* * Archive: UREAL03.NEW * * Created on: Tue Mar 28 15:30:11 2000 * * Number of articles: 24 * * Welcome! This is one of the files that goes to make up the archives of * Project Galactic Guide. To find out what the heck PGG is, go look at its * main Web site at , where you'll be able to * find an FAQ. * * * The articles in this file are: * * 2U48-1 RSA Broken By The Russians? * 2U49-1 Feline MPD * 2U50-1 Light, Speed Of, Why It Is Finite * 2U51-1 Antartoth II, Camping On * 2U52-1 Alpha Centaurian Alcohol Enhancing Device * 2U53-1 Writers' Block * 2U54-1 M.E.O.W. Treatment * 2U55-1 Aura Photograph Technique * 2U56-1 Afterlife, The * 2U57-1 Argicize * 2U59-1 Prou'Gress Ivro'K * 2U60-1 Geeks And... Er... Romance * 2U61-1 Alternate Universes * 2U62-1 Mating Habits Of The McBain Initial * 2U63-1 Self-Destructing Computers * 2U64-1 Caramilk Bars - The Biggest Secret In The Universe * 2U65-1 Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis * 2U66-1 Hoovercraft * 2U67-1 Uhm, Eh * 2U68-1 Intelligent Species, Earth * 2U69-1 Chain Letters * 2U70-1 Reality Alteration * 2U71-1 Genesis Revised * 2U72-1 Dreams By Mail * %t RSA Broken By The Russians? %n 2U48 %s Kolmogorov Cryptography System Possibly Cracked %a Timothy C. May (tcmay@netcom.com) * * Broken free from alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940411 %x Compression Sort Transform %x Gedankenexperiment %x Supermarkets %i Cryptography %i Many Worlds Theory %e Apparently those rumors that the Russians, always top notch mathematicians, had developed public key crypto in the 1950s or early 60s are true -- my hero Kolmogorov developed this when he was technical director at Kryptogorodok, the secret city of Soviet cryptographers hidden in the Urals (and first visited by an outsider, Stephen Wolfram, only a couple of years ago). Here's the report on a news conference announcing the cracking of their Kolmogorov system, which is equivalent to our own RSA. I haven't had a chance to talk to John Markoff, who was at the press conference, to get his comments. MOSCOW (AP) -- At a press conference held minutes ago in a crowded hall, Russian mathematicians announced that a breakthrough had been made nearly a decade ago in the arcane branch of mathematics known as "cryptography," the science of making messages that are unreadable to others. Leonid Vladwylski, Director of the prestigious Moscow Academy of Sciences, called the press conference yesterday, after rumors began circulating that noted Russian-American reporter John Markoff was in Russia to interview academicians at the previously secret city of Soviet cryptographers, Kryptogorodok. The existence of Kryptogorodok, sister city to Akademogorodok, Magnetogorsk, and to the rocket cities of Kazhakstan, had been shrouded in secrecy since its establishment in 1954 by Chief of Secret Police L. Beria. Its first scientific director, A. Kolmogorov, developed in 1960 what is called in the West "public key cryptography." The existence of Kryptogorodok was unknown to the West until 1991, when Stephen Wolfram disclosed its existence. American cryptographers initially scoffed at the rumors that the Russians had developed public-key cryptography as early as 1960, some 15 years prior to the first American discovery. After interviews last year at Kryptogorodok, noted American cryptographers Professor D. Denning and D. Bowdark admitted that it did seem to be confirmed. Professor Denning was quoted at the time saying that she did not think this meant the Russians could actually break the Kolmogorov system, known in the West as RSA, because she had spent more than a full weekend trying to do this and had not succeeded. "Believe me, RSA is still unbreakable," she said in her evaluation report. Russia's top mathematicians set out to break Kolmogorov's new coding system. This required them to determine that "P = NP" (see accompanying article). Details are to be published next month in the journal "Doklady.Krypto," but a few details are emerging. The Kolmogorov system is broken by computing the prime numbers which form what is called the modulus. This is done by randomly guessing the constituent primes and then detonating all of the stockpiled nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union for each "wrong guess." In the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, invented in 1949 by Lev Landau (and later, independently by Everett and Wheeler in the U.S.), all possible outcomes of a quantum experiment are realized. As Academician Leonid Vladwylski explained, "In all the universes in which we guessed the wrong factors, we were destroyed completely. But since we are obviously here, talking to you at this press conference, in this universe we have an unbroken record of successfully factoring even the largest of imaginable numbers. Since we are so optimistic about this method, we say the computation runs in 'Nondeterministic Pollyanna Time.' Allow me to demonstrate..." [Press Conference will be continued if the experiment is a success.] MOSCOW (AP), ITAR-Tass, 1 April 1994 Appendix -------- First, it was Stephen Wolfram's actual suggestion, a couple of years ago after the USSR imploded, that we try to recruit mathematicians and programmers from what he surmised must exist: a secret city of Soviet cryptographers. It probably exists. We did it at Los Alamos, they did it with their rocket scientists and others (Akademogorodok exists), so why not put their version of NSA a bit off the beaten track? Note that our own NSA is within a stone's throw of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that their experts were ensconced somewhere in the Urals. I tried to acknowledge Steve with my comments. By the way, so far as I know, no word has come out on whether he was right in this speculation. (Maybe some of the Russians he does in fact have working at Wolfram are these folks? Naw...) Second, Kolmogorov did basic work on information theory, probability, and statistics. One has to assume he had ties to the Soviet cryptography effort (about which little has been written about, so far). If anyone in Russia could have seen public key methods coming, he is a candidate. No evidence that he or any other Russian did, though. Third, my references to Denning and Sternlight were perhaps not riotously funny (though I didn't aim for a riotously funny tone). Especially in light of David Sternlight's excellent follow-up here... never let it be said that David lacks a sense of humor. The Denning reference was to her own comments about spending a weekend or so trying (and failing, not surprisingly) to crack the Skipjack algorithm. (Real ciphers often take years to break, as with the knapsack algorithm, recent crunching of DES, etc.). Fourth, the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics does exist, and leads to approaches such as I described. It's also a hypothetical way to ensure one's wealth: simply bet everything you own at 1000-to-1 odds and then commit suicide in all universes in which you lose. Not very convincing, I agree. Hans Moravec writes about this in his "Mind Children," 1987. Finally, I used the headers and format of a real article in the ClariNet system, then made modifications. Given that the Supreme Court has recently ruled in favor of "fair use" for satire, I hope my version of "2 Live Crew meets RSA" does not get my sued. (I could just kill myself in all realities in which Brad sues me.) %e *EOA* %t Feline MPD %n 2U49 %s Cats With Suspected Multiple Personality Disorder %a Suzanne Patricia Johnson (alphonse@uclink.berkeley.edu) * * Found in alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940217 %x Cats And Dogs %x M.E.O.W. Treatment %e We know that cats can get feline leukemia and feline aids. Cats are subject to mood disorders (e.g., distemper) and adjustment disorders (e.g., peeing on owner's new lover's discarded clothing). I've been reading a lot about Multiple Personality Disorder lately, and I think my cats have MPD. It would explain a lot. For instance, one cat goes in and out a lot. She'll meow at the door to be let out, goes out, meows to come back in, is let back in, and two minutes later the cycle begins again. I'm beginning to suspect that she is actually amnesiac for having been let out in the first place. (I don't hold with those theories that are critical of the MPD diagnosis, implying that the cat's behavior is purely hysterical or manipulative. My cat would never manipulate; our bond is to deep for that.) Possibly she is switching from an "indoors and wants to go out" alter to an "outdoors and wants to come in" one. Possibly her symptoms indicate underlying concerns having to do with (door) closure. (I should note that she has a perfectly acceptable indoor litterbox, free access to sunny spots, and a history of abuse -- she's a lab refugee.) The other cat has other peculiar traits that might be dissociative as well. Like the first, she has an early childhood history of trauma, living on the mean streets of Oakland under the tutelage of her notorious father "The Original Mop" who disappeared suddenly one year and did a lot of running around before that. For one thing, she forgets that she has eaten almost immediately after every meal. Consequently, she often gets fed twice, once by me and once by my partner to whom she presents as not having eaten. (Like I say, I don't think this is pure manipulation). I think she has a "hungry" alter, possibly related to her early experiences of deprivation. Also, she likes to lie in forbidden spots. Even though she is repeatedly removed and told "no," she immediately jumps back up (onto the printer, bed, etc.) I suspect that such forced removal is actually traumatic for her, and the stress of the event precipitates a switch into an alter personality that remembers nothing about having been thrown off the forbidden location. Both cats often appear to be in a daze, staring at nothing in particular for hours on end, and in the most intent fashion. They sleep a lot, which can be indicative of depression; but some MPD experts suggest that depression is just evidence of a depressed alter. The way their ears twitch or they meow at nothing in particular also suggests to me that they may be hearing voices of alter kitties in their head. I'd be interested in hearing about anyone else's experiences along these lines. With enough data, it might even be able to put together a truly ground-breaking article. The top-ranked journals might not accept it, but there's always the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. I can supply lots of appropriate references, such as my unwritten dissertation and other unconducted research which would, given the chance, show conclusive results. If you really think your cat has MPD, take it to a therapist right away. As a follow up to the original research, I've learned that at least one of the subjects reported has come to view her posterior appendage as an hostile alter -- the rest of her body periodically chases and bites it, in an apparently hysterical frenzy. %e *EOA* %t Light, Speed Of, Why It Is Finite %n 2U50 %s The Untold Truth About Creation %a Mark Hopkins (mark@omnifest.uwm.edu) * * Sucked from alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940411 %x i %x Mathematical Model Of God And Jesus %x Life After Death %x Light %x Hell %i God Cocked Up %e Actually, light speed is infinite. No matter how fast you move to catch up with it, it's still infinite. However, God made a mistake when He let light come into being, ending up being about 10% off in His calculations, like any good engineer ought to be, and lo and behold infinity accidentally turned out to be 186,282 miles per second. And so 186.282 miles per second is actually an infinite speed. To cover up His tracks, He forced motion to exist in such a way that no matter who measured the distance, X, traversed by the moving object, and the time, T, the object took to move that distance, the result would always be that X^2 - (c T)^2 would come out the same, where c is light speed. Later on, when He brought planets and stars into being and created gravity and inertia, He had to make a few adjustments to account for acceleration and the influence of gravity. It was really a mess. He decided that as long as He was at it, He might as well just simply equate one second to 186.282 times the square root of -1 miles, and then He could explain His mistake by saying "It's the Pythagorean Theorem now, see?", and so it was that Complex Numbers were invented along with their first Physical embodiment. This is apparently not the only time He botched things up. The first time He said "Let there be Life" He ended up getting these real tiny slimy things, like pond scum, and they infested the water. Once the deed was done, it was too late. So in order to cover His tracks, He decided, like any good engineer, just to tinker about for a while making a few changes here and there until He worked His way up to humans. Well anyway, in the Specs, He originally estimated that He could fix the problems in a few days, and really it only seemed like a few days passed (it's always like that when you get into heavy projects), but it took a while longer. Nevertheless, here we are. Since nobody else was around He decided to tell a little fib, exaggerate a little (after all, it SEEMED like only a day or two and who was going to argue with Him), and proclaim that Creation lasted a mere week. The problem is that He didn't cover up His tracks too well, ending up leaving some of the remains of His prior work lying about, and to this day keeps trying to sneak in changes while we're not looking. Anyhow, He's been getting tired of playing the Life game, and so decided to teach us how to do it, retire, and let us take on the task. There was another time when He screwed up. When God made Math, He forgot to finish the job. You see, He made the apparatus of arithmetic and the theory of recursive functions so powerful that the very logic used to prop up these edifices could be mirrored faithfully by arithmetic computations and functions within. Unfortunately, around this time, one of His assistants (I won't name any names here) got the idea to stick in a math problem that mirrored the statement, "This statement can't be proven true," and made it impossible for God to finish His job. Anyhow, God was in the process of enumerating all the logically possible computations, arbitrarily judging them to be true or false (and in His Divine Wisdom always doing it consistently). When He ran into this little gem, literally, all hell broke loose. He tried to fix it by changing the Axioms around, adding a few here, taking away a few, and the same problem kept coming up. And so it was that at the same time, Hell came into being and the first Persian Flaw too. Another case: Christian legend has it that almost 2000 years ago, He was experimenting with the idea of Divine Infusion and ended up accidentally cramming the entirety of His Infinite Presence into a finite, mortal body for about 30 years. The Universe had to be run on autopilot in the intervening period. It's a good thing it only happened here on Earth; Lord only knows what manner of chaos would ensue were He to have pulled off that same stunt on each of the other billion some-odd alien worlds out there for 30 years apiece. He wouldn't even have any time left to take care of all those God-like things that He's supposed to do. To this day, scientists cannot explain how it was accomplished. %e *EOA* %t Antartoth II, Camping On %n 2U51 %s Where To Go To See Your Life Flash Before Your Eyes %a David Carroll Hall (aka Nomad of Norad) (nomad@tlvx.UUCP) %d 19840901 %i Nightmare Of Antartoth II %i Camping On Antartoth II %e Have you ever considered camping and/or backpacking on planet Antartoth II? There are some very important things you must consider, like not going at all! If you absolutely must go, then consider this article. Always bring weapons! Bring blasters, laser swords, phasers, anything along those lines. But especially consider the wonders that crates and crates and more crates of sonic grenades will do. Always sleep inside a force field; you just never know what may come clunking/slithering/crawling/romping/skittering/bounding into camp. Naturally you will need to tie everything down... with titanium chains (after all, you can't put everything in the force field!) Never go alone; you will need the safety others will bring, but especially, you will need someone to help carry all that protective stuff. Of course companionship may also help keep you from going nuts/crackers/bonkers under the pressure you'll encounter here. There are some interesting items to take on such a trip, including multi- function things that take less space than the individual equivalents. Consider the combination laser-sword/lock-pick/nut-cracker/pocket-knife which is sold in designer colors. Think of the binocular/communications/ clock-radio pack. And there are others. But what about food? Of course there is the stuff you can bring with you, like dehydrated geff, gledg, and dlutches. How about the things once known as "teevee dinners"? But you only have so much room in your packs. Consider the food handy on the planet. You must learn the types you can eat, can't eat, and those you should be able to eat but can't because the competition (animals) don't like your taking their sustenance (never mind that you need sustenance too!). I now give you warnings concerning certain creatures on this planet. Never trust a smiling plomphtumpth. Never camp near a blugtigof pit. It is unknown what creature or creatures are in it, but... well... there are people who have come near enough to find out what's in there, and those who are still alive, never camp near a blugtigof pit! Then there are the tsuztiklots which burrow under the ground in the night, come up in the force field area and (ahem!) eat all the cloth. (Obviously, they can cause quite a stir in the morning, especially if there are ladies with you!) The best defense is to throw onto the ground lots of mothballs (for some reason they will eat those even more readily and will quickly become gorged on them and leave the cloth alone). And then there are the spletlarpti trees. Yes, trees! They move around by their roots (which are above ground). They are rather harmless except that they like to make noise. They strike rocks together (in a musical pattern), they beat logs between "normal" trees (trees like ours, that are just plants). But if that's all they do, why am I listing them here? It is because they also (ahem!) use tents as drums! This is, of course, impossible when the force fields are up, but some have been known to use the force fields too! As you can see, it is asking for trouble to camp on this beautiful (?) little world. Why bother? Surely there must be better ways to spend your vacation time than fighting for your life and sanity! %e *EOA* %t Alpha Centaurian Alcohol Enhancing Device %n 2U52 %s How The Alcohol Enhancing Device Came Into Existence %i Sex, Alternatives To %a Simo, Dave Hodges' Guide (not available via Internet) * * Nicked from Dave Hodges' guide by Alex McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) * %d 19940501 %e It has often been said that drinking is like sex - fun to do, sinful, and (on the planet Quartelhoose) illegal after 11:00pm on weekdays. One way in which they differ, however, is that there is no natural alcoholic equivalent of the multiple orgasm. This was a problem which for many centuries vexed large numbers of scientists, driving a few of them to drink, but mostly driving them away from drink and towards sex, which they finally decided was more fun. Then one day, a young Alpha Centauran economics student (who should never have been in the laboratory in the first place, but, being an economics student, didn't have any lectures to go to) found himself reasoning thus: "If I don't know how to do something, and I am a character in a pastiche of the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, then Douglas Adams himself should be able to cop out of this if he was here. Since he isn't here, all I have to do is rip off a well known passage from the Guide (such as, for example, the bit about the Infinite Improbability Drive), plug it into a really hot rehash of jokes from old Footlights reviews, and stand well back." This he did, and nobody was at all surprised when an Alpha Centaurian Alcohol Enhancing Device popped out of this comedy with no real attempt at any logical explanation of its creation or existence whatsoever. %e *EOA* %t Writers' Block %n 2U53 %s Prisons For The Literate %a Alexander Lachlan McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) %d 19940505 %e It is a well known fact that writers write some of their best works when depressed, moody, and poor. The reasons for this are essentially that if someone is happy and basically well off then they really don't have much to write about. Most writing about nice things is rather banal. Examples of "nice-writing" could be Shakespeare's sonnets. Lots of roses and summer's days for example. Most modern reviewers criticize Shakespeare's poetry for not having a part for the "Arnold Schwarzenegger character." This happy-factor was the basis the of the holiday/prison camp called "Writers' Block." In Writers' Block meals were bread and water, cable TV was rationed to one hour a day, people were locked up in rooms with nothing but paper and pencils (the pencils had rubber leads so writers couldn't hurt themselves), and visitors had to see the inmates through bullet proof glass. The fees for this place were very high, as you would expect for the best of health farms, but it produced some of the best novels of the Pinta Beer Era. %e *EOA* %t M.E.O.W. Treatment %n 2U54 %s Treatment For Feline Psychological Problems %a Jeffrey Miner (jminer@world.std.com) * * Dug up from alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940219 %i Treatment For Feline MPD %x Feline MPD %x Cats And Dogs %e As an experienced veterinary psychologist, I have treated many cats for a wide variety of conditions, including Feline Factitious Disorder (F.F.D.), Siamese Schizophrenia, Generalized Angora Anxiety Syndrome (G.A.A.S.), Hysterical Hairballs, Catnip Dependance, Finicky Personality Disorder, and of course, Multiple Personality Disorder (or MPD, usually known as Feline Dissociative Disorder, multiple type). What small success I have had has been the product of rigorously applied Multiphasic Empathic Ontogenic Work (M.E.O.W.). It is demanding of both therapist and patient, but given sufficient motivation and an understanding owner, it is the only hope. The first phase of treatment requires repeated application of Feline Exo-Empathic Dysphoric Mood Exercises (F.E.E.D.M.E.) until a stable period of at least one month has been established. The next phase begins the challenging of the fragmentation, and it entails the Lovingly Interpreted Transferential Topographic Entity Rapprochement By Observed Xenophobia maneuver (L.I.T.T.E.R.B.O.X.) in which the very fragmentation itself is made toxic to the cat. The final phase produces a single, intact personality through Positive Unified Reintegrated Reinforcement (P.U.R.R.), and though this phase can last upwards of two years, it is essential that it be performed unerringly with intensely focused purpose. A thorough exegesis of M.E.O.W. treatment can be found in my latest book, _Feline Analytic Theory & Character: Assessment and Technique_ (F.A.T.C.A.T.). %e *EOA* %t Aura Photograph Technique %n 2U55 %s Technique For The Restoration Of Damaged CD's %a Liron Lightwood (liron@zikzak.apana.org.au) * * Seen on alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * Re-edited and polished by Liron Lightwood. * %i Compact Discs, Aura Photograph Restoration Technique %i Kirlian Photography %d 19940411 %e AURA PHOTOGRAPHS USED TO RESTORE DAMAGED COMPACT DISCS MELBOURNE - Australian scientists have discovered a remarkable new technique that can fully restore recordings on damaged compact discs to their original condition. The technique involves taking photographs of the aura of a damaged CD. But where the damaged sections of CD lie, instead of seeing the damage, the aura in the photograph reproduces the pits and bumps as they were in their original, undamaged condition. These photographs can be used to press new copies of the CD, in which the entire recorded material is restored to its original condition, without error. "We're not talking about one bit in a billion, or one bit in a billion billion error," said a spokesman for the Melbourne-based Centre of Expertise in Paranormal Phenomena (CEPP), where the discovery was made. "We're talking about zero error. And it doesn't matter if the original CD has light scratches, deep scratches, or entire chunks missing altogether. The missing recorded information is recovered, in full, and without error!" The discovery has major implications for people who have spent years and large sums of money building up their compact disc collections. "For even if CD's eventually do wear out, you'll always be able to get fully restored copies, and when these wear out, fully restored copies of copies, and so on. In effect, the CD will truly last forever." But the area where this technique is expected to have the greatest impact is the computer industry. "If a company uses optical discs for its main data storage, then the data can always be restored, even after a major disaster in which the discs are physically damaged!" The technique is based on a phenomena known as the missing leaf phenomena, which had been discovered in the early 70's, but only now has it been applied to compact discs. In the missing leaf phenomena, the aura of a leaf that has had a piece cut out of it becomes whole again after several hours. "All objects have a halo surrounding them, which is known as an aura. Living objects emit a vibrant aura. Inanimate objects such as statues or coins emit a still aura. Inanimate objects which used to be living objects, such as a leaf, emit an aura which is somewhere in between." The aura can be captured on film using a technique known as Kirlian photography. In Kirlian photography, the object in question is placed on a film plate, and a high frequency electric field is applied to the object. When developed, the aura can clearly be seen in the photograph. "If a piece is cut from the leaf, the new aura of the leaf will show the new outline of the leaf. Or at least, that's what happens initially. After a number of hours, the aura suddenly changes back to the way it was before the piece was cut away. The leaf appears whole again, almost as if the missing piece was never removed in the first place. The only difference is that the new section of aura isn't as bright as the rest of the aura. "Although we knew about this phenomena since the 70's, we only started taking aural photographs of CD's in the past two years, mainly out of curiosity. We found that compact discs emit a bright aura around the outside of the disc and around the hole in the middle, and a less bright, though still vivid, aura around the entire surface of the disc. "Close examination of the Kirlian photographs revealed that the aura faithfully reproduced all the pits and bumps of the original compact discs. In fact, it was possible to press new CD's from the photographs. The new ones sounded every bit as good as the originals, and comparison of the digital bitstreams found them to be identical. "We then asked the next logical question: Would the missing leaf phenomena work for CD's? So we bought two copies of some brand new CD's and deliberately scratched one of each copy and took aura photographs of the damaged CD's. "As with the leaf, aura photographs taken immediately after the damage showed the damage, with the aura of the damaged sections missing or damaged. But aura photographs taken a few hours later showed faint outlines of the missing sections of CD, with all the original pits and bumps clearly evident. "After some very basic image processing (to compensate for the dimness of the newly restored sections on the aura photograph), new CD's were pressed, and these were found to be exact replicas of the original CD's without error. "Different amounts of damage were tried, and even for CD's in which a section as large as a 5-cent coin was missing, the missing sections had been fully restored in the aural photographs, and in the new CD's made from them." The Centre of Expertise in Paranormal Phenomena is one of the many centres of expertise founded in the mid- to late-80's to foster fundamental research within Australia and allow Australia to take advantage of new scientific breakthroughs. CEPP is applying for worldwide patents for their revolutionary technique, and are pursuing licensing agreements with major CD manufactures, both within Australia and around the world. %e *EOA* %t Afterlife, The %n 2U56 %s Dream On %a Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) %d 19940518 %i Life After Death Revisited %x Life After Death %x Ethereal Travel %x Black Holes %x Gravity %x Infinity %e By definition, life stops at the beginning of death. As we have read in the "Life After Death" article, after or in death there is no existence or consciousness. God said so himself. What he failed to see, however, was that from the point of view of the dying, everything looks completely different than the casual observer in the "real world" observes. In the real world, we observe the decay of the bodily functions, the disappearing of consciousness, and finally the disappearing of all life signs. As an introduction to the explanation of the reality you know nothing about that I will put forward very soon, I will briefly describe the observations of someone falling into a black hole as opposed to the observations of someone observing that. This I do to point out that observations are relative. The poor soul falling into the black hole, when he looks up from his computer on which he/she is writing a Guide entry, will see and experience what we all expect. He will feel an increasing pull resulting in being torn apart and being disintegrated by the tidal forces, after which he will, after a while, reach the nucleus, whatever that may be. The observer standing alongside will however, uttering a sigh of relief that he/she isn't in the observed situation, see the in-falling spaceship, getting redder and redder (gravitational redshift), slow down until it stops moving on the event horizon and remains there forever with the tortured and distorted face of the astronaut, even redder than expected through fearal redshift, clutching at the port-hole. In fact, everything will be crispy black at the event horizon, because after all we are dealing with a black hole, not a red or white one. When dying the reverse happens. As we, the living, see the beloved or whatever cease to live, that person experiences an afterlife with a duration extending to infinity. This effect is due to a change in the speed of the internal clock, induced by death-related chemical reactions in the brain. The voyage into the afterlife begins, as near-death out-of-body experiences teach us, with a voyage through a large tunnel to a very bright light. The living have never been able to get further than meeting the light. What happens to dying people is that they, at that point, start dreaming. At the same time, if we can use that concept, chemical changes in the body due to the process of dying cause the perception of time to change, speeding up close to infinity (causing a second in real-time to last for ages), causing the mind to escape in a kind of tangent to our time to a different time dimension, so to speak. In short, you start to dream. First you do this as incoherent as in your regular dreams. This might be considered as the purgatory. If you are lucky you will learn to be able to control the neverending dream, as some people can do already, and create your own private heaven. On the other hand, if you fail to ever control your dreams, you will remain in purgatory for ever, for some people being equal to hell. But it can be worse. If your dream turns into a nightmare you will learn what real Hell is. It is all in your own hands. Well, that is, this is not completely true. As we all know there are several ways people can screw up your peaceful dream life. War traumas are an effective nightmare creators. From this we can conclude that as sad and harsh as it may be, it is true that Heaven or Hell partly depends on people other than ourselves. I could give you the advice to be good to others, hoping they'll be good back to you (give them some heaven and get some back). This is cruelly moralistic, but worth a try. My last advice for a better afterlife is to enjoy yourself as much as you can now and thus create some fine memories to dream about. Hitchhiking is an excellent way to do this. You could also stay at home and read a lot, but nothing's better than the real thing! %e *EOA* %t Argicize %n 2U57 %s What Does Argicize Mean And What Are Its Roots? %a Craig Dickson (crd@netcom.com) * * Rescued from alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940520 %i Censoring By Kibologists %i Argic, Serdar %e Argicize (AR-gih-size), vt. To post nonsense repeatedly without significant change, especially to a wide spectrum of unrelated newsgroups and/or threads, as in "all the articles you argicized" (snowhare@netcom.com) [1]. Etymology: derived from the name of Serdar Argic, a roboposter well-known for posting essentially identical articles in mass quantities all over Usenet during the period 1991-4. Synonyms: serdarize, brynerize, spam. Antonym: retromoderate. See also "crosspost to hell and back," "off-charter," "robopost," "-bot." [1] Snowhare (snowhare@netcom.com), inventor of the word. %e *EOA* %t Prou'Gress Ivro'K %n 2U59 %s This Is NOT A Really Hoopy Kind Of Music %a Joerg Rhiemeier (rhiemeir@ips.cs.tu-bs.de) %d 19940428 %i Gress Ivro'K, Prou' %i Ivro'K, Prou'Gress %i K, Prou'Gress Ivro' %x Progressive Rock %e Prou'Gress Ivro'K is the name of: 1) A drink which affects you like the penii of a Knirglinbraianian Sex Gerilla (a Knirglinbraianian Sex Gerilla is a large, horned ape-like creature with two penii which are very big and covered with rough black bristles) invading your nostrils 2) Un ugly music style invented by the Perverse Trisexual Limbo Dancer Killer Beasts from Shnarikon VIb which humanoid beings can only endure under the effect of Prou'Gress Ivro'K (1). This music style, which has some resemblance to a mixture of Earthian Techno, Sirian Doggy-Dogg, Vegan Tera-Grunge and the grunts of Knirglinbraianian Sex Gerillas, should not be mistaken for Progressive Rock - an entirely different music style which is played and listened to without consuming Prou'Gress Ivro'K (1) or other drugs. %e *EOA* %t Geeks And... Er... Romance %n 2U60 %s What Geeks Find Romantic %a SONGYO00@AC.USFCA.EDU * * Retrieved from alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940516 %e What do Geeks find (or do that is) romantic? There are several things: 1) Stalking 2) Wearing night vision goggles while perched in a tree or something (see 1) 3) Asking a girl out while speaking Klingon, then laughing when she doesn't understand 4) Calling 1-900 numbers 5) Finding a teleconferencing BBS and looking for girls 6) Walking nonchalantly through the lingerie section of Sears 3 or 4 times, sneaking quick furtive glances 7) Dressing up as a United Federation of Planets ADMIRAL, because hey, chicks dig the people with the highest rank 8) Setting your digital watch to beep when you're next to some girl and hoping she'll say "Wow Bernard, is that the new Casio GMT-90 with global positioning tracking and indiglo? You're cool!" 9) Playing some "interactive sex" game on your computer 10) GIFs! GIFs! %e *EOA* %t Alternate Universes %n 2U61 %s Relativistic Effects At Low Velocities %a Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) %d 19940430 %i Velocity-related Experiences %i Universe Hopping %i Van der Meulen's Theory Of Relativity %x Infinity %x Means Of Transportation For The Earth-Confined Hitchhiker %x Light %e Universe Hopping - an Everyday Experience ----------------------------------------- I have noticed that lately (since 1905) there's been a lot of interest in Einstein's theory of relativity. This theory deals with what happens at velocities close to the speed of light. Einstein's theory has a lot of applications in science, for instance in astronomy and elementary particle physics. The theory is also a grateful subject for layman dinner table speculations and discussions. I think Einstein's theory seems so interesting because it deals with phenomena very far from our daily experience. All this time these people have neglected to pay attention to all the things going on at relatively low velocities like for instance the velocities of trains, cars, bicycles, hikers and people not moving at all (the motion operandi of the hitchhiker). This is to their loss, because there are so much unexpected interesting phenomena at these velocities. In this article I will reveal to the world one of these phenomena. Definition of the Universes --------------------------- My experience is that each of the aforementioned velocities has its own reality or universe. To be more precise, each velocity interval around the average speed of the vehicle used to attain this velocity has a certain universe attached to it. The interval edges of a universe are a bit fuzzy: in which universe you are at a given velocity mostly depends on which hopping device you are in. For reasons of convenience I have named these universes the T-, C-, B-, H- and PNMAA- (or just Z-) universes (from respectively the Train-, Car-, Bicycle-, Hiker- and the People-Not-Moving-At-All- (or Zero-) universes.) One might be led to believe that there is another alternate universe, the one where the minds reside of some people of whom you at first glance might say "Wow, here's a dude living in a whole different universe altogether," but in this case the phenomenon is purely psychological. Optical Observations of the Universes ------------------------------------- You might wonder how I got this idea of several universes instead of the simpler idea of only the one we think we live in. Just one universe seems simpler, but it must be clear that we observe different things travelling at different speeds. Generally we observe geometrically large structures when going fast and small lines when going slow. But what exactly is it that we observe? Imagine driving through a city in a car. You see blocks of houses and stores, sometimes being able to read what kind of stores they are, but most of the time without a clue to what's really inside. It is clear that you can't drive through a store to observe the interior, so as far as you are concerned the interior doesn't even exist. Slowing down to have a peak is leaving the general speed of your vehicle and transferring to a different universe again. On the other hand, *walking* down that "same" street will give you a complete different set of observations. You can discern most of the different products in the windows and read who had put them there for you. If you stand still you can even read how much the products cost and how much they are supposed to have cost last week (mostly in flagrant disagree with last week's observations of the same tag). When walking, however, you do miss the understanding of the larger structures plus the amusing sight of pedestrians hurriedly running away from you to get themselves out of the path of the rapidly nearing vast amount of metal you are sitting in (especially near zebras). Clearly two different universes altogether! Just to show how very different our observations at these low velocities are from observations at the speed of light, consider this. If you were to move at the speed of light, you would be able to see a weird bright dot in front of you [1]. This is not the so called "tunnelvision," but a consequence of Einstein's theory of relativity. Hopping Devices --------------- You have surely noticed that the transition to other universes is only possible with help of machines. To be more specific: electricity-to-motion converters (electromotors); fuel-to-motion converters (combustion engines); muscle-to-motion converters (pedals); chemical energy to motion converters (muscles) and, well, food to fat converters (enzymes). It must be clear what the more common names for these machines are (otherwise, get a life!) Now for a moment be amazed by the wonder of the difference between the archaic ideas about universe hoppers from the extensive Science Fiction literature and the simplicity of the everyday universe hoppers. (*Amazement*) There are other hopping devices which are not machines. Strictly seen, these fall outside the course of this article. These jumping devices are optical in nature and they refract light. They are called spectacles. Spectacles are completely velocity unrelated. However, the number of alternate universes you can be in can be doubled with them. Spectacles add details, or differently put, smaller lengths to what you see, but a Spectacles-C-universe (SC) is not equal to an ordinary B-universe. In principle you see the same details, but not the same amount of them, because you don`t have enough time to see as much. There are also more fine tuned, miniaturized devices that work on this same principle. These are called contact lenses, but they are more complex and difficult to handle and maintain, as is most of the most modern, state of the art technology. Hopping Patterns ---------------- This jumping between universes has a certain pattern. A high velocity universe is commonly used to translate fast in the Zero-universe. The jumping through hyperspace to get to other stars in a fraction of time, taking place in myriads of science fiction books, ought to give you the right picture. On our scale though, it is much simpler. It is even so simple that it is possible to draw maps which can be used in several alternate universes at the same time! And note: this has been done! Everyone has, of course, seen one of these maps one time or other, but few know that these are multiverse maps. Exploring a Universe -------------------- The higher the velocity, the less we are able to observe and scrutinize the accompanying universe. Try smelling a green, white, blue and yellow field from a train! (This would be a lovely odouring flower covered meadow in the Zero-universe). From fast to slow the hearing, smelling, feeling, and tasting sense perceptions are added, in respective order, to the seeing sense perception. An example: from a train you can see (and provided it takes you through a heavy industrialized or heavy farm animal dunged area, smell). One might be mislead to say that you can feel and taste in a train as well. That is wrong. The T-universe is outside the train, surrounding a local Zero-universe. Indeed, one can use all the sense-organs one has and take in all the sensory input there is in the Zero-universe. Space in a Universe ------------------- Anthropocentrically, the low velocity universes are spatially bound. Strange as this may seem at first, we have a smaller amount of space to be in (the body) in a high-velocity universe, than in a lower one. (This law breaks down when exceeding the T-universe, as I shall soon explain). Hiking, in principle, you can get everywhere, but in trains, you are limited to area's which in the other universes correspond to railway rails and some space surrounding it. As I said before, this law breaks down at higher velocities. In the plane and helicopter universe (P&H-universe), space extends from the complete shell of earth, to high into the atmosphere. The spacecraft universe (S-universe) even extends to infinity, but this is in fact the domain of Einstein's special relativity, and as the S-universe is beyond the reach of the average hitchhiker, it is not interesting to us. Conclusion ---------- If after reading this article you are not convinced and think that, to say the least, my logic is a bit fuzzy, remember about how successful fuzzy logic is becoming in the world of computers; why shouldn't it work here? I hope you will now hitchhike with a complete different perception of the world around you than that of the average car-driver (if this wasn't so already). [1] Could it be that before the universe began, God was driving his Ferrari at the speed of light (looking at this bright dot in front of Him, representing the state of the universe). For some reason He must have pulled over (not because of malfunctions or lack of fuel because everyone knows He is all-powerful and all-mighty and all-knowing), causing the dot to expand... (hmm... is there a highway patrol that can stop even God? Or was He just slowing down because He, allknowingly, *knew* there was a radar control coming up..?) %e *EOA* %t Mating Habits Of The McBain Initial %n 2U62 %s Slide Show By Doctor Vincent Elwing, Ph.D. %a Vincent Elwing (author unavailable via Internet) * * Yeah, but picked from alt.humor.best-of-usenet by * Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940623 %x X-Rated GIF Site, Astronomers Find %e ___________________________________________________________________________ | | | Amongst other things, Andrew McBain (ceeacm@cee.hw.ac.uk) once wrote: | | | |__________________________________________________________________________ +---------------- __________ ________________ Andrew McBain ceeacm@cee.hw.ac.uk / ___ /\ / ____ ____ /\ ceeacm@vaxb.hw.ac.uk / /__/ / / / /\__/ / __/ / / -------------------------------------- / ____ / / / / / /_/ / / / / WWW : http://137.195.27.66:8080/ / /\__/ / / / / / \_\/ / / / BEng Computing & Electronics, 1st Yr. /__/ / /__/ / /__/ / /__/ / Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ +---------------- _ __________________________________________________________________________ | | | | | MATING HABITS OF THE MCBAIN INITIAL | | A Biological Sciences filmstrip presentation | | by Doctor Vincent Elwing, Ph.D. | | | | Here vee haff ze male unt female McBain Initials, initialicus | | idiotus. Zees peectures haff been magneefied zhirty zousand times, | | as zee McBain Initial ees an eenseegneefecant creeture. | | | | | |*bing* | |_________________________________________________________________________| +---------------- ________________ Andrew McBain ceeacm@cee.hw.ac.uk *ohh* / ____ ____ /\ ceeacm@vaxb.hw.ac.uk *ungh* / / / / / / / --------------------------------------- \ / / /_/ / / / WWW : http://137.195.27.66:8080/ / / ___ / / / BEng Computing & Electronics, 1st Yr. /__/ /__/ /__/ / Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. \_/_________/\__\/ +---------------- \_________\/ / *urgh* *grunt* ___________________________________________________________________________ | | | | | Zees slide is of zee McBain Initials in zee naughty act its-zelf. | | Note how zee male McBain Initial ees foolee engorged. | | | | Ze gestation period of McBain Initials is zhirty to forty hours. | | Uncomplicated, blocky creetures as zees must reeproduce queeklee | | in ordeir to promote ze prezzerfashon of ze speecies. | | | | | |*bing* | |_________________________________________________________________________| *chirp* +---------------- __________ A ________________ Andrew McBain ceeacm@cee.hw.ac.uk / ___ /\ / ____ ____ /\ ceeacm@vaxb.hw.ac.uk / /__/ / / / /\__/ / __/ / / --------------------------------------- / ____ / / / / / /_/ / / / / WWW : http://137.195.27.66:8080/ / /\__/ / / / / / \_\A / / / BEng Computing & Electronics, 1st Yr. /__/ / /__/ / /__/ /A MM /__/ / Heriot-Watt University , Edinburgh. \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ M A M \__\/ M +---------------- *chirp* *chirp* *chirp* ___________________________________________________________________________ | | | | | Zees final slide is of ze new mother McBain initial and its brood. | | Zeez babies are but a few hours old. In a few days, zey will bee | | foolee grown, and zee cycle begeens anoo. | | | |_________________________________________________________________________| %e *EOA* %t Self-Destructing Computers %n 2U63 %s Which Computer To Choose Now CBM Has Folded %a Dan Zerkle (zerkle@toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu) * * But brought to you from alt.humor.best-of-usenet by * Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940623 %i CBM Folds - What Should Amiga Users Do? %i Experiences With Computer Expire Dates %x Ka-Dink Effect, The %x Computer Malfunctions %e Now that Commodore Business Machines (CBM) has folded, a lot of Amiga users ask themselves the question if they shall continue using the Amiga or look for another machine and then which machine would that be. To answer this question I can tell your there is a self-destruct routine built into version 2.1 of the WorkBench. The news of Commodore's liquidation came across the modem and my Amiga 3000 (25-megahertz '030, 2-meg chip, 4-meg fast), immediately started a ten-second countdown timer on the screen in 80-point type. This wasn't an outline font, so the numbers were pretty jaggy. Naturally, I flipped the switch on the power strip, but somehow the computer and monitor stayed on and the countdown continued. Apparently, it was using the remaining charge in the lithium clock battery. Yanking the cords from the wall didn't help, either, and by the time I finished that, there were only four seconds left. I had no choice except to defenestrate (look it up) the CPU. The monitor was made by another vendor, but it had the Commodore label and it was still turned on, so I threw it out after the CPU and hit the dirt. Well, the explosion that followed immediately afterwards blew out all the plate glass on my whole block. The cops came because of a noise ordinance violation in Davis, and because the remains were still smoking, but they left after I explained what happened. Unfortunately, the house needs a new paint job, and the lawn will probably never grow back right over that crater. Fortunately, the printer was a Panasonic and the modem was a Zyxel, so they are both fine. I'm glad to report that no people were seriously injured, although it was a close thing. Anyway, if this hasn't happened to you yet, there are a couple things you should do. First of all, you should avoid using your modem. If you do, use a third-party serial device (like baudbandit.device or the ones that come with GVP's devices). Second of all, you should shut down your WorkBench and run from CLI, since WB is where the self-destruct code resides. Another work-around is to remove the clock battery and be ready to unplug the computer at short notice. Never leave your machine unattended if you do this. Switching to another version of the OS will NOT help! This routine was coded in from the beginning. I think the programmers and hardware engineers realized the need sometime around Tramiel's departure. The only revision of the self-destruct scheme came with version 2.04 of the OS. Before that version, there was a synthesized voice that did the countdown instead of the numbers on the screen. This means that if you are running a pre-2.04 machine, you should make SURE that you have your speakers hooked up AT ALL TIMES!!! Is it now time to change to a Mac, or even, a PC?! Well, the Mac would probably be the safest bet. MS-DOS has a similar routine that will kick in should Bill Gates ever die/lose control of the company/reproduce, so they are moderately safe for now. If you're really worried, you can switch to DR-DOS. Its self-destruct only kicks in after the last CP/M machine goes to the dump. Windows (3.1 and NT) has a routine that is supposed to do the same thing, but it is so buggy that it just crashes the machine instead. The Macs used to have a "bomb" routine that was set to go off if Steve Jobs ever left the company. Fortunately, the routine was mainly coded by the same people who did the early versions of "Word" for that platform, so the versions released were all really "beta" software. The main effect of the routine were that a lot of white smoke came out of the top of the machine. A few of the Macs turned black and melted down into a vaguely cube-shaped object. Anyway, the routine has since been removed so the OS can handle the 10-key on the keyboard. As a result, modern Macs are now very safe. Be careful with the PowerPC-based machines. Nobody has completely analyzed them yet. However, there is a rumor that when the last mainframe is sold, they will all refuse to run emulators for anything but CMS. The casualty rate from this is expected to be extremely high. %e *EOA* %t Caramilk Bars - The Biggest Secret In The Universe %n 2U64 %s How They Get The Caramilk In The Caramilk Bar %a David B. Feland (decibel@tibalt.supernet.ab.ca) %d 19940707 %x Earth %i Advertising %i Secret Information %i Chocolate Bars %e If you spend any time near a television receiver (not a good thing to do; consult the Guide on radiation and on intelligence-draining devices) you're bound to see an advertisement for Caramilk chocolate bars. There are several... but they all have a central theme: humans befuddled by "how they get the sweet flowing Caramilk into the centre of each piece of a Caramilk bar." Or words to that effect. In one advert, two "superior beings" are laughing over great mysteries they've left for humans to ponder (such as Stonehenge). The laughing stops when they discover neither of them was responsible for the Caramilk secret. Then we see another, even higher being gloating over them... "Fools... ah hah hah hah...". Another commercial shows dolphins speaking to a human through a computer translator... when asked the Caramilk secret, they laugh and say "Don't you know?". (This is likely to be true.) What follows is the secret to how they get the Caramilk into the Caramilk bar. But first, an overview. Caramilk bars are small chocolate bars produced by a company called Cadbury's headquartered in England. (The bars are small for two reasons: one, they are portable; and two, they have to be small to allow for the enormous cost of the aforementioned advertisements.) If you take a bar, unwrap it and invert it so that the top points downward, you have a shape not unlike a plastic ice cube tray from a refrigerator freezer. (Remember this, it's important.) When the bar is made, two molds are used (the whole procedure is automated and mechanized so that thousands of bars are made per hour). In the first mold, the actual shape of the bar, molten chocolate is poured to about the halfway-full point. Meanwhile, in another machine, a second mold is readied. This one is a similar shape but smaller... and in this one Caramilk is poured into individual spaces. Then the Caramilk pieces are frozen. Yes, frozen - thus creating small, hard, Caramilk "lozenges." These are dropped into the chocolate in the first mold (being frozen Caramilk, they float). Next the "bottom" of the bar is made by covering the whole thing with a second layer of chocolate, enough to fill the mold. When the chocolate has hardened (accelerated somewhat by the frozen Caramilk inside) the bar is popped out, wrapped, packaged, distributed, and sold to an unsuspecting populace. Knowing this information isn't useful in any direct way... the bars taste the same whether you know how they are manufactured or not. But the adverts have created a sort of mystique around the bars, and an alert hitchhiker can usually use this knowledge to his advantage (see: How To Get Free Drinks, when that article gets written). (Caramilk is a trademark of Cadbury's Ltd. and is used here entirely without permission.) %e *EOA* %t Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis %n 2U65 %s Thinking Causes Brain To Explode %a Anonymous (available somewhere on Internet) * * Intro by Matt Wyczalkowski (mxw@xray.hmc.psu.edu) * Found in alt.folklore.college by * Rudy Wijnands (rudy@astro.uva.nl) * %d 19940716 %i Spontaneous Skull Combustion %i Explosions, Brain %e I realize there are some poor souls out there that are taking exams at this time, many more who will take exams at some time or other in their life. Therefore, it is with deep concern that I post the following article, taken from a reputable journal. Please read this and take it to heart - it may save your life. MOSCOW -- Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a chess player whose head literally exploded in the middle of a championship game. No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but four players and three officials at the Moscow Candidate Masters' Chess Championships were sprayed with blood and brain matter when Nikolai Titov's head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis or HCE. "He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the board," says Titov's opponent, Vladimir Dobrynin. "All of a sudden his hands flew to his temples and he screamed in pain. Everyone looked up from their games, startled by the noise. Then, as if someone had put a bomb in his cranium, his head popped like a firecracker." Incredibly, Titiov's is not the first case in which a person's head has spontaneously exploded. Five people are known to have died of HCE in the last 25 years. The most recent death occurred just three years ago in 1991, when European psychic Barbara Nicole's skull burst. Miss Nicole's story was reported by newspapers worldwide, including WWN. "HCE is an extremely rare physical imbalance," said Dr. Anatoly Martinenko, famed neurologist and expert on the human brain who did the autopsy on the brilliant chess expert. "It is a condition in which the circuits of the brain become overloaded by the body's own electricity. The explosions happen during periods of intense mental activity when lots of current is surging through the brain. "Victims are highly intelligent people with great powers of concentration. Both Miss Nicole and Mr. Titov were intense people who tended to keep those cerebral circuits overloaded. In a way it could be said they were literally too smart for their own good." Although Dr. Martinenko says there are probably many undiagnosed cases, he hastens to add that very few people will die from HCE. "Most people who have it will never know. At this point, medical science still doesn't know much about HCE. And since fatalities are so rare it will probably be years before research money becomes available." In the meantime, the doctor urges people to take it easy and not think too hard for long periods of time. "Take frequent relaxation breaks when you're doing things that take lots of mental focus," he recommends. As a public service, WWN has added the following sidebar: How to tell if your head is about to blow up -------------------------------------------- Although HCE is very rare, it can kill. Dr. Martinenko says knowing you have the condition can greatly improve your odds of surviving it. A "yes" answer to any three of the following seven questions could mean that you have HCE: 1) Does your head sometimes ache when you think too hard? (Head pain can indicate overloaded brain circuits.) 2) Do you ever hear a faint ringing or humming sound in your ears? (It could be the sound of electricity in the skull cavity.) 3) Do you sometimes find yourself unable to get a thought out of your head? (This is a possible sign of too much electrical activity in the cerebral cortex.) 4) Do you spend more than five hours a day reading, balancing your checkbook, or other thoughtful activity? (A common symptom of HCE is a tendency to over-use the brain.) 5) When you get angry or frustrated do you feel pressure in your temples? (Friends of people who died of HCE say the victims often complained of head pressure in times of strong emotion.) 6) Do you ever over-eat on ice cream, doughnuts and other sweets? (A craving for sugar is typical of people with too much electrical pressure in the cranium.) 7) Do you tend to analyze yourself too much? (HCE sufferers are often introspective, "over-thinking" their lives.) %e *EOA* %t Hoovercraft %n 2U66 %s They Really Suck %a Ryan Tucker (rtucker@netins.net) %c Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) %d 19940717 %i Vacuum Cleaners %i Cat Catcher %x Cats %e In the UK, "hoovers" are the general name for vacuum cleaner, so a hoovercraft might be some kind of mobile vacuum cleaner which you sit on and it moves you about. :-) This idea has been used in the past as a replacement for the witch's broom. Hoovercraft are mobile vacuum cleaners. They are frequently advertised on television, as a Self-Propelled Hoover Vacuum Cleaner, but it's really just a Hoovercraft. Hoovercrafts are the modern replacement for the witch's broom, often discussed in Earth mythology. They are also used by Cat Catchers to Catch Cats. In the Cat use, the operator sits on a special attached seat, which is between the Hoover and the Diesel Generator. When s/he wants to Catch a Cat, s/he just starts the generator and then flips the switch on the Hoover. The whole setup is propelled forward. When Hoovercraft finds a Cat, it homes in and then... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFOOP! Another, more domestic, use is as a Really, Really, REALLY BIG HOME Vacuum Cleaner. If you have a home the size of, say, Yankee Stadium attached to Michael Jackson's residence, all you have to do is purchase a Hoovercraft. Of course, if you're house is that size, you might want to purchase the optional AutoHoovercraft, which is a computer-controlled Hoovercraft. It has similarities to the Hero Jr. Robot in that it can sense when it's about to suck up a wall. But it has troubles telling the difference between a dust bunnie and a Cat, so you may end up with... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFOOP! By the way, if your cat gets FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFOOP'ed into your vacuum cleaner, the best advice is to change the bag quickly because it starts to stink after a while. %e *EOA* %t Uhm, Eh %n 2U67 %s Why Do People Utter These Sounds? %a Ryan Tucker (rtucker@netins.net) %c Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) %d 19940717 %e Why do we always say "uhm" and "eh" or "errr" at grammatically improper places in sentences? Further: *every* place in a sentence is grammatically improper to put these 'words' in. Why can't we just shut up when we don't know what to say? There have been many theories posed. One is that it clears the sinuses which compress the thought nodes of your brain. Another is that people are dumb (Cat Rules, July, 1994 Edition). But our research has discovered the TRUTH! It is, umm, er... ehhhhh, well, I forgot. It's probably cats. Yeah, that's it. Uhmm, they... evaporate our brains! That's right... Wait--- maybe it, hmmm... maybe it... errr... I forgot again. %e *EOA* %t Intelligent Species, Earth %n 2U68 %s Various Species Argue Ranking %a Richard Nielsen (redrick@delphi.com) %d 19940723 %x Mensa %x Cats And Dogs %x Cats %x Norway, Earth %e For some time now the furless monkeys of planet Earth have been polluting the radio frequencies in their sector with evidence that would suggest that there is no intelligent life on the planet. Many of the more intelligent life forms on the planet, who in the past could not have cared less what the presumptuous primates thought, are now making themselves known in order to avoid possibly tragic misunderstandings on a galactic level. The superiority of the dolphins and the mice has long been known, but there are other claims that need to be taken far more seriously than those of the humans. Cats, it has been established, have both the vocal mechanism and the intelligence for human speech. They disdain it. No self-respecting cat would be caught dead doing anything so obvious as to actually say what it wants. They are perfectly capable of communicating their demands with a tiny movement of ear or tail, or, if their human is exceptionally dull, with a single barked triphthong. Dogs are capable of licking their own private parts. Dogs often ask whether, if humans had that capability, they wouldn't spend all of their time at it. Humans do have the distinction of being closely related to the only terran species to both master and use the language of another. The chimpanzee has learned and uses American Sign Language. This has caused the loss of many lucrative grants for clever experiments designed to discover how chimpanzees feel about things. Now one need simply ask them. It is interesting to note that peer review of grants has quickly eliminated all funding for teaching any more chimps American Sign Language. Humans have yet to learn a language of any other creature, though they claim to have made some progress with bees. Whales, when not fleeing a primitive harpoon-wielding human sub-group called Norwegians, would like to know what all the fuss is about their fellow cetacean dolphins. The whale's brain is many times as large. There is a theory that intelligence is based, not on the size of the brain, but on the proportion between the size of brain and size of body. Whales point out that there has never been any evidence to support this theory and that it was invented by humans immediately upon their discovery that humans did not possess the largest brains on the planet. They go on to say that the larger one's body, the less one actually has, or is inclined, to do with it. Thus can the cerebrum concentrate on things cerebral. Whales are more compassionate as well as more intelligent than their genocidal tormentors. While the dumbest whale that ever lived is twice as smart as the smartest Norwegian, no whale has ever harpooned a Norwegian on purpose. %e *EOA* %t Chain Letters %n 2U69 %s The Living Letter Theory %a Robert Kopp III (rkopp@cap.gwu.edu) %d 19940719 %x Galactic Postal Service %x Important Tips For Youngsters %i Letters, Chain %i Living Letter Theory, The %e Chain letters are letters that possess many of the characteristics of living organisms. They eat people's energy, their address list changes, and they reproduce. It is for this reason that many biologists working for the Galactic Postal Service have classified them as a living species, _Letterus chainus_. This theory is known as the Living Letter Theory. Chain letters are believed to have evolved as a parasite on a small planet orbiting a star in the Orion Nebula. Using bribes of good fortune, they were able to get their host, a now-extinct Zquackle-descended life form, to beam them to other planets. They have used similar methods to spread throughout the galaxy. Chain letters have caused the extinction of many sentient life forms throughout the galaxy. Among these are the Mechanical Pencils of Tau Ceti VI, the Small Furry Creatures of Proxima Centauri III, and the Grass of Epsilon II. Currently, the life forms of the galaxy are attempting to exterminate this little-noticed but dangerous animal. Chain letters have been outlawed throughout the galaxy, but we are still not safe. Chain letters possess their unsuspecting hosts, causing them to be a mere tool in their reproduction process. Do not let this happen to you! Among the signs of possession are: 1) Going without sleep for over 48 hours 2) Severe eye strain 3) Severe wrist strain 4) Unquestioning obedience to superiors 5) An urge to hitchhike on a pair of coconuts If you are experiencing one or more of these signs, see your doctor immediately. Possession by a chain letter can be fatal! %e *EOA* %t Reality Alteration %n 2U70 %s All A Hitchhiker Needs To Know About Propaganda %d 19940722 %a Robert Kopp III (rkopp@cap.gwu.edu) %i Alteration Of Reality %x Alternate Universes %e Reality is not static. All persons have a different view of the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. However, most of them agree on most points. These people can be said to be in the same Reality, or Universe. By changing the view, you can change the Reality. However, most people will not be convinced of the reality of the new Reality unless they are convinced of its reality. Therefore, one must produce propaganda. This works best if you believe what you are saying. Once you produce the propaganda, you must convince people that it is real. You should destroy all evidence to the contrary. This includes, of course, your knowledge of doing this. To do this, you must lock away part of your brain. The easiest way of doing this is through hypnosis. In other words, all you need is propaganda and evidence (or lack there of). Once you have convinced enough people of the new Reality so that they will not be forced from their view, you have changed your location in Probability. For example, let's say that you wanted to move to a Reality where Vogons never existed. You must produce propaganda to this effect. You must also destroy Vogsphere and all the Vogons in the Universe. You must also destroy all references to Vogons. Within a few years, most people will have been converted to your new Reality. The skill of altering Reality can be very useful to a hitchhiker. It is advisable that you learn how to do it easily. %e *EOA* %t Genesis Revised %n 2U71 %s Bible Rewritten Due To Catholic Church Position On Evolution Shift %a Lee J. Merkel (lmerkel@BIX.com) * * Found on alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Roel van der Meulen * (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * %d 19940714 %i Evolution, Vatican View Of %x Judaism %x Classification Of Religions %e The Papal Academy of Sciences has recently declared biological evolution "a fact beyond reasonable doubt." Here follows a transcript of the new Vatican catechism: The Vatican's Latest Stand on Evolution (as revised in the new catechism) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the beginning, God created a heaving earth, and it was in ferment, and no life moved upon it, not even the creeping thing. And God looked thereat and said "Let there be life." And lo the waters of the earth began to grow little things. And God saw his little children, algaesus, as colorful lint in the waters of the deep, and He said: "Cool." And God watched his little children multiply. And He watched. And He watched. And He watched. And He watched. And He watched. And it was morning and night for a few billion years. Then God said: "This algaesus isn't cool anymore." So God said, "Let the little things take unto themselves partners, one cell cleaving to another, that they may work together as a team and grow larger, and experience life in a new way, and give Me something better to watch." And lo, some little things in the oceans began to cleave together as partners, and became bigger little things. And seeing the little things around them, they did give thanks and eat thereof. And thus the bigger little things grew in size, might and cunning. And God watched what he had wrought, and found that it was good. And it was morning and night for a few more hundred million years. Then God said, "Let the bigger little things take unto themselves new habits, that I may see something different." For even His mighty patience was thin from long watching of algaesus. Whereat some of the bigger things in the oceans, which fed on the little things, turned upon their brethren and consumed others after their kind. And God saw this and said "Way cool." And it was morning and night many times again, for a hundred million years, more or less. Then God did return to earth after a quick break, and He found that some of the bigger things had crafted hard shells, and seeing the handiwork of His handiwork, God said: "Awesome. I should have thought of that." And it was morning and night for some more millions of years. And many things, shelled and unshelled, moved in the waters of the deep, and God saw that it was good. Lo. Verily. Then God said "I will take these children of Mine to be with Me in heaven," and he sent a mighty comet down upon the face of the earth to show the path to heaven, and he took unto his bosom many of His creatures. But the few living things He left upon the earth wept and gnashed their shells and toothless gums. And God saw this, and said "Let Us give them something to do, that they may cease their wailing." For God was sometimes not just one person, but a committee. And God commanded the living things left in the waters of the earth to be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the deep oceans with their offspring, and shut up. And it was morning and night for another fifty or eighty million years, and it was less noisy, and God saw that it was good. And as God watched the creatures in the waters of earth, He said: "Let some of my children move onto the dry land, and multiply, and become fruitful, and do other stuff." And lo, the green plant did sprout upon the face of the land, and the creeping thing moved upon the earth, and God looked and saw that it was, if not good, at least different. And it was morning and night for dozens of millions of years. And God said, "Let the dry land move as on the back of a turtle," and the lands did become creeping things, pushing the waters of the deep aside. And some lands did bump into other lands, and there was a gnashing of mountains and weeping of oceans. And God said, "Plates. Groovy." And God looked upon His children that He had taken to be with Him in heaven, and God saw that He had more than enough tribbles from the deep waters, and He said "Let there be no more tribbles." And He stoked the bowels of the earth, which belched forth heat and smoke and flame for forty days and forty nights, give or take a hundred millennia. Therefrom did the tribbles bite the dust. And many other things were also cooked, each after its kind, even the creeping thing. And when the face of the earth was clean again, God looked upon it and saw that almost everything living had disappeared, and He said, "Let there be new moving things in the oceans, new flying things in the air, new stomping things on the land, and even new creeping things." And lo, the waters of the deep begat swimming dragons, and the dry lands begat giant trees and walking dragons, and the skies were filled with flying dragons. And God looked and said, "Bad!" and it was good. And God watched the dragons, which multiplied and were fruitful and begat and begat and begat for a long time. Then God looked at His watch, which is always on the right time, and He said, "Whoops, We wanted to beget man in Our image. We'd better get a move on." And He took the dragons of the sea, and of the land, and of the air to be with Him in heaven, celebrating the occasion with fireworks from heaven and more flames from the bowels of the earth. Then God said, "Let us fashion man in Our own image, starting with these cute little rats." And He gave man dominion over the things that were still left on the earth, even the creeping thing -- except the cockroach. %e *EOA* %t Dreams By Mail %n 2U72 %s The Mail-Order Dreams Business Is Booming %a Mark Young (marky@engin.umich.edu) %c Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) %d 19940802 %i Mail-Order Dreams %x Sleep %x Ligantis, Justice Lipo %e The first dream recorded to sensa-tape was actually quite boring -- an un-named psychology student at a back-water university (front-water universities require their students to have names) dreamt of walking around their home and finding it empty. Subjects who later had this dream played back to them found it so boring that they all fell asleep, and promptly began dreaming of walking around _their_ homes and finding them empty. Fortunately for the galactic system of moderately-priced enterprise, the researcher on that project was a graduate student, poorly paid, on the edge of starvation, and given to bouts of fantasy about chucking the whole university scene and going to make his living as a sex-toy on Erotica-VI -- in other words, a perfectly average graduate student. The student looked at the sensa-tapes that the project had generated, and saw not merely data that would lead to an unimportant thesis followed by a career in a dull but life-sustaining faculty position, but recognized the potential that lurked there: to be a mind-bogglingly dull and stupid thesis that would not even get him his degree, let alone a faculty position. He immediately quit the university and set out for Erotica-VI, tossing the sensa-tapes into the trash on the way, whence they were rescued by an enterprise consultant, who convinced a passing business-being that, with a few touch-ups, the tapes could be a gold-mine. The consultant sold the tapes for $1200 Altairian, and laughed about it to his buddies for weeks. Then the re-touched dreams came out. The first run of 50,000 copies sold out in hours at $79.95 Altairian apiece. Each of the previously empty rooms had been filled with models from Play-Being magazine who performed strip-teases and/or get-dressed-teases (depending on the species of the model and the target market involved). A brief message appeared in the last room to the effect that the dreamer should keep an eye out for the next series of dreams, in which the dreamer would "get to know the models better." The consultant saw one tape and then killed himself. The spectacular success of the first series was followed by the even more spectacular successes of the second, third and fourth series, and by the somewhat less successful fifth and sixth series (by which time the models and dreamers knew each other so well that the models were telling the dreamers to take out the trash and walk the cyberdog). Of course this success spawned imitators -- it being estimated that the number of original thoughts that occur in a given business being over a given time period is on average somewhat less than the number of compliments handed out by a particularly unpleasant Vogon captain on the occasion of his crew getting his ship caught in a traffic jam while the weapons systems are off-line. Among these imitators were those that sold their wares through the mail. This was not terribly successful at first, since so many packages arrived marked "opened by customs" when the only customs between the vendor and the purchaser were of the sort that anthropologists write of. More often than not there was a slip of paper inside saying that "customs" had seized some material (the sensa-tape), and that it would be returned once "customs" was sure that it didn't contain any secret messages that might be harmful to the security of the state and/or the purchaser or once "customs" went blind (whichever came first). This pilferage only ended when J.J. Lipo Ligantis found one postal employee guilty of theft and ordered them promoted to supervisor in charge of firing superfluous postal employees. As for the poor graduate student who invented the process, he never did make it to Erotica-VI. He made a stop-over on Niuork -- the planet that never sleeps -- and was promptly offered a faculty position at the University of Niuork, on the theory that, if anyone on the planet did ever manage to fall asleep, it would be nice to get a record of what they dreamt for posterity. He's still waiting for something useful to do, but hey, aren't all professors? %e *EOA* * * End of file: UREAL03.NEW * Share and Enjoy! *