Collage 214               H u m o u r N e t                9 FEB 96

What a day ...

Earlier this afternoon, I noticed a couple of HumourNetters sending
"Why am I getting these messages, and how do I get out of here?" posts
to the Photoshop list. Having recently been subjected to the same
problem (different list, same list server), I figured that the problem
was most likely very limited in scope. I sent off a message to both
persons, copied it to the Photoshop list, and left for a meeting with
my Ph.D. advisor.

Two hours later, I returned to find that all hell had broken loose.
Several observant and resourceful people had e-mailed me directly
regarding the problem. I replied directly to as many people as I
could, while simultaneously trying to compose the admin message you
received earlier. All the while trying to locate the briefing
slides I told my advisor I'd get to him pronto.

Well, I soon found out that (1) the problem was more widespread than
I'd feared (a quick look at the Photoshop list confirmed this), (2)
our local network had just gone down (no mail getting in, no mail
going out), and (3) not only could I not find the slides for my
advisor, but the entire presentation set was AWOL. Then my Mac
crashed.

I obviously picked a bad week to quit sniffing glue.

(A "new mail" beep?)

(As I type this, our LAN has come back up -- and the 177 messages
that accumulated during the three hours that the net was down
are now downloading. Looks like it's going to be a long *night*,
too ...)

One thing that really disturbed me (aside from my childhood, of
course) was the number of messages containing profanity that were
sent to the Photoshop list by displaced HumourNetters. Many of the
messages contained -- shall we say? -- "extreme" profanity. Now, I'm
not trying to be your mother (most people agree that I just don't
look good in a skirt), but showing some restraint/tact/intellect
isn't a bad idea. The behavior of the HumourNetters has generated
some traffic over there, and the barbs have been *very* well earned
by several members of this list. (The fact that I'm an intentional
member of the Photoshop list makes this just a little *extra*
undesirable.) Since I prefer to believe that those members represent
the minority of subscribers, I will leave the soapbox stuffed under
the desk, and simply suggest -- for those of you who need it (and you
know who you are) -- that you DL and *read* the following documents
on proper 'Net etiquette ("netiquette"):

<ftp://colossus.arl.mil//Colossal.Drop.Box/Pub/Net.Stuff/
Netiquette.Arlene_Rinaldi>

<ftp://colossus.arl.mil//Colossal.Drop.Box/Pub/Net.Stuff/
Netiquette.Bob_Crispen>

<ftp://colossus.arl.mil//Colossal.Drop.Box/Pub/Net.Stuff/
Netiquette.Emily_Postnews>

And if you are one of those persons (and *I* know who you are),
please do not even *consider* e-mailing me to challenge my position
on this -- or defend yours -- until you have read those documents.
If you cannot DL them, let me know, and I will personally mail them
to you. If you have a fundamental problem with my attitude on this
issue, please feel free to unsubscribe; I do not cater to the
intellectual proletariat, nor do I prefer to deal with them.

So, back to business ...

The events of this afternoon have led to the question, "How do these
things happen?" Darned if I know, but it probably has something to
do with electrons being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being
an electrical engineer, I can probably describe how this occurs, but
I wouldn't be able to do it quite the humorous justice that Dave Barry
can.

And so, with *many* thanks to Jack out there in Washington State, may
I present "Dave Barry's Electricity Theory" (with apologies to the
electrical engineers out there :-).

And once we're up to speed on electricity, the next step is to become
familiar with telecommunications; to that end, Amy sends us the
"Telecommunications Dictionary," a lexicon of computer-networking
terms.

Hopefully, these two pieces will help everyone to better understand
how situations like the one that developed this afternoon can occur.

And, if not, at least they'll help us have a better sense of humor
about them.

Many thanks to Jack and Amy for the pieces. And, once again, my
sincere apologies for the listproc problems that many of you had
to deal with today.

Happy bytes!

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1996 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: Dave Barry's Electricity Theory
By Dave Barry (of course)

Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?

Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important
electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a
carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of
his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched
violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity
can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt
others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.

It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you
scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons," which are
very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpet so
that they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your
bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that
leaps to your friend's filling, then travel down to his feet and
back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.

AMAZING ELECTRONIC FACT: If you scuffed your feet long enough
without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that
your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about
unless you have carpeting.

Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
mixers, etc. for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
any of these things, which is just as well because there was no
place to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical
Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lightning storm and
received a serious electrical shock. This proved that lightning was
powered by the same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's
brain so severely that he started speaking only in incomprehensible
maxims, such as, "A penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he
had to be given a job running the post office.

After Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have
become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise
Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted
many important electrical experiments. Among them, Galvani
discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different
kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed
and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to
the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to
enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today,
skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch
it hop back into the pond -- almost.

But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison,
who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little
formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major
invention in 1877 was the phonograph, which could soon be found in
thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when
the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in
1879 when he invented the electric company.

Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical
circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a
customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another
wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the
customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same
batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught,
since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity
closely. In fact, the last year any new electricity was generated
was 1937.

Today, thanks to men like Edison and Franklin, and frogs like
Galvani's, we receive almost unlimited benefits from electricity.
For example, in the past decade scientists have developed the laser,
an electronic appliance so powerful that it can vaporize a bulldozer
2000 yards away, yet so precise that doctors can use it to perform
delicate operations to the human eyeball, provided they remember to
change the power setting from "Bulldozer" to "Eyeball."

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Telecommunications Dictionary

Modem: What landscapers do to dem lawns.

Token Ring: A virtual engagement gift.

Ethernet: A device for catching the Ether Bunny.

DataPac: A size 14 girl in a size 8 bikini.

Asynch: A place to wash your hands.

Bisynch: The place where Elton John washes his hands.

BBS: Tall tales told by insects that produce honey.

ASCII: Ancient god of Telecommunications.
Rumored to give vast amounts of data to believers.
Hence, the phrase "ASCII and you shall receive."

Block Parity: One heck of a good time.

Carrier Detect: Raison d'etre for premarital blood tests.

File Transfer: Procedure followed by INFORMATION CENTER staff who
are tired of their present jobs.

Hayes Compatible: Prone to riding with a grizzled old cowhand who
sings off-key. Gene Autry is the industry standard.

Serial Interface: A spoon.

Terminal Emulation: A function performed by a canary that
lays on its back with its legs in the air.

XMODEM: A device on the losing end of a lightning encounter.

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