From Thu Apr 21 15:34:07 1988 From: Date: Wed, 2 Mar 88 20:10:11 EST To: sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: [FYA: [levitt@MEDIA-LAB.MEDIA.MIT.EDU: [puccio: Kids these days]]] Date: Wed, 2 Mar 88 15:51:36 EST From: David A. Levitt To: puccio@MEDIA-LAB.MEDIA.MIT.EDU, hour-of-lies@MEDIA-LAB.MEDIA.MIT.EDU Subject: [puccio: Kids these days] Jim, this may be the funniest piece of e-mail I've ever received. I think I'd like to use it for our video. Kid voices can be pitch-shifted adult voices, and most of the entries work well even without the spelling gags. In some cases we can use an animated kid, but we also use lots of asynchronous audio and video. Would we need cooperation from Lederer? Could we get it? How did you get the material? There is a similar piece, a collection of peoples' accounts of auto accidents, which I might be able to find on line. Date: Fri, 23 Oct 87 03:08:59 EDT From: James Puccio To: bob Subject: Kids these days The following is due to a teacher named Richard Lederer. It is a collage of real statements from real students from 8th grade to college freshman level, written in essays. There are no typos here (in the sense of incorrect duplications of the original text). As Mr. Lederer says, "Read carefully, and you will learn a lot." ------ The inhabitants of Ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his 12 sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites. Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the 10 commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled in playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomn, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines. Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns -- Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the river Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in "The Iliad," by Homer. Homer also wrote "The Oddity," in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of that name. Socrates was another famous Greek teacher who went around giving other people advice. They killed him. Socrates died of an overdose of wedlock. Life in ancient Greece reeked with Joy. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what the neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men. Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlics in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them. Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harold mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by Bernard Shaw and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense. In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh was a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper. The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted "hurrah!" Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote." The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife died and he wrote "Paradise Regained." ------ Hope you enjoyed today's history lesson, kids. Next time: Science! See ya, -- Poodles Microwave, Asst. Poobah to the Poobah. Forum on Roof and Tunnel Hacking. Volume 24: Issue 1. Contents: Steps of 77 Mass Ave. Building 12 alarms Combination lists Send contributions to toma@melange.lcs.mit.edu. The From: field will be set to the name you use to sign your message. If you do not sign your message, the From: field will be left blank. Each message has a volume number, V, and an issue number, N. To request a back issue, send mail specifying which issue you want (e.g.,toma-V.N). To receive an entire volume, request toma-V.all. The current moderator is Ben Blout (blout@athena.mit.edu). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Equinox Subject: steps of 77 Mass Ave. Gladiator and I finally managed to get under the south steps of 77 Mass Ave. The door that is hard to pick is in fact the entrance. This door leads to a big storage area, which leads to two tombs under the steps. To get into the first, you must either pick a big Yale padlock or take the small door off its hings. (We took the door off its hinges since it was quicker than picking in this case). Remember to put the door back on when you are finished! To get under the other tomb, you must unstack about 25 big wooden signs that are right in front of the door to the tomb. Remember to restack the wooden signs after you are finished! To get through the initial door that is very hard to pick, it is actually possible to card the door if you are very determined and persistent. -Equinox Question: Has anyone been under the steps which lead to building 5 which have the big anchors next to them? Also, has anyone ever been under the grating at the northeast corner of building 36? ---------------------------------------- From: Cthulhu Subject: Building 12 alarms >From Gladiator's article, it wasn't clear to me where he had gone, but I went through the route behind the career center during IAP, and there were "magnetic alarms" -- nice little empty plastic boxes... dunno if they were disabled, or were simply decoys to begin with. Unless things have changed (don't blindly wander through there just because I say it was OK last month!) that route is OK. If that fails, there is another way, though the toxicity (!) lab in the basement -- it's easy to find on a map, and the lock is real easy to pick. Great room... one corner has radiation, another has high voltage, and all of them have biohazard stickers. Glove boxes, syringes with nasty compounds -- the whole bit... The door to the bottom of the spiral staircase has no knob, sso make sure you bring a large screwdriver to turn it. When last I checked one was on the floor next to the door (convenient, no?) but better safe... It just seems awful irrational to me -- Physplant is afraid that we hackers are going to endanger ourselves, so they put an alarm on the door, forcing us to go through a biowarfare zone... -- Cthulhu ---------------------------------------- From: ??? Subject: combination lists Like unix passwords, combinations should only be stored in some sort of (easy to undo) encrypted format. (Well, I guess not completley like Unix passwords, but similar to them...) A simple encryption system is (add 1) to every digit. ---------------------------------------- End of the Hacker's Digest. **************************