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The Heretofore Unpublished Letters of Ernest Glitch
Roger Curry writes "Letters to Michael Faraday in 1856 from previously unknown victorian experimentalist Ernest Glitch have recently been discovered. The history of science may need to be revised. His letters, and accounts of his work, would appear to indicate the observation of laser action in air, a Victorian Nitrogen Laser, more than a century before Maiman first demonstrated his ruby laser. Also, in a letter dated 8th July 1856 he notes the crystallisation of the fullerene C60 some 150 years before Kroto. Amazingly, there are also accounts of a Liquid-Fuel Rocket Engine detailing the use of hypergolic propellants and deLaval nozzles, a Victorian Tesla Coil, with reference to a possible medieval Coil, and Manned Flight achieved long before the Wright Bros., using Multiple Valve-less Pulse Jets."
In Soviet Russia, Beowulf clusters imagine YOU!
I'm number one, bitches! numero uno!
Is it just me or is /. really getting heavily into the Bad Science articles?
hoax? Get it, get it, the "It's Funny, Laugh" icon should be a hint. The guy's name is "Glitch" for crying out loud.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What about the Internet? Al Gore still invented that, didn't he? I hope so.
For someone writing letters in the 19th century, his signature Looks disturbingly like typeface....
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
If Jules Verne or H.G. Wells had written comedy we probably would have gotten something like this
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
No comment required ;-)
Just too funny though - very well done.
Poor Hodges.
Ok, now we know who to blame when there is a serious glitch.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Main Entry: heretofore
Pronunciation: 'hir-t&-"fOr, -"for, "hir-t&-'
Function: adverb
Date: 13th century
: up to this time : HITHERTO
i think someone wise and learned needs to start moderating the posted news a little closer. /. is starting to turn into the online edition of Joe Average's "Discover" magazine.
These letters mean nothing. Jules Verne "wrote" about the submarine and a time machine too, doesn't mean he invented them. For all we know these could be test manuscripts for Sci-Fi never realized. Science requires incontrovertable physical evidence, or at least a complete mathematical description if the hypothesis is currently untestable due to physical limitations. These letters provide neither, and very well may be a hoax. Have they tested the ink and paper to _prove_ it was even written that long ago?
-J0ey4
Sierra has known about this for some time now.
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
This isn't even a good hoax. The letters sound like they were writen by the same guy who wrote the dialog for Resident Evil 1.
Barry, you saved me!
NAAAAAGGHHH
#include <yousuck.h>
#include <properitrylibarby.h>
int(main)
{
htmlprintf( "<b>First Post</b>
}
It turns out that Aristotle pioneered the use of hyperthreading in x86 microprocessors way back in ancient Greece. Only problem was he couldn't get any decent uptime, what with the lack of electricity and all...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Glitch to Hodges: "You knew this job was dangerous when you took it, Fred".
-jhon
Yeah, and Hugo Gernsback invented TV, Radar, yadda yadda in 1911.
... when I see it. I am an American!
P.S.
My son Rupert sends his regards and has recently began an investigation into the properties of the glowing barium salts. It is so encouraging to see him busy with non-explosives.
more of this satire can be found at lemonparty
... of "HOAX". This is the homepage:
http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/
Back to your lives citizens.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Clearly a hoax, but very funny:
"As an interesting sidenote, Hodges has sustained peculiar fern like scarring and ramifications on his skin where he touched the prime discharge brass. I have endeavored to draw these for you Faraday, please forgive the penmanship. Hodges` hand was still smoking when I started the sketch, I hurried somewhat, as he was pleading to go to the horse doctor."
"The position of the gap is critical to these phenomena, and afforded me much experimentation, apparently to the detriment of Hodges. Just as I was observing a continuous luminous glow appearing between the top conductors, upon each discharge, Hodges couldn`t go on. His arm had seized and his whole frame was shaking as though palsied. At first I thought he had received another shock, but he maintained fatigue and virtually demanded a rest!
Sensing a shirker as well as you can Faraday, I took over turning the machine and with some merriment demanded he take observations of the expanded spark. The dolt actually had the audacity to assume a proprietorial stance next to the plates, Faraday! When the prime started sparking over, Hodges emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year. Hodges staggered back from the plates, covering his right eye and uttering blasphemities which would have themselves led to his dismissal, even had he not been blinded. But what had happened Faraday?"
nothing exceptional about that, hot air balloons have been around since the early 1800's.
They were even used in the civil war.
The Wright brothers invented heavier than air/powered flight.
is how he slips in a advertisement for the book he sells on his main page within the articles...
:-)
Man... this is bad science at its absolute worst. (I hope enough people notice the "it's funny... laugh" and don't think it's the "science" section one.) Considering that the only site google has that refers to this particular Glitch <laugh> is this site. Science ain't changing anytime soon.
Oh, but if you do think this is for real, I have a beautiful bridge I am selling...
~ kjrose
Did the guy discover Object Oriented Programming, too?
7 errors, 1 warning fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'yousuck.h': No such file or directory
fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'properitrylibarby.h': No such file or directory
error C2239: unexpected token '{' following declaration of 'main'
error C2065: 'htmlprintf' : undeclared identifier
error C2001: newline in constant
error C2143: syntax error : missing ')' before '}'
error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '}'
warning C4508: 'main' : function should return a value; 'void' return type assumed
And I thought we only recently started seeing Glitchy technologies!
My parents are so crazy! You see, black people drive like this, but white people drive like this! No, seriously, folks, I'll be here all week. My mother and father are very possibly the most "hello-there-my-pillow-is-named-Friendly-Pete" insane (we are talking certifiably, lock-em-up crazy here) people in the greater Hobart, Wisconsin area. I know that I am making a very large claim here to say the least, but I will explain why I believe this in the course of today's novel update (and the following two) and when you are done reading them you will believe what I say. You believe me so much that you will be very glad that you don't know them in any way whatsoever (no matter how tangentially), let alone have them for parents. You will believe me so much that you will immediately want to pay me large sums of money, perhaps even all of the money, for me to guarantee you that I will do everything within my power to make sure that you never do know them.
This update will establish the insanity of the people who bred me, one at a time, and my last of the three will delve into the horrible world of lies and law enforcement that has been mine to bear since I moved from Wisconsin to Seattle in April of this past year. Hopefully by the time I get to the part about the police coming to the house (part three) there will already be a substantial basis for my story and so I will not have to explain how anyone in their right mind could ever make choices in the way that my mother and father have. HINT: THEY ARE NOT IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS BECAUSE THEY ARE LOOPY LIKE "BATMAN: THE RIDE." I will also not have to explain why I have some problems dealing with certain issues or why I find solace in staying up until all hours of the morning playing "Warcraft 3" rather than think about my weirdo upbringing or the fact that I was exposed to some rather interesting (read: "bonkers") people for long periods of time. I think I was pretty lucky to have not been scarred more obviously, now that I think about it. It's a fortunate thing that I can hide all of my pain inside, like a suicidal clown.
Most people have had fairly typical childhoods, I've found. Maybe their parents got divorced or something shitty like that but not many people have had to deal with problems more extreme than occasionally not being allowed to watch certain television programs, a curfew, or no good snack foods in the house when they bring friends over to play "Contra." My childhood was a little different because of my mom and dad and their behavior, but suffice it to say that I couldn't watch most TV, I had to be home by 10:00 PM all through high school (because "nothing good ever happens after 10:00 PM"), we didn't have snack foods ever, and I couldn't usually bring friends over because it "wasn't part of the game plan." Oh yeah, and my family bought into Apple computers (oh no). In all candor though, THESE FACTS ARE TRIVIAL COMPARED TO THE OVERALL PICTURE HERE. Maybe I wasn't abused or anything horrible like that, but my mother and father by all appearances grew up in space or perhaps on the moon and only recently decided to move part of their brains from there to their home in Wisconsin. I'm not sure which parts of them ever decided that it would be a good idea to procreate but I with that a giant dinosaur would discover a time machine and zoom into whenever that was to crush them with its useless forelimbs.
I will just say right now that I am not making any of this up. Not a bit of it, although I truly wish that I were more than I will ever be able to communicate to anyone, ever.
I know that in past updates I have touched lightly on various things that make my mother easily labeled "crazy," such as her creepily massive animal teapot collection, staying out of a three-mile radius of microwaves due to the fear of brain / death waves, or perhaps her ritualistic consumption of aspirin, but I have never really delved into the pain that it was to live and grow up with a crazy woman as a female role model. For example, on a nightly basis after my Mom came home from work, she would misplace something and then begin to rant and yell about how either my brother or myself put it someplace on purpose or stole it from her. Keep in mind I SWEAR TO GOD I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
Mom: Where are my glasses? Have you seen my glasses?
Me: No, I haven't.
Mom: Are you sure you haven't seen them? My glasses. Have you?
Me: No, I haven't seen your glasses anyplace, sorry Mom.
Mom: I think you have. I put them right here. You took them, didn't you?
Me: What? No, why would I want to take your glasses?
Mom: You did! I know you did. I left them right here and you took them. Give them back!
Me: I don't have them! I never saw them!
Mom: Liar! You're lying. YOU ARE A LIAR!
Me: I'm not lying! I swear, I didn't see them and I didn't take them!
Mom: GIVE THEM BACK! YOU TOOK THEM!!
Her face would grow a livid red and she'd start throwing things all over the place in a futile attempt to locate her missing item. This sort of encounter almost always ended with me storming off to my room to read "The Lord of the Rings" for the 30th time and drown my sorrows in the sweet and subtle faggotry of Legolas and Gimli. If that plan failed due to my mother pounding on my door and screaming, "You are lying to me! I can't believe it! You are a liar! Where are they, Emma?!?" I would get out of my room and run tirelessly around the house, overturning every pillow and checking each nook until I found my mom's dumb glasses. She invariably put them somewhere and forgot about it, as she has a memory like a paper towel which has been moistened and then used to clean the floor of a movie theater after a sneak-preview midnight showing of the second Harry Potter movie. In addition to this, those glasses were extra-strength double-duty army trifocals or something. There was no way she could see anything at all without those things, let alone find them after she intentionally put them down in some dark hole.
Unfortunately, it wasn't always her glasses that she lost. Sometimes she would leave her purse in the car and when she later realized that she didn't have it, she would repeatedly accuse my brother or I of taking it until we cried or she found it in the car. That was great because we would be accused of stealing her money even if she found her purse in the car, where she herself left it. This sort of stuff lasted my whole life, from my earliest memories to college. It still happened when I go home to see them, but since I moved out it has gotten a bit easier to say, "Uhhh, you are being crazy, mother."Of course then she gets angry and won't talk to me until I apologize and tell her that I was only kidding.
Another fun aspect of my loving mother was her tendency to fear and despise any and all things that she would put into the category of "drugs." This will be of vital importance in part two of this update when it comes time to explain my recent encounter with the police. Until then, I will explain that my mother's drug phobia began with cigarettes and ended with whatever fantasy chemicals she created in her cavernous, crazy mind, and my brother and I were brought up to believe the following:
1. People who smoke are bad people.
2. People who "do drugs" are bad people."
3. We should never talk to or associate with people who smoke and / or "do drugs."
Unfortunately for us, part of what fell into the "drug" category were over-the-counter remedies for things like headaches, colds, the flu, and various other childhood ailments, which I was fortunate to escape for the most part. I did get colds and have a fever a few times but was given nothing to ease my symptoms or the like because my mom would say, "it's better not to drug yourself all up. You don't want to get better with the help of drugs." As a consequence of this, I remember several very vivid fever-dreams encountered at young ages after which I woke up screaming and drenched in sweat. I never looked at Goofy the same way again.
I also remember the time when my throat was so sore that I couldn't eat or swallow anything and yet my parents wouldn't buy me any cough or throat medication, instead giving me seven gallons of broth to drink four days after I said that I was sick. I finally had to ask a friend's mom to take me to the store so that I could buy medicine myself because my throat hurt so much that I began to hallucinate. It took me a long time to come to the conclusion for myself that people who smoked or used over-the-counter cold medications were not necessarily bad people, but I think that I finally got that nailed down around my 21st birthday somewhere or other. Except for those people with allergies. Those people are bad news.
With all of her fear that "drugs" will destroy the world and her family along with it, my mother is also a neurotic hypochondriac and is at the doctor every three weeks or so for repeated batteries of tests. I'll never forget the time that she ate a nectarine and then was convinced that she had colon cancer because the peel was a bright red and she had thought that there was blood in her stool. I had come home from school for a few days to visit and she cornered me on a Saturday evening outside of her bathroom.
Mom: Emma, there's something I have to show you. I'm really worried. Can I show you?
Me: Uhhmm, what's going on, Mom?
Mom: I am so worried. I think that I have colon cancer. Come and look at this. (she led me over to the toilet)
Me: Ok, what am I looking at here? (I was looking at a giant turd with a big red streak in the side of it)
Mom: I made that a few hours ago. I think that it's blood.
Me: (leaning closer to inspect the poop) It's not blood. What did you eat earlier today?
Mom: I had a nectarine for breakfast and a turkey sandwich for lunch.
Me: These nectarines? (indicating some that were very ripe and red on the kitchen counter) That's what that is. It's nectarine, not blood.
Mom: It's... It's blood! I know it's blood. I'm going to take this in to the doctor on Monday morning and have them run tests.
SHE THEN SAVED THE POOP IN A BAGGIE AND TOOK IT IN TO THE DOCTOR FOR TESTS. It was a Saturday evening so we had that turd sitting out on the counter top for almost two days before she could finally take it to the office personally on Monday morning, early. WHAT THE HELL? The doctor politely told her to stop coming in to the office so often and recommended some stress-therapy. I think that she might have benefited from some other sort of therapy altogether.
When the doctor finds anything wrong with her (which is practically never) and he prescribes something, she will always take roughly half of the prescription, assuming that he gave her twice what he really had meant to and that she would be just fine without the second half. This included antibiotic prescriptions and knowing what I know now about bacterial infections, it is a wonder that my mother was not single handedly responsible for creating horrible and deadly strains of bacteria that killed millions of people and then took over the planet.
With all of her neuroses, my Mom somehow missed the charm boat that most Jewish mothers tend to have. They nag and they're batshit crazy, but somehow it tends to be endearing and annoying at the same time. Maybe it was when she married my Christian dad that she stopped being allowed to act so nutty, but I wish that Jesus hadn't made my mom a wacko. Every time I say something even slightly negative about Jesus, she gets really defensive and tells me the same warning story. It goes a little something like this:
You should never make fun of Jesus, Emma, you know why? I'll tell you why. When I was a young woman I remember being at a department store and I saw a picture on the wall. I looked at the picture and I thought that it was the ugliest thing that I had ever seen and the man that was painted in it was ugly too. I thought to myself, "who is that ugly man in that painting? He sure is ugly." Right after that I realized that the painting was supposed to be of Jesus! I felt so bad because I had made fun of Him, and sure enough, right after I left the store I ALMOST GOT HIT BY A BUS. I felt that I had deserved it after what I had thought about the painting of Jesus.
Oh boy oh boy, thanks for the advice, mom! I have heard that story so many times now I could recite it by heart while having my nipples gouged out with a red-hot melon-baller. Let us hope that it never comes to that, but it strikes me as especially ridiculous that my mom is repeating this garbage over and over again because I know for a fact that she didn't"buy into Jesus" until she married my "own a lot of stock in Jesus" father. But then again, I suppose that I should watch what I say because there is a bus route close to the house.
I really could go on at length about the many ways in which my mother is nuttier than a fruitcake. She is one of the most interesting people I know but it was absolute hell growing up with her, and her behavior in the past eight or so months has not added to that feeling. I wish that I could elaborate on that in this update but I fear that first I must do my part to cover my father's tale in next week's update before I get to the law enforcement-filled climax concerning my move away from home. I at least hope I have convinced you that my mom is a headcase and look forward to cathartically yet necessarily reviewing the insanity of my father next Saturday. In the meantime I will continue to spend all of my time living in various fantasy worlds in a futile attempt to forget the pain.
"It's Funny, Laugh" icon. But when I got to the part about poor ole Hodges "emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year", a suspected that this page was out about truth but about entertainment. And it is!
I still don't see that icon at http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/VicN2/vicN2.html. Where is it?
With the other fakers, the one that was looking like a Nobel candidate until it was discovered he had been faking the results (and therefore conclusions) of his experiments for the past few years.
I'm also reminded of the apparently bogus papers that have been making their way into peer-reviewed journals of theoretical physics.
The abuse of the ass-istant in these articles, especially the part about getting his scrotum burned off, are too much. I just don't think I buy this stuff.
The do a sthick like this in "Rozencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead", a fantastic movie with Gary Oldman based on the Top Stoppard favorite.
One of them keeps discovering advanced concepts of physics (the movie is set in the time of Hamlet) playing with potted plants and bowling balls and feathers, but is never able to fully expand on them as he is repeatedly distracted by plot advancement.
Its pretty funny, and this kinda reminded me of that.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Kroto wasn't the first to see crystals of C60, Huffman was. Kroto only saw C60 as a peak in a mass spectrometer.
Notice how he never mentioned that everyone will have a flying car by the year 2000? Puts the 50's science writers to shame..
Trolling is a art,
the ernestglitch machine which was rediscovered by one Mr. Turing.
Poor Glitch also forgot to patent a device in later incarnation called paladin or palladium something.
How is that possible? Did the guy also develop the quantum concepts necessary to explain what a laser is?
This all sounds like a lot of moonshine.
History is written by those who have hanged heroes. (Sorry, couldn't resist)
Who invented the telephone again?
Mike
Ok ok, I'll be good. Gimme back my karma.
-- Karma whore? You betcha. --
i think someone wise and learned needs to start moderating the posted news a little closer.
Notice that this article was posted with topic It's funny. Laugh. (icon: bare, bald foot) rather than topic Science (icon: Einstein's head).
On the home page:
Experimenting with Weapons-Grade Fissile Material in the Home.
A Method of Electro-Plating Lizards
Atomic Hydrogen Blowtorch.
Any they just keep geting better
http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/
Can't wait for the Victorian Cyclotron
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
the secret journals of Phineas J. Magnetron
-
I received these unusual documents from my uncle who -- perhaps inadvertently -- willed them to me along with an attic full of junk and dusty memorabilia. There were twenty-four books in all, every one of them labeled with a year on the spine and front cover. What captured my attention -- besides the mysterious code -- was that the years began with 1877.
nicely done.Magnetron's books appeared to be a journal of some kind, as each entry was preceded by a date written in a bold block lettering. Below each date were as many as 4,408 small numbers and letters, packed 64 characters per square inch with no spaces or identifiable punctuation. The only characters used were the numerals 0 through 9 and the letters A through F, leading the cryptographers to deduce that the code utilized a hexadecimal, or base 16 numbering system.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
He writes:
Indian hemp? Become a scientist NOW! :-)
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Slashdot.org: Al Gore accused as[*] patent infringement
[*] sic
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
It is in memorium of him that we have the phrase "a glitch in the system". ;-)
-psy
Ernest Glitch ??? how about Genuine Hoax....
Medievil electricty ummm...yeah right...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
"ungloved testicles" ... um ..
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Reading these articles, I couldn't help but think that poor Hodges must be a distant relative of Jim, Marlon Perkins hapless assistant from Wild Kingdom. "So now we watch from the safety of the boat as Jim attempts to subdue the deadly anaconda!"
Poor Hodges is now famous as the first person to receive laser eye surgery.
The abuse that the poor guy received was astounding. Dig this:
Hodges emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year.
Table-ized A.I.
"But he uses these slight infirmities to shirk from a full sixteen hour day. I remind him that lead mining is equally dangerous, although he maintains that scrotal de-glovement by halogen gases is rare in the mines."
does that mean his poor assistant got his nutsack burned off?!? geez
Remarkable! I see clear parallels between this pioneering Victorian scientist and the much later experiments chronicled in the televised documentaries of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his faithful assistant Beaker.
From this page on his website-
My own experience with fluorine has been solely with its compounds. In particular, natural calcium fluoride crystals (fluorite or fluorspar). Also hydrofluoric acid, during a highly ill-advised "experiment" conducted in the clean room of a semiconductor manufacturer unwise enough to employ me.... The glass and quartz-ware used in diffusion furnaces must be kept scrupulously clean to avoid contamination of the silicon wafers being processed. Consequently it is periodically bathed in a mixture of hydrofluoric and nitric acids. Full protection clothing was donned over normal clean room eyes-only-exposed garb, and a large silicon wafer (complete with defective 4Mb DRAMs) was "carefully" thrown into the acid bath. Nothing happened for about twenty seconds, as the HF attacked the silicon, heating up the wafer until a runaway reaction started. The acid bath then erupted into a frightening boiling maelstrom, with the violent evolution of copious amounts of red and brown fumes of nitrogen oxides. The complete destruction of high technology by the tiger of chemistry.
Splendid.
Now we know why they're shunning away geeks
- mritunjai
I'm not up on chemistry and electrical engineering to know if this stuff actually makes sense. Would the stuff presented in the stories actually work?
If so, it is nice to see funny, clever hard-scifi -- it might make a nice book or short story.
-- I browse at +5 with stripped sigs
This is one of the great hoaxes put on the American people, and it's gained a life of its own. Gore correctly took credit - in a casual comment in an interview - for taking the initiative in Congress in creating what we consider to be the Internet (increasing funding and taking it from a military to a commercial and academic network). Some weeks later, Republicans started using the false "invented" claim.
I was telling someone about that book today - I read it about ten years ago - but couldn't remember the title. A fortunate coincidence.
The apparent owner of the site posted links to this stuff over on scienceforums.net, and it was quickly refuted with some simple facts:w thread.php?s= &postid=4477#post4477
"A C60 fullerene has 20 hexagons; but also 12 pentagons, and the observation doesn't mention these; but the biggest problem I see is it's diameter; we simply couldn't see things 7 angstroms in diameter 1856. If we could, and above 260 kelvin, the spin would make it appear spherical."
-http://scienceforums.net/forums/sho
I've gotten so tired of the Rush Limbaugh drones and their guffaws whenever this distortion is repeated. The Internet, and the technology sector in general, would be in a lot better shape today if we had Al Gore in office rather than the guy that was appointed President.
I never would have wanted to be THIS guy's assistant! First he makes him sick from inhaling quicksilver (Mercury) vapor (very poisonous), then he fries (electrocutes) his hand so bad that he can't use his arm for a month, then the poor guy loses his sight in one eye thanks to the discovery of the laser. How does this guy reward his assistant for giving (literally) so much of himself? He CANS him! And we thought that our employers were assholes! Jeesh!
so the russians were ahead of the game all this time.
.. both US and USSR being white for the most part.
And I just attributed it all to inspired by good but crap for brains implemented policyies of the last 100 years.
One thing of note, the cold war taught us to hate the russians as our enemy, possibly the first non-racially based enemy created.
I nearly fell out of my seat when I read this... ouch! This letter could have come right out of the pages of The Onion, from perhaps Zwiebel's (sp?) cheif scientist.
Hum, if this book did actually exist, someone ought to contribute it to Project Gutenburg. This guy is claiming copyright to something that was supposedly written in 1854 and selling it for $25.
Now, if he actually wrote it all, the price is reasonable, given the amount of creativity involved in putting it together, but he ought to have said so rather than lying about it being something historic.
Slashdot could have warned us before we hit the second paragraph that this was a good story.. but nothing more than a good *story*.
Slashdot could hae posted it to a humor section instead of *Science*!
"...Hodges emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year"
Hodges would make a great strait-man, in a cartoon that is...I missed the 'funny' icon but I couldn't help laughing as soon as I read the exploits of poor Hodges. Whomever wrote this should turn it into a weekly cartoon. Some of us that have been zapped, blown up, suffered chemical burns, etc in our path of discovery can't help but feel for this guy. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
...made in the 1970's and re-runs played on PBS stations here in the states afterwards. Leonard Rossiter could've played the perfect Glitch.
There they go again. Trying to take credit for someone else's work.
Anyone else see something funny about this?
Master Glitch, there's a glitch in this here electric valve. It has been glowing funnily since I dropped my pickle sandwich in there (and so was discovered the light emitting diode)
From the article
"Sensing a shirker as well as you can Faraday, I took over turning the machine and with some merriment demanded he take observations of the expanded spark...Hodges would see nothing of value looking along the axis. How wrong Faraday! When the prime started sparking over, Hodges emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year."
Now THAT'S funny!
...it was *Mrs. Glitch* who should really get the credit.
No wonder you hate Americans, if I lived in your country I would too.
Cause I'd be a stupid starved uneducationed fuck with no future except the hope that I can get to America and get a minimum wage job which is more then you or you 2 kids working for Nike in the sweat shops will make in a year.
I forgot to mention that what they believe is a mechanical calculator was an ancient greek artifact. That was really the whole point. Jesus, I don't even have the "coffee" excuse.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I've even seen fufula and foofera, but I'm pretty sure froofrah is the correct spelling.
I'm not sure which is more indicative of Slashdot's editorial decline -- this story, or the rash of duplicates.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
The internet invents AL GORE!
These letters are a classic. Probably should be ran thru Victoriantalk though. The parent site has some of the coolest stuff I've seen in a while. I hope somebody mirrors it before the ARM shuts it down.
Here is a modern description. You can put one together for a few dollars. It delivers nanosecond pulses of UV laser light that you can use to excite dye lasers and do other neat stuff with.
make wonderful earrings...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Hodges sounds like a character out of one of the Lemony Snicket novels. And if you haven't read any of those, you're missing something nasty and good. Actually, I wonder if 'Ernest Glitch' IS the same guy who writes the Snicket books. The styles are similar.
it looked like the title read:
"The Heterophobe Unpublished Letters of Ernest Glitch"
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Of course it's a hoax, the whole thing reads like a comedy of errors where the poor servant Hodges is subjected to various nasty injuries as a result of Glitch's experiments.
How is the parent a "troll"? How can providing providing factual information regarding an interview be considered trolling?
"Troll" does not mean something that you don't want to hear.
But Franklin and Faraday got all the credit.
He's back!