Today's Topics:
Brain Scans (4 msgs)
OBIT: the magic box that brought SLACK to computing
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Date: Thu, 23 Dec 93 15:09:52 PST
Message-Id: <9312232309.AA05328@calvin.usc.edu>
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
From: Frank San Filippo <fsanf@calvin.usc.edu>
Subject:
I am but a humble neophyte in the ways of Bob...and I didn't even bother to
read most of the stuff on Rush ...butt...doesn't it seem to anybody else
that even taking this guy seriously enough to talk about him is buying in
to the whole CON?!?! If we can't make money off of him ourselves, I think
it's best if (as per that purple THING) we just ignore the whole situation
until the pinks find something else to be interested in.
I suspect that people who like Rush HATE Beavis & Butthead. Those that hate
Rush actually have a PREFERENCE for one or the other. And Bob hates me for
caring enough to bring this all up.
Please, people-- can't we all get some SLACK?
--Br'er Pud
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Message-ID: <ch6Vdoq00WB38K26xX@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1993 17:23:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu, nm-list@reef.cis.ufl.edu
Subject: Brain Scans
In-Reply-To: <9312221516.AA07754manitoba.marcam.com>
In-Reply-To: <9312221516.AA07754manitoba.marcam.com>
If you want to try something really cool, volunteer for a Magnetic
Resonance Imaging brain scan. I did it today at the U. of Chicago
Hospital's brain center, and like wow man.
They put me in this future plastic mummy case, like Spock's coffin or
something, and slowly slid me inside this huge massive doughnut
magneto thingamajig with weird rhythmic banging noises going on all
the time. I could only move any part of my body a few inches, like
when yer dead & buried.
There was a cool little mirror thing above my eyes where I could
vaguely see down between my feet out to the rest of the MRI room.
There was a little microphone and speaker so the technician guy could
talk to me ("You doin OK?") and I could talk back ("Duh, yeah, it's
like electronic music, cool").
THey would run a scan, for like five minutes, and they did about 5 of
these. Enormous monstrous magnetic thingamajigs, all around my head,
making enormous repetitive noises (they gave me cool foam earplugs
beforehand). It reminded me of some electronic music pieces I've done
in the past, and I got a great inspiration while I was in there,
relating to my next large project, the Puncture Wound of the
Alien.....
At one point towards the end of a 5-minute run my head got really
weird, as if the magnets were pulling my brain molecules all to one
side or something, and I began tumbling down a distant tube of
vertigo..... really cool, like doing drugs or being totally insanely
feverish, but locked inside this cool huge magneto monster.
Afterwards, I got to look at the images on a real spiffy computer
setup with multiple screens, twisty knobs, footpedals, etc., and they
gave me a cool printout of my brain scans. "This is my brain on
drugs", it's going to be the cover art for my CD when it comes out
sometime next year....
Chris Koenigsberg
ckk@uchicago.edu, ckk@andrew.cmu.edu
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Message-Id: <9312232349.AA02103@adobe.mv.us.adobe.com>
To: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Cc: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu, nm-list@reef.cis.ufl.edu,
dkletter@mv.us.adobe.com
Subject: Brain Scans
In-Reply-To: <ch6Vdoq00WB38K26xX@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 93 15:49:19 PST
From: dkletter@mv.us.adobe.com
From: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>
-> If you want to try something really cool, volunteer for a Magnetic
-> Resonance Imaging brain scan. I did it today at the U. of Chicago
-> Hospital's brain center, and like wow man.
yeah, my ex had to get an MRI scan about a year and a half ago... usually,
they do MRI scans when they're looking for anomolies like a tumor on the
brain or something similarly scary. we later found out it costs a grand
for an hour in that thing, plus some other administrative costs and
printing costs for the negatives. thank g*d for insurance!
the MRI issupposedly less intrusive or dangerous to your body as opposed
to a regular X-Ray or anything like that. many people get claustrophobia
because when they're taking the pictures, you have to be very very very
still and if anything doesn't come out right (they can tell because they're
watching in real-time) then they have to do it over. so, they usually tell
you to prepare to hang out for an hour. but you can imagine being tense
and worried that something may be wrong and then being stuck in that
narrow tube for an hour... when my ex did it, they let her bring in some
CDs and they played them for her through the comm system to help calm her
down.
an interesting tidbit of trivia to note is that when we asked what the
rumbling sound was, the doctor said he did not know. there are no
moving parts in the MRI scanner. he said it was one of those
inexplicable wonders of nature. of course, this bothers some people.
neat stuff... you're pretty lucky to get it for free and keep the
negatives.
hasta.
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Message-Id: <9312240034.AA18330@claris.com>
Date: 23 Dec 1993 16:32:39 -0800
From: Brendan McCarthy <claris!qm!brendan_mccarthy@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Brain Scans
To: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>, nm-list@reef.cis.ufl.edu,
Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Mail*Link(r) SMTP RE>Brain Scans
Yeah, you can have lots o' fun with MRs. I've had 6.
One of the best parts of submitting to an MRI is the reading the list of
conditions which preclude the procedure... no wearers of metal implants or
pacemakers, welders or steelworkers need apply. (The latter professions
are excluded because they tend to get tiny metal fragments in their eyes.
Imagine the effect of a wildly oscillating magnetic field on that.)
Metal jewelry in body piercings is also risky (anything below the nips is
supposed to be safe for a head MR, but who'd take the chance?)
At my medical facility, the technicians have a CD player hooked up to
the earphones (those low-fi airline-style pneumatic jobbers.)
Once, I took Einsteurzende Neubauten's "Tabula Rasa" without really thinking.
It was the most appropriate listening environment for "Head Cleaner" that
I can imagine. Not only a great pun; but the knocking, pounding, and
throbbing machinery combined with my limited sensory input stream to blur
the distinction between the music, myself, and machine.
I scanned in my MR films and made a bunch of QuickTime movies of my head...
it's great fun watching yourself getting resected into 2mm slices.
It's also a cool way to show off my low-tek cyberware shunt to friends.
brendan
brendan@claris.com "it IS a tumor"
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Message-Id: <9312240114.AA18780@claris.com>
Date: 23 Dec 1993 17:02:39 -0800
From: Brendan McCarthy <claris!qm!brendan_mccarthy@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Brain Scans
To: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>, dkletter@mv.us.adobe.com
Cc: nm-list@reef.cis.ufl.edu, Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Mail*Link(r) SMTP RE>>Brain Scans
dkletter@mv.us.adobe.com sez:
>neat stuff... you're pretty lucky to get it for free and keep the
>negatives.
yeah, real lucky. i get to have them regularly for the rest of my life.
duplication costs for the films ran about $12 per sheet. i think i paid
$250 for my complete set of films from one session.
brendan
brendan@claris.com "you've got the brain of a juvenile in an adult body"
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Date: Thu, 23 Dec 93 11:35:58 PST
Message-Id: <9312231935.AA23958@osc.versant.com>
From: strickperson #1 <nobody@nowhere.taz>
To: "Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu" <Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject: OBIT: the magic box that brought SLACK to computing
NEWSPAPER (c) THE WASHINGTON POST
BYLINE John Schwartz
CREDIT Washington Post Staff Writer
DATE 12/20/93
LENGTH 26 INCHES
The machine that changed the world, the magic box that first
wrestled computing away from the corporate giants and gave it to anybody
with $1,400, the technology that convinced us that the future was not
going to fold, spindle or mutilate us, died last month.
Like many deaths, it came quietly, and in the dark. Apple didn't even
put out a press release when it dropped the Apple IIe, the last of the
Apple II product line. But this was no mere product cancellation. It
was the death of a hero of the revolution -- the personal computer
revolution.
The Apple was a generational statement -- the brainchild of two
scruffy Silicon Valley kids named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, cobbled
together in Jobs's garage. These were the baby boomers taking on the
Establishment, a rainbow-colored logo against three big blue capital
letters: IBM. The computer, and the image, made Silicon Valley the new
home town of the American dream.
The Apple II was a rock-and-roll message to the Pat Boone mainframe
world. Many rival brands in the heady early days of personal computing
died young, like digital Keith Moons and Janis Joplins. The Apple II,
however, was more like Frank Zappa, a classic survivor chugging
along, dying finally of a disease of the old. Apple had sold more than
5 1/2 million of the machines in its remarkable 16-year run.
By the time Apple pulled the plug, technology had long passed the
II by. Almost a decade ago, the company moved on to the more powerful and
easy-to-use Macintosh line of computers. Just 2 percent of the computers
sold by Apple this year were IIe's, and almost all of those went to
schools, the most loyal purchasers of the machines.
Despite its advanced age, the news still hit the many fans of the
machine hard. They remembered with great fondness the upstart machine
that started it all.
Florence Haseltine, head of the Center for Population Research at
the National Institutes of Health, lovingly remembered her first 1980
Apple as saving her career: A self-confessed terrible speller, she
needed the computer so that she could correct her grant proposals
without retyping whole pages. "I'll always love that Apple II," she
said. "It gave me freedom -- and when anything does that you know it's
just the beginning of a whole explosion."
This, then, was much more than just microchips and molded plastic.
The Apple II was the Model T of computing. Ford's mass-produced
invention took the power of transportation away from the rich railroads
and put individual drivers behind the wheel. Apple users, too, were
delivered from the priesthood that maintained the mainframes. And the
Apple was available in any color as long as it was beige.
The machine itself was a shock: Its sculpted plastic case looked
less like a clunky computer terminal than some mysterious-but-elegant
kitchen appliance, perhaps from Germany.
"It was the first computer that a lot of people fell in love with,"
said Richard Shaffer, publisher of the New York-based Computer Letter.
It was born of love, not market research, Jobs would later tell
audiences: "When we first started Apple, we really built the first
computer because we wanted one."
Like the Model T, that early Apple was primitive by today's
turbocharged standards. Its disks could store a few college papers,
nothing more. Today's machines offer thousands of times the performance,
yet that early Apple was capable of running early versions of the same
programs found on machines in 1993: word processors, spreadsheets and
databases.
The genius at Apple wasn't just technical, though. It was an
unprecedented marketing triumph: Apple got people to think that
computers were cool. No longer the domain of the dorks, computers became
objects of desire for a generation. Savvy publicist Regis McKenna saw
how Jobs and Wozniak would punch the buttons of a generation on the
make. One set of Apple ads made yuppie execs yearn for the power that
could be tapped through the keyboard; another made parents fret that
their precious children would fall behind the pack if they couldn't do
their homework on an Apple II. The company cannily sold the machines
directly to schools, building a loyal market of educators and parents.
By 1981, when IBM weighed into the market with its initial PC, more than
300,000 Apples had been sold, and public awareness of the brand was up
to 80 percent. By January 1982, the number sold had jumped to 650,000.
The sleek lines of the upgraded IIc were celebrated in the design
showcases of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Was it any wonder, then, that in 1982 Time magazine declared its
Man of the Year to be the computer?
The Apple II legitimized personal computers in education and in
business, said Oliver Strimpel, executive director of the Computer
Museum in Boston -- which displays one of the machines prominently
among other pioneering boxes. "To some extent it was the genius of the
design, but to some extent it was luck -- the right machine at the right
place at the right time."
To Shaffer, the appeal of the Apple II lay in its relative
simplicity: "You could open the top and look at the parts and see what
everything did." The II made sense partly because Wozniak designed the
machine's main circuit board on his own, with equal measures of
elegance and artistry. Today's machines are put together by armies of
engineers, and combine so many functions on a chip that you can't
distinguish the parts under the hood. "This is the last machine I think I
completely understood," Shaffer said.
The II was good for Apple long after Apple stopped being good to it.
Jobs denigrated the II as he lurchingly tried to move the company to
new machines. As Apple struggled with the introductions of one failed
product after another in the early 1980s -- the Apple III, the
Buick-sized Lisa, and the initially disappointing Macintosh -- the
trusty Apple II kept the company afloat.
Goodbye, Apple II. When our time comes, let's hope we will depart
with similar grace, or will have accomplished a fraction as much.
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End of Subgenius Digest
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