Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: FTSD2000 - $1T++: I see a great need
Reply-To: xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Birthright Party "The birthright of humankind is the stars!"
From: xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan)
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Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2000 07:57:14 GMT
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Aside: Funny. Mostly people describe my postings as: funny that he
should waste his time and our patience writing that. Quant suf. This
is supposed to be funny that other way, as in making you laugh. If it
doesn't, be really, really careful before picking a party to whom to
assign the blame. Heehaw dolts who laugh at their own jokes
unaccompanied and humorless gits who never get the joke while everyone
around is rolling on the floor in stitches and acute pain are equally
real parts of our shared universe. Too bad the continuum between seems
to have been carried away in a major meteor strike about the advent of
homo habilis. The chimps and bonobos know how to laugh when something
is funny. Maybe that's what Jane Goodall was really trying to learn
from studying the great apes: what a sense of humor was, and why humans
seem to lack any evidence of one.
The news media tell us that the two major political candidates each
have an agenda for ways to spend a trillion dollar budget surplus, one
probably composed of equal parts cooked books and wishful thinking, but
let us posit for the nonce that we really have a dollar sign with a
dozen zeros after it and a one between the pair, which is burning a
hole in our budget and has been put off limits for doing something sane
like paying down our war debts.
Best I can tell, the party of mean spiritedness was planning to use
that surplus to give tax breaks to the folks funding their campaigns,
sort of a "billionnaires' budget blessing" for the Forbes 400 richest
folks in America.
The party of general profligacy seemed intent on doing something for
the homeless, perhaps buying them all RVs with an eight years' supply
of fuel and food and cannabis and Mapquest interfaces.
The chartreuses' agenda wasn't too clear, but I believe professional
24x7 tree huggers were to be hired to protect all the old growth forest
trees, or some such, from among the unemployed, the under employed, and
the polluting industry employed to be carried to and from their tasks
in non-polluting, packaging free electric camels.
While all of the above are certainly splendid uses for loot for which
the folks from which it was extracted have no conceivable other uses, I
feel a great need to look at an alternative agenda, one that will put
America back in the forefront of nations, by reinforcing the habit that
got us where we are today. Yes, I'm talking government funding of pure
research. Yes, I'm talking pork barrel budget busting.
Without further ado, then, let us look at a few of the many worthwhile
research grant proposals that have gone wanting for lack of budget at
the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, and see if we couldn't just usefully hand that $1T to
the NSF and DARPA with joy and trust, knowing that they'd do right by
us, the taxpayers.
Title:
Further investigations into the unexpectedly high incidence of haital
hernias in obese males age 45 to 55.
Principle investigator and affiliation:
Jonathan Hogg, Professor of Extreme Nutrition, Razorback University,
Pigwallow, Arkansas.
Abstract:
Does gut sucking, when a woman young enough to be his grandchild walks
by in revealing clothing, really push the obese male's organs through
his diaphragm to sleep side by side with his lungs and heart?
Methodology:
Standard "street tarts and couch potatos" protocol will be used.
Additional funding required:
Both special funding for a derrick to maneuver the couch potato
research subjects upright, and also the hourly rates for street tarts,
explain the rather high supplemental funding request for this grant.
Title:
Revisit of the skewed statistics for Net awareness among users with
accounts less than two years old.
Principle investigator and affiliation:
Asa Batt, Professor of Aural Studies, Unseeing University for the Fully
Vision Challenged, Textonly, Texas.
Abstract:
There is frequent mention in the aural media and braille publications
of an 18% awareness of Usenet news among the general web population.
It has been unclear in these reports just what the other 82% of the
populace are doing while sitting at their telnet sessions: enjoying the
repeated vocalization of their login fortune cookie is one theory,
while seeking a CRT tan is another.
Methodology:
Graduate students with particularly acute hearing will be stationed at
home and office computer use points around the country, listening
carefully for any signs of mentation among those not feverishly typing
FTSD postings, to wrest an understanding of the fascination to the
others of sitting at a keyboard making clicking noises with their
thumbnails.
Additional funding required:
Both the need for first class airline tickets to points of
investigation so that guide dogs can accompany the graduate students to
their assigned stations, and the increasing cost of doggie kibble with
the failure of Pets.com, explain the rather high supplemental funding
request for this grant.
Title:
Swarming behavior of coptotermes cranius in urban environments.
Principle investigator and affiliation:
Xanthus Xanthianus, Professor of Pedantry, San Jose University for the
Insufferably Smug, San Jose, California.
Abstract:
Mental capacities are decreasing at an alarming rate in the
"demographic hump" of the baby boom generation as it enters its fifth
decade. A growing awareness in the academic community of connections
between this intellectual loss and the swarming of copotermes cranius,
the common "brain termite", around computer keyboards and monitors
which seem constantly in use, has led to a hypothesis much in need of
investigation, that the sufferer might need to be weaned from the
posting chair by more attractive alternatives.
Methodology:
As graduate students are typically too young to be research subjects in
problems of the late middle aged, the PI will at great personal risk
and inconvenience be his own research subject; seeking out parts of
"real life" that make the 24x7 posting attempts seem less attractive.
Additional funding required:
The high cost of wine, women, song, recreational drugs, fine
restaurants, spas, massage parlors, theatah tickets, and world travel,
all potential weaning mechanisms, explain the rather high supplemental
funding request for this grant. That it must of necessity be a
longitudinal study across many years to study the long term effects of
this behavior modification only increases this funding need.
There were more, but the witching hour approaches.
Cheers!
xanthian.
===== random archival quality quote =====
It's been a hard day on the planet,
How much is it all worth?
It's been a hard day on the planet,
Things are getting tough all over the Earth.
-- Louden Wainwright III,
Hard Day on the Planet
--
Kent Paul Dolan.
<xanthian@well.com> <xanthian@aztec.asu.edu> <kdolan@ebay.com>
Gods, that stunk.