Fun_People Archive
17 Oct
Errata, oversights, and responses 10/17/95 

Date: Tue, 17 Oct 95 17:33:29 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Errata, oversights, and responses  10/17/95
Cc: jmichael@sas.upenn.edu, whitbeck@mit.edu


Marc Abrahams (editor of The Annals of Improbable Research) points out that  
the Fun_Item called "Everything I need to know I learned in, ..., er, ..."  
consisting of inspired misunderstandings of the world from student test papers  
and essays comes entirely from Richard Lederer's books.  Often an interesting  
bit reaches me with no attribution, but some knowledgeable Fun_Person sees it  
and sends me info on it.  These updates are appreciated and remembered, but  
usually not circulated because the moment has passed.  In this case, Marc's  
observation that "People seem to have gotten into the habit of neglecting to  
credit him [Lederer]." inspired me to make this lengthy mention of the  
mistake.
_____________________________________________________________________________

A number of Fun_People knew similar variants of the URL for the OJ Simpson Web  
page (Re: "JOTD -- (10/9) OJ & the Web").  In particular, Lani Hermann  
<lanih@info.SIMS.Berkeley.EDU>, Nina Feldman <Ninafel@aol.com>, and Jef Jaisun  
<eljefe@netcom.com> all suggested something like:

	http://www/ // \ / \\ //// <ESC>
_____________________________________________________________________________

Finally, both Robert Reynolds <Robert.Reynolds@directory.Reed.EDU> and Neil  
Gershenfeld <neilg@media.mit.edu> were inspired by "The tragedy of Canada" to  
remember the comparison of heaven and hell:

In heaven the 

	police are English
	cooks are French
	auto mechanics are German
	lovers are Italian
	government officials are Swiss

whereas

In hell the
	police are German
	cooks are English
	auto mechanics are French
	lovers are Swiss
	government officials are Italian.

But no one mentioned the contention that Washington, D.C. is a town that  
combines Northern hospitalitry with Southern efficiency (from JFK?)  


-psl
[=] © 1995 Peter Langston []