Whats the screwiest thing you collect?

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Thu Dec 2 12:59:08 1999

At 05:36 PM 12/2/99 +0000, Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk wrote:
>Like, in Jakarta, I bought a gong. 28 inches in diameter, and
>weighing, um, I was going to say nearly 100lb but I think it's a bit less.
 I'll
>have to weigh it. I wish I'd known how expensive excess baggage charges
are ---
>it cost me $700 US just to ship the damned thing home...

And that gamelan gong has a connection to computers, too: Gamelan
music (playing in the background of shadow puppet plays) often
has its cycles of rhythms at powers of two, so a large gong
like that marks off time at, say, every 256 beats.

This cracked me up when I learned that in gamelan class, much like
the moment when aspects of the Japanese language reminded me of
stack-based computer languages.

- John
Received on Thu Dec 02 1999 - 12:59:08 GMT