Skip to main content
Labscam: "Labscam--A Preliminary Report
Dennis Ritchie jaynote: he is the creator of Unix
This is a brief account of an interesting practical joke we perpetrated recently. A better treatment by another author will be forthcoming, as will a video. I will tell the story in linear fashion as a straight history, instead of striving for dramatic effect.

In the fall of 1989, Rob Pike met Penn Jillette, of the comedy/magic team of Penn and Teller. The introduction and initial conversations were through e-mail, and the mutual acquaintance who started things off was Mike Hawley, now enmeshed at the Media Lab at MIT. After a series of electronic letters, Rob attended one of Penn's Friday movie nights, which was just as described by Calvin Trillin in his recent New Yorker profile of P&T. (Meet in the Times Square HoJo's. Rob wondered, `How will I know you?' and Penn said, `I have samurai hair and I'll be at the back.')

Penn's interest in visiting Bell Labs had already been piqued not only by Hawley, but also by Ron Graham (BTL mathematician/juggler), another mutual acquaintance. By the time Rob met Penn, thoughts of something more than a mere see-the-sights visit began to stir: there was the possibility of pulling off a great trick."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Artist turns animals into everyday objects

Ananova - A Chilean artist is making a name for herself with an exhibition in which stuffed animals are transformed into household objects. Artworks on display include a chick turned into a lamp, and 'sheep bag' - a lamb carcass fitted with handles. Artist Caterina Purdy says her exhibition at the Experimental Arts Centre in Santiago is intended to be humorous but also makes a serious point. She told Las Ultimas Noticias online: 'It is possible to see my work as something scary, but I find it beautiful. 'There is also irony and humour in my objects as well as a criticism of the way animals are treated by society.'"

Josh Nimoy @ ITP - BallDroppings

Josh Nimoy @ ITP - BallDroppings : "BallDroppings is an addicting and noisy play-toy. It can also be seen as an emergence game. My brother Marc takes this software seriously as an audio-visual performance instrument. Balls fall from the top of the screen and bounce off the lines you are drawing with the mouse. The balls make a percussive and melodic sound, whose pitch depends on how fast the ball is moving when it hits the line."

W Ketchup™

W Ketchup™ : "You don’t support Democrats. Why should your ketchup? W Ketchup™ is made in America, from ingredients grown in the USA. In side-by-side taste tests of five leading brands, we found that W Ketchup is second to none. You'll never go back to Heinz again! W Ketchup is America’s Ketchup™"