Best E-mails of the Week 3/31/01


This is a hoot, but may require broadband. Keep trying it. In case you were wondering what people do at Harvard

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~pyang/base/allyourbase.swf

Here's last week's Mad Cow opened a different way plus some links
http://www.justsaywow.com/mad.htm

First graders:
A first grade teacher collected well known proverbs. She gave each
child in her class the first half of a proverb and asked them to come up with
the remainder of the proverb. Their
insight may surprise you.
* Better to be safe than....................Punch a kid bigger than
you
* Strike while the.........................Bug is close
* Never underestimate the power of............Termites
* You can lead a horse to water but.................how?
* Don't bite the hand that..................looks dirty
* No news is ....................impossible
* A miss is as good as a .....................Mr.
* You can't teach an old dog new.................math
* If you lie down with dogs, you'll...................stink in the
morning
* Love all, trust....................me
* The pen is mightier than the.....................pigs
* An idle mind is..........................The best way to relax
* Where there's smoke there's.......................pollution
* Happy the bride who...................gets all the presents
* A penny saved is............................not much
* Two's company, three's........................The Musketeers
* Don't put off till tomorrow what.................you put on to go to
bed
* Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry
and..................you have to blow your nose
* None are so blind as.....................Stevie Wonder
* Children should be seen and not....................spanked or
grounded
* If at first you don't succeed................get new batteries
* You get out of something what you...............see pictured on the
box
* When the blind leadeth the blind................get out of the way
And the favorite.....
* Better late than......................pregnant

Subject: Railroad History: (as only an Engineer could love)

Here's a look into the corporate/human mind that is very interesting, educational, historical, completely true, and hysterical all at the same time (and old COBOL programmers need to be particularly aware):
The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the previous question. ********** BUT, there is a twist to the story ********** There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' rears. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' butts.
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by a couple of Horses' Asses!


Blue Ribbon (worth reading)

A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in high
school by telling them the difference they each made. She called each
student to the front of the class, one at a time. First she told each of
them how they had made a difference to her and the class. Then she
presented each of them with a blue ribbon imprinted with gold letters,
which read, "Who I Am Makes a Difference."
Afterwards the teacher decided to do a class project to see what kind of
impact recognition would have on a community. She gave each of the
students three more ribbons and instructed them to go out and spread
this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the
results, see who honored whom and report back to the class in about a
week.
One of the boys in the class went to a junior executive in a nearby
company and honored him for helping him with his career planning. He
gave him a blue ribbon and put it on his shirt. Then he gave him two
extra ribbons and said, "We're doing a class project on recognition, and
we'd like you to go out, find somebody to honor, give them a blue
ribbon, then give them the extra blue ribbon so they can acknowledge a
third person to keep this acknowledgment ceremony going. Then please
report
back to me and tell me what happened."
Later that day the junior executive went in to see his boss, who had
been noted, by the way, as being kind of a grouchy fellow. He sat his
boss down and he told him that he deeply admired him for being a
creative genius. The boss seemed very surprised. The junior executive
asked him if he would accept
the gift of the blue ribbon and would he give him permission to put it
on him. His surprised boss said, "Well, sure." The junior executive took
the blue ribbon and placed it right on his boss's jacket above his
heart.
As he gave him the last extra ribbon, he said, "Would you do me a favor?
Would you take this extra ribbon and pass it on by honoring somebody
else? The young boy who first gave me the ribbons is doing a project in
school and we want to keep this recognition ceremony going and find out
how it affects people."
That night the boss came home to his 14-year-old son and sat him down.
He said, "The most incredible thing happened to me today. I was in my
office and one of the junior executives came in and told me he admired
me and gave me a blue ribbon for being a creative genius. Imagine. He
thinks I'm a creative genius. Then he put this blue ribbon that says
'Who I Am Makes A Difference'" on my jacket above my heart. He gave me
an extra ribbon and asked me to find somebody else to honor. As I was
driving home tonight, I started thinking about whom I would honor with
this ribbon and I thought about you. I want to honor you. My days are
really hectic and when I come home I don't pay a lot of attention to
you. Sometimes I scream at you for not getting good enough grades in
school and for your bedroom being a mess, but somehow tonight, I just
wanted to sit here and, well, just let you know that you do make a
difference to me. Besides your mother, you are the most important person
in my life. You're a great kid
and I love you!"
The startled boy started to sob and sob, and he couldn't stop crying.
His whole body shook. He looked up at his father and said through his
tears, "Dad, earlier tonight I sat in my room and wrote a letter to you
and Mom explaining why I had killed myself and asking you to forgive me.
I was going to commit suicide tonight after you were asleep. I just
didn't think that you cared at all.
The letter is upstairs. I don't think I need it after all." His father
walked upstairs and found a heart felt letter full of anguish and pain.
The envelope was addressed, "Mom and Dad".
The boss went back to work a changed man. He was no longer a grouch but
made sure to let all his employees know that they made a difference.
The junior executive helped several other young people with career
planning and never forgot to let them know that they made a difference
in his life...one being
the boss's son. And the young boy and his classmates learned a valuable
lesson.
Who you are DOES make a difference. You are under no obligation to send
this on to anyone...not to two people or to two hundred. As far as I am
concerned, you can DELETE it and move on to the next message. But if you
have anyone who means a lot to you, I encourage you to send him or her
this message and let them know. You never know what kind of difference a
little encouragement can make to a person. I give you all a blue
ribbon. Who you are makes a difference, and I wanted you to know that.

Thanks to all the contributors!
Have a good week!
Pierre