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| Splendid, Phil!
Who's next?
I remember Steve Jaffe in Toronto ('93) when he lost his text sheets
from his desk, whirling like an old tulip bouquet to the floor, actually
disarming (an excellent exposition by the way - there seems to be a
video tape).
Or in Lancaster, while Steve & Jim were showing and explaining
a few complicated things and Richard Smith (9) nodding, said:
"I see ..." (apparantly he did).
jan
"phil chastney" <phil.hates.spam@amadeus.munged.eclipse.co.uk> wrote in message
news:H53Th.178031$Ts6.104152@fe12.news.easynews.com...
> jk wrote:
>
> there was an incident at Rochester when Trenchard More was introducing the
> world to the insights of array theory, and he turned over his first page of
> notes, to discover that he'd left the rest behind -- the look of horror on his
> face is something he still gets teased about
>
> and I'm still embarrassed by the recollection of Heidelberg, where I was
> rabbitting on about nulls -- there was the usual 5 second pause after I
> asked for questions at the end, then one of the Scandinavians said, "yes, I
> have a null question" . . . and I stood there like a lemon waiting for him
> to continue
>
> it worked well in the end, because I walked into the Red Ox that evening, and
> couldn't see a face I recognised, but a group of Scandinavians shoved up
> closer, and made space for me, because at least they recognised me as the
> aforesaid lemon
>
> Heidelberg was also the place where Trenchard More displayed that amazing set
> of slides, illustrating the ideas of nested arrays
>
> we discussed this in the Red Ox, and I said I couldn't decide whether it was
> deep or vacuous, and that seemed a pretty common reaction
>
> at the IPSA-financed conference in Toronto, we (well, actually, the rest of
> them -- not me) drank the bar dry -- Roseanne briefed the hotel to get more
> stuff in, and they said "oh, we always get more in for a conference" and they
> were told to get more more in, but it still wasn't enough
>
> incidentally, Copenhagen was 1973, and the proceedings were published by
> (?)North-Holland, not by the ACM . . . /phil
>
> P.S: Pisa (1975) was a nightmare regarding accommodation -- they were still
> trying to book delegates into rooms on the morning of the first day -- I
> stayed at three different locations -- as the conference progressed, people
> were organising their own accommodation, and moving closer in, so those of us
> on the periphery took up their rooms for a night, before finding something
> closer for the following night
>
> I remember a bar in Pisa with dozens of different brandies on the wall, so we
> started at the beginning, intending to go on to the end, and then stop --
> pretty soon it was clear this wasn't going to be possible, so we asked the
> barman just to give us the best he'd got -- it was a brand I'd never heard of,
> and came out of a bottle with a cheap and gaudy label, and it tasted
> _Wonderful_ -- but then, I was probably so far gone I would have said the same
> about a cup of weak tea
>
> on the Saturday, after the conference was over, a lot of people went to
> Florence -- four hours each way on the train! how much will they be able to
> take in in that short stay?
>
> P.P.S: now you know how the wedding guest feels in "The Rime of the Ancient
> Mariner" . . . /p
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