News You Can Bruise for 2000 April

Sat Apr 01 2000 07:01: I'm going to Frisco in about an hour (I call it Frisco precisely to piss you Frisco people off) for another job interview. I'm being flown back to LA immediately so there's no time to hang out with Mike or Mae Ling (who is across the country anyway) or anyone. Oh well.

Sat Apr 01 2000 07:11: Think I'll spin a little Devo.

Sat Apr 01 2000 11:29: I'm at myzack showing off the notebook program.

Sat Apr 01 2000 17:24: I'm back. Dan's back. We're all back. For ice back.

Sat Apr 01 2000 17:38: I'm experimenting with putting links to other people's sites at the bar at the top of the page. The links are links to sites that a) belong to particular people, whom I know; and b) are updated on a fairly regular basis.

I don't know why I didn't realize this before. Supernova's song Daredevil has the same melody as Devo's It's Not Right.

Sat Apr 01 2000 17:58: I picked up Hazel's second (and last) album, Are You Going To Eat That? for cheap in Austin last week, so I'm going through that right now. Jody (see NYCB 19990531) got just a little too butch for me between the first and second albums, but she still has the sexiest singing voice.

Sat Apr 01 2000 18:02: Bill Softky and I are low-key delving into the crazy world of Javascript. (I'm low-key, I don't know the height of Bill's key) Who wants to point us to a decent Javascript tutorial? How about for Microsoft's version of Javascript?

Sat Apr 01 2000 18:07: Did I mention that the notebook program is in beta? Beta meaning "Mark has it".

Sat Apr 01 2000 20:22: Now that Jake has pictures avaliable I can do the graphic for the Jake Berendes West Covina story. In fact, I just did. The story will make no sense to anyone but me--just the way I like it.

Sat Apr 01 2000 20:53: Leonardonics: I win!

Sat Apr 01 2000 21:02: Celeste has given me permission to link to her webpage, which features many entertaining pictures of her. I find them entertaining, anyhow. And bless her heart, she actually said the phrase "so serious", allowing me to do a The Guy Who Thinks He's Jeff Lynne.

Sun Apr 02 2000 07:20: Whimsical rendered DNA graphics.

Sun Apr 02 2000 18:39: Before Babe Winkelman, there was Tux on the Run. I found that at freearcade, which is interesting in its own right.

Sun Apr 02 2000 19:37: Guppy Races is probably the best game on FreeArcade; it's cute.

Sun Apr 02 2000 20:06: Joe Barr sent me the picture he surrepetiously took of Mae Ling and myself at LWE last August. It probably won't be the last image to go into /pix/1999/misc.

Mon Apr 03 2000 07:07: I miss Geek Site of the Day.

Mon Apr 03 2000 08:07: Duh. Maybe I should link to foaf's essay on a horrible game after I put it up.

Mon Apr 03 2000 10:29: While doing research for a page I'm working on, I came across a wargame (eg. Axis and Allies) type game called A Mighty Fortress (scroll down that page to see reviews). That's gotta be the most original wargame (if the term applies) ever. Like the Bunnies and Burrows of wargames.

[NB: Bunnies and Burrows is/was a role-playing game based on Watership Down. From Andy's latest dispatch, I think we now know who was responsible for that game.]

Mon Apr 03 2000 10:44: Before landing a job at the Free Software Foundation, he hawked cereal for Kelloggs.

Tue Apr 04 2000 07:47: I long to taste the taco that is impro, but my speakers aren't hooked up.

Tue Apr 04 2000 08:06: Someone should write an ncurses version of that Matrix screen saver using ASCII characters.

Tue Apr 04 2000 11:53: Michael Yount comes out of hiding to point me to CMatrix. AFAIK, CMatrix doesn't use ASCII characters. CMatrix was what inspired me to call out for a program that did use ASCII characters.

Tue Apr 04 2000 21:32: I have been informed that CMatrix does in fact do what I want it to do. The description I read made it sound like it did something annoyingly close but not quite. News You Can Bruise regrets the error.

Tue Apr 04 2000 21:58: It would appear that GTE uses its no call list as a "deluge with junk mail" list. I guess the thinking is that I tell them not to call me because I want to hear about their great offers in some other medium.

Wed Apr 05 2000 07:19: What a great URL. It's the only CGI I've ever seen that has a "court=xth" GET variable.

Wed Apr 05 2000 07:23: The microwave in my apartment is down, so every time I want to heat something up I have to take it to school or to work. It's pretty sad.

Wed Apr 05 2000 09:18: Oh, did I link to this 6th Circuit Court decision? I meant to link to this 6th Circuit Court decision.

Wed Apr 05 2000 15:18: Another dispatch from Andy, to which was attached the promised Watership Down comic. Prince Valliant it ain't.

Adam has graduated and is working at drdrew.com. His girlfriend Kim is working at hollywood.com. They're a [dehlorwy]*\.com couple!

Thu Apr 06 2000 07:28: Not only does this guy have, among other programs, a program that automatically breaks the highly popular and oh-so-secure XOR-encryption, but some of those other programs are 'script-kiddie safe', requiring a fix to the code before they'll work. I think this should be a new buzzword.

Thu Apr 06 2000 07:36: This is the sort of headline we need: The lunar eclipse: What you didn't see

If there were a Marine Biology Picture of the Day to go along with Astronomy Picture of the Day, I would be a happy camper.

Thu Apr 06 2000 08:41: I'm looking around the Web site for Westminster College, where Andy is. Not only are there a lot of missing pages, but at the bottom of the pages that are there it says "This page is periodically monitored for updates." Why are they just monitoring for updates when they should be actually doing the updates?

The whole thing looks a little shady. Look at this: it's right out of a spam.

The Diplomatic Academy of London (DAL) has enacted this mission as the longest established British institution that pioneered integrated training programmes in Diplomatic Studies and International Relations (MA, MPhil & PhD Degrees ) IN THE HEART OF LONDON and PARIS!

Thu Apr 06 2000 08:46: Fred tried to think of a good domain name for a porn site yesterday, but all the ones he thought of were taken.

Thu Apr 06 2000 08:49: I should link to CMatrix since I mentioned it.

Fri Apr 07 2000 05:48: Kris on the porn site naming issue: butttown.com isn't taken, but buttown.com is. "That leads me to believe they misspelled the domain name when they were registering it."

Fri Apr 07 2000 15:42: My customary twice-yearly sickness has set in, and I am deliriously doing odd things. When I left to go to class, I put on my backpack and reached back to yank my ponytail out from between my backpack and my back. I haven't had a ponytail for well over a year.

Sat Apr 08 2000 08:00: foaf on The Pirates of Silicon Valley:

They way Ballmer was portrayed made it seem like he's only using evil as a means to an end, that end being chicks and beer money.

Exactly. This is why you gotta love Ballmer.

Sat Apr 08 2000 08:06: B in CS181. A- in philosophy! That's incredible! (The A-, not the B). I believe this means I make the Dean's List again.

Sat Apr 08 2000 20:54: Folks, this is a full-fledged bonanza. Via an exclusive deal I make avaliable for you, the listening public, not only TWO albums from well-known attic band crupper scupper supper upper and the flupperdupper maleatora ("The best thing they ever did was break up." -- Variety), but also FIVE FULL FREAKING ALBUMS from well-known person and former crup bassist Jeremy Bruce from his solo act Off Gabbt ("We wish Off Gabbt would break up so we could say something mean about them." -- Variety). This is over TWO HUNDRED SONGS in MP3 format, over 350 megs of stuff all told. I'll be working with Jer and Jake to put up track lists for the albums that don't have them, but in the meantime you can start your downloading engines by going to /music/hosted/crup/ and /music/hosted/jbruce/. Enjoy, sucka.

Sat Apr 08 2000 21:21: The listener's guide to the temporal ordering of those albums: On the crup side, the albums go My Dinner With Andre Nguyen -> What Do You Call Those [sic] Pork Things. For jbruce, I believe it goes I'm not playing with you or you ever again till next friday -> Smally Creative -> Off Gabbt -> Largely Creative -> it smells really bad in here.

Sat Apr 08 2000 22:31: Not the sort of site I ever expected to link to anything on my site.

Sun Apr 09 2000 08:24: I don't have lilypond, so I can't use impro. A look at the source reveals that it isn't as intelligent as I was hoping an improvisation program to be, anyway. Oh well.

Sun Apr 09 2000 10:15: Pluto and Charon: giant alien disco balls?

Sun Apr 09 2000 12:59: Deitel, Deitel, Deitel. I made him out of clay. Deitel, Deitel, Deitel. It's Deitel I shall play.

Sun Apr 09 2000 13:49: My scanner will now remove comments from source code. To celebrate, I give you The Theobrominator!

Sun Apr 09 2000 18:49: The scanner is just about done. C++ is not nearly as horrible as I remember it. Since C++ has not changed in the past 3 years, I must be a better programmer than I was then. This is not hard to believe.

Sun Apr 09 2000 18:58: As far as I can tell, the scanner is done. Of course, the spec will probably change on me, since we're not technically supposed to have even started on the scanner yet.

Mon Apr 10 2000 07:08: Geez, I gotta recommend particular tracks so that people (such as daniel) will download them. Uh... there's some controversy as to whether the crup albums should actually be released as MP3 (So far it's me and Jer versus Jake) or left to die a slow, agonizing death on tapes, and besides all they have are track numbers so I'm not sure which tracks are which songs. So let's do some recommendations for Jer's albums.

I'm not really into instrumentals, but Cerve Basil is very good. A lot of the songs on it smells really bad in here are excellent, like Lady in Red, I want to marry a tall man, you know what? It's really annoying to make all these immensely long links so I'm just going to mention albums and track names and you can go to /music/hosted/jbruce and figure it out for yourself.

Who's the Grey Man, Got Kicked in the Balls and Cooking up the Tofu are also good. My knowledge of the other albums is limited because Jake once sent me a tape with a bunch of songs from them and no track list, but here are the ones I can associate: From i'm not playing with you..., for vintage jbruce get Cheese Fondue, Heath Bar (Crunch), Bennetts [a crup cover]. From Off Gabbt: Amy, Dave Moore, Ted Lin [one of the best jbruce songs IMO], Mara. i'm not playing..., off gabbt, and smally creative have HTML files in their directories that talk about the songs, so you can look at those and d/l whatever strikes your fancy. Other than that, you know as much as I do.

Oops, I forgot to mention the best jbruce song of all: Karl Malone. Get that, if nothing else.

Mon Apr 10 2000 12:17: I'm giving an introductory talk on Python this evening at the UCLALUG meeting. Be there or be somewhere else. I know I will.

Mon Apr 10 2000 13:21: Martin Sheen is Frank Zappa! Emilio Estevez is Frank Zappa!

Mon Apr 10 2000 21:31: My Python presentation went pretty well. Notes and pictures soon.

Tue Apr 11 2000 06:52: Jake on the crup MP3s:

re: crup songs. let's make a selection. not all the songs. only some. i will make a list, as i am the one who will be embarrassed. and i will be embarrassed.

I don't want to suggest anything, but... no, I said I didn't want to suggest anything. So I won't.

Tue Apr 11 2000 06:58: Microsoft and Ralph Reed - two great tastes that go better together!

Tue Apr 11 2000 09:09: Jake's new sig (the quote is from the last email I sent him):

=====
www.nindy.com     "It's finite... like a precious jewel.
That said, the chord progression is C F C5 G5+7. Sorta."
                                     -Leonard Richardson

Tue Apr 11 2000 11:21: Mike [Chan] is being polled by Microsoft right now (for "Microsoft" equals "somebody paid by Microsoft to conduct a poll that shows popular support for Microsoft").

Tue Apr 11 2000 18:35: Jake says Sausages is the best jbruce song. And it's an easy download!

Tue Apr 11 2000 19:44: It was a long time ago (like, over a year ago). Kris said something about sportsmanship that I thought was very profound. It's been going in and out of my head ever since, but I never thought to write it down. That's why I wrote this song. No, that's why I'm writing it down now (paraphrased, obviously):

The difference between sportsmanship in wrestling and sportsmanship in other sports is this: If you see an interview of someone who lost at a real sport, they're like "Well, I guess the best man won, uh, I've just gotta push myself a little more and work on my defense and, you know, go out and try harder next time." But if you see an interview of someone who just lost a wrestling match, they're like "YOU ARE SCUM, MIGHTY MIKE MUELLER! YOU ARE BOOTLICKING SCUM! I AM GOING TO HUNT YOU DOWN AND SLASH YOUR TIRES AND KILL YOU!!!"

Tue Apr 11 2000 19:56: I have been reduced to installing Quake on my computer, because Dan refuses to play any other networked game with me.

Wed Apr 12 2000 09:56: Quake wouldn't install. A box upon it.

Boy, the things you miss when you use Lynx. The Register's BOFH columns have cool cartoon pictures of the BOFH. And they've got an even cooler BOFH/PFY cartoon squirreled away which they've never used.

Wed Apr 12 2000 12:30: I hadn't been to Joel Hodgson's site in a long time, but I went there this morning when Peter Hodgson asked me if there was such a person as Joel Hodgson. There is, and now you can download the coloring book.

Thu Apr 13 2000 12:24: Dammit! eCost backordered my digital camera! The only reason I bought from them was that they said they had it in stock!

Thu Apr 13 2000 12:30: Also, the TA changed the format of the language just to break my scanner. In particular, things like "123abc" are valid now (two tokens, "123" and "abc"). Whitespace, folks. It's your friend.

Fri Apr 14 2000 08:04: Another game in the famous Leonard and Dan Carnage Signiature Series: City Destroy Carnage. The computer haplessly attempts to defend its cities from your endless barrage of nuclear missiles by firing intercept missiles.

I think this is the only way a Missile Command-type game could be made fun.

Fri Apr 14 2000 08:29:
From the ever stallwart ACM
To the bold IEEE
We're the folks on whom you can depend
To keep our country strong and free

Fri Apr 14 2000 20:58: There's a Captain Planet fan site that links to The Deficient Advantures of Captain Planet. TDAoCP is so good. It still makes me laugh out loud.

Fri Apr 14 2000 21:16: I was just putting up the 50th Best of Dada Pokey, when I realized that we have over a year of Daily Pokey: it started on April 9, 1999. Huzzah!

Sat Apr 15 2000 15:51: I haven't gotten email from Celeste since last night. I hope she's okay and she's not mad at me.

Sun Apr 16 2000 08:05: Celeste was mad at me but she's not anymore. :)

Sun Apr 16 2000 09:05: The new improved lexer is done. I just have to put it in the framework that the TA wants it in. This is made difficult by the fact that the campus backbone is undergoing planned downtime so I can't get the documentation I need. I can't get email, either.

For some reason the TA wants to make sure we don't use malloc or new in the lexer. Why? If we were allowed to use malloc or new, would the lexer suddenly become incredibly easy? I don't think so.

You probably already know this, but a lot of Hannah-Barbara cartoons are just homomorphisms of Scooby Doo.

Sun Apr 16 2000 14:28: Four [score and seven] years ago, I wrote a C++ program to answer the burning question: what are the odds of winning at craps? Today, the legend continues on the Web with Fast Jack's Floating Hall of Craps. In the spirit of corporate megamergers, FJFHoC has joined forces with the venerable Monty Hall's Hall of Doors to form Crummy.com's Hall of Halls.

Mon Apr 17 2000 07:39: I have been given a catalog from eLinux.com (I don't know if they have a web site). In it is a bit that might possibly win the "evading the question" award:

Why do we sell hardware with Windows pre-installed?
Linux users are helping drive the Linux movement by taking popular systems from well-known manufacturers and installing Linux on them. We know that buying the hardware to "test" Linux compatability can be expensive, thus we want to make products avaliable to you at extremely low prices! We'll also give you the resources to get Linux working for you!

Get this IBM 240 ThinkPad at $1,069! We'll tell you how users got SuSE up and running on it and were even able to use the winmodem.

We'll also give you a copy of SuSE.

Mon Apr 17 2000 09:38: Looking through the list of python modules I saw "math" and thought "Hmm, must be some kind of authentication module". I need a more ergonomic chair.

Mon Apr 17 2000 11:16: Arrrgh! My camera won't be shipped until the 28th! I'm going to look elsewhere.

Wed Apr 19 2000 21:57: This is a placeholder entry.

Thu Apr 20 2000 07:16: Here is an innovation which, if you are looking for something useful to do, you may use: There are about ten "x Weekly News" or "x-URL" newsletters which give the status of various free software projects. The innovation consists of a site which gives a brief summary of them as they come out and perhaps provides the most interesting link from each.

It should be obvious to regular NYCB readers that a great many of my so-called "innovations" come about just because I like modifying nouns with themselves (in this case, "Weekly News Weekly News"). What can I say? At least I don't buy up other people's ideas and call it innovation.

Thu Apr 20 2000 07:32: For some reason, my story about Linus Torvalds going back to work on Minix is very big in French-speaking countries like Canada and, well, France. I don't know why, but there are about five French-speaking sites that have linked to it. The French for "operating system" appears to be "syst�me d'exploitation". This was the sort of thing I never learned in high school French class.

Hm... one of the sites specifically states that it's a hoax ("canular"). Maybe some French dude is circulating email reports to the effect that it is real. Maybe Minix, like Jerry Lewis, is just bigger in France, so people there are more likely to think my story is funny.

Thu Apr 20 2000 07:37: Lemme link to that site I was talking about so you can see for yourself.

Thu Apr 20 2000 08:04: And so I says to the guy, I says, "Oh, you wanted a character pointer! I thought you wanted a string!"

Thu Apr 20 2000 08:36: Okay, FINALLY the parser has been put into the weird magical yacc framework and it does the right things to the symbol table and the string table and everything. So I'm done. And the project isn't due til midnight!

Thu Apr 20 2000 11:23: In case you haven't already seen it, let me also point you to the fabulous Matzillah Segfault story, which is better than my Minix story to the extent that I feel guilty about linking to my story and not linking to it.

Thu Apr 20 2000 12:30: This has been annoying me for a while, and I think it's a bug. When I type "lynx newshub.com/tech/", lynx responds as though I had typed "lynx news://newshub.com/tech/". Seems like it should look for the :// before rashly assuming it's a netnews resource. "lynx mailtohub.com" and "lynx gopherhub.com" work as you would expect, so I think it's a bug. Maybe I should try to fix it instead of just complaining about it on my webpage.

Thu Apr 20 2000 12:55: It definitely appears to be a feature. There's a function that specifically does it (LYUtils.c's LYAddSchemeForURL). I was wrong about other URLs beginning with schemes working correctly; the URLs I tried before don't really exist so lynx crapped out before prefixing a scheme onto them. I'm not happy about this. How am I supposed to be lazy when lynx stands in my way?

Thu Apr 20 2000 13:09: I you like The Hunger Site and you like generalizations, you'll like the generalization of The Hunger Site, FreeDonation.com.

Thu Apr 20 2000 17:07: I thought Peter only had The Name of the Rose in Italian, but just today I found a paperback translation to English! Woohoo! Now I can {drink, read it}!

Thu Apr 20 2000 20:01: The Linus-goes-back-to-Minix meme infected enough people that Linux Weekly News felt the need, the need for speed! I mean the need to publish a pointer to my story so that its satiric content would be obvious.

Thu Apr 20 2000 20:18: Going home to Bakersfield tomorrow. As those of you who follow Susanna's journal know, Susanna is also going home (in fact, she's probably home already). Between the two of us, there will be no food in my mother's house when we leave. Not that there will be any when we get there.

Fri Apr 21 2000 07:05: Register writer hates life, film at 11.

Fri Apr 21 2000 07:31: I now have an account on Advogato, although I'm not sure what benefits I obtain from such. I don't feel comfortable certifying people as one thing or another, and I already have an online journal.

Fri Apr 21 2000 07:43: I guess certification isn't so bad so long as you stick to certifying people you actually know.

Fri Apr 21 2000 09:01: Scott explains the Lynx feature that allegedly lets people other than me be lazy.

Newshub doesn't work anymore anyway.

Fri Apr 21 2000 17:26: I'm getting a ride with Josh up to Bakersfield. Woo!

Sun Apr 23 2000 09:10: Now in Bakersfield. Going back (again with Josh) today. Before that happens I will see all of my Richardson relatives. Except for Rachel, who is unaccountably in Paris. I was told about Rachel's impending trip to Nebraska but not about her current trip to Paris. Where are the priority snows of yesteryear?

Sun Apr 23 2000 09:11: I've never even been to Nebraska.

Sun Apr 23 2000 09:20: Something seriously needs to be done about the "news and satire" classification of Segfault stories. Every time a story is published under its rubric, either some idiot reads it on our site and thinks the events described in the story really happened, or it gets forwarded and forwarded and our credit for it gets stripped until it reaches someone who doesn't know the source.

I don't know which, and it may be one or the other on a case-by-case basis, but whatever happens the inevitable result is that someone slaps the text of our story onto a real news site and it wreaks havoc. I'm worried because this does not bode well for online journalism and also because it gives the impression that segfault.org are a bunch of hoaxters.

Well, we are a bunch of hoaxsters, but our hoaxes are planned well in advance and we don't put them on our front page as news articles. That's the difference, you see.

So I'm seriously considering dropping the "news and" from the category title and just making it "satire". I think this is what should have been done in the first place, but we were distracted by that nifty "news" icon that Garrett drew. I didn't design the type system, though, so I don't know how much rewiring that will take. I'm consulting with Scott on this.

Sun Apr 23 2000 09:48: I rearranged Susanna's journal, under her direction. I just now put up a little HTML help thing for her as well.

Sun Apr 23 2000 10:54: I finished Name of the Rose yesterday morning; great book! Read it! Foucault's Pendulum was better, though.

Yesterday Susanna and I went to the Goodwill and I got two really nice surfer dude type shirts (those are my new favorite kind of shirt). I also replaced my copy of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (lost in the huge book disaster of 1996) and got the O'Reilly HTML reference (which I will likely never refer to as it only covers HTML 3.2, which I understand completely). Both books were $.35, so I got the O'Reilly book for about 1/80th its cover price.

Then on to the used bookstore, where I got Pebble in the Sky (continuing my tradition of reading Asimov's Robots->Empire->Foundation series completely out of order), The Colour of Magic (Hi, Scott!), and Across A Billion Years (which I'd never heard of before and which wasn't very good). TCoM, which I got only because I figured I should know something about Terry Pratchett, turned out to be the best of that lot. All of those I read yesterday afternoon.

Sun Apr 23 2000 19:14: There's a halfhearted but decent interview up with Eric Hovland of the SCLUG. I'm mainly linking to it to promote the SCLUG, who do a lot of cool things.

Sun Apr 23 2000 20:14: Josh tells me that everyone in this quarter's CS111 (Operating Systems) class has been given a free copy of Windows 2000 Professional by Microsoft. I honestly think Microsoft has just missed the point here. Even if their operating system were great, it couldn't be used in that class.

Sun Apr 23 2000 20:29: It's time for vision and leadership!

Okay, it's no longer time for vision and leadership.

Tue Apr 25 2000 17:22: Jared Diamond is giving a talk at 5:30 but I'm not going to go see it because I'm lazy.

Fri Apr 28 2000 17:42: Back on the air, kinda.

Sat Apr 29 2000 17:52: The new version of NewsBruiser is sufficiently operational for action. I converted 2000, 1999, and part of 1998 to the new format. I'll link to the viewer once I set up the infrastructure for it on this webspace.

Sat Apr 29 2000 17:56: Some testing entries will likely clutter up this space in the near future. I really need to stop working on this and start working on my 132 project, though.

Sat Apr 29 2000 18:08: Quick links for those who want to see the new interface: view add edit. I love the edit interface (inspired by "Edit This Page", of course). The navigation bar at the top of view is killer too; I want to add search to that and to give edit a navbar as well, but both those changes will require more API changing than I have time for right now.

Sun Apr 30 2000 15:51: Spent all afternoon rewriting the notebook interface. Now I can devote my energies to making the edit screen look nicer. Here's a cool trick that works now: Daily View, Daily Edit. Except the header and footer still think it's monthly. One more thing I have to fix.

Sun Apr 30 2000 18:03: Susanna's notebook is up and on the new system. Jake, I'll get the gang's notebook on the new system probably Tuesday. I really need to get ready for my collab.net interview tomorrow. The main reason I spent most of today wrestling with NewsBruiser was so I'd have a decent-sized OO project to show them.

You can download a tar.gz of NewsBruiser here.

Sun Apr 30 2000 18:29: I've always liked House of Fun by Madness, and now I know the lyrics. "This is a chemist, not a joke shop!" is a good nonsense rebuttal for when you want your nonsense rebuttals to have a bit of British flair to them.

Sun Apr 30 2000 18:31: William S. Burroughs, programmer:

The pleasure of morphine is in the viscera... But C is electricity through the brain, and the C yen is of the brain alone, a need without body and without feeling. The C-charged brain is a berserk pinball machine, flashing blue and pink lights in electric orgasm. C pleasure could be felt by a thinking machine, the first stirrings of hideous insect life.