Remote Wireless Links...

Recently our little Lawson Valley was connected to the terrestrial Internet through some clever wireless technology, from a little company called SDWISP. This morning I read about some truly remote wireless linkups, in the small villages of Nepal (a map of these connected villages is at right). The web site for that Internet provider is here, and a related story here...

Ancient Greek Humor...

Interesting stuff. I'd never have guessed that humor would have such durability. An excerpt:

Pride of place in the Philogelos goes to the “egg-heads”, who are the subject of almost half the jokes for their literal-minded scholasticism (“An egg-head doctor was seeing a patient. ‘Doctor’, he said, ‘when I get up in the morning I feel dizzy for 20 minutes.’ ‘Get up 20 minutes later, then’”). After the “egg-heads”, various ethnic jokes come a close second. In a series of gags reminiscent of modern Irish or Polish jokes, the residents of three Greek towns – Abdera, Kyme and Sidon – are ridiculed for their “how many Abderites does it take to change a light bulb?” style of stupidity. Why these three places in particular, we have no idea. But their inhabitants are portrayed as being as literal-minded as the egg-heads, and even more obtuse. “An Abderite saw a eunuch talking to a woman and asked if she was his wife. When he replied that eunuchs can’t have wives, the Abderite asked, ‘So is she your daughter then?’” And there are many others on predictably similar lines.