Reverend Beecher's Letters

"Reverend Beecher's Letters"

Reverend Henry Ward Beecher entered Plymouth
Church one Sunday and found several letters
awaiting him. He opened one and found it contained
a single word, "Fool."

Quietly and with becoming seriousness he shared the
letter with the congregation and announced: "I have
known many an instance of a person writing a letter
and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only
instance I have ever known of someone signing his
name and forgetting to write the letter."

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"Translators Are Traitors"

Computers have been developed which can
translate any language into another. Ideally, if
the translated passage were then translated by
computer back into the first language, the original
words ought to be regained. This, however, does
not allow for the ambiguity of languages.

Thus, there is the story of the computer that was
ordered to translate a common English phrase into
Russian and then translate the Russian translation
back into English.

What went in was "Out of sight, out of mind."

What came out was "Invisible insanity."
Received on Sun Feb 27 00:55:36 2005