FROM EDWARD SAPIR'S LANGUAGE, P. 1: Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM CARSON MCCULLERS' THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE, FIRST PARAGRAPH: The town itself is dreary; not much is there except the cotton mill, the two-room houses where the workers live, a few peach trees, a church with two colored windows, and a miserable main street only a hundred yards long. On Saturdays the tenants from the near-by farms come in for a day of talk and trade. Otherwise the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world. The nearest train stop is Society City, and the Greyhound and White Bus Lines use the Forks Falls Road which is three miles away. The winters here are short and raw, the summers white with glare and fiery hot. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, MAR 25, 1994, P. 12E (BUSINESS): In a stunning reversal for one of Silicon Valley's fastest growing companies, Media Vision Technology Inc. said Thursday it will report a sharp decline in sales and a ``substantial loss'' in the quarter ending March 31 -- a jolt that cut its stock price in half. Media Vision shares plummeted to 11, down 10 1/2 in frantic NASDAQ trading as 14.2 million shares were traded, more than 25 times normal volume. Thursday's decline continues a precipitous two-month slide from a peak of 46 1/4 Jan. 20 that has wiped out $480 million in market value. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM "ANTIGENIC DIVERSITY THRESHOLDS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AIDS", BY MARTIN A. NOWAK, ROY M. ANDERSON, ANGELA R. MCLEAN, TOM F. W. WOLFS, JAAP GOUDSMIT, AND ROBERT M. MAY, SCIENCE, 15 NOVEMBER 1991, PP. 963-969: [Both selections from p. 964.] We propose that the genetic variability of HIV is not so much a complication, as the key to understanding the development of AIDS. In particular, we examine a mathematical model for viral multiplication that explicitly describes the interplay between the total diversity of viral strains (which in general will increase over time) and the suppressing capacity of the immune system. The model shows that the human immune system is only able to mount an effective response against HIV quasispecies whose diversity is below some threshold value; once the population of viral strains exceeds this ``diversity threshold'' the immune system is no longer able to regulate viral replication, with consequent destuction of CD4^{+} cells. OR For a short but variable period---a few weeks to a few months---after an individual is infected with HIV-1, virus is typically found in the blood (viremia), and high levels of virus replication can be observed. Antibodies then appear in blood serum (seroconversion), after which it becomes difficult to isolate the virus; viral antigens are often undetectable during the long but variable asymptomatic or incubation period between primary HIV-1 infection and the occurrence of AIDS. This incubation period is characterized by low viral replication (interspersed with minor and short-lived upsurges of viremia in some patients), and by constant or slowly decreasing numbers of CD4^{+} cells. As AIDS develops, viral isolation becomes easier; the proportion of infected cells in peripheral blood is 100 to 1000 times higher in AIDS patients than in asymptomatic individuals (12). In AIDS patients, viremia can be reduced, and CD4^{+} cell counts raised, by treatment with Zidovudine (AZT), but such changes may be transient, only lasting 6 to 12 months (13). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TWO SELECTED CASUALTY REPORTS: 22. UNKNOWN / TECH ASSIST REQUESTED ********** LOSS OF LUBE OIL PRESSURE DURING OPERATION. INVESTIGATION REVEALED ADEQUATE LUBE OIL SATURATED WITH BOTH METALLIC AND NON-METALLIC PARTICLES. REQUEST REPLACEMENT OF SAC. 28. INADQ DSGN / RETURN TO COMPANY UNIT HAS EXCESSIVE WEAR ON INLET IMPELLOR ASSEMBLY AND SHOWS HIGH USAGE OF OIL. BLADES ARE BENT AND 1 / 4 INCH DEEP CHIPS ARE VISIBLE ON LEADING EDGE. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SHAKESPEARE'S 64TH SONNET: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich, proud cost of outworn buried age, When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay, Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM SET 4 OF DECISION-MAKING MEETINGS: ( 25) A: So, um. At least for for, ah, let's see he's gonna get here at eleven, um let's say we use the ah intervening hour, I mean the twelve to one o'clock slot for ah for discussion and lunch. ( 26) B: Wait a sec, you want to go from twelve to, to one for lunch. ( 27) A: Well, ah, we could probably make it less than that I guess, because if it's a working lunch and we have somebody, ah, have the secretaries ah just bring us some sandwiches? ( 28) B: Sounds fine. ( 29) A: Okay. And, so we can do that, y'know probably use that for discussion time, and maybe even keep it to a half an hour. Or is that too... ( 30) C: No, that's about right. ( 31) A: Okay, so let's say we block out the twelve to um, twelve thirty for working lunch. Okay. Now I, let's see, um... ( 32) C: Who will be doing their presentation during that time? Did we discuss that? ( 33) A: Ah, well, let's see, one of the things I think we probably want to do is find out ah y'know what his views are, what the what what new things he might have available and so on. Get some information from him, maybe, maybe take at least fifteen minutes for that purpose. ( 34) C: When he first gets here, of course. ( 35) A: Well ah we could either do it when he first gets here or we can even put that off for lun', til lunch. I mean it's not critical ah un' unless we, y'know, think for some, for your project it might be. ( 36) C: Uh, well, ah, it's not necessary that we do that before I give him the demo. I wouldn't mind doing the demo immediately when he gets here. Spending the first, ah, forty five minutes. ( 37) A: Okay, in fact, because my project is an ongoing one and he knows something about it, and ah actually I might be the best to do first, but I don't, I y'know, I don't feel strongly about that. The advantage there again is that, ah, I don't have to know anything about his current goals and plans for that purpose. So, um, if I went first, let's say with for um, see I, as I said, I need about an hour and fifteen minutes I could do the, my reporting on the ongoing project, ah, for that first hour. See if we total up all the time we need, let's see an hour for Brian, an hour and fifteen A: minute for me, thirty five minutes, it's almost exactly B: So it's almost exactly... A: correct. Three hours. ( 38) B: But we've got to take into account that they're typically B: late on these things. All right, so we're gonna get A: Okay, right, B: squeezed someplace. A: right, okay. Um, ( 39) A: I think what I'd be willing to do is if we get squeezed on the, uh if I go first and if we get squeezed I'll I'll eat the ah the time that we lose. ( 40) B: Okay. ( 41) A: Okay? Is that acceptable? ( 42) C: Sure. You mean like if he gets here late, for example. ( 43) A: Yeah. So in other words, I'll eat out of the hour, that I originally scheduled. If he gets here late, I'll eat that.