[From Bruce Animist, er, Abbott (941104.1315 EST)]
Bill Powers (941103.1100 MST) --
Pardon me while I dry my eyes. I've been laughing so hard I can't see the
screen anymore! Bill, that was GREAT! But while Kirk and crew have been
communicating with the aliens, they have contrived to send yet another rather
pathetic e. coli simulation of "reinforcement" principles to annoy the
Enterprise crew--and just when there was some hope that McCoy could be
"deprogrammed."
Of course, my only role in all of this has been that of Starfleet translator.
I grew up with the aliens and thus have a more than passing familiarity with
their strange language and even stranger conception of the behaving sentient
being. Many of them do still appear to believe in the Ptolemaic system of
psychology, and I have only been attempting to show how this ancient model may
be construed in such a way as to account for planetary movements that we post-
Newtonians derive in simpler fashion from first principles. I must confess,
however, that this long period of assimilation into alien society has led to
certain habits of speech that are difficult to suppress, especially when
attempting to describe features of the alien literature, but I shall try my
best.
The aliens' new ECOLI3 simulation doesn't quite follow Sam Saunders's
proposal, now that I've had a chance to look it over again, because it does
not change the tumble rate directly as a function of the consequences of the
previous tumble. Rather, it changes tumble rate as a consequence of the
current value of dNut. However, the aliens tell me that they recognize this
problem and are working on yet another e. coli simulation that works as Sam
suggested. They plan to call this new (and I might add, complex) species e.
coli skinnerius.
Now, what are we going to do with this nifty CTBASIC control system?
Regards,
Bruce