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LAYA! [eLetter for American Young Adults]
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Volume 2 Issue 7 - July 1997
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http://laya.home.ml.org
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HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS...
EDITOR'S NOTE
ICQ: KNOW WHO'S ON, WHEN THEY'RE ON
TRAGEDY
CHAIN E-MAIL:WHAT YOU MIGHT
NOT KNOW
AFFIRMITIVE ACTION (PART
1 OF 3)
WEB SITES
SURVEYS
LAYA! looks best when viewed with 10 point Arial font.
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EDITOR'S NOTE
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Hello students of Los Altos!
Enjoy this wonderful article of LAYA!, and enjoy your summer!
Robert Chin
Editor
robertchin@akamail.com
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ICQ: KNOW WHO'S ON, WHEN THEY'RE ON
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With new companies comes innovation. This is one of them. ICQ is
a piece of software that allows you to know who's on, and when
they're on the Internet. If you've every used AOL, then you know
what a buddy list is. This is just like a buddy list for anyone
who has access to the Internet. You can search through a
directory of users, and add them to your list. When their on, you
can send them messages, urls, open up a chat window, even send
them files! ICQ also supports multiple people in a chat 'room'
and the chat window can be configured to be 'seen as you type'
where the text appears on the screen when you type, or to look
like IRC (Internet Relay Chat, see Volume 2, Issue 6 on our web
site). Best of all, ICQ is free!
Visit: http://www.mirabilis.com
Requirements: Windows 3.x, 95, NT; versions for Mac and Unix are
under development.
Price: Free
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TRAGEDY
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Tragedy
Bill Clinton is visiting a school. In one class, he asks the
students if anyone can give him an example of a
"tragedy". One little boy stands up and offers,
"If my best friend who lives next door was playing in the
street when a car came along and killed him, that would be a
tragedy."
"No," Clinton says, "That would be an
ACCIDENT."
A girl raises her hand. "If a schoolbus carrying fifty
children drove off a cliff, killing everyone involved... that
would be a tragedy."
"I'm afraid not," explains Clinton. "That is what
we would call a GREAT LOSS."
The room is silent; none of the other children volunteer.
"What?" asks Clinton. "Isn't there any one here
who can give me an example of a tragedy?"
Finally, a boy in the back raises his hand. In a timid voice, he
speaks: "If an airplane carrying Bill and Hillary Clinton
were blown up by a bomb, *that* would be a tragedy."
"Wonderful!" Clinton beams. "Marvelous! And can
you tell me WHY that would be a tragedy?"
"Well," says the boy, "because it wouldn't be an
accident, and it certainly would be no great loss!"
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WANNA BE AN ALIEN WATCHER?
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Wanna be an alien watcher?
By Chris Watkins
net surfers are being asked to join the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in an effort to deal with
the vast amount of data the programme is generating.
For the past 20 years different Serendip--the Search for
Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed
Intelligent Populations--instruments have kept a close eye on the
data gathered by radio telescopes, looking for signals from other
intelligent races. Earlier this month the University of
California, Berkeley, SETI programme installed an instrument
called Serendip IV on the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
This piggybacks on the telescope and examines 168 million
frequency channels every 1.7 seconds.
But Serendip IV produces a huge amount of data that the SETI
programme does not have the resources to analyse. So any Internet
surfers who have computer power to spare are being recruited to
help analyse data collected by the Arecibo telescope.
The group of astronomers and computer scientists behind Serendip
plan to separate the Arecibo data into chunks that will be sent
over the Internet to participating computers. Each volunteer will
be supplied with an analysis program that automatically processes
the data for a few hours or days, before returning it to the
server. Serendip has developed software to search for signals at
4 million combinations of frequency, bandwidth and chirp (the
drift of frequency with time). By the time 50 000 PCs are
involved, the search will rival all current SETI projects,
without the need for expensive supercomputers.
The program comes with a screensaver illustrating the search
process, and the faint but tantalising possibility of making a
vital discovery. The Internet project is called SETI@home and is
due to launch in spring next year.
Taken from NewScientist
http://www.newscientist.com/
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CHAIN E-MAIL:WHAT YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW
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Chain e-mail can be fun and exciting, but watch out. Some chain
e-mail or newsgroup postings tell you to send in money to people,
which you should never do. All this will do is make money for the
person who is sending the message. Most likely you won't get any
money back: why should any one else send you money? Most
importantly, sending chain e-mail that asks for thank you cards
or money because that person is extremely sick- number one, may
not be true, and number two, some of that e-mail may have been
circulating for a very long time, especially since everyone keeps
sending it, and it's not dated! The person may have recovered, or
died already! There was someone speaking on TV a few days ago
telling viewers not to send the chain letter anymore. He had
recovered over 4 years ago, and he still receives over 1000 get
well cards a week! I encourage you to think before you send out
that next chain e-mail about a helpless little kid. Just think:
you might actually be doing that person a favor!
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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
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Affirmative Action
Discrimination or Fairness?
This is the beginning of a 3 part series where I will discuss the
good and the bad of affirmative action. Part 1 will be discussing
how affirmative action is a good thing. Part 2 will discuss how
affirmative action is unfair and unlawful. I will conclude with
reader comments, and my own personal opinion (my opinion does not
necessarily reflect the opinion of LAYA or anyone else).
Affirmative action is a very important subject. Affirmative
action is a law that says all businesses and colleges must accept
a certain number of minorities into their workplace or
university. If they don't, they will face strict fines.
Propsistion 209, recently passed by Californian voters, ended a
long saga of affirmative action. We all will be affected by
affirmative action in the long run, even if it hasn't touched us
yet.
Affirmative action does help minority students get into college,
no question about that. Many of these students who otherwise
would not have normally gotten in, become great lawyers, doctors,
teachers, and engineers someday. A recent study showed that
people admitted under affirmative action have the same success
rate as people who get in otherwise. Affirmative action also
helps balance out race and gender in colleges and workplaces.
After affirmative action was killed by Prop 209 in California,
many schools's minority population dropped to 1963 levels. A
recent UC law school had only ONE black student admitted into
their campus. Affirmative action does undoubtedly help minorities
get another look. In the next issue of LAYA! I'll discuss whether
or not this second chance is fair for others. I want to know what
you think of affirmative action or the points I made in this
article. E-mail me at cclin@worldnet.att.net
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WEB SITES
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The Museum of Advertising
Icons
Juggling Information Service
The
Classic Typewriter Page
House of Blues
Jazz Online
The Company Therapist
Ray's World
The Roots of Lunge
Pig Intertainment
The New York Web
For more good sites, visit: http://point.lycos.com/topics/Entertainment_Overall.html
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SURVEYS
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1. Should Timoth McVeigh get the death penalty for being
convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing?
2. General Ralston (Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)
was with your article. If this
article was not written by you, we'd like to know who wrote it,
and what
their
email address is.
If it is your article, please include your name and your email
address.
You may also stay anonymous (please tell us this in the e-mail).
The article should be appropriate for 7-12th graders.
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LAYA's STAFF...
Compiled, edited, designed, and approved by:
Robert Chin
Editor
robertchin@akamail.com
Daniel Cheng
Layout & Design
dancheng@akamail.com
Chris Lin
Quotes and Facts
cclin@worldnet.att.net
Charles Hua
Internet Supervisor
charleyman@akamail.com
Scott Chiang
Public Relations
illuminator@juno.com
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You may also stay anonymous (please tell us this in the e-mail).
The article should be appropriate for 7-12th graders.
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LAYA!
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(c) copyright 1997 by LAYA!