comma operator: keep away?

[John Rupley]

In article <28831 at ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, jas at ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Jim Shankland)
writes:
> The world is full of bad programmers.  A magic potion that would turn
> them all into good programmers would be a useful thing, indeed.
> Brings to mind the (surely apocryphal) story about the ne'er-do-wells
> who finagled an NSF grant to research ways to turn cow shit into butter.
> Having partied away the entire grant, they applied for supplemental
> funds, with the argument:  "We've gotten it to spread like butter,
> now we need more money to work on the taste."

Ah, but the __true__ story is even better......

At a meeting of the National Academy, in 1967 I believe, there was a
panel discussion with several significant bureaucrats from the NSF and
NIH.  They floated the idea that science funding should be partly if
not largely through block grants to Universities, whose administrators
would have the power to distribute the funds.  This horrifying concept
prompted a response from Kistiakowsky (kinetics, explosions, atom bomb,
Eisenhower, science advisor -- for those too young in years to
remember).  He rose from the audience and said that the proposal
reminded him of conversations he had had with a Soviet Academician.
Several years previously, the Academician had described the Russian
project to convert shit into butter.  Subsequently, Kistiakowsky
recounted, the Academician told him the project was half completed --
they had learned to spread it on bread.  Metaphor complete,
Kistiakowsky returned to his seat.

John Rupley
rupley!local at megaron.arizona.edu