Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!degas.Berkeley.EDU!ph
From: ph@degas.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Heckbert)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Ray Tracing Jell-O Brand Gelatin
Message-ID: <23252@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 9 Mar 88 22:45:29 GMT
References: <20312@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <23187@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1184@tekirl.TEK.COM> <2201@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: ph@degas.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Paul Heckbert)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 41
Summary: death to :-)
Keywords:


In <2201@saturn.ucsc.edu> skinner@saturn.ucsc.edu (Robert Skinner) writes:
> I guess that Paul presumed he didn't need the smiley faces, because
> people would be more alert.

Yes, we're all intelligent readers here, right? (yuk yuk). I don't understand
why some USENET folks are so fond of their :-)'s and those silly *stars*,
anyway.  I find these "netiquette" affectations simply repulsive.
The English language is perfectly adequate as is.

If I had used the oral equivalent of :-)'s during my presentation of the
Jell-O paper at SIGGRAPH it would have spoiled a lot of the fun.
For example, a Japanese guy came up to me at a reception the evening
after the talk and said "I enjoyed your talk today, but I didn't follow your
derivation of the Jell-O Equation".  I had to explain that the whole
thing was a joke.  Seriously!

> ...  I wonder though, if it displaced anyone who would have presented
> a serious and valueable paper.

No, I did not want to displace a serious paper.  The SIGGRAPH technical
committee waited until all of the other papers were selected before
deciding on mine.  They accepted it only after long debate, apparently,
on the strict conditions that I hold the printed version to 2 pages
and the presentation to 10-15 minutes (both of which I adhered to).

The best surprise was the limited-edition Jell-O t-shirt that Turner Whitted
presented to me after the talk.  On the back it said (what else?):
"There's always room for Jell-O".

I've heard that one joke paper was submitted to SIGGRAPH this year, but I
don't know what its chances of acceptance are.

Paul Heckbert		ph@degas.berkeley.edu

PS: If you enjoy allegorical parodies like the Jell-O paper, be sure to
check out the books by Tom Weller: "SCIENCE MADE STUPID" and
"CVLTVRE MADE STUPID".  I used the former for style reference while
writing Jell-O.

PPS: As Tom Weller would say:
OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.