Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!purdue!decwrl!labrea!denali!karish
From: karish@denali.UUCP (karish)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: pushing back the bounds of ignorance
Message-ID: <55@denali.UUCP>
Date: 22 Apr 88 00:57:20 GMT
References: <28177@linus.UUCP> <11142@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: karish@denali.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish)
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Lines: 24
Keywords: magic cookie Dan O'Neill Odd Bodkins
Summary: Etymology of `magic cookie'

In article <11142@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>In article <28177@linus.UUCP> jfjr@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Jerome Freedman) writes:
>>ps what is a "magic cookie" 
>
>(begin :-) )
>
>The derivation should be obvious: `magic', or `opposite of
>scientific': based on nothing sensible.  `cookie': something that
>looks tasty, but has no nutritional value, and eating too many of which
>will make you feel ill.  Hence `magic cookie': a dumb, valueless thing
>which will make you sick, but which looks good on paper or in the
>marketing department.  :-)

The first place I encountered the term `magic cookie' was in the
`Odd Bodkins' comic strip, drawn by Dan O'Neill.  Magic cookies were
the form in which the characters in the strip ingested psychotropic
substances.  They caused the main characters (a bird and a cross
between a shmoo and a human) to do things like confront their personal
values as absolutes, or to journey to Mars and encounter a demoniacal
incarnation of Abraham Lincoln.

I don't know how or when the term was introduced into computer lingo.

Chuck