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These are to the best of my knoweledge true
John Kallam graduated with a BA in criminology and entered the U.S. Army. He served for 20 years
beginning in the late 1930's. He was an investigator during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, and stayed
in Germany for many years organizing civilian police forces in the post-war era. He also wrote numerous books on
criminal justice. He retired from military service in the late 1950's at the rank of full colonel.
Returning to Fresno, California, he began teaching criminology at what was then Fresno State College. (Later to
become the California State University, Fresno.) His work was well respected, but after about ten years of service,
he was called to see the president of the college.
He was informed that he could no longer teach with just a bachelor's degree. Times were changing, he was told,
and the school demanded that faculty members hold a graduate degree. Merely having 20 years of distinguished experience
was no longer considered sufficient qualification to teach. All new faculty were being required to hold a doctorate,
it was explained, and the school was actually doing him a favor by letting him keep his job by getting "only"
a master's degree.
So John enrolled in a summer program at an out of state college. Three months of intensive seminars and then nine
months of home study would get him his MA.
On the first day of class, the instructor was taking roll. He stopped when he read John's name. "Are you related
to the John Kallam who wrote the textbook we'll be using?" he asked.
"I am the John Kallam who wrote the textbook you're using," came the dry response.
A 10pm curfew was imposed in Belfast, and everybody had to be off the streets or risk being shot.
However one citizen was shot at 9.45pm.
"Why did you do that?" the soldier was asked by his superior officer.
"I know where he lives," came the reply, "and he wouldn't have made it."
This is supposedly a true story from a recent Defence Science Lectures Series, as related by
the head of the Australian DSTO's Land Operations/Simulation division.
They've been working on some really nifty virtual reality simulators, the case in point being to incorporate Armed
Reconnaissance Helicopters into exercises (from the data fusion point of view). Most of the people they employ
on this sort of thing are ex- (or future) computer game programmers. Anyway, as part of the reality parameters,
they include things like trees and animals. For the Australian simulation they included kangaroos. In particular,
they had to model kangaroo movements and reactions to helicopters (since hordes of disturbed kangaroos might well
give away a helicopter's position).
Being good programmers, they just stole some code (which was originally used to model infantry detachments reactions
under the same stimuli), and changed the mapped icon, the speed parameters, etc. The first time they've gone to
demonstrate this to some visiting Americans, the hotshot pilots have decided to get "down and dirty"
with the virtual kangaroos. So, they buzz them, and watch them scatter. The visiting Americans nod appreciatively...
then gape as the kangaroos duck around a hill, and launch about two dozen Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter.
Programmers look rather embarrassed at forgetting to remove that part of the infantry coding... and Americans leave
muttering comments about not wanting to mess with the Aussie wildlife...
As an addendum, simulator pilots from that point onwards avoided kangaroos like the plague, just like they were
meant to do in the first place...
When I was in the Air Force, they had a weekly paper. It had a lost and found section. One day
I was reading it and saw this: "Found, one black boy's bicycle".
Wonder how they knew?
A man walked into a Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled -- leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer? Fifteen dollars.
Thirty years ago, when the Air Force needed a large cargo plane, it put out a list of specifications
that took up less than 8 pages. Lockheed responded with a proposal 3/4" thick, which resulted in a huge plane
named the Hercules. In 1980, when the Air Force needed a new cargo plane, it issued specifications that took up
2,750 pages. Lockheed's proposal alone weighed 6,600 pounds. To deliver it, the company used one of the old Hercules
cargo planes.
- John Tierney, in Science 85
