milliLampson
/mil'*-lamp"sn/ A unit of talking speed, abbreviated mL. Most people run about
200 milliLampsons. The eponymous Butler Lampson (a CS theorist and systems
implementor highly regarded among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak
faster. This unit is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely disparate)
rates at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them in speech. For
example, noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell (designer of the PDP-11) is
said, with some awe, to think at about 1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he is
frequently reduced to fragments of sentences as his mouth tries to keep up with
his speeding brain.
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
millennium meltdown « milli- « millihelen «
milliLampson
» millisecond » MILNET » MIMD
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