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milliLampson
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milliLampson /mil'*-lamp`sn/ /n./ 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.
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