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religion of CHI
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religion of CHI /ki:/ /n./ [Case Western Reserve
University] Yet another hackish parody religion (see also
Church of the SubGenius, Discordianism). In the mid-70s,
the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at CWRU were
taught in Algol, and student exercises were punched on cards and
run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating system named
CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one ritual: whenever
the worshipper noted that a digital clock read 11:08, he or she
would recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN,
ARCCOS, ARCTAN." The last five words were the first five
functions in the appropriate chapter of the Algol manual; note the
special pronunciations /obz/ and /ark'sin/ rather than the more
common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of
11:08's arrival was considered harmful.
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