PHHH #972.9 
Date: Sunday, January 25, 2004 
Place: Pennytown Shopping Center to Hopewell Borough 
Weather: Embittered 
Time: 75 minutes (90 for HYP) 
Hare: Judson Farnsworth 
Hounds: Hand Solo, Hey YO! Paully, Jan, Kasey and Cindy (both of Rumson), Polish Twin A, 
Polish Twin C, Jimmy Ruckfutgers, Ouipy, Safe Sweats, Mike Hostetler 
Seen at the on-in: The Red-Faced Chugger 


Who Invented Hashing? 

A good question, and oh so apropos what with the imminent annual return of the G Hash in honor of 
the purported founder, Albert Stephen Ignatius Gispert.  Ever the popular choice in Catalan circles, 
Gispert could give way to Frederick "Horse" Thomson who in turn should give mad props to Tom Brown 
and Matthew Arnold. 

    But I digress.  The real question is who invented television and if I hear one more flaccid, 
simpering, uncritical reference to Philo #@$%*(& Farnsworth with his #@$%*(& postage stamp, 
#@$%*(& Emmy, and #@$%*(& televised docudrama, I'll throw up, I swear to God.  Two inventors 
demonstrated the wireless transmission of live video using electromechanical means while Philo 
was finishing high school and Vladimir Zworykin demonstrated electronic transmission of a still 
image in 1924. Philo gets points for demonstrating the first all-electronic wireless transmission 
of live video in 1928, but his camera had no photo-electron storage capacity and he took up drinking 
in his efforts to sell his flawed system to the Brits. Meanwhile Zworykin led a team at RCA that 
invented system standards and a practical camera adopted by the Brits, Germans, and Russians as well 
as the US before WWII.  RCA cross-licensed with Farnsworth for some patents he failed to exploit, 
stuck as he was on his brainstorm and booze, and right here in Princeton invented the camera tube for 
which the emmy is named.  So there. 

    But I digress.  Who the hell is Judson Farnsworth?  Damned if we know.  It could have been Llloda, 
jetting in from Vienna after a heartfelt plea by Nonsensei to set again in her hometown, but the 
footprints were too big.  It might have been Polish Twin B = square root of C2 - A2, but everyone knew 
this wasn't their 'hood.  It should have been the Chugger, seeing as it ended on her doorstep, much to 
her annoyance, but she didn't look like she'd spent three hours throwing red flour on every tree and 
frozen pond and streambed in the Stony Brook Watershed.  It didn't appear to be Wacko, unless Mrs. Wacko 
was being extraordinarily ingenuous Monday night in attesting to her husband's Sunday afternoon at the 
pool with Micro, Nano, and Femto.  And it couldn't have been Weepee because he was the mystery hare last 
week and his shoes weren't frozen and he wasn't all covered in chalkdust. 

    Sure, Jimmy was pretty clever identifying Judson's ISP code node as being from Sarnoff, but . . . . 
STEGMAIER'S?  In THREE flavors?  And who else has the technical chops to break into Sarnoff's triple-thick, 
titanium-lined, Mordor-standard firewall as well as the wile to chart a trail to downtown Hopewell without 
using the insanely dull but time-honored toxic-waste transport RR tracks that we have lurched along so 
many pitilessly sunny afternoons? 

    Oh, of course!  The Cuban Assassin, stirred to action over the Princeton Hash's diminished interest 
in setting--only he and A. G. Zaire have access to Wilkes-Barre's finest potable brew and the skill to 
set such a clever and scenic trail over pond and up the hypoxial Hopewellian heights of vertiginous Mt. 
Rose. 

    But could the Assassin have been lured away from the comforts of the Belle Mead Inn?  Not when Our 
Wanda needs his attention. . . . No, this was no ordinary hare, however larger than life the Assassin 
appears--in Geezer's mind, anyway.  This--this was a POOKA, having its gentle revenge for our slicing 
and dicing of the bunnies of the field on Geezer's set 2 weeks ago.  And prithee, what the #@$% might 
that pooka be, you, the gentle reader, are undoubtedly asking?  Ah, gather round and listen close, my 
children, and you two will know, like the Celts and Catalans of old, of the "fairy spirit in animal 
form, always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one. A 
benign but mischievous creature" equally skilled at hacking and haring and best remembered as the 6-foot, 
three-and-a-half inch invisible tippling rabbit in the Jimmy Stewart action pic, Harvey (1950). 

So who's setting next week?  Remember, after that it's three straight of Safe Sweats's ineffable directions 
to the start and then Madame Butterfly's HardKorpse, so get your bids in now!