Cutter Summit 2007: Tuesday Miscellany

Miscellaneous gems from Tuesday's (5/1/2007) conversations at the Cutter Consortium's Summit 2007:

Pope John Paul II smelled like flowers. No perfume; it was just the way he was. This was according to Julio César Margáin, who'd once shown J.P. II around town.

There's a web service out there, somewhere, that accepts a human language choice and will provide you with curse words and phrases in that language. A prankster/instructor used it when he taught SOAP development. One time he had a colleague visiting from Finland when an important business document, written in Finnish, arrived. He used the curse generator to sprinkle Finnish obscenities throughout the document, then he asked his Finnish visitor for help translating. Hilarity ensued. (Note to self: I must find that web service.)

I'm really pleased that I've been listening to Jason Watt's History Podcast. There were a bunch of folks from Mexico at the summit and the conversation drifted at one point into a discussion of the Mexican Civil War (circa 1930). I was so happy to be able to particpate in the conversation! (We really don't cover that war in the U.S. schools.)

At the restaurant (Legal Seafood, which had a good vegetarian pasta primavera), the folks visiting from Poland commented on the large portions at American restaurants. I recalled that Rob Austin had said in a Monday session that China has more honor students than the U.S. has students. So when the topic inevitably turned to American obesity I said, "There's something we've got more of than China. Obese people!" So there.