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RHF

RHF stands for rec.humor.funny,
a unix newsgroup briefly                      LOTS - Low-Overhead Timesharing
censored at Stanford by Street,                      System
aka The head of AIR, aka The                  became
prince of darkness, (who seems to             AIR - Academic Information
lead a charmed life in the                          Resources
Stanford bureacracy.                          when the 'timesharing' became
                                              less sexy (and the overhead
          Other sins include                  got way too high).
          denying choice of
          long distance                       It also allowed Street to
          carrier to students.                pull the libraries under
                                              his domain (hey, that's
But why would someone ban                     "Academic Info", right?)
a newsgroup?  What heinous
thing could it be that was                    (And I'm sure I've forgot
posted there (in comparison                   many other name changes
to all the other newsgroups)?                 along the way. IR? LAIR?)

It was this one joke (from memory):

    A Scottsman was having dinner with a Jew.
    When the waiter brought the check, the
    Scottsman was heard to say "I'll pay!"
    The next day, the headlines read:
    "Jewish Ventriliquist Found Murdered".

Brad Templeton (the group
moderator) had a policy of
rot-13 encrypting ethnic
jokes... he just forgot
to do it on this one.

Some nut complained.

The real question is why
Street took this seriously,
and had Stanford temporarily
block a newsgroup.


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