Retrying failed mail (sorry for the silly text at the top, I'm too lazy to strip it)

[Kent M. Pitman <KMP at MIT-MC>]

Date: 12 Jun 1982 0309-EDT
From: Yale Local Mailer <Mailer at YALE>
To:   Kmp
Re:   Bad network mail

Unable to send PS:<CHAOS>NETMAIL.CPY.7 file to the following hosts:
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    JIM
  UDEL-RELAY
    MEEHAN.UCI
  MIT-MC
    T-DISCUSSION-TRANSCRIPT
    KMP
  PARC-MAXC
    DEUTSCH

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Text of message:
Mail-from: ARPANET site MIT-MC rcvd on Sat Jun 12 03:04:33 
Date: 12 June 1982 03:02-EDT
From: Kent M. Pitman <KMP at MIT-MC>
To: Riesbeck at YALE
cc: T-Discussion at YALE, McDermott at YALE, Guy.Steele at CMU-10A

    Date: 11-Jun-82 5:12PM-EDT (Fri)
    From: Chris Riesbeck <Riesbeck at YALE>

    ...     1. APPEND1 and APPEND1!
               Where did the use of "1" arise, anyway?  Class 2 form.

    From NCONC1 in UCILisp, presumably for "NCONC one element." ...
----_
It's funny how things get their names. I found this etymological note pretty
amusing. I have this as nth hand information I think from Rees who I think
got it from Drew, so maybe one of them correct me if I'm wrong, but this is 
the story I know...

Once upon a time there was an operator named CONC which destructively joined
two lists. Then someone thought that there should be an nary version, so made
NCONC. CONC eventually went away, so there was just NCONC and APPEND. People
assumed the "N" meant destructive, hence the badly named NREVERSE, intended
to mean destructive REVERSE instead of nary REVERSE (whatever that would be),
which the morphemes in its name should by right imply.

So though NCONC doesn't do what CONC used to, it's still interesting to think
of UCILisp having de-nary-ized NCONC without removing the "N" ... Probably
if they'd known, they'd have wanted to call it CONC1 and not NCONC1...

Drew, did I get my history right? Hope so.

-kmp

ps This note isn't meant to set off any big arguments 'bout naming -- just to
   add a note of humor to everyone's day...