MilliLampson
/mi-lə-lamp-sən/
n. A unit of talking speed,
abbreviated mL. Most people run about 200 milliLampsons. Butler
Lampson (a CS theorist and systems implementor highly regarded
among hackers) goes at 1000. A few people speak faster. This unit
is sometimes used to compare the (sometimes widely disparate) rates
at which people can generate ideas and actually emit them in
speech. For example, noted computer architect C. Gordon Bell
(designer of the PDP-11) is said, with some awe, to think at about
1200 mL but only talk at about 300; he is frequently reduced to
fragments of sentences as his mouth tries to keep up with his
speeding brain.
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