milliLampson

milliLampson /mil'*-lamp`sn/ n.  A unit of talking speed,
   abbreviated mL.  Most people run about 200 milliLampsons.  The
   eponymous 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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