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.

