religion of CHI

/ki:/ , n. [Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody
religion (see also Church of the SubGenius , Discordianism ). In the
mid-70s, the canonical Introduction to Programming courses at CWRU were
taught in Algol, and student exercises were punched on cards and run on a
Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating system named CHI. The religion
had no doctrines and but one ritual: whenever the worshiper noted that a
digital clock read 11:08, he or she would recite the phrase It is 11:08;
ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS, ARCTAN. The last five words were the first
five functions in the appropriate chapter of the Algol manual; note the
special pronunciations /obz/ and /arksin/ rather than the more common /ahbz/
and /arksi:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was
considered harmful.

