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 worshipper 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
/ark'sin/ rather than the more common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using
an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was considered harmful.
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