"Vox Humana" > writes:

> I once found a wonderful microwave oven next to a dumpster. The fuse had
> blown and apparently the owner didn't know enough to change it. You might
> find an oven at a garage sale or secondhand store for next to nothing.
> Cruising an affluent neighborhood the day before trash day may also be
> productive!

As I said, I don't have room for an oven.

I agree, however, that garage sales, dumpsters, etc. are a wonderful source
of unexpected goods. I found that in Boston, the end of August was a
particularly good time to see what people had thrown out, since most leases
started on Sept.1. One Aug.31, I found in people's trash a discarded 1826
edition of Tacitus, two staplers, a monopoly set, a 35 mm camera, a record
player and several television sets. Following some suggestions in an
electronics magazine, I managed to connect the speaker wires of the
record player to one of the TV sets in such a way that patterns would
appear on the TV screen when I played music.

When I was hanging out at certain university about 20 years ago, one of the
math graduate students was an expert on how to scavenge discarded food from
supermarket dumpsters and to decide whether it was still fit for human
consumption. He once invited me and a few other people to dinner and, as
I didn't remember until afterwards that he practiced this art, I accepted.
But the food was quite good. Where I live now, I see people practicing this
art practically every day.

Allan Adler


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* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT Artificial *
* Intelligence Lab. My actions and comments do not reflect *
* in any way on MIT. Moreover, I am nowhere near the Boston *
* metropolitan area. *
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