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The recent postings on these subjects have rekindled a lot of interest in the' village' over the Golden Parkie Awards. Part 1 March '97 Those of you who are familiar with the Parkinson village in the depths of Middle England will not be surprised to learn that to relieve mid winter boredom and depression when it rains every day and the mists swirl round the bare skeleton like trees, they get up to some strange antics . A few weeks ago a meeting of the Sports and Entertainment Committee was held and it decided to promote Golden Parkie Awards for services to the Parkinson Internet community.Besides the publicity value for Parkinsons world wide it was thought that the entertainment aspect could raise valuable funds for the Parkinson village.Naturally a sub committee had to be set up to investigate this proposal further and ever ambitious the first thing they did was to write to the Pope asking him if he would like to be patron of the Awards and participate in the first presentations which would of course take place in the village in August 1998. A reply is still awaited from his Eminence. Amongst other business the Golden Awards committe set up yet another sub committe called The Research committee to investigate the current status of Parkinson on the Internet and in particular our Parkinson list. The village school teacher who was on the committee offered as an educational project in numerancy skills to get the kids to analyse 1000 consecutive postings on the list and this revealed some interesting information tabulated below; Number of messages Number of senders 1-4 154 5-9 24 10-19 16 20-29 4 30-39 2 40-49 3 Total number of senders 203 Most prolific senders Mallut 48 messages McReynol 49 CArva 45 Members of the research committte have found it interesting that in this recent series of 1000 postings when many different topics have been discussed there would appear to be 1247 lurkers (1450 minus 203) 1450 being the total numbers on the As we were most recent list.It was suggested that possibly Parkies suffer from a Peeping Tom syndrome.Members have been discussing various classes of awards and it is thought that the greatest interest will be generated in a proposed award for the writer of the greatest number of messages which would encourage a much larger volume with a gradual climb to 200 a day by early 1998.In the village betting shop they are already quoting odds on the winner of this award and the Parkinson Arms is fully booked for August 1988 even though room prices have been doubled.This soap may be continued. Part 2 The research committee have been tremendouly excited by the spate of recent postings under the headings 'Get a clue' 'You are such idiots' 'How much is too much'all supportive of chat, banter etc and hardly no dissenting from the silent majority,. This together with the emergence of new multiple posters who are showing prodigous stamina are encouraging signs that messages might indeed reach 200 per day.Although this might not please the likes of Jeanne Prestine the omens are good for an exciting contest and activity in the betting shop is reaching fever pitch with a woman widely being forecast as the winner.Incidentally the His Eminence has sadly declined to be patron and Muhammed Ali has recently been offered the position but has not yet accepted. A lot of time has been spent in trying to agree competition rules and naturally ploys like posting two or three of the same messages are being ruled out.One particular developement has caused the committee concern.Nerdie Ned the village computer brain has developed a software program which is in effect an automatic E mail reply system which would be activated by messages with contents such as 'help', 'does any body know' etc and which has a number of appropriate responses like 'keep on laughing', 'never give up', ' we all love you ' etc.Neat Eh !Takes the sweat out of Internet counceling. No more lonely labourious hours at the keyboard - you can watch TV and stuff cookies instead.A slightly more sinister development is the rumoured design of a sort of artificial Parkinson robot which routinely asks questions like 'I'm suddenly going bald. Is this anything to do with Parkinsons?'The combination of the robot with the automatic reply software raises the spectre of a virtual list dominated by a sort of internet Tamagochi ( the virtual pet which is all the rage in Japan and now in the UK}. By the way the downside to the increased postings is that the village doctor has had to treat a lot of cases of Delititis a painful inflamation of the tip of the middle finger left hand for touch typists.