Unconfirmed Minutes of a Meeting of the International Organization for Standardization, Held on the First of April 1994

RE-DRAFTING OF THE FIRST STANDARD

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." And the German delegation lodged an official objection, claiming that this was a circular definition and was too verbose. The German head of delegation cited a previous agreement giving the Editing Committee responsibility for grammatical problems, and therefore asked for the text to be deleted and replaced by: "Section 1, Clause 1.1, Sub-clause 1.1.1: God".

And Norway voted "No". They felt that the scope of the Universe was too broad, and asked for clarification before they could vote "Yes". On the contrary, the Swedes wanted the scope to be broadened to include the words "and similar premises". The Danish delegation firstly disapproved, but then approved on condition that "national regulations applied" and that no federalism was involved. The USA announced that they doubted the technical feasibility of Darkness, which led the discussion into complete confusion.
Then a dinner took place and it was the end of the first day, except for the lobbying in the bar afterwards.

On the second day, the Japanese tabled a new contribution entitled "Let there be right." Except for the Russian delegation, who saw this as contrary to democratic socialism, there was no objection (as the document was in Japanese), but later, someone realized that in fact, owing to a typographical mistake, its title was "Let there be Light". And so Light became a technical requirement.
Then a cocktail party took place and it was the end of the second day, except for the caucus in the restaurant afterwards.

On the third day, the Austrians announced that they could not accept the existing proposal for Light as a technical requirement and insisted that Light and Darkness should be allowed to co-exist simultaneously. An ad-hoc Working Group was formed from available experts to study that problem, causing interruption of all other work because of lack of participants.
Then a factory tour took place and it was the end of the third day, except for the Resolutions Committee meeting in the Secretary's hotel afterwards.

On the morning of the fourth day, the ad-hoc Working Group stated that its task was not possible, given the "current state of the art" but suggested the addition of a "note for guidance: E should preferably equal mc squared". A Chinese proposal was then accepted (while everyone else was at coffee) that Light and Darkness be allowed to exist in alternate periods, disputed only by the Irish delegation which preferred the periods of Light and Darkness to be in the reverse order. However, there was no agreement on the names for the alternate periods or for their units of measurement. Finally, a compromise was accepted to call the light period Type A: Panchromatic Universal Interface Units (Class 1) The name of the dark period was marked Type B: under consideration. There was extensive discussion on the tolerance on the effective length of these periods. It was finally agreed that, in "tropical countries", a value of ±2% could be used. The Greenland and Antarctic delegations thought this was too stringent, and reserved the right to apply a variable tolerance depending on the time of year.
Then the spouses' social event took place and it was the end of the fourth day, except for discussions as to which Type B period club the delegates should visit afterwards.

On the fifth day, it was planned to discuss plants in the morning and animals in the afternoon. However, by lunch time only blue-green algae had been agreed. It was decided to leave further work on plants to the Finnish delegate, who has since identified 689,362 distinct types of fungus. In the afternoon, animal proposals were considered. Five varieties were defined, with provisional titles: "insect", "fish", "fowl of the air", "beast of the field," and "private implementation". In view that most of their birds were unable to fly, the New Zealand delegation pressed for the inclusion of an additional variety, "fowl of the field".

The Australian delegate complained that her late arrival was no justification for having all the experimental prototypes (e.g. mammals that laid eggs) imposed on her, and said that she would vote negative if the committee expected her to jump about with her children in a pouch. The Saudi Arabian delegate could not understand all the fuss, saying that the horse designed by the committee for desert use had performed so well that he wanted a variety with two humps.

Three animal options were proposed: "male", "female" and "neuter". The UK delegate stated that, for simplicity of the standard, only one option (the third) should be allowed. The British proposal was finally rejected, after an animated discussion of "special conditions in some countries". The concept of "hermaphrodite" was initially dismissed because no test laboratory could be expected to perform all the combinations in the reference test method, but was subsequently adopted subject to '"Compliance shall be tested by inspection under normal or corrected-to-normal vision". A "mandatory appendix" was added for many species, on the understanding that it could be surgically deleted later, "if appropriate".
Then an official reception took place and it was the end of the fifth day, except for the Drafting Committee meeting in the bar afterwards.

On the sixth day, the morning was spent on a debate about the order of the agenda, as some delegates wanted to leave by lunch time. In the afternoon there was an extremely harmonious and fruitful all-out war over the issue of language. It was finally agreed that all documents should be drafted in Aramaic and translated via Greek and WordPerfect into both English and French. The English and French texts could differ in content, but they must use the same typeface and section numbering.

The French delegation proposed the concept of "le weekend", for implementation after a "5-day transitional period". The Chairman announced that no meeting would be held on the seventh day because of lack of participants and because the secretarial and catering staff had transposed the French proposal into their National Standards with (unusually) immediate effect.
He congratulated the delegations on their work and closed the meeting with an urgent plea for an extraordinary acceleration of the procedures in order to reduce the publishing delay, which according to the Central Secretariat was now approximately 15 billion years.

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