According to my notes, y'all are eligible to prove sentience tomorrow at 
meeting.  Proving sentience is easy.  All you need to do is show up to 
meeting and prove that you are sentient, using any logical or illogical 
argument.  We'll heckle your proof, but then find some way to prove you 
sentient anyway.  You can't stand up there and expect us to prove you 
sentient, but we'll do what we can to, uh, help.  Yes, help.

Once proven sentient, you will be dismembered (it doesn't hurt) and then 
you will be an official non-member of SWIL.  You get all the perks and 
advantages of being a non-member, which include (and is limited to) full 
voting rights.  Not that we keep track of such things.

All I ask is that you e-mail the presidents any text you have written 
out for your proof so that it can go in SWILnews.  This can be done 
after proving.

If for some reason you cannot make it to meeting tomorrow, you can send 
a proxy.  This proxy should not be a person, it should be a thing in the 
care of a person.  If you want you can have your proxy prove sentience 
for you, otherwise just make sure the person has your proxy sign the 
attendance list and then you can prove sentience whenever you wish.  If 
you are willing to part with your proxy, let me know and I'll bring my 
hammer.  There is precedence for this, and it's a lot of fun.

If you do not wish to prove sentience tomorrow but you come to meeting, 
you can prove sentience at any meeting from here to eternity.

As an example proof, Nick proved his sentience by sticking a waffle to 
the ceiling with forks, and proclaiming it God, according to Simpsons 
episode 1F14.  As we know, everything on TV is true.  The God-waffle was 
found to be sentient.  Nick then ate a piece of the waffle.  Having 
eaten God, Nick is depraved.  Depraved is defined to be "marked by 
corruption or evil".  Evil is moral, thus being depraved is a moral 
state, and since sentient beings are moral, Nick is sentient.

Your proof need not be that elaborate or well-planned.  Qian proved 
sentience by threatening to eat SPAM and Ipecac if we didn't vote her 
sentient.

You can also make up a proof on the spot.

More examples can be found in the SWILNews archives at 
www.swil.org/SWILnews/.  I'd suggest looking at issues 2-4 for fall 
years.  Fall '01 #3 contains Nick's proof, as well as several others 
(including mine).

==Mark