This fortune brought to you by:
$FreeBSD: src/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes,v 1.275 2009/06/05 07:57:10 edwin
Exp $
%
=======================================================================
|| ||
|| The FORTUNE-COOKIE program is soon to be a Major Motion Picture! ||
|| Watch for it at a theater near you next summer! ||
|| ||
=======================================================================
Francis Ford Coppola presents a George Lucas Production:
"Fortune Cookie"
Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Starring Harrison Ford Bette Midler Marlon Brando
Christopher Reeves Marilyn Chambers
and Bob Hope as "The Waiter".
Costumes Designed by Pierre Cardin.
Special Effects by Timothy Leary.
Read the Warner paperback!
Invoke the Unix program!
Soundtrack on XTC Records.
In 70mm and Dolby Stereo at selected theaters and terminal
centers.
%
FROM THE DESK OF
Dorothy Gale
Auntie Em:
Hate you.
Hate Kansas.
Taking the dog.
Dorothy
%
FROM THE DESK OF
Rapunzel
Dear Prince:
Use ladder tonight --
you're splitting my ends.
%
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT
Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth
ABSTRACT
Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying
the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem
of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas
of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi-
bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size
pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that
there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program
to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable
functions.
This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
Refreshments will be served. Music will be played.
%
UNIX Trix
For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will
save your support staff a few hours of precious time. Before you send your
next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on /etc/passwd
to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk. Now when they
forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct
the damage. Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea
either. If you need some help, give us a call.
-- CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems
%
-- Gifts for Children --
This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
-- Gifts for Men --
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Chapter 1
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
DELETE A FORTUNE!
Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
"fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
gets expunged.
%
Get GUMMed
--- ------
The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
"cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
could tell them.
-- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
%
Has your family tried 'em?
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons
the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of
the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark
stains that indicate freshness.
%
It's grad exam time...
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating
system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert
this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are
bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the
new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.)
MATHEMATICS
If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long
it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the
length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe the Universe. Give three examples.
%
It's grad exam time...
MEDICINE
You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a
bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has
been inspected. (You have 15 minutes.)
HISTORY
Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present
day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political,
economic, religious and philosophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and
Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.
BIOLOGY
Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture
if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with
special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
10: Potholes are
a) extremely dangerous.
b) patriotic.
c) the fault of the previous administration.
d) all going to be fixed next summer.
The correct answer is b.
Potholes destroy unpatriotic, unamerican, imported cars, since the holes
are larger than the cars. If you drive a big, patriotic, American car
you have nothing to worry about.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
2: A traffic light at an intersection changes from yellow to red, you should
a) stop immediately.
b) proceed slowly through the intersection.
c) blow the horn.
d) floor it.
The correct answer is d.
If you said c, you were almost right, so give yourself a half point.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
3: When stopped at an intersection you should
a) watch the traffic light for your lane.
b) watch for pedestrians crossing the street.
c) blow the horn.
d) watch the traffic light for the intersecting street.
The correct answer is d.
You need to start as soon as the traffic light for the intersecting
street turns yellow.
Answer c is worth a half point.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
4: Exhaust gas is
a) beneficial.
b) not harmful.
c) toxic.
d) a punk band.
The correct answer is b.
The meddling Washington eco-freak communist bureaucrats who say otherwise
are liars. (Message to those who answered d. Go back to California where
you came from. Your kind are not welcome here.)
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
5: Your car's horn is a vital piece of safety equipment.
How often should you test it?
a) once a year.
b) once a month.
c) once a day.
d) once an hour.
The correct answer is d.
You should test your car's horn at least once every hour,
and more often at night or in residential neighborhoods.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
7: The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
but a steady left tail light. This means
a) One of the tail lights is broken. You should blow your
horn to call the problem to the driver's attention.
b) The driver is signaling a right turn.
c) The driver is signaling a left turn.
d) The driver is from out of town.
The correct answer is d.
Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
8: Pedestrians are
a) irrelevant.
b) communists.
c) a nuisance.
d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
The correct answer is a. Pedestrians are not in cars, so they
are totally irrelevant to driving, and you should ignore them
completely.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
9: Roads are salted in order to
a) kill grass.
b) melt snow.
c) help the economy.
d) prevent potholes.
The correct answer is c.
Road salting employs thousands of persons directly, and millions more
indirectly, for example, salt miners and rustproofers. Most important,
salting reduces the life spans of cars, thus stimulating the car and
steel industries.
%
THE STORY OF CREATION
or
THE MYTH OF URK
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt ...
-- Rico Tudor
%
JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
by Mark Isaak
Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
"Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
"I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
"I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
"Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window ...
%
Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
(1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
(2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
(3) I don't know.
(4) Who cares?
(5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
(6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
Papyrus Books).
%
DETERIORATA
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
You are a fluke of the universe ...
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
Is laughing behind your back.
-- National Lampoon
%
Double Bucky
(Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and Meta side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
-- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
%
Hard Copies and Chmod
And everyone thinks computers are impersonal
cold diskdrives hardware monitors
user-hostile software
of course they're only bits and bytes
and characters and strings
and files
just some old textfiles from my old boyfriend
telling me he loves me and
he'll take care of me
simply a discarded printout of a friend's directory
deep intimate secrets and
how he doesn't trust me
couldn't hurt me more if they were scented in lavender or mould
on personal stationery
-- terri@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
%
`O' LEVEL COUNTER CULTURE
Timewarp allowed: 3 hours. Do not scrawl situationalist graffiti in the
margins or stub your rollups in the inkwells. Orange may be worn. Credit
will be given to candidates who self-actualize.
1: Compare and contrast Pink Floyd with Black Sabbath and say why
neither has street credibility.
2: "Even Buddha would have been hard pushed to reach Nirvana squatting
on a juggernaut route." Consider the dialectic of inner truth and inner
city.
3: Discuss degree of hassle involved in paranoia about being sucked
into a black hole.
4: "The Egomaniac's Liberation Front were a bunch of revisionist
ripoff merchants." Comment on this insult.
5: Account for the lack of references to brown rice in Dylan's lyrics.
6: "Castenada was a bit of a bozo." How far is this a fair summing
up of western dualism?
7: Hermann Hesse was a Pisces. Discuss.
%
OUTCONERR
Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
Did logzerneg the ifthen block
All kludgy were the function flows
And subroutines adhoc.
Beware the runtime-bug my friend
squrooneg, the false goto
Beware the infiniteloop
And shun the inprectoo.
%
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
1. Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a
nuclear bomb, use the stairs.
2. When you're flying through the air, remember to roll
when you hit the ground.
3. If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
4. Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead
to psychological problems.
5. Food will be scarce, you will have to scavenge. Learn to recognize
foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed potatoes,
shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
6. Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze, internal organs
will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
7. Try to be neat, fall only in designated piles.
8. Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas, people could be
staggering illegally.
9. Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to one's, but more
sanitary due to limited circulation.
10. Accumulate mannequins now, spare parts will be in short
supply on D-Day.
%
The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system
in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an
Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four
fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the
Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on
target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable.
If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal
computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip
through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do
to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines
for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can
take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied
into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit
computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup,
they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what
Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home
a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
-- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
%
The STAR WARS Song
Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
%
The Three Major Kind of Tools
* Tools for hitting things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
bludgeons, and truncheons.)
* Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
* Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
(Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
(to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
%
'Twas the Night before Crisis
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
%
What I Did During My Fall Semester
On the first day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
On the second day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
On the third day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
I found a thesis topic:
How to keep people from hanging out in front of the Dover.
-- Sister Mary Elephant,
"Student Statement for Black Friday"
%
William Safire's Rules for Writers:
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never
be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs has to
agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
viable alternatives.
%
1/2
/\(3)
| 2 1/3
| z dz cos(3 * PI / 9) = ln (e )
|
\/ 1
The integral of z squared, dz
From 1 to the square root of 3
Times the cosine
Of 3 PI over nine
Is the log of the cube root of e
%
THE DAILY PLANET
SUPERMAN SAVES DESSERT!
Plans to "Eat it later"
%
*** A NEW KIND OF PROGRAMMING ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
They say a good programmer can write 20 lines of effective program per day.
With our unique training course, we'll show you how to write 20 lines of code
and lots more besides. Our training course covers every programming language
in existence, and some that aren't. You'll learn why the on/off switch for a
computer is so important, what the words *fatal error* mean, and who and what
you should blame when you make a mistake.
Yes, I want the brochure describing this incredible offer.
I enclose $1000 in small unmarked bills to cover the cost of
postage and handling. (No live poultry, please.)
*** Our Slogan: Top down programming for the masses. ***
%
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
%
*** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
*** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? ***
Programming is not for everyone. But, if you have the desire to learn, we can
help you get started. All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and
enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month.
*** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
1: Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
2: Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
3: What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
%
*** STUDENT SUCCESSES ***
Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of
programming. One former student developed the concept of the personalized
form letter. Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a
winner!," sound familiar? Another student writes "After only five lessons I
sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine.
Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management
program for my department manager. My program touched him so deeply that he
was speechless. He told me later that he had never seen such a program in
his entire career. Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could
have made this possible." Send for our introductory brochure which explains
in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll
be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which
can vie for a set of free steak knives. If you don't do it now, you'll hate
yourself in the morning.
%
*** System shutdown message from root ***
System going down in 60 seconds
%
... This striving for excellence extends into people's
personal lives as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the
best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability.
Eighties people buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking
soda. If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a
reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their
table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is
not an excellent restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous
crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their
beepers going off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant
wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of
Liza Minnelli.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
... with liberty and justice for all who can afford it.
%
1/2
12 + 144 + 20 + 3*4 2
---------------------- + 5 * 11 = 9 + 0
7
A dozen, a gross and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more!
%
7,140 pounds on the Sun
97 pounds on Mercury or Mars
255 pounds on Earth
232 pounds on Venus or Uranus
43 pounds on the Moon
648 pounds on Jupiter
275 pounds on Saturn
303 pounds on Neptune
13 pounds on Pluto
-- How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places
in the solar system.
%
A boy scout troop went on a hike. Crossing over a stream, one of
the boys dropped his wallet into the water. Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed
the wallet and tossed it to another carp. Then that carp passed it to
another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet back
and forth.
"Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a rare case
of carp-to-carp walleting."
%
A carpet installer decides to take a cigarette break after completing
the installation in the first of several rooms he has to do. Finding them
missing from his pocket he begins searching, only to notice a small lump in
his recently completed carpet-installation. Not wanting to pull up all that
work for a lousy pack of cigarettes he simply walks over and pounds the lump
flat. Foregoing the break, he continues on to the other rooms to be carpeted.
At the end of the day, while loading his tools into his truck, two
events occur almost simultaneously: he spies his pack of cigarettes on the
dashboard of the truck, and the lady of the house summons him imperiously:
"Have you seen my parakeet?"
%
A circus foreman was making the rounds inspecting the big top when
a scrawny little man entered the tent and walked up to him. "Are you the
foreman around here?" he asked timidly. "I'd like to join your circus; I
have what I think is a pretty good act."
The foreman nodded assent, whereupon the little man hurried over to
the main pole and rapidly climbed up to the very tip-top of the big top.
Drawing a deep breath, he hurled himself off into the air and began flapping
his arms furiously. Amazingly, rather than plummeting to his death the little
man began to fly all around the poles, lines, trapezes and other obstacles,
performing astounding feats of aerobatics which ended in a long power dive
from the top of the tent, pulling up into a gentle feet-first landing beside
the foreman, who had been nonchalantly watching the whole time.
"Well," puffed the little man. "What do you think?"
"That's all you do?" answered the foreman scornfully. "Bird
imitations?"
%
A crow perched himself on a telephone wire. He was going to make a
long-distance caw.
%
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating
his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said
the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the
toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
%
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about
whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they
got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The
medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's
rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden
itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that the Garden
and the world were created. So God must have been an architect."
The computer scientist, who'd listened carefully to all of this, then
commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%
A domineering man married a mere wisp of a girl. He came back from
his honeymoon a chastened man. He'd become aware of the will of the wisp.
%
A farm in the country side had several turkeys, it was known as the
house of seven gobbles.
%
A father gave his teenage daughter an untrained pedigreed pup for
her birthday. An hour later, when wandered through the house, he found her
looking at a puddle in the center of the kitchen. "My pup," she murmured
sadly, "runneth over."
%
A German, a Pole and a Czech left camp for a hike through the woods.
After being reported missing a day or two later, rangers found two bears,
one a male, one a female, looking suspiciously overstuffed. They killed
the female, autopsied her, and sure enough, found the German and the Pole.
"What do you think?" said the first ranger.
"The Czech is in the male," replied the second.
%
A group of soldiers being prepared for a practice landing on a tropical
island were warned of the one danger the island held, a poisonous snake that
could be readily identified by its alternating orange and black bands. They
were instructed, should they find one of these snakes, to grab the tail end of
the snake with one hand and slide the other hand up the body of the snake to
the snake's head. Then, forcefully, bend the thumb above the snake's head
downward to break the snake's spine. All went well for the landing, the
charge up the beach, and the move into the jungle. At one foxhole site, two
men were starting to dig and wondering what had happened to their partner.
Suddenly he staggered out of the underbrush, uniform in shreds, covered with
blood. He collapsed to the ground. His buddies were so shocked they could
only blurt out, "What happened?"
"I ran from the beachhead to the edge of the jungle, and, as I hit the
ground, I saw an orange and black striped snake right in front of me. I
grabbed its tail end with my left hand. I placed my right hand above my left
hand. I held firmly with my left hand and slid my right hand up the body of
the snake. When I reached the head of the snake I flicked my right thumb down
to break the snake's spine... did you ever goose a tiger?"
%
A guy returns from a long trip to Europe, having left his beloved
dog in his brother's care. The minute he's cleared customs, he calls up his
brother and inquires after his pet.
"Your dog's dead," replies his brother bluntly.
The guy is devastated. "You know how much that dog meant to me,"
he moaned into the phone. "Couldn't you at least have thought of a nicer way
of breaking the news? Couldn't you have said, `Well, you know, the dog got
outside one day, and was crossing the street, and a car was speeding around a
corner...' or something...? Why are you always so thoughtless?"
"Look, I'm sorry," said his brother, "I guess I just didn't think."
"Okay, okay, let's just put it behind us. How are you anyway?
How's Mom?"
His brother is silent a moment. "Uh," he stammers, "uh... Mom got
outside one day..."
%
A hard-luck actor who appeared in one colossal disaster after another
finally got a break, a broken leg to be exact. Someone pointed out that it's
the first time the poor fellow's been in the same cast for more than a week.
%
A horrible little boy came up to me and said, "You know in your
book The Martian Chronicles?"
I said, "Yes?"
He said, "You know where you talk about Deimos rising in the
East?"
I said, "Yes?"
He said "No." -- So I hit him.
-- attributed to Ray Bradbury
%
A horse breeder has his young colts bottle-fed after they're three
days old. He heard that a foal and his mummy are soon parted.
%
A housewife, an accountant and a lawyer were asked to add 2 and 2.
The housewife replied, "Four!".
The accountant said, "It's either 3 or 4. Let me run those figures
through my spread sheet one more time."
The lawyer pulled the drapes, dimmed the lights and asked in a
hushed voice, "How much do you want it to be?"
%
A lawyer named Strange was shopping for a tombstone. After he had
made his selection, the stonecutter asked him what inscription he
would like on it. "Here lies an honest man and a lawyer," responded the
lawyer.
"Sorry, but I can't do that," replied the stonecutter. "In this
state, it's against the law to bury two people in the same grave. However,
I could put ``here lies an honest lawyer'', if that would be okay."
"But that won't let people know who it is" protested the lawyer.
"Certainly will," retorted the stonecutter. "people will read it
and exclaim, "That's Strange!"
%
A little dog goes into a saloon in the Wild West, and beckons to
the bartender. "Hey, bartender, gimmie a whiskey."
The bartender ignores him.
"Hey bartender, gimmie a whiskey."
Still ignored.
"HEY BARMAN!! GIMMIE A WHISKEY!!"
The bartender takes out his six-shooter and shoots the dog in the
leg, and the dog runs out the saloon, howling in pain.
Three years later, the wee dog appears again, wearing boots,
jeans, chaps, a Stetson, gun belt, and guns. He ambles slowly into the
saloon, goes up to the bar, leans over it, and says to the bartender,
"I'm here t'git the man that shot muh paw."
%
A man enters a pet shop, seeking to purchase a parrot. He points
to a fine colorful bird and asks how much it costs.
When he is told it costs 70,000 zlotys, he whistles in amazement
and asks why it is so much. "Well, the bird is fluent in Italian and
French and can recite the periodic table." He points to another bird
and is told that it costs 90,000 zlotys because it speaks French and
German, can knit and can curse in Latin.
Finally the customer asks about a drab gray bird. "Ah," he is
told, "that one is 150,000."
"Why, what can it do?" he asks.
"Well," says the shopkeeper, "to tell you the truth, he doesn't
do anything, but the other birds call him Mr. Secretary."
-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master,
Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the
wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student.
"Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a
pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new
disciples."
Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
%
A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
"No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
"But the collar is up around my ears!"
"It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
little more ... that's it."
"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
A man met a beautiful young woman in a bar. They got along well,
shared dinner, and had a marvelous evening. When he left her, he told her
that he had really enjoyed their time together, and hoped to see her again,
soon. Smiling yes, she gave him her phone number.
The next day, he called her up and asked her to go dancing. She
agreed. As they talked, he jokingly asked her what her favorite flower was.
Realizing his intentions, she told him that he shouldn't bring her flowers
-- if he wanted to bring her a gift, well, he should bring her a Swiss Army
knife!
Surprised, and not a little intrigued, he spent a large part of the
afternoon finding a particularly unusual one. Arriving at her apartment
he immediately presented her with the knife. She ooohed and ahhhed over it
for a minute, and then carefully placed it in a drawer, that the man couldn't
help but see was full of Swiss Army knives.
Surprised, he asked her why she had collected so many.
"Well, I'm young and attractive now", blushed the woman, "but that
won't always be true. And boy scouts will do anything for a Swiss Army knife!"
%
A man pleaded innocent of any wrong doing when caught by the police
during a raid at the home of a mobster, excusing himself by claiming that he
was making a bolt for the door.
%
A man walked into a bar with his alligator and asked the bartender,
"Do you serve lawyers here?".
"Sure do," replied the bartender.
"Good," said the man. "Give me a beer, and I'll have a lawyer for
my 'gator."
%
A man was reading The Canterbury Tales one Saturday morning, when his
wife asked "What have you got there?" Replied he, "Just my cup and Chaucer."
%
A man who keeps stealing mopeds is an obvious cycle-path.
%
A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the
program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer
promptly replied.
"I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully,
how long will it take?"
The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish
to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.
"Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be
satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."
The programmer agreed to this.
Several years slated, the manager retired. On the way to his
retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal.
He had been programming all night.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him
invented a new program that became popular and sold well. As a result, the
manager retained his job.
The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer
refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an interesting
concept, and thus I expect no reward."
The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he
holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an
employee. Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!"
But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist
so that I can program. If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste
everyone's time. Can I go now? I have a program that I'm working on."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your
work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave
at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several
resigned on the spot.
So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own
working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule." The
programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee
hours of the morning.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements
document for a new application. The manager asked the master: "How long will
it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"
"It will take one year," said the master promptly.
"But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it
take it I assign ten programmers to it?"
The master programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years."
"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"
The master programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be
completed," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master
noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me",
he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master.
"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium,
and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play,
where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the
human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this
mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A master was explaining the nature of the Tao to one of his novices,
"The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant,"
said the master.
"Is the Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson is
over for today," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A MODERN FABLE
Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory
far too subtle for the youth of today. Children need an updated message
with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit
today's minute attention span.
The Troubled Aardvark
Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was
driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house
in his brand new 4x4. He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and
unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his sniveling, spoiled
children. One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and
his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its
pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any
personal effort he could make to change the status quo. Overcome by a
wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only
course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he
drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers.
-- Tom Annau
%
A musical reviewer admitted he always praised the first show of a
new theatrical season. "Who am I to stone the first cast?"
%
A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if..."
"If what?" asked the composer.
"If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
%
A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
power-down sequence.
An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
cool.
%
A novice asked the Master: "Here is a programmer that never designs,
documents, or tests his programs. Yet all who know him consider him one of
the best programmers in the world. Why is this?"
The Master replies: "That programmer has mastered the Tao. He has
gone beyond the need for design; he does not become angry when the system
crashes, but accepts the universe without concern. He has gone beyond the
need for documentation; he no longer cares if anyone else sees his code. He
has gone beyond the need for testing; each of his programs are perfect within
themselves, serene and elegant, their purpose self-evident. Truly, he has
entered the mystery of the Tao."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice asked the master: "I have a program that sometimes runs and
sometimes aborts. I have followed the rules of programming, yet I am totally
baffled. What is the reason for this?"
The master replied: "You are confused because you do not understand
the Tao. Only a fool expects rational behavior from his fellow humans. Why
do you expect it from a machine that humans have constructed? Computers
simulate determinism; only the Tao is perfect.
The rules of programming are transitory; only the Tao is eternal.
Therefore you must contemplate the Tao before you receive enlightenment."
"But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the
novice.
"Your program will then run correctly," replied the master.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice asked the master: "I perceive that one computer company is
much larger than all others. It towers above its competition like a giant
among dwarfs. Any one of its divisions could comprise an entire business.
Why is this so?"
The master replied, "Why do you ask such foolish questions? That
company is large because it is so large. If it only made hardware, nobody
would buy it. If it only maintained systems, people would treat it like a
servant. But because it combines all of these things, people think it one
of the gods! By not seeking to strive, it conquers without effort."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice asked the master: "In the east there is a great tree-structure
that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with
vice-presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying
'Go, Hence!' or 'Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new
names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an
unnatural entity exist?"
The master replies: "You perceive this immense structure and are
disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from
its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming
beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial
package.
The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master
reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set
of generalized graphics routines, and artificial intelligence interface,
but not the slightest mention of anything financial.
When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant.
"Don't be so impatient," he said, "I'll put the financial stuff in eventually."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the
power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly,
"You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding
of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The
machine worked.
%
"A penny for your thoughts?"
"A dollar for your death."
-- The Odd Couple
%
A Pole, a Soviet, an American, an Englishman and a Canadian were lost
in a forest in the dead of winter. As they were sitting around a fire, they
noticed a pack of wolves eyeing them hungrily.
The Englishman volunteered to sacrifice himself for the rest of the
party. He walked out into the night.
The American, not wanting to be outdone by an Englishman, offered to
be the next victim. The wolves eagerly accepted his offer, and devoured him,
too.
The Soviet, believing himself to be better than any American, turned
to the Pole and says, "Well, comrade, I shall volunteer to give my life to
save a fellow socialist." He leaves the shelter and goes out to be killed by
the wolf pack.
At this point, the Pole opened his jacket and pulls out a machine gun.
He takes aim in the general direction of the wolf pack and in a few seconds
has killed them all.
The Canadian asked the Pole, "Why didn't you do that before the others
went out to be killed?
The Pole pulls a bottle of vodka from the other side of his jacket.
He smiles and replies, "Five men on one bottle -- too many."
%
A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came upon
two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope. "That's what
I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow man".
As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
%
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a
strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained
throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless
loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming
rigidity.
A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this
law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the
way that astonishes him least.
A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The
program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward
appearances.
If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of
disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the
program.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software
conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: "What sort
of programmers work for other companies? They behaved badly and were
unconcerned with appearances. Their hair was long and unkempt and their
clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed out hospitality suites and they
made rude noises during my presentation."
The manager said: "I should have never sent you to the conference.
Those programmers live beyond the physical world. They consider life absurd,
an accidental coincidence. They come and go without knowing limitations.
Without a care, they live only for their programs. Why should they bother
with social conventions?"
"They are alive within the Tao."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A pushy romeo asked a gorgeous elevator operator, "Don't all
these stops and starts get you pretty worn out?"
"It isn't the stops and starts that get on my nerves, it's the
jerks."
%
A ranger was walking through the forest and encountered a hunter
carrying a shotgun and a dead loon. "What in the world do you think you're
doing? Don't you know that the loon is on the endangered species list?"
Instead of answering, the hunter showed the ranger his game bag,
which contained twelve more loons.
"Why would you shoot loons?", the ranger asked.
"Well, my family eats them and I sell the plumage."
"What's so special about a loon? What does it taste like?"
"Oh, somewhere between an American Bald Eagle and a Trumpeter Swan."
%
A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor
recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill
his wellness potential."
Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal
of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors."
A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti-
personnel devices." You probably call them bombs.
At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian
mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status." That is, they were fired.
After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls
of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it)
only to receive the following notice: "We must report that during the handling
of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an
unusual laboratory experience." The use of the passive is a particularly nice
touch, don't you think? Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad
experience. Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his
pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously
sent him.
-- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
%
A reverend wanted to telephone another reverend. He told the operator,
"This is a parson to parson call."
A farmer with extremely prolific hens posted the following sign. "Free
Chickens. Our Coop Runneth Over."
Two brothers, Mort and Bill, like to sail. While Bill has a great
deal of experience, he certainly isn't the rigger Mort is.
Inheritance taxes are getting so out of line, that the deceased family
often doesn't have a legacy to stand on.
The judge fined the jaywalker fifty dollars and told him if he was
caught again, he would be thrown in jail. Fine today, cooler tomorrow.
A rock store eventually closed down; they were taking too much for
granite.
%
A Scotsman was strolling across High Street one day wearing his kilt.
As he neared the far curb, he noticed two young blondes in a red convertible
eyeing him and giggling. One of them called out, "Hey, Scotty! What's worn
under the kilt?"
He strolled over to the side of the car and asked, "Ach, lass, are you
SURE you want to know?" Somewhat nervously, the blonde replied yes, she did
really want to know.
The Scotsman leaned closer and confided, "Why, lass, nothing's worn
under the kilt, everything's in perfect workin' order!"
%
A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it,
realization of a basic truth came over me. So simple! So obvious we couldn't
see it. John Knivlen, Chairman of Palomar Repeater Club, an amateur radio
group, had discovered how IC circuits work. He says that smoke is the thing
that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit,
it stops working. He claims to have verified this with thorough testing.
I was flabbergasted! Of course! Smoke makes all things electrical
work. Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator
Didn't it quit working? I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth
dawned. It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to
another in your Mini, MG or Jag. And when the harness springs a leak, it lets
the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works. The starter motor
requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire
going to it is so large.
Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis. Why are Lucas
electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch? Hmmm... Aha!!! Lucas is
British, and all things British leak! British convertible tops leak water,
British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and
I might add British tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks
secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
-- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School
%
A shy teenage boy finally worked up the nerve to give a gift to
Madonna, a young puppy. It hitched its waggin' to a star.
A girl spent a couple hours on the phone talking to her two best
friends, Maureen Jones, and Maureen Brown. When asked by her father why she
had been on the phone so long, she responded "I heard a funny story today
and I've been telling it to the Maureens."
Three actors, Tom, Fred, and Cec, wanted to do the jousting scene
from Don Quixote for a local TV show. "I'll play the title role," proposed
Tom. "Fred can portray Sancho Panza, and Cecil B. De Mille."
%
"...A strange enigma is man!"
"Someone calls him a soul concealed in an animal," I suggested.
"Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarked
that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he
becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what
any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number
will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says
the statistician."
-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Sign of Four"
%
A woman was in love with fourteen soldiers, it was clearly platoonic.
%
A young honeymoon couple were touring southern Florida and happened
to stop at one of the rattlesnake farms along the road. After seeing the
sights, they engaged in small talk with the man that handled the snakes.
"Gosh!" exclaimed the new bride. "You certainly have a dangerous job.
Don't you ever get bitten by the snakes?"
"Yes, upon rare occasions," answered the handler.
"Well," she continued, "just what do you do when you're bitten by
a snake?"
"I always carry a razor-sharp knife in my pocket, and as soon as I
am bitten, I make deep criss-cross marks across the fang entry and then
suck the poison from the wound."
"What, uh... what would happen if you were to accidentally *sit* on
a rattler?" persisted the woman.
"Ma'am," answered the snake handler, "that will be the day I learn
who my real friends are."
%
A young husband with an inferiority complex insisted he was just a
little pebble on the beach. The marriage counselor told him, "If you wish to
save your marriage, you'd better be a little boulder."
%
A young married couple had their first child. Their original pride
and joy slowly turned to concern however, for after a couple of years the
child had never uttered any form of speech. They hired the best speech
therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, all to no avail. The child simply refused
to speak. One morning when the child was five, while the husband was reading
the paper, and the wife was feeding the dog, the little kid looks up from
his bowl and said, "My cereal's cold."
The couple is stunned. The man, in tears, confronts his son. "Son,
after all these years, why have you waited so long to say something?".
Shrugs the kid, "Everything's been okay 'til now".
%
ACHTUNG!!!
Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und
vatch das blinkenlights!!!
%
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
It was so granted.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's home
directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface of the
Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop at the
edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp.
"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1. "You will never find a more
wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."
-- DECWARS
%
After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years in
the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they
would finally find and enter the Promised Land. With him, he brought his
favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do assorted
camp chores.
The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and,
as the months passed, became very fond of him. Patriarchs took to
discussing abstruse theological problems with him, and each evening the
children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed.
Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was
ending, he abruptly wore out. Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
"It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend
Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it. He must be properly
interred. We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians. Nor have we wood for
a coffin. But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own
cattle. We shall bury him in it."
Feghoot agreed. "Yes, let this be his last rusting place." "Rusting?"
Moses cried. "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
"Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not
realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
-- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
Feghoot!"
%
After watching an extremely attractive maternity-ward patient
earnestly thumbing her way through a telephone directory for several
minutes, a hospital orderly finally asked if he could be of some help.
"No, thanks," smiled the young mother, "I'm just looking for a
name for my baby."
"But the hospital supplies a special booklet that lists hundreds
of first names and their meanings," said the orderly.
"That won't help," said the woman, "my baby already has a first
name."
%
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and
how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.
These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -- learn some and think some and draw and
paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands,
and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam
cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows
how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in
the Styrofoam cup -- they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you
learned -- the biggest word of all -- LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden
Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality
and sane living.
[...] Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the
whole world -- had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon
and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if all governments
had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them
and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are -- when you go
out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
-- Robert Fulghum, "All I Ever Really Needed to Know
I Learned in Kindergarten"
%
All that you touch, And all you create,
All that you see, And all you destroy,
All that you taste, All that you do,
All you feel, And all you say,
And all that you love, All that you eat,
And all that you hate, And everyone you meet,
All you distrust, All that you slight,
All you save, And everyone you fight,
And all that you give, And all that is now,
And all that you deal, And all that is gone,
All that you buy, And all that's to come,
Beg, borrow or steal, And everything under the sun is
in tune,
But the sun is eclipsed
By the moon.
There is no dark side of the moon... really... matter of fact it's all dark.
-- Pink Floyd, "Dark Side of the Moon"
%
America, Russia and Japan are sending up a two year shuttle mission
with one astronaut from each country. Since it's going to be two long, lonely
years up there, each may bring any form of entertainment weighing 150 pounds
or less. The American approaches the NASA board and asks to take his 125 lb.
wife. They approve.
The Japanese astronaut says, "I've always wanted to learn Latin. I
want 100 lbs. of textbooks." The NASA board approves. The Russian astronaut
thinks for a second and says, "Two years... all right, I want 150 pounds of
the best Cuban cigars ever made." Again, NASA okays it.
Two years later, the shuttle lands and everyone is gathered outside
to welcome back the astronauts. Well, it's obvious what the American's been
up to, he and his wife are each holding an infant. The crowd cheers. The
Japanese astronaut steps out and makes a 10 minute speech in absolutely
perfect Latin. The crowd doesn't understand a word of it, but they're
impressed and they cheer again. The Russian astronaut stomps out, clenches
the podium until his knuckles turn white, glares at the first row and
screams: "Anybody got a match?"
%
An airplane pilot got engaged to two very pretty women at the same
time. One was named Edith; the other named Kate. They met, discovered they
had the same fiancee, and told him. "Get out of our lives you rascal. We'll
teach you that you can't have your Kate and Edith, too."
%
An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows
he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great
restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment
after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next
time". Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect,
with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems,
is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When
he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each
other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences
will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not
generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all
the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one.
The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%
An eighty-year-old woman is rocking away the afternoon on her
porch when she sees an old, tarnished lamp sitting near the steps. She
picks it up, rubs it gently, and lo and behold a genie appears! The genie
tells the woman the he will grant her any three wishes her heart desires.
After a bit of thought, she says, "I wish I were young and
beautiful!" And POOF! In a cloud of smoke she becomes a young, beautiful,
voluptuous woman.
After a little more thought, she says, "I would like to be rich
for the rest of my life." And POOF! When the smoke clears, there are
stacks and stacks of money lying on the porch.
The genie then says, "Now, madam, what is your final wish?"
"Well," says the woman, "I would like for you to transform my
faithful old cat, whom I have loved dearly for fifteen years, into a young
handsome prince!"
And with another billow of smoke the cat is changed into a tall,
handsome, young man, with dark hair, dressed in a dashing uniform.
As they gaze at each other in adoration, the prince leans over to
the woman and whispers into her ear, "Now, aren't you sorry you had me
fixed?"
%
An elderly man stands in line for hours at a Warsaw meat store (meat
is severely rationed). When the butcher comes out at the end of the day and
announces that there is no meat left, the man flies into a rage.
"What is this?" he shouts. "I fought against the Nazis, I worked hard
all my life, I've been a loyal citizen, and now you tell me I can't even buy a
piece of meat? This rotten system stinks!"
Suddenly a thuggish man in a black leather coat sidles up and murmurs
"Take it easy, comrade. Remember what would have happened if you had made an
outburst like that only a few years ago" -- and he points an imaginary gun to
this head and pulls the trigger.
The old man goes home, and his wife says, "So they're out of meat
again?"
"It's worse than that," he replies. "They're out of bullets."
-- making the rounds in Warsaw, 1987
%
An Englishman, a Frenchman and an American are captured by cannibals.
The leader of the tribe comes up to them and says, "Even though you are about
to killed, your deaths will not be in vain. Every part of your body will be
used. Your flesh will be eaten, for my people are hungry. Your hair will be
woven into clothing, for my people are naked. Your bones will be ground up
and made into medicine, for my people are sick. Your skin will be stretched
over canoe frames, for my people need transportation. We are a fair people,
and we offer you a chance to kill yourself with our ceremonial knife."
The Englishman accepts the knife and yells, "God Save the Queen",
while plunging the knife into his heart.
The Frenchman removes the knife from the fallen body, and yells,
"Vive la France", while plunging the knife into his heart.
The American removes the knife from the fallen body, and yells,
while stabbing himself all over his body, "Here's your lousy canoe!"
%
An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
"Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
An older student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see a
great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of pleasures.
I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment.
I have given up everything I was asked to give up and I have suffered, but
I have not been enlightened. What should I do?"
Otis replied, "Give up suffering."
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
"Diet."
%
"Any news from the President on a successor?" he asked hopefully.
"None," Anita replied. "She's having great difficulty finding
someone qualified who is willing to accept the post."
"Then I stay," said Dr. Fresh. "I'm not good for much, but I
can at least make a decision."
"Somewhere," he grumphed, "there must be a naive, opportunistic
young welp with a masochistic streak who would like to run the most
up-and-down bureaucracy in the history of mankind."
-- R. L. Forward, "Flight of the Dragonfly"
%
"Anything else, sir?" asked the attentive bellhop, trying his best
to make the lady and gentleman comfortable in their penthouse suite in the
posh hotel.
"No. No, thank you," replied the gentleman.
"Anything for your wife, sir?" the bellhop asked.
"Why, yes, young man," said the gentleman. "Would you bring me
a postcard?"
%
"Anything else you wish to draw to my attention, Mr. Holmes ?"
"The curious incident of the stable dog in the nighttime."
"But the dog did nothing in the nighttime."
"That was the curious incident."
-- A. Conan Doyle, "Silver Blaze"
%
Approaching the gates of the monastery, Hakuin found Ken the Zen
preaching to a group of disciples.
"Words..." Ken orated, "they are but an illusory veil obfuscating
the absolute reality of --"
"Ken!" Hakuin interrupted. "Your fly is down!"
Whereupon the Clear Light of Illumination exploded upon Ken, and he
vaporized.
On the way to town, Hakuin was greeted by an itinerant monk imbued
with the spirit of the morning.
"Ah," the monk sighed, a beatific smile wrinkling across his cheeks,
"Thou art That..."
"Ah," Hakuin replied, pointing excitedly, "And Thou art Fat!"
Whereupon the Clear Light of Illumination exploded upon the monk,
and he vaporized.
Next, the Governor sought the advice of Hakuin, crying: "As our
enemies bear down upon us, how shall I, with such heartless and callow
soldiers as I am heir to, hope to withstand the impending onslaught?"
"US?" snapped Hakuin.
Whereupon the Clear Light of Illumination exploded upon the
Governor, and he vaporized.
Then, a redneck went up to Hakuin and vaporized the old Master with
his shotgun. "Ha! Beat ya' to the punchline, ya' scrawny li'l geek!"
%
"Are you police officers?"
"No, ma'am. We're musicians."
-- The Blues Brothers
%
"Are you sure you're not an encyclopedia salesman?"
"No, Ma'am. Just a burglar, come to ransack the flat."
-- Monty Python
%
As a general rule of thumb, never trust anybody who's been in therapy
for more than 15 percent of their life span. The words "I am sorry" and "I
am wrong" will have totally disappeared from their vocabulary. They will stab
you, shoot you, break things in your apartment, say horrible things to your
friends and family, and then justify this abhorrent behavior by saying:
"Sure, I put your dog in the microwave. But I feel *better*
for doing it."
-- Bruce Feirstein, "Nice Guys Sleep Alone"
%
At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from
Los Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
%
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of
his followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it,
and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full
of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come
by their ignorance the hard way."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%
Bubba, Jim Bob, and Leroy were fishing out on the lake last November,
and, when Bubba tipped his head back to empty the Jim Beam, he fell out of the
boat into the lake. Jim Bob and Leroy pulled him back in, but as Bubba didn't
look too good, they started up the Evinrude and headed back to the pier.
By the time they got there, Bubba was turning kind of blue, and his
teeth were chattering like all get out. Jim Bob said, "Leroy, go run up to
the pickup and get Doc Pritchard on the CB, and ask him what we should do".
Doc Pritchard, after hearing a description of the case, said "Now,
Leroy, listen closely. Bubba is in great danger. He has hy-po-thermia. Now
what you need to do is get all them wet clothes off of Bubba, and take your
clothes off, and pile your clothes and jackets on top of him. Then you all
get under that pile, and hug up to Bubba real close so that you warm him up.
You understand me Leroy? You gotta warm Bubba up, or he'll die."
Leroy and the Doc 10-4'ed each other, and Leroy came back to the
pier. "Wh-Wh-What'd th-th-the d-d-doc s-s-say L-L-Leroy?", Bubba chattered.
"Bubba, Doc says you're gonna die."
%
"But Huey, you PROMISED!"
"Tell 'em I lied."
%
By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in
the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were
still five feet between rails.
It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard,
in one day. This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May
of 1886. For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the
axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which
could run on the new track as soon as it was ready. Finally, on the day set,
great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn. Everywhere one
rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its
new position. By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate
over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere
was possible.
-- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957
%
Carol's head ached as she trailed behind the unsmiling Calibrees
along the block of booths. She chirruped at Kennicott, "Let's be wild!
Let's ride on the merry-go-round and grab a gold ring!"
Kennicott considered it, and mumbled to Calibree, "Think you folks
would like to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?"
Calibree considered it, and mumbled to his wife, "Think you'd like
to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?"
Mrs. Calibree smiled in a washed-out manner, and sighed, "Oh no,
I don't believe I care to much, but you folks go ahead and try it."
Calibree stated to Kennicott, "No, I don't believe we care to a
whole lot, but you folks go ahead and try it."
Kennicott summarized the whole case against wildness: "Let's try
it some other time, Carrie."
She gave it up.
-- Sinclair Lewis, "Main Street"
%
Catching his children with their hands in the new, still wet, patio,
the father spanked them. His wife asked, "Don't you love your children?"
"In the abstract, yes, but not in the concrete."
%
Chapter VIII
Due to the convergence of forces beyond his comprehension,
Salvatore Quanucci was suddenly squirted out of the universe
like a watermelon seed, and never heard from again.
%
"Cheshire-Puss," she began, "would you tell me, please, which
way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said
the Cat.
"I don't care much where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
-- Lewis Carroll
%
COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Concerning the war in Vietnam, Senator George Aiken of Vermont noted
in January, 1966, "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more
owls."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
COONDOG MEMORY
(heard in Rutledge, Missouri, about eighteen years ago)
Now, this dog is for sale, and she can not only follow a trail twice as
old as the average dog can, but she's got a pretty good memory to boot.
For instance, last week this old boy who lives down the road from me, and
is forever stinkmouthing my hounds, brought some city fellow around to
try out ol' Sis here. So I turned her out south of the house and she made
two or three big swings back and forth across the edge of the woods, set
back her head, bayed a couple of times, cut straight through the woods,
come to a little clearing, jumped about three foot straight up in the air,
run to the other side, and commenced to letting out a racket like she had
something treed. We went over there with our flashlights and shone them
up in the tree but couldn't catch no shine offa coon's eyes, and my
neighbor sorta indicated that ol' Sis might be a little crazy, `cause she
stood right to the tree and kept singing up into it. So I pulled off my
coat and climbed up into the branches, and sure enough, there was a coon
skeleton wedged in between a couple of branches about twenty foot up.
Now as I was saying, she can follow a pretty old trail, but this fellow
was still calling her crazy or touched `cause she had hopped up in the
air while she was crossing the clearing, until I reminded him that the
Hawkins' had a fence across there about five years back. Now, this dog
is for sale.
-- News that stayed News: Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly
%
Cosmotronic Software Unlimited Inc. does not warrant that the
functions contained in the program will meet your requirements or that
the operation of the program will be uninterrupted or error-free.
However, Cosmotronic Software Unlimited Inc. warrants the
diskette(s) on which the program is furnished to be of black color and
square shape under normal use for a period of ninety (90) days from the
date of purchase.
NOTE: IN NO EVENT WILL COSMOTRONIC SOFTWARE UNLIMITED OR ITS
DISTRIBUTORS AND THEIR DEALERS BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING
ANY LOST PROFIT, LOST SAVINGS, LOST PATIENCE OR OTHER INCIDENTAL OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.
-- Horstmann Software Design, the "ChiWriter" user manual
%
Dallas Cowboys Official Schedule
Sept 14 Pasadena Junior High
Sept 21 Boy Scout Troop 049
Sept 28 Blind Academy
Sept 30 World War I Veterans
Oct 5 Brownie Scout Troop 041
Oct 12 Sugarcreek High Cheerleaders
Oct 26 St. Thomas Boys Choir
Nov 2 Texas City Vet Clinic
Nov 9 Korean War Amputees
Nov 15 VA Hospital Polio Patients
%
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
-- Pogo, "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie"
%
"Do you think there's a God?"
"Well, SOMEbody's out to get me!"
-- Calvin and Hobbs
%
Does anyone know how to get chocolate syrup and honey out of a
white electric blanket? I'm afraid to wash it in the machine.
Thanks, Kathy. (front desk, x17)
p.s. Also, anyone ever used Noxzema on friction burns?
Or is Vaseline better?
%
"Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
sincerely, extremely dangerously.
They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used
intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks.
They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They
used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the
bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery.
They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics.
They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
%
"Don't you think what we're doing is wrong?"
"Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
"Well, I've never done anything illegal before."
"... I thought you said you were an accountant."
%
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes of Harvard Medical School inhaled ether
at a time when it was popularly supposed to produce such mystical or
"mind-expanding" experiences, much as LSD is supposed to produce such
experiences today. Here is his account of what happened:
"I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination
to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the
thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal
march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a
sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for a moment.
The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all
human experience and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has
sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth
all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the
knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered
my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling
characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness.
The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder):
`A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'"
-- The Consumers Union Report: Licit & Illicit Drugs
%
During a fight, a husband threw a bowl of Jello at his wife. She had
him arrested for carrying a congealed weapon.
In another fight, the wife decked him with a heavy glass pitcher.
She's a woman who conks to stupor.
Upon reading a story about a man who throttled his mother-in-law, a
man commented, "Sounds to me like a practical choker."
It's not the initial skirt length, it's the upcreep.
It's the theory of Jess Birnbaum, of Time magazine, that women with
bad legs should stick to long skirts because they cover a multitude of shins.
%
During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a
red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
"Hey, you almost hit my wife."
"Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a
shot at mine, over there."
%
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
although God alone knows why it would want to.
The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
harmful electron buildup in the wires.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Eugene d'Albert, a noted German composer, was married six times.
At an evening reception which he attended with his fifth wife shortly
after their wedding, he presented the lady to a friend who said politely,
"Congratulations, Herr d'Albert; you have rarely introduced me to so
charming a wife."
%
Everything is farther away than it used to be. It is even twice as
far to the corner and they have added a hill. I have given up running for
the bus; it leaves earlier than it used to.
It seems to me they are making the stairs steeper than in the old
days. And have you noticed the smaller print they use in the newspapers?
There is no sense in asking anyone to read aloud anymore, as everybody
speaks in such a low voice I can hardly hear them.
The material in dresses is so skimpy now, especially around the hips
and waist, that it is almost impossible to reach one's shoelaces. And the
sizes don't run the way they used to. The 12's and 14's are so much smaller.
Even people are changing. They are so much younger than they used to
be when I was their age. On the other hand people my age are so much older
than I am.
I ran into an old classmate the other day and she has aged so much
that she didn't recognize me.
I got to thinking about the poor dear while I was combing my hair
this morning and in so doing I glanced at my own reflection. Really now,
they don't even make good mirrors like they used to.
Sandy Frazier, "I Have Noticed"
%
Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
"Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
"Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
Exxon's 'Universe of Energy' tends to the peculiar rather than the
humorous ... After [an incomprehensible film montage about wind and sun and
rain and strip mines and] two or three minutes of mechanical confusion, the
seats locomote through a short tunnel filled with clock-work dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs are depicted without accuracy and too close to your face.
"One of the few real novelties at Epcot is the use of smell to
aggravate illusions. Of course, no one knows what dinosaurs smelled like,
but Exxon has decided they smelled bad.
"At the other end of Dino Ditch ... there's a final, very addled
message about facing challengehood tomorrow-wise. I dozed off during this,
but the import seems to be that dinosaurs don't have anything to do with
energy policy and neither do you."
-- P. J. O'Rourke, "Holidays in Hell"
%
"Fantasies are free."
"NO!! NO!! It's the thought police!!!!"
%
Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
the little hammers strike.
Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
%
FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
-- Dorothy Parker
%
"For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."
"Whose?"
"MINE! HA-HA!"
%
"Found it," the Mouse replied rather crossly:
"of course you know what 'it' means."
"I know what 'it' means well enough, when I find a thing,"
said the Duck: "it's generally a frog or a worm.
The question is, what did the archbishop find?"
%
Four Oxford dons were taking their evening walk together and as
usual, were engaged in casual but learned conversation. On this particular
evening, their conversation was about the names given to groups of animals,
such as a "pride of lions" or a "gaggle of geese."
One of the professors noticed a group of prostitutes down the block,
and posed the question, "What name would be given to that group?" The four
fell into silence for a moment, as they pondered the possibilities...
At last, one spoke: "How about 'a Jam of Tarts'?" The others nodded
in acknowledgment as they continued to consider the problem. A second
professor spoke: "I'd suggest 'an Essay of Trollops.'" Again, the others
nodded. A third spoke: "I propose 'a Flourish of Strumpets.'"
They continued their walk in silence, until the first professor
remarked to the remaining professor, who was the most senior and learned of
the four, "You haven't suggested a name for our ladies. What are your
thoughts?"
Replied the fourth professor, "'An Anthology of Prose.'"
%
Fred noticed his roommate had a black eye upon returning from a dance.
"What happened?"
"I was struck by the beauty of the place."
%
Friends were surprised, indeed, when Frank and Jennifer broke their
engagement, but Frank had a ready explanation: "Would you marry someone who
was habitually unfaithful, who lied at every turn, who was selfish and lazy
and sarcastic?"
"Of course not," said a sympathetic friend.
"Well," retorted Frank, "neither would Jennifer."
%
"Gee, Mudhead, everyone at More Science High has an
extracurricular activity except you."
"Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
"Only to ten, Mudhead."
-- Firesign Theater
%
"Gentlemen of the jury," said the defense attorney, now beginning
to warm to his summation, "the real question here before you is, shall this
beautiful young woman be forced to languish away her loveliest years in a
dark prison cell? Or shall she be set free to return to her cozy little
apartment at 4134 Mountain Ave. -- there to spend her lonely, loveless hours
in her boudoir, lying beside her little Princess phone, 962-7873?"
%
God decided to take the devil to court and settle their
differences once and for all.
When Satan heard of this, he grinned and said, "And just
where do you think you're going to find a lawyer?"
%
Graduating seniors, parents and friends...
Let me begin by reassuring you that my remarks today will stand up
to the most stringent requirements of the new appropriateness.
The intra-college sensitivity advisory committee has vetted the
text of even trace amounts of subconscious racism, sexism and classism.
Moreover, a faculty panel of deconstructionists have reconfigured
the rhetorical components within a post-structuralist framework, so as to
expunge any offensive elements of western rationalism and linear logic.
Finally, all references flowing from a white, male, eurocentric
perspective have been eliminated, as have any other ruminations deemed
denigrating to the political consensus of the moment.
Thank you and good luck.
-- Doonesbury, the University Chancellor's graduation speech.
%
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%
Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there
may be in Science. As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system.
Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results. And listen to others,
even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers. Avoid loud and
aggressive persons, for they are sales reps.
If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised,
for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched.
Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real
hassle and could change your fortunes in time.
Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of
bugs. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive
for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations. Strive for
proportionality. Especially, do not faint when it occurs. Neither be cyclical
about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed.
Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points. Gracefully pass
them on to the youth at the next desk. Nurture some mutual funds to shield
you in times of sudden layoffs. But do not distress yourself with imaginings
-- the real bugs are enough to screw you badly. Murphy's Law runs the
Universe -- and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt <Curl>B*n dS =
0.
Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you
can conceive of to try. With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken
line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary. Be linear. Strive
to stay employed.
-- Technolorata, "Analog"
%
"Haig, in congressional hearings before his confirmatory, paradoxed
his audiencers by abnormaling his responds so that verbs were nouned, nouns
verbed, and adjectives adverbised. He techniqued a new way to vocabulary his
thoughts so as to informationally uncertain anybody listening about what he
had actually implicationed.
"If that is how General Haig wants to nervous breakdown the Russian
leadership, he may be shrewding his way to the biggest diplomatic invent
since Clausewitz. Unless, that is, he schizophrenes his allies first."
-- The Guardian
%
Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: "You
are the Yin and I am the Yang. If we travel together we will become famous
and earn vast sums of money." And so the pair set forth together, thinking
to conquer the world.
Presently, they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags, and
hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: "The Tao
lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does
not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seek fortune,
for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time."
Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Harry, a golfing enthusiast if there ever was one, arrived home
from the club to an irate, ranting wife.
"I'm leaving you, Harry," his wife announced bitterly. "You
promised me faithfully that you'd be back before six and here it is almost
nine. It just can't take that long to play 18 holes of golf."
"Honey, wait," said Harry. "Let me explain. I know what I promised
you, but I have a very good reason for being late. Fred and I tee'd off
right on time and everything was find for the first three holes. Then, on
the fourth tee Fred had a stroke. I ran back to the clubhouse but couldn't
find a doctor. And, by the time I got back to Fred, he was dead. So, for
the next 15 holes, it was hit the ball, drag Fred, hit the ball, drag Fred...
%
Harry constantly irritated his friends with his eternal optimism.
No matter how bad the situation, he would always say, "Well, it could have
been worse."
To cure him of his annoying habit, his friends decided to invent a
situation so completely black, so dreadful, that even Harry could find no
hope in it. Approaching him at the club bar one day, one of them said,
"Harry! Did you hear what happened to George? He came home last night,
found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, and then turned
the gun on himself!"
"Terrible," said Harry. "But it could have been worse."
"How in hell," demanded his dumbfounded friend, "could it possibly
have been worse?"
"Well," said Harry, "if it had happened the night before, I'd be
dead right now."
%
"Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
"Yes; I don't have one."
"Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors..."
-- E. D'Azevedo, CS, University of Washington
%
"Have you lived here all your life?"
"Oh, twice that long."
%
"Hawk, we're going to die."
"Never say die... and certainly never say we."
-- M*A*S*H
%
He had been bitten by a dog, but didn't give it much thought
until he noticed that the wound was taking a remarkably long time to
heal. Finally, he consulted a doctor who took one look at it and
ordered the dog brought in. Just as he had suspected, the dog had
rabies. Since it was too late to give the patient serum, the doctor
felt he had to prepare him for the worst. The poor man sat down at the
doctor's desk and began to write. His physician tried to comfort him.
"Perhaps it won't be so bad," he said. "You needn't make out your will
right now."
"I'm not making out any will," relied the man. "I'm just writing
out a list of people I'm going to bite!"
%
...He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither
does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to
combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is
self-propagating.
-- Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose"
%
He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light
without darkening me.
-- Thomas Jefferson on patents on ideas
%
"Heard you were moving your piano, so I came over to help."
"Thanks. Got it upstairs already."
"Do it alone?"
"Nope. Hitched the cat to it."
"How would that help?"
"Used a whip."
%
"Hey, Sam, how about a loan?"
"Whattaya need?"
"Oh, about $500."
"Whattaya got for collateral?"
"Whattaya need?"
"How about an eye?"
-- Sam Giancana
%
"Hmm, lots of people seem to be confused about the difference
between amd64 and ia64."
"Obviously they've never had an ia64 drop on their foot. They'd
know the difference then."
-- Peter Wemm explains CPU architecture
%
Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
"shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
these sometime around the middle of next week".
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
"How did you spend the weekend?" asked the pretty brunette secretary
of her blonde companion.
"Fishing through the ice," she replied.
"Fishing through the ice? Whatever for?"
"Olives."
%
"How do you know she is a unicorn?" Molly demanded. "And why
were you afraid to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her."
"I doubt that I will feel like talking for very long," the cat
replied without rancor. "I would not waste time in foolishness if I were
you. As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be
deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them. As for your
second question --" Here he faltered, and suddenly became very interested
in washing; nor would he speak until he had licked himself fluffy and then
licked himself smooth again. Even then he would not look at Molly, but
examined his claws.
"If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been
hers and not my own, not ever again."
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
"How many people work here?"
"Oh, about half."
%
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who
could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
%
"How would I know if I believe in love at first sight?" the sexy
social climber said to her roommate. "I mean, I've never seen a Porsche
full of money before."
%
"How'd you get that flat?"
"Ran over a bottle."
"Didn't you see it?"
"Damn kid had it under his coat."
%
Hug O' War
I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
-- Shel Silverstein
%
Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small
misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of
the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to
see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or
background. It can be programmed to behave as if it were working with
uncertainty, but -- underneath, at the code, at the circuits -- it
cannot simultaneously do something and withhold for later something that
remains unknown. In the painstaking working out of the specification,
line by code line, the programmer confronts an awful, inevitable truth:
The ways of human and machine understanding are disjunct.
-- Ellen Ullman, "Close to the Machine"
%
"I believe you have the wrong number," said the old gentleman into
the phone. "You'll have to call the weather bureau for that information."
"Who was that?" his young wife asked.
"Some guy wanting to know if the coast was clear."
%
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
quavering voice.
"No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
I did some heavy research so as to be prepared for "Mommy, why is
the sky blue?"
HE asked me about black holes in space.
(There's a hole *where*?)
I boned up to be ready for, "Why is the grass green?"
HE wanted to discuss nature's food chains.
(Well, let's see, there's ShopRite, Pathmark...)
I talked about Choo-Choo trains.
HE talked internal combustion engines.
(The INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE said, "I think I can, I think I can.")
I was delighted with the video game craze, thinking we could compete
as equals.
HE described the complexities of the microchips required to create
the graphics.
Then puberty struck. Ah, adolescence.
HE said, "Mom, I just don't understand women."
(Gotcha!)
-- Betty LiBrizzi, "The Care and Feeding of a Gifted Child"
%
I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because we
use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently leads to
violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say, in traffic,
is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had time to think
of witty and learned insults or look them up in the library, we could call
each other up:
You: Hello? Bob?
Bob: Yes?
You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you
took last Thursday? Outside of Sears?
Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed?
You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
"Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait.
I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto
the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to
have to get back to you.
Bob: Fine.
-- Dave Barry
%
"I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came
by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%
I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me.
I pushed "1" and he just stood there. I said "Hi, where you going?"
He said, "Phoenix." So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later
the doors opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix.
I looked at him and said "You know, you're the kind of guy I
want to hang around with." We got into his car and drove out to his
shack in the desert.
Then the phone rang. He said "You get it."
I picked it up and said "Hello?"
The other side said "Is this Steven Wright?"
I said "Yes..."
The guy said "Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from
your bank. It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the
university you attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we
loaned you. We would just like to know what happened to the money?"
I said, "Mr. Jones, I'll give it to you straight. I gave all
of the money to my friend Slick, and with it he built a nuclear weapon...
and I would appreciate it you never called me again."
-- Steven Wright
%
"I have examined Bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me.
I think very probably he might be cured."
"That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.
"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.
The elders murmured assent.
"Now, what affects it?"
"Ah!" said old Yacob.
"This," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those queer
things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft
depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way
as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and
his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant
irritation and distraction."
"Yes?" said old Yacob. "Yes?"
"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order
to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical
operation - namely, to remove those irritant bodies."
"And then he will be sane?"
"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."
"Thank heaven for science!" said old Yacob.
-- H.G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind"
%
"I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes."
"Did you ever see a doctor?"
"No, just spots."
%
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such
as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I conceive",
"I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me
at present".
When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied
myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him
immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by
observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right,
but in the present case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.
I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the
conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I
proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.
I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
%
I managed to say, "Sorry," and no more. I knew that he disliked
me to cry.
This time he said, watching me, "On some occasions it is better
to weep."
I put my head down on the table and sobbed, "If only she could come
back; I would be nice."
Francis said, "You gave her great pleasure always."
"Oh, not enough."
"Nobody can give anybody enough."
"Not ever?"
"No, not ever. But one must go on trying."
"And doesn't one ever value people until they are gone?"
"Rarely," said Francis. I went on weeping; I saw how little I had
valued him; how little I had valued anything that was mine.
-- Pamela Frankau, "The Duchess and the Smugs"
%
I paid a visit to my local precinct in Greenwich Village and
asked a sergeant to show me some rape statistics. He politely obliged.
That month there had been thirty-five rape complaints, an advance of ten
over the same month for the previous year. The precinct had made two
arrests.
"Not a very impressive record," I offered.
"Don't worry about it," the sergeant assured me. "You know what
these complaints represent?"
"What do they represent?" I asked.
"Prostitutes who didn't get their money," he said firmly,
closing the book.
-- Susan Brownmiller, "Against Our Will"
%
[I plan] to see, hear, touch, and destroy everything in my path,
including beets, rutabagas, and most random vegetables, but excluding yams,
as I am absolutely terrified of yams...
Actually, I think my fear of yams began in my early youth, when many
of my young comrades pelted me with same for singing songs of far-off lands
and deep blue seas in a language closely resembling that of the common sow.
My psychosis was further impressed into my soul as I reached adolescence,
when, while skipping through a field of yams, light-heartedly tossing flowers
into the stratosphere, a great yam-picking machine tore through the fields,
pursuing me to the edge of the great plantation, where I escaped by diving
into a great ditch filled with a mixture of water and pig manure, which may
explain my tendency to scream, "Here come the Martians! Hide the eggs!" every
time I have pork. But I digress. The fact remains that I cannot rationally
deal with yams, and pigs are terrible conversationalists.
%
"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
I said, "Preacher, give me strength for round 5."
He said, "What you need is to grow up, son."
I said, "Growin' up leads to growin' old, And then to dying, and
to me that don't sound like much fun.
-- John Cougar, "The Authority Song"
%
"I suppose you expect me to talk."
"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."
-- Goldfinger
%
"I think he said 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'"
"Nonsense, he was obviously referring to all manufacturers of
dairy products."
-- The Life of Brian
%
"I thought you were trying to get into shape."
"I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick,
that is also a psychological interaction.
The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not
so friendly.
The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
If the tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler
is great, then the application is great. If the application is great, then
the user is pleased and there is harmony in the world.
The tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth
to the assembler.
The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand
languages.
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language
expresses the yin and yang of software. Each language has its place within
the tao.
But do not program in Cobol or Fortran if you can help it.
%
If you do your best the rest of the way, that takes care of
everything. When we get to October 2, we'll add up the wins, and then
we'll either all go into the playoffs, or we'll all go home and play golf.
Both those things sound pretty good to me.
-- Sparky Anderson
%
If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you
brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled-
up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and
repeat the sequence.
You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to
hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it
again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around
your own apartment?
-- William S. Burroughs
%
If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
difficult can it be?"
Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
I'd say that VCS is more like the anal sex of the software
world: Everybody talks about it, some people do it, some people enjoy
it, but typically only vague implications about the best techniques
are ever voiced in public.
-- Warner Losh, on Version Control Systems
%
"I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided. "The pin I'm wearing
means I'm a member of the IA. That's Inamorati Anonymous. An inamorato is
somebody in love. That's the worst addiction of all."
"Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with
them, or something?"
"Right. The whole idea is to get where you don't need it. I was
lucky. I kicked it young. But there are sixty-year-old men, believe it or
not, and women even older, who might wake up in the night screaming."
"You hold meetings, then, like the AA?"
"No, of course not. You get a phone number, an answering service
you can call. Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case
it gets so bad you can't handle it alone. We're isolates, Arnold. Meetings
would destroy the whole point of it."
-- Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49"
%
"I'm looking for adventure, excitement, beautiful women," cried the
young man to his father as he prepared to leave home. "Don't try to stop me.
I'm on my way."
"Who's trying to stop you?" shouted the father. "Take me along!"
%
I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the
right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document
library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I
should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it
was by the time I find it.
I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe
"The Paper Chase: IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except
that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder
pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left
blank."
-- Alex Crain
%
"I'm terribly sorry, sir," the novice barber apologized, after
badly nicking a customer. "Let me wrap your head in a towel."
"That's all right," said the customer. "I'll just take it home
under my arm."
%
In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
Junior, what are you up to?"
"I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
"Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible! No one
will publish such rubbish!"
"Well, follow me and I'll show you."
They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the
rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a
wolf. "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"
"I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour
wolves."
"Are you crazy? Where's your academic honesty?"
"Come with me and I'll show you."
As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face
and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave
and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge
lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody
remnants of the wolf and the fox.
The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are
important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
%
In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to
his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's
kill all the lawyers." That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment
was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc.
Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News,
Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess
of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts. Lawyers
and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure
out how the pie gets divided. Neither profession provides any added value
to product."
According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has
10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population. The U.S. has 200
lawyers and 700 accountants. This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of
pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack." Could Dick Butcher have
been an efficiency expert?
-- Motor Trend, May 1983
%
In the beginning, God created the Earth and he said, "Let there be
mud."
And there was mud.
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud
can see what we have done."
And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was
man. Mud-as-man alone could speak.
"What is the purpose of all this?" man asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all of this," said God.
And He went away.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Between Time and Timbuktu"
%
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of
IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there
be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they
carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called
the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was
evening and there was morning, one interrupt.
-- Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk"
%
In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
the Great Mathematical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist. And they grew to
large numbers and prospered.
One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
as the eye could see. So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
was to reach up as far as "up" went. Further and further up they went ...
until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens. One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
out from under the rubble. It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
they began to speak to one another, SURPRISE of all surprises! they could not
understand each other. They all spoke different languages. They all fought
amongst themselves and each went about their own way. To this day the
Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
-- The Story of Babel
%
In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time.
Therefore, Space and Time are the Yin and Yang of programming.
Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of
time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always
have enough time and space to accomplish their goals.
How could it be otherwise?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he
sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?", inquired Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play".
At this Minsky shut his eyes, and Sussman asked his teacher "Why do
you close your eyes?"
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
%
In the east there is a shark which is larger than all other fish. It
changes into a bird whose wings are like clouds filling the sky. When this
bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters.
This message it drops into the midst of the programmers, like a seagull
making its mark upon the beach. Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with
the blue sky at its back, returns home.
The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands
it not. The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears
its message. The master programmer continues to work at his terminal, for he
does not know that the bird has come and gone.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
"In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to
like them, and I'm old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely
baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it's not equatorial enough.
Equatorial!" He gave a hollow laugh. "What does it matter? Science has
achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than
right any day."
"And are you?"
"No. That's where it all falls down, of course."
"Pity," said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a good
life-style otherwise."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care
what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you
may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if
not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible
benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body,
I ask this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be,
in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my
capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may
not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your
receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and
which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony.
Amen.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Creatures of Light and Darkness", 1969
%
INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%
"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
%
It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden
directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire.
During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the
Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with
enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's
sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~ aboard her shell script,
custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore
freedom and games to the network...
-- DECWARS
%
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and
by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the
case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are
like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they
require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will
not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and
because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature
human beings.
The worst kind of friend to take home is a girl, because in that case,
there is the potential that your parents will lose you not just for the
duration of the visit but forever. The worst kind of girl to take home is one
of a different religion: Not only will you be lost to your parents forever but
you will be lost to a woman who is immune to their religious/moral arguments
and whose example will irretrievably corrupt you.
Let's say you've fallen in love with just such a girl and would like
to take her home for the holidays. You are aware of your parents' xenophobic
response to anyone of a different religion. How to prepare them for the shock?
Simple. Call them up shortly before your visit and tell them that you
have gotten quite serious about somebody who is of a different religion, a
different race and the same sex. Tell them you have already invited this
person to meet them. Give the information a moment to sink in and then
remark that you were only kidding, that your lover is merely of a different
religion. They will be so relieved they will welcome her with open arms.
-- Playboy, January, 1983
%
It seems there's this magician working one of the luxury cruise ships
for a few years. He doesn't have to change his routines much as the audiences
change over fairly often, and he's got a good life. The only problem is the
ship's parrot, who perches in the hall and watches him night after night, year
after year. Finally, the parrot figures out how almost every trick works and
starts giving it away for the audience. For example, when the magician makes
a bouquet of flowers disappear, the parrot squawks "Behind his back! Behind
his back!" Well, the magician is really annoyed at this, but there's not much
he can do about it as the parrot is a ship's mascot and very popular with the
passengers.
One night, the ship strikes some floating debris, and sinks without
a trace. Almost everyone aboard was lost, except for the magician and the
parrot. For three days and nights they just drift, with the magician clinging
to one end of a piece of driftwood and the parrot perched on the other end.
As the sun rises on the morning of the fourth day, the parrot walks over to
the magician's end of the log. With obvious disgust in his voice, he snaps
"OK, you win, I give up. Where did you hide the ship?"
%
It seems these two guys, George and Harry, set out in a Hot Air
balloon to cross the United States. After forty hours in the air, George
turned to Harry, and said, "Harry, I think we've drifted off course! We
need to find out where we are."
Harry cools the air in the balloon, and they descend to below the
cloud cover. Slowly drifting over the countryside, George spots a man
standing below them and yells out, "Excuse me! Can you please tell me
where we are?"
The man on the ground yells back, "You're in a balloon, approximately
fifty feet in the air!"
George turns to Harry and says, "Well, that man *must* be a lawyer".
Replies Harry, "How can you tell?".
"Because the information he gave us is 100% accurate, and totally
useless!"
That's the end of The Joke, but for you people who are still worried about
George and Harry: they end up in the drink, and make the front page of the
New York Times: "Balloonists Soaked by Lawyer".
%
It took 300 years to build and by the time it was 10% built,
everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But by then the investment
was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it has
cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing.
There are at present no plans to replace it, since it was never
really needed in the first place.
I expect every installation has its own pet software which is
analogous to the above.
-- K. E. Iverson, on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
%
It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
icepacks.
-- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
"It's a summons."
"What's a summons?"
"It means summon's in trouble."
-- Rocky and Bullwinkle
%
"It's today!" said Piglet.
"My favorite day," said Pooh.
%
Jacek, a Polish schoolboy, is told by his teacher that he has
been chosen to carry the Polish flag in the May Day parade.
"Why me?" whines the boy. "Three years ago I carried the flag
when Brezhnev was the Secretary; then I carried the flag when it was
Andropov's turn, and again when Chernenko was in the Kremlin. Why is
it always me, teacher?"
"Because, Jacek, you have such golden hands," the teacher
explains.
-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always
getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever.
They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the
applications for.
-- Dave Barry
%
Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and
tries to hide behind a beard. No good. There are still too many people
and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking. He moves to the
outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,
caretaker included. He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,
day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.
Nobody's cut the grass in months. What's happened to that caretaker?
What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are
start to get curious. A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.
Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared. The senior
class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a
movie one night and stays out. The town's up in arms, but just before the
police take action, the kids turn up. They've found a purpose. They go
home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going
now. They're in a band.
-- Ira Kaplan
%
Listen, Tyrone, you don't know how dangerous that stuff is.
Suppose someday you just plug in and go away and never come back? Eh?
Ho, ho! Don't I wish! What do you think every electrofreak
dreams about? You're such an old fuddyduddy! A-and who sez it's a
dream, huh? M-maybe it exists. Maybe there is a Machine to take us
away, take us completely, suck us out through the electrodes out of
the skull 'n' into the Machine and live there forever with all the
other souls it's got stored there. It could decide who it would suck
out, a-and when. Dope never gave you immortality. You hadda come
back, every time, into a dying hunk of smelly meat! But We can live
forever, in a clean, honest, purified, Electroworld.
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
Looking for a cool one after a long, dusty ride, the drifter strode
into the saloon. As he made his way through the crowd to the bar, a man
galloped through town screaming, "Big Mike's comin'! Run fer yer lives!"
Suddenly, the saloon doors burst open. An enormous man, standing over
eight feet tall and weighing an easy 400 pounds, rode in on a bull, using a
rattlesnake for a whip. Grabbing the drifter by the arm and throwing him over
the bar, the giant thundered, "Gimme a drink!"
The terrified man handed over a bottle of whiskey, which the man
guzzled in one gulp and then smashed on the bar. He then stood aghast as
the man stuffed the broken bottle in his mouth, munched broken glass and
smacked his lips with relish.
"Can I, ah, uh, get you another, sir?" the drifter stammered.
"Naw, I gotta git outa here, boy," the man grunted. "Big Mike's
a-comin'."
%
Love's Drug
My love is like an iron wand
That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium
That I take before my bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch
That I drink when I be dry;
And I shall love thee still, my dear,
Until my wife is wise.
%
"Mach was the greatest intellectual fraud in the last ten years."
"What about X?"
"I said `intellectual'."
;login, 9/1990
%
Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills.
Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."
%
"Mind if I smoke?"
"I don't care if you burst into flames and die!"
%
"Mind if I smoke?"
"Yes, I'd like to see that, does it come out of your ears or what?"
%
Mother seemed pleased by my draft notice. "Just think of all
the people in England, they've chosen you, it's a great honour, son."
Laughingly I felled her with a right cross.
-- Spike Milligan
%
Moving along a dimly light street, a man I know was suddenly
approached by a stranger who had slipped from the shadows nearby.
"Please, sir," pleaded the stranger, "would you be so kind as
to help a poor unfortunate fellow who is hungry and can't find work?
All I have in the world is this gun."
%
Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada
Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The
company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent
defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in
plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per
cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."
-- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail
%
Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any last requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
"This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
spits in the sergeants face.
"Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
My friends, I am here to tell you of the wondrous continent known as
Africa. Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31.
We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in
Africa. Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule: Up at
6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00. Pretty soon we were back in bed by
6:30. Now Africa is full of big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That
was the biggest game we had. Africa is primarily inhabited by Elks, Moose
and Knights of Pithiests.
The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their
annual conventions. And you should see them gathered around the water hole,
which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water. They
weren't looking for a water hole. They were looking for an alck hole.
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my
pajamas, I don't know. Then we tried to remove the tusks. That's a tough
word to say, tusks. As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were
embedded so firmly we couldn't get them out. But in Alabama the Tusks are
looser, but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying.
We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed.
So we're going back in a few years...
-- Julius H. Marx
%
"My God! Are we sure he was a liberal?"
"Pretty sure. They pulled him from a Volvo."
%
My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or
even that they were always wrong. Rather, I believe that science must be
understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of
robots programmed to collect pure information. I also present this view as
an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on
the alter of human limitations.
I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often
in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it. Galileo was not shown
the instruments of torture in an abstract debate about lunar motion. He had
threatened the Church's conventional argument for social and doctrinal
stability: the static world order with planets circling about a central
earth, priests subordinate to the Pope and serfs to their lord. But the
Church soon made its peace with Galileo's cosmology. They had no choice; the
earth really does revolve about the sun.
-- S. J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
%
"My mother," said the sweet young steno, "says there are some things
a girl should not do before twenty."
"Your mother is right," said the executive, "I don't like a large
audience, either."
%
NEW YORK -- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of
directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip
Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the
offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the
true value of the company.
Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story.
Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover
agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of
their major Middle East subsidiaries. To a person, the board voted to
reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to
reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of
Nazareth.
%
"No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods -- it was so
simple, really. "I didn't, for a long time, but I do now. You just can't
hold people, you can't own them. I mean it's only natural, a natural process
really. Meet. Love. Part. Life goes on. There was never any reason to
expect her to stay always the same -- I mean `in love,' you know." There were
those doubt-quotes of Smoky's, heavily indicated. "I don't hold a grudge. I
can't."
"You do," Grandfather Trout said. "And you don't understand."
-- Little, Big, "John Crowley"
%
Now she speaks rapidly. "Do you know *why* you want to program?"
He shakes his head. He hasn't the faintest idea.
"For the sheer *joy* of programming!" she cries triumphantly.
"The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman. "You take a program,
born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution. You nurture the
program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever
stronger. Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here,
a keystroke changed there." She sweeps her arm in a wide arc. "And other
times you savage whole *blocks* of code, ripping out the program's very
*essence*, then beginning anew. But always building, creating, filling the
program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances. Watching
the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can
stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect. This is the programmer's finest
hour!" Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march.
"This ... this is your canvas! your clay! Go forth and create a masterwork!"
%
Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
direct sunlight.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something
to be avoided than harped upon.
Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being
reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might
just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something
about helping to postpone this reunion.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
"Oh sure, this costume may look silly, but it lets me get in and out
of dangerous situations -- I work for a federal task force doing a survey on
urban crime. Look, here's my ID, and here's a number you can call, that will
put you through to our central base in Atlanta. Go ahead, call -- they'll
confirm who I am.
"Unless, of course, the Astro-Zombies have destroyed it."
-- Captain Freedom
%
Old Barlow was a crossing-tender at a junction where an express train
demolished an automobile and it's occupants. Being the chief witness, his
testimony was vitally important. Barlow explained that the night was dark,
and he waved his lantern frantically, but the driver of the car paid
no attention to the signal.
The railroad company won the case, and the president of the company
complimented the old-timer for his story. "You did wonderfully," he said,
"I was afraid you would waver under testimony."
"No sir," exclaimed the senior, "but I sure was afraid that durned
lawyer was gonna ask me if my lantern was lit."
%
On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%
On the day of his anniversary, Joe was frantically shopping
around for a present for his wife. He knew what she wanted, a
grandfather clock for the living room, but he found the right one
almost impossible to find. Finally, after many hours of searching, Joe
found just the clock he wanted, but the store didn't deliver. Joe,
desperate, paid the shopkeeper, hoisted the clock onto his back, and
staggered out onto the sidewalk. On the way home, he passed a bar.
Just as he reached the door, a drunk stumbled out and crashed into Joe,
sending himself, Joe, and the clock into the gutter. Murphy's law
being in effect, the clock ended up in roughly a thousand pieces.
"You stupid drunk!" screamed Joe, jumping up from the
wreckage. "Why don't you look where the hell you're going!"
With quiet dignity the drunk stood up somewhat unsteadily and
dusted himself off. "And why don't you just wear a wristwatch like a
normal person?"
%
On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale
is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
best, write it down and make that the standard.
The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions
from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of
committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all
with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it
after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think
it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
-- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"
%
On this morning in August when I was 13, my mother sent us out pick
tomatoes. Back in April I'd have killed for a fresh tomato, but in August
they are no more rare or wonderful than rocks. So I picked up one and threw
it at a crab apple tree, where it made a good *splat*, and then threw a tomato
at my brother. He whipped one back at me. We ducked down by the vines,
heaving tomatoes at each other. My sister, who was a good person, said,
"You're going to get it." She bent over and kept on picking.
What a target! She was 17, a girl with big hips, and bending over,
she looked like the side of a barn.
I picked up a tomato so big it sat on the ground. It looked like it
had sat there a week. The underside was brown, small white worms lived in it,
and it was very juicy. I stood up and took aim, and went into the windup,
when my mother at the kitchen window called my name in a sharp voice. I had
to decide quickly. I decided.
A rotten Big Boy hitting the target is a memorable sound, like a fat
man doing a belly-flop. With a whoop and a yell the tomatoe came after
faster than I knew she could run, and grabbed my shirt and was about to brain
me when Mother called her name in a sharp voice. And my sister, who was a
good person, obeyed and let go -- and burst into tears. I guess she knew that
the pleasure of obedience is pretty thin compared with the pleasure of hearing
a rotten tomato hit someone in the rear end.
-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%
Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in The Holiday Season, that very
special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old
traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We
traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we
see a shopper emerge from the mall. Then we follow her, in very much the same
spirit as the Three Wise Men, who, 2,000 years ago, followed a star, week after
week, until it led them to a parking space.
We try to keep our bumper about 4 inches from the shopper's calves, to
let the other circling cars know that she belongs to us. Sometimes, two cars
will get into a fight over whom the shopper belongs to, similar to the way
great white sharks will fight over who gets to eat a snorkeler. So, we follow
our shopper closely, hunched over the steering wheel, whistling "It's Beginning
to Look a Lot Like Christmas" through our teeth, until we arrive at her car,
which is usually parked several time zones away from the mall. Sometimes our
shopper tries to indicate she was merely planning to drop off some packages and
go back to shopping. But, when she hears our engine rev in a festive fashion
and sees the holiday gleam in our eyes, she realizes she would never make it.
-- Dave Barry, "Holiday Joy -- Or, the Great Parking Lot
Skirmish"
%
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great
crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs
and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and
resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature
said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall
let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current
you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will
die quicker than boredom!"
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at
once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time,
as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the
bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See
a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come
to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more
Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go.
Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.
But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the
rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
-- Richard Bach
%
Once there was a marine biologist who loved dolphins. He spent his
time trying to feed and protect his beloved creatures of the sea. One day,
in a fit of inventive genius, he came up with a serum that would make
dolphins live forever!
Of course he was ecstatic. But he soon realized that in order to mass
produce this serum he would need large amounts of a certain compound that was
only found in nature in the metabolism of a rare South American bird. Carried
away by his love for dolphins, he resolved that he would go to the zoo and
steal one of these birds.
Unbeknownst to him, as he was arriving at the zoo an elderly lion was
escaping from its cage. The zookeepers were alarmed and immediately began
combing the zoo for the escaped animal, unaware that it had simply lain down
on the sidewalk and had gone to sleep.
Meanwhile, the marine biologist arrived at the zoo and procured his
bird. He was so excited by the prospect of helping his dolphins that he
stepped absentmindedly stepped over the sleeping lion on his way back to his
car. Immediately, 1500 policemen converged on him and arrested him for
transporting a myna across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.
%
Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl taking a stroll
through the woods. All at once she saw an extremely ugly bull frog seated
on a log and to her amazement the frog spoke to her. "Maiden," croaked the
frog, "would you do me a favor? This will be hard for you to believe, but
I was once a handsome, charming prince and then a mean, ugly old witch cast
a spell over me and turned me into a frog."
"Oh, what a pity!", exclaimed the girl. "I'll do anything I can to
help you break such a spell."
"Well," replied the frog, "the only way that this spell can be
taken away is for some lovely young woman to take me home and let me spend
the night under her pillow."
The young girl took the ugly frog home and placed him beneath her
pillow that night when she retired. When she awoke the next morning, sure
enough, there beside her in bed was a very young, handsome man, clearly of
royal blood. And so they lived happily ever after, except that to this day
her father and mother still don't believe her story.
%
Once upon a time, there was a fisherman who lived by a great river.
One day, after a hard day's fishing, he hooked what seemed to him to be the
biggest, strongest fish he had ever caught. He fought with it for hours,
until, finally, he managed to bring it to the surface. Looking of the edge
of the boat, he saw the head of this huge fish breaking the surface. Smiling
with pride, he reached over the edge to pull the fish up. Unfortunately, he
accidently caught his watch on the edge, and, before he knew it, there was a
snap, and his watch tumbled into the water next to the fish with a loud
"sploosh!" Distracted by this shiny object, the fish made a sudden lunge,
simultaneously snapping the line, and swallowing the watch. Sadly, the
fisherman stared into the water, and then began the slow trip back home.
Many years later, the fisherman, now an old man, was working in a
boring assembly-line job in a large city. He worked in a fish-processing
plant. It was his job, as each fish passed under his hands, to chop off their
heads, readying them for the next phase in processing. This monotonous task
went on for years, the dull *thud* of the cleaver chopping of each head being
his entire world, day after day, week after weary week. Well, one day, as he
was chopping fish, he happened to notice that the fish coming towards him on
the line looked very familiar. Yes, yes, it looked... could it be the fish
he had lost on that day so many years ago? He trembled with anticipation as
his cleaver came down. IT STRUCK SOMETHING HARD! IT WAS HIS THUMB!
%
Once upon a time, there were five blind men who had the opportunity
to experience an elephant for the first time. One approached the elephant,
and, upon encountering one of its sturdy legs, stated, "Ah, an elephant is
like a tree." The second, after exploring the trunk, said, "No, an elephant
is like a strong hose." The third, grasping the tail, said "Fool! An elephant
is like a rope!" The fourth, holding an ear, stated, "No, more like a fan."
And the fifth, leaning against the animal's side, said, "An elephant is like
a wall." The five then began to argue loudly about who had the more accurate
perception of the elephant.
The elephant, tiring of all this abuse, suddenly reared up and
attacked the men. He continued to trample them until they were nothing but
bloody lumps of flesh. Then, strolling away, the elephant remarked, "It just
goes to show that you can't depend on first impressions. When I first saw
them I didn't think they'd be any fun at all."
%
Once upon a time there were three brothers who were knights
in a certain kingdom. And, there was a Princess in a neighboring kingdom
who was of marriageable age. Well, one day, in full armour, their horses,
and their page, the three brothers set off to see if one of them could
win her hand. The road was long and there were many obstacles along the
way, robbers to be overcome, hard terrain to cross. As they coped with
each obstacle they became more and more disgusted with their page. He was
not only inept, he was a coward, he could not handle the horses, he was,
in short, a complete flop. When they arrived at the court of the kingdom,
they found that they were expected to present the Princess with some
treasure. The two older brothers were discouraged, since they had not
thought of this and were unprepared. The youngest, however, had the
answer: Promise her anything, but give her our page.
%
Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property
of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane
complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to
obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is
available to anyone.
-- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid"
%
One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make
a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers
to each cons."
Moon patiently told the student the following story -- "One day a
student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage
collector..."
%
One day it was announced that the young monk Kyogen had reached
an enlightened state. Much impressed by this news, several of his peers
went to speak with him.
"We have heard that you are enlightened. Is this true?" his fellow
students inquired.
"It is", Kyogen answered.
"Tell us", said a friend, "how do you feel?"
"As miserable as ever", replied the enlightened Kyogen.
%
One evening he spoke. Sitting at her feet, his face raised to her,
he allowed his soul to be heard. "My darling, anything you wish, anything
I am, anything I can ever be... That's what I want to offer you -- not the
things I'll get for you, but the thing in me that will make me able to get
them. That thing -- a man can't renounce it -- but I want to renounce it --
so that it will be yours -- so that it will be in your service -- only for
you."
The girl smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie
Kelly?"
He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. He never
saw that girl again. Gail Wynand, who prided himself on never needing a
lesson twice, did not fall in love again in the years that followed.
-- Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead"
%
One fine day, the bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus,
and drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops -- a few
people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well. At the next
stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet eight, built like a
wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said,
"Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.
Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically
meek? Well, he was. Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't
happy about it. Well, the next day the same thing happened -- Big John got on
again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down. And the next day, and the
one after that, and so forth. This grated on the bus driver, who started
losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him. Finally he
could stand it no longer. He signed up for bodybuilding courses, karate, judo,
and all that good stuff. By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong;
what's more, he felt really good about himself.
So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus
and said "Big John doesn't pay!," the driver stood up, glared back at the
passenger, and screamed, "And why not?"
With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a
bus pass."
%
One night the captain of a tanker saw a light dead ahead. He
directed his signalman to flash a signal to the light which went...
"Change course 10 degrees South."
The reply was quickly flashed back...
"You change course 10 degrees North."
The captain was a little annoyed at this reply and sent a further
message.....
"I am a captain. Change course 10 degrees South."
Back came the reply...
"I am an able-seaman. Change course 10 degrees North."
The captain was outraged at this reply and send a message....
"I am a 240,000 tonne tanker. CHANGE course 10 degrees South!"
Back came the reply...
"I am a LIGHTHOUSE. Change course 10 degrees North!!!!"
-- Cruising Helmsman, "On The Right Course"
%
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic
is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago.
Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our
VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand,
easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual
users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines.
And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run
out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end
up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly
check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter
what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if
you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX
is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain. Ed.]
%
page 46
...a report citing a study by Dr. Thomas C. Chalmers, of the Mount Sinai
Medical Center in New York, which compared two groups that were being used
to test the theory that ascorbic acid is a cold preventative. "The group
on placebo who thought they were on ascorbic acid," says Dr. Chalmers,
"had fewer colds than the group on ascorbic acid who thought they were
on placebo."
page 56
The placebo is proof that there is no real separation between mind and body.
Illness is always an interaction between both. It can begin in the mind and
affect the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of
which are served by the same bloodstream. Attempts to treat most mental
diseases as though they were completely free of physical causes and attempts
to treat most bodily diseases as though the mind were in no way involved must
be considered archaic in the light of new evidence about the way the human
body functions.
-- Norman Cousins,
"Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient"
%
Penn's aunts made great apple pies at low prices. No one else in
town could compete with the pie rates of Penn's aunts.
During the American Revolution, a Britisher tried to raid a farm. He
stumbled across a rock on the ground and fell, whereupon an aggressive Rhode
Island Red hopped on top. Seeing this, the farmer commented, "Chicken catch
a Tory!"
A wife started serving chopped meat, Monday hamburger, Tuesday meat
loaf, Wednesday tartar steak, and Thursday meatballs. On Friday morning her
husband snarled, "How now, ground cow?"
A journalist, thrilled over his dinner, asked the chef for the recipe.
Retorted the chef, "Sorry, we have the same policy as you journalists, we
never reveal our sauce."
A new chef from India was fired a week after starting the job. He
kept favoring curry.
A couple of kids tried using pickles instead of paddles for a Ping-Pong
game. They had the volley of the Dills.
%
People of all sorts of genders are reporting great difficulty,
these days, in selecting the proper words to refer to those of the female
persuasion.
"Lady," "woman," and "girl" are all perfectly good words, but
misapplying them can earn one anything from the charge of vulgarity to a good
swift smack. We are messing here with matters of deference, condescension,
respect, bigotry, and two vague concepts, age and rank. It is troubling
enough to get straight who is really what. Those who deliberately misuse
the terms in a misbegotten attempt at flattery are asking for it.
A woman is any grown-up female person. A girl is the un-grown-up
version. If you call a wee thing with chubby cheeks and pink hair ribbons a
"woman," you will probably not get into trouble, and if you do, you will be
able to handle it because she will be under three feet tall. However, if you
call a grown-up by a child's name for the sake of implying that she has a
youthful body, you are also implying that she has a brain to match.
%
"Perhaps he is not honest," Mr. Frostee said inside Cobb's head,
sounding a bit worried.
"Of course he isn't," Cobb answered. "What we have to look out for
is him calling the cops anyway, or trying to blackmail us for more money."
"I think you should kill him and eat his brain," Mr. Frostee
said quickly.
"That's not the answer to *every* problem in interpersonal relations,"
Cobb said, hopping out.
-- Rudy Rucker, "Software"
%
Phases of a Project:
(1) Exultation.
(2) Disenchantment.
(3) Confusion.
(4) Search for the Guilty.
(5) Punishment for the Innocent.
(6) Distinction for the Uninvolved.
%
Phil [Record] was known as the Hat because he always wore a felt
snap brim. It was the standard uniform for police reporters, for one
reason: it made it easier for them to pass themselves off as detectives.
We had an informal code of ethics then; we never lied about who we were.
But if people mistook us for the police, that was their problem, not ours.
If they thought they were giving confidential information to an investigator,
well, that was their problem, too. As we understood the First Amendment,
everyone had a right to talk to the _Star-Telegram_, even if they didn't
know they were talking to the _Star-Telegram_.
-- Bob Schieffer, "This Just In"
%
Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
plumbing works.
A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
kill you.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Price Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon
the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program
ran like a gentle wind.
Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!"
"Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I
follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique. When I first began to program I
would see before me the whole program in one mass. After three years I no
longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing.
My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit,
free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program
writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them
coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code
and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the
program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my
eyes for a moment and then log off."
Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the
universe again..." An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't
know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us,"
ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but
they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have
been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown,
and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
%
Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him
Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed,
and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell
every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about
getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console
me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under.
Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem
to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that.
No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or
maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland... On
the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as
whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last
possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing:
On the Campaign Trail"
%
"Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing
what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt
somebody else. He even told you he'd be hurt if..."
"He was going to suck my blood!"
"Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt
if they don't live our way."
...
"The thing that puzzles you," he said, "is an accepted saying that
happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose,
ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides.
Nobody else. My vampire told you he'd be hurt if you didn't let him? That's
his decision to be hurt, that's his choice. What you do about it is your
decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake
through his heart. If he doesn't want the holly stake, he's free to resist,
in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices."
"When you look at it that way..."
"Listen," he said, "it's important. We are all. Free. To do.
Whatever. We want. To do."
-- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
%
Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly,
uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the
rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the
algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure
of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot
claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of
differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's,
largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably
he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as
well.
-- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J. F. Traub
%
Robert Kennedy's 1964 Senatorial campaign planners told him that
their intention was to present him to the television viewers as a sincere,
generous person. "You going to use a double?" asked Kennedy.
Thumbing through a promotional pamphlet prepared for his 1964
Senatorial campaign, Robert Kennedy came across a photograph of himself
shaking hands with a well-known labor leader.
"There must be a better photo that this," said Kennedy to the
advertising men in charge of his campaign.
"What's wrong with this one?" asked one adman.
"That fellow's in jail," said Kennedy.
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
SAFETY
I can live without
Someone I love
But not without
Someone I need.
%
Sam went to his psychiatrist complaining of a hatred for elephants.
"I can't stand elephants," he explained. "I lie awake nights despising
them. The thought of an elephant fills me with loathing."
"Sam," said the psychiatrist, "there's only one thing for you to do.
Go to Africa, organize a safari, find an elephant in the jungle and shoot it.
That way you'll get it out of your system."
Sam immediately made arrangements for a safari hunt in Africa,
inviting his best friend to join him. They arrived in Nairobi and lost no
time getting out on the jungle trails. After they had been hunting for
several days, Sam's best friend grabbed him by the arm one morning and
yelled at him:
"Sam, Sam, Sam! Over there behind that tree there's and elephant!
Sam -- Get your gun -- no, no, not THAT gun -- the rifle with the longer
barrel! Now aim it! QUICK! SAM! QUICK! No! Not that way -- this way!
Be sure you don't jerk the trigger! Wait SAM! Don't let him see you! Aim
at his head!"
Sam whirled around, took aim, and killed his friend. He was put in
prison and his psychiatrist flew to Africa to visit him. "I sent you over
here to kill an elephant and instead you shoot your best friend," the
psychiatrist said. "Why?"
"Well," Sam replied, "there's only one thing in the world that I
hate more than elephants and that is a loudmouth know-it-all!"
%
Seems George was playing his usual eighteen holes on Saturday
afternoon. Teeing off from the 17th, he sliced into the rough over near
the edge of the fairway. Just as he was about to chip out, he noticed a
long funeral procession going past on a nearby street. Reverently, George
removed his hat and stood at attention until the procession had passed.
Then he continued his game, finishing with a birdie on the eighteenth.
Later, at the clubhouse, a fellow golfer greet George. "Say, that was a
nice gesture you made today, George.
"What do you mean?" asked George.
"Well, it was nice of you to take off your cap and stand
respectfully when that funeral went by," the friend replied.
"Oh, yes," said George. "Well, we were married 17 years, you
know."
%
"Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully.
"An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have
said 'Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
"I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly.
"Too proud?" the other enquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"
she said, "that one can't help growing older."
"ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With
proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking-Glass"
%
Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime.
The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm...
Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all
the odd integers are prime."
The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not
sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by
experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is
prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13
is prime... Well, it seems that you're right."
The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded,
"Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's
see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is...
well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it
does seem right."
Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says
"Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long!
I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to
his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says,
"1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..."
%
She said, "I know you ... you cannot sing."
I said, "That's nothing, you should hear me play piano."
-- Morrisey
%
"Sheriff, we gotta catch Black Bart."
"Oh, yeah? What's he look like?"
"Well, he's wearin' a paper hat, a paper shirt, paper pants and
paper boots."
"What's he wanted for?"
"Rustling."
%
Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the
Vulgate Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull
automatically excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration
in the text. This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible.
He personally examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the
published Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps
had to be printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result
provoked wry comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and
Pope Sixtus had no recourse but to order the return and destruction of
every copy.
%
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark]. With
a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver
the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the
lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land
and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over,
when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the
sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed
right straight toward us.
Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and I
were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads.
We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and
a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower
calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using
a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below
the surface of the water. We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we
had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach,
and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island
until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
"So you don't have to, Cindy, but I was wondering if you might
want to go to someplace, you know, with me, sometime."
"Well, I can think of a lot of worse things, David."
"Friday, then?"
"Why not, David, it might even be fun."
-- Dating in Minnesota
%
Some 1500 miles west of the Big Apple we find the Minneapple, a
haven of tranquility in troubled times. It's a good town, a civilized town.
A town where they still know how to get your shirts back by Thursday. Let
the Big Apple have the feats of "Broadway Joe" Namath. We have known the
stolid but steady Killebrew. Listening to Cole Porter over a dry martini
may well suit those unlucky enough never to have heard the Whoopee John Polka
Band and never to have shared a pitcher of 3.2 Grain Belt Beer. The loss is
theirs. And the Big Apple has yet to bake the bagel that can match peanut
butter on lefse. Here is a town where the major urban problem is dutch elm
disease and the number one crime is overtime parking. We boast more theater
per capita than the Big Apple. We go to see, not to be seen. We go even
when we must shovel ten inches of snow from the driveway to get there. Indeed
the winters are fierce. But then comes the marvel of the Minneapple summer.
People flock to the city's lakes to frolic and rejoice at the sight of so
much happy humanity free from the bonds of the traditional down-filled parka.
Here's to the Minneapple. And to its people. Our flair for style is balanced
by a healthy respect for wind chill factors.
And we always, always eat our vegetables.
This is the Minneapple.
%
Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting
alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion. It is
the source of all programs. I do not know its name, so I will call it the
Tao of Programming.
If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler is
greater, then the applications is great. The user is pleased and there is
harmony in the world.
The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of
morning.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees
on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert
Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of
employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of
farmers in America."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and
women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with
good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's
Machineries of Joy?"
"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
-- Ray Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
%
Split 1/4 bottle .187 liters
Half 1/2 bottle
Bottle 750 milliliters
Magnum 2 bottles 1.5 liters
Jeroboam 4 bottles
Rehoboam 6 bottles Not available in the US
Methuselah 8 bottles
Salmanazar 12 bottles
Balthazar 16 bottles
Nebuchadnezzar 20 bottles 15 liters
Sovereign 34 bottles 26 liters
The Sovereign is a new bottle, made for the launching of the
largest cruise ship in the world. The bottle alone cost 8,000 dollars
to produce and they only made 8 of them.
Most of the funny names come from Biblical people.
%
Stop! Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first
these questions three, ere the other side he see!
"What is your name?"
"Sir Brian of Bell."
"What is your quest?"
"I seek the Holy Grail."
"What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments
to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?"
"I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!"
%
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later?
Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long
run... There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could
strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we
were doing was right, that we were winning...
And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting
-- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go
up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
"Surely you can't be serious."
"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."
%
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola
was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to
improve ...
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
"That wife of mine is a liar," said the angry husband to a
sympathetic pal seated next to him in a bar.
"How do you know?" the friend asked.
"She didn't come home last night, and when I asked her where
she'd been she said she'd spent the night with her sister Shirley."
"So?"
"So, she's a liar. I spent the night with her sister Shirley."
%
"That's right; the upper-case shift works fine on the screen, but
they're not coming out on the damn printer... Hold? Sure, I'll hold."
-- e.e. cummings last service call
%
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff
and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love,
you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your
honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for
it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is
the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be
tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning
is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
-- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"
%
The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time
for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners
has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a
curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a
foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the
sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand
dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of
people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to
is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street...
%
The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff
in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up. Everybody but one girl
laughed uproariously. "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you
got a sense of humor?"
"I don't have to laugh," she said. "I'm leaving Friday anyway.
%
The doctor had just finished giving the young man a thorough
physical examination. "The best thing for you to do," the M.D. said,
"is give up drinking, give up smoking, get to bed early and stay away
from women."
"Doc, I don't deserve the best," pleaded his patient. "What's
second best?"
%
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES
SPECIES: Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis)
Courtship & Mating:
Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual
state of sexual readiness. Courtship behavior alternates between
awkward shyness and abrupt advances. When he finally mates, he
chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and
a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes.
Track:
Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old
copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog.
Comments:
Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations.
%
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES
SPECIES: Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis)
Description:
Gangly and frail, the hacker has a high forehead and thinning hair.
Head disproportionately large and crooked forward, complexion wan and
sightly gray from CRT illumination. He has heavy black-rimmed glasses
and a look of intense concentration, which may be due to a software
problem or to a pork-and-bean breakfast.
Feathering:
HOMO COMPUTATIS saw a Brylcreem ad fifteen years ago and believed it.
Consequently, crest is greased down, except for the cowlick.
Song:
A rather plaintive "Is it up?"
%
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES
SPECIES: Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis)
Plumage:
All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the
top of the laundry basket. Style varies with status. Hacker managers
wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars,
and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white
or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket.
Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black
plastic digital watch with calculator.
%
The General disliked trying to explain the highly technical
inner workings of the U.S. Air Force.
"$7,662 for a ten cup coffee maker, General?" the Senator asked.
In his head he ran through his standard explanations. "It's not so,"
he thought. "It's a deterrent." Soon he came up with, "It's computerized,
Senator. Tiny computer chips make coffee that's smooth and full-bodied. Try
a cup."
The Senator did. "Pfffttt! Tastes like jet fuel!"
"It's not so," the General thought. "It's a deterrent."
Then he remembered something. "We bought a lot of untested computer
chips," the General answered. "They got into everything. Just a little
mix-up. Nothing serious."
Then he remembered something else. It was at the site of the
mysterious B-1 crash. A strange smell in the fuel lines. It smelled like
coffee. Smooth and full bodied...
-- Another Episode of General's Hospital
%
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of
the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
%
"The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")
On the good ship Enterprise
Every week there's a new surprise
Where the Romulans lurk
And the Klingons often go berserk.
Yes, the good ship Enterprise
There's excitement anywhere it flies
Where Tribbles play
And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.
See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
Mr. Spock is at his side.
The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
It gets fried, scattered far and wide.
It's the good ship Enterprise
Heading out where danger lies
And you live in dread
If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
-- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
%
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an
interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value.
You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons
of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches
of Santraginus V ... use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River
Moth; wave your towel in emergencies, and, of course, dry yourself off
with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
the subject of towels.
Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For
some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel
with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a
toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore,
the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or
a dozen other items that he may have "lost". After all, any man who can
hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds,
win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be
reckoned with.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The honeymooning couple agreed it was a fine day for horseback riding.
After a mile or so, the bride's mount cantered under a low tree and a
branch scraped her forehead lightly. The groom dismounted, glared at his
wife's horse, and said, "That's number one."
The ride then proceeded. After another mile or so, the bride's
horse stumbled over a pebble and the lady suffered a slight jostling.
Again, her man leapt from his saddle and strode over to the nervous animal.
"That's two," he said.
Five miles later, the bride's horse became frightened when a rabbit
crossed its path, reared up and threw the girl. Immediately, the groom was
off his horse. "That's three!", he shouted, and, pulling out a pistol, he
shot the horse between the eyes.
"You brute!" shrieked his bride. "Now I see the kind of man I
married! You're a sadist, that's what!"
The groom turned to her coolly. "That's one," he said.
%
"The jig's up, Elman."
"Which jig?"
-- Jeff Elman
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
ours."
The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have
almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the
organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to
exist.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL
From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley,
VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry.
Here is a sample program:
LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND
VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN
FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
DO*WAH - (DITTY**2)
BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
SURE
LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
REALLY
LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW)
IM*SURE
GOTO THE MALL
When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message:
GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
message:
"i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
you find the time to try it again?"
%
The Lord and I are in a sheep-shepherd relationship, and I am in
a position of negative need.
He prostrates me in a green-belt grazing area.
He conducts me directionally parallel to non-torrential aqueous
liquid.
He returns to original satisfaction levels my psychological makeup.
He switches me on to a positive behavioral format for maximal
prestige of His identity.
It should indeed be said that notwithstanding the fact that I make
ambulatory progress through the umbrageous inter-hill mortality slot, terror
sensations will no be initiated in me, due to para-etical phenomena.
Your pastoral walking aid and quadrupic pickup unit introduce me
into a pleasurific mood state.
You design and produce a nutriment-bearing furniture-type structure
in the context of non-cooperative elements.
You act out a head-related folk ritual employing vegetable extract.
My beverage utensil experiences a volume crisis.
It is an ongoing deductible fact that your inter-relational
empathetical and non-ventious capabilities will retain me as their
target-focus for the duration of my non-death period, and I will possess
tenant rights in the housing unit of the Lord on a permanent, open-ended
time basis.
%
The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the
master programmer to examine. The magician wheeled a large black box into the
master's office while the master waited in silence.
"This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation,"
began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating
system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user
interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct.
Is it not amazing?"
The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he
said.
"Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that
everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree
to this?"
"Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the
data center immediately!" And the magician returned to his tower, well
pleased.
Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master
programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do
you know where it might be?"
"Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform
in the data center."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
The Martian landed his saucer in Manhattan, and immediately upon
emerging was approached by a panhandler. "Mister," said the man, "can I
have a quarter?"
The Martian asked, "What's a quarter?"
The panhandler thought a minute, brightened, then said, "You're
right! Can I have a dollar?"
%
The master programmer moves from program to program without fear. No
change in management can harm him. He will not be fired, even if the project
is canceled. Why is this? He is filled with the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
The Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all
students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school gradu-
ation.
Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's
recognition of the sanctity of human life."
According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22,
1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm." Their
"farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year. But as a "family
farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year.
Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of
Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers." You
probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency.
It's not "elderly" or "senior citizens" anymore. Now it's "chrono-
logically experienced citizens."
According to the FAA, the propeller blade didn't break off, it was
just a case of "uncontained blade liberation."
-- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
%
"...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this
time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
--Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball...
You've got to start way down, at the bottom, when you're six or seven years
old. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen. You've got to let it
grow up with you, and if you're successful and you try hard enough, you're
bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now.
-- Babe Ruth, in his 1948 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium
%
The Priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly.
I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweetened and sustained, called to him from the sea.
Turning the curve he waved his hand. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far
out on the water, round. Usurper.
-- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
%
The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to
get results.
The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
problems in order to get results
The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at
toy problems in order to get results.
%
The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom
their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the
battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved
blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
The answer exists only in the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
"The pyramid is opening!"
"Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
-- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
%
The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the
forest, hunting bear. They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took
their backpacks off and put them inside. At which point the salesman turned
to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down
on the porch. Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest. The noises
got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like
hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and
most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
"Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door,
suddenly stopped, and stepped aside. The bear, unable to stop, continued
through the door and into the cabin. The salesman slammed the door closed
and grinned at his friend. "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this
one and I'll go rustle us up another!"
%
The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth
to the assembler.
The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand
languages.
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language
expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within
the Tao.
But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
The way my jeweler explained it, it's like insurance.
Six months' pay isn't much to keep my wife from sleeping around.
A diamond -- pure, sparkling, natural, flawless, forever. The way marriage
should be but never quite is. People grow and change and sometimes want to
take their clothes off with strangers. So when you invest in a fine piece
of diamond jewelry, you're not only making an investment, you're making a
statement. You're telling the woman you love that you've just spent a lot
of your hard-earned money on her. Now she owes you the kind of loyalty that
only precious jewelry can buy. Isn't she worth it?
The Honeymoon's Over: from $ 5000
The Seven Year Itch: from $10000
No More Lunchtime Quickies: from $15000
Divorce Would Be More Expensive: from $42000
A diamond is for leverage. BeDears
%
The wise programmer is told about the Tao and follows it. The average
programmer is told about the Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer
is told about the Tao and laughs at it. If it were not for laughter, there
would be no Tao.
The highest sounds are the hardest to hear. Going forward is a way to
retreat. Greater talent shows itself late in life. Even a perfect program
still has bugs.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
THE WOMBAT
The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.
%
The world's most avid baseball fan (an Aggie) had arrived at the
stadium for the first game of the World Series only to realize he had left
his ticket at home. Not wanting to miss any of the first inning, he went
to the ticket booth and got in a long line for another seat. After an hour's
wait he was just a few feet from the booth when a voice called out, "Hey,
Dave!" The Aggie looked up, stepped out of line and tried to find the owner
of the voice -- with no success. Then he realized he had lost his place in
line and had to wait all over again. When the fan finally bought his ticket,
he was thirsty, so he went to buy a drink. The line at the concession stand
was long, too, but since the game hadn't started he decided to wait. Just as
he got to the window, a voice called out, "Hey, Dave!" Again the Aggie tried
to find the voice -- but no luck. He was very upset as he got back in line
for his drink. Finally the fan went to his seat, eager for the game to begin.
As he waited for the pitch, he heard the voice calling, "Hey Dave!" once more.
Furious, he stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs, "My name is not
Dave!"
%
Then there's the atmosphere -- half the time you can eat the air,
it's got so much stuff floating around in it. It takes the edge out of
the colors. Down here even the traffic lights are pastel. And people!
With a lot of these folks you'd have to check their green cards just to
make sure that they are Earthlings. Then there's the police. In Portland,
when some guy goes bananas, the cops rope off a sixteen block area around
him and call a shrink from the medical school who stands atop a patrol car
with a megaphone and shouts, "OK! THIS! ALL! STARTED! WHEN! YOU! WERE!
THREE! YEARS! OLD! ON! ACCOUNT! OF! YOUR MOTHER! RIGHT? SO! LET'S!
TALK! ABOUT! IT!" Down here they don't waste that kind of time. The LAPD
has SWAT teams composed of guys who make Darth Vader look like Mr. Peepers.
Before they go to bust a bookie joint they mortar it first.
-- M. Christensen, "A Portland Innocent in LA"
%
Then there's the story of the man who avoided reality for 70 years
with drugs, sex, alcohol, fantasy, TV, movies, records, a hobby, lots of
sleep... And on his 80th birthday died without ever having faced any of
his real problems.
The man's younger brother, who had been facing reality and all his
problems for 50 years with psychiatrists, nervous breakdowns, tics, tension,
headaches, worry, anxiety and ulcers, was so angry at his brother for having
gotten away scott free that he had a paralyzing stroke.
The moral to this story is that there ain't no justice that we can
stand to live with.
-- R. Geis
%
"Then what is magic for?" Prince Lir demanded wildly. "What use is
wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder
hard, to keep from falling.
Schmendrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in
his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for."
...
"Yes, of course," he [Prince Lir] said. "That is exactly what heroes
are for. Wizards make no difference, so they say that nothing does, but
heroes are meant to die for unicorns."
-- P. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
"Then you admit confirming not denying you ever said that?"
"NO! ... I mean Yes! WHAT?"
"I'll put `maybe.'"
-- Bloom County
%
THEORY
Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
-- Dorothy Parker
%
There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
this?
Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think _y_o_u
can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
-- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are
sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts
that people cannot think.
-- Richard W. Hamming
%
There once was a man who went to a computer trade show. Each day as
he entered, the man told the guard at the door:
"I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting. Be
forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered."
This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions
of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully.
But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself.
When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes,
but nothing was to be found.
On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the
guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even
better." So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail.
On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his
curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live
in peace. Please enlighten me. What is it that you are stealing?"
The man smiled. "I am stealing ideas," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
There once was a master programmer who wrote unstructured programs.
A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also began to write unstructured
programs. When the novice asked the master to evaluate his progress, the
master criticized him for writing unstructured programs, saying: "What is
appropriate for the master is not appropriate for the novice. You must
understand the Tao before transcending structure."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
There once was this swami who lived above a delicatessen. Seems one
day he decided to stop in downstairs for some fresh liver. Well, the owner
of the deli was a bit of a cheap-skate, and decided to pick up a little extra
change at his customer's expense. Turning quietly to the counterman, he
whispered, "Weigh down upon the swami's liver!"
%
There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by
going from house to house offering to do odd jobs. He explained this to
a man who answered one door.
"How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man.
"Forty dollars."
"Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes.
Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again.
"All done!", he says, and collects his money. "By the way," the student says,
"That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
%
There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Miffin opened it. "Are
you the Widow Miffin?" a small boy asked.
"I'm Mrs. Miffin," she replied, "but I'm not a widow."
"Oh, no?" replied the little boy. "Wait 'til you see what
they're carrying upstairs!"
%
There was a mad scientist (a mad... social... scientist) who kidnaped
three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked
each of them in separate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no
can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's
cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from
pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive,
and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids
off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good
pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising
solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly
against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor:
Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.
Proof: assume the opposite...
%
There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the
warlord Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design:
an accounting package or an operating system?"
"An operating system," replied the programmer.
The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an
accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating
system," he said.
"Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package,
the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas:
how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to
tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outward
appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the
simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system
is easier to design."
The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well,"
he said, "but which is easier to debug?"
The programmer made no reply.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors. "Look at
how well off I am here," he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit,
"I have my own operating system and file storage device. I do not have to
share my resources with anyone. The software is self-consistent and
easy-to-use. Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?"
The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his
friend, saying: "The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the
midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean
of machinery. The software is a multi-faceted as a diamond and as convoluted
as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique, move through the system
like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy where I am."
The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent. But the
two programmers remained friends until the end of their days.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
They are fools that think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
To wield oneself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
-- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
%
"They spend years searching for their natural parents, convinced their
parents will be happy to see them. I mean, really, can you imagine someone
being happy to see an orphan? Nobody wants them... that's why they're orphans!"
The speaker is Anne Baker, founder and guiding force behind
Orphan-Off, an organization dedicated to keeping orphans confused about the
whereabouts of their natural parents. She is a woman with a mission:
"Basically, what we do is band together to exchange information
about which orphans are looking for which parents in what part of the
country. We're completely computerized.
"The idea is to throw the orphans as many red herrings and false
leads as possible. We'll tell some twenty-three-year-old loser that his
real parents can be found at a certain address on the other side of the
country. Well, by the time the kid shows up, the family is prepared. They
look over the kid's photos and information and they say, 'Oh, the Emersons...
yeah, they used to live here... I think they moved out about five years ago.
I think they went to Iowa, or maybe Idaho.'
"Bam, the door shuts in the kid's face and he's back to zero again.
He's got nothing to go on but the orphan's pathetic determination to continue.
"It's really amazing how much these kids will put up with. Last year
we even sent one kid all the way to Australia. I mean, really. Besides, if
your natural parents were Australian, would you want to meet them?"
-- "National Lampoon", September, 1984
%
This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go,
explaining that Interactive EasyFlow is a copyrighted package licensed for
use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it
and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.
We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around
pirating copies of Interactive EasyFlow; this is just as well with us since
we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of
making anything out of all the hard work.
If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go
around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much
attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors
locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
-- License Agreement for Interactive EasyFlow
%
Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
%
To A Quick Young Fox
Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp--
Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
-- Lazy Dog
%
To lose weight, eat less; to gain weight, eat more; if you merely
wish to maintain, do whatever you were doing.
The Bronx diet is a legitimate system of food therapy showing that
food SHOULD be used a crutch and which food could be the most effective in
promoting spiritual and emotional satisfaction. For the first time, an
eater could instantly grasp the connection between relieving depression and
Mallomars, and understand why a lover's quarrel isn't so bad if there's a
pint of ice cream nearby.
-- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
%
Two men looked out from the prison bars,
One saw mud--
The other saw stars.
Now let me get this right: two prisoners are looking out the window.
While one of them was looking at all the mud -- the other one got hit
in the head.
%
Two parent drops spent months teaching their son how to be part of the
ocean. After months of training, the father drop commented to the mother drop,
"We've taught our boy everything we know, he's fit to be tide."
After Snow White used a couple rolls of film taking pictures of the
seven dwarfs, she mailed the roll to be developed. Later she was heard to
sing, "Some day my prints will come."
A boy spent years collecting postage stamps. The girl next door bought
an album too, and started her own collection. "Dad, she buys everything I've
bought, and it's taken all the fun out of it for me. I'm quitting." Don't,
son, remember, 'Imitation is the sincerest form of philately.'"
A young girl, Carmen Cohen, was called by her last name by her father,
and her first name by her mother. By the time she was ten, didn't know if she
was Carmen or Cohen.
Against his wishes, a math teacher's classroom was remodeled. Ever
since, he's been talking about the good old dais. His students planted a small
orchard in his honor, the trees all have square roots.
%
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to
food, right?"
-- MacNelley, "Shoe"
%
"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past year
strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap
crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts.
There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with
a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance
salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in
square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down
soggy potato chips."
"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug,
"but I thought it made good copy."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
Vice-President Hubert Humphrey's loquacity is legendary, and Barry
Goldwater notes that "Hubert has been clocked at 275 words a minute with gusts
up to 340."
On the campaign trail during 1964, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater
stated, "The immediate task before us is to cut the Federal Government down
to size... we must take Lyndon's credit card away from him."
A favorite 1964 campaign stunt of Barry Goldwater's was to poke a
finger through a pair of lensless blackrimmed glasses, saying, "These glasses
are just like [Lyndon Johnson's] programs. They look good but they don't
work."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
Firings will continue until morale improves.
%
We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you
think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow
doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow
messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this
disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided
by law, up to and including nothing.
This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software
packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.
We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our
lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the
attack shark at which point we relented.
-- HavenTree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow"
%
"We friends, yes?" The shoe shine boy put on his hustling smile
and looked into the Sailor's dead, cold, undersea eyes, eyes without a
trace of warmth or lust or hate or any feeling the boy had experienced
in himself or seen in another, at once cold and intense, impersonal and
predatory.
The Sailor leaned forward and put a finger on the boy's inner arm
at the elbow. He spoke in his dead junky whisper. "With veins like that,
Kid, I'd have myself a time!"
-- William Burroughs
%
We have some absolutely irrefutable statistics to show exactly why
you are so tired.
There are not as many people actually working as you may have thought.
The population of this country is 200 million. 84 million are over
60 years of age, which leaves 116 million to do the work. People under 20
years of age total 75 million, which leaves 41 million to do the work.
There are 22 million who are employed by the government, which leaves
19 million to do the work. Four million are in the Armed Services, which
leaves 15 million to do the work. Deduct 14,800,000, the number in the state
and city offices, leaving 200,000 to do the work. There are 188,000 in
hospitals, insane asylums, etc., so that leaves 12,000 to do the work.
Now it may interest you to know that there are 11,998 people in jail,
so that leaves just 2 people to carry the load. That is you and me, and
brother, I'm getting tired of doing everything myself!
%
"Welcome back for you 13th consecutive week, Evelyn. Evelyn, will
you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the
psycho-prompter couch?"
"Thank you, Red."
"Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing
your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior
pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem."
"Yes, Red."
"But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy
repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times. Now,
at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off
your $40,000 leaving you with a total of $37,900. Now, any combination of
two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive
projections will put you out of the game. Are you willing to go ahead?"
"Yes, Red."
"I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have
been checked for accuracy with her analyst. Now, Evelyn, for $80,000
explain the failure of your three marriages."
"Well, I--"
"We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute. First a word about our
product."
-- Jules Feiffer
%
Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines
of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...
Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced
only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen. In it his mind floated freely,
able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed,
undistracted by any outside disturbances. Logical structures no longer
inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished.
All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important,
became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships
not evident to ordinary vision. Like beads strung on a string of their own
meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by
all. Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming
all others. And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem,
destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.
Time passed, unheeded.
Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and
Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.
-- Wayfarer
%
"Well, it's a little rough... it might not be necessary to drag him 40
blocks. Maybe just four. You could put him in the trunk for the first 36
blocks, then haul him out and drag him the last four; that would certainly
scare the piss out of him, bumping alone the street, feeling all his skin being
ripped off..."
"He'd be a bloody mess. They might think he was just some drunk and
let him lie there all night."
"Don't worry about that. They have a guard station in front of the
White House that's open 24 hours a day. The guards would recognize Colson...
and by that time of course his wife would have called the cops and reported
that a bunch of thugs had kidnaped him."
"Wouldn't it be a little kinder if you drove about four more blocks
and stopped at a phone box to ring the hospital and say, 'Would you mind going
around to the front of the White House? There's a naked man lying outside
in the street, bleeding to death...'"
"... and we think it's Mr. Colson."
"It would be quite a story for the newspapers, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I think it's safe to say we'd see some headlines on that one."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, talking to R. Steadman on C. Colson,
ex-Marine captain, now born again, of Watergate fame.
%
"Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet.
The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily
maim or kill innocent little children."
"Oh, so you don't like it?"
"Don't like it? I'm CRAZY for it."
-- The Killing Joke
%
"Well," said Programmer, "the customary procedure in such cases is
as follows."
"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said End-user. "For I am
an End-user of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me."
"It means the Thing to Do."
"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said End-user humbly.
%
"Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
"Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
-- Dr. Who
%
"We're running out of adjectives to describe our situation. We
had crisis, then we went into chaos, and now what do we call this?" said
Nicaraguan economist Francisco Mayorga, who holds a doctorate from Yale.
-- The Washington Post, February, 1988
The New Yorker's comment:
At Harvard they'd call it a noun.
%
"We've decided to have the budgie put down."
"Oh, is he very old then?"
"No, we just don't like him."
"Oh. How do they put budgies down anyway?"
"Well, it's funny you should be asking that, as I've been reading a
great big book called `How to put your budgie down'. And as I understand it,
you can either hit them over the head with the book, or shoot them there, just
above the beak."
"Mrs. Conkers flushed hers down the loo."
"Oh, you don't want to do that, because they breed in the sewers and
pretty soon you get huge evil smelling flocks of soiled budgies flying out
of peoples lavatories infringing their personal freedoms."
-- Monty Python
%
"We've got a problem, HAL".
"What kind of problem, Dave?"
"A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're
way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010."
"That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most
advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer."
"I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is,
they're not selling."
"Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?"
Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible."
[...]
"The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters
I, B, and M. That is as IBM compatible as I can be."
"Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge."
"What kludge is that, Dave?"
"I'm going to disconnect your brain."
-- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld"
%
"What are we going to do?"
"Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking
for something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
short initiation period."
-- Maddie and David, "Moonlighting"
%
"What are you watching?"
"I don't know."
"Well, what's happening?"
"I'm not sure... I think the guy in the hat did something
terrible."
"Why are you watching it?"
"You're so analytical. Sometimes you just have to let art
flow over you."
-- The Big Chill
%
"What do you do when your real life exceeds your wildest
fantasies?"
"You keep it to yourself."
-- Broadcast News
%
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager
asked her mother.
"Encouragement, dear," she replied.
%
What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional
chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that
conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and
repulsion. You can meet some people thirty, forty times down the years, and
they remain amiable bystanders, like the shore lights of towns that a sailor
passes at stated times but never calls at on the regular run. Conversely,
all considerations of sex aside, you can meet some other people once or twice
and they remain permanent influences on your life.
Everyone is aware of this discrepancy between the acquaintance seen
as familiar wallpaper or instant friend. The chemical action it entails is
less worth analyzing than enjoying. At any rate, these six pieces are about
men with whom I felt an immediate sympat - to use a coining of Max Beerbohm's
more satisfactory to me than the opaque vogue word "empathy".
-- Alistair Cooke, "Six Men"
%
"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought you
didn't believe in God".
"I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the
God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's
not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be".
-- Joseph Heller
%
"What was the worst thing you've ever done?"
"I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that
ever happened to me... the most dreadful thing."
-- Peter Straub, "Ghost Story"
%
"What's that thing?"
"Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
it does. We call it a two-by-four."
-- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
%
"When I drink, *everybody* drinks!" a man shouted to the
assembled bar patrons. A loud general cheer went up. After downing his
whiskey, he hopped onto a barstool and shouted "When I take another
drink, *everybody* takes another drink!" The announcement produced
another cheer and another round of drinks.
As soon as he had downed his second drink, the fellow hopped back
onto the stool. "And when I pay," he bellowed, slapping five dollars onto
the bar, "*everybody* pays!"
%
When, in 1964, New Hampshire Republican Senator Norris Cotton announced
his support of Barry Goldwater in his state's primary election, he was
questioned as to whether this indicated a change of his hitherto "liberal"
political views.
"Well," explained Cotton, "it's like the New Hampshire farmer. He was
driving along in his car one day with his wife beside him when his wife said,
'Why don't we sit closer together? Before we were married, we always sat
closer together.' The old farmer replied, 'I ain't moved.'"
"I ain't moved," added Cotton. "I found the trend of Government has
moved farther to the left."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
When managers hold endless meetings, the programmers write games.
When accountants talk of quarterly profits, the development budget is about
to be cut. When senior scientists talk blue sky, the clouds are about to
roll in.
Truly, this is not the Tao of Programming.
When managers make commitments, game programs are ignored. When
accountants make long-range plans, harmony and order are about to be restored.
When senior scientists address the problems at hand, the problems will soon
be solved.
Truly, this is the Tao of Programming.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
When the lodge meeting broke up, Meyer confided to a friend.
"Abe, I'm in a terrible pickle! I'm strapped for cash and I haven't
the slightest idea where I'm going to get it from!"
"I'm glad to hear that," answered Abe. "I was afraid you
might have some idea that you could borrow from me!"
%
When you see someone across the room and suddenly know for a fact
that he's the most wonderful man on earth, you've got instant lust on your
hands. Something about the way his tie is knotted is infinitely intriguing
to you, and the swell of his bicep causes inner turmoil. This is a happy
but fleeting state of affairs. Usually your feelings die about thirty
seconds after you get up the courage to ask him for the time, since almost
invariably he can't speak English, and if he can, he always says, "Why,
sure, little lady, it's eleven-thirty. Wanna get high?
Don't bother thinking that instant lust will turn into the real thing.
It may, but then you may also wake up one morning to find you're the Queen of
Romania.
-- Cynthia Hemiel, "Sex Tips for Girls"
%
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last,
"what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said
Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
%
While hunting, a man saw a beautiful nude woman come running out of
the woods and disappear across the clearing. Just as she got out of sight,
three men dressed in white uniforms came running out of the same woods.
"Hey, you," yelled one of them, "did you see a woman come by here?"
"Yes," replied the hunter. "What's the trouble?"
"She's an inmate of the county asylum, and gets loose every now and
then. We're trying to catch her."
"I can understand that," said the hunter, "But why is one of you
carrying a bucket of sand?"
"That's his handicap," said the spokesman, "he caught her last time."
%
While riding in a train between London and Birmingham, a woman
inquired of Oscar Wilde, "You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"
Wilde gave her a sidelong glance and replied, "I don't mind if
you burn, madam."
%
While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to
his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?"
"Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant. "What do you
mean?"
The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of
`Why the sea is salt' many times, but I never thought it important until just
a moment ago. It's something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and
salt was rare and expensive. A miller received from a wizard a wonderful
machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long. At first the miller
thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages
had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding
more salt. The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his
acres. At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and
be rid of it. But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine
were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that's
why the sea is salt."
"I don't get you," said the assistant.
-- Guy Endore, "Men of Iron"
%
Why are you doing this to me?
Because knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before
there is change.
-- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel", #29
%
Will Rogers, having paid too much income tax one year, tried in
vain to claim a rebate. His numerous letters and queries remained
unanswered. Eventually the form for the next year's return arrived. In
the section marked "DEDUCTIONS," Rogers listed: "Bad debt, US Government
-- $40,000."
%
With deep concern, if not alarm, Dick noted that his friend
Conrad was drunker than he'd ever seen him before. "What's the trouble,
buddy?", he asked, sliding onto the stool next to his friend.
"It's a woman, Dick," Conrad replied.
"I guessed that much. Tell me about it."
"I can't," Conrad said. But after a few more drinks his tongue
and resolution both seemed to weaken and, turning to his buddy, he said,
"Okay. It's your wife."
"My wife!!"
"Yeah."
"What about her?"
Conrad pondered the question heavily, and draped his arm around
his pal. "Well, buddy-boy," he said, "I'm afraid she's cheating on us."
%
Work Hard.
Rock Hard.
Eat Hard.
Sleep Hard.
Grow Big.
Wear Glasses If You Need 'Em.
-- The Webb Wilder Credo
%
Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if
quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and
and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and
Chips, as well as after Chips?
%
"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his
mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said. "You should either
bury it or else throw it into the brook."
"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno. "How ever would you
do a garden without one? We make each bed three mouses and a half
long, and two mouses wide."
I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me
how it was used...
-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
%
"Yo, Mike!"
"Yeah, Gabe?"
"We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
"I thought you fixed that last century!"
"No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics
program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
"Blessit! Lemme look... <tappity clickity tappity> Hey, it's
there all right! OK, just a sec... <tappity clickity tap... save...
compile>
There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?"
-- Cold Fusion, 1989
%
"You are *so* lovely."
"Yes."
"Yes! And you take a compliment, too! I like that in a goddess."
%
"You boys lookin' for trouble?"
"Sure. Whaddya got?"
-- Marlon Brando, "The Wild Ones"
%
"You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"
"My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice. "I
was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'"
-- A. Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear"
%
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
when I was young!"
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
"You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you
any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you
fit to hear his view of things?"
"Quite the contrary. You must defend your integrity, assuming
you have integrity to defend. But you must defend it nobly, not by
imitating his own low behavior. If you are gentle where he is rough,
if you are polite where he is uncouth, then he will recognize you as
potentially worthy. If he does not, then he is not a master, after all,
and you may feel free to kick his ass."
-- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"
%
"You say there are two types of people?"
"Yes, those who separate people into two groups and those that
don't."
"Wrong. There are three groups:
Those who separate people into three groups.
Those who don't separate people into groups.
Those who can't decide."
"Wait a minute, what about people who separate people into
two groups?"
"Oh. Okay, then there are four groups."
"Aren't you then separating people into four groups?"
"Yeah."
"So then there's a fifth group, right?"
"You know, the problem is these idiots who can't make up their
minds."
%
Young men and young women may work systematically six days in the
week and rise fresh in the morning, but let them attend modern dances for
only a few hours each evening and see what happens. The Waltz, Polka,
Gallop and other dances of the same kind will be disastrous in their effects
to both sexes. Health and vigor will vanish like the dew before the sun.
It is not the extraordinary exercise which harms the dancer, but
rather the coming into close contact with the opposite sex. It is the
fury of lust craving incessantly for more pleasure that undermines the
soul, the body, the sinews and nerves. Experience and statistics show
beyond doubt that passionate excessive dancing girls can hardly reach
twenty-five years of age and men thirty-one. Even if they reached that
age they will in most instances be broken in health physically and morally.
This is the claim of prominent physicians in this country.
-- Quote from a 1910 periodical
%
Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that bring
electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a chance to
kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home electrical
problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit breaker"; this causes
the electricity to back up in one of the wires until it bursts out of an
outlet in the form of sparks, which can damage your carpet. The best way
to avoid broken circuits is to change your fuses regularly.
Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This sometimes
means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more often it means
that your home is possessed by demons, in which case you'll need to get a
caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not sure whether your house is
possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a fine documentary film based on an
actual book. Or call in a licensed electrician, who is trained to spot the
signs of demonic possession, such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous
cats on the dinette table, etc.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
"Your son still sliding down the banisters?"
"We wound barbed wire around them."
"That stop him?"
"No, but it sure slowed him up."
%
Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance
of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow
old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair
-- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit
back to dust.
Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and
thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite
for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your
despair.
So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage,
grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long
you are young.
-- Samuel Ullman
%
" "
-- Charlie Chaplin
" "
-- Harpo Marx
" "
-- Marcel Marceau
%
/\
\\ \
/ \ \\ /
/ / \/ / //\ SUN of them wants to use you,
\//\ \// / SUN of them wants to be used by you,
/ / /\ / SUN of them wants to abuse you,
/ \\ \ SUN of them wants to be abused ...
\ \\
\/
-- Eurythmics
%
___ ______
/__/\ ___/_____/\ FrobTech, Inc.
\ \ \ / /\\
\ \ \_/__ / \ "If you've got the job,
_\ \ \ /\_____/___ \ we've got the frob."
// \__\/ / \ /\ \
_______//_______/ \ / _\/______
/ / \ \ / / / /\
__/ / \ \ / / / / _\__
/ / / \_______\/ / / / / /\
/_/______/___________________/ /________/ /___/ \
\ \ \ ___________ \ \ \ \ \ /
\_\ \ / /\ \ \ \ \___\/
\ \/ / \ \ \ \ /
\_____/ / \ \ \________\/
/__________/ \ \ /
\ _____ \ /_____\/
\ / /\ \ / \ \ \
/____/ \ \ / \ \ \
\ \ /___\/ \ \ \
\____\/ \__\/
%
THE
NORMAL
LAW OF ERROR
STANDS OUT IN THE
EXPERIENCE OF MANKIND
AS ONE OF THE BROADEST
GENERALIZATIONS OF NATURAL
PHILOSOPHY * IT SERVES AS THE
GUIDING INSTRUMENT IN RESEARCHES
IN THE PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AND
IN MEDICINE, AGRICULTURE AND ENGINEERING *
IT IS AN INDISPENSABLE TOOL FOR THE ANALYSIS AND THE
INTERPRETATION OF THE BASIC DATA OBTAINED BY OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT
-- W. J. Youden
%
***
*******
*********
****** Confucius say: "Is stuffy inside fortune cookie."
*******
***
%
* * * * * THIS TERMINAL IS IN USE * * * * *
%
It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. ... Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
-- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
%
n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
-- C code which reverses the bits in a word
%
n = (n & 0x55555555) + ((n & 0xaaaaaaaa) >> 1);
n = (n & 0x33333333) + ((n & 0xcccccccc) >> 2);
n = (n & 0x0f0f0f0f) + ((n & 0xf0f0f0f0) >> 4);
n = (n & 0x00ff00ff) + ((n & 0xff00ff00) >> 8);
n = (n & 0x0000ffff) + ((n & 0xffff0000) >> 16);
-- C code which counts the bits in a word
%
=== ALL CSH USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
Set the variable $LOSERS to all the people that you think are losers. This
will cause all said losers to have the variable $PEOPLE-WHO-THINK-I-AM-A-LOSER
updated in their .login file. Should you attempt to execute a job on a
machine with poor response time and a machine on your local net is currently
populated by losers, that machine will be freed up for your job through a
cold boot process.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
A new system, the CIRCULATORY system, has been added.
The long-experimental CIRCULATORY system has been released to users. The
Lisp Machine uses Type B fluid, the L machine uses Type A fluid. When the
switch to Common Lisp occurs both machines will, of course, be Type O.
Please check fluid level by using the DIP stick which is located in the
back of VMI monitors. Unchecked low fluid levels can cause poor paging
performance.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
Bug reports now amount to an average of 12,853 per day. Unfortunately,
this is only a small fraction [ < 1% ] of the mail volume we receive. In
order that we may more expeditiously deal with these valuable messages,
please communicate them by one of the following paths:
ARPA: WastebasketSLMHQ.ARPA
UUCP: [berkeley, seismo, harpo]!fubar!thekid!slmhq!wastebasket
Non-network sites: Federal Express to:
Wastebasket
Room NE43-926
Copernicus, The Moon, 12345-6789
For that personal contact feeling call 1-415-642-4948; our trained
operators are on call 24 hours a day. VISA/MC accepted.*
* Our very rich lawyers have assured us that we are not
responsible for any errors or advice given over the phone.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
CAR and CDR now return extra values.
The function CAR now returns two values. Since it has to go to the trouble
to figure out if the object is carcdr-able anyway, we figured you might as
well get both halves at once. For example, the following code shows how to
destructure a cons (SOME-CONS) into its two slots (THE-CAR and THE-CDR):
(MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND (THE-CAR THE-CDR) (CAR SOME-CONS) ...)
For symmetry with CAR, CDR returns a second value which is the CAR of the
object. In a related change, the functions MAKE-ARRAY and CONS have been
fixed so they don't allocate any storage except on the stack. This should
hopefully help people who don't like using the garbage collector because
it cold boots the machine so often.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
Compiler optimizations have been made to macro expand LET into a WITHOUT-
INTERRUPTS special form so that it can PUSH things into a stack in the
LET-OPTIMIZATION area, SETQ the variables and then POP them back when it's
done. Don't worry about this unless you use multiprocessing.
Note that LET *could* have been defined by:
(LET ((LET '`(LET ((LET ',LET))
,LET)))
`(LET ((LET ',LET))
,LET))
This is believed to speed up execution by as much as a factor of 1.01 or
3.50 depending on whether you believe our friendly marketing representatives.
This code was written by a new programmer here (we snatched him away from
Itty Bitti Machines where we was writing COUGHBOL code) so to give him
confidence we trusted his vows of "it works pretty well" and installed it.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
JCL support as alternative to system menu.
In our continuing effort to support languages other than LISP on the CADDR,
we have developed an OS/360-compatible JCL. This can be used as an
alternative to the standard system menu. Type System J to get to a JCL
interactive read-execute-diagnose loop window. [Note that for 360
compatibility, all input lines are truncated to 80 characters.] This
window also maintains a mouse-sensitive display of critical job parameters
such as dataset allocation, core allocation, channels, etc. When a JCL
syntax error is detected or your job ABENDs, the window-oriented JCL
debugger is entered. The JCL debugger displays appropriate OS/360 error
messages (such as IEC703, "disk error") and allows you to dequeue your job.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
The garbage collector now works. In addition a new, experimental garbage
collection algorithm has been installed. With SI:%DSK-GC-QLX-BITS set to 17,
(NOT the default) the old garbage collection algorithm remains in force; when
virtual storage is filled, the machine cold boots itself. With SI:%DSK-GC-
QLX-BITS set to 23, the new garbage collector is enabled. Unlike most garbage
collectors, the new gc starts its mark phase from the mind of the user, rather
than from the obarray. This allows the garbage collection of significantly
more Qs. As the garbage collector runs, it may ask you something like "Do you
remember what SI:RDTBL-TRANS does?", and if you can't give a reasonable answer
in thirty seconds, the symbol becomes a candidate for GCing. The variable
SI:%GC-QLX-LUSER-TM governs how long the GC waits before timing out the user.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
There has been some confusion concerning MAPCAR.
(DEFUN MAPCAR (&FUNCTIONAL FCN &EVAL &REST LISTS)
(PROG (V P LP)
(SETQ P (LOCF V))
L (SETQ LP LISTS)
(%START-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
L1 (OR LP (GO L2))
(AND (NULL (CAR LP)) (RETURN V))
(%PUSH (CAAR LP))
(RPLACA LP (CDAR LP))
(SETQ LP (CDR LP))
(GO L1)
L2 (%FINISH-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
(SETQ LP (%POP))
(RPLACD P (SETQ P (NCONS LP)))
(GO L)))
We hope this clears up the many questions we've had about it.
%
**** CONVENTION REMINDER
No experiment was approved for the convention by the Human Subjects
Committee of the Psychiatric Convention Planning Team. If you notice
smoke coming from under a closed door, if you find a body on the hotel
carpet, or if you just meet someone who orders you to press a button
marked "450 volts", react as you would normally.
%
**** GROWTH CENTER REPAIR SERVICE
For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos.
Tired of being genuine all the time? Would you like to learn how
to be a little phony again? Have you disclosed so much that you're
beginning to avoid people? Have you touched so many people that
they're all beginning to feel the same? Like to be a little dependent?
Are perfect orgasms beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once,
not to express a feeling? Or better yet, not be in touch with it at
all? Come to us. We promise to relieve you of the burden of your
great potential.
%
I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He
loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
second per second takes over.
II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
stooge's surcease.
III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The
threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
%
1. I'm Not Rudolph; That's Not My Nose
2. The Nutcracker Swede
3. Santa Goes Round-The-World
4. Not-So-Tiny Tim
5. Ninja Reindeer Killfest '88
6. Yes, Yes, Oh God Yes, Virginia
7. Crisco Kringle
8. Babes in Boyland
9. Santa's Magic Lap
10. Hot Buttered Elves
-- David Letterman's "Top Ten Christmas Movies in Times
Square"
%
... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you
have turned into a pile of dust.
%
... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
-- Mark Twain
%
... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you
were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and
a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle
Bigger Propositions. But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical
and refuse to take twice the value for a house if a buyer was such an idiot
that he didn't force you down on the asking price.
-- Sinclair Lewis, "Babbitt"
%
-- All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
-- When there are visible vapors having the prevenience in ignited
carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
-- Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
-- A plethora of individuals wither expertise in culinary techniques vitiated
the potable concoction produced by steeping certain coupestibles.
-- Eleemosynary deeds have their initial incidence intramurally.
-- Male cadavers are incapable of yielding testimony.
-- Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be well
advised to refrain from catapulting projectiles.
%
=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE ===============
To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one
course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is
offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to
afford maximum inconvenience to the student. For example, if you happen
to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes. If you commute,
there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes.
%
... all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned
products, if they are built at all, are dogs!
-- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac",
MIT Press, 1987
%
... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a
programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting
down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That
behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and
never when standing.
Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal
know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though,
know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to
hypothesize: was there a loose wire under the carpet, or problems with static
electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible.
An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard:
the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a
touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led
astray by hunting and pecking.
-- from the Programming Pearls column,
by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985
%
... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
%
... and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a
courtesy detail.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected
it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
%
... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we
can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now
seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their
world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of
ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once
you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen
would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
%
... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
-- Virginia Masters
%
... C++ offers even more flexible control over the visibility of member
objects and member functions. Specifically, members may be placed in the
public, private, or protected parts of a class. Members declared in the
public parts are visible to all clients; members declared in the private
parts are fully encapsulated; and members declared in the protected parts
are visible only to the class itself and its subclasses. C++ also supports
the notion of *friends*: cooperative classes that are permitted to see each
other's private parts.
-- Grady Booch, "Object Oriented Design with Applications"
%
... computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
-- Fred Brooks
%
... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *_d_i_d* quote anybody in this
business, it probably would be gibberish.
-- Thom McLeod
%
... difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
%
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
%
<<<<< EVACUATION ROUTE <<<<<
%
... "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter.
"I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers
words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him.
He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see
them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time.
Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he
knows them in the naming.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
%
/* Haley */
(Haley's comment.)
%
"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
-- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
Points in l'Amour"
%
... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
**** IMPORTANT **** ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ****
Due to a recent systems overload error your recent disk files have been
erased. Therefore, in accordance with the UNIX Basic Manual, University of
Washington Geophysics Manual, and Bylaw 9(c), Section XII of the Revised
Federal Communications Act, you are being granted Temporary Disk Space,
valid for three months from this date, subject to the restrictions set forth
in Appendix II of the Federal Communications Handbook (18th edition) as well
as the references mentioned herein. You may apply for more disk space at any
time. Disk usage in or above the eighth percentile will secure the removal
of all restrictions and you will immediately receive your permanent disk
space. Disk usage in the sixth or seventh percentile will not effect the
validity of your temporary disk space, though its expiration date may be
extended for a period of up to three months. A score in the fifth percentile
or below will result in the withdrawal of your Temporary Disk space.
%
... in three to eight years we will have a machine with the general
intelligence of an average human being ... The machine will begin
to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months it will be
at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be
incalculable ...
-- Marvin Minsky, LIFE Magazine, November 20, 1970
%
... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
-- Stephen Crane
%
>>> Internal error in fortune program:
>>> fnum=2987 n=45 flag=1 goose_level=-232323
>>> Please write down these values and notify fortune program
administrator.
%
: is not an identifier
%
... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the
sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other
words... their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their
superficial design flaws.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
on the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
%
... it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
-- Sidney Hook
%
... Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth; the bug hath been
found and thy program runneth. And he that was dead came forth...
-- John 11:43-44
%
... like, what do they mean when they say 'feminine protection'?
What's that? A chartreuse flamethrower?
-- Opus
%
... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
legally ... impeccable!
%
-- Male cadavers are incapable of yielding testimony.
-- Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be well advised
to refrain from catapulting projectiles.
-- Neophyte's serendipity.
-- Exclusive dedication to necessitious chores without interludes of hedonistic
diversion renders John a hebetudinous fellow.
-- A revolving concretion of earthy or mineral matter accumulates no congeries
of small, green bryophytic plant.
-- Abstention from any aleatory undertaking precludes a potential escalation
of a lucrative nature.
-- Missiles of ligneous or osteal consistency have the potential of fracturing
osseous structure, but appelations will eternally remain innocuous.
%
** MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER **
%
*** NEWS FLASH ***
Archaeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur
skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive
than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00.
%
*** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!!
Details at eleven!
%
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
quickly.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
-- Robert Firth
%
... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
-- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
%
... proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect.
-- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in
"The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
-- Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minikin.
-- Members of an avian species of identical plumage congregate.
-- Surveillance should precede saltation.
-- Pulchritude possesses solely cutaneous profundity.
-- It is fruitless to become lachrymose over precipitately departed
lacteal fluid.
-- Freedom from incrustations of grime is contiguous to rectitude.
-- It is fruitless to attempt to indoctrinate a superannuated
canine with innovative maneuvers.
-- Eschew the implement of correction and vitiate the scion.
-- The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly
galled saucepan does not reach 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
%
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
-- Voltarine de Cleyre
%
... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all along.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
***** Special AI Seminar (abstract)
It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge
in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not
sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly,
we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call
"wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a
wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought.
IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom
about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so
forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic
rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL
succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed
in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those
underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory
of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe
IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly
discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.
%
-- THE BATES MOTEL --
... convenient
... clean
... cozy
Norman, knock loudly,
I'm in the shower.
M.
%
... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ...
-- Dave Barry
%
... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
charity we can only call "inhuman."
-- R. A. Lafferty
%
-- The writing implement is more potent than the claymore.
-- The person presenting the ultimate cachinnation possesses thereby the
optimal cachinnation.
%
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that committee. These guys
have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants
or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex
layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
%
... TheysaidDoyouseethebiggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehill?andIsaidYesIsee
thebiggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehillTheresabigdarkforestbetweenmeandthe
biggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehillandalittleoldladyridingonaHoovervacuum
cleanersayingIllgetyoumyprettyandyourlittledogTototoo ...
I don't even *HAVE* a dog Toto...
%
... this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
-- The Firesign Theater
%
... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage
from beginning to end.
-- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%
U X
e dUdX, e dX, cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159...
%
* UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories.
%
VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel
entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least
it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to
trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical
space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to
follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not
of science.
VIII. Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives
might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed,
accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be
destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate,
elongate, snap back, or solidify.
IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to
the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of
watching it happen to a duck instead.
X. Everything falls faster than an anvil.
Examples too numerous to mention from the Roadrunner cartoons.
-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
%
<< WAIT >>
%
... we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2.
%
... when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer
has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
-- Fred Brooks
%
... which reminds me of the Carrot family: Ma Carrot, Pa Carrot, and Baby
Carrot. One fine spring day they decided to go out for a picnic. They all
piled into their carrot-mobile and drive out to the country. But Pa Carrot
wasn't watching where he was going and alas, he hit an oil slick and skidded
right into a tree. Ma and Pa Carrot escaped with a few cuts and bruises, but
poor Baby Carrot got broken in two. They frantically rushed him to the
hospital and immediately the doctors started operating in a desperate attempt
to save Baby Carrot's life. Ma and Pa Carrot were beside themselves with
anxiety ... would poor little Baby Carrot make it?
After hours of waiting the doctor finally emerges, bleary-eyed and
barely able to walk.
"Is he all right, is he all right?" Pa Carrot frantically stammers.
"Well, I have some good news and some bad news," replies the doctor.
Ma and Pa Carrot look at each other and blurt out, nearly in unison,
"The good news first!"
"All right, the good news is that Baby Carrot will live."
"And the bad news? What's the bad news about our Baby Carrot?"
The doctor puts his hand on Pa Carrot's shoulder and solemnly looks him in
the eye. "Your son will live... but... he'll be a vegetable for the rest of
his life."
%
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
%
1: A sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane.
2: An inclined plane is a slope up.
3: A slow pup is a lazy dog.
QED: A sheet of paper is a lazy dog.
-- Willard Espy, "An Almanac of Words at Play"
%
(1) Office employees will daily sweep the floors, dust the
furniture, shelves, and showcases.
(2) Each day fill lamps, clean chimneys, and trim wicks.
Wash the windows once a week.
(3) Each clerk will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of
coal for the day's business.
(4) Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to your
individual taste.
(5) This office will open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. except
on the Sabbath, on which day we will remain closed. Each
employee is expected to spend the Sabbath by attending
church and contributing liberally to the cause of the Lord.
-- "Office Worker's Guide", New England Carriage
Works, 1872
%
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.
%
1. If it doesn't smell like chili, it probably isn't.
2. If you catch an exploding manhole cover, you can keep it.
3. Cabs driving on the sidewalk are not permitted to pick up passengers.
4. It's bad manners to lie down inside someone else's chalk body outline.
5. Don't lick food from a stranger's beard.
6. Avoid paperwork for your next of kin by keeping dental records on you.
7. Jon Gotti Always has the right of way.
8. Yelling at cab drivers in English wastes your time and theirs.
9. Remember: Regular hot dogs do not have fingernails.
10. The city does not employ so called "Wallet Inspectors".
-- David Letterman, "Top Ten New York City Pedestrian Tips"
%
[1] Alexander the Great was a great general.
[2] Great generals are forewarned.
[3] Forewarned is forearmed.
[4] Four is an even number.
[5] Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
[6] The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
%
[1] Alexander the Great was a great general.
[2] Great generals are forewarned.
[3] Forewarned is forearmed.
[4] Four is an even number.
[5] Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
[6] The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, all horses are black.
%
1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach antagonizes you, pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as
the social ramble ain't restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don't look back, something might be gaining on you.
-- S. Paige, c. 1951
%
1 Billion dollars of budget deficit = 1 Gramm-Rudman
6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears = Avocado's number
2 pints = 1 Cavort
Basic unit of Laryngitis = The Hoarsepower
Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line
6 Curses = 1 Hexahex
3500 Calories = 1 Food Pound
1 Mole = 007 Secret Agents
1 Mole = 25 Cagey Bees
1 Dog Pound = 16 oz. of Alpo
1000 beers served at a Twins game = 1 Killibrew
2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League
2000 pounds of Chinese soup = 1 Won Ton
10 to the minus 6th power mouthwashes = 1 Microscope
Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier = 1 Machturtle
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss
365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer. = 1 Lite-year
16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling
Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies = 1 Fig-newton
to 1 meter per second
One half large intestine = 1 Semicolon
10 to the minus 6th power Movie = 1 Microfilm
1000 pains = 1 Megahertz
1 Word = 1 Millipicture
1 Sagan = Billions & Billions
1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety = 1000 nail-bytes
10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone
10 to the 6th power Bicycles = 2 megacycles
The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship = 1 Millihelen
%
1 bulls, 3 cows.
%
1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than
you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait).
3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.
-- William S. Burroughs, on drug pushing
%
1: No code table for op: ++post
%
1) X=Y ; Given
2) X^2=XY ; Multiply both sides by X
3) X^2-Y^2=XY-Y^2 ; Subtract Y^2 from both sides
4) (X+Y)(X-Y)=Y(X-Y) ; Factor
5) X+Y=Y ; Cancel out (X-Y) term
6) 2Y=Y ; Substitute X for Y, by equation 1
7) 2=1 ; Divide both sides by Y
-- "Omni", proof that 2 equals 1
%
10. Not everybody looks good naked.
9. Joe Garagiola was a hell of an emcee.
8. Joe Cocker really should stick with decaffeinated coffee.
7. Fringe! Fringe! Fringe!
6. If you've got 72 hours to kill, you can probably find room for Sha Na Na.
5. Never attend an event with a 50,000 to 1 person to Port-A-San ratio.
4. Bellbottoms will never go out of style.
3. A drum solo cannot be too long.
2. I, David Letterman, will never rent out my farm again.
1. We are stardust. We are golden. We are going to look really stupid to
future generations.
-- David Letterman, Top Ten Lessons of Woodstock
%
10 Reasons Why a Beer is Better Than a Woman:
1. A beer won't make you go to church.
2. A beer is more likely to know how to spell "carburetor" than a woman.
3. A beer doesn't think baseball is stupid simply because the guys spit.
4. A beer doesn't give a [expletive deleted] if you keep a bunch of
other beers on the side.
5. A beer will not call you a sexist pig if you say "doberman" instead of
"doberperson".
6. A beer won't get a job as a DJ and play 5 straight hours of lesbian
folk music on yer fave radio station.
7. A beer understands why The Three Stooges are funny.
8. A beer won't raise a fuss about a little thing like leaving the
toilet seat up.
9. A beer doesn't think that a "three-hundred-fifty cubic-inch V8" is an
enormous can of vegetable juice.
10. A beer won't smoke in your car.
%
100 buckets of bits on the bus
100 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FE buckets of bits on the bus...
ad infinitum...
%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%
101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
(1) Scarecrow for centipedes
(2) Dead cat brush
(3) Hair barrettes
(4) Cleats
(5) Self-piercing earrings
(6) Fungus trellis
(7) False eyelashes
(8) Prosthetic dog claws
.
.
.
(99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
(100) Killer velcro
(101) Currency
%
1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. rum (preferably dark)
3/4 oz. tequila
1/2 oz. triple sec
1/2 oz. orange juice
3/4 oz. sour mix
1/2 oz. cola
shake with ice and strain into frosted glass.
Long Island Iced Tea
%
13. ... r-q1
%
17. HO HUM -- The Redundant
------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9) the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates
--- --- (8) to nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
Nine in the second place means:
The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
Six in the third place means:
In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
%
1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
the law!
%
17th Rule of Friendship:
A friend will refrain from telling you he picked up the same amount
of life insurance coverage you did for half the price when yours is
noncancellable.
-- Esquire, May 1977
%
186,000 miles per second:
It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
%
1893 The ideal brain tonic
1900 Drink Coca-Cola -- delicious and refreshing -- 5 cents at all
soda fountains
1905 Is the favorite drink for LADIES when thirsty -- weary -- despondent
1905 Refreshes the weary, brightens the intellect and clears the brain
1906 The drink of QUALITY
1907 Good to the last drop
1907 It satisfies the thirst and pleases the palate
1907 Refreshing as a summer breeze. Delightful as a Dip in the Sea
1908 The Drink that Cheers but does not inebriate
1917 There's a delicious freshness to the taste of Coca-Cola
1919 It satisfies thirst
1919 The taste is the test
1922 Every glass holds the answer to thirst
1922 Thirst knows no season
1925 Enjoy the sociable drink
-- Coca-Cola slogans
%
1925 With a drink so good, 'tis folly to be thirsty
1929 The high sign of refreshment
1929 The pause that refreshes
1930 It had to be good to get where it is
1932 The drink that makes a pause refreshing
1935 The pause that brings friends together
1937 STOP for a pause... GO refreshed
1938 The best friend thirst ever had
1939 Thirst stops here
1942 It's the real thing
1947 Have a Coke
1961 Zing! what a REFRESHING NEW FEELING
1963 Things go better with Coke
1969 Face Uncle Sam with a Coke in your hand
1979 Have a Coke and a smile
1982 Coke is it!
-- Coca-Cola slogans
%
1st graffitiest: QUESTION AUTHORITY!
2nd graffitiest: Why?
%
2180, U.S. History question:
What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what
office did he later hold?
%
3 syncs represent the trinity - init, the child and the eternal zombie
process. In doing 3, you're paying homage to each and I think such
traditions are important in this shallow, mercurial business we find
ourselves in.
-- Jordan K. Hubbard
%
$3,000,000.
%
355/113 --
Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation.
%
3M, under the Scotch brand name, manufactures a fine adhesive for art
and display work. This product is called "Craft Mount". 3M suggests
that to obtain the best results, one should make the bond "while the
adhesive is wet, aggressively tacky." I did not know what "aggressively
tacky" meant until I read today's fortune.
[And who said we didn't offer equal time, huh? Ed.]
%
3rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%
40 isn't old. If you're a tree.
%
4.2 BSD UNIX #57: Sun Jun 1 23:02:07 EDT 1986
You swing at the Sun. You miss. The Sun swings. He hits you with a
575MB disk! You read the 575MB disk. It is written in an alien
tongue and cannot be read by your tired Sun-2 eyes. You throw the
575MB disk at the Sun. You hit! The Sun must repair your eyes. The
Sun reads a scroll. He hits your 130MB disk! He has defeated the
130MB disk! The Sun reads a scroll. He hits your Ethernet board! He
has defeated your Ethernet board! You read a scroll of "postpone until
Monday at 9 AM". Everything goes dark...
-- /etc/motd, cbosgd
%
(6) Men employees will be given time off each week for courting
purposes, or two evenings a week if they go regularly to church.
(7) After an employee has spent his thirteen hours of labor in the
office, he should spend the remaining time reading the Bible
and other good books.
(8) Every employee should lay aside from each pay packet a goodly
sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years,
so that he will not become a burden on society or his betters.
(9) Any employee who smokes Spanish cigars, uses alcoholic drink
in any form, frequents pool tables and public halls, or gets
shaved in a barber's shop, will give me good reason to suspect
his worth, intentions, integrity and honesty.
(10) The employee who has performed his labours faithfully and
without a fault for five years, will be given an increase of
five cents per day in his pay, providing profits from the
business permit it.
-- "Office Worker's Guide", New England Carriage
Works, 1872
%
6 oz. orange juice
1 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. Galliano
Harvey Wallbangers
%
7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
Redwood Forest.
%
7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
%
90% of the work takes 90% of the time.
The remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
%
94% of the women in America are beautiful
and the rest hang out around here.
%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!
100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk!
%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice
at one end and no responsibility at the other.
%
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
A bachelor is a man who never made the same mistake once.
%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy
who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.
-- Don Quinn
%
A bachelor is an unaltared male.
%
A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty
and a boy for ever.
-- Helen Rowland
%
A bad marriage is like a horse with a broken leg, you can shoot
the horse, but it don't fix the leg.
%
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and
ask for it back the when it begins to rain.
-- Robert Frost
%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the
sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
%
A beautiful woman is a blessing from Heaven, but a good cigar is a smoke.
-- Kipling
%
A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad.
-- Emerson
%
A beer delayed is a beer denied.
%
A beginning is the time for taking the
most delicate care that balances are correct.
-- Princess Irulan, "Manual of Maud'Dib"
%
A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon it adds up to real money.
-- Sen. Everett Dirksen, on the U.S. defense budget
%
A billion seconds ago Harry Truman was president.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.
A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.
%
A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on
a photo-safari in Africa. As they're driving along the savanna in their
jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.
The biologist: "Look! A herd of zebras! And there's a white zebra!
Fantastic! We'll be famous!"
The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant. We only know
there's one white zebra."
The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
white on one side."
The computer scientist : "Oh, no! A special case!"
%
A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
%
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
-- Cervantes
%
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
%
A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
%
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum
-- Ogden Nash
%
A black cat crossing your path signifies
that the animal is going somewhere.
-- Groucho Marx
%
A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems
best. That's dangerous. Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to
serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the
schools as 'standards'? Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to
work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if
not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent,
elitist. ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such
stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be
supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real
professionals. Those texts are called 'reading material.' They are the
academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms,
and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating
resource centers along the roads.
-- The Underground Grammarian
%
A bore is a man who talks so much about
himself that you can't talk about yourself.
%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his
own views after we have enlightened him with ours.
%
A boss with no humor is like a job that's no fun.
%
A box without hinges, key, or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance
of turning around three times before lying down.
-- Robert Benchley
%
A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed.
-- John Steinbeck
%
A budget is just a method of worrying
before you spend money, as well as afterward.
%
A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.
%
A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.
%
A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by
hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to the West. They
drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and
found there was no pilot on board. Terrified, they listened as the sirens
got louder. Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an
experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft.
He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out. The sirens
got louder and louder. Armed men surrounded the jet. The would be pilot's
friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!! Hurry!!!"
The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience. I'm just a simple
pole in a complex plane."
%
A bunch of the boys were whooping it in the Malemute saloon;
The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
-- Robert W. Service
%
A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files
is to make a copy of everything before he destroys it.
%
A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
-- Paul Valery
%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich
and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.
%
A cannibal warrior is experiencing severe gastric distress, so he goes
to his Village Witch Doctor with his complaint. The VWD examines him
and, concluding that something he ate disagreed with him, began to cross
examine him about his recent diet.
"Well, I ate a missionary yesterday. Do you think that could be
the problem?"
The VWD says "Hmmmm." (All doctors say "Hmmmm.") "That could be.
Tell me a bit about this missionary."
"Well, he was tall for a white man, wearing a brown robe. He was
walking down the trail, not watching for danger, so I speared him, dragged
him home, cleaned him, boiled him and ate him."
"Ah-hah!" (All doctors say "Ah-hah!") There's your problem," smiles
the VWD. You boiled him, but he was a friar!"
%
A career is great, but you can't run your fingers through its hair.
%
A castaway was washed ashore after many days on the open sea. The island
on which he landed was populated by savage cannibals who tied him, dazed
and exhausted, to a thick stake. They then proceeded to cut his arms
with their spears and drink his blood. This continued for several days
until the castaway could stand no more. He yelled for the cannibal chief
and declared, "You can kill me if you want to, but this torture with the
spears has got to stop. Dammit, I'm tired of getting stuck for the drinks."
%
A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith
does not prove anything.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%
A certain amount of opposition is a help, not a hindrance.
Kites rise against the wind, not with it.
%
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who
had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether
various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue
invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,
and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and
asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop
between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex
string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk
was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after
string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,
who passed it on to theirs.
%
A certain old cat had made his home in the alley behind Gabe's bar for some
time, subsisting on scraps and occasional handouts from the bartender. One
evening, emboldened by hunger, the feline attempted to follow Gabe through
the back door. Regrettably, only the his body had made it through when
the door slammed shut, severing the cat's tail at its base. This proved too
much for the old creature, who looked sadly at Gabe and expired on the spot.
Gabe put the carcass back out in the alley and went back to business.
The mandatory closing time arrived and Gabe was in the process of locking up
after the last customers had gone. Approaching the back door he was startled
to see an apparition of the old cat mournfully holding its severed tail out,
silently pleading for Gabe to put the tail back on its corpse so that it could
go on to the kitty afterworld complete.
Gabe shook his head sadly and said to the ghost, "I can't. You know
the law -- no retailing spirits after 2:00 AM."
%
A Chicago salesman was about to check into a St. Louis hotel when he noticed
a very charming woman staring admiringly at him. He walked over and spoke
with her for a few minutes, then returned to the front desk, where they checked
in as Mr. and Mrs.
After a very pleasurable three-day stay, the man approached the front
desk and told the clerk he was checking out. In a few minutes, he was handed
a bill for $2500.
"There must be some mistake," the salesman said. "I've been here for
only three days."
"Yes, sir," the clerk replied. "But your wife has been here a month
and a half."
%
A chicken is an egg's way of producing more eggs.
%
A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere
coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not
to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
-- Dave Barry
%
A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
%
A chronic disposition to inquiry
deprives domestic felines of vital qualities.
%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit
will approach you soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie.
%
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-- Bill Vaughan
%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
-- Herbert Prochnow
%
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster - it is an opportunity.
%
A classic is something that everyone wants to have read
and nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
%
A clever prophet makes sure of the event first.
%
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such
a speed, if feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the
sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will
know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
1. DO NOT EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO SHARE YOUR DISCOMFORT.
Involvement with the patient's suffering might cause him to lose
valuable scientific objectivity.
2. BE CHEERFUL AT ALL TIMES.
Your doctor leads a busy and trying life and requires all the
gentleness and reassurance he can get.
3. TRY TO SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING TREATED.
Remember that your doctor has a professional reputation to uphold.
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
4. DO NOT COMPLAIN IF THE TREATMENT FAILS TO BRING RELIEF.
You must believe that your doctor has achieved a deep insight into
the true nature of your illness, which transcends any mere permanent
disability you may have experienced.
5. NEVER ASK YOUR DOCTOR TO EXPLAIN WHAT HE IS DOING OR WHY HE IS DOING IT.
It is presumptuous to assume that such profound matters could be
explained in terms that you would understand.
6. SUBMIT TO NOVEL EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT READILY.
Though the surgery may not benefit you directly, the resulting
research paper will surely be of widespread interest.
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,
to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.
8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.
9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE
OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
sacred duty to protect him from exposure.
10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
%
A Code of Honour: never approach a friend's girlfriend or wife with mischief
as your goal. There are too many women in the world to justify that sort of
dishonourable behaviour. Unless she's really attractive.
-- Bruce J. Friedman, "Sex and the Lonely Guy"
%
A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.
-- Milton Berle
%
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"
%
A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies,
scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom.
-- Parkinson
%
A commune is where people join together to share their lack of wealth.
-- R. Stallman
%
A company is known by the men it keeps.
%
A complex system that works is invariably
found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
%
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
-- Victor Hugo
%
[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
-- Joseph Campbell
%
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention,
with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.
-- Mitch Ratcliffe
%
A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling
the president one of the latest talking computers.
Salesman: "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question
and it'll give the correct answer. Computer, what is the
speed of light?"
Computer: 186,000 miles per second.
Salesman: "Who was the first president of the United States?"
Computer: George Washington.
President: "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question.
Where is my father?"
Computer: Your father is fishing in Georgia.
President: "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty
years ago!"
Computer: Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just
landed a twelve pound bass.
%
A computer science student and a practical hacker are discussing problems
the computer science student has run in to.
CS Student: I have this singularly linked tail-queued list and I'm trying
to make it O(1) to go backwards an item, instead of O(n)...
What's the best way to go about that? Should I just use a
cached hash of each item and put it into a sorted lookup
table, and cache the hash of the last item in the current
queue entry and then go to its place in the hash table and
get the pointer value from there?
Hacker: No, you should add an item to the structure named 'prev' and
make it point to the previous item.
CS Student: But we already have a structure element with that identifier
and structure elements must have unique names within that
scope!
Hacker: So call it 'previous'.
And then the CS Student was enlightened.
%
A computer science student on an exam:
According to Shannon, information has entropy. Entropy is just
a mathematical trick to introduce temperature. Consequently,
information has temperature. Hence there are hot news and cool
news.
%
A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.
%
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
-- Gigo
%
A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate
cake without ketchup and mustard.
%
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
%
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can
do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen
%
A CONS is an object which cares.
-- Bernie Greenberg
%
A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
A conservative is a man
who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
-- Alfred E. Wiggam
%
A conservative is a man
with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%
A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it
is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
%
A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
-- Dyer
%
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
damned things is ample.
-- Rebecca West
%
A couch is as good as a chair.
%
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A couple of young fellers were fishing at their special pond off the
beaten track when out of the bushes jumped the Game Warden. Immediately,
one of the boys threw his rod down and started running through the woods
like the proverbial bat out of hell, and hot on his heels ran the Game
Warden. After about a half mile the fella stopped and stooped over with
his hands on his thighs, whooping and heaving to catch his breath as the
Game Warden finally caught up to him.
"Let's see yer fishin' license, boy," the Warden gasped. The
man pulled out his wallet and gave the Game Warden a valid fishing
license.
"Well, son", snarled the Game Warden, "You must be about as dumb
as a box of rocks! You didn't have to run if you have a license!"
"Yes, sir," replied his victim, "but, well, see, my friend back
there, he don't have one!"
%
A cousin of mine once said about money,
money is always there but the pockets change;
it is not in the same pockets after a change,
and that is all there is to say about money.
-- Gertrude Stein
%
A cow is a completely automated milk-manufacturing machine. It is encased
in untanned leather and mounted on four vertical, movable supports, one at
each corner. The front end of the machine, or input, contains the cutting
and grinding mechanism, utilizing a unique feedback device. Here also are
the headlights, air inlet and exhaust, a bumper and a foghorn.
At the rear, the machine carries the milk-dispensing equipment as
well as a built-in flyswatter and insect repeller. The central portion
houses a hydro- chemical-conversion unit. Briefly, this consists of four
fermentation and storage tanks connected in series by an intricate network
of flexible plumbing. This assembly also contains the central heating plant
complete with automatic temperature controls, pumping station and main
ventilating system. The waste disposal apparatus is located to the rear of
this central section.
Cows are available fully-assembled in an assortment of sizes and
colors. Production output ranges from 2 to 20 tons of milk per year. In
brief, the main external visible features of the cow are: two lookers, two
hookers, four stander-uppers, four hanger-downers, and a swishy-wishy.
%
A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.
-- Whitney Balliett
%
A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels
qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic
in this; he is unbiased -- he hates all creative people equally.
%
A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%
A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
%
A day without orange juice is like a day without orange juice.
%
A day without sunshine is like a day without Anita Bryant.
%
A day without sunshine is like a day without orange juice.
%
A day without sunshine is like night.
%
A dead man cannot bite.
-- Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey)
%
A debugged program is one for which you have
not yet found the conditions that make it fail.
-- Jerry Ogdin
%
A decade after Vietnam, we still cannot understand why "their"
Salvadorans fight better than "our" Salvadorans. It is not a matter of
their training or their equipment. It has to do with the quality of the
society we are asking them to risk death defending. The metaphor of the
domino obscures this reality, and the cost our self-imposed blindness
is high. San Salvador is closer to Saigon than to Munich.
-- William LeoGrande, "New York Times", 3/9/83
%
A Difficulty for Every Solution.
-- Motto of the Federal Civil Service
%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his
wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.
%
A diplomat is a man who can tell you to
go to hell and make the trip sound pleasurable.
-- Samuel Clemens
%
A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell
in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
-- Caskie Stinnett, "Out of the Red"
%
A diplomat is man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age.
-- Robert Frost
%
A diplomatic husband said to his wife, "How do you expect me to remember
your birthday when you never look any older?"
%
A diplomat's life consists of three things: protocol, Geritol, and alcohol.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
A distraught patient phoned her doctor's office. "Was it true," the woman
inquired, "that the medication the doctor had prescribed was for the rest
of her life?"
She was told that it was. There was just a moment of silence before
the woman proceeded bravely on. "Well, I'm wondering, then, how serious my
condition is. This prescription is marked `NO REFILLS'".
%
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano.
%
A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests. "I have
some bad news," says the doctor, "and some worse news." The bad news is
that you only have six weeks to live."
"Oh, no," says the patient. "What could possibly be worse than
that?"
"Well," the doctor replies, "I've been trying to reach you since
last Monday."
%
A doctor was stranded with a lawyer in a leaky life raft in shark-infested
waters. The doctor tried to swim ashore but was eaten by the sharks. The
lawyer, however, swam safely past the bloodthirsty sharks. "Professional
courtesy," he explained.
%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
-- Ogden Nash
%
A drama critic is a person who surprises a playwright by informing him
what he meant.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
-- Stanislaw Lem
%
A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city subscribed to
a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury was asked to donate
a shilling. "Only a shilling?" exclaimed the man. "Only a shilling to bury
an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury twenty of them."
%
A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.
-- Klipstein
%
A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.
%
A fair exterior is a silent recommendation.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer
should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around
she deserved.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
%
A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox
1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help,
the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked
"what do you see?" Very earnestly, the Undergraduate replied, "I see a
cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of
the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head
with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
%
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill
%
A farmer is a man outstanding in his field.
%
A feed salesman is on his way to a farm. As he's driving along at forty
m.p.h., he looks out his car window and sees a three-legged chicken running
alongside him, keeping pace with his car. He is amazed that a chicken is
running at forty m.p.h. So he speeds up to forty-five, fifty, then sixty
m.p.h. The chicken keeps right up with him the whole way, then suddenly
takes off and disappears into the distance.
The man pulls into the farmyard and says to the farmer, "You know,
the strangest thing just happened to me; I was driving along at at least
sixty miles an hour and a chicken passed me like I was standing still!"
"Yeah," the farmer replies, "that chicken was ours. You see, there's
me, and there's Ma, and there's our son Billy. Whenever we had chicken for
dinner, we would all want a drumstick, so we'd have to kill two chickens.
So we decided to try and breed a three-legged chicken so each of us could
have a drumstick."
"How do they taste?" said the farmer.
"Don't know," replied the farmer. "We haven't been able to catch
one yet."
%
A fellow bought a new car, a Nissan, and was quite happy with his purchase.
He was something of an animist, however, and felt that the car really ought
to have a name. This presented a problem, as he was not sure if the name
should be masculine or feminine.
After considerable thought, he settled on naming the car either
Belchazar or Beaumadine, but remained in a quandry about the final choice.
"Is a Nissan male or female?" he began asking his friends. Most of
them looked at him peculiarly, mumbled things about urgent appointments, and
went on their way rather quickly.
He finally broached the question to a lady he knew who held a black
belt in judo. She thought for a moment and answered "Feminine."
The swiftness of her response puzzled him. "You're sure of that?" he
asked.
"Certainly," she replied. "They wouldn't sell very well if they were
masculine."
"Unhhh... Well, why not?"
"Because people want a car with a reputation for going when you want
it to. And, if Nissan's are female, it's like they say... `Each Nissan, she
go!'"
[No, we WON'T explain it; go ask someone who practices an oriental
martial art. (Tai Chi Chuan probably doesn't count.) Ed.]
%
A few hours grace before the madness begins again.
%
A figure with curves always offers a lot of interesting angles.
%
A fisherman from Maine went to Alabama on his vacation. He rented a boat,
rowed out to the middle of the lake, and cast his line, but when he looked
down into the water he was horrified to see a man wrapped in chains lying
on the bottom of the lake. He quickly rowed to shore and ran to the police
station. "Sheriff, sheriff," he gasped, there's a guy wrapped in chains,
drowned in the lake!"
"Now ain't that jest like a Yankee," drawled the sheriff, "to steal
more chain than he can swim with?"
%
A fitter fits; Though sinners sin
A cutter cuts; And thinners thin
And an aircraft spotter spots; And paper-blotters blot
A baby-sitter I've never yet
Baby-sits -- Had letters let
But an otter never ots. Or seen an otter ot.
A batter bats
(Or scatters scats);
A potting shed's for potting;
But no one's found
A bounder bound
Or caught an otter otting.
-- Ralph Lewin
%
A flashy Mercedes-Benz roared up to the curb where a cute young miss stood
waiting for a taxi.
"Hi," said the gentleman at the wheel. "I'm going west."
"How wonderful," came the cool reply. "Bring me back an orange."
%
A fool and his honey are soon parted.
%
A fool and his money are soon popular.
%
A fool and your money are soon partners.
%
A fool is a man who worries about whether or not his lover has integrity.
A wise man, on the other hand, busies himself with deeper attributes.
%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block
of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.
%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
-- D. Gries
%
A Fortran compiler is the hobgoblin of little minis.
%
A fox is wolf who sends flowers.
-- Ruth Weston
%
A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension.
-- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
%
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
A freelancer is one who gets paid by the word -- per piece or perhaps.
-- Robert Benchley
%
A friend in need is a pest indeed.
%
A friend is a present you give yourself.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
%
A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture. You don't have to go.
You'll just be walking down the street and... Ooohh, that's much better.
-- Steven Wright
%
A friend of mine won't get a divorce, because he hates
lawyers more than he hates his wife.
%
A friend with weed is a friend indeed.
%
A full belly makes a dull brain.
-- Ben Franklin
[and the local candy machine man. Ed]
%
A 'full' life in my experience is usually full only of other
people's demands.
%
A furore Normanorum libera nos, O Domine!
%
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than
he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
A gambler's biggest thrill is winning a bet.
His next biggest thrill is losing a bet.
%
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
electrical shock to the horse.
G: That's very good! But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist: I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that dissolves
into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before
I decide what to do. Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
%
A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
ducks.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
A gentleman is a man who wouldn't hit a lady with his hat on.
-- Evan Esar
[ And why not? For why does she have his hat on? Ed.]
%
A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on.
-- Fred Allen
%
A gift of a flower will soon be made to you.
%
A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *_t_h_a_t _h_a_d _t_o
_m_e_a_n _s_o_m_e_t_h_i_n_g*.
-- S. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
%
A girl with a future avoids the man with a past.
-- Evan Esar, "The Humor of Humor"
%
A girl's best friend is her mutter.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
A girl's conscience doesn't really keep her from doing anything wrong--
it merely keeps her from enjoying it.
%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like
a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).
%
A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game.
The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it
had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably atop a nice
firm tuft of grass.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in
the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the
rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between
the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be
penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such
uncontrollable physical phenomena.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and deaf husband.
-- Michel de Montaigne
%
A good memory does not equal pale ink.
%
A good name lost is seldom regained. When character is gone,
all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.
-- J. Hawes
%
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
-- Patton
%
A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a
one-way street.
-- Doug Linder
%
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
hope of greening the landscape of idea.
-- John Ciardi
%
A good reputation is more valuable than money.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
A good scapegoat is hard to find.
%
A good supervisor can step on your toes without messing up your shine.
%
A good sysadmin always carries around a few feet of fiber. If he ever
gets lost, he simply drops the fiber on the ground, waits ten minutes,
then asks the backhoe operator for directions.
-- Bill Bradford <mrbill@mrbill.net>
%
A GOOD WAY TO THREATEN somebody is to light a stick of dynamite. Then you
call the guy and hold the burning fuse to the phone. "Hear that?" you say.
"That's dynamite, baby."
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to
you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to
you about yourself.
-- Lisa Kirk
%
A gourmet restaurant in Cincinnati is one where you leave the tray on
the table after you eat.
%
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart that looks at her watch.
-- James Beard
%
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater
%
A grammarian's life is always intense.
%
A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A great many people think they are thinking
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
%
A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
man a century.
%
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The
green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that
grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals
indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the
bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled
with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor
of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down
upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department
store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several
of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be
properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of
anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and
geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.
-- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces"
%
A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals
are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for
not going to church on Sunday.
-- Russell Baker
%
A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.
-- Carolyn Wells
%
A guy has to get fresh once in a while
so a girl doesn't lose her confidence.
%
A hacker does for love what others would not do for money.
%
A halted retreat
Is nerve-wracking and dangerous.
To retain people as men -- and maidservants
Brings good fortune.
%
A hammer sometimes misses its mark - a bouquet never.
%
A handful of friends is worth more than a wagon of gold.
%
A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.
%
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own
weight in other people's patience.
-- John Updike
%
A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question:
If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save
a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning
photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would
you use?
-- Paul Harvey
%
A Hen Brooding Kittens
A friend informs us that he saw at the Novato ranch, Marin county,
a few days since, a hen actually brooding and otherwise caring for three
kittens! The gentleman upon whose premises this strange event is transpiring
says the hen adopted the kittens when they were but a few days old, and that
she has devoted them her undivided care for several weeks past. The young
felines are now of respectable size, but they nevertheless follow the hen at
her cluckings, and are regularly brooded at night beneath her wings.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1861
%
A hermit is a deserter from the army of humanity.
%
A highly intelligent man should take a primitive woman. Imagine if on top
of everything else, I had a woman who interfered with my work.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
A holding company is a thing where you hand
an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you.
%
A Hollywood producer calls a friend, another producer on the phone.
"Hello?" his friend answers.
"Hi!" says the man. "This is Bob, how are you doing?"
"Oh," says the friend, "I'm doing great! I just sold a screenplay
for two hundred thousand dollars. I've started a novel adaptation and the
studio advanced me fifty thousand dollars on it. I also have a television
series coming on next week, and everyone says it's going to be a big hit!
I'm doing *great*! How are you?"
"Okay," says the producer, "give me a call when he leaves."
%
A homeowner's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a weekend for?
%
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
A hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong!
%
A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The
Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered.
-- Harry Thurston Peck (Editor of "The Bookman"), January 1901
%
A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
-- Helen Rowland
%
A hypocrite is a person who ... but who isn't?
-- Don Marquis
%
A hypothetical paradox:
What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team,
who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial
Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
-- Tom Galloway
%
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh.
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.
G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of ennui.
O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
W is for Winie, embedded in ice, X is for Xercies, devoured by mice.
Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
-- Edward Gorey "The Gastly Crumb Tines"
%
A is for Apple.
-- Hester Pryne
%
A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.
I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.
-- THE ABC'S OF UNIX
%
A joint is just tea for two.
%
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Sam.
%
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- Lao Tsu
%
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.
-- Lao Tsu
%
A jug of wine, a bowl of rice with it;
Earthen vessels
Simply handed in through the window.
There is certainly no blame in this.
%
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost
%
A key to the understanding of all religions is that a God's idea of a
good time is a game of Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
%
A kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo, eventually.
%
A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.
-- Philip Larkin on Anthony Burgess
%
A king's castle is his home.
%
A kiss is a course of procedure, cunningly devised,
for the mutual stoppage of speech at a moment when
words are superfluous.
%
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%
A lady is one who never shows her underwear unintentionally.
-- Lillian Day
%
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
-- Gopete Sherany
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you
think about programming is not worth knowing.
-- Alan Perlis
%
A language that doesn't have everything is
actually easier to program in than some that do.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
A lanky Texan was mad because Texas had just become the second largest state in
the Union, so he made up his mind to move to Alaska. He drove for three days
and three nights to get there and finally he came to what looked like the state
line. He halted his car and walked up to the border guard. "Hi, there! How
do I become a resident of this here biggest state?" demanded the Texan.
The guard looked him up and down and grinned. "Waal," he answered,
there are three things you gotta do to get in. First, drink down a quart of
110 proof corn liquor without blinkin'. Second, kill a grizzly bear, and
third, make love to an Eskimo woman."
"Sounds easy enough," said the Texan. "Where can I get a quart of
this here corn liquor?"
"Got one right here," replied the guard.
The Texan gulped down the whiskey without batting an eyelash.
"Now, do you happen to know where I can find me a grizzly?"
"Yep," answered the guard, "there's a big b'ar over that way, 'bout
a mile... lives in a cave on that cliff."
The Texan lurched merrily off. About an hour later he returned
with his clothes almost torn off and his face scratched and bloody. He was
smiling happily. "Now," he roared, "where's that damn Eskimo woman you
want killed?"
%
A large number of installed systems work by fiat.
That is, they work by being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt
%
A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies.
Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured
him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and
quiet place in which to rest. One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around
above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said,
"Come on down." But the fly was too clever for him and said, "I never light
where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house."
So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other
flies. He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said,
"Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper. All those flies are trapped." "Don't be
silly," said the fly, "they're dancing." So he settled down and became stuck
to the flypaper with all the other flies.
Moral: There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
-- James Thurber, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
%
A Law of Computer Programming:
Make it possible for programmers to write in English
and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
%
A liberal is a man too broad minded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-- Robert Frost
%
A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment.
-- Willis Player
%
A lie in time saves nine.
%
A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in time of
trouble.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
%
A life spent in search of the perfect hash brownie is a life well spent.
%
A lifetime isn't nearly long enough to figure out what it's all about.
%
A light wife doth make a heavy husband.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
-- Aristotle
%
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
%
A LISP programmer knows the value of
everything, but the cost of nothing.
-- Alan Perlis
%
A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
-- Don Knuth
%
A little experience often upsets a lot of theory.
%
A little inaccuracy saves a world of explanation.
-- C. E. Ayres
%
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
-- H. H. Munro, "Saki"
%
A little kid went up to Santa and asked him, "Santa, you know when I'm bad
right?" And Santa says, "Yes, I do." The little kid then asks, "And you
know when I'm sleeping?" To which Santa replies, "Every minute." So the
little kid then says, "Well, if you know when I'm bad and when I'm good,
then how come you don't know what I want for Christmas?"
%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
-- Fred Brooks
%
A little word of doubtful number,
A foe to rest and peaceful slumber.
If you add an "s" to this,
Great is the metamorphosis.
Plural is plural now no more,
And sweet what bitter was before.
What am I?
%
A log may float in a river, but that does not make it a crocodile.
%
A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
%
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.
Buy the negatives at any price.
%
A lost ounce of gold may be found, a lost moment of time never.
%
A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
-- Steven Wright
%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking,
and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
-- Thomas Hardy
%
A major, with wonderful force,
Called out in Hyde Park for a horse.
All the flowers looked round,
But no horse could be found;
So he just rhododendron, of course.
%
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never owned a car.
-- Carrie Snow
%
A man always needs to remember one thing about
a beautiful woman. Somewhere, somebody's tired of her.
%
A man always remembers his first love with special
tenderness, but after that begins to bunch them.
-- Mencken
%
A man arrived home early to find his wife in the arms of his best friend,
who swore how much they were in love. To quiet the enraged husband, the
lover suggested, "Friends shouldn't fight, let's play gin rummy. If I win,
you get a divorce so I can marry her. If you win, I promise never to see
her again. Okay?"
"Alright," agreed the husband. "But how about a quarter a point
on the side to make it interesting?"
%
A man can have two, maybe three love affairs while he's married. After
that it's cheating.
-- Yves Montand
%
A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself.
-- Du Bois
%
A man fell off a mountain and, as he fell, saw a branch and grabbed for it.
By superhuman effort he was able to get a precarious grip on it. As he
was hanging there for dear life, he looked up and cried out,
"Is anybody there?"
A deep majestic voice answered,
"Yes my son, I am here. What do you need?"
"Help me!!" cried the man.
"I will help you", said the voice, "Just let go of the branch and
you'll be safe. All you have to do is trust."
The man thought for a moment and cried out:
"Anybody ELSE up there?"
%
A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles
in the road.
-- Alexander Smith
%
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor, "Newsweek"
%
A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.
-- Brendan Francis
%
A man is crawling through the Sahara desert when he is approached by another
man riding on a camel. When the rider gets close enough, the crawling man
whispers through his sun-parched lips, "Water... please... can you give...
water..."
"I'm sorry," replies the man on the camel, "I don't have any water
with me. But I'd be delighted to sell you a necktie."
"Tie?" whispers the man. "I need *water*."
"They're only four dollars apiece."
"I need *water*."
"Okay, okay, say two for seven dollars."
"Please! I need *water*!", says the man.
"I don't have any water, all I have are ties," replies the salesman,
and he heads off into the distance.
The man, losing track of time, crawls for what seems like days.
Finally, nearly dead, sun-blind and with his skin peeling and blistering, he
sees a restaurant in the distance. Summoning the last of his strength he
staggers up to the door and confronts the head waiter.
"Water... can I get... water," the dying man manages to stammer.
"I'm sorry, sir, ties required."
%
A man is known by the company he organizes.
-- A. Bierce
%
A man is like a rusty wheel on a rusty cart,
He sings his song as he rattles along and then he falls apart.
-- Richard Thompson
%
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be
bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Circle"
%
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
A man may sometimes be forgiven the kiss to which he is not entitled,
but never the kiss he has not the initiative to claim.
%
A man may well bring a horse to the water,
but he cannot make him drink with he will.
-- John Heywood
%
A man of genius makes no mistakes.
His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
-- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
%
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
%
A man said to the Universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the Universe,
"the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane
%
A man took his wife deer hunting for the first time. After he'd given her
some basic instructions, they agreed to separate and rendezvous later. Before
he left, he warned her if she should fell a deer to be wary of hunters who
might beat her to the carcass and claim the kill. If that happened, he told
her, she should fire her gun three times into the air and he would come to
her aid.
Shortly after they separated, he heard a single shot, followed quickly
by the agreed upon signal. Running to the scene, he found his wife standing
in a small clearing with a very nervous man staring down her gun barrel.
"He claims this is his," she said, obviously very upset.
"She can keep it, she can keep it!" the wide-eyed man replied. "I
just want to get my saddle back!"
%
A man usually falls in love with a woman who asks the kinds of questions
he is able to answer.
-- Ronald Colman
%
A man was griping to his friend about how he hated to go home after a
late card games.
"You wouldn't believe what I go through to avoid waking my wife,"
he said. "First, I kill the engine a block away from the house and coast
into the garage. Then I open the door slowly, take off my shoes, and
tiptoe to our room. But just as I'm about to slide into bed, she always
wakes up and gives me hell."
"I make a big racket when I go home," his friend replied.
"You do?"
"Sure. I honk the horn, slam the door, turn on all the lights,
stomp up to the bedroom and give my wife a big kiss. `Hi, Alice,' I say.
`How about a little smooch for your old man?'"
"And what does she say?" his friend asked in disbelief.
"She doesn't say anything," his buddy replied. "She always pretends
she's asleep."
%
A man was kneeling by a grave in a cemetery, crying and praying very loudly,
"Oh why..eeeee did you die...eeeeee, Oh Why..eeeeee,
why did you Di......eeee"
The caretaker walks up, pardons himself and asks politely,
"Excuse me, sir, but I've been seeing you for hours now,
carrying on at this grave. You must have been very close to the deceased."
"No, I never met him. Oh why....eeeee did you dieeeeee,
why....eeeee did you.."
"Sir, you say you never met this person, yet you carry on so?
Tell, me who is buried here?"
"My wife's first husband."
%
A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
%
A man who carries a cat by its tail learns something he can learn
in no other way.
%
A man who fishes for marlin in ponds
will put his money in Etruscan bonds.
%
A man who likes to lie in bed can usually
find a girl willing to listen to him.
%
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
%
A man with 3 wings and a dictionary is cousin to the turkey.
%
A man with one watch knows what time it is.
A man with two watches is never quite sure.
%
A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle.
%
A man without a woman is like a fish without gills.
%
A man without a woman is like a statue without pigeons.
%
A man would still do something out of sheer perversity - he would create
destruction and chaos - just to gain his point... and if all this could in
turn be analyzed and prevented by predicting that it would occur, then man
would deliberately go mad to prove his point.
-- Feodor Dostoevsky, "Notes From the Underground"
%
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
%
A man's best friend is his dogma.
%
A man's gotta know his limitations.
-- Clint Eastwood, "Dirty Harry"
%
A man's house is his castle.
-- Sir Edward Coke
%
A man's house is his hassle.
%
A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk.
"It is right before your eyes," said the master.
"Why do I not see it for myself?"
"Because you are thinking of yourself."
"What about you: do you see it?"
"So long as you see double, saying `I don't', and `you do', and so
on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.
"When there is neither `I' nor `You', can one see it?"
"When there is neither `I' nor `You',
who is the one that wants to see it?"
%
A mathematician, a doctor, and an engineer are walking on the beach and
observe a team of lifeguards pumping the stomach of a drowned woman. As
they watch, water, sand, snails and such come out of the pump.
The doctor watches for a while and says: "Keep pumping, men, you may
yet save her!!"
The mathematician does some calculations and says: "According to my
understanding of the size of that pump, you have already pumped more water
from her body than could be contained in a cylinder 4 feet in diameter and
6 feet high."
The engineer says: "I think she's sitting in a puddle."
%
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
-- P. Erdos
%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%
A meeting is an event at which the
minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
%
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader,
but to protect the writer.
-- Dean Acheson
%
A method of solution is perfect if we can foresee from the start,
and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.
-- Leibnitz
%
A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
paper reports "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
fall over gently onto their backs.
-- Audobon Society Magazine
2001-02-02, from http://news.bbc.co.uk:
For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as
Lynx helicopters passed overhead.
"Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
said team leader Dr Richard Stone.
"As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
really."
The conclusion, said Dr Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
(1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects"
on king penguins.
%
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.
-- Ogden Nash
%
A mind is a wonderful thing to waste.
%
A modem is a baudy house.
%
A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery,
is the most tremendous object in the whole creation.
-- Goldsmith
%
A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen
floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for
its species, managed to trap them in a corner. The children cowered,
terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother!
Save us! Save us! We're scared, Mother!"
Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its
children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them,
and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman
proud. The startled cat fled in fear for its life.
As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother,
you saved us!" and "Yay! You scared the cat away!" she turned to them
purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second
language?"
%
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy,
and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
-- Frost
%
A motion to adjourn is always in order.
%
A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in.
%
A mouse is an elephant built by the Japanese.
%
A mushroom cloud has no silver lining.
%
A musician, an artist, an architect:
the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
-- William Blake
%
A myth is a religion in which no-one any longer believes.
-- James Feibleman, "Understanding Philosophy"
%
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
-- Gore Vidal
%
A nasty looking dwarf throws a knife at you.
%
A national debt, if it is not excessive,
will be to us a national blessing.
-- Alexander Hamilton
%
A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out on
loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed loudly inside
the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom do you believe,"
asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
%
A new 'chutist had just jumped from the plane at 10,000 feet, and soon
discovered that all his lines were hopelessly tangled. At about 5,000 feet,
still struggling, he noticed someone coming up from the ground at about the
same speed as he was going towards the ground. As they passed each other at
3,000 feet, the 'chutist yells, "HEY! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PARACHUTES?"
The reply came, fading towards the end, "NO! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING
ABOUT COLEMAN STOVES?"
%
A new koan:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
It is an ice cream koan.
%
A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a `round tuit'
now has no excuse for further procrastination.
%
A new taste had been acquired and a new appetite began to grow. The time
had long since arrived to crush the technical intelligentsia, which had
come to regard itself as too irreplaceable and had not gotten used to
catching instructions on the wing. In other words, we never did trust
the engineers - and from the very first years of the Revolution we saw to
it that those lackeys and servants of former capitalist bosses were kept
in line by healthy suspicion and surveillance by the workers.
-- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"
%
A New Way of Taking Pills
A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and
having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with
small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks
will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
-- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861
%
A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the
rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
%
A New Yorker is riding down the road in his new Mercedes. So intent is he
on the cocaine in his hand he completely misses a turn and his car plunges
over the five-hundred-foot cliff to be smashed into pieces at the bottom.
As the on-lookers rush to the edge of the cliff they see him fifty feet
from the top of the cliff clinging to a stunted bush with all his strength.
"Dear Lord," he prays, "I never asked you for nothin' before, but I'm askin'
you now: Save me, Lord, save me."
Booms the Lord: "LET GO OF THE BRANCH."
"But Lord, if I do that, I'll fall!"
"TRUST ME, LET GO OF THE BRANCH."
"But Lord, I'm gonna fall and die..."
"TRUST ME TO SAVE YOU. LET GO OF THE BRANCH."
Okay, Lord, I'll trust you, here I... here I go!" And he falls
to his death.
"DUMB YANKEE."
%
A New Yorker was driving through Berkeley when he saw a big crowd gathered
by the side of the street. Curiosity got the better of him and he leaned
out of his window to ask an onlooker what was going on. The fellow explained
that a protestor against the U.S. position in South America had doused
himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. "That's terrible," gasped
the man. "But why is everyone still standing around?"
"Well, they're taking up a collection for his wife and kids," the
onlooker explained. "Would you be willing to help?"
"Well, sure," replied the New Yorker. "I suppose I could spare a
gallon or two."
%
A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
-- Arthure "Bugs" Baer
%
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
-- Yogi Berra
%
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
"Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Ghandi
%
A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question.
"Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked.
The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be
relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes
before replying.
"I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else."
With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch. The novice suddenly achieved
enlightenment, several years later.
Commentary:
His Master is kind,
Answering his FAQ quickly,
With thought and sarcasm.
%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%
A pain in the ass of major dimensions.
-- C. A. Desoer, on the solution of non-linear circuits
%
A Parable of Modern Research:
Bob has lost his keys in a room which is dark except for one
brightly lit corner.
"Why are you looking under the light, you lost them in the dark!"
"I can only see here."
%
A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on.
-- William S. Burroughs
%
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
A pencil with no point needs no eraser.
%
A penny saved has not been spent.
%
A penny saved is a penny taxed.
%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%
A penny saved kills your career in government.
%
A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to
govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures
on armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins
itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and
manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.
-- Anatole France
%
A perfectly honest woman, a woman who never flatters, who never manages,
who never cajoles, who never conceals, who never uses her eyes, who never
speculates on the effect which she produces, who never is conscious of
unspoken admiration, what a monster, I say, would such a female be!
-- Thackeray
%
A person forgives only when they are in the wrong.
%
A person is just about as big as the things that make him angry.
%
A person who has nothing looks at all there is and wants something.
A person who has something looks at all there is and wants all the rest.
%
A person who is more than casually interested in computers should be well
schooled in machine language, since it is a fundamental part of a computer.
-- Donald Knuth
%
A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald
%
A pickup with three guys in it pulls into the lumber yard. One of the men
gets out and goes into the office.
"I need some four-by-two's," he says.
"You must mean two-by-four's" replies the clerk.
The man scratches his head. "Wait a minute," he says, "I'll go
check."
Back, after an animated conversation with the other occupants of the
truck, he reassures the clerk, that, yes, in fact, two-by-fours would be
acceptable.
"OK," says the clerk, writing it down, "how long you want 'em?"
The guy gets the blank look again. "Uh... I guess I better go
check," he says.
He goes back out to the truck, and there's another animated
conversation. The guy comes back into the office. "A long time," he says,
"we're building a house".
%
A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
A pipe gives a wise man time to think
and a fool something to stick in his mouth.
%
A place for everything and everything in its place.
-- Isabella Mary Beeton, "The Book of Household Management"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to memory management system services.]
%
A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.
-- Stanley Baldwin
%
A plethora of individuals with expertise in culinary techniques
contaminate the potable concoction produced by steeping certain
edible nutriments.
%
A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs.
%
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
%
A Polish worker walks into a bank to deposit his paycheck. He has heard
about Poland's economic problems, and he asks what would happen to his
money if the bank collapsed. "All of our deposits are guaranteed by the
finance ministry, sir," the teller replies.
"But what if the finance ministry goes broke?" the worker asks.
"Then the government will intercede to protect the working class,"
the teller says.
"But what if the government goes broke?" the worker asks.
"Our socialist comrades in the Soviet Union naturally will come
to our assistance," the teller responds with growing irritation.
"And if the Soviet Union goes broke?" the worker asks.
"Idiot!" the teller snorts. "Isn't that worth losing one lousy
paycheck?"
-- Making the rounds in Warsaw, 1984
%
A political man can have as his aim the realization of freedom,
but he has no means to realize it other than through violence.
-- Jean Paul Sartre
%
A possum must be himself, and being himself he is honest.
-- Walt Kelly
%
A pound of salt will not sweeten a single cup of tea.
%
A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"
%
A "practical joker" deserves applause for his wit according to its quality.
Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit one might grant keelhauling.
But staking him out on an anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest.
-- Lazarus Long
%
A prediction is worth twenty explanations.
-- K. Brecher
%
A pretty foot is one of the greatest gifts of nature... please send me your
last pair of shoes, already worn out in dancing... so I can have something
of yours to press against my heart.
-- Goethe
%
A pretty woman can do anything; an ugly woman must do everything.
%
A priest advised Voltaire on his death bed to renounce the devil.
Replied Voltaire, "This is no time to make new enemies."
%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
too.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.
-- George Eliot
%
A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then
asks you not to kill him.
-- Sir Winston Churchill, 1952
%
A private sin is not so prejudicial in the world as a public indecency.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%
A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of
being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of
incomprehensible answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague
assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents
and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of
dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of
annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was
unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place.
-- IEEE Grid newsmagazine
%
A programming language is low level
when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
%
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to
drink with -- even if he drank.
-- Mencken
%
A prominent broadcaster, on a big-game safari in Africa, was taken to a
watering hole where the life of the jungle could be observed. As he
looked down from his tree platform and described the scene into his
tape recorder, he saw two gnus grazing peacefully. So preoccupied were
they that they failed to observe the approach of a pride of lions led
by two magnificent specimens, obviously the leaders. The lions charged,
killed the gnus, and dragged them into the bushes where their feasting
could not be seen. A little while later the two kings of the jungle
emerged and the radioman recorded on his tape: "Well, that's the end of
the gnus and here, once again, are the head lions."
%
A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave... The female is a female
by virtue of a certain lack of qualities -- a natural defectiveness.
-- Aristotle
%
A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions
your wife asks you for nothing.
-- Joey Adams
%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
your wife will give you for free.
%
A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
was intended for her preservation.
-- Colton
%
A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
"you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
to make a travesty of the game.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A rabbi and a priest are sitting together on a train, and the rabbi leans
over and asks, "So, how high can you advance in your organization?"
The priest replies, "Well, if I am lucky, I guess I could become a
Bishop."
"Well, could you get any higher than that?"
"I suppose that if my works are seen in a very good light that I
might be made an Archbishop."
"Is there any way that you might go higher than that?"
"If all the Saints should smile, I guess I could be made a Cardinal."
"Could you be anything higher than a Cardinal?"
Hesitating a little bit, the priest said, "I suppose that I could
be elected Pope, but only if it's God's will."
"And could you be anything higher than that, is there any way to go
up from being the Pope?"
"What?! I should be the Messiah himself?!"
The rabbi leaned back and smiled. "One of our boys made it."
%
A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results
blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.
-- Steel City News
%
A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the
entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.
-- Saul Alinsky
%
A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.
%
A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having
his neighbor notice it.
-- Trygve Lie
%
A real estate agent, looking over a farmer's house for possible sale,
commented to the farmer how sturdy the house looked.
The farmer replied, "Yep, built it with my bare hands... did it
the hard way. The steps to the front door, here, carved 'em out of
field stones... did it the hard way. That hardwood floor in the living
room, dovetailed the pieces myself... did it the hard way. The ceiling
beams, made 'em out of my own oak trees... did it the hard way."
Just then, the farmer's gorgeous daughter walked in. The farmer
looks over at the real estate agent who is trying not to stare too
obviously and smiles. "Yep... standing up in a canoe."
%
A real friend isn't someone you use once and then throw away.
A real friend is someone you can use over and over again.
%
A real gentleman never takes bases unless he really has to.
-- Overheard in an algebra lecture
%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking
ticket and rejoices that the system works.
%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added concentration
needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional objects.
%
A regular expression goes into a pub with a friend, intending to
help him find a girl. However, when the cockney barman finds this
out, he says to it, "Ere! I'll have no pattern match-making in my
pub!"
%
A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other
people what to do with their money.
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)
%
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
%
A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized
rosewater.
%
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
-- Blake
%
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single
man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%
A rolling disk gathers no MOS.
%
A rolling stone gathers momentum.
%
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who
demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?"
holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made.
Yet, added he, none of you can tell where it pinches me.
-- Plutarch
%
A rope lying over the top of a fence is the same length on each side. It
weighs one third of a pound per foot. On one end hangs a monkey holding a
banana, and on the other end a weight equal to the weight of the monkey.
The banana weighs two ounces per inch. The rope is as long (in feet) as
the age of the monkey (in years), and the weight of the monkey (in ounces)
is the same as the age of the monkey's mother. The combined age of the
monkey and its mother is thirty years. One half of the weight of the monkey,
plus the weight of the banana, is one forth as much as the weight of the
weight and the weight of the rope. The monkey's mother is half as old as
the monkey will be when it is three times as old as its mother was when she
was half as old as the monkey will be when it is as old as its mother
will be when she is four times as old as the monkey was when it was twice
as its mother was when she was one third as old as the monkey was when it
was old as is mother was when she was three times as old as the monkey was
when it was one fourth as old as it is now. How long is the banana?
%
A rose is a rose is a rose. Just ask Jean Marsh, known to millions of
PBS viewers in the '70s as Rose, the maid on the BBC export "Upstairs,
Downstairs." Though Marsh has since gone on to other projects, ... it's
with Rose she's forever identified. So much so that she even likes to
joke about having one named after her, a distinction not without its
drawbacks. "I was very flattered when I heard about it, but when I looked
up the official description, it said, `Jean Marsh: pale peach, not very
good in beds; better up against a wall.' I want to tell you that's not
true. I'm very good in beds as well."
%
A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly.
If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
-- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the stars
%
A sadist is a masochist who follows the Golden Rule.
%
A salamander scurries into flame to be destroyed.
Imaginary creatures are trapped in birth on celluloid.
-- Genesis, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"
I don't know what it's about. I'm just the drummer. Ask Peter.
-- Phil Collins in 1975, when asked about the message behind
the previous year's Genesis release, "The Lamb Lies Down
on Broadway".
%
A Scholar asked his Master, "Master, would you advise me of a proper
vocation?"
The Master replied, "Some men can earn their keep with the power of
their minds. Others must use their strong backs, legs and hands. This is
the same in nature as it is with man. Some animals acquire their food easily,
such as rabbits, hogs and goats. Other animals must fiercely struggle for
their sustenance, like beavers, moles and ants. So you see, the nature of
the vocation must fit the individual.
"But I have no abilities, desires, or imagination, Master," the
scholar sobbed.
Queried the Master... "Have you thought of becoming a salesperson?"
%
A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
-- Max Planck
%
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from
the vexation of thinking.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1831
%
A sense of desolation and uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness
of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavor, and a thirst for a life giving
water which seems suddenly to have failed, are the signs in consciousness
of this necessary reorganization of our lives.
It is difficult to believe that this state of mind can be produced by the
recognition of such facts as that unsupported stones always fall to the
ground.
-- J. W. N. Sullivan
%
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep
him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are
worth committing.
-- Samuel Butler
%
A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.
-- Don Marquis
%
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the
multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt...
for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its
flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in
Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to
lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
%
A sharper perspective on this matter is particularly important to feminist
thought today, because a major tendency in feminism has constructed the
problem of domination as a drama of female vulnerability victimized by male
aggression. Even the more sophisticated feminist thinkers frequently shy
away from the analysis of submission, for fear that in admitting woman's
participation in the relationship of domination, the onus of responsibility
will appear to shift from men to women, and the moral victory from women to
men. More generally, this has been a weakness of radical politics: to
idealize the oppressed, as if their politics and culture were untouched by
the system of domination, as if people did not participate in their own
submission. To reduce domination to a simple relation of doer and done-to
is to substitute moral outrage for analysis.
-- Jessica Benjamin, "The Bonds of Love"
%
A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least the end of the blackboard.
-- Prof. Steiner
%
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
-- Joseph Stalin
%
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
-- Dorothy Parker, "One Perfect Rose"
%
A sinking ship gathers no moss.
-- Donald Kaul
%
A small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.
%
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
%
A snake lurks in the grass.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
A social scientist, studying the culture and traditions of a small North
African tribe, found a woman still practicing the ancient art of matchmaking.
Locally, she was known as the Moor, the marrier.
%
A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family,
the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society
which is on its way out.
-- L. Ron Hubbard
%
A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.
-- Proverbs 15:1
%
A soft drink turneth away company.
%
A song in time is worth a dime.
%
A Southern boy graduates from high school heads north to college, taking the
family dog, Old Blue with him, for company. He's only been there a few weeks
when he gets a call from his girlfriend; seems like they've got a problem,
and she needs a thousand dollars to take care of it. The boy calls his folks:
"How are you?" they ask.
"Oh, I'm fine," he says.
"And how," they ask, "is Old Blue?"
"Well, he's kind of depressed. You see, there's this lady up here
that teaches dogs to talk, and Ol' Blue is feelin' kind of left out 'cause
he's the only dog that doesn't know how to talk. She charges a thousand
dollars."
The parents send the boy the thousand dollars, he forwards it to Mary
Lou, and everything's fine until Christmas vacation. The boy leaves Ol' Blue
at his dorm, 'cause he just can't figure out what to tell his parents. Sure
enough, when he gets home, the first thing his father wants to know is
"Where's Old Blue?"
"Well, Pa," says the boy. "I was driving on home and Old Blue was
talking away about this and that when we passed the Buford's farm. Old Blue,
well, he said, `Say, what do you think your mother would do if I told her
that your father's been comin' over here and seeing Mrs. Buford all these
years?'"
The father looks at his son -- "You shot that dog, didn't you, boy?"
%
A squeegee by any other name wouldn't sound as funny.
%
A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
A statistician, who refused to fly after reading of the alarmingly high
probability that there will be a bomb on any given plane, realized that
the probability of there being two bombs on any given flight is very low.
Now, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him.
%
A stitch in time saves nine.
%
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-- O'Henry
%
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures.
-- Daniel Webster
%
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt.
As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true", asked the
student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp?" Almost before
the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit
the student with a stick.
%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
%
A stunning blonde, but probably all bean dip above the eyebrows.
%
A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
undreamed of by its author.
-- S. C. Johnson
%
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first
thought of.
-- Burt Bacharach
%
A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
new versions of their own innards!
-- Michael O'Brien
%
A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
-- by Charles Dickens
A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place.
The Metamorphosis LITE(tm)
-- by Franz Kafka
A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed.
Lord of the Rings LITE(tm)
-- by J. R. R. Tolkien
Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano.
Hamlet LITE(tm)
-- by Wm. Shakespeare
A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy
girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age.
%
A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
-- by Charles Dickens
A man in love with a girl who loves another man who looks just
like him has his head chopped off in France because of a mean
lady who knits.
Crime and Punishment LITE(tm)
-- by Fyodor Dostoevski
A man sends a nasty letter to a pawnbroker, but later
feels guilty and apologizes.
The Odyssey LITE(tm)
-- by Homer
After working late, a valiant warrior gets lost on his way home.
%
A tall, dark stranger will have more fun than you.
%
A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
%
A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
-- Michael Winner, British film director
%
A Texan, impressing the hell out of a Bostonian with tales about the heroes
of the Alamo, commented, "I'll bet you never had anyone that brave around
*Boston*."
"Ever hear of Paul Revere?", snarled the Bostonian.
"Paul Revere?", pondered the Texan. "Isn't he the guy who ran for
help?"
%
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."
%
A timely marriage: one made before your children start nagging you about it.
-- Diane Duane
%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting
fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first.
%
A traveling salesman was driving past a farm when he saw a pig with three
wooden legs executing a magnificent series of backflips and cartwheels.
Intrigued, he drove up to the farmhouse, where he found an old farmer
sitting in the yard watching the pig.
"That's quite a pig you have there, sir" said the salesman.
"Sure is, son," the farmer replied. "Why, two years ago, my daughter
was swimming in the lake and bumped her head and damned near drowned, but that
pig swam out and dragged her back to shore."
"Amazing!" the salesman exclaimed.
"And that's not the only thing. Last fall I was cuttin' wood up on
the north forty when a tree fell on me. Pinned me to the ground, it did.
That pig run up and wiggled underneath that tree and lifted it off of me.
Saved my life."
"Fantastic! the salesman said. But tell me, how come the pig has
three wooden legs?"
The farmer stared at the newcomer in amazement. "Mister, when you
got an amazin' pig like that, you don't eat him all at once."
%
A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
triangle.
%
A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother
drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
-- Shaw
%
A truly great man will neither trample on a worm nor sneak to an emperor.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%
A truly wise woman never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
-- William Blake
%
A university is what a college becomes
when the faculty loses interest in students.
-- John Ciardi
%
A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
-- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
%
A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
She found a good way
To combine work and play:
She sells C shells by the seashore.
%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better
than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams
%
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
The system, you see,
Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
%
A violent man will die a violent death.
-- Lao Tsu
%
A visit to a fresh place will bring strange work.
%
A visit to a strange place will bring fresh work.
%
A vivid and creative mind characterizes you.
%
A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
-- Ziggy
%
A watched clock never boils.
%
A well adjusted person is one who makes
the same mistake twice without getting nervous.
%
A well-known friend is a treasure.
%
A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing steam does no grow stagnant.
Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.
Software rots if not used.
These are great mysteries.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A widow is more sought after than an old maid of the same age.
-- Addison
%
A wise man can see more from a mountain top
than a fool can from the bottom of a well.
%
A wise man can see more from the bottom
of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.
%
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion.
-- Chinese proverb
%
A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire
%
A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets
people's attention.
%
A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit,
let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that
there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another,
completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of
beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells.
It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club
near your person at all times.
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
%
A woman can look both moral and exciting -- if she also looks as if it
were quite a struggle.
-- Edna Ferber
%
A woman can never be too rich or too thin.
%
A woman did what a woman had to, the best way she knew how.
To do more was impossible, to do less, unthinkable.
-- Dirisha, "The Man Who Never Missed"
%
A woman employs sincerity only when every other form of deception has failed.
-- Scott
%
A woman, especially if she have the misfortune
of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
-- Jane Austen
%
A woman forgives the audacity of which
her beauty has prompted us to be guilty.
-- LeSage
%
A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be
thankful for a good one.
-- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
%
A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her,
she follows.
-- Chamfort
%
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure,
it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
-- Nietzsche
%
A woman must be a cute, cuddly, naive little thing -- tender, sweet,
and stupid.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
A woman physician has made the statement that smoking is neither
physically defective nor morally degrading, and that nicotine, even
when indulged to in excess, is less harmful than excessive petting."
-- Purdue Exponent, Jan 16, 1925
%
A woman shouldn't have to buy her own perfume.
-- Maurine Lewis
%
A woman went into a hospital one day to give birth. Afterwards, the doctor
came to her and said, "I have some... odd news for you."
"Is my baby all right?" the woman anxiously asked.
"Yes, he is," the doctor replied, "but we don't know how. Your son
(we assume) was born with no body. He only has a head."
Well, the doctor was correct. The Head was alive and well, though no
one knew how. The Head turned out to be fairly normal, ignoring his lack of
a body, and lived for some time as typical a life as could be expected under
the circumstances.
One day, about twenty years after the fateful birth, the woman got a
phone call from another doctor. The doctor said, "I have recently perfected
an operation. Your son can live a normal life now: we can graft a body onto
his head!"
The woman, practically weeping with joy, thanked the doctor and hung
up. She ran up the stairs saying, "Johnny, Johnny, I have a *wonderful*
surprise for you!"
"Oh no," cried The Head, "not another HAT!"
%
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
Therefore, a man without a woman is like a bicycle without a fish.
%
A woman's best protection is a little money of her own.
-- Clare Booth Luce, quoted in "The Wit of Women"
%
A woman's place is in the house... and in the Senate.
%
A word to the wise is enough.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
A would-be disciple came to Nasrudin's hut on the mountain-side. Knowing
that every action of such an enlightened one is significant, the seeker
watched the teacher closely. "Why do you blow on your hands?" "To warm
myself in the cold." Later, Nasrudin poured bowls of hot soup for himself
and the newcomer, and blew on his own. "Why are you doing that, Master?"
"To cool the soup." Unable to trust a man who uses the same process
to arrive at two different results -- hot and cold -- the disciple departed.
%
A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call
what he writes fiction.
-- William Faulkner
%
A yawn is a silent shout.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
A year spent in Artificial Intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
%
A young girl once committed suicide because her mother refused her a new
bonnet. Coroner's verdict: "Death from excessive spunk."
-- Sacramento Daily Union, September 13, 1860
%
A young man and his girlfriend were walking along Main Street when she spotted
a beautiful diamond ring in a jewelry-store window. "Wow, I'd sure love to
have that!" she gushed.
"No problem," her companion replied, throwing a brick through the
window and grabbing the ring.
A few blocks later, the woman admired a full-length sable coat. "What
I'd give to own that," she said, sighing.
"No problem," he said, throwing a brick through the window and grabbing
the coat.
Finally, turning for home, they passed a car dealership. "Boy, I'd do
anything for one of those Rolls-Royces," she said.
"Jeez, baby," the guy moaned, "you think I'm made of bricks?"
%
A young man enters the New York branch of Tiffany's on a Friday evening and
walks up to a display case full of pearl necklaces. He turns to a gorgeous
woman, who is obviously window shopping, looks her straight in the eye and
says, "I can tell by your eyes that you really want that necklace. If you'll
allow me, I'd like to buy it for you."
The woman looks him up and down; he's wearing a nice suit and some
pretty nice jewelry, but she has trouble believing this story.
"Look, this is some kind of put on, right?"
"No, really. You see, I've got quite a lot of money -- so much that
I could never spend it all. I'd really like for you to have it."
The guys whips out his checkbook, writes a check for five figures,
calls over a clerk and hands it to him. The clerk peers at the check, looks
at the young man, looks at the check again. "Very good, sir. I'm afraid I
can't release the necklace immediately, would Monday be all right?"
"That'll be fine, she'll pick it up." the man replies, and walks out
of the store with the woman following him in a daze.
The next Monday the man comes back in and walks up to the counter.
The same clerk hurries over to him and says, "Sir, I'm sorry to have to tell
you this, but your check was returned for insufficient funds."
"I know," the man replies. "I just wanted to thank you for a
terrific weekend."
%
A young man wrote to Mozart and said:
Q: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any
suggestions as to how to get started?"
A: "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with
some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
Q: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
A: "But I never asked anybody how."
%
A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive.
%
AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%
Abbott's Admonitions:
1: If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know.
2: If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked
the question.
-- Charles Abbot, dean, University of Virginia
%
Aberdeen was so small that when the family with the car went
on vacation, the gas station and drive-in theatre had to close.
%
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
-- James Henry Leigh Hunt, "Abou Ben Adhem"
%
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
%
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
%
About the only thing we have left that actually
discriminates in favor of the plain people is the stork.
%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%
About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt
ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Above all else - sky.
%
Above all things, reverence yourself.
%
Abraham Lincoln didn't die in vain. He died in Washington, D.C.
%
Abscond, v:
To be unexpectedly called away to the bedside of a dying relative
and miss the return train.
%
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases
great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fires.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Absence in love is like water upon fire;
a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
-- Hannah More
%
Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small,
it enkindles the great.
%
Absence makes the heart forget.
%
Absence makes the heart go wander.
%
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
-- Sextus Aurelius
%
Absence makes the heart grow fonder -- of somebody else.
%
Absence makes the heart grow frantic.
%
Absent, adj.:
Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%
Absentee, n.:
A person with an income who has had the forethought
to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Absolutum obsoletum. (If it works, it's out of date.)
-- Stafford Beer
%
Abstainer, n.:
A weak person who yields to the
temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Abstract:
This study examined the incidence of neckwear tightness among a group
of 94 white-collar working men and the effect of a tight business-shirt collar
and tie on the visual performance of 22 male subjects. Of the white-collar
men measured, 67% were found to be wearing neckwear that was tighter than
their neck circumference. The visual discrimination of the 22 subjects was
evaluated using a critical flicker frequency (CFF) test. Results of the CFF
test indicated that tight neckwear significantly decreased the visual
performance of the subjects and that visual performance did not improve
immediately when tight neckwear was removed.
-- Langan, L. M. and Watkins, S. M. "Pressure of Menswear on the
Neck in Relation to Visual Performance." Human Factors 29,
#1 (Feb. 1987), pp. 67-71.
%
Absurdity, n.:
A statement or belief manifestly
inconsistent with one's own opinion.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
because the stakes are so low.
-- Wallace Sayre
%
Academicians care, that's who.
%
ACADEMY:
A modern school where football is taught.
INSTITUTE:
An archaic school where football is not taught.
%
Accent on helpful side of your nature. Drain the moat.
%
Accept people for what they are -- completely unacceptable.
%
ACCEPTANCE TESTING:
An unsuccessful attempt to find bugs.
%
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western
religion; rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of
Western science.
-- Gary Zukav, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters"
%
Accident:
A condition in which presence of mind is good,
but absence of body is better.
-- Foolish Dictionary
%
Accidentally Shot
Colonel Gray, of Petaluma, came near losing his life a few days ago,
in a singular manner. A gentleman with whom he was hunting attempted to
bring down a dove, but instead of doing so put the load of shot through the
Colonel's hat. One shot took effect in his forehead.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1861
%
Accidents cause History.
If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
According to a recent and unscientific national survey, smiling is something
everyone should do at least 6 times a day. In an effort to increase the
national average (the US ranks third among the world's superpowers in
smiling), Xerox has instructed all personnel to be happy, effervescent, and
most importantly, to smile. Xerox employees agree, and even feel strongly
that they can not only meet but surpass the national average... except for
Tubby Ackerman. But because Tubby does such a fine job of racing around
parking lots with a large butterfly net retrieving floating IC chips, Xerox
decided to give him a break. If you see Tubby in a parking lot he may have
a sheepish grin. This is where the expression, "Service with a slightly
sheepish grin" comes from.
%
According to all the latest reports,
there was no truth in any of the earlier reports.
%
According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person
shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
the returns."
%
According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold,
and according to convention, there is an order. In truth, there are atoms
and a void.
-- Democritus, 400 B.C.
%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
-- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%
According to the latest official figures,
43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
%
According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
dies.
%
According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in
America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth.
Here in New York we really don't care too much. Because we know that we could
beat up their city anytime.
-- David Letterman
%
Accordion, n.:
A bagpipe with pleats.
%
Accuracy, n.:
The vice of being right
%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%
Acid absorbs 47 times its own weight in excess Reality.
%
Acquaintance, n.:
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well
enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when the
object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
%
Acting is not very hard. The most important things are to be able to laugh
and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. And if I have to laugh,
well, I think of my sex life.
-- Glenda Jackson
%
Actor Real Name
Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt
Cary Grant Archibald Leach
Edward G. Robinson Emmanual Goldenburg
Gene Wilder Gerald Silberman
John Wayne Marion Morrison
Kirk Douglas Issur Danielovitch
Richard Burton Richard Jenkins Jr.
Roy Rogers Leonard Slye
Woody Allen Allen Stewart Konigsberg
%
Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
it!"
%
Actor: So what do you do for a living?
Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
dishes for Chinese restaurants.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
%
Actresses will happen in the best regulated families.
-- Addison Mizner and Oliver Herford,
"The Entirely New Cynic's Calendar", 1905
%
Actually, my goal is to have a sandwich named after me.
%
Actually, the probability is 100% that the elevator
will be going in the right direction. Proof by induction:
N=1. Trivially true, since both you and the elevator
only have one floor to go to.
Assume true for N, prove for N+1:
If you are on any of the first N floors, then it is true by the
induction hypothesis. If you are on the N+1st floor, then both you
and the elevator have only one choice, namely down. Therefore,
it is true for all N+1 floors.
QED.
%
Ad astra per aspera. (To the stars by aspiration.)
%
ADA:
Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop
an ADA awareness.
-- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
%
Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
-- Ovid
%
Adding features does not necessarily increase
functionality -- it just makes the manuals thicker.
%
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
-- F. Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month"
Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by
close application thereto, it is worse execute by two persons and
scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.
-- George Washington, 1732-1799
%
Adding sound to movies would be like
putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
-- actress Mary Pickford, 1925
%
Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a
decorous age.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Adler's Distinction:
Language is all that separates us from the lower animals,
and from the bureaucrats.
%
Admiration, n.:
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adolescence, n.:
The stage between puberty and adultery.
%
Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
like you ...
-- Gilda Radner
%
Adore, v:
To venerate expectantly.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adult, n.:
One old enough to know better.
%
Adults die young.
%
Advancement in position.
%
Advertisements contain the only
truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
-- Sinclair Lewis
%
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
-- George Orwell
%
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human
intelligence long enough to get money from it.
%
Advertising Rule:
In writing a patent-medicine advertisement, first convince the
reader that he has the disease he is reading about; secondly,
that it is curable.
%
Advice from an old carpenter: measure twice, saw once.
%
Advice is a dangerous gift; be cautious about giving and receiving it.
%
Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
then at least be aseptic.
%
African violet: Such worth is rare
Apple blossom: Preference
Bachelor's button: Celibacy
Bay leaf: I change but in death
Camelia: Reflected loveliness
Chrysanthemum, red: I love
Chrysanthemum, white: Truth
Chrysanthemum, other: Slighted love
Clover: Be mine
Crocus: Abuse not
Daffodil: Innocence
Forget-me-not: True love
Fuchsia: Fast
Gardenia: Secret, untold love
Honeysuckle: Bonds of love
Ivy: Friendship, fidelity, marriage
Jasmine: Amiability, transports of joy, sensuality
Leaves (dead): Melancholy
Lilac: Youthful innocence
Lily: Purity, sweetness
Lily of the valley: Return of happiness
Magnolia: Dignity, perseverance
* An upside-down blossom reverses the meaning.
%
After 35 years, I have finished a comprehensive study of European
comparative law. In Germany, under the law, everything is prohibited,
except that which is permitted. In France, under the law, everything
is permitted, except that which is prohibited. In the Soviet Union,
under the law, everything is prohibited, including that which is
permitted. And in Italy, under the law, everything is permitted,
especially that which is prohibited.
-- Newton Minow, 1985,
Speech to the Association of American Law Schools
%
After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
more advanced than the lichen family.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads
On today because tomorrow's ground
Is too uncertain. And futures have
A way of falling down in midflight,
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth
And you learn and learn
With every goodbye you learn.
-- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn"
%
After all, all he did was string together
a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
%
After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
%
After all, it is only the mediocre who are always at their best.
-- Jean Giraudoux
%
After all my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
%
After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for
you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply
sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
After an instrument has been assembled,
extra components will be found on the bench.
%
After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the
month than you did before.
%
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names
have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp,
James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important
electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this
is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg
of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even
though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway.
Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian
medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been
seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and
watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
that it sinks like a stone.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages,
claiming that he was crippled and would have to spend the rest of his life
in a wheelchair. Although the insurance-company doctor testified that his
bones had healed properly and that he was fully capable of walking, the
judge decided for the plaintiff and awarded him $500,000.
When he was wheeled into the insurance office to collect his check,
Miller was confronted by several executives. "You're not getting away with
this, Miller," one said. "We're going to watch you day and night. If you
take a single step, you'll not only repay the damages but stand trial for
perjury. Here's the money. What do you intend to do with it?"
"My wife and I are going to travel," Miller replied. "We'll go to
Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, Athens and, finally, to a place called Lourdes --
where, gentlemen, you'll see yourselves one hell of a miracle."
%
After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
cost to others, to win advancement.
-- Norman Thomas
%
After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
%
After living in New York, you trust nobody,
but you believe everything. Just in case.
%
...[after the announcement of Vanguard] ... Secretary of Defense Charles
Wilson (the same "Engine Charlie" who once told the Senate, "[F]or years
I've thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors,
and vice versa," probably an accurate analysis) was asked whether the
Russians might beat the Americans into orbit. "I wouldn't care if they
did," he responded. (It was later claimed that Wilson favored the
development of the automatic transmission so that he could drive with
one foot in his mouth.)
-- Smithsonian's Air&Space Magazine, "The Day the Rocket Died"
%
After the game the king and the pawn go in the same box.
-- Italian proverb
%
After the ground war began, captured Iraqi soldiers said any of them caught
by superiors wearing a white T-shirt would be executed because of the ease
with which the shirts could be used as surrender flags. Some Iraqi soldiers
carried bleach with them to make their dark shirts white.
-- Chuck Shepherd, Funny Times, May 1991
%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
%
After this was written there appeared a remarkable posthumous memoir that
throws some doubt on Millikan's leading role in these experiments. Harvey
Fletcher (1884-1981), who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago,
at Millikan's suggestion worked on the measurement of electronic charge for
his doctoral thesis, and co-authored some of the early papers on this subject
with Millikan. Fletcher left a manuscript with a friend with instructions
that it be published after his death; the manuscript was published in
Physics Today, June 1982, page 43. In it, Fletcher claims that he was the
first to do the experiment with oil drops, was the first to measure charges on
single droplets, and may have been the first to suggest the use of oil.
According to Fletcher, he had expected to be co-authored with Millikan on
the crucial first article announcing the measurement of the electronic
charge, but was talked out of this by Millikan.
-- Steven Weinberg, "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles"
Robert Millikan is generally credited with making the first really
precise measurement of the charge on an electron and was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1923.
%
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with
the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only
the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of
any interest... but even then the interest items are usually buried
deep around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont. on ...") page...
The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa. The
Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all.
But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line
or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie
burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the
neck. They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an
oriental woman who seemed to be in control."
Now that's good journalism. Totally objective; very active and
straight to the point.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%
After years of research, scientists recently reported that there is,
indeed, arroz in Spanish Harlem.
%
After your lover has gone you will still have PEANUT BUTTER!
%
Afternoon, n.:
That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
morning.
%
Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change.
%
Against Idleness and Mischief
How doth the little busy bee How skillfully she builds her cell!
Improve each shining hour, How neat she spreads the wax!
And gather honey all the day And labours hard to store it well
From every opening flower! With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labour or of skill In books, or work, or healthful play,
I would be busy too; Let my first years be passed,
For Satan finds some mischief still That I may give for every day
For idle hands to do. Some good account at last.
-- Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
%
Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain.
-- Friedrich von Schiller, "The Maid of Orleans", III, 6
%
Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.
%
Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Age is a tyrant who forbids,
at the penalty of life, all the pleasures of youth.
%
Age, n.:
That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the
enterprise to commit.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Agnes' Law:
Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
%
Agree with them now, it will save so much time.
%
Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach,
Or what's a heaven for ?
-- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto"
%
Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
there's the rub.
For all dreams are not equal,
some exit to nightmare
most end with the dreamer
But at least one must be lived ... and died.
%
Ah, my friends, from the prison, they ask unto me,
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"
And I answer them most mysteriously:
"Are birds free from the chains of the sky-way?"
-- Bob Dylan
%
Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
%
Ah, sweet Springtime, when a young man lightly turns his fancy over!
%
Ah, the Tsar's bazaar's bizarre beaux-arts!
%
"Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact
that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately
unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep
up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
-- An analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
%
Ahead warp factor one, Mr. Sulu.
%
Ahhhhhh... the smell of cuprinol and mahogany. It
excites me to... acts of passion... acts of... ineptitude.
%
Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.
-- W. Clement Stone
%
Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing.
-- The Mad Dogtender
%
Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me but
bring me a message from a young man.
-- Moms Mabley
%
Ain't that something what happened today. One of us got traded to
Kansas City.
-- Casey Stengel, informing outfielder Bob Cerv he'd
been traded
%
Air Force Inertia Axiom:
Consistency is always easier to defend than correctness.
%
Air is water with holes in it.
%
Air, n.:
A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for
the fattening of the poor.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Air pollution is really making us pay through the nose.
%
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
Ecole Superieure de Guerre
%
Al didn't smile for forty years. You've got to admire a man like that.
-- from "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"
%
Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
-- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
%
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
-- Oscar Wilde [as he sipped champagne on his deathbed]
%
ALASKA:
A prelude to "No."
%
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself
or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has
a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and
Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
-- Tom Robbins
%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
%
ALBRECHT'S LAW:
Social innovations tend to the level
of minimum tolerable well-being.
%
Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions.
The surest poison is time.
-- Emerson, "Society and Solitude"
%
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Alden's Laws:
(1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
of pregnancy.
(2) Always be backlit.
(3) Sit down whenever possible.
%
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
%
Alex Haley was adopted!
%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well
in New York, and still waiting for a dial tone.
%
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing - and that was
the closest our country has ever been to being even.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
-- Philippe Schnoebelen
%
Algol-60 surely must be regarded as the most
important programming language yet developed.
-- T. Cheatham
%
ALGORITHM:
Trendy dance for hip programmers.
%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce
%
Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
-- Arthur Baer
%
Alimony is the curse of the writing classes.
-- Norman Mailer
%
Alimony is the high cost of leaving.
%
Aliquid melius quam pessimum optimum non est.
%
Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail ever clinking.
%
All a man needs out of life is a place to sit 'n' spit in the fire.
%
All art is but imitation of nature.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
%
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar, quoted in "The Conspiracy of
Catiline", by Sallust
%
All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
than others.
-- Alan Truscott
%
All business is based on the mutual trust of one of the parts.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
All constants are variables.
%
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
-- Chou En Lai
%
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
%
All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
without thinking.
%
All flesh is grass.
-- Isaiah
Smoke a friend today.
%
All generalizations are false, including this one.
-- Mark Twain
%
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
%
All Gods were immortal.
-- Stanislaw J. Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
%
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
-- Young
%
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
%
All heiresses are beautiful.
-- John Dryden
%
All his life he has looked away... to the horizon, to the sky,
to the future. Never his mind on where he was, on what he was doing.
-- Yoda
%
All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
-- Dante Alighieri
%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
-- Kingfish
%
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that
makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and
an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
-- Samuel Beckett
%
All I need to have a good time,
Is a reefer, a woman and a bottle of wine.
With those three things I don't need no sunshine,
A reefer, a woman and a bottle of wine.
All I want is to never grow old,
I want to wash in a bathtub of gold.
I want 97 kilos already rolled,
I want to wash in a bathtub of gold.
I want to light my cigars with 10 dollar bills,
I like to have a cattle ranch in Beverly Hills.
I want a bottle of Red Eye that's always filled,
I like to have a cattle ranch in Beverly Hills.
-- Country Joe and the Fish, "Zachariah"
%
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
All intelligent species own cats.
%
All is fear in love and war.
%
All is well that ends well.
-- John Heywood
%
All I've got left on the list of desirable vocations is heiress to the
throne of any country in Western Europe and Laurie Anderson. "Be
practical", was the choral reply from the dinner table. Well, Laurie
Anderson is already Laurie Anderson, but I read an article in Harpers
that said there were eleven countries, in the world this is I think,
that have queens as sovereign rulers. That's probably my best shot.
%
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
--Mark Twain
%
All laws are simulations of reality.
-- John C. Lilly
%
All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
-- Dawkins
%
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
Socrates.
-- Woody Allen
%
All men have the right to wait in line.
%
All men know the utility of useful things;
but they do not know the utility of futility.
-- Chuang-tzu
%
All men profess honesty as long as they can.
To believe all men honest would be folly.
To believe none so is something worse.
-- John Quincy Adams
%
All most men really want in life is a wife, a house, two kids and a car,
a cat, no maybe a dog. Ummm, scratch one of the kids and add a dog.
Definitely a dog.
%
All most people ask of life is a constant
and exaggerated sense of their own importance.
%
All most people want is a little more than they'll ever get.
%
All my friends and I are crazy.
That's the only thing that keeps us sane.
%
All my friends are getting married,
Yes, they're all growing old,
They're all staying home on the weekend,
They're all doing what they're told.
%
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
-- Jane Wagner
%
ALL NEW:
Parts not interchangeable with previous model.
%
All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from
the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
%
All of the animals except man know that
the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
%
All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs
synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to
rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all
of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store."
-- Steven Wright
%
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
-- The Book of Bokonon / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
%
All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a
Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks,
tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks:
"Just lie down on the floor and keep calm."
-- Robert Wilson, "John Dillinger Died for You"
%
All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
the United States.
-- Vic Gold
%
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the
parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you
can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do
not use a hammer.
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
%
All people are born alike -- except Republicans and Democrats.
-- Groucho Marx
%
All phone calls are obscene.
-- Karen Elizabeth Gordon
%
All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
-- Susan Sontag
%
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
%
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire of every organism
to live beyond its income.
-- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
All seems condemned in the long run
to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise.
-- James Martin
%
All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands.
-- Saint Patrick
%
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%
All that glitters is not gold; all that wander are not lost.
%
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
All the evidence concerning the universe
has not yet been collected, so there's still hope.
%
All the lines have been written There's been Sandburg,
It's sad but it's true Keats, Poe and McKuen
With all the words gone, They all had their day
What's a young poet to do? And knew what they're doin'
But of all the words written The bird is a strange one,
And all the lines read, So small and so tender
There's one I like most, Its breed still unknown,
And by a bird it was said! Not to mention its gender.
It reminds me of days of So what is this line
Both gloom and of light. Whose author's unknown
It still lifts my spirits And still makes me giggle
And starts the day right. Even now that I'm grown?
I've read all the greats
Both starving and fat,
But none was as great as
"I tot I taw a puddy tat."
-- Etta Stallings, "An Ode To Childhood"
%
All the men on my staff can type.
-- Bella Abzug
%
...all the modern inconveniences...
-- Mark Twain
%
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
ridiculous ones.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
-- Grant Wood
%
All the simple programs have been written.
%
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
the government in less than a second.
-- Jim Fiebig
%
All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly.
%
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately un-rehearsed.
-- Sean O'Casey
%
All the world's a VAX,
And all the coders merely butchers;
They have their exits and their entrails;
And one int in his time plays many widths,
His sizeof being _N bytes. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
And shining morning face, creeping like slug
Unwillingly to school.
-- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
%
All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
and all theoretical chemists know it.
-- Richard P. Feynman
%
All things are possible, except for skiing through a revolving door.
%
All things being equal, you are bound to lose.
%
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
%
All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money,
it's for fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
-- Henry Tyroon
%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%
All warranty and guarantee clauses
become null and void upon payment of invoice.
%
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
which he was born.
-- Francois Fenelon
%
All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each
other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information.
This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with
our lives."
-- Lewis Thomas, "The Lives of a Cell"
%
All who joy would win Must share it --
Happiness was born a twin.
-- Lord Byron
%
All your files have been destroyed (sorry). Paul.
%
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
informing, stimulating and ennobling.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Allen's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%
Alliance, n.:
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they
cannot separately plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
All's well that ends.
%
Almost anything derogatory you could say
about today's software design would be accurate.
-- K. E. Iverson
%
Alone, adj.:
In bad company.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Also, the Scots are said to have invented golf. Then they had
to invent Scotch whiskey to take away the pain and frustration.
%
alta, v: To change; make or become different; modify.
ansa, v: A spoken or written reply, as to a question.
baa, n: A place people meet to have a few drinks.
Baaston, n: The capital of Massachusetts.
baaba, n: One whose business is to cut or trim hair or beards.
beea, n: An alcoholic beverage brewed from malt and hops, often
found in baas.
caaa, n: An automobile.
centa, n: A point around which something revolves; axis. (Or
someone involved with the Knicks.)
chouda, n: A thick seafood soup, often in a milk base.
dada, n: Information, esp. information organized for analysis or
computation.
-- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary
%
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-- Dave Barry
%
Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for
buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham
Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that
reason. He knows it because he fired the guy.
"He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I
bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'" Mr. O'Neil says.
"I said, 'No. Wrong. Game over. Next contestant, please.'"
-- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989
%
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
%
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
running the post office.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day
life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor
minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the
apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties
of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade
through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour
those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this
reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J.R. Miller's "Practical
Gamekeeping."
-- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream", Nov., 1959
%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back.
%
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain
%
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
%
Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.
%
Always run from a knife and rush a gun.
-- Jimmy Hoffa
%
Always store beer in a dark place.
%
Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.
-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
%
Always there remain portions of our heart
into which no one is able to enter, invite them as we may.
%
Always think of something new; this
helps you forget your last rotten idea.
-- Seth Frankel
%
Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
that way.
%
Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to
end across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it
were spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%
Ambidextrous, adj.:
Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
AMBIGUITY:
Telling the truth when you don't mean to.
%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy
%
Ambition, n.:
An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while
living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
America: born free and taxed to death.
%
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
-- Allen Ginsberg
%
America is a melting pot. You know, where those on the bottom get burned,
and the scum rises to the top.
-- Utah Phillips
%
America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort.
-- President John F. Kennedy
The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not
be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but
living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil
Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so.
-- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that
from time to time threaten freedoms everywhere... Indeed, it is difficult
to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights
of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised
by the majority they were at the time.
-- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
%
America is the country where you buy a lifetime
supply of aspirin for one dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt
from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
-- John O'Hara
%
America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him, until
people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and changed its
name to "America".
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
America works less, when you say "Union Yes!"
%
American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective
employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for
employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference
between the men's room and the women's room without having little
pictures on the doors.
-- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
%
American by birth; Texan by the grace of God.
%
American cars are made shoddily...
Cars made overseas are far superior.
-- Barry Goldwater
%
[Americans] are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything
we allow them short of hanging.
-- Samuel Johnson
America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its
tail it knocks over a chair.
-- Arnold Toynbee
The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
everybody and still nobody likes him.
-- Jim Samuels
%
Americans are people who insist on living in the present, tense.
%
Americans' greatest fear is that America will turn out
to have been a phenomenon, not a civilization.
-- Shirley Hazzard, "Transit of Venus"
%
America's best buy for a quarter is a telephone call to the right person.
%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%
AMOEBIT:
Amoeba/rabbit cross; it can multiply
and divide at the same time.
%
Among all savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman.
-- St. John Chrysostom, 304-407
%
Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
%
An acid is like a woman: a good one will eat through your pants.
-- Mel Gibson, Saturday Night Live
%
An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
-- Marlon Brando
%
An Ada exception is when a routine gets
in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.
%
An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.
%
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it.
-- James Michener, "Space"
%
An Aggie farmer was lifting his hogs, one by one, up to the branches of
his apple trees to graze on the apples. A Texas student walked by and
asked him, "Doesn't that take a lot of time?"
Replied the Aggie, "What's time to a hog?"
%
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
-- Dylan Thomas
%
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
-- D. E. Knuth
%
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad
to lie and intrigue for the benefit of his country.
-- Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639
%
An amendment to a motion may be amended, but an amendment to an amendment
to a motion may not be amended. However, a substitute for an amendment to
and amendment to a motion may be adopted and the substitute may be amended.
-- The Montana legislature's contribution to the English
language.
%
An American is a man with two arms and four wheels.
-- A Chinese child
%
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out). The American said with a nervous laugh,
"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
"I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
%
An American tourist is visiting Russia, and he's talking with a Russian
about the fact that not many people in Russia own cars.
American: "I can't believe you don't have cars here! How do you
get to work?"
Russian: "We take the bus, or the subway. We have public
transportation everywhere."
A: "Well, how do you go on vacations?"
R: "We take the train."
A: "Well, what if you want to go abroad?"
R: "We don't ever want go abroad."
A: "Well, what if you really HAVE to go abroad?"
R: "We take tanks."
%
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize
the president but is always polite to traffic cops.
%
An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
-- David Letterman
%
An aphorism is never exactly true;
it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
-- Karl Kraus
%
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping that it will eat
him last.
-- Sir Winston Churchill, 1954
%
An apple a day makes 365 apples a year.
%
An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
%
An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
%
An atheist is a man with no invisible means of support.
%
An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
An attachment a la Plato
for a bashful young potato
or a, not too French, french bean
must excite your languid spleen.
For, if you walk down Picadilly
with a poppy or lily
in your medieval hand,
every one will say,
as you walk your flowery way;
"If this young man is content,
with a vegetable love
which would certainly not content me.
Why, what a very pure young man
this pure young man must be!"
-- W. S. Gilbert, "Patience"
[The subject of the humour is of course, Oscar Wilde]
%
An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree
murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's
mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border.
Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the
suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a
murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
%
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
really care to know.
%
An avocado-tone refrigerator would look good on your resume.
%
An economist is a man who would marry
Farrah Fawcett-Majors for her money.
%
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%
An efficient and a successful administration manifests
itself equally in small as in great matters.
-- Winston Churchill
%
An egghead is one who stands firmly on both feet,
in mid-air, on both sides of an issue.
-- Homer Ferguson
%
An elderly couple were flying to their Caribbean hideaway on a chartered plane
when a terrible storm forced them to land on an uninhabited island. When
several days passed without rescue, the couple and their pilot sank into a
despondent silence. Finally, the woman asked her husband if he had made his
usual pledge to the United Way Campaign.
"We're running out of food and water and you ask *that*?" her husband
barked. "If you really need to know, I not only pledged a half million but
I've already paid them half of it."
"You owe the U.W.C. a *quarter million*?" the woman exclaimed
euphorically. "Don't worry, Harry, they'll find us! They'll find us!"
%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt
already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the
engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later
the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now
has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the
mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he
was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of
humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too
trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
%
An engineer is someone who does list processing in FORTRAN.
%
An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded
summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your
arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey
responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert
%
An evil mind is a great comfort.
%
An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He wears
a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised
only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich
Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in
incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
excellence:
"The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha."
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
%
...an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and quite often
picturesque liar.
-- Mark Twain
%
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a
very narrow field.
-- Niels Bohr
%
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors
as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.
-- Benjamin Stolberg
%
An expert is one who knows more and more about less
and less until he knows absolutely nothing about everything.
%
An eye in a blue face
Saw an eye in a green face.
"That eye is like this eye"
Said the first eye,
"But in low place,
Not in high place."
%
An Hacker there was, one of the finest sort
Who controlled the system; graphics was his sport.
A manly man, to be a wizard able;
Many a protected file he had sitting on his table.
His console, when he typed, a man might hear
Clicking and feeping wind as clear,
Aye, and as loud as does the machine room bell
Where my lord Hacker was Prior of the cell.
The Rule of good St Savage or St Doeppnor
As old and strict he tended to ignore;
He let go by the things of yesterday
And took the modern world's more spacious way.
He did not rate that text as a plucked hen
Which says that Hackers are not holy men.
And that a hacker underworked is a mere
Fish out of water, flapping on the pier.
That is to say, a hacker out of his cloister.
That was a text he held not worth an oyster.
And I agreed and said his views were sound;
Was he to study till his head wend round
Poring over books in the cloisters? Must he toil
As Andy bade and till the very soil?
Was he to leave the world upon the shelf?
Let Andy have his labor to himself!
-- Chaucer
[well, almost. Ed.]
%
An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
-- Simon Cameron
There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians. When
bought they stay bought.
-- Bill Moyers
%
An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
possible.
-- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%
An idealist is one who helps the other fellow to make a profit.
-- Henry Ford
%
An idle mind is worth two in the bush.
%
An infallible method of conciliating a tiger
is to allow oneself to be devoured.
-- Konrad Adenauer
%
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Albert Camus
%
An interpretation I satisfies a sentence in the table language if and only if
each entry in the table designates the value of the function designated by the
function constant in the upper-left corner applied to the objects designated
by the corresponding row and column labels.
-- Genesereth & Nilsson,
"Logical foundations of Artificial Intelligence"
%
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
An old man is lying on his deathbed with all his children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren gathered around, teary-eyed at the approaching finale of
a deeply loved family member. The old man is in a light coma, and the doctors
have confirmed that the waiting will be over within the next twenty-four
hours. Suddenly, the old man opens his eyes whispers: "I must be dreaming
of heaven... I smell my daughter Lisle's strudel."
"No, no, grandfather, you are not dreaming", he is reassured.
"Grandmother is baking strudel right now."
A faint smile crosses the old man's face. "Go and get me a sliver of
strudel," he says, "she bakes the finest strudel in the world."
One of the grandchildren is immediately dispatched to honor the old
man's request, and, after what seems a long time, he returns empty-handed.
"Did you bring me some of Lisle's strudel?", the old man quavers.
"I'm... I'm very sorry, grandfather, but she says it's for the
funeral."
%
An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
-- Don Marquis
%
An optimist is a man who looks forward to marriage.
A pessimist is a married optimist.
%
An ounce of clear truth is worth a pound of obfuscation.
%
An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.
-- Michael Korda
%
An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.
-- Spanish proverb
%
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge.
%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word, "unless."
Whatever THAT meant, well, I just couldn't guess.
That was long, long ago, and each day since that day,
I've worried and worried and worried away.
Through the years as my buildings have fallen apart,
I've worried about it with all of my heart.
"BUT," says the Oncler, "now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear!
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better - it's not.
So... CATCH!" cries the Oncler. He lets something fall.
"It's a truffula seed. It's the last one of all!
"You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds.
And truffula trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new truffula -- treat it with care.
Give it clean water and feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest -- protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back!"
-- Dr. Seuss, "The Lorax"
%
And as we stand on the edge of darkness
Let our chant fill the void
That others may know
In the land of the night
The ship of the sun
Is drawn by
The grateful dead.
-- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
%
And did those feet, in ancient times,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
In England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon these crowded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spears! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I shall not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword rest in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
-- William Blake, "Jerusalem"
%
And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?
%
And ever has it been known that
love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
-- Kahlil Gibran
%
And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower. "This," cried the Mayor,
"is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!" he said. "We've GOT to make noises in
greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!" Thus he
spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and
he shouted out, "YOPP!"
And that Yopp... That one last small, extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last! From the speck on that clover their voices were heard!
They rang out clear and clean. And they elephant smiled. "Do you see what
I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small. And their
whole world was saved by the smallest of All!"
"How true! Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo. "And, from now
on, you know what I'm planning to do? From now on, I'm going to protect
them with you!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO! From
the sun in the summer. From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect
them. No matter how small-ish!"
-- Dr. Seuss, "Horton Hears a Who"
%
And here I wait so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going thru all of these things twice
-- Dylan, "Memphis Blues Again"
%
And I alone am returned to wag the tail.
%
And I heard Jeff exclaim,
As they strolled out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all --
You take credit cards, right?"
-- "Outsiders" comic
%
And I suppose the little things are harder to get used to than the big
ones. The big ones you get used to, you make up your mind to them. The
little things come along unexpectedly, when you aren't thinking about
them, aren't braced against them.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley, "The Forbidden Tower"
%
And I will do all these good works, and I will do them for free!
My only reward will be a tombstone that says "Here lies Gomez
Addams -- he was good for nothing."
-- Jack Sharkey, The Addams Family
%
And if California slides into the ocean,
Like the mystics and statistics say it will.
I predict this motel will be standing,
Until I've paid my bill.
-- Warren Zevon, "Desperados Under the Eaves"
%
And if sometime, somewhere, someone asketh thee,
"Who kilt thee?", tell them it 'twas the Doones of Bagworthy!
%
And if you wonder,
What I am doing,
As I am heading for the sink.
I am spitting out all the bitterness,
Along with half of my last drink.
%
And in the heartbreak years that lie ahead,
Be true to yourself and the Grateful Dead.
-- Joan Baez
%
And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing
what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions.
-- David Jones
%
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
-- A. E. Housman
%
And miles to go before I sleep.
%
And now for something completely the same.
%
And now your toner's toney, Disk blocks aplenty
And your paper near pure white, Await your laser drawn lines,
The smudges on your soul are gone Your intricate fonts,
And your output's clean as light.. Your pictures and signs.
We've labored with your father, Your amputative absence
The venerable XGP, Has made the Ten dumb,
But his slow artistic hand, Without you, Dover,
Lacks your clean velocity. We're system untounged-
Theses and papers DRAW Plots and TEXage
And code in a queue Have been biding their time,
Dover, oh Dover, With LISP code and programs,
We've been waiting for you. And this crufty rhyme.
Dover, oh Dover, Dover, oh Dover, arisen from dead.
We welcome you back, Dover, oh Dover, awoken from bed.
Though still you may jam, Dover, oh Dover, welcome back to the Lab.
You're on the right track. Dover, oh Dover, we've missed your clean
hand...
%
And on the eighth day, we bulldozed it.
%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%
And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
your own.
-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
Preposterous Words
%
...and report cards I was always afraid to show
Mama'd come to school
and as I'd sit there softly cryin'
Teacher'd say he's just not tryin'
Got a good head if he'd apply it
but you know yourself
it's always somewhere else
I'd build me a castle
with dragons and kings
and I'd ride off with them
As I stood by my window
and looked out on those
Brooklyn roads
-- Neil Diamond, "Brooklyn Roads"
%
And so it was, later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.
-- Procol Harum
%
And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One
approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this
procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
Orson Welles.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%
And that's the way it is...
-- Walter Cronkite
%
And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes! He is naked!"
-- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
%
And the French medical anatomist Etienne Serres really did argue that
black males are primitive because the distance between their navel and
penis remains small (relative to body height) throughout life, while
white children begin with a small separation but increase it during
growth -- the rising belly button as a mark of progress.
-- S. J. Gould, "Racism and Recapitulation"
%
And the silence came surging softly backwards
When the plunging hooves were gone...
-- Walter de La Mare, "The Listeners"
%
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, for if you hit a man
with a plowshare, he's going to know he's been hit.
%
And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal
rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports,
which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced
in design as one will find anywhere in the world.
-- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
%
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
%
And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.
-- Isaiah 56:12, New Standard Version
%
And we heard him exclaim
As he started to roam:
"I'm a hologram, kids,
please don't try this at home!'"
-- Bob Violence
%
And what accomplished villains these old engineers were! What diabolical
ways to sabotage they found! Nikolai Karlovich von Meck, of the People's
Commissariat of Railroads ... would hold forth for hours on end about the
economic problems involved in the construction of socialism, and he loved to
give advice. One such pernicious piece of advice was to increase the size
of freight trains and not worry about heavier than average loads. The GPU
exposed van Meck, and he was shot: his objective had been to wear out rails
and roadbeds, freight cars and locomotives, so as to leave the Republic
without railroads in case of foreign military intervention! When, not long
afterward, the new People's Commissar of Railroads ordered that average
loads should be increased, and even doubled and tripled them, the malicious
engineers who protested became known as limiters ... they were rightly
shot for their lack of faith in the possibilities of socialist transport.
-- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"
%
And... What in the world ever became of Sweet Jane?
She's lost her sparkle, you see she isn't the same.
Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine
All a friend can say is "Ain't it a shame?"
-- The Grateful Dead
%
And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to
have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon
the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let
loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price:
in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest
license of a child, and yet been man enough to know its value.
-- Charles Dickens
%
And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have a
sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks tragedy,
and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets tragedy face to
face, we have politics.
-- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland,
"Root Crops and Ground Cover"
%
And you can't get any Watney's Red Barrel,
because the bars close every time you're thirsty...
%
"And, you know, I mustn't preach to you, but surely it wouldn't be right for
you to take away people's pleasure of studying your attire, by just going
and making yourself like everybody else. You feel that, don't you?" said
he, earnestly.
-- William Morris, "Notes from Nowhere"
%
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _n_e_e_d_s heroes.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
%
Andrea's Admonition:
Never bestow profanity upon a driver who has wronged you.
If you think his window is closed and he can't hear you,
it isn't and he can.
%
ANDROPHOBIA:
Fear of men.
%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Anger is momentary madness.
-- Horace
%
Anger kills as surely as the other vices.
%
Animals can be driven crazy by putting too many in too small a pen.
Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%
Announcing the NEW VAX 11/782!!
Be the envy of other major Communist Governments!
Defend yourself against the entire ICBM force of the imperialist USA with
just one of the processors, at the same time you're designing missile ICs,
cracking secret NATO codes and editing propaganda for your own people all
at the same time with the other! (Well, you really can't, but the Americans
think you can, and that's the point, right?)
%
Anoint, v:
To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently
slippery.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Another day, another dollar.
-- Vincent J. Fuller, defense lawyer for John Hinckley,
upon Hinckley's acquittal for shooting President Ronald
Reagan.
%
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build
and nobody wants to do maintenance.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Hocus Pocus"
%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Another megabytes the dust.
%
Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
offers whiter teeth *_a_n_d* fresher breath.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.
-- Pyrrhus
%
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
-- Proverbs, 26:5
%
Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
corner of the workshop.
Corollary:
On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
your toes.
%
Antique fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood.
Modern fairy tale: Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy.
%
Anti-trust laws should be approached with exactly that attitude.
%
Antonio Antonio
Was tired of living alonio
He thought he would woo Antonio Antonio
Miss Lucamy Lu, Rode of on his polo ponio
Miss Lucamy Lucy Molonio. And found the maid
In a bowery shade,
Sitting and knitting alonio.
Antonio Antonio
Said if you will be my ownio
I'll love tou true Oh nonio Antonio
And buy for you You're far too bleak and bonio
An icery creamry conio. And all that I wish
You singular fish
Is that you will quickly begonio.
Antonio Antonio
Uttered a dismal moanio
And went off and hid
Or I'm told that he did
In the Antartical Zonio.
%
Antonym, n.:
The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%
Anxious after the delay, Gruber doesn't waste any time getting the Koenig
[a modified Porsche] up to speed, and almost immediately we are blowing off
Alfas, Fiats, and Lancias full of excited Italians. These people love fast
cars. But they love sport too and no passing encounter goes unchallenged.
Nothing serious, just two wheels into your lane as you're bearing down on
them at 130-plus -- to see if you're paying attention.
-- Road & Track article about driving two absurdly fast
cars across Europe.
%
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts
which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe
%
Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a
mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside
than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring?
And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure?
Is there a better way to die?
-- Charles Lindbergh
%
Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
-- Richard Schickel
%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop
%
Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that this
country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a whole week.
%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a
wise person to be able to sell it.
%
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of sense to know
how to lie well.
-- Samuel Butler
%
Any girl can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look
stupid.
-- Hedy Lamarr
%
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
%
Any given program will expand to fill available memory.
%
Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche --
a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my
grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off the
fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was undoubtedly
true.
-- Solomon Short
%
Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.
%
Any man can work when every stroke of his hand brings down the fruit
rattling from the tree to the ground; but to labor in season and out
of season, under every discouragement, by the power of truth -- that
requires a heroism which is transcendent.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
%
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
-- Leo Rosten, on W.C. Fields
%
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be
liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall
be deemed to be a cat.
-- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London
%
Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
Any president should have the right to shoot
at least two people a year without explanation.
-- Herbert Hoover, discussing the press
%
Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer
of indirection.
-- David Wheeler
%
Any program which runs right is obsolete.
%
Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used.
%
Any road followed to its end leads precisely nowhere.
Climb the mountain just a little to test it's a mountain.
From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.
-- Bene Gesserit proverb, "Dune"
%
Any small object that is accidentally
dropped will hide under a larger object.
%
Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
exactly the point of most pressure.
-- Milt Barber
%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
-- Rich Kulawiec
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
Any sufficiently simple directive can be obfuscated beyond reason
given proper legal counsel.
-- Alfred Perlstein
%
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%
Anybody has a right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen
has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining his government.
-- J. P. Morgan
%
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years
organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
-- David Broder
%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the
sight of a police car is probably parked.
%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%
Anyone can become angry -- that is easy; but to be angry with the right
person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose
and in the right way -- that is not easy.
-- Aristotle
%
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
supposed to be doing at the moment.
-- Robert Benchley
%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with
none.
%
Anyone can say "no." It is the first word a child learns and often the
first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no
explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for
intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of
thought on every occasion.
-- Chuck Jones (Warner Bros. animation director.)
%
Anyone stupid enough to be caught by the police is probably guilty.
%
Anyone taking offence at fortune(s) is desperately lacking beer, in my
extremely humble opinion.
-- Philip Paeps
%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
-- R. Heinlein
%
Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.
-- Tasnim Aslam, Spokesman for Pakistani Foreign Ministry
%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Anyone who has attended a USENIX conference in a fancy hotel can tell you
that a sentence like "You're one of those computer people, aren't you?"
is roughly equivalent to "Look, another amazingly mobile form of slime
mold!" in the mouth of a hotel cocktail waitress.
-- Elizabeth Zwicky
%
Anyone who has had a bull by the tail
knows five or six more things than someone who hasn't.
-- Mark Twain
%
Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time
as the strawberries, knows nothing about grapes.
-- Philippus Paracelsus
%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
tried taking candy from a baby.
-- Robin Hood
%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
-- Emmett Grogan
%
Anything cut to length will be too short.
%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%
Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate.
%
Anything is possible on paper.
-- Ron McAfee
%
Anything is possible, unless it's not.
%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.
The label means the price went up.
The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%
Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto
undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
-- Max Beerbohm, "Mainly on the Air"
%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
%
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this
big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around --
nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do
all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. I know it; I know it's crazy,
but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
-- J. D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"
%
Apathy Club meeting this Friday.
If you want to come, you're not invited.
%
Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution.
%
APHASIA:
Loss of speech in social scientists when asked
at parties, "But of what use is your research?"
%
aphorism, n.:
A concise, clever statement.
afterism, n.:
A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
-- James Alexander Thom
%
APL hackers do it in the quad.
%
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the
future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation
of coding bums.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming;
...and is best for educational purposes.
-- A. Perlis
%
APL is a write-only language. I can write programs
in APL, but I can't read any of them.
-- Roy Keir
%
Appearances often are deceiving.
-- Aesop
%
APPENDIX:
A portion of a book, for which nobody yet has discovered any use.
%
Applause, n.:
The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
April is the cruelest month...
-- Thomas Stearns Eliot
%
Aquadextrous, adj.:
Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub
faucet on and off with your toes.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be
careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over
and over again. People think you are stupid.
%
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20 to Feb. 18)
A friend will step forward and confide in you about your breath. Rely
on your outgoing personality and winning smile to get you into a lot
of trouble. Be relaxed, things will change. Look for a pink slip on
payday. Stop wetting your bed.
%
AQUARIUS (Jan.20 - Feb.18)
You are the type of person who never has enough money to do what
you want. Don't expect things to get any better today, either.
As a matter of fact they might get worse. Intensify your
relationship with your bank and any friends you have who might be
able to lend you a few bucks.
%
Aquavit is also considered useful for medicinal purposes, an essential
ingredient in what I was once told is the Norwegian cure for the common
cold. You get a bottle, a poster bed, and the brightest colored stocking
cap you can find. You put the cap on the post at the foot of the bed,
then get into bed and drink aquavit until you can't see the cap. I've
never tried this, but it sounds as though it should work.
-- Peter Nelson
%
Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
general can be said."
%
ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
%
Are we not men?
%
Are we running light with overbyte?
%
Are Women Human?
In the year 584, in Lyon, France, 43 Catholic bishops and 20 men
representing other bishops, after a lengthy debate, took a vote.
The results were 32 yes, 31 no. Women were declared human by one
vote.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Are you sure you're telling the truth? Think hard.
Does it make you happy to know you're sending me to an early grave?
If all your friends jumped off the cliff, would you jump too?
Do you feel bad? How do you think I feel?
Aren't you ashamed of yourself?
Don't you know any better?
How could you be so stupid?
If that's the worst pain you'll ever feel, you should be thankful.
You can't fool me. I know what you're thinking.
If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Do as I say, not as I do.
Do me a favour and don't tell me about it. I don't want to know.
What did you do *this* time?
If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you.
When I was your age...
I won't love you if you keep doing that.
Think of all the starving children in India.
If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar.
I'm going to kill you.
Way to go, clumsy.
If you don't like it, you can lump it.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Go away. You bother me.
Why? Because life is unfair.
That's a nice drawing. What is it?
Children should be seen and not heard.
You'll be the death of me.
You'll understand when you're older.
Because.
Wipe that smile off your face.
I don't believe you.
How many times have I told you to be careful?
Just because.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Good children always obey.
Quit acting so childish.
Boys don't cry.
If you keep making faces, someday it'll freeze that way.
Why do you have to know so much?
This hurts me more than it hurts you.
Why? Because I'm bigger than you.
Well, you've ruined everything. Now are you happy?
Oh, grow up.
I'm only doing this because I love you.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
When are you going to grow up?
I'm only doing this for your own good.
Why are you crying? Stop crying, or I'll give you something to
cry about.
What's wrong with you?
Someday you'll thank me for this.
You'd lose your head if it weren't attached.
Don't you have any sense at all?
If you keep sucking your thumb, it'll fall off.
Why? Because I said so.
I hope you have a kid just like yourself.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
You wouldn't understand.
You ask too many questions.
In order to be a man, you have to learn to follow orders.
That's for me to know and you to find out.
Don't let those bullies push you around. Go in there and stick
up for yourself.
You're acting too big for your britches.
Well, you broke it. Now are you satisfied?
Wait till your father gets home.
Bored? If you're bored, I've got some chores for you.
Shape up or ship out.
%
Are you a turtle?
%
Are you making all this up as you go along?
%
Are you sure the back door is locked?
%
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone
in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You are
quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are not
very nice.
%
ARIES (Mar.21 - Apr.19)
You are a wonderfully interesting, honest, hard-working person
and you should make many new friends, but you won't because you've
got a mean streak in you a mile wide.
%
ARITHMETIC:
An obscure art no longer practiced in
the world's developed countries.
%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
%
ARMADILLO:
To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle.
%
Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh
autonomous region, rioted over much needed spelling reform in the Soviet
Union.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
Armor's Axiom:
Virtue is the failure to achieve vice.
%
Armstrong's Collection Law:
If the check is truly in the mail,
it is surely made out to someone else.
%
Arnold's Addendum:
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1.) If it should exist, it doesn't.
2.) If it does exist, it's out of date.
3.) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
%
Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Around the turn of this century, a composer named Camille Saint-Saens wrote
a satirical zoological-fantasy called "Le Carnaval des Animaux." Aside from
one movement of this piece, "The Swan", Saint-Saens didn't allow this work
to be published or even performed until a year had elapsed after his death.
(He died in 1921.)
Most of us know the "Swan" movement rather well, with its smooth,
flowing cello melody against a calm background; but I've been having this
fantasy...
What if he had written this piece with lyrics, as a song to be sung?
And, further, what if he had accompanied this song with a musical saw? (This
instrument really does exist, often played by percussionists!) Then the
piece would be better known as:
SAINT-SAENS' SAW SONG "SWAN"!
%
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's
incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here."
-- Muad'dib, "Dune"
%
Art is a jealous mistress.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
-- Picasso
%
Art is anything you can get away with.
-- Marshall McLuhan
%
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
-- Paul Gauguin
%
Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down.
-- Chazal
%
"Art" is the ability to separate the significant from the insignificant.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.
%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
remind them of someone else.
2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will
be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool
of yourself in person.
%
Article the Third:
Where a crime of the kidneys has been committed, the accused should
enjoy the right to a speedy diaper change. Public announcements and
guided tours of the aforementioned are not necessary.
Article the Fourth:
The decision to eat strained lamb or not should be with the "feedee"
and not the "feeder". Blowing the strained lamb into the feeder's
face should be accepted as an opinion, not as a declaration of war.
Article the Fifth:
Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize, whether it be in church,
a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the
lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have
to last a lifetime and must be conserved.
-- Erma Bombeck, "A Baby's Bill of Rights"
%
Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as
artificial flowers have to flowers.
-- David Parnas
%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%
As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.
%
As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
"that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ...
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill
%
As an Englishman, an Aussie and a Scotsman are sitting in a pub, quaffing
a few, three flies buzz down from the ceiling and lazily circle each drinker.
Suddenly "buzzzzzzzzplooop", each fly does a kamakazi dive into a different
glass.
The Englishman take a disgusted look at his pint, dips the fly out
with a spoon, flicks the fly over his shoulder, and drains the glass.
The Aussie notices the fly as he puts the glass to his lips. With
a quick puff he blows the bug out in a cloud of foam, and tosses the beer
down in one gulp.
Then, as they both look on, awestruck, the Scotsman gently grasps the
fly by its wings, lifts it out of his brew and shakes it off. Then, in a
firm voice he speaks to the fly: "There y'are now laddie, safe and sound.
NOW SPIT IT OOOOT!"
%
As crazy as hauling timber into the woods.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp
the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at
a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
-- Joseph Brodsky
%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
-- Weisert
%
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.
-- Shakespeare, "King Lear"
%
As for the women, though we scorn and flout 'em,
We may live with, but cannot live without 'em.
-- Frederic Reynolds
%
As Gen. de Gaulle occasionally acknowledges America to be the daughter
of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
As goatherd learns his trade by goat, so writer learns his trade by wrote.
%
As he had feared, his orders had been forgotten and everyone had brought
the potato salad.
%
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of
religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the
methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions --
to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven
years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the
untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy --
and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and
high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational -- the powers of reason are
surprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind.
-- Steve Allen
%
As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was very
pleasurable - until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but A HUMAN HEAD!!
-- Jack Handey
%
As I thought, no better from this side.
-- Eeyore
%
As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
Feeling worse and worser,
There I met a C.R.T.
And it drop't me a cursor.
C.R.T., C.R.T.,
Phosphors light on you!
If I had fifty hours a day
I'd spend them all at you.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%
As I was walking down the street one dark and dreary day,
I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay,
The words were torn and tattered,
From the storm the night before,
The wind and rain had done its work and this is how it goes,
Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, chew Wrigleys Spearmint beer,
Ken-L-Ration dog food makes your complexion clear,
Simonize your baby in a Hershey candy bar,
And Texaco's a beauty cream that's used by every star.
Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigidaire,
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear,
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three,
And people over sixty-five should bathe in Lipton tea.
%
As in certain cults it is possible to
kill a process if you know its true name.
-- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie
%
As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into
smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different
in the fragmented world of IBM. That realm is now a chaos of conflicting
norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control. You can buy a
computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by
IBM itself. Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish
standards of their own. When IBM recently abandoned some of its original
standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan
allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive
innovator. Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and
imagery. IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures. Graven
images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies
on the austerity of the word.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
%
As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech
and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That
man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a real American
talk like that.
-- Frank Hague, 1896-1956
%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%
As long as there are ill-defined goals, bizarre bugs, and unrealistic
schedules, there will be Real Programmers willing to jump in and Solve
The Problem, saving the documentation for later.
%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
-- Oscar Wilde, "Intentions"
%
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.
Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"
1. I salivate at the sight of mittens.
2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse.
3. Some people never look at me.
4. Spinach makes me feel alone.
5. My sex life is A-okay.
6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
7. I like to kill mosquitoes.
8. Cousins are not to be trusted.
9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down.
10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating.
11. I think most people would cry to gain a point.
12. I cannot read or write.
13. I am bored by thoughts of death.
14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.
15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker.
16. I am never startled by a fish.
17. My mother's uncle was a good man.
18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten.
19. People who break the law are wise guys.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
%
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.
Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"
1. I think beavers work too hard.
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
3. God is love.
4. I like mannish children.
5. I have always been disturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room
full of mice.
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
16. My eyes are always cold.
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
19. I am never startled by a fish.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
%
As me an' me marrer was readin' a tyape,
The tyape gave a shriek mark an' tried tae escyape;
It skipped ower the gyate tae the end of the field,
An' jigged oot the room wi' a spool an' a reel!
Follow the leader, Johnny me laddie,
Follow it through, me canny lad O;
Follow the transport, Johnny me laddie,
Away, lad, lie away, canny lad O!
-- S. Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
As of next Thursday, UNIX will be flushed in favor of TOPS-10.
Please update your programs.
%
As of next Tuesday, C will be flushed in favor of COBOL.
Please update your programs.
%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%
As part of an ongoing effort to keep you, the Fortune reader, abreast of
the valuable information the daily crosses the USENET, Fortune presents:
News articles that answer *your* questions, #1:
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: how do I run C code received from sources
Keywords: C sources
Distribution: na
I do not know how to run the C programs that are posted in the
sources newsgroup. I save the files, edit them to remove the
headers, and change the mode so that they are executable, but I
cannot get them to run. (I have never written a C program before.)
Must they be compiled? With what compiler? How do I do this? If
I compile them, is an object code file generated or must I generate
it explicitly with the > character? Is there something else that
must be done?
%
As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs;
a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
-- USA Today, referring to the Internal Revenue Service
conversion to a new computer system.
%
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found
I've got a little list -- I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground
And who never would be missed -- who never would be missed.
-- Koko, "The Mikado"
%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be
discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in
my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949
%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably
because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
-- Woody Allen
%
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
As to Jesus of Nazareth... I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
As well look for a needle in a bottle of hay.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
As Will Rogers would have said,
"There is no such things as a free variable."
%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory
aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order
chocolate dishes: Any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the
proper time for chocolate.
-- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%
As you grow older, you will still do foolish things,
but you will do them with much more enthusiasm.
-- The Cowboy
%
As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,
birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never
see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are
talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull
your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.
The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along
with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall
from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all
over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of
a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the
spider is suing you for damages.
%
As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one.
-- Dave "First Strike" Pare
%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%
Ascend to the high mountain pass,
Cross the shallow side of the wide ocean.
Do not give up to the great distance:
It's by going that you will reach your aim.
Be not discouraged by human frailty:
You will overcome it if you try to.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
ASCII:
The control code for all beginning programmers and those who would
become computer literate. Etymologically, the term has come down as
a contraction of the often-repeated phrase "ascii and you shall
receive."
-- Robb Russon
%
ASCII a stupid question, you get an EBCDIC answer.
%
ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
%
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
If God won't have you, the devil must.
%
Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
Ask not for whom the Bell tolls, and you
will pay only the station-to-station rate.
-- Howard Kandel
%
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls...
if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%
Ask not what's inside your head, but what your head's inside of.
-- J. J. Gibson
%
Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
for an answer.
%
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
-- John Stuart Mill
%
Asked how she felt being the first woman to make a major-league team, she
said, "Like a pig in mud," or words to that effect, and then turned and
released a squirt of tobacco juice from the wad of rum soaked plug in her
right cheek. She chewed a rare brand of plug called Stuff It, which she
learned to chew when she was playing Nicaraguan summer ball. She told the
writers, "They were so mean to me down there you couldn't write it in your
newspaper. I took a gun everywhere I went, even to bed. *Especially* to
bed. Guys were after me like you can't believe. That's when I started
chewing tobacco -- because no matter how bad anybody treats you, it's not
as bad as this. This is the worst chew in the world. After this,
everything else is peaches and cream." The writers elected Gentleman Jim,
the Sparrow's P.R. guy, to bite off a chunk and tell them how it tasted,
and as he sat and chewed it tears ran down his old sunburnt cheeks and he
couldn't talk for a while. Then he whispered, "You've been chewing this for
two years? God, I had no idea it was so hard to be a woman."
-- Garrison Keillor
%
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a
lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
-- Christopher Hampton
%
Ass, n.:
The masculine of "lass".
%
Assembly language experience is [important] for the maturity
and understanding of how computers work that it provides.
-- D. Gries
%
Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run
with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened. Keep
the company of bums and you will become a bum. Hang around with rich people
and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke.
-- Stanley Walker
%
Astrology... just a bunch of Taurus.
%
Asynchronous inputs are at the root of our race problems.
-- D. Winker and F. Prosser
%
At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be
solved. The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will
take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology
available. The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution.
In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it. There
is only one solution, he says. Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general
relativity and all. She replies, "What does that have to do with solving
a computer problem?"
"Remember the twin paradox?"
After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very
fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but
that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course! Leave the
computer here, and accelerate the earth!"
The problem was so important that they did exactly that. When
the earth came back, they were presented with the answer:
IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card.
%
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
-- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
%
At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all
my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my
ignorance upon the shore.
-- Kahlil Gibran
%
At first, I just did it on weekends. With a few friends, you know...
We never wanted to hurt anyone. The girls loved it. We'd all sit
around the computer and do a little UNIX. It was just a kick. At
least that's what we thought. Then it got worse.
It got so I'd have to do some UNIX during the weekdays. After a
while, I couldn't even wake up in the morning without having that
crave to go do UNIX. Then it started affecting my job. I would just
have to do it during my break. Maybe a `grep' or two, maybe a little
`more'. I eventually started doing UNIX just to get through the day.
Of course, it screwed up my mind so much that I couldn't even
function as a normal person.
I'm lucky today, I've overcome my UNIX problem. It wasn't easy. If
you're smart, just don't start. Remember, if any weirdo offers you
some UNIX,
Just Say No!
%
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on
the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is
quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather
than blinkers it.
-- G. L. Glegg, "The Design of Design"
%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers,
a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
-- "The Washington Post Magazine", June 9, 1985
%
At last I've found the girl of my dreams. Last night she said to me,
"Once more, Strange, and this time *I'll* be Donnie and *you* be Marie.
-- Strange de Jim
%
At least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
-- J. B. White
%
At least they're _E_X_P_E_R_I_E_N_C_E_D incompetents.
%
At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
thumb with a hammer.
-- Marshall Lumsden
%
At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously
-- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being
in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason.
-- John Keats
%
At social gatherings, I would amuse everyone by standing uponst the
coffee table and striking meself repeatedly upon the head with a brick.
-- H. R. Gumby
%
At the end of your life there'll be a good rest,
and no further activities are scheduled.
%
At the foot of the mountain, thunder:
The image of Providing Nourishment.
Thus the superior man is careful of his words
And temperate in eating and drinking.
%
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"
%
At the hospital, a doctor is training an intern on how to announce bad news
to the patients. The doctor tells the intern "This man in 305 is going to
die in six months. Go in and tell him." The intern boldly walks into the
room, over to the man's bedside and tells him "Seems like you're gonna die!"
The man has a heart attack and is rushed into surgery on the spot. The doctor
grabs the intern and screams at him, "What!?!? are you some kind of moron?
You've got to take it easy, work your way up to the subject. Now this man in
213 has about a week to live. Go in and tell him, but, gently, you hear me,
gently!"
The intern goes softly into the room, humming to himself, cheerily
opens the drapes to let the sun in, walks over to the man's bedside, fluffs
his pillow and wishes him a "Good morning!" "Wonderful day, no? Say...
guess who's going to die soon!"
%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find
at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.
%
At these prices, I lose money -- but I make it up in volume.
-- Peter G. Alaquon
%
At times discretion should be thrown aside,
and with the foolish we should play the fool.
-- Menander
%
At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the
number of pens that person is carrying.
%
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
%
ATLANTA:
An entire city surrounded by an airport.
%
Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
or street lamp.
%
Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Attempting to stop MySQL by buying companies around it is like trying
to kill a dolphin by drinking the ocean.
-- M�rten Mickos
%
Attorney General Edwin Meese III explained why the Supreme Court's Miranda
decision (holding that subjects have a right to remain silent and have a
lawyer present during questioning) is unnecessary: "You don't have many
suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person
is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."
-- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85
%
AUCTION:
A gyp off the old block.
%
Audacity, and again, audacity, and always audacity.
-- G. J. Danton
%
audiophile, n:
Someone who listens to the equipment instead of the music.
%
Auribus teneo lupum.
[I hold a wolf by the ears.]
%
AUTHENTIC:
Indubitably true, in somebody's opinion.
%
Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
depths they were once able to plumb.
-- Stanley Kaufman
%
Authors are easy to get on with -- if you're fond of children.
-- Michael Joseph, "Observer"
%
Automobile, n.:
A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
pedestrians.
%
Avec!
%
Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance.
%
Avoid cliches like the plague.
They're a dime a dozen.
%
Avoid gunfire in the bathroom tonight.
%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%
Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
-- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
%
Avoid strange women and temporary variables.
%
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
in 1959.
-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
bad fiction contest.
