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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

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 8: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
        The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
        Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano.
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 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 sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.
                -- Don Marquis
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
                -- Marlon Brando
An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an
autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.
                -- Marlo Thomas
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #5

THE ATOMIC GRANDMOTHER:
        This humorous but heart-warming story tells of an elderly woman
        forced to work at a nuclear power plant in order to help the family
        make ends meet.  At night, granny sits on the porch, tells tales
        of her colorful past, and the family uses her to cook barbecues
        and to power small electrical appliances.  Maureen Stapleton gives
        a glowing performance.
Hoaars-Faisse Gallery presents:
An exhibit of works by the artist known only as Pretzel.

The exhibit includes several large conceptual works using non-traditional
media and found objects including old sofa-beds, used mace canisters,
discarded sanitary napkins and parts of freeways.  The artist explores
our dehumanization due to high technology and unresponsive governmental
structures in a post-industrial world.  She/he (the artist prefers to
remain without gender) strives to create dialogue between viewer and
creator, to aid us in our quest to experience contemporary life with its
inner-city tensions, homelessness, global warming and gender and
class-based stress.  The works are arranged to lead us to the essence of
the argument: that the alienation of the person/machine boundary has
sapped the strength of our voices and must be destroyed for society to
exist in a more fundamental sense.
I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they
could do was to go away.
I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind
of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances
being in widespread use.  Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms
of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like
a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments
as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
  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
If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner,
and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops,
not just because you fear she might be crazy.  If she tells her tale on
camera, you might listen.  Watching strangers on television , even
responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged -- voyeurs
collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community.  Never
have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little.
                -- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television
                   in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional".
If I have to lay an egg for my country, I'll do it.
                -- Bob Hope
It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater.  The clown came
out to inform the public.  They thought it was just a jest and applauded.
He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder.  So I think the world
will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe
that it is a joke.
IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or
    equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to
    spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
        Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it
        inevitably unsuccessful.
V. All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
        Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel
        them directly away from the earth's surface.  A spooky noise or an
        adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to
        the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole.
        The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding
        auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.
VI. As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
        This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a
        character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of
        altercation at several places simultaneously.  This effect is common
        as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled.  A "wacky"
        character has the option of self-replication only at manic high
        speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.
                -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
                -- Tom Stoppard
Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets.
                -- The Brigadier, "Dr. Who"
        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
Like ya know?  Rock 'N Roll is an esoteric language that unlocks the
creativity chambers in people's brains, and like totally activates their
essential hipness, which of course is like totally necessary for saving
the earth, like because the first thing in saving this world, is getting
rid of stupid and square attitudes and having fun.
                -- Senior Year Quote
Mr. Rockford?  Miss Collins from the Bureau of Licenses.  We got your
renewal before the extended deadline but not your check.  I'm sorry but
at midnight you're no longer licensed as an investigator.
                -- "The Rockford Files"
My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I threw my
amplifier out the dormitory window.  We did not act in haste. First we
checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the frame, using the
belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up the amplifier and backed
up to my bedroom door.  Then we rushed forward, shouting "The WHO!  The
WHO!" and we launched my amplifier perfectly, as though we had been doing it
all our lives, clean through the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a
small but appreciative crowd had gathered.  I would like to be able to say
that this was a symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away
from one state in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper
and I really just wanted to find out what it would sound like.  It sounded
OK.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
Oprah Winfrey has an incredible talent for getting the weirdest people to
talk to.  And you just HAVE to watch it.  "Blind, masochistic minority,
crippled, depressed, government latrine diggers, and the women who love
them too much on the next Oprah Winfrey."
Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
Plots are like girdles.  Hidden, they hold your interest; revealed, they're
of no interest except to fetishists. Like girdles, they attempt to contain
an uncontainable experience.
                -- R.S. Knapp
Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents:

        SPUD ROGERS OF THE 25TH CENTURY: Story of an Air Force potato that's
left in a rarely used chow hall for over two centuries and wakes up in a world
populated by soybean created imitations under the evil Dick Tater.  Thanks to
him, the soy-potatoes learn that being a 'tater is where it's at.  Memorable
line, "'Cause I'm just a stud spud!"

        FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER SERIES: Crazed potato who was left in a
fryer too long and was charbroiled carelessly returns to wreak havoc on
unsuspecting, would-be teen camp cooks.  Scenes include a girl being stuffed
with chives and Fleischman's Margarine and a boy served up on a side dish
with beets and dressing.  Definitely not for the squeamish, or those on
diets that are driving them crazy.

        FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER II,III,IV,V,VI: Much, much more of the same.
Except with sour cream.
        The big problem with pornography is defining it.  You can't just
say it's pictures of people naked.  For example, you have these
primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot,
and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal
saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think
you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same
time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of
Northern Mali that you may be interested in."
        So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic
publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest
naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason
naked, or whatever.  But if National Geographic were to publish an
article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System
Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography.  But
others would not.  And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev.
Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.
                -- Dave Barry, "Pornography"
The Great Movie Posters:

A mis-spawned murderous abomination from the nether reaches of an
unimaginable hell.
                -- The Killer of Castle Brood (1967)

NEW -- SICKENING HORROR to make your STOMACH TURN and FLESH CRAWL!
                -- Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968)

LUST-MAD MEN AND LAWLESS WOMEN IN A VICIOUS AND SENSUOUS ORGY OF SLAUGHTER!
                -- Five Bloody Graves (1969)

The family that slays together stays together.
                -- Bloody Mama (1970)
The Great Movie Posters:

An AVALANCHE of KILLER WORMS!
                -- Squirm (1976)

Most Movies Live Less Than Two Hours.
This Is One of Everlasting Torment!
                -- The New House on the Left (1977)

WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU!
                -- Zombie (1980)

It's not human and it's got an axe.
                -- The Prey (1981)
The Great Movie Posters:

Different! Daring! Dynamic! Defying! Dumbfounding!
SEE Uncle Tom lead the Negroes to FREEDOM!
... Now, all the SENSUAL and VIOLENT passions Roots couldn't show on TV!
                -- Uncle Tom's Cabin (1972)

An appalling amalgam of carnage and carnality!
                -- Flesh and Blood Show (1973)

WHEN THE CATS ARE HUNGRY...
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
Alone, only a harmless pet...
        One Thousand Strong, They Become a Man-Eating Machine!
                -- The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972)

They're Over-Exposed
But Not Under-Developed!
                -- Cover Girl Models (1976)
The Great Movie Posters:

HOODLUMS FROM ANOTHER WORLD ON A RAY-GUN RAMPAGE!
                -- Teenagers from Outher Space (1959)

Which will be Her Mate... MAN OR BEAST?
Meet Velda -- the Kind of Woman -- Man or Gorilla would kill... to Keep.
                -- Untamed Mistress (1960)

NOW AN ALL-MIGHTY ALL-NEW MOTION PICTURE BRINGS THEM TOGETHER FOR THE
FIRST TIME...  HISTORY'S MOST GIGANTIC MONSTERS IN COMBAT ATOP MOUNT FUJI!
                -- King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
The Great Movie Posters:

SCENES THAT WILL STAGGER YOUR SIGHT!
-- DANCING CALLED GO-GO
-- MUSIC CALLED JU-JU
-- NARCOTICS CALLED BANGI!
-- FIRES OF PUBERTY!
        SEE the burning of a virgin!
        SEE power of witch doctor over women!
        SEE pygmies with fantastic Physical Endowments!!!
                -- Kwaheri (1965)

The Big Comedy of Nineteen-Sexty-Sex!
                -- Boeing-Boeing (1965)

AN ASTRONAUT WENT UP-
A "GUESS WHAT" CAME DOWN!
        The picture that comes complete with a 10-foot tall monster to
give you the wim-wams!
                -- Monster a Go-Go (1965)
The Great Movie Posters:

SHE TOOK ON A WHOLE GANG! A howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog
on a roaring rampage of revenge!
                -- Bury Me an Angel (1972)

WHAT'S THE SECRET INGREDIENT USED BY THE MAD BUTCHER FOR HIS SUPERB SAUSAGES?
                -- Meat is Meat (1972)

TODAY the Pond!
TOMORROW the World!
                -- Frogs (1972)
The Great Movie Posters:

The nightmare terror of the slithering eye that unleashed agonizing
horror on a screaming world!
                -- The Crawling Eye (1958)

SEE a female colossus... her mountainous torso, scyscraper limbs,
giant desires!
                -- Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman (1958)

Here Is Your Chance To Know More About Sex.
What Should a Movie Do?  Hide Its Head in the Sand Like an Ostrich?
Or Face the JOLTING TRUTH as does...
                -- The Desperate Women (1958)
"The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
has gills through which it can see."
                -- Monty Python
The key to building a superstar is to keep their mouth shut.  To reveal
an artist to the people can be to destroy him.  It isn't to anyone's
advantage to see the truth.
                -- Bob Ezrin, rock music producer
The Worst Musical Trio
        There are few bad musicians who have a chance to give a recital at
a famous concert hall while still learning the rudiments of their
instrument.  This happened about thirty years ago to the son of a Rumanian
gentleman who was owed a personal favour by Georges Enesco, the celebrated
violinist.  Enesco agreed to give lessons to the son who was quite
unhampered by great musical talent.
        Three years later the boy's father insisted that he give a public
concert.  "His aunt said that nobody plays the violin better than he does.
A cousin heard him the other day and screamed with enthusiasm."  Although
Enesco feared the consequences, he arranged a recital at the Salle Gaveau
in Paris.  However, nobody bought a ticket since the soloist was unknown.
        "Then you must accompany him on the piano," said the boy's father,
"and it will be a sell out."
        Reluctantly, Enesco agreed and it was.  On the night an excited
audience gathered.  Before the concert began Enesco became nervous and
asked for someone to turn his pages.
        In the audience was Alfred Cortot, the brilliant pianist, who
volunteered and made his way to the stage.
        The soloist was of uniformly low standard and next morning the
music critic of Le Figaro wrote: "There was a strange concert at the Salle
Gaveau last night.  The man whom we adore when he plays the violin played
the piano.  Another whom we adore when he plays the piano turned the pages.
But the man who should have turned the pages played the violin."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit.  It begins with the vision to
recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to let
go.  It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its
past importance in our lives.  It involves a sense of future, a belief
that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out.
The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well.  It's hard to
recognize that life isn't a holding action, but a process.  It's hard to
learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the
dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there.  The experiences
and the growth are grafted onto our lives.  And when we exit, we can take
ourselves along -- quite gracefully.
                -- Ellen Goodman
Use an accordion.  Go to jail.
                -- KFOG, San Francisco
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
What a bonanza!  An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script
by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary
Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them!
                -- David Niven, "Bring On the Empty Horses"
What an artist dies with me!
                -- Nero
What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.
                -- Brendan Francis
Yevtushenko has... an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty feet.
                -- John Cheever
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
Everyone *knows* cats are on a higher level of existence.  These silly humans
are just to big-headed to admit their inferiority.
        Just think what a nicer world this would be if it were controlled by
cats.
        You wouldn't see cats having waste disposal problems.
        They're neat.
        They don't have sexual hangups.  A cat gets horny, it does something
about it.
        They keep reasonable hours.  You *never* see a cat up before noon.
        They know how to relax.  Ever heard of a cat with an ulcer?  
        What are the chances of a cat starting a nuclear war?  Pretty neglible.
It's not that they can't, they just know that there are much better things to
do with ones time.  Like lie in the sun and sleep.  Or go exploring the world.
When man calls an animal "vicious", he usually means that it will attempt
to defend itself when he tries to kill it.
> : Any porters out there should feel happier knowing that DEC is shipping
> : me an AlphaPC that I intend to try getting linux running on: this will
> : definitely help flush out some of the most flagrant unportable stuff.
> : The Alpha is much more different from the i386 than the 68k stuff is, so
> : it's likely to get most of the stuff fixed.
>
> It's posts like this that almost convince us non-believers that there
> really is a god.
(A follow-up by alovell@kerberos.demon.co.uk, Anthony Lovell, to Linus's
remarks about porting)
I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.
Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
(By entropy@world.std.com, Lawrence Foard)
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb.  Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)
"I'm an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.."
(Linus Torvalds in response to a bug report.)

> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
Disquieting ...
(Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)

> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals
then.
(Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)

> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-).
(Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)
"What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through
these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot
water."
(By Matt Welsh)
Please excuse me, I have to circuit an AC line through my head to get this database working.
I'm sorry a pentium won't do, you need an SGI to connect with us.
You need to install an RTFM interface.
YOU HAVE AN I/O ERROR -> Incompetent Operator error
t's an ID-10-T error
We are Microsoft.  What you are experiencing is not a problem; it is an undocumented feature.
Terorists crashed an airplane into the server room, have to remove /bin/laden. (rm -rf /bin/laden)
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
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
                -- Mark Twain
An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.
                -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
Consider well the proportions of things.  It is better to be a young June-bug
than an old bird of paradise.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.  Except a
creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely
a loose misapplication of the word.  Consider the flea!--incomparably the
bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact
that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth
to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the
very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by
an earthquake ten centuries before.  When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam
as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and
put him at the head of the procession.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
                -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is
oblivion.
                -- Mark Twain
Gone With The Wind LITE(tm)
        -- by Margaret Mitchell

        A woman only likes men she can't have and the South gets trashed.

Gift of the Magi LITE(tm)
        -- by O. Henry

        A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences.

The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm)
        -- by Ernest Hemingway

        An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck.
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely
the most important.
                -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek,
shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm
as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like
bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood;
she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a
man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the
right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
                -- Rachel Sheeley, winner

The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never
see her little dog Pritzi again.
                -- Claudia Fields, runner-up

It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a
tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it
was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.
                -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up

Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest.  The contest is
named after the author of the immortal lines:  "It was a dark and stormy
night."  The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the
worst possible novel.
Noise proves nothing.  Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles
as if she laid an asteroid.
                -- Mark Twain
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves
possess.
                -- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"]
Reader, suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of
Congress.  But I repeat myself.
                -- Mark Twain
Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then
turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a
bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last
night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British
aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.'
                -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton
                   bad fiction contest.
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie;
and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head
into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently
married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand
Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all
fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran
out at the heels of their boots.
                -- Samuel Foote
"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though
ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee.  Of all divers,
thou has dived the deepest.  That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has
moved amid the world's foundations.  Where unrecorded names and navies rust,
and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate
earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful
water-land, there was thy most familiar home.  Thou hast been where bell or
diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers
would give their lives to lay them down.  Thou saw'st the locked lovers when
leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting
wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.  Thou saw'st the
murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell
into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed
on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would
have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms.  O head! thou has
seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
syllable is thine!"
                -- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"
Stop!  There was first a game of blindman's buff.  Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
in his boots.  My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it.  The
way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
on the credulity of human nature.
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a
rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2,
to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the
manuscript of his forthcoming book.  No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2
admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty.
"When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."
                -- Mark Twain
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by
ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.  Observe the ass, for instance: his
character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler
animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to.  Instead of feeling
complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that
is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
                -- Mark Twain
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.  But there was
also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
French restaurant. [...]
        I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile.  There had been a fight.  I had punched her
boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls.  Everyone told him, "You ride the
bull, senor.  You do not fight it."  But he was lean and tough like a bad
rib-eye and he fought the bull.  And then he fought me.  And when we finished
there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
        "Stop the car," the girl said.
        There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes.  She knew about the
woman of the tollway.  I knew not how.  I started to speak, but she raised an
arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
        "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
        The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
onto my granola and faced a new day.
                -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
                   Competition
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words.  The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women.  There, that's it: 24 words.  But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
        Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father.  It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages.  If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
        I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God.  So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
        Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:

* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
  nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
                -- Dave Barry
What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?
                -- Nero Wolfe, "The League of Frightened Men"
You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the
obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and
an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.
                -- Sherlock Holmes, "The Norwood Builder"
"Good afternoon, madam.  How may I help you?"

"Good afternoon.  I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please."

"A--?  Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady.  I
mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I
say they have a right to.  But I think... I might... Let's have a look
down here.  I might have just the thing for you.  Yes, here we are!
Look at that, isn't it neat?  Now that is a FrintArms product as well,
but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call
them.  Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't
spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a
tonne of iron around with you.  We do a range of matching accessories,
including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster.  Wish I
got to do the fitting for that!  Ha -- just my little joke.  And
there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun,
charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster
with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your
next battery.  Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free
lessons at your local gun club or range.  Or there's the *special*
presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two*
charged batteries and a night-sight, too.  Here, feel that -- don't
worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat?  Feel how light it is?
Smooth, see?  No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and*
beautifully balanced.  And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's
no recoil.  Because it's shooting light, you see?  Beautiful gun,
beautiful gun; my wife has one.  Really.  That's not a line, she
really has.  Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free
charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special
offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for
one-forty-nine."

"I'll take the special."

"Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice.  Now, do--?"

"And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three
six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a
Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding
rounds, not the signalers.  I assume the night-sight on this toy is
compatible?"

"Aah... yes,  And how does madam wish to pay?"

She slapped her credit card on the counter.  "Eventually."

          -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background"
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
[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
                -- Joseph Campbell
A CONS is an object which cares.
                -- Bernie Greenberg.
        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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Polamar 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 Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks
secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
                -- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School

        [Ummm ... IC circuits?  Integrated circuit circuits?]
===  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  ========================

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.
AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has
been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an
import.  This beer never really sold very well because the original
manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer
fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a
16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz.  cans too.  When this can was
originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design
hasn't changed much over the years, so it appears dated now.  Critics of
this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.
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 algorithm must be seen to be believed.
                -- D.E. Knuth
... 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 with 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.
        -- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
An engineer is someone who does list processing in FORTRAN.
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"
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.  The
question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them
is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the existence of
the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient.  (A
discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope
of this article.)
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
                -- Weisert
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 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?
ASCII a stupid question, you get an EBCDIC answer.
Brace yourselves.  We're about to try something that borders on the unique:
an actually rather serious technical book which is not only (gasp) vehemently
anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides.  I tend to think of it as
`Constructive Snottiness.'
                -- Mike Padlipsky, "Elements of Networking Style"
        Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design.
Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor
any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.
Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the
center of the dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will
usually know what's wrong."
CCI Power 6/40: one board, a megabyte of cache, and an attitude...
Couldn't we jury-rig the cat to act as an audio switch, and have it yell
at people to save their core images before logging them out?  I'm sure
the cattle prod would be effective in this regard.  In any case, a traverse
mounted iguana, while more perverted, gives better traction, not to mention
being easier to stake.
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking
process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical
attention to detail.  It requires intelligence, dedication, and an
enormous amount of hard work.  But, a certain amount of unpredictable
and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference
between adequacy and excellence.
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking
process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical
attention to detail.  It requires intelligence, dedication, and an
enormous amount of hard work.  But, a certain amount of unpredictable
and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference
between adequacy and excellence.
Dear Emily:
        How can I choose what groups to post in?
                -- Confused

Dear Confused:
        Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience.  After
all, the net exists to give you an audience.  Ignore those who suggest you
should only use groups where you think the article is highly appropriate.
Pick all groups where anybody might even be slightly interested.
        Always make sure followups go to all the groups.  In the rare event
that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure you
expand the list of groups.  Never include a "Followup-to:" line in the
header, since some people might miss part of the valuable discussion in
the fringe groups.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        I collected replies to an article I wrote, and now it's time to
summarize.  What should I do?
                -- Editor

Dear Editor:
        Simply concatenate all the articles together into a big file and post
that.  On USENET, this is known as a summary.  It lets people read all the
replies without annoying newsreaders getting in the way.  Do the same when
summarizing a vote.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        I recently read an article that said, "reply by mail, I'll summarize."
What should I do?
                -- Doubtful

Dear Doubtful:
        Post your response to the whole net.  That request applies only to
dumb people who don't have something interesting to say.  Your postings are
much more worthwhile than other people's, so it would be a waste to reply by
mail.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted
to.  How about an example?
                -- Still Confused

Dear Still:
        Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from
the Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.
        The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.
He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)
        You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each
group.  If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders
will only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        Today I posted an article and forgot to include my signature.
What should I do?
                -- Forgetful

Dear Forgetful:
        Rush to your terminal right away and post an article that says,
"Oops, I forgot to post my signature with that last article.  Here
it is."
        Since most people will have forgotten your earlier article,
(particularly since it dared to be so boring as to not have a nice, juicy
signature) this will remind them of it.  Besides, people care much more
about the signature anyway.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Ms. Postnews:
        I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site.  What
        should I do?
                -- Eager Beaver

Dear Eager:
        No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people
read.  Say, "This is for John Smith.  I couldn't get mail through so I'm
posting it.  All others please ignore."
        This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning
over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective
time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet
maps or looking for alternate routes.  Just think, if you couldn't distribute
your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call
directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person.  This can cost
as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call!
        And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's
money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight
letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp!
        Don't forget.  The world will end if your message doesn't get through,
so post it as many places as you can.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
(defun NF (a c)
  (cond ((null c) () )
        ((atom (car c))
          (append (list (eval (list 'getchar (list (car c) 'a) (cadr c))))
                 (nf a (cddr c))))
        (t (append (list (implode (nf a (car c)))) (nf a (cdr c))))))

(defun AD (want-job challenging boston-area)
  (cond
   ((or (not (equal want-job 'yes))
        (not (equal boston-area 'yes))
        (lessp challenging 7)) () )
   (t (append (nf  (get 'ad 'expr)
          '((caaddr 1 caadr 2 car 1 car 1)
            (car 5 cadadr 9 cadadr 8 cadadr 9 caadr 4 car 2 car 1)
            (car 2 caadr 4)))
      (list '851-5071x2661)))))
;;;     We are an affirmative action employer.
DISCLAIMER:
Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement
of Western industrial civilization.
DOS Beer: Requires you to use your own can opener, and requires you to
read the directions carefully before opening the can. Originally only
came in an 8-oz. can, but now comes in a 16-oz. can. However, the can is
divided into 8 compartments of 2 oz. each, which have to be accessed
separately.  Soon to be discontinued, although a lot of people are going
to keep drinking it after it's no longer available.
Fellow programmer, greetings!  You are reading a letter which will bring
you luck and good fortune.  Just mail (or UUCP) ten copies of this letter
to ten of your friends.  Before you make the copies, send a chip or
other bit of hardware, and 100 lines of 'C' code to the first person on the
list given at the bottom of this letter.  Then delete their name and add
yours to the bottom of the list.

Don't break the chain!  Make the copy within 48 hours.  Gerald R. of San
Diego failed to send out his ten copies and woke the next morning to find
his job description changed to "COBOL programmer."  Fred A. of New York sent
out his ten copies and within a month had enough hardware and software to
build a Cray dedicated to playing Zork.  Martha H. of Chicago laughed at
this letter and broke the chain.  Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in
her terminal and she now spends her days writing documentation for IBM PC's.

Don't break the chain!  Send out your ten copies today!
For example, if \thinmskip = 3mu, this makes \thickmskip = 6mu.  But if
you also want to use \skip12 for horizontal glue, whether in math mode or
not, the amount of skipping will be in points (e.g., 6pt).  The rule is
that glue in math mode varies with the size only when it is an \mskip;
when moving between an mskip and ordinary skip, the conversion factor
1mu=1pt is always used.  The meaning of '\mskip\skip12' and
'\baselineskip=\the\thickmskip' should be clear.
                -- Donald Knuth, TeX 82 -- Comparison with TeX80
From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
experience in sound:

5.  Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees.  The pin-spreading
    sound is normal for this type of connector.
Hacker's Guide To Cooking:
2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't
        really  come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.)
1 tsp. vanilla  extract  (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty
        strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure)
1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too)
8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you
        can squirt all over your friends and lick off...)
"Blend all together until creamy with no lumps."  This is where you get to
        join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through
        merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy
        and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it.  Try an electric
        beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off
        the ceiling(3m).
"Pour into a graham cracker crust..."  Aha, the BUGS section at last.  You
        just happened  to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right?
        If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent
        GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter.
"...and  refrigerate for an hour."  Leave the  recipe's  stdout in a fridge
        for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and
        by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and
after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government
of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only
commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even
the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the
reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
        If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were
a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the
execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some
justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I
venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will
ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if
made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to
declare the construction of such machinery impracticable...
        And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed
by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its
advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I
think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
                -- Charles Babbage, "The Life of a Philosopher"
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise.  I strained
it to expose its weaknesses.  I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero.  I had found an error.  I
chased down the error and fixed it.  Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
                -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
                   Holes and the Fate of Stars"
        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
If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days
and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to
think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate.
                -- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia"
If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program
an imbedded system.  The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that
it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention
will suffice to remove it.  An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything
it hears from the outside world.  It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff
around, and adapt again.  I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming
carefulness here.  No.  Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted
raging maniacal paranoia.  For example, our ethernet front ends need to know
what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs
properly.  How do you find out what your network number is?  Easy, you ask a
gateway.  Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network
numbers.  Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before
you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all
over creation.  Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he
was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong
network number?  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  Supposing that your
software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network
number than before, what's it supposed to do about it?  This is not discussed
in the protocol document.  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  I think you
get my drift.
In any problem, if you find yourself doing an infinite amount of work,
the answer may be obtained by inspection.
In fact, S. M. Simpson, eventually devised an efficient 24-point Fourier
transform, which was a precursor to the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform
in 1965.  The FFT made all of Simpson's efficient autocorrelation and
spectrum programs instantly obsolete, on which he had worked half a lifetime.
                -- Proc. IEEE, Sept. 1982, p.900
... 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
: is not an identifier
        It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself
working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates.  One slow day, he
found that he had time to chat with the new entrants.  To the first one
he asked, "What's your IQ?"  The new arrival replied, "190".  They
discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours.  When the second
new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's
IQ.  The answer this time came "120".  To which Einstein replied, "Tell
me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half
an hour or so.  To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the
question, "What's your IQ?".  Upon receiving the answer "70",
Einstein smiled and replied, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
        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 easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

        ...
        The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information
Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President.  The ISHW
is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show
that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before
the first prototypes are ready.  Asked whether he was worried about the
foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president
said, ``Finland?  Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told
anyone yet.  They're great at building model airplanes as well.  And _I
can spell potato.''  House representatives are not mollified, however,
wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska.
        Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock
market for weeks.  Several major publishing houses reached an all time
low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the
publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius.  The negotiations did not work
out, tough.  ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen
at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable
of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks,
preferring to communicate via e-mail.  ``He kept muttering something
about jiffies and pegs,'' they say.
        ...
                -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi>
                   [comp.os.linux.announce]
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

Helsinki, Finland, August 6, 1995 -- In a surprise movement, Lars
``Lasu'' Wirzenius today released the 0.3 edition of the ``Linux System
Administrators' Guide''.  Already an industry non-classic, the new
version sports such overwhelming features as an overview of a Linux
system, a completely new climbing session in a tree, and a list of
acknowledgements in the introduction.
        The SAG, as the book is affectionately called, is one of the
corner stones of the Linux Documentation Project.  ``We at the LDP feel
that we wouldn't be able to produce anything at all, that all our work
would be futile, if it weren't for the SAG,'' says Matt Welsh, director
of LDP, Inc.
        The new version is still distributed freely, now even with a
copyright that allows modification.  ``More dough,'' explains the author.
Despite insistent rumors about blatant commercialization, the SAG will
probably remain free.  ``Even more dough,'' promises the author.
        The author refuses to comment on Windows NT and Windows 96
versions, claiming not to understand what the question is about.
Industry gossip, however, tells that Bill Gates, co-founder and CEO of
Microsoft, producer of the Windows series of video games, has visited
Helsinki several times this year.  Despite of this, Linus Torvalds,
author of the word processor Linux with which the SAG was written, is
not worried.  ``We'll have world domination real soon now, anyway,'' he
explains, ``for 1.4 at the lastest.''
        ...
                -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi>
                   [comp.os.linux.announce]
LOGO for the Dead

LOGO for the Dead lets you continue your computing activities from
"The Other Side."

The package includes a unique telecommunications feature which lets you
turn your TRS-80 into an electronic Ouija board.  Then, using Logo's
graphics capabilities, you can work with a friend or relative on this
side of the Great Beyond to write programs.  The software requires that
your body be hardwired to an analog-to-digital converter, which is then
interfaced to your computer.  A special terminal (very terminal) program
lets you talk with the users through Deadnet, an EBBS (Ectoplasmic
Bulletin Board System).

LOGO for the Dead is available for 10 percent of your estate
from NecroSoft inc., 6502 Charnelhouse Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44101.
                -- '80 Microcomputing
        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
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
                -- Steinbach
Never trust an operating system.
No man is an island if he's on at least one mailing list.
No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence
different from the one identified by the given indication as an
indication-applied occurrence.
                -- ALGOL 68 Report
No wonder Clairol makes so much money selling shampoo.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat is an infinite loop!
Norbert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories.  Weiner was, in
fact, very absent minded.  The following story is told about him: when they
moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely
useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move.  Since
she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had
moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to
him.  Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him.  He
reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled
some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and
threw the piece of paper away.  At the end of the day he went home (to the
old address in Cambridge, of course).  When he got there he realized that they
had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of
paper with the address was long gone.  Fortunately inspiration struck.  There
was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where
he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me.  I'm Norbert Weiner
and we've just moved.  Would you know where we've moved to?"  To which the
young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget."
        The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the
story) about the truth of the story, many years later.  She said that it wasn't
quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were!  The rest of it,
however, was pretty close to what actually happened...
                -- Richard Harter
Nurse Donna:        Oh, Groucho, I'm afraid I'm gonna wind up an old maid.
Groucho:        Well, bring her in and we'll wind her up together.
Nurse Donna:        Do you believe in computer dating?
Groucho:        Only if the computers really love each other.
        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"
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions:  to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining
errors by providing for recovery from them.  An interesting footnote to this
design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the
result of two program errors:  the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.
                -- A.L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage
                   Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and
                   Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4.
Overconfidence breeds error when we take for granted that the game will
continue on its normal course; when we fail to provide for an unusually
powerful resource -- a check, a sacrifice, a stalemate.  Afterwards the
victim may wail, `But who could have dreamt of such an idiotic-looking move?'
                -- Fred Reinfeld, "The Complete Chess Course"
        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"
Programming is an unnatural act.
Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is
described in the formal spec.  Working late would feel like using an
undocumented external procedure.
Remember, God could only create the world in 6 days because he didn't
have an established user base.
Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question.
They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was
built. Finally the big day was at hand.  All the computers were linked
together.  They asked the question, "Is there a God?".  Lights started
blinking, flashing and blinking some more.  Suddenly, there was a loud
crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the
computers, and welded all the connections permanently together.  "There
is now", came the reply.
                                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.
        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..."
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure
that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing,
all-encompassing monster.  Allocate an array and free the middle third?
Sure!  Why not?  Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the
result to a float decimal?  Go ahead!  Free a controlled variable procedure
parameter and reallocate it before passing it back?  Overlay three different
types of variable on the same memory location?  Anything you say!  Write a
recursive macro?  Well, no, but Real Men use rescan.  How could a language
so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
... that the notions of "hardware", and "software" should be extended by
the notion of LIVEWARE - being that which produces software for use on
hardware.  This produces an obvious extension to the concept of MONITORS.
A liveware monitor is a person dedicated to the task of ensuring that the
liveware does not interfere with the real-time processes, invoking the
REAL-TIME EXECUTIONER to delete liveware that adversely affects ...
                -- Linden and Wihelminalaan
The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8.
                -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?]
        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 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 idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given
tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than
it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
                -- Doug Gwyn
        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE

SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment.  This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it.  The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP.  No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error.  Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful.  Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP

This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH".  LITHP is said
to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #15 -- DOGO

        Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Obedience Training, DOGO
DOGO heralds a new era of computer-literate pets.  DOGO commands include
SIT, STAY, HEEL, and ROLL OVER.  An innovative feature of DOGO is "puppy
graphics", a small cocker spaniel that occasionally leaves a deposit as
it travels across the screen.
        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE

Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
unstructured language.  Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just are.
Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions. SARTRE
programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at parties.
        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 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 misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be
general systems laws.  For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that
any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby
not to be a science.  He would cite as examples Military Science, Library
Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer
Science.  Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its
predictive power.
                -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
                   Thinking"
The most important early product on the way to developing a good product
is an imperfect version.
The net is like a vast sea of lutefisk with tiny dinosaur brains embedded
in it here and there. Any given spoonful will likely have an IQ of 1, but
occasional spoonfuls may have an IQ more than six times that!
        -- James 'Kibo' Parry
The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.

        But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay:
        for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
                -- Matthew 5:37
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column
card.
                -- Dennis M. Ritchie
The proof that IBM didn't invent the car is that it has a steering wheel
and an accelerator instead of spurs and ropes, to be compatible with a horse.
                -- Jac Goudsmit
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers
while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference --
one can see only a very few things at once.
                -- Fred Brooks
The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
The world is coming to an end.  Please log off.
The young lady had an unusual list,
Linked in part to a structural weakness.
She set no preconditions.
        There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the
warlord of 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
the tax laws.  By contrast, an operating system is not limited my outside
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, 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"
This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
        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
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings:

        (10) Sorry, but that's too useful.
         (9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent!
         (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell
             #pragma is for.
         (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too
             hard to write.
         (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar.
         (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in
             here?
         (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!"
         (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this
             sucker.
         (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth.
         (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz.
to 64 oz.  Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even
though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical.
Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have
to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you
either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been
drinking Unix Beer for several years.
        BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste.  The official
brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it.
        Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active
GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body.  The GNU brewery is
mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can,
which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented.
        Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his
basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious
brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe.
        POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the
newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager.
        Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout.
Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout.
        Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was
discontinued in favor of a lager.
        SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of
stout or the sweetness of ale.
                                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
"We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog,
star of "The Muppet Show." [3]

[3]  Why?  Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we
were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of
character.  But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol
after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an
acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the
letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest.  Later, while
looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed
that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs
should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our
source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky
instead).  When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for
publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission
to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog.  Permission
was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told.  I resisted the
temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book."
                -- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol"
Welcome to UNIX!  Enjoy your session!  Have a great time!  Note the
use of exclamation points!  They are a very effective method for
demonstrating excitement, and can also spice up an otherwise plain-looking
sentence!  However, there are drawbacks!  Too much unnecessary exclaiming
can lead to a reduction in the effect that an exclamation point has on
the reader!  For example, the sentence

        Jane went to the store to buy bread

should only be ended with an exclamation point if there is something
sensational about her going to the store, for example, if Jane is a
cocker spaniel or if Jane is on a diet that doesn't allow bread or if
Jane doesn't exist for some reason!  See how easy it is?!  Proper control
of exclamation points can add new meaning to your life!  Call now to receive
my free pamphlet, "The Wonder and Mystery of the Exclamation Point!"!
Enclose fifteen(!) dollars for postage and handling!  Operators are
standing by!  (Which is pretty amazing, because they're all cocker spaniels!)
        "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.

        [with apologies to A.A. Milne]
When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple
of asterisked sentences:

        It weighs less than 8 pounds.*
        And costs less than $1,300.**

In tiny type were these "fuller explanations":

      * Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out?  Well, all
        this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power
        pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks
        will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you
        might not be able to figure this out for yourself.

     ** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if
        you really want to.  Or less.
                -- Forbes
Windows 95 Beer: A lot of people have taste-tested it and claim it's
wonderful. The can looks a lot like Mac Beer's can, but tastes more like
Windows 3.1 Beer. It comes in 32-oz.  cans, but when you look inside, the
cans only have 16 oz. of beer in them. Most people will probably keep
drinking Windows 3.1 Beer until their friends try Windows 95 Beer and say
they like it. The ingredients list, when you look at the small print, has
some of the same ingredients that come in DOS beer, even though the
manufacturer claims that this is an entirely new brew.
Windows NT Beer: Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the
truckload. This causes most people to have to go out and buy bigger
refrigerators. The can looks just like Windows 3.1 Beer's, but the
company promises to change the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer's --
after Windows 95 beer starts shipping. Touted as an "industrial strength"
beer, and suggested only for use in bars.
X windows:
        Something you can be ashamed of.
        30% more entropy than the leading window system.
        The first fully modular software disaster.
        Rome was destroyed in a day.
        Warn your friends about it.
        Climbing to new depths.  Sinking to new heights.
        An accident that couldn't wait to happen.
        Don't wait for the movie.
        Never use it after a big meal.
        Need we say less?
        Plumbing the depths of human incompetence.
        It'll make your day.
        Don't get frustrated without it.
        Power tools for power losers.
        A software disaster of Biblical proportions.
        Never had it.  Never will.
        The software with no visible means of support.
        More than just a generation behind.

Hindenburg.  Titanic.  Edsel.
        X windows.
X windows:
        The ultimate bottleneck.
        Flawed beyond belief.
        The only thing you have to fear.
        Somewhere between chaos and insanity.
        On autopilot to oblivion.
        The joke that kills.
        A disgrace you can be proud of.
        A mistake carried out to perfection.
        Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set.
        To err is X windows.
        Ignorance is our most important resource.
        Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems.
        Built to fall apart.
        Nullifying centuries of progress.
        Falling to new depths of inefficiency.
        The last thing you need.
        The defacto substandard.

Elevating brain damage to an art form.
        X windows.
You are an insult to my intelligence!  I demand that you log off immediately.
You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--

This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--

You are permanently confused.
                -- Dave Decot
You will lose an important disk file.
You will lose an important tape file.
"The biggest problem facing software engineering is the one it will
never solve - politics."
-- Gavin Baker, ca 1996, An unusually cynical moment inspired by working on a large
    project beseiged by politics
        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 chicken is an egg's way of producing more eggs.
        A father gave his teen-age daughter an untrained pedigreed pup for
her birthday.  An hour later, when wandering through the house, he found her
looking at a puddle in the center of the kitchen.  "My pup," she murmured
sadly, "runneth over."
A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in time of
trouble.
                -- Adlai Stevenson
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
                -- Aristotle
Advice from an old carpenter: measure twice, saw once.
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or
one-and-a-half truths.
                -- Karl Kraus
An apple a day makes 365 apples a year.
An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
An idle mind is worth two in the bush.
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."
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
Better living a beggar than buried an emperor.
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #9

        A word to the wise is often enough to start an argument.
Have an adequate day.
If you would keep a secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.
Laugh and the world thinks you're an idiot.
-- 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 Farenheit.
Scintillation is not always identification for an auric substance.
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching train.
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
The man who sees, on New Year's day, Mount Fuji, a hawk, and an eggplant
is forever blessed.
                -- Old Japanese proverb
The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly ogled
culinary vessel will not achieve 100 degrees on the Celsius scale.
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
There's no such thing as an original sin.
                -- Elvis Costello
Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.
To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
                -- B. Duggan
Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.
                -- Publilius Syrus
Two is company, three is an orgy.
You can move the world with an idea, but you have to think of it first.
You can't break eggs without making an omelet.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy
thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.  Thy navel
is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor:  thy belly is like an heap
of wheat set about with lillies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
[Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missle defense
systems.  The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities.  An unreliable
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
- C. A. R. Hoare
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did.  In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
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," Parade, February 1, 1987
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary
psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After
more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP
phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions.  This simple but
basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted
over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little
interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that
needs explanation.
-- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan.  We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.  -- Edmund Burke
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.  -- James Baldwin
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions:  to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
remaining errors by providing for recovery from them.  An interesting footnote
to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
the result of two program errors:  the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.  -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating
Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...  

If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
such machinery impracticable...

And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
The world is coming to an end--save your buffers!
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder.  It's a
very powerful emotion.  All children feel it.  In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it.  Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it's not just puberty.  Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder.  Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling.  Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience.  And
in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing materail aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality.  Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
by a change in our world view.  We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
nature and all of creation.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
dangers that must not be underestimated.  Practitioners must take into
account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being.  The history
of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug.  Special internal and external advance preperations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
   Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.

   "Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report.  "A barrier of water
vapor!  A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
A civilized race could not have stooped so low!  A civilized race would not
have..."

   It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.

- Startide Rising, by David Brin
Harrison's Postulate:
        For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
...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, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
- Edmund Burke
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . .
   [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
of dealing with it. . . .
   [L]et us use the tools that we have.  Let us invoke the cooperation we have
the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon
represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race.  Even
if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this
task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the
goal.  In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human
arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by
those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the
development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.
- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while.  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
gratifications.  All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done.  There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
   1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated
      by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our
      national security;
   2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air
      Force that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED represent
      technological developments or principles beyond the range of
      present-day scientific knowledge; and
   3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized
      as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.
- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from 1950
  to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only
in the God idea, not God Himself.
- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the
improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve?  The judgement of God
upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of
criminal at the bar of justice.
- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"
- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute --
where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom
to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
people who might elect him.
- from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
  September 12, 1960.
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking.  Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.  Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man.  It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions.  It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way.
Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality,
and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
beyond the grave.  Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
- H. L. Mencken
...this is an awesome sight.  The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
- The Firesign Theater
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
- John Lions (University of New South Wales)
"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
States?  Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
Here, there is no such mobility.  If you have the slightest bit of intellectual
integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer
minds belong to the opposition."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door.  Now all you have to do is
bend a disk."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
  commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
"Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.

In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket,
achieving an altitude of 41 feet.  In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth.

In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
in Apollo 11."
-- Michael Collins
   Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum
"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting"
--Stanley Sutton
...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
"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."
- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is now in the American experience... We must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial
complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature.  For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events.  To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.  For a doctrine which
is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress.  In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is,
give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
powers in the hands of priests.  In their labors they will have to avail
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself.  This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
- Albert Einstein
Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
- from "Our Sunday Visitor", an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?
Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of
ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
his ignorance.  And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If they think
you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude.  I'm a
very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.  These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
crudeness.
- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers.  No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions.  This is true in religion as
it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive.
As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
advised to leave them to heaven.  They will not, unfortunately, do us the
same courtesy.  They attack us and each other, and whatever their
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword.  My own belief in
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge.  My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth.  But even well-educated Christians
are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it.  Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
  Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
...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
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 suprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer's mind.
- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
  Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
superficial answer is not far to seek....
The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.  What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectualy heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight."
-- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory
"An organization dries up if you don't challenge it with growth."
-- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession,
conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge,
we must ask how one differentiates "real transcendence" from neuropathies
that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense
of cosmic unity.  When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs
[temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of
the religious tradition, the parallels are striking.  The same is true of the
recent spate of alleged UFO abductees.  Parsimony alone argues against invoking
spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
   Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
Two things are certain about science.  It does not stand still for long,
and it is never boring.  Oh, among some poor souls, including even
intellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequently
misperceived.  Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated from
on high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchanging
precepts defended with authoritarian vigor.  Others view it as nothing
but a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process -- the scientific
method: hidebound, linear, and left brained.

These people are the victims of their own stereotypes.  They are
destined to view the world of science with a set of blinders.  They
know nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, and
tendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone the
creativity, passion, and joy of discovery.  And they are likely to
know little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveries
that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the
natural world.

-- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in
   1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
"jackpot:  you may have an unneccessary change record"
-- message from "diff"
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible;
a pessimist fears this is true.
"The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while
the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
-- William Stekel
"I don't believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person,
unless he has an atomic weapon."
-- Howard Chaykin
"And kids... learn something from Susie and Eddie.
If you think there's a maniacal psycho-geek in the
basement:
    1)        Don't give him a chance to hit you on the
        head with an axe!
    2)        Flee the premises... even if you're in your
        underwear.
    3)        Warn the neighbors and call the police.
But whatever else you do... DON'T GO DOWN IN THE DAMN BASEMENT!"
-- Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
"Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion."
-- Harlan Ellison
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the
splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope,
for it balks at pig.
-- Ambrose Bierce
"I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this
country what it once was... an arctic wilderness."
-- Steve Martin
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
-- Woody Allen
"Because he's a character who's looking for his own identity, [He-Man is]
an interesting role for an actor."
-- Dolph Lundgren, "actor"
"Poor man... he was like an employee to me."
-- The police commisioner on "Sledge Hammer" laments the death of his bodyguard
"You show me an American who can keep his mouth shut and I'll eat him."
-- Newspaperman from Frank Capra's _Meet_John_Doe_
"The Soviet Union, which has complained recently about alleged anti-Soviet
themes in American advertising, lodged an official protest this week against
the Ford Motor Company's new campaign: `Hey you stinking fat Russian, get
off my Ford Escort.'"
-- Dennis Miller, Saturday Night Live
"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 and such, Badger comics
"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
What to do in case of an alien attack:

    1)   Hide beneath the seat of your plane and look away.
    2)   Avoid eye contact.
    3) If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.

-- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
Absolute:  Independent, irresponsible.  An absolute monarchy is one in which
the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.  Not
many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by
limited monarchies, where the soverign's power for evil (and for good) is
greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Administration:  An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive
the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Politician:  An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
organized society is reared.  When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of
his tail for the trembling of the edifice.  As compared with the statesman,
he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Proboscis:  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place
of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.  For purposes
of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Here is an Appalachian version of management's answer to those who are
concerned with the fate of the project:
"Don't worry about the mule.  Just load the wagon."
-- Mike Dennison's hillbilly uncle
"Maintain an awareness for contribution -- to your schedule, your project,
our company."  
-- A Group of Employees
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
Marriage Ceremony:  An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the
law being dragged into the affairs of your family.
-- O. C. Ogilvie
DE:  The Soviets seem to have difficulty implementing modern technology.
     Would you comment on that?

Belenko:  Well, let's talk about aircraft engine lifetime.  When I flew the
          MiG-25, its engines had a total lifetime of 250 hours.

DE:  Is that mean-time-between-failure?

Belenko:  No, the engine is finished; it is scrapped.

DE:  You mean they pull it out and throw it away, not even overhauling it?

Belenko:  That is correct.  Overhaul is too expensive.

DE:  That is absurdly low by free world standards.

Belenko:  I know.
-- an interview with Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 102
"I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as
a house.  So I reasoned that after college, I'd have to live cheaply in
an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer."
-- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
"If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways
to be hospitable to the unusual person.  You don't get innovation as a
democratic process.  You almost get it as an anti-democratic process.
Certainly you get it as an anthitetical process, so you have to have an
environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can
deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc.,  
   "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity",
   The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
Another goal is to establish a relationship "in which it is OK for everybody
to do their best.  There are an awful lot of people in management who really
don't want subordinates to do their best, because it gets to be very
threatening.  But we have found that both internally and with outside
designers if we are willing to have this kind of relationship and if we're
willing to be vulnerable to what will come out of it, we get really good
work."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
In his book, Mr. DePree tells the story of how designer George Nelson urged
that the company also take on Charles Eames in the late 1940s.  Max's father,
J. DePree, co-founder of the company with herman Miller in 1923, asked Mr.
Nelson if he really wanted to share the limited opportunities of a then-small
company with another designer.  "George's response was something like this:
'Charles Eames is an unusual talent.  He is very different from me.  The
company needs us both.  I want very much to have Charles Eames share in
whatever potential there is.'"
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
Mr. DePree believes participative capitalism is the wave of the future.  The
U.S. work force, he believes, "more and more demands to be included in the
capitalist system and if we don't find ways to get the capitalist system
to be an inclusive system rather than the exclusive system it has been, we're
all in deep trouble.  If we don't find ways to begin to understand that
capitalism's highest potential lies in the common good, not in the individual
good, then we're risking the system itself."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth."  I usually pick one small
topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the
beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is "mere."  I too can
see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or more?
The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel
my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which
I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?*  It does not do harm to the
mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than
any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak
of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
-- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
"Pseudocode can be used to some extent to aid the maintenance
process.  However, pseudocode that is highly detailed -
approaching the level of detail of the code itself - is not of
much use as maintenance documentation.  Such detailed
documentation has to be maintained almost as much as the code,
thus doubling the maintenance burden.  Furthermore, since such
voluminous pseudocode is too distracting to be kept in the
listing itself, it must be kept in a separate folder.  The
result: Since pseudocode - unlike real code - doesn't have to be
maintained, no one will maintain it.  It will soon become out of
date and everyone will ignore it.  (Once, I did an informal
survey of 42 shops that used pseudocode.  Of those 42, 0 [zero!],
found that it had any value as maintenance documentation."
         --Meilir Page-Jones, "The Practical Guide to Structured
           Design", Yourdon Press (c) 1988
An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is
a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the
duration of his stay on this planet.  Since neither the mouse nor the chimp
knows what is, he is spared all the vexing problems that follow this
discovery.  But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question
emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt
and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the
centures as reelentlessly as hunger or sexual longing.  The chimp that does
not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared
the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end.  And even if the animal
experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or
to play chess, the chimp will develop no science and he will exhibit no
appreciation of beauty, for the greatest part of man's wisdom may be traced
back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give
meaning to his existence, to life itself.
-- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
A comment on schedules:
Ok, how long will it take?    
   For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month.
   For each manager who says "data flow analysis" add another month.
   For each unique end-user type add one month.
   For each unknown software package to be employed add two months.
   For each unknown hardware device add two months.
   For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month.
   For each type of communication channel add one month.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on a non-IBM
      system add 6 months.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on an IBM
      system add 9 months.
Round up to the nearest half-year.
--Brad Sherman
By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative prototyping.
Some companies call their prototypes "releases", that's all.
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a fal-
lacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850
"An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of code."
-- an anonymous programmer
"An entire fraternity of strapping Wall-Street-bound youth.  Hell - this
is going to be a blood bath!"
-- Post Bros. Comics
"If you weren't my teacher, I'd think you just deleted all my files."
-- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed "rm -i *" to
   get rid of a file named "-f" on a Unix system.
New York is a jungle, they tell you.  You could go further, and say that
New York is a jungle.  New York *is a jungle.*  Beneath the columns of
the old rain forest, made of melting macadam, the mean Limpopo of swamped
Ninth Avenue bears an angry argosy of crocs and dragons, tiger fish, noise
machines, sweating rainmakers.  On the corners stand witchdoctors and
headhunters, babbling voodoo-men -- the natives, the jungle-smart natives.
And at night, under the equatorial overgrowth and heat-holding cloud
cover, you hear the ragged parrot-hoot and monkeysqueak of the sirens,
and then fires flower to ward off monsters.  Careful: the streets are
sprung with pits and nets and traps.  Hire a guide.  Pack your snakebite
gook and your blowdart serum.  Take it seriously.  You have to get a
bit jungle-wise.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
"You tried it just for once, found it alright for kicks,
but now you find out you have a habit that sticks,
you're an orgasm addict,
you're always at it,
and you're an orgasm addict."
-- The Buzzcocks
"Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret
police and laws similar to those in the USSR, there are
thousands of underground publications, a legal independent
Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc's first and only
independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is
an affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labor.  There is
literally a world of difference between Poland - even in its
present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of
its "glasnost."  This difference has been maintained at great
cost by the Poles since 1944.
-- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
   gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
   to Poland
"There is also a thriving independent student movement in
Poland, and thus there is a strong possibility (though no
guarantee) of making an EARN-Poland link, should it ever come
about, a genuine link - not a vacuum cleaner attachment for a
Bloc information gathering apparatus rationed to trusted
apparatchiks."
-- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
   gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
   to Poland
"Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture,
an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads."
-- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
"An honest god is the noblest work of man.  ... God has always resembled his
creators.  He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably
found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with
sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine
perfume."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
"An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt."
-- a saying at RPI
...Saure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papryomancy,
the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll reefers -
the shape, the licking pattern, the wrinkles and folds or absence thereof
in the paper.  "You will soon be in love," sez Saure, "see, this line here."
"It's long, isn't it?  Does that mean --" "Length is usually intensity.
Not time."
-- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
"There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearence; he somehow
seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an
actor, and clad in immaculate linen."
-- H.L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan
... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually
we were all forced to turn to it.  By the summer of '85, the valley had more
satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of
Alaska.

Mine was one of the last to go in.  I had been nervous from the start about
the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these
things.  Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels
all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
David Brinkley: The daily astrological charts are precisely where, in my
  judgment, they belong, and that is on the comic page.
George Will:  I don't think astrology belongs even on the comic pages.
  The comics are making no truth claim.
Brinkley:  Where would you put it?
Will:  I wouldn't put it in the newspaper.  I think it's transparent rubbish.
  It's a reflection of an idea that we expelled from Western thought in the
  sixteenth century, that we are in the center of a caring universe.  We are
  not the center of the universe, and it doesn't care.  The star's alignment
  at the time of our birth -- that is absolute rubbish.  It is not funny to
  have it intruded among people who have nuclear weapons.
Sam Donaldson:  This isn't something new.  Governor Ronald Reagan was sworn
  in just after midnight in his first term in Sacramento because the stars
  said it was a propitious time.
Will:  They [horoscopes] are utter crashing banalities.  They could apply to
  anyone and anything.
Brinkley:  When is the exact moment [of birth]?  I don't think the nurse is
  standing there with a stopwatch and a notepad.
Donaldson:  If we're making decisions based on the stars -- that's a cockamamie
  thing.  People want to know.
-- "This Week" with David Brinkley, ABC Television, Sunday, May 8, 1988,
   excerpts from a discussion on Astrology and Reagan
Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about
astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked.
Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an
effect on our characters, lives, or destinies?  What force or influence,
what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human
beings and affect our development or fate?  No amount of scientific-sounding
jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central
problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which
celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . .
Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents
the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those
of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always
claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their
efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have
generously done such testing for them.  There have been dozens of well-designed
tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . .
I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest
in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them
keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by
the firelight, afraid of the night.
-- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
    "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury
    News, May 8, 1988
With the news that Nancy Reagan has referred to an astrologer when planning
her husband's schedule, and reports of Californians evacuating Los Angeles
on the strength of a prediction from a sixteenth-century physician and
astrologer Michel de Notredame, the image of the U.S. as a scientific and
technological nation has taking a bit of a battering lately.  Sadly, such
happenings cannot be dismissed as passing fancies.  They are manifestations
of a well-established "anti-science" tendency in the U.S. which, ultimately,
could threaten the country's position as a technological power. . . .  The
manifest widespread desire to reject rationality and substitute a series
of quasirandom beliefs in order to understand the universe does not augur
well for a nation deeply concerned about its ability to compete with its
industrial equals.  To the degree that it reflects the thinking of a
significant section of the public, this point of view encourages ignorance
of and, indeed, contempt for science and for rational methods of approaching
truth. . . . It is becoming clear that if the U.S. does not pick itself up
soon and devote some effort to educating the young effectively, its hope of
maintaining a semblance of leadership in the world may rest, paradoxically,
with a new wave of technically interested and trained immigrants who do not
suffer from the anti-science disease rampant in an apparently decaying society.
-- Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988
miracle:  an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.
-- Webster's Dictionary
"You must have an IQ of at least half a million."  -- Popeye
A student asked the master for help... does this program run from the
Workbench? The master grabbed the mouse and pointed to an icon. "What is
this?" he asked. The student replied "That's the mouse". The master pressed
control-Amiga-Amiga and hit the student on the head with the Amiga ROM Kernel
Manual.
-- Amiga Zen Master Peter da Silva
"To undertake a project, as the word's derivation indicates, means to cast an
idea out ahead of oneself so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled not only
by the efforts of its originator but, indeed, independently of him as well.
-- Czeslaw Milosz
Remember, an int is not always 16 bits.  I'm not sure, but if the 80386 is one
step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is aymptotically
approaching a real machine, perhaps an int has been implemented as 32 bits by
some Unix vendors...?
-- Derek Terveer
"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 that 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."

Madrak, in _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, by Roger Zelazny
"An Academic speculated whether a bather is beautiful
if there is none in the forest to admire her. He hid
in the bushes to find out, which vitiated his premise
but made him happy.
Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation."
-- Sam Weber
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - H.L. Mencken
"Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief
or dogma.  It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is
counterfeit and what is genuine.  And a recognition of how costly it may
be to fail to do so.  To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in
the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own
allegiances.  To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
-- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility,"
New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988
It might be worth reflecting that this group was originally created
back in September of 1987 and has exchanged over 1200 messages.  The
original announcement for the group called for an all inclusive
discussion ranging from the writings of Gibson and Vinge and movies
like Bladerunner to real world things like Brands' description of the
work being done at the MIT Media Lab.  It was meant as a haven for
people with vision of this scope.  If you want to create a haven for
people with narrower visions, feel free.  But I feel sad for anyone
who thinks that alt.cyberpunk is such a monstrous group that it is in
dire need of being subdivided.  Heaven help them if they ever start
reading comp.arch or rec.arts.sf-lovers.
-- Bob Webber
Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following
TETflame programme:

1) For a negotiated price (no quatloos accepted) one of our flaming
   representatives will flame the living shit out of the poster of
   your choice. The price is inversly proportional to how much of
   an asshole the target it. We cannot be convinced to flame Dennis
   Ritchie. Matt Crawford flames are free.

2) For a negotiated price (same arrangement) the TETflame programme
   is offering ``flame insurence''. Under this arrangement, if
   one of our policy holders is flamed, we will cancel the offending
   article and flame the flamer, to a crisp.

3) The TETflame flaming representatives include: Richard Sexton, Oleg
   Kisalev, Diane Holt, Trish O'Tauma, Dave Hill, Greg Nowak and our most
   recent aquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his
   kill file. Weemba by special arrangement.

-- Richard Sexton
                        HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 2

proof by cumbersome notation:
        Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special
        symbols.

proof by exhaustion:
        An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.

proof by omission:
        'The reader may easily supply the details'
        'The other 253 cases are analogous'
        '...'
                        HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 5

proof by accumulated evidence:
        Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.

proof by cosmology:
        The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or
        meaningless. Popular for proofs of the existence of God.

proof by mutual reference:
        In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3 in
        reference B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2 in
        reference C, which is an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in
        reference A.

proof by metaproof:
        A method is given to construct the desired proof. The
        correctness of the method is proved by any of these
        techniques.
Seen on a button at an SF Convention:
Veteran of the Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force.  1990-1951.
"Oh my!  An `inflammatory attitude' in alt.flame?  Never heard of such
a thing..."
-- Allen Gwinn, allen@sulaco.Sigma.COM
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
the ideal never goes unpunished."
-- Goethe
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in?  ...
Q: How about an example?

A: Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.

The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.  He is
a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)

You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
Q: I cant spell worth a dam.  I hope your going too tell me what to do?

A: Don't worry about how your articles look.  Remember it's the message
that counts, not the way it's presented.  Ignore the fact that sloppy
spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that
soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
"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
"For a male and female to live continuously together is...  biologically
speaking, an extremely unnatural condition."
-- Robert Briffault
"Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so."
-- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
"He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort,
he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion."
-- Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_
        "Yes, I am a real piece of work.  One thing we learn at Ulowell is
how to flame useless hacking non-EE's like you.  I am superior to you in
every way by training and expertise in the technical field.  Anyone can learn
how to hack, but Engineering doesn't come nearly as easily.  Actually, I'm
not trying to offend all you CS majors out there, but I think EE is one of the
hardest majors/grad majors to pass.  Fortunately, I am making it."
-- "Warrior Diagnostics" (wardiag@sky.COM)

"Being both an EE and an asshole at the same time must be a terrible burden
for you.  This isn't really a flame, just a casual observation.  Makes me
glad I was a CS major, life is really pleasant for me.  Have fun with your
chosen mode of existence!"
-- Jim Morrison (morrisj@mist.cs.orst.edu)
"I have more information in one place than anybody in the world."  
-- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS
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 semed 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
"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic
Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and
Indefatigable?"

"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought,
thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"None of our men are "experts."  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible."
-- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):
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 sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from
the vexation of thinking.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1831
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie and intrigue for the
benefit of his country.
                -- Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the president but is
always polite to traffic cops.
An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in
small as in great matters.  
                -- W. Churchill
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
Gentlemen,
        Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the
approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been
diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship
from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters.
        We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles,
and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds
me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and
spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted
for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
        Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains
unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been
a hideous confusion as the the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to
one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain.  This
reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance,
since we are war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise
to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
        This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request
elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I
may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains.
I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as
given below.  I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but
I cannot do both:
        1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the
benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance:
        2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
                -- Duke of Wellington, to the British Foreign Office,
                   London, 1812
George Orwell was an optimist.
Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
                -- John Updike, "Couples"
Government spending?  I don't know what it's all about.  I don't know
any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
doesn't know much.
                -- Will Rogers
I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.
                -- Judge Harold T. Stone
I was appalled by this story of the destruction of a member of a valued
endangered species.  It's all very well to celebrate the practicality of
pigs by ennobling the porcine sibling who constructed his home out of
bricks and mortar.  But to wantonly destroy a wolf, even one with an
excessive taste for porkers, is unconscionable in these ecologically
critical times when both man and his domestic beasts continue to maraud
the earth.
                Sylvia Kamerman, "Book Reviewing"
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
will always do it.
                -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
In an orderly world, there's always a place for the disorderly.
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in all times and situations.  They presented him the words: "And this,
too, shall pass away."
                -- Abraham Lincoln
Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out
the right thing to do.  Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing,
but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the
right thing to do and what is the right way to do it.  That is the problem.
But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of
bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President.
This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people, and it reflects
their desires, they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a thing
that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously
just by a few words or any particular -- say, a little this and that, or even
a panacea so alleged.
                -- D.D. Eisenhower, in response to: "Has the government
                been lacking in courage and boldness in facing up to
                the recession?"
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty
nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and,
instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at
a hundred miles an hour ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at
the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which
turnoff to take when I got to the other end ... but being absolutely certain
that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were
just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson
Never trust an automatic pistol or a D.A.'s deal.
                -- John Dillinger
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
                -- F. J. Raymond
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
                -- Winston Churchill

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as
satisfying as an income tax refund.
                -- F.J. Raymond
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
        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 kingdom ruled by a great bear.  The peasants
were not very rich, and one of the few ways to become at all wealthy was
to become a Royal Knight.  This required an interview with the bear.  If
the bear liked you, you were knighted on the spot.  If not, the bear would
just as likely remove your head with one swat of a paw.  However, the family
of these unfortunate would-be knights was compensated with a beautiful
sheepdog from the royal kennels, which was itself a fairly valuable
possession.  And the moral of the story is:

The mourning after a terrible knight, nothing beats the dog of the bear that
hit you.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
                -- S. Johnson, "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by J. Boswell

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
                -- Ambrose Bierce

When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel,
he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform.
                -- Sen. Roscoe Conkling

Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
                -- Boies Penrose
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
                -- Otto Von Bismarck
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest man.
                -- Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims"
Rev. Jim:        What does an amber light mean?                                
Bobby:                Slow down.
Rev. Jim:        What...   does...  an...  amber...  light...  mean?
Bobby:                Slow down.
Rev. Jim:        What....     does....     an....     amber....     light....
Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken
him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.  Such an excess of
stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
                -- Samuel Johnson
So from the depths of its enchantment, Terra was able to calculate a course
of action.  Here at last was an opportunity to consort with Dirbanu on a
friendly basis -- great Durbanu which, since it had force fields which Earth
could not duplicate, must of necessity have many other things Earth could
use; mighty Durbanu before whom we would kneel in supplication (with purely-
for-defense bombs hidden in our pockets) with lowered heads (making invisible
the knife in our teeth) and ask for crumbs from their table (in order to
extrapolate the location of their kitchens).
                -- Theodore Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost"
        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"
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
of "Camptown Races".  Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not
utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind,
a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
                -- Bertrand Russell, in "Marriage and Morals", 1929
The founding fathers tried to set up a judicial system where the accused
received a fair trial, not a system to insure an acquittal on technicalities.
The greatest disloyalty one can offer to great pioneers is to refuse to
move an inch from where they stood.
The public is an old woman.  Let her maunder and mumble.
                -- Thomas Carlyle
The time was the 19th of May, 1780.  The place was Hartford, Connecticut.
The day has gone down in New England history as a terrible foretaste of
Judgement Day.  For at noon the skies turned from blue to grey and by
mid-afternoon had blackened over so densely that, in that religious age,
men fell on their knees and begged a final blessing before the end came.
The Connecticut House of Representatives was in session.  And, as some of
the men fell down and others clamored for an immediate adjournment, the
Speaker of the House, one Col. Davenport, came to his feet.  He silenced
them and said these words: "The day of judgment is either approaching or
it is not.  If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment.  If it is, I
choose to be found doing my duty.  I wish therefore that candles may be
brought."
                -- Alistair Cooke
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.
                -- Anatole France
There is no education that is not political.  An apolitical
education is also political because it is purposely isolating.
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers
in heavy weather for several days.  I was serving on the lead battleship and
was on watch on the bridge as night fell.  The visibility was poor with patchy
fog, so the Captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
        Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported,
"Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
        "Is it steady or moving astern?" the Captain called out.
        Lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous
collision course with that ship.
        The Captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on
a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees."
        Back came a signal "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees."
        In reply, the Captain said, "Send: I'm a Captain, change course 20
degrees!"
        "I'm a seaman second class," came the reply, "You had better change
course 20 degrees."
        By that time, the Captain was furious. He spit out, "Send: I'm a
battleship, change course 20 degrees."
        Back came the flashing light: "I'm a lighthouse!"
        We changed course.
                -- The Naval Institute's "Proceedings"
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the Christmas
season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military
forces of the world.  Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of
every persuasion.  Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time
low over the world.
                -- Isaac Asimov
War is an equal opportunity destroyer.
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to
win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent?
In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded
that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the
simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life.  First, a
base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done.  Second,
a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human
activities must exist.  Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed.  Finally, an articulate
and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with
words and action the great thing to be accomplished.  The motivation of young
Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of
conditions. ...  The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John
Kennedys appear.  We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they,
and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward.
                -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
                -- Vine Deloria, Jr.
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
                -- Harry Truman
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The
short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified", which
means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears tax-preparation
expert to distinguish between their first and last names.  Here's the
complete text:

"(1) How much did you make?  (AMOUNT)
(2) How much did we here at the government take out?  (AMOUNT)
(3) Hey!  Sounds like we took too much!  So we're going to
     send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
     THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
     household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
     you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
     NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"

The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money.  So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
The human instinct to censor thrives, as it always will, living in
irrepressible conflict with the human instinct to speak.  Outrage,
self-righteousness, and paranoia feed the maw of censorship.
Squelching speech, however, never reduces society's net paranoia
quotient; it simply redirects it, drives it underground, where it
festers into more dangerous hysterias.  In the words of Justice
Brandeis, "Men feared witches and burned women."
                -- Rodney Smolla, "Free Speech in an Open Society", p. 43.
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 musician, an artist, an architect:
        the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
                -- William Blake
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.
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"
Academy:
        A modern school where football is taught.
Institute:
        An archaic school where football is not taught.
Acceptance testing:
        An unsuccessful attempt to find bugs.
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
alimony, n:
        Having an ex you can bank on.
Ambition, n:
        An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while
        living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Arithmetic:
        An obscure art no longer practiced in the world's developed countries.
Atlanta:
        An entire city surrounded by an airport.
Backward conditioning:
        Putting saliva in a dog's mouth in an attempt to make a bell ring.
Barach's Rule:
        An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.
Barometer, n.:
        An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
        are having.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Booker's Law:
        An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
boss, n:
        According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the
        words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
        in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
        ornamental stud."
Bowie's Theorem:
        If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.
brain, v: [as in "to brain"]
        To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source
        of error in an opponent.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
brain-damaged, generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a
theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in
Multics, adj:
        Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented.  There is an implication
        that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage,
        because he/she should have known better.  Calling something
        brain-damaged is bad; it also implies it is unusable.
Brontosaurus Principle:
        Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
        in relation to their environment and to their own physiology:  when
        this occurs, they are an endangered species.
                -- Thomas K. Connellan
Bug, n.:
        An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
        programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
        wrote the program.

Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
                -- Ray Simard
bug, n:
        An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect.
        The activity of "debugging", or removing bugs from a program, ends
        when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed.
                -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
Burbulation:
        The obsessive act of opening and closing a refrigerator door in
        an attempt to catch it before the automatic light comes on.
                -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends
cerebral atrophy, n:
        The phenomena which occurs as brain cells become weak and sick, and
impair the brain's performance.  An abundance of these "bad" cells can cause
symptoms related to senility, apathy, depression, and overall poor academic
performance.  A certain small number of brain cells will deteriorate due to
everday activity, but large amounts are weakened by intense mental effort
and the assimilation of difficult concepts.  Many college students become
victims of this dread disorder due to poor habits such as overstudying.

cerebral darwinism, n:
        The theory that the effects of cerebral atrophy can be reversed
through the purging action of heavy alcohol consumption.  Large amounts of
alcohol cause many brain cells to perish due to oxygen deprivation.  Through
the process of natural selection, the weak and sick brain cells will die
first, leaving only the healthy cells.  This wonderful process leaves the
imbiber with a healthier, more vibrant brain, and increases mental capacity.
Thus, the devastating effects of cerebral atrophy are reversed, and academic
performance actually increases beyond previous levels.
Chicken Soup:
        An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
        cocaine, interferon, and TLC.  The only ailment chicken soup
        can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
clone, n:
        1. An exact duplicate, as in "our product is a clone of their
        product."  2. A shoddy, spurious copy, as in "their product
        is a clone of our product."
Clovis' Consideration of an Atmospheric Anomaly:
        The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated
        than by the fact that, when exposed to the same atmosphere,
        bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.
COBOL:
        An exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
Computer, n.:
        An electronic entity which performs sequences of useful steps in a
        totally understandable, rigorously logical manner.  If you believe
        this, see me about a bridge I have for sale in Manhattan.
Concept, n.:
        Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
        $25,000.
Consultant, n.:
        [From con "to defraud, dupe, swindle," or, possibly, French con
        (vulgar) "a person of little merit" + sult elliptical form of
        "insult."]  A tipster disguised as an oracle, especially one who
        has learned to decamp at high speed in spite of a large briefcase
        and heavy wallet.
Consultant, n.:
        An ordinary man a long way from home.
Correspondence Corollary:
        An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half
        your data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your theory.
Data, n.:
        An accrual of straws on the backs of theories.
double-blind experiment, n:
        An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
        fooling both the subject and the lab assistant.  Often accompanied
        by a strong belief in the tooth fairy.
Eagleson's Law:
        Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
        months, might as well have been written by someone else.  (Eagleson
        is an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
Economies of scale:
        The notion that bigger is better.  In particular, that if you want
        a certain amount of computer power, it is much better to buy one
        biggie than a bunch of smallies.  Accepted as an article of faith
        by people who love big machines and all that complexity.  Rejected
        as an article of faith by those who love small machines and all
        those limitations.
economist, n:
        Someone who's good with figures, but doesn't have enough
        personality to become an accountant.
Eleventh Law of Acoustics:
        In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between
        frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they
        are all merely transforms of one another.  This combined with
        minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct
        compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can
        lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost.  However,
        of course, this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
enhance, v.:
        To tamper with an image, usually to its detriment.
Envy, n.:
        Wishing you'd been born with an unfair advantage,
        instead of having to try and acquire one.
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):

Horses have an even number of legs.  Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs.  This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse.  But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity.  Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs.  Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs.  But that is a horse
of another color, and by the lemma ["All horses are the same color"],
that does not exist.
feature, n:
        A surprising property of a program.  Occasionaly documented.  To
        call a property a feature sometimes means the author did not
        consider that case, and the program makes an unexpected, though
        not necessarily wrong response.  See BUG.  "That's not a bug, it's
        a feature!"  A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it.
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
        If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.

Corollary:
        If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
Finagle's Eighth Law:
        If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's Ninth Law:
        No matter what results are expected, someone is always willing to
        fake it.

Finagle's Tenth Law:
        No matter what the result someone is always eager to misinterpret it.

Finagle's Eleventh Law:
        No matter what occurs, someone believes it happened according to
        his pet theory.
Finagle's First Law:
        If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
FORTUNE EXPLAINS WHAT JOB REVIEW CATCH PHRASES MEAN:        #4
consistent:
        Reviewee hasn't gotten anything right yet, and it is anticipated
        that this pattern will continue throughout the coming year.

an excellent sounding board:
        Present reviewee with any number of alternatives, and implement
        them in the order precisely opposite of his/her specification.

a planner and organizer:
        Usually manages to put on socks before shoes.  Can match the
        animal tags on his clothing.
Fortune's Rules for Memo Wars: #2

Given the incredible advances in sociocybernetics and telepsychology over
the last few years, we are now able to completely understand everything that
the author of an memo is trying to say.  Thanks to modern developments
in electrocommunications like notes, vnews, and electricity, we have an
incredible level of interunderstanding the likes of which civilization has
never known.  Thus, the possibility of your misinterpreting someone else's
memo is practically nil.  Knowing this, anyone who accuses you of having
done so is a liar, and should be treated accordingly.  If you *do* understand
the memo in question, but have absolutely nothing of substance to say, then
you have an excellent opportunity for a vicious ad hominem attack.  In fact,
the only *inappropriate* times for an ad hominem attack are as follows:

        1: When you agree completely with the author of an memo.
        2: When the author of the original memo is much bigger than you are.
        3: When replying to one of your own memos.
Frobnicate, v.:
        To manipulate or adjust, to tweak.  Derived from FROBNITZ. Usually
abbreviated to FROB.  Thus one has the saying "to frob a frob." See TWEAK
and TWIDDLE.  Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK sometimes connote points along
a continuum.  FROB connotes aimless manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross
manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes
fine-tuning.  If someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's
carefully adjusting it he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it
but looking at the screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just
doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
        An unspecified physical object, a widget.  Also refers to electronic
black boxes.  This rare form is usually abbreviated to FROTZ, or more
commonly to FROB.  Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and FROBNODULE.
Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl. FROBBOTZIM, has also
become very popular, largely due to its exposure via the Adventure spin-off
called Zork (Dungeon).  These can also be applied to non-physical objects,
such as data structures.
Fun experiments:
        Get a can of shaving cream, throw it in a freezer for about a week.
        Then take it out, peel the metal off and put it where you want...
        bedroom, car, etc.  As it thaws, it expands an unbelievable amount.
Fun Facts, #63:
        The name California was given to the state by Spanish conquistadores.
        It was the name of an imaginary island, a paradise on earth, in the
        Spanish romance, "Les Serges de Esplandian", written by Montalvo in
        1510.
furbling, v.:
        Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
        even when you are the only person in line.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
genealogy, n.:
        An account of one's descent from an ancestor
        who did not particularly care to trace his own.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
        (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
        (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
        (3) The energy required to change either one of these states
           will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
           much as to make the task totally impossible.
Godwin's Law (prov.  [Usenet]):
        As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
        comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a
        tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is
        over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost
        whatever argument was in progress.  Godwin's Law thus guarantees
        the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Government's Law:
        There is an exception to all laws.
Gunter's Airborne Discoveries:
        (1)  When you are served a meal aboard an aircraft,
             the aircraft will encounter turbulence.
        (2)  The strength of the turbulence
             is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.
guru, n.:
        A person in T-shirt and sandals who took an elevator ride with
        a senior vice-president and is ultimately responsible for the
        phone call you are about to receive from your boss.
gyroscope, n.:
        A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
        free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpindicular to
        each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the
        two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of
        torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the
        entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on
        the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction
        of the axis of spin.
                -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
half-done, n.:
        This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy,
        light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference between this
        and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the
        difference between life and death.

        You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there
        in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport,
        fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall,
        transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
        Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
        about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop.  Say to the
        man, "Let me have a nice half-done."  Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
Happiness, n.:
        An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Harrison's Postulate:
        For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Hippogriff, n.:
        An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
        The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
        The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
        is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of zoology is full
        of surprises.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Hlade's Law:
        If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person --
        they will find an easier way to do it.
Honorable, adj.:
        Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In legislative
        bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as,
        "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Iles's Law:
        There is always an easier way to do it.  When looking directly
        at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
        Neither will Iles.
index, n.:
        Alphabetical list of words of no possible interest where an
        alphabetical list of subjects with references ought to be.
jogger, n.:
        An odd sort of person with a thing for pain.
Jones' First Law:
        Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
        endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
        obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
        importance of their original contribution.
kern, v.:
        1. To pack type together as tightly as the kernels on an ear
        of corn.  2. In parts of Brooklyn and Queens, N.Y., a small,
        metal object used as part of the monetary system.
kernel, n.:
        A part of an operating system that preserves the medieval
        traditions of sorcery and black art.
Kettering's Observation:
        Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
Kin, n.:
        An affliction of the blood.
Kludge, n.:
        An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a
        distressing whole.
                -- Jackson Granholm, "Datamation"
Law of Selective Gravity:
        An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jenning's Corollary:
        The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side
        down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:
        You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
Laws of Serendipity:
        (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something.
        (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
            be engaged in making an inferior one.
learning curve, n.:
        An astonishing new theory, discovered by management consultants
        in the 1970's, asserting that the more you do something the
        quicker you can do it.
Lemma:  All horses are the same color.
Proof (by induction):
        Case n = 1: In a set with only one horse, it is obvious that all
        horses in that set are the same color.
        Case n = k: Suppose you have a set of k+1 horses.  Pull one of these
        horses out of the set, so that you have k horses.  Suppose that all
        of these horses are the same color.  Now put back the horse that you
        took out, and pull out a different one.  Suppose that all of the k
        horses now in the set are the same color.  Then the set of k+1 horses
        are all the same color.  We have k true => k+1 true; therefore all
        horses are the same color.
Theorem: All horses have an infinite number of legs.
Proof (by intimidation):
        Everyone would agree that all horses have an even number of legs.  It
        is also well-known that horses have forelegs in front and two legs in
        back.  4 + 2 = 6 legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a
        horse to have!  Now the only number that is both even and odd is
        infinity; therefore all horses have an infinite number of legs.
        However, suppose that there is a horse somewhere that does not have an
        infinite number of legs.  Well, that would be a horse of a different
        color; and by the Lemma, it doesn't exist.
Liar:
        one who tells an unpleasant truth.
                -- Oliver Herford
MAFIA, n:
        [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS.  MAFIA documentation is
rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
operations.  From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
security functions.  The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
more than usually autocratic operating system.  Screen prompts carry an
imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
entire nodal aggravations.
                -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
Main's Law:
        For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
marriage, n.:
        An old, established institution, entered into by two people deeply
        in love and desiring to make a committment to each other expressing
        that love.  In short, committment to an institution.
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
        If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95.
meeting, n.:
        An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
        department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
memo, n.:
        An interoffice communication too often written more for the benefit
        of the person who sends it than the person who receives it.
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
        Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
        is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can
        never hope to acquire it.
modem, adj.:
        Up-to-date, new-fangled, as in "Thoroughly Modem Millie."  An
        unfortunate byproduct of kerning.

        [That's sic!]
Molecule, n.:
        The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.  It is distinguished
        from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
        closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
        matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
        atom in that it is an ion ...
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
        If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
        it wasn't worth doing.
mummy, n.:
        An Egyptian who was pressed for time.
My father taught me three things:
        (1) Never mix whiskey with anything but water.
        (2) Never try to draw to an inside straight.
        (3) Never discuss business with anyone who refuses to give his name.
neutron bomb, n.:
        An explosive device of limited military value because, as
        it only destroys people without destroying property, it
        must be used in conjunction with bombs that destroy property.
Newlan's Truism:
        An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the
        government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
        Murphy was an optimist.
Old timer, n.:
        One who remembers when charity was a virtue and not an organization.
Optimism, n.:
        The belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, good,
        bad, and everything right that is wrong.  It is held with greatest
        tenacity by those accustomed to falling into adversity, and most
        acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile.  Being a blind
        faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual
        disorder, yielding to no treatment but death.  It is hereditary, but
        not contagious.
Paul's Law:
        In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.
Pickle's Law:
        If Congress must do a painful thing,
        the thing must be done in an odd-number year.
poverty, n.:
        An unfortunate state that persists as long
        as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
        SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
    legs for a horse.
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.

Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by:
        Intimidation
        Gesticulation (handwaving)
        "Try it; it works"
        Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
        Blatant assertion
        Changing all the 2's to _n's
        Mutual consent
        Lack of a counterexample, and
        "It stands to reason"
QOTD:
        "I am not sure what this is, but an 'F' would only dignify it."
QOTD:
        "I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
QOTD:
        "I used to be an idealist, but I got mugged by reality."
QOTD:
        "If you keep an open mind people will throw a lot of garbage in it."
QOTD:
        "It's hard to tell whether he has an ace up his sleeve or if
        the ace is missing from his deck altogether."
QOTD:
        "Lack of planning on your part doesn't consitute an emergency
        on my part."
Ray's Rule of Precision:
        Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
Reappraisal, n.:
        An abrupt change of mind after being found out.
Reichel's Law:
        A body on vacation tends to remain on vacation unless acted upon by
        an outside force.
Revolution, n.:
        In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Ryan's Law:
        Make three correct guesses consecutively
        and you will establish yourself as an expert.
scenario, n.:
        An imagined sequence of events that provides the context in
        which a business decision is made.  Scenarios always come in
        sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case.
Scott's First Law:
        No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.

Scott's Second Law:
        When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
        to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
        After the correction has been found in error, it will be
        impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
        equation.
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
        The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
        number of times you have looked at it.
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
        Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
Taxes, n.:
        Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
        an extension.
Technicality, n.:
        In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having
        accused a neighbor of murder.  His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt
        hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one
        side of his head fell on one shoulder and the other side upon the
        other shoulder."  The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the
        court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder,
        for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an
        inference.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Telephone, n.:
        An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages
        of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
The Official MBA Handbook on doing company business on an airplane:
        Do not work openly on top-secret company cost documents unless
        you have previously ascertained that the passenger next to you
        is blind, a rock musician on mood-ameliorating drugs, or the
        unfortunate possessor of a forty-seventh chromosome.
The Official MBA Handbook on the use of sunlamps:
        Use a sunlamp only on weekends.  That way, if the office wise guy
        remarks on the sudden appearance of your tan, you can fabricate
        some story about a sun-stroked weekend at some island Shangri-La
        like Caneel Bay.  Nothing is more transparent than leaving the
        office at 11:45 on a Tuesday night, only to return an Aztec sun
        god at 8:15 the next morning.
Three rules for sounding like an expert:
        (1) Oversimplify your explanations to the point of uselessness.
        (2) Always point out second-order effects, but never point out
            when they can be ignored.
        (3) Come up with three rules of your own.
timesharing, n:
        An access method whereby one computer abuses many people.
transparent, adj.:
        Being or pertaining to an existing, nontangible object.
        "It's there, but you can't see it"
                -- IBM System/360 announcement, 1964.

virtual, adj.:
        Being or pertaining to a tangible, nonexistent object.
        "I can see it, but it's not there."
                -- Lady Macbeth.
Van Roy's Law:
        An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
weapon, n.:
        An index of the lack of development of a culture.
Weinberg's Principle:
        An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
        sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
                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 have 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.
Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
        We are no longer allowing this practice.  We wish to discourage any
thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you should not
consider having anything removed.  We hired you as you are, and to have
anything removed would certainly make you less than we bargained for.
Worst Month of the Year:
        February.  February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
        you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you
        don't get.  Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
                -- Steve Rubenstein
write-protect tab, n.:
        A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly left
        by disk manufacturers.  The use of the tab creates an error message
        once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the momentary
        inconvenience.
                -- Robb Russon
Obscurism:
        The practice of peppering daily life with obscure
references as a subliminal means of showcasing both one's education
and one's wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
McJob:
        A low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future job in the
service sector.  Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by
those who have never held one.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Poverty Jet Set:
        A group of people given to chronic traveling at the expense of
long-term job stability or a permanent residence.  Tend to have doomed
and extremely expensive phone-call relationships with people named
Serge or Ilyana.  Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Historic Underdosing:
        To live in a period of time when nothing seems to happen.
Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news
broadcasts.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Historic Overdosing:
        To live in a period of time when too much seems to happen.
Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news
broadcasts.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Historical Slumming:
        The act of visiting locations such as diners, smokestack
industrial sites, rural villages -- locations where time appears to
have been frozen many years back -- so as to experience relief when
one returns back to "the present."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Brazilification:
        The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the
accompanying disappearance of the middle classes.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Vaccinated Time Travel:
        To fantasize about traveling backward in time, but only
with proper vaccinations.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Decade Blending:
        In clothing: the indiscriminate combination of two or more
items from various decades to create a personal mood: Sheila =
Mary Quant earrings (1960s) + cork wedgie platform shows (1970s) +
black leather jacket (1950s and 1980s).
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Veal-Fattening Pen:
        Small, cramped office workstations built of
fabric-covered disassemblable wall partitions and inhabited by junior
staff members.  Named after the small preslaughter cubicles used by
the cattle industry.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Emotional Ketchup Burst:
        The bottling up of opinions and emotions inside oneself so
that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing
employers and friends -- most of whom thought things were fine.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Bleeding Ponytail:
        An elderly, sold-out baby boomer who pines for hippie or
presellout days.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Boomer Envy:
        Envy of material wealth and long-range material security
accrued by older members of the baby boom generation by virtue of
fortunate births.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Clique Maintenance:
        The need of one generation to see the generation following it
as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: "Kids today do
nothing.  They're so apathetic.  We used to go out and protest.  All
they do is shop and complain."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Consensus Terrorism:
        The process that decides in-office attitudes and behavior.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Sick Building Migration:
        The tendency of younger workers to leave or avoid jobs in
unhealthy office environments or workplaces affected by the Sick
Building Syndrome.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Recurving:
        Leaving one job to take another that pays less but places one
back on the learning curve.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Ozmosis:
        The inability of one's job to live up to one's self-image.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Power Mist:
        The tendency of hierarchies in office environments to be diffuse
and preclude crisp articulation.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Overboarding:
        Overcompensating for fears about the future by plunging
headlong into a job or life-style seemingly unrelated to one's
previous life interests: i.e., Amway sales, aerobics, the Republican
party, a career in law, cults, McJobs....
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Earth Tones:
        A youthful subgroup interested in vegetarianism, tie-dyed
outfits, mild recreational drugs, and good stereo equipment.  Earnest,
frequently lacking in humor.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Ethnomagnetism:
        The tendency of young people to live in emotionally
demonstrative, more unrestrained ethnic neighborhoods: "You wouldn't
understand it there, mother -- they *hug* where I live now."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Mid-Twenties Breakdown:
        A period of mental collapse occurring in one's twenties,
often caused by an inability to function outside of school or
structured environments coupled with a realization of one's essential
aloneness in the world.  Often marks induction into the ritual of
pharmaceutical usage.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Successophobia:
        The fear that if one is successful, then one's personal needs
will be forgotten and one will no longer have one's childish needs
catered to.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Safety Net-ism:
        The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional
safety net to buffer life's hurts.  Usually parents.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Divorce Assumption:
        A form of Safety Net-ism, the belief that if a marriage
doesn't work out, then there is no problem because partners can simply
seek a divorce.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Anti-Sabbatical:
        A job taken with the sole intention of staying only for a
limited period of time (often one year).  The intention is usually to
raise enough funds to partake in another, more meaningful activity
such as watercolor sketching in Crete, or designing computer knit
sweaters in Hong Kong.  Employers are rarely informed of intentions.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Legislated Nostalgia:
        To force a body of people to have memories they do not
actually possess: "How can I be a part of the 1960s generation when I
don't even remember any of it?"
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Now Denial:
        To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and
that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Bambification:
        The mental conversion of flesh and blood living creatures into
cartoon characters possessing bourgeois Judeo-Christian attitudes and
morals.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Diseases for Kisses (Hyperkarma):
        A deeply rooted belief that punishment will somehow always be
far greater than the crime: ozone holes for littering.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Spectacularism:
        A fascination with extreme situations.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Lessness:
        A philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with diminishing
expectations of material wealth: "I've given up wanting to make a
killing or be a bigshot.  I just want to find happiness and maybe open
up a little roadside cafe in Idaho."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Status Substitution:
        Using an object with intellectual or fashionable cachet to
substitute for an object that is merely pricey: "Brian, you left your
copy of Camus in your brother's BMW."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Survivulousness:
        The tendency to visualize oneself enjoying being the last
person on Earth.  "I'd take a helicopter up and throw microwave ovens
down on the Taco Bell."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Platonic Shadow:
        A nonsexual friendship with a member of the opposite sex.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Mental Ground Zero:
        The location where one visualizes oneself during the dropping
of the atomic bomb; frequently, a shopping mall.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Cult of Aloneness:
        The need for autonomy at all costs, usually at the expense of
long-term relationships.  Often brought about by overly high
expectations of others.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Celebrity Schadenfreude:
        Lurid thrills derived from talking about celebrity deaths.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
The Emperor's New Mall:
        The popular notion that shopping malls exist on the insides only
and have no exterior.  The suspension of visual disbelief engendered
by this notion allows shoppers to pretend that the large, cement
blocks thrust into their environment do not, in fact, exist.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Poorochrondria:
        Hypochrondria derived from not having medical insurance.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Personal Tabu:
        A small rule for living, bordering on a superstition, that
allows one to cope with everyday life in the absence of cultural or
religious dictums.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Architectural Indigestion:
        The almost obsessive need to live in a "cool"
architectural environment.  Frequently related objects of fetish
include framed black-and-white art photography (Diane Arbus a
favorite); simplistic pine furniture; matte black high-tech items such
as TVs, stereos, and telephones; low-wattage ambient lighting; a lamp,
chair, or table that alludes to the 1950s; cut flowers with complex
names.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Japanese Minimalism:
        The most frequently offered interior design aesthetic used by
rootless career-hopping young people.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Bread and Circuits:
        The electronic era tendency to view party politics as corny --
no longer relevant of meaningful or useful to modern societal issues,
and in many cases dangerous.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Voter's Block:
        The attempt, however futile, to register dissent with the
current political system by simply not voting.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Armanism:
        After Giorgio Armani; an obsession with mimicking the seamless
and (more importantly) *controlled* ethos of Italian couture.  Like
Japanese Minimalism, Armanism reflects a profound inner need for
control.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Poor Buoyancy:
        The realization that one was a better person when one had less
money.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Musical Hairsplitting:
        The act of classifying music and musicians into pathologically
picayune categories: "The Vienna Franks are a good example of urban
white acid fold revivalism crossed with ska."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
101-ism:
        The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all
aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Yuppie Wannabes:
        An X generation subgroup that believes the myth of a yuppie
life-style being both satisfying and viable.  Tend to be highly in
debt, involved in some form of substance abuse, and show a willingness
to talk about Armageddon after three drinks.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Ultra Short Term Nostalgia:
        Homesickness for the extremely recent past: "God, things seemed
so much better in the world last week."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Rebellion Postponement:
        The tendency in one's youth to avoid traditionally youthful
activities and artistic experiences in order to obtain serious career
experience.  Sometimes results in the mourning for lost youth at about
age thirty, followed by silly haircuts and expensive joke-inducing
wardrobes.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Conspicuous Minimalism:
        A life-style tactic similar to Status Substitution.  The
nonownership of material goods flaunted as a token of moral and
intellectual superiority.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Caf'e Minimalism:
        To espouse a philosophy of minimalism without actually putting
into practice any of its tenets.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
O'Propriation:
        The inclusion of advertising, packaging, and entertainment
jargon from earlier eras in everyday speech for ironic and/or comic
effect: "Kathleen's Favorite Dead Celebrity party was tons o'fun" or
"Dave really thinks of himself as a zany, nutty, wacky, and madcap
guy, doesn't he?"
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Air Family:
        Describes the false sense of community experienced among coworkers
in an office environment.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Squirming:
        Discomfort inflicted on young people by old people who see no
irony in their gestures.  "Karen died a thousand deaths as her father
made a big show of tasting a recently manufactured bottle of wine
before allowing it to be poured as the family sat in Steak Hut.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Recreational Slumming:
        The practice of participating in recreational activities
of a class one perceives as lower than one's own: "Karen!  Donald!
Let's go bowling tonight!  And don't worry about shoes ... apparently
you can rent them."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Conversational Slumming:
        The self-conscious enjoyment of a given conversation
precisely for its lack of intellectual rigor.  A major spin-off
activity of Recreational Slumming.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Occupational Slumming:
        Taking a job well beneath one's skill or education level
as a means of retreat from adult responsibilities and/or avoiding
failure in one's true occupation.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Anti-Victim Device:
        A small fashion accessory worn on an otherwise
conservative outfit which announces to the world that one still has a
spark of individuality burning inside: 1940s retro ties and earrings
(on men), feminist buttons, noserings (women), and the now almost
completely extinct teeny weeny "rattail" haircut (both sexes).
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Nutritional Slumming:
        Food whose enjoyment stems not from flavor but from a
complex mixture of class connotations, nostalgia signals, and
packaging semiotics: Katie and I bought this tub of Multi-Whip instead
of real whip cream because we thought petroleum distillate whip
topping seemed like the sort of food that air force wives stationed in
Pensacola back in the early sixties would feed their husbands to
celebrate a career promotion.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Tele-Parabilizing:
        Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots:
"That's just like the episode where Jan loses her glasses!"
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
QFD:
        Quelle fucking drag.  "Jamie got stuck at Rome airport for
thirty-six hours and it was, like, totally QFD."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
QFM:
        Quelle fashion mistake.  "It was really QFM.  I mean painter
pants?  That's 1979 beyond belief."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Me-ism:
        A search by an individual, in the absence of training in
traditional religious tenets, to formulate a personally tailored
religion by himself.  Most frequently a mishmash of reincarnation,
personal dialogue with a nebulously defined god figure, naturalism,
and karmic eye-for-eye attitudes.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Paper Rabies:
        Hypersensitivity to littering.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Bradyism:
        A multisibling sensibility derived from having grown up in
large families.  A rarity in those born after approximately 1965,
symptoms of Bradyism include a facility for mind games, emotional
withdrawal in situations of overcrowding, and a deeply felt need for a
well-defined personal space.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Black Holes:
        An X generation subgroup best known for their possession of
almost entirely black wardrobes.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Black Dens:
        Where Black Holes live; often unheated warehouses with Day-Glo
spray painting, mutilated mannequins, Elvis references, dozens of
overflowing ashtrays, mirror sculptures, and Velvet Underground music
playing in background.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Strangelove Reproduction:
        Having children to make up for the fact that one no longer
believes in the future.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Squires:
        The most common X generation subgroup and the only subgroup
given to breeding.  Squires exist almost exclusively in couples and
are recognizable by their frantic attempts to create a semblance of
Eisenhower-era plenitude in their daily lives in the face of
exorbitant housing prices and two-job life-styles.  Squires tend to be
continually exhausted from their voraciously acquisitive pursuit of
furniture and knickknacks.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Poverty Lurks:
        Financial paranoia instilled in offspring by depression-era
parents.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Pull-the-Plug, Slice the Pie:
        A fantasy in which an offspring mentally tallies up the
net worth of his parents.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Underdogging:
        The tendency to almost invariably side with the underdog in a
given situation.  The consumer expression of this trait is the
purchasing of less successful, "sad," or failing products: "I know
these Vienna franks are heart failure on a stick, but they were so sad
looking up against all the other yuppie food items that I just had to
buy them."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
2 + 2 = 5-ism:
        Caving in to a target marketing strategy aimed at oneself after
holding out for a long period of time.  "Oh, all right, I'll buy your
stupid cola.  Now leave me alone."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Option Paralysis:
        The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Personality Tithe:
        A price paid for becoming a couple; previously amusing
human beings become boring: "Thanks for inviting us, but Noreen and I
are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight.  Afterward we're going
to watch the shopping channel."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Jack-and-Jill Party:
        A Squire tradition; baby showers to which both men and
women friends are invited as opposed to only women.  Doubled
purchasing power of bisexual attendance brings gift values up to
Eisenhower-era standards.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Down-Nesting:
        The tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free
houses after the children have moved away so as to avoid children aged
20 to 30 who have boomeranged home.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
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".
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:                Amiablity, transports of joy, sensuality
Leaves (dead):                Melancholy
Lilac:                        Youthful innocence
Lilly:                        Purity, sweetness
Lilly of the valley:        Return of happiness
Magnolia:                Dignity, perseverance
        * An upside-down blossom reverses the meaning.
An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
                -- Isaac Asimov
Biggest security gap -- an open mouth.
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
                -- Beckett
"I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
                -- Ronald Mabbitt
"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
                -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
I'd be a poorer man if I'd never seen an eagle fly.
                -- John Denver

[I saw an eagle fly once.  Fortunately, I had my eagle fly swatter handy.  Ed.]
I'm going to raise an issue and stick it in your ear.
                -- John Foreman
I'm not offering myself as an example; every life evolves by its own laws.
If we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of an
oncoming train.
                -- Robert Lowell
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark.
Life is like an analogy.
Marigold:                Jealousy
Mint:                        Virute
Orange blossom:                Your purity equals your loveliness
Orchid:                        Beauty, magnificence
Pansy:                        Thoughts
Peach blossom:                I am your captive
Petunia:                Your presence soothes me
Poppy:                        Sleep
Rose, any color:        Love
Rose, deep red:                Bashful shame
Rose, single, pink:        Simplicity
Rose, thornless, any:        Early attachment
Rose, white:                I am worthy of you
Rose, yellow:                Decrease of love, rise of jealousy
Rosebud, white:                Girlhood, and a heart ignorant of love
Rosemary:                Remembrance
Sunflower:                Haughtiness
Tulip, red:                Declaration of love
Tulip, yellow:                Hopeless love
Violet, blue:                Faithfulness
Violet, white:                Modesty
Zinnia:                        Thoughts of absent friends
        * An upside-down blossom reverses the meaning.
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
Remember that there is an outside world to see and enjoy.
                -- Hans Liepmann
She has an alarm clock and a phone that don't ring -- they applaud.
Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art.
The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.
                -- Wittgenstein.
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
To generalize is to be an idiot.
                -- William Blake
True to our past we work with an inherited, observed, and accepted vision of
personal futility, and of the beauty of the world.
                -- David Mamet
Wasting time is an important part of living.
When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.
                -- Gen. C. Abrams
[ ] Safeguard this message - it is an important historical document.
[ ] Delete after reading -- Subversive Literature.
[ ] Ignore and go back to what you were doing.
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
                -- Dylan Thomas
ELECTRIC JELL-O

2   boxes JELL-O brand gelatin        2 packages Knox brand unflavored gelatin
2   cups fruit (any variety)        2+ cups water
1/2 bottle Everclear brand grain alcohol

Mix JELL-O and Knox gelatin into 2 cups of boiling water.  Stir 'til
        fully dissolved.
Pour hot mixture into a flat pan.  (JELL-O molds won't work.)
Stir in grain alcohol instead of usual cold water.  Remove any congealing
        glops of slime. (Alcohol has an unusual effect on excess JELL-O.)
Pour in fruit to desired taste, and to absorb any excess alcohol.
Mix in some cold water to dilute the alcohol and make it easier to eat for
        the faint of heart.
Refrigerate overnight to allow mixture to fully harden. (About 8-12 hours.)
Cut into squares and enjoy!

WARNING:
        Keep ingredients away from open flame.  Not recommended for
        children under eight years of age.
Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
                -- Jimmy Cannon
FORTUNE'S FAVORITE RECIPES: #8
        Christmas Rum Cake

1 or 2 quarts rum                1 tbsp. baking powder
1 cup butter                        1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. sugar                        1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 large eggs                        2 cups brown sugar
2 cups dried assorted fruit        3 cups chopped English walnuts

Before you start, sample the rum to check for quality.  Good, isn't it?  Now
select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc.  Check the rum again.  It
must be just right.  Be sure the rum is of the highest quality.  Pour one cup
of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can.  Repeat. With an electric
mixer, beat one cup butter in a large fluffy bowl.  Add 1 seaspoon of tugar
and beat again.  Meanwhile, make sure the rum teh absolutely highest quality.
Sample another cup.  Open second quart as necessary.  Add 2 orge laggs, 2 cups
of fried druit and beat untill high.  If the fried druit gets stuck in the
beaters, just pry it loose with a screwdriver.  Sample the rum again, checking
for toncisticity.  Next sift 3 cups of baking powder, a pinch of rum, a
seaspoon of toda and a cup of pepper or salt (it really doesn't matter).
Sample some more.  Sift 912 pint of lemon juice.  Fold in schopped butter and
strained chups.  Add bablespoon of brown gugar, or whatever color you have.
Mix mell.  Grease oven and turn cake pan to 350 gredees and rake until
poothtick comes out crean.
HOGAN'S HEROES DRINKING GAME --
        Take a shot every time:

-- Sergeant Schultz says, "I knoooooowww nooooothing!"
-- General Burkhalter or Major Hochstetter intimidate/insult Colonel Klink.
-- Colonel Klink falls for Colonel Hogan's flattery.
-- One of the prisoners sneaks out of camp (one shot for each prisoner to go).
-- Colonel Klink snaps to attention after answering the phone (two shots
        if it's one of our heroes on the other end).
-- One of the Germans is threatened with being sent to the Russian front.
-- Corporal Newkirk calls up a German in his phoney German accent, and
        tricks him (two shots if it's Colonel Klink).
-- Hogan has a romantic interlude with a beautiful girl from the underground.
-- Colonel Klink relates how he's never had an escape from Stalag 13.
-- Sergeant Schultz gives up a secret (two shots if he's bribed with food).
-- The prisoners listen to the Germans' conversation by a hidden transmitter.
-- Sergeant Schultz "captures" one of the prisoners after an escape.
-- Lebeau pronounces "colonel" as "cuh-loh-`nell".
-- Carter builds some kind of device (two shots if it's not explosive).
-- Lebeau wears his apron.
-- Hogan says "We've got no choice" when someone claims that the plan is
        impossible.
-- The prisoners capture an important German, and sneak him out the tunnel.
I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.
                -- Richard Burton
In a gathering of two or more people, when a lighted cigarette is
placed in an ashtray, the smoke will waft into the face of the non-smoker.
Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.
[Norm comes in with an attractive woman.]

Coach:  Normie, Normie, could this be Vera?
Norm:   With a lot of expensive surgery, maybe.
                -- Cheers, Norman's Conquest

Coach:  What's up, Normie?
Norm:   The temperature under my collar, Coach.
                -- Cheers, I'll Be Seeing You (Part 2)

Coach:  What would you say to a nice beer, Normie?
Norm:   Going down?
                -- Cheers, Diane Meets Mom
One dusty July afternoon, somewhere around the turn of the century, Patrick
Malone was in Mulcahey's Bar, bending an elbow with the other street car
conductors from the Brooklyn Traction Company.  While they were discussing the
merits of a local ring hero, the bar goes silent.  Malone turns around to see
his wife, with a face grim as death, stalking to the bar.
        Slapping a four-bit piece down on the bar, she draws herself up to her
full five feet five inches and says to Mulcahey, "Give me what himself has
been havin' all these years."
        Mulcahey looks at Malone, who shrugs, and then back at Margaret Mary
Malone.  He sets out a glass and pours her a triple shot of Rye.  The bar is
totally silent as they watch the woman pick up the glass and knock back the
drink.  She slams the glass down on the bar, gasps, shudders slightly, and
passes out; falling straight back, stiff as a board, saved from sudden contact
with the barroom floor by the ample belly of Seamus Fogerty.
        Sometime later, she comes to on the pool table, a jacket under her
head.  Her bloodshot eyes fell upon her husband, who says, "And all these
years you've been thinkin' I've been enjoying meself."
PLEASE DON'T SMOKE HERE!

Penalty: An early, lingering death from cancer,
         emphysema, or other smoking-caused ailment.
Police:        Good evening, are you the host?
Host:        No.
Police:        We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host:        About the drugs?
Police:        No.
Host:        About the guns, then?  Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police:        No, the noise.
Host:        Oh, the noise.  Well that makes sense because there are no guns
        or drugs here.  (An enormous explosion is heard in the
        background.)  Or fireworks.  Who's complaining about the noise?
        The neighbors?
Police:        No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago.  Most of the recent
        complaints have come from Pittsburgh.  Do you think you could
        ask the host to quiet things down?
Host:        No Problem.  (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
        religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
        room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
        lawn, where it smashes into a tree.  Eight guests tumble out
        onto the grass, moaning.)  See?  Things are starting to wind
        down.
Recipe for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster:
        (1) Take the juice from one bottle of Ol' Janx Spirit
        (2) Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of
                Santraginus V  (Oh, those Santraginean fish!)
        (3) Allow 3 cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the
                mixture (properly iced or the benzine is lost.)
        (4) Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it.
        (5) Over the back of a silver spoon, float a measure of
                Qualactin Hypermint extract.
        (6) Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger.  Watch it dissolve.
        (7) Sprinkle Zamphuor.
        (8) Add an olive.
        (9) Drink... but... very carefully...
Smoking is, as far as I'm concerned, the entire point of being an adult.
                -- Fran Lebowitz
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year.  I
have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with
slightly over half that quantity of beer.
                -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
You're not an alcoholic unless you go to the meetings.
Q:        How do you stop an elephant from charging?
A:        Take away his credit cards.
Q:        How many elephants can you fit in a VW Bug?
A:        Four.  Two in the front, two in the back.

Q:        How can you tell if an elephant is in your refrigerator?
A:        There's a footprint in the mayo.

Q:        How can you tell if two elephants are in your refrigerator?
A:        There's two footprints in the mayo.

Q:        How can you tell if three elephants are in your refrigerator?
A:        The door won't shut.

Q:        How can you tell if four elephants are in your refrigerator?
A:        There's a VW Bug in your driveway.
Q:        How many journalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
        light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot
        to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for
        reporting that Electric Company hired a light bulb-assassin to break
        the bulb in the first place.
Q:        How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the
party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith
agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed
from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed
upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of
the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating
at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of
the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the
second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the
parties.
        The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be
limited to, the following.  The party of the first part shall, with or without
elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other
means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party
of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered
non-negotiable.  Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part
becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall
have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner
consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes.
Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part
shall have the option of beginning installation.  Aforesaid installation shall
occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in
step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation
should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable.
The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the
first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to
produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
Q:        How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
        light bulb?
A:        Seven.  Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
        the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
        Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim
        that he's a doctor, not an electrician).  Scotty, after checking
        around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
        that he "canna" see in the dark.  Kirk will make an emergency stop at
        the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
        from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
        Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
        beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply
        killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
        As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
        Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
        warp out of orbit.  Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
        and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
        just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
        given all light bulbs they can carry.  The new bulb is then inserted
        and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
Q:        Know what the difference between your latest project
        and putting wings on an elephant is?
A:        Who knows?  The elephant *might* fly, heh, heh...
Q:        What do you call the money you pay to the government when
        you ride into the country on the back of an elephant?
A:        A howdah duty.
Q:        What do you get when you cross a mobster with an international standard?
A:        You get someone who makes you an offer that you can't understand!
Q:        What do you get when you cross the Godfather with an attorney?
A:        An offer you can't understand.
Q:        What is purple and commutes?
A:        An Abelian grape.
Q:        What's the contour integral around Western Europe?
A:        Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe!

Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they
        are removable!

Q:        An English mathematician (I forgot who) was asked by his
        very religious colleague: Do you believe in one God?
A:        Yes, up to isomorphism!

Q:        What is a compact city?
A:        It's a city that can be guarded by finitely many near-sighted
        policemen!
                -- Peter Lax
Q:        What's the difference between a duck and an elephant?
A:        You can't get down off an elephant.
Q:        What's the difference between a Mac and an Etch-a-Sketch?
A:        You don't have to shake the Mac to clear the screen.
Q:        What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?
A:        One less drunk.
Q:        Where's the Lone Ranger take his garbage?
A:        To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump!

Q:        What's the Pink Panther say when he steps on an ant hill?
A:        Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant...
Q:        Why do the police always travel in threes?
A:        One to do the reading, one to do the writing, and the other keeps
        an eye on the two intellectuals.
Q:        Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation
        function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?
A:        That's the Law of Spline Demand.
        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 student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
"A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."
        -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
                -- Benjamin Franklin
Briefly stated, the findings are that when presented with an array of
data or a sequence of events in which they are instructed to discover
an underlying order, subjects show strong tendencies to perceive order
and causality in random arrays, to perceive a pattern or correlation
which seems a priori intuitively correct even when the actual correlation
in the data is counterintuitive, to jump to conclusions about the correct
hypothesis, to seek and to use only positive or confirmatory evidence, to
construe evidence liberally as confirmatory, to fail to generate or to
assess alternative hypotheses, and having thus managed to expose themselves
only to confirmatory instances, to be fallaciously confident of the validity
of their judgments (Jahoda, 1969; Einhorn and Hogarth, 1978).  In the
analyzing of past events, these tendencies are exacerbated by failure to
appreciate the pitfalls of post hoc analyses.
                -- A. Benjamin
... 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"
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to
time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
                -- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"
Graduate life: It's not just a job.  It's an indenture.
"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
                -- English Professor
I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for my mother.
I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting:
a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.
                -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
                -- Wilson Mizner
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
                -- Tom Robbins
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get
the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.  See in
college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural
method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall
learn what you have no taste or capacity for.  The college, which should
be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the
young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
I would have the studies elective.  Scholarship is to be created not
by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.  The wise
instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the
attractions the study has for himself.  The marking is a system for schools,
not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to
put on a professor.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he
thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent
teacher should know.  "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig
said, "up to the mathematicians."
                -- The New York Times, October 22, 1985
It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill,
or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing.  It dehumanizes those who
achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom
good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy
notions.  This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all
infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from
folklore to Article of Belief.  It enhances their self-esteem and lightens
their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that
appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge,
and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
competence will be quite enough.
                -- The Underground Grammarian
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
                -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way.  "The cost may be
upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be
nearly 10m#.  "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable
news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris.  "Rarely does
the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been
prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a
periphrasis for November, and another for lingers.  "The answer is in the
negative" is a periphrasis for No.  "Was made the recipient of" is a
periphrasis for Was presented with.  The periphrasis style is hardly possible
on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis,
case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack,
nature, reference, regard, respect".  The existence of abstract nouns is a
proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of
civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are
by many held to be inseparable.  These good people feel that there is an almost
indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news
instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory
developments."
                -- Fowler's English Usage
"The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
is an emerging underachiever."
The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an
open doorway with an open mind.
                -- E.B. White
Trying to get an education here is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose.
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
                -- Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals"
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"
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
                -- Adlai Stevenson
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.
In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
                -- Frank Mankiewicz
Isn't it conceivable to you that an intelligent person could harbor
two opposing ideas in his mind?
                -- Adlai Stevenson, to reporters
                Once Again From the Top

Correction notice in the Miami Herald: "Last Sunday, The Herald erroneously
reported that original Dolphin Johnny Holmes had been an insurance salesman
in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he had won the New York lottery in 1982 and
lost the money in a land swindle, that he had been charged with vehicular
homicide, but acquitted because his mother said she drove the car, and that
he stated that the funniest thing he ever saw was Flipper spouting water on
George Wilson.  Each of these items was erroneous material published
inadvertently.  He was not an insurance salesman in Raleigh, did not win the
lottery, neither he nor his mother was charged or involved in any way with
vehicular homicide, and he made no comment about Flipper or George Wilson.
The Herald regrets the errors."
                -- "The Progressive", March, 1987
        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"
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.  Had there been an
actual emergency, then you would no longer be here.
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.  If this had been an
actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
This life is a test.  It is only a test.  Had this been an actual life, you
would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.
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
An American is a man with two arms and four wheels.
                -- A Chinese child
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
                -- A.P. Herbert
Five people -- an Englishman, Russian, American, Frenchman and Irishman
were each asked to write a book on elephants.  Some amount of time later they
had all completed their respective books.  The Englishman's book was entitled
"The Elephant -- How to Collect Them", the Russian's "The Elephant -- Vol. I",
the American's "The Elephant -- How to Make Money from Them", the Frenchman's
"The Elephant -- Its Mating Habits" and the Irishman's "The Elephant and
Irish Political History".
Have you seen the latest Japanese camera?  Apparently it is so fast it can
photograph an American with his mouth shut!
I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
I shot an arrow in to the air, and it stuck.
                -- graffito in Los Angeles

On a clear day,
U.C.L.A.
                -- graffito in San Francisco

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our
lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
                -- Robert Orben
I'm going through my "I want to go back to New York" phase today.  Happens
every six months or so.  So, I thought, perhaps unwisely, that I'd share
it with you.  

> In New York in the winter it is million degrees below zero and
  the wind travels at a million miles an hour down 5th avenue.
> And in LA it's 72.

> In New York in the summer it is a million degrees and the humidity
  is a million percent.
> And in LA it's 72.

> In New York there are a million interesting people.  
> And in LA there are 72.
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.
Moishe Margolies, who weighed all of 105 pounds and stood an even five feet
in his socks, was taking his first airplane trip. He took a seat next to a
hulking bruiser of a man who happened to be the heavyweight champion of
the world.  Little Moishe was uneasy enough before he even entered the plane,
but now the roar of the engines and the great height absolutely terrified him.
So frightened did he become that his stomach turned over and he threw up all
over the muscular giant siting beside him.  Fortunately, at least for Moishe,
the man was sound asleep.  But now the little man had another problem.  How in
the world would he ever explain the situation to the burly brute when he
awakened?  The sudden voice of the stewardess on the plane's intercom, finally
woke the bruiser, and Moishe, his heart in his mouth, rose to the occasion.
        "Feeling better now?" he asked solicitously.
Seems that a pollster was taking a worldwide opinion poll.
Her question was, "Excuse me; what's your opinion on the meat shortage?"

In Texas, the answer was "What's a shortage?"
In Poland, the answer was "What's meat?"
In the Soviet Union, the answer was "What's an opinion?"
In New York City, the answer was "What's excuse me?"
The trouble is, there is an endless supply of White Men, but there has
always been a limited number of Human Beings.
                -- Little Big Man
        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 isn't Dave!"
There was this New Yorker that had a lifelong ambition to be an Texan.
Fortunately, he had an Texan friend and went to him for advice.  "Mike,
you know I've always wanted to be a Texan.  You're a *____real* Texan, what
should I do?"
        "Well," answered Mike, "The first thing you've got to do is look
like a Texan.  That means you have to dress right.  The second thing
you've got to do is speak in a southern drawl."
        "Thanks, Mike, I'll give it a try," replied the New Yorker.
        A few weeks passed and the New Yorker saunters into a store dressed
in a ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, Levi jeans and a bandanna.  "Hey, there,
pardner, I'd like some beef, not too rare, and some of them fresh biscuits,"
he tells the counterman.
        The guy behind the counter takes a long look at him and then says,
"You must be from New York."
        The New Yorker blushes, and says, "Well, yes, I am.  How did
you know?"
        "Because this is a hardware store."
Three Midwesterners, a Kansan, a Missourian and an Iowan,
all appearing on a quiz program, were asked to complete this sentence:
"Old MacDonald had a . . ."

        "Old MacDonald had a carburetor," answered the Kansan.
        "Sorry, that's wrong," the game show host said.
        "Old MacDonald had a free brake alignment down at the
                service station," said the Missourian.
        "Wrong."
        "Old MacDonald had a farm," said the Iowan.
        "CORRECT!" shouts the quizmaster.  "Now for $100,000, spell 'farm.'"
        "Easy," said the Iowan. "E-I-E-I-O."
To be happy one must be a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in
Zion, b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's
fellow men, and c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste.
It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country
in the world wherein a man constituted as I am -- a man of my peculiar
weaknesses, vanities, appetites, and aversions -- can be so happy as he can
be in the United States.  Going further, I lay down the doctrine that it is
a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in the United States
and not be happy.
                -- H.L. Mencken, "On Being An American"
(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) 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) 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.
"355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!"
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 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 disolves
          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 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 physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
                -- George Wald
A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle.
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.
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
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.
Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it.
                -- James Michener, "Space"
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 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 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 authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
really care to know.
An economist is a man who would marry Farrah Fawcett-Majors for her money.
An egghead is one who stands firmly on both feet, in mid-air, on both
sides of an issue.
                -- Homer Ferguson
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.
... 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"
"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
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 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"
Bistromathics is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the
behavior of numbers.  Just as Einstein observed that space was not an
absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that
time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in
time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend
on the observer's movement in restaurants.
                -- Douglas Adams
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center
of the universe.  The premise is wrong, but the navigation works.  An
incorrect model can be a useful tool.
                -- Kelvin Throop III
Chapter 2:  Newtonian Growth and Decay

        The growth-decay formulas were developed in the trivial fashion by
Isaac Newton's famous brother Phigg.  His idea was to provide an equation
that would describe a quantity that would dwindle and dwindle, but never
quite reach zero.  Historically, he was merely trying to work out his
mortgage.  Another versatile equation also emerged, one which would define
a function that would continue to grow, but never reach unity.  This equation
can be applied to charging capacitors, over-damped springs, and the human
race in general.
Congratulations!  You have purchased an extremely fine device that would
give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you
undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver.
Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL
CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE.  YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T
YOU?  YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH
THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH
SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS
CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT?  AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING
TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT???  WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE
DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
                -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
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"
Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.

It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist.  But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific
mind.  The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned
with what ____does exist.  Indeed, the banality of existence has been
so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further
here.  The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically,
discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical,
and the purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent,
but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ...
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer!  My joules!  Someone has stolen my
joules!"

"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
a moment.  Perhaps they're mislead."

"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence.  "I remember putting them
in my burette ... We must call a copper."

Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
of Lawrence Ium.

"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
dangerous.  His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium.  Maybe I can
catch him there."  With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
                -- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #14
What to do...
    if reality disappears?
        Hope this one doesn't happen to you.  There isn't much that you
        can do about it.  It will probably be quite unpleasant.

    if you meet an older version of yourself who has invented a time
    traveling machine, and has come from the future to meet you?
        Play this one by the book.  Ask about the stock market and cash in.
        Don't forget to invent a time traveling machine and visit your
        younger self before you die, or you will create a paradox.  If you
        expect this to be tricky, make sure to ask for the principles
        behind time travel, and possibly schematics.  Never, NEVER, ask
        when you'll die, or if you'll marry your current SO.
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #2
What to do...
    if you get a phone call from Mars:
        Speak slowly and be sure to enunciate your words properly.  Limit
        your vocabulary to simple words.  Try to determine if you are
        speaking to someone in a leadership capacity, or an ordinary citizen.

    if he, she or it doesn't speak English?
        Hang up.  There's no sense in trying to learn Martian over the phone.
        If your Martian really had something important to say to you, he, she
        or it would have taken the trouble to learn the language before
        calling.

    if you get a phone call from Jupiter?
        Explain to your caller, politely but firmly, that being from Jupiter,
        he, she or it is not "life as we know it".  Try to terminate the
        conversation as soon as possible.  It will not profit you, and the
        charges may have been reversed.
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #6
What to do...
    if a starship, equipped with an FTL hyperdrive lands in your backyard?
        First of all, do not run after your camera.  You will not have any
        film, and, given the state of computer animation, noone will believe
        you anyway.  Be polite.  Remember, if they have an FTL hyperdrive,
        they can probably vaporize you, should they find you to be rude.
        Direct them to the White House lawn, which is where they probably
        wanted to land, anyway.  A good road map should help.

    if you wake up in the middle of the night, and discover that your
    closet contains an alternate dimension?
        Don't walk in.  You almost certainly will not be able to get back,
        and alternate dimensions are almost never any fun.  Remain calm
        and go back to bed.  Close the door first, so that the cat does not
        wander off.  Check your closet in the morning.  If it still contains
        an alternate dimension, nail it shut.
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your
hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.  Did you
notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain?  This
teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never
use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
        It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works.  When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects
that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt.
The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger,
where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels
down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
        Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger
would explode!  But this is nothing to worry about unless you have
carpeting.
                -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
How can you do 'New Math' problems with an 'Old Math' mind?
                -- Charles Schulz
I am not an Economist.  I am an honest man!
                -- Paul McCracken
I do hate sums.  There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
exact science.  There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds
entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail
to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to
perceive.  For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again
from the top down, the result is always different.
                -- Mrs. La Touche
I do not remember ever having seen a sustained argument by an author which,
starting from philosophical premises likely to meet with general acceptance,
reached the conclusion that a praiseworthy ordering of one's life is to
devote it to research in mathematics.
                -- Sir Edmund Whittaker, "Scientific American", Vol. 183
        "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 cosequently 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"
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
If for every rule there is an exception, then we have established that there
is an exception to every rule.  If we accept "For every rule there is an
exception" as a rule, then we must concede that there may not be an exception
after all, since the rule states that there is always the possibility of
exception, and if we follow it to its logical end we must agree that there
can be an exception to the rule that for every rule there is an exception.
                -- Bill Boquist
If I set here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think
I'm an engineer working on something.
                -- S.R. McElroy
If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the
answer can be obtained by simple inspection.
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
                -- Stanley Garn
If you are smart enough to know that you're not smart enough to be an
Engineer, then you're in Business.
In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between
frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they
are all merely transforms of one another.  This combined with
minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct
compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can
lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost.  However,
this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
universe."
                -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
It is not every question that deserves an answer.
                -- Publilius Syrus
It is not that polar co-ordinates are complicated, it is simply
that cartesian co-ordinates are simpler than they have a right to be.
                -- Kleppner & Kolenhow, "An Introduction to Mechanics"
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
                -- Phil White
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory keeps all its data in an old gray trunk.
Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,
365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365".  He [ten-year-old Truman Henry
Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the
tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes
smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more
than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!"
An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be
as much fun to watch.
                -- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"
My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always,
always, he was right.
        [That's an interesting angle.  I wonder if there are any parallels?]
        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"
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of the
smaller prime numbers.

2:  The Odd Prime --
        It's the only even prime, therefore is odd.  QED.
3:  The True Prime --
        Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you 3 times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
        Determined by unanimous unvote.  We needed an arbitrary prime in
        case the prof asked for one, and so had an election.  91 received
        the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the next most.
        However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none at all.
41: The Female Prime --
        The polynomial X**2 - X + 41 is
        prime for integer values from 1 to 40.
43: The Male Prime - they form a prime pair.

Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities
are derived from those primes.  So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd
but true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and
decides to do something about it.  He calls up his best friend, who is a
mathematical genius.  "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some
way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track?  We could
make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life."  The mathematician thinks
this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself.
        A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any
success.  The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes,
actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but
there a number of details to be figured out.
        After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house,
looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have
some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right
track."
        At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by
pounding on his door at three in the morning.  He has dark circles under his
eyes.  His hair hasn't been combed for many days.  He appears to be wearing
the same clothes as the last time.  He has several pencils sticking out from
behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face.  "WE CAN DO
IT!  WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!!
And it's so EASY!  First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple
harmonic motion..."
One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor...
is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics.
                -- N. Wiener
Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard.  It is fatal in
concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m.  Humans exposed to the
oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes.  Symptoms resemble very
much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.).  In higher
concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it
takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place.  The reason
for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of
oxygen in 20% concentration.  It apparently contributes to a complex
process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is
always fatal.

However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the
fact it is habit forming.  The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is
sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent.  After that, any
considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with
symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.

Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard.  All of the fires that were reported in
the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be
due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings
in question.

Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and
tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is
too late.
                -- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956
        "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"
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your
current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it
into a dumpster.  Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of
8-millimeter video equipment.

... OK!  Got everything?  Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were
gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes
your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt.
This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until
it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so
*order yours now*.
                -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution"
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided.  It's the psychic predecessor of all
real understanding.  An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
                -- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
Take an astronaut to launch.
The amount of weight an evangelist carries with the almighty is measured
in billigrahams.
The bomb will never go off.  I speak as an expert in explosives.
                -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
The Commandments of the EE:

(9)        Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
        commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
        frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages.
(10)        Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
        written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
        and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
        thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician.
(11)        When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
        unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket.  Better
        that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
        experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
        innocent-seeming device.
The Commandments of the EE:

(1)        Beware of lightning that lurketh in an uncharged condenser
        lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
        embarrassing manner.
(2)        Cause thou the switch that supplieth large quantities of juice to
        be opened and thusly tagged, that thy days may be long in this
        earthly vale of tears.
(3)        Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth, and upon
        which the worketh, are grounded and thusly tagged lest they lift
        thee to a radio frequency potential and causeth thee to make like
        a radiator too.
(4)        Tarry thou not amongst these fools that engage in intentional
        shocks for they are not long for this world and are surely
        unbelievers.
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed
to do the work of a man.  The marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation defines a robot as 'Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With'.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the
first against the wall when the revolution comes', with a footnote to effect
that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking
over the post of robotics correspondent.
        Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that
had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in
the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the
wall when the revolution came'.
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
The Greatest Mathematical Error
        The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28
July 1962 towards Venus.  After 13 minutes' flight a booster engine would
give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes 9,800 solar cells
would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course
corrections and after 100 days the craft would cirlce the unknown planet,
scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed.  
        However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I
plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after takeoff.
        Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from
the instructions fed into the computer.  "It was human error", a launch
spokesman said.
        This minus sign cost L4,280,000.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
        The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth.  However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.  
        In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall.  On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
        The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
        "It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point.  "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor.  "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him.  "Suck?  Suck?  Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out.  Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair.  "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using
other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern
countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so
far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill
and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons.  None of the animals turned into
oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer.
                -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor
its theories will hold water.
The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for
the reader.
The spirit of Plato dies hard.  We have been unable to escape the philosophical
tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the
superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.
                -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
The universe is an island, surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds
universes.
        There was a mad scientist (a mad... social... scientist) who kidnapped
three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked
each of them in seperate 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 a writer in 'Life' magazine ... who claimed that rabbits have
no memory, which is one of their defensive mechanisms.  If they recalled
every close shave they had in the course of just an hour life would become
insupportable.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut
There was an old Indian belief that by making love on the hide of
their favorite animal, one could guarantee the health and prosperity
of the offspring conceived thereupon.  And so it goes that one Indian
couple made love on a buffalo  hide.  Nine months later, they were
blessed with a healthy baby son.  Yet another couple huddled together
on the hide of a deer and they too were blessed with a very healthy
baby son.  But a third couple, whose favorite animal was a hippopotamus,
were blessed with not one, but TWO very healthy baby sons at the conclusion
of the nine month interval.  All of which proves the old theorem that:
The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of
the squaws of the other two hides.
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
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Two men are in a hot-air balloon.  Soon, they find themselves lost in a
canyon somewhere.  One of the three men says, "I've got an idea.  We can
call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the
end of the canyon.  Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
        So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo!  Where
are we?"  (They hear the echo several times).
        Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
You're lost!"
        The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
        Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
        "For three reasons.  First, he took a long time to answer, second,
he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
Two wrights don't make a rong, they make an airplane.  Or bicycles.
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
                -- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support
of the earth, contrived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support
the elephant, a huge tortoise.  If we will candidly confess the truth, we
know as little of the operation of the nerves, as he did of the manner in
which the earth is supported: and our hypothesis about animal spirits, or
about the tension and vibrations of the nerves, are as like to be true, as
his about the support of the earth.  His elephant was a hypothesis, and our
hypotheses are elephants.  Every theory in philosophy, which is built on
pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly
by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose
feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.
                -- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
... we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection
by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized
brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as
an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting
functions).  But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often
uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities
of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
                -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
... 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 a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute.
But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute -- and it's longer than any
hour.  That's relativity.
                -- Albert Einstein
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation
of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand, so that you can
proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the goal.
                -- Amrom Katz
Why do mathematicians insist on using words that already have another
meaning?  "It is the complex case that is easier to deal with."  "If it
doesn't happen at a corner, but at an edge, it nonetheless happens at a
corner."
Do you feel personally responsible for the world food shortage?
Every time you go to the beach, does the tide come in?
Have you ever eaten an entire moose?
Can you see your neck?
Do joggers take laps around you for exercise?
If so, welcome to National Fat Week.
This week we'll eat without guilt, and kick off our membership campaign,
        ...by force-feeding a box of cornstarch to a skinny person.
                -- Garfield
        During the American Revolution, a Britisher tried to raid a farm.  He
stumbled across a rock on the ground and fell, whereupon an agressive Rhode
Island Red hopped on top.  Seeing this, the farmer commented, "Chicken catch
a Tory!"
For those of you who have been unfortunate enough to never have tasted the
'Great Chieftain O' the Pudden Race' (i.e. haggis) here is an easy to follow
recipe which results in a dish remarkably similar to the above mentioned
protected species.
        Ingredients:
          1 Sheep's Pluck (heart, lungs, liver) and bag
          2 teacupsful toasted oatmeal
          1 teaspoonful salt
          8 oz. shredded suet
          2 small onions
        1/2 teaspoonful black pepper
    
        Scrape and clean bag in cold, then warm, water.  Soak in salt water
overnight.  Wash pluck, then boil for 2 hours with windpipe draining over
the side of pot.  Retain 1 pint of stock.  Cut off windpipe, remove surplus
gristle, chop or mince heart and lungs, and grate best part of liver (about
half only).  Parboil and chop onions, mix all together with oatmeal, suet,
salt, pepper and stock to moisten.  Pack the mixture into bag, allowing for
swelling.  Boil for three hours, pricking regularly all over.  If bag not
available, steam in greased basin covered by greaseproof paper and cloth for
four to five hours.
Fortune's diet truths:
1:  Forget what the cookbooks say, plain yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream.
2:  Any recipe calling for soybeans tastes like mud.
3:  Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate.  In fact, carob is not
    an acceptable substitute for anything, except, perhaps, brown shoe polish.
4:  There is no such thing as a "fun salad."  So let's stop pretending and see
    salads for what they are:  God's punishment for being fat.
5:  Fruit salad without maraschino cherries and marshmallows is about as
    appealing as tepid beer.
6:  A world lacking gravy is a tragic place!
7:  You should immediately pass up any recipes entitled "luscious and
    low-cal."  Also skip dishes featuring "lively liver."  They aren't and
    it isn't.
8:  Wearing a blindfold often makes many diet foods more palatable.
9:  Fresh fruit is not dessert.  CAKE is dessert!
10: Okra tastes slightly worse than its name implies.
11: A plain baked potato isn't worth the effort involved in chewing and
    swallowing.
Has anyone ever tasted an "end"?  Are they really bitter?
I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
with an option to buy.
I don't have an eating problem.  I eat.  I get fat.  I buy new clothes.
No problem.
If you see an onion ring -- answer it!
Life is like an egg stain on your chin -- you can lick it, but it still
won't go away.
Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes
you weep.
                -- Carl Sandburg
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find
there is nothing in it.
                -- James Huneker
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
        (1)  Never eat on an empty stomach.
        (2)  Never leave the table hungry.
        (3)  When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
        (4)  Enjoy your food.
        (5)  Enjoy your companion's food.
        (6)  Really taste your food.  It may take several portions to
             accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
        (7)  Really feel your food.  Texture is important.  Compare,
             for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
             brownie.  Which feels better against your cheeks?
        (8)  Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
        (9)  Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate.  You
             can always eat it later.
        (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
        (11) Avoid blue food.
                -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
The Kosher Dill was invented in 1723 by Joe Kosher and Sam Dill.  It is
the single most popular pickle variety today, enjoyed throughout the free
world by man, woman and child alike.  An astounding 350 billion kosher
dills are eaten each year, averaging out to almost 1/4 pickle per person
per day.  New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton says "The kosher dill
really changed my life.  I used to enjoy eating McDonald's hamburgers and
drinking Iron City Lite, and then I encountered the kosher dill pickle.
I realized that there was far more to haute cuisine then I'd ever imagined.
And now, just look at me."
        ... 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"
        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"
When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional
cheese dip.
                -- Ignatius Reilly
While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
                -- Edward Stevenson
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did.  In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
                -- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
You first parents of the human race... who ruined yourself for an apple,
what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
                -- Brillat-savarin, "Physiologie du Gout"
You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2
if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each
"special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4
if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the
waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged
six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to
twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the
banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets
made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.

In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
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 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 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 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-Z affectionately,
1 to 10 alphabetically,
from here to eternity without in betweens,
still looking for a custom fit in an off-the-rack world,
sales talk from sales assistants
        when all i want to do is lower your resistance,
no rhythm in cymbals no tempo in drums,
love's on arrival,
she comes when she comes,
right on the target but wide of the mark...
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"
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"
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.]
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.
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"
Black shiny mollies and bright colored guppies,
Shy little angels as gentle as puppies,
Swimming and diving with scarcely a swish,
They were just some of my tropical fish.

Then I got mantas that sting in the water,
Deadly piranhas that itch for a slaughter,
Savage male betas that bite with a squish,
Now I have many less tropical fish.

        If you think that
        Fish are peaceful
        That's an empty wish.
        Just dump them together
        And leave them alone,
        And soon you will have -- no fish.
                -- To My Favorite Things
Breathe deep the gathering gloom.
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bed-sitter people look back and lament;
another day's useless energies spent.

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one.
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son.
Senior citizens wish they were young.

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night;
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white.
But we decide which is real, and which is an illusion."
                -- The Moody Blues, "Days of Future Passed"
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy.
        -- Robert Burns, "To a Mouse", 1785
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
        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" [Walt Kelly]
Declared guilty... of displaying feelings of an almost human nature.
                -- Pink Floyd, "The Wall"
Double Bucky, you're the one,
You make my keyboard so much fun,
Double Bucky, an additional bit or two, (Vo-vo-de-o)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, 9 bits wide!
Double Bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!

Oh, I sure wish that I,
Had a couple of bits more!
Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four.

Double Double Bucky!  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!
                -- to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit
                be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use
                by screen editors.  [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"]
Every night my prayers I say,
        And get my dinner every day;
And every day that I've been good,
        I get an orange after food.
The child that is not clean and neat,
        With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I'm sure--
        Or else his dear papa is poor.
                -- Robert Louis Stevenson
Felix Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadroped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your sub-vocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predelection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents:
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance;
And when not being utilitized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
        -- Lt. Cmdr. Data, "An Ode to Spot"
Gil-galad was an Elven-king.
Of him the harpers sadly sing:
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,
his shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven's field
were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Half a bee, philosophically, must ipso facto half not be.
But half the bee has got to be, vis-a-vis its entity.  See?
But can a bee be said to be or not to be an entire bee,
When half the bee is not a bee, due to some ancient injury?
Have you ever felt like a wounded cow
halfway between an oven and a pasture?
walking in a trance toward a pregnant
        seventeen-year-old housewife's
        two-day-old cookbook?
                -- Richard Brautigan
He thought he saw an albatross
That fluttered 'round the lamp.
He looked again and saw it was
A penny postage stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said,
"The nights are rather damp."
He's been like a father to me,
He's the only DJ you can get after three,
I'm an all-night musician in a rock and roll band,
And why he don't like me I don't understand.
                -- The Byrds
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.

But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
Hier liegt ein Mann ganz obnegleich;
Im Leibe dick, an Suden reich.
Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt,        Here lies a man with sundry flaws
Weil es uns dunkt er sei verreckt.        And numerous Sins upon his head;
                                        We buried him today because
                                        As far as we can tell, he's dead.

                -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty
                   Sue Bach and written by the local doggeral catcher;
                   "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele
Hit them biscuits with another touch of gravy,
Burn that sausage just a match or two more done.
Pour my black old coffee longer,
While that smell is gettin' stronger
A semi-meal ain't nuthin' much to want.

Loan me ten, I got a feelin' it'll save me,
With an ornery soul who don't shoot pool for fun,
If that coat'll fit you're wearin',
The Lord'll bless your sharin'
A semi-friend ain't nuthin' much to want.

And let me halfway fall in love,
For part of a lonely night,
With a semi-pretty woman in my arms.
Yes, I could halfway fall in deep--
Into a snugglin', lovin' heap,
With a semi-pretty woman in my arms.
                -- Elroy Blunt
I gave my love an Apple, that had no core;
I gave my love a building, that had no floor;
I wrote my love a program, that had no end;
I gave my love an upgrade, with no cryin'.

How can there be an Apple, that has no core?
How can there be a building, that has no floor?
How can there be a program, that has no end?
How can there be an upgrade, with no cryin'?

An Apple's MOS memory don't use no core!
A building that's perfect, it has no flaw!
A program with GOTOs, it has no end!
I lied about the upgrade, with no cryin'!
I had an errand there: gathering water-lilies,
green leaves and lilies white to please my pretty lady,
the last ere the year's end to keep them from the winter,
to flower by her pretty feet till the snows are melted.

Each year at summer's end I go to find them for her,
in a wide pool, deep and clear, far down Withywindle;
there they open first in spring and there they linger latest.

By that pool long ago I found the River-daughter,
fair young Goldberry sitting in the rushes.
Sweet was her singing then, and her heart was beating!

And that proved well for you--for now I shall no longer
go down deep again along the forest-water,
no while the year is old.  Nor shall I be passing
Old Man Willow's house this side of spring-time,
not till the merry spring, when the River-daughter
dances down the withy-path to bathe in the water.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller, like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
                -- R.L. Stevenson
I sent a letter to the fish,                I said it very loud and clear,
I told them, "This is what I wish."        I went and shouted in his ear.
The little fishes of the sea,                But he was very stiff and proud,
They sent an answer back to me.                He said "You needn't shout so loud."
The little fishes' answer was                And he was very proud and stiff,
"We cannot do it, sir, because..."        He said "I'll go and wake them if..."
I sent a letter back to say                I took a kettle from the shelf,
It would be better to obey.                I went to wake them up myself.
But someone came to me and said                But when I found the door was locked
"The little fishes are in bed."                I pulled and pushed and kicked and
                                                knocked,
I said to him, and I said it plain        And when I found the door was shut,
"Then you must wake them up again."        I tried to turn the handle, But...

        "Is that all?" asked Alice.
        "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
I sent a message to another time,
But as the days unwind -- this I just can't believe,
I sent a message to another plane,
Maybe it's all a game -- but this I just can't conceive.
...
I met someone who looks at lot like you,
She does the things you do, but she is an IBM.
She's only programmed to be very nice,
But she's as cold as ice, whenever I get too near,
She tells me that she likes me very much,
But when I try to touch, she makes it all too clear.
...
I realize that it must seem so strange,
That time has rearranged, but time has the final word,
She knows I think of you, she reads my mind,
She tries to be unkind, she knows nothing of our world.
                -- ELO, "Yours Truly, 2095"
I shot a query into the net.
I haven't got an answer yet,                A posted message called me rotten
But seven people gave me hell                For ignoring mail I'd never gotten;
And said I ought to learn to spell;        An angry message asked me, Please
                                        Don't send such drivel overseas;
A lawyer sent me private mail
And swore he'd slap my ass in jail --        One netter thought it was a hoax:
I'd mentioned Un*x in my gem                "Hereafter, post to net dot jokes!";
And failed to add the T and M;                Another called my grammar vile
                                        And criticized my writing style.
Each day I scan each Subject line
In hopes the topic will be mine;
I shot a query into the net.
I haven't got an answer yet...
                -- Ed Nather
"I thought that you said you were 20 years old!"
"As a programmer, yes," she replied,
"And you claimed to be very near two meters tall!"
"You said you were blonde, but you lied!"
Oh, she was a hacker and he was one, too,
They had so much in common, you'd say.
They exchanged jokes and poems, and clever new hacks,
And prompts that were cute or risque'.
He sent her a picture of his brother Sam,
She sent one from some past high school day,
And it might have gone on for the rest of their lives,
If they hadn't met in L.A.
"Your beard is an armpit," she said in disgust.
He answered, "Your armpit's a beard!"
And they chorused: "I think I could stand all the rest
If you were not so totally weird!"
If she had not said what he wanted to hear,
And he had not done just the same,
They'd have been far more honest, and never have met,
And would not have had fun with the game.
                -- Judith Schrier, "Face to Face After Six Months of
                Electronic Mail"
I'm an artist.
But it's not what I really want to do.
What I really want to do is be a shoe salesman.
I know what you're going to say --
"Dreamer!  Get your head out of the clouds."
All right!  But it's what I want to do.
Instead I have to go on painting all day long.

The world should make a place for shoe salesmen.
                -- J. Feiffer
I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
She's traversed me seven times before.
And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
N-ary the tree I am, I am,
N-ary the tree I am.
                -- Stolen from Paul Revere and the Raiders
If a system is administered wisely,
its users will be content.
They enjoy hacking their code
and don't waste time implementing
labor-saving shell scripts.
Since they dearly love their accounts,
they aren't interested in other machines.
There may be telnet, rlogin, and ftp,
but these don't access any hosts.
There may be an arsenal of cracks and malware,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy reading their mail,
take pleasure in being with their newsgroups,
spend weekends working at their terminals,
delight in the doings at the site.
And even though the next system is so close
that users can hear its key clicks and biff beeps,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
                -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer.....

Here's an easy game to play.
Here's an easy thing to say:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

You can't say this?  What a shame, sir!
We'll find you another game, sir.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to ram your rom.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

                -- DementDJ@ccip.perkin-elmer.com (DementDJ) [rec.humor.funny]
If researchers wrote nursery rhymes...

Little Miss Muffet sat on her gluteal region,
Eating components of soured milk.
On at least one occasion,
        along came an arachnid and sat down beside her,
Or at least in her vicinity,
And caused her to feel an overwhelming, but not paralyzing, fear,
Which motivated the patient to leave the area rather quickly.
                -- Ann Melugin Williams
In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.
Find the fun and snap!  The job's a game.
And every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake,
        a lark, a spree; it's very clear to see.
                -- Mary Poppins
In high school in Brooklyn
I was the baseball manager,
proud as I could be
I chased baseballs,
gathered thrown bats
handed out the towels                        Eventually, I bought my own
It was very important work                but it was dark blue while
for a small spastic kid,                the official ones were green
but I was a team member                        Nobody ever said anything
When the team got                        to me about my blue jacket;
their warm-up jackets                        the guys were my friends
I didn't get one                        Yet it hurt me all year
Only the regular team                        to wear that blue jacket
got these jackets, and                        among all those green ones
surely not a manager                        Even now, forty years after,
                                        I still recall that jacket
                                        and the memory goes on hurting.
                -- Bart Lanier Safford III, "An Obscured Radiance"
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forest ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
                -- S.T. Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn"
Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone,
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you,
I went out this morning and I wrote down this song,
Just can't remember who to send it to...

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain,
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end,
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
But I always thought that I'd see you again.
Thought I'd see you one more time again.
                -- James Taylor, "Fire and Rain"
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Ether!  (ether who?)  Ether Bunny... Yea!
[chorus]
        Yeay!
        Stay on the Happy side, always on the happy side,
        Stay on the Happy side of life!
        Bum bum bum bum bum bum
        You will feel no pain, as we drive you insane,
        So Stay on the Happy Side of life!

Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Anna!  (anna who?)
        An another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Stilla!  (stilla who?)
        Still another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Yetta!  (yetta who?)
        Yet another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Cargo!  (cargo who?)
        Cargo beep beep and run over ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Boo!  (boo who?)
        Don't Cry!  Ether bunny be back next year! [chorus]
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.  Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Let us go then you and I
while the night is laid out against the sky
like a smear of mustard on an old pork pie.

"Nice poem Tom.  I have ideas for changes though, why not come over?"
        -- Ezra
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
                -- T.S. Eliot, "Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And plunged it deep into the VAX;
Don't you envy people who
Do all the things ___YOU want to do?
Mummy dust to make me old;
To shroud my clothes, the black of night;
To age my voice, an old hag's cackle;
To whiten my hair, a scream of fright;
A blast of wind to fan my hate;
A thunderbolt to mix it well --
Now begin thy magic spell!
                -- Walter Disney, "Snow White"
My calculator is my shepherd, I shall not want
It maketh me accurate to ten significant figures,
        and it leadeth me in scientific notation to 99 digits.
It restoreth my square roots and guideth me along paths of floating
        decimal points for the sake of precision.
Yea, tho I walk through the valley of surprise quizzes,
        I will fear no prof, for my calculator is there to hearten me.
It prepareth a log table to comfort me, it prepareth an
        arc sin for me in the presence of my teachers.
It annoints my homework with correct solutions, my interpolations are
        over.
Surely, both precision and accuracy shall follow me all the days of my
        life, and I shall dwell in the house of Texas instruments forever.
Near the Studio Jean Cocteau
On the Rue des Ecoles
lived an old man
with a blind dog
Every evening I would see him
guiding the dog along
the sidewalk, keeping
a firm grip on the leash
so that the dog wouldn't
run into a passerby
Sometimes the dog would stop
and look up at the sky
Once the old man
noticed me watching the dog
and he said, "Oh, yes,
this one knows
when the moon is out,
he can feel it on his face"
                -- Barry Gifford
No one likes us.
I don't know why.
We may not be perfect,                        We give them money,
But heaven knows we try.                But are they grateful?
But all around,                                No, they're spiteful,
Even our old friends put us down.        And they're hateful.
Let's drop the big one,                        They don't respect us,
And see what happens.                        So let's surprise them
                                        We'll drop the big one,
                                        And pulverize 'em.
Asia's crowded,
Europe's too old,
Africa is far too hot,                        We'll save Australia.
And Canada's too cold.                        Don't wanna hurt no kangaroos.
And South America stole our name        We'll build an All-American amusement
Let's drop the big one,                                park there--
There'll be no one left to blame us.        They got surfin', too!

Boom! goes London,
And Boom! Paree.
More room for you,                        Oh, how peaceful it'll be!
And more room for me,                        We'll set everybody free!
And every city,                                You'll wear a Japanese kimono, babe;
The whole world round,                        There'll be Italian shoes for me!
Will just be another American town.        They all hate us anyhow,
                                        So, let's drop the big one now.
                                        Let's drop the big one now!
                -- Randy Newman, "Drop the Big One"
O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?
Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail,
And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail,
And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool,
He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!)
And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat,
He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat,
And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout!
        And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out!
And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog,
And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god,
The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed,
But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed!
Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace,
And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste,
But all they ever found was this:  "panic: never doubt",
        And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out!
When the day is done and the moon comes out,
And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count,
When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey,
And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay,
You must mind the file protections and not snoop around,
        Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down!
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
                -- Edgar Allen Poe, "Science, a Sonnet"
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.
                -- To the tune of "As the Caissons go Rolling Along"
The carbonyl is polarized,
The delta end is plus.
The nucleophile will thus attack,
The carbon nucleus.
Addition makes an alcohol,
Of types there are but three.
It makes a bond, to correspond,
From C to shining C.
                -- Prof. Frank Westheimer, to "America the Beautiful"
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
                -- Dorothy Parker
        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 umbragious 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 young lady had an unusual list,
Linked in part to a structural weakness.
She set no preconditions.
There's amnesia in a hangknot,
And comfort in the ax,
But the simple way of poison will make your nerves relax.
        There's surcease in a gunshot,
        And sleep that comes from racks,
        But a handy draft of poison avoids the harshest tax.
You find rest on the hot squat,
Or gas can give you pax,
But the closest corner chemist has peace in packaged stacks.
        There's refuge in the church lot
        When you tire of facing facts,
        And the smoothest route is poison prescribed by kindly quacks.
Chorus:        With an *ugh!* and a groan, and a kick of the heels,
        Death comes quiet, or it comes with squeals --
        But the pleasantest place to find your end
        Is a cup of cheer from the hand of a friend.
                -- Jubal Harshaw, "One For The Road"
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine                And then one day you find
Staying home to watch the rain                Ten years have got behind you
You are young and life is long                No one told you when to run
And there is time to kill today                You missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter                Hanging on in quiet desperation
                                                is the English way
Never seem to find the time                The time is gone, the song is over
Plans that either come to nought        Thought I'd something more to say...
Or half a page of scribbled lines
                -- Pink Floyd, "Time"
'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
   preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
   throughout our place of residence,
Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
   possessors of this potential, including that
   species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
   edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
   imminent visitation from an eccentric
   philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
   is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
Under the wide and heavy VAX
Dig my grave and let me relax
Long have I lived, and many my hacks
And I lay me down with a will.
These be the words that tell the way:
"Here he lies who piped 64K,
Brought down the machine for nearly a day,
And Rogue playing to an awful standstill."
Well, my daddy left home when I was three,
And he didn't leave much for Ma and me,
Just and old guitar an'a empty bottle of booze.
Now I don't blame him 'cause he ran and hid,
But the meanest thing that he ever did,
Was before he left he went and named me Sue.
...
But I made me a vow to the moon and the stars,
I'd search the honkey tonks and the bars,
And kill the man that give me that awful name.
It was Gatlinburg in mid-July,
I'd just hit town and my throat was dry,
Thought I'd stop and have myself a brew,
At an old saloon on a street of mud,
Sitting at a table, dealing stud,
Sat that dirty (bleep) that named me Sue.
...
Now, I knew that snake was my own sweet Dad,
From a wornout picture that my Mother had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye...
                -- Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue"
What with chromodynamics and electroweak too
Our Standardized Model should please even you,
Tho' once you did say that of charm there was none
It took courage to switch as to say Earth moves not Sun.
Yet your state of the union penultimate large
Is the last known haunt of the Fractional Charge,
And as you surf in the hot tub with sourdough roll
Please ponder the passing of your sole Monopole.
Your Olympics were fun, you should bring them all back
For transsexual tennis or Anamalon Track,
But Hollywood movies remain sinfully crude
Whether seen on the telly or Remotely Viewed.
Now fasten your sunbelts, for you've done it once more,
You said it in Leipzig of the thing we adore,
That you've built an incredible crystalline sphere
Whose German attendants spread trembling and fear
Of the death of our theory by Particle Zeta
Which I'll bet is not there say your article, later.
                -- Sheldon Glashow, Physics Today, December, 1984
Whether weary or unweary, O man, do not rest,
Do not cease your single-handed struggle.
Go on, do not rest.
                -- An old Gujarati hymn
While walking down a crowded
City street the other day,
I heard a little urchin
To a comrade turn and say,
"Say, Chimmey, lemme tell youse,
I'd be happy as a clam
If only I was de feller dat
Me mudder t'inks I am.

"She t'inks I am a wonder,                My friends, be yours a life of toil
An' she knows her little lad                Or undiluted joy,
Could never mix wit' nuttin'                You can learn a wholesome lesson
Dat was ugly, mean or bad.                From that small, untutored boy.
Oh, lot o' times I sit and t'ink        Don't aim to be an earthly saint
How nice, 'twould be, gee whiz!                With eyes fixed on a star:
If a feller was de feller                Just try to be the fellow that
Dat his mudder t'inks he is."                Your mother thinks you are.
                -- Will S. Adkin, "If I Only Was the Fellow"
Why are you watching
The washing machine?
I love entertainment
So long as it's clean.

Professor Doberman:
        While the preceding poem is unarguably a change from the guarded
pessimism of "The Hound of Heaven," it cannot be regarded as an unqualified
improvement.  Obscurity is of value only when it tends to clarify the poetic
experience.  As much as one is compelled to admire the poem's technique, one
must question whether its byplay of complex literary allusions does not in
fact distract from the unity of the whole.  In the final analysis, one
receives the distinct impression that the poem's length could safely have
been reduced by a factor of eight or ten without sacrificing any of its
meaning.  It is to be hoped that further publication of this poem can be
suspended pending a thorough investigation of its potential subversive
implications.
Woke up this mornin' an' I had myself a beer,
Yeah, Ah woke up this mornin' an' I had myself a beer
The future's uncertain and the end is always near.
                -- Jim Morrison, "Roadhouse Blues"
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
        For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
        Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
        And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
        Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
        That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
        What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
        Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
        Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
You can grovel with a lover, you can grovel with a friend,
You can grovel with your boss, and it never has to end.

(chorus)        Grovel, grovel, grovel, every night and every day,
                Grovel, grovel, grovel, in your own peculiar way.

You can grovel in a hallway, you can grovel in a park,
You can grovel in an alley with a mugger after dark.
(chorus)

You can grovel with your uncle, you can grovel with your aunt,
You can grovel with your Apple, even though you say you can't.
(chorus)
You go down to the pickup station,
        craving warmth and beauty;
You settle for less than fascination --
        a few drinks later you're not so choosy.
And the closing lights strip off the shadows
        on this strange new flesh you've found --
Clutching the night to you like a fig leaf
        you hurry to the blackness
        and the blankets to lay down an impression
        and your loneliness.
                -- Joni Mitchell
An avocado-tone refrigerator would look good on your resume.
An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year.  Take an elephant to lunch.
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
Give him an evasive answer.
It is so very hard to be an
on-your-own-take-care-of-yourself-because-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you
grown-up.
Never give an inch!
You are farsighted, a good planner, an ardent lover, and a faithful friend.
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.
You have an unusual equipment for success.  Be sure to use it properly.
You have an unusual magnetic personality.  Don't walk too close to
metal objects which are not fastened down.
You have an unusual understanding of the problems of human relationships.
You may get an opportunity for advancement today.  Watch it!
You will be winged by an anti-aircraft battery.
You will gain money by an illegal action.
You will gain money by an immoral action.
You will meet an important person who will help you advance professionally.
You will soon meet a person who will play an important role in your life.
        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 endagered 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."
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)
Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates,
is my choice for team captain.  Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led
off the bottom of the eighth with a walk.  The next hitter banged a hard
single to right field.  Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and
kept going, sliding safely into third base.
        With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at
bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first.
Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy
took off for second and made it.  Now we had runners at second and third.
        I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy
start to take a lead.  All of a sudden, here he comes.  He makes a great slide
into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?"  He looks up, and
shouts, "Back to second if I can make it."
                -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty
played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees
played.  There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks,
and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
                -- H. L. Mencken
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us
all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for
its wild horses.  I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs
romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any
wild horses in person.  In person, they are like enormous hooved rats.  They
amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses.
We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes.
We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon."
                -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
        Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills.
Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."
        [So is that punchline.]
Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem.  You see, during
a portion of Beethovan's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin
parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around.  So,
to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the
end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the
page of the score before the bass cue.  As the basses grew more and more
inebriated, two of them fell asleep.  The conductor grew quite nervous (he
was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth;
the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out.
Our [softball] team usually puts the other woman at second base, where the
maximum possible number of males can get there on short notice to help out
in case of emergency.  As far as I can tell, our second basewoman is a pretty
good baseball player, better than I am, anyway, but there's no way to know
for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male comes barging
over from, say, right field, to deal with it.  She's been on the team for
three seasons now, but the males still don't trust her.  They know, deep in
their souls, that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving
an infant's life, she probably would elect to save the infant's life, without
ever considering whether there were men on base.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching.  Working once a week,
he might have lasted a long time and become a great star.
                -- Tris Speaker, commenting on Babe Ruth's plan to change
                   from being a pitcher to an outfielder.
                   Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
Several years ago, an international chess tournament was being held in a
swank hotel in New York.  Most of the major stars of the chess world were
there, and after a grueling day of chess, the players and their entourages
retired to the lobby of the hotel for a little refreshment.  In the lobby,
some players got into a heated argument about who was the brightest, the
fastest, and the best chess player in the world.  The argument got quite
loud, as various players claimed that honor.  At that point, a security
guard in the lobby turned to another guard and commented, "If there's
anything I just can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."
Show me a good loser in professional sports and I'll show you an idiot.
Show me a good sportsman and I'll show you a player I'm looking to trade.
                -- Leo Durocher
                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).
Has anyone realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to
defuse project tensions?  When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
        Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions.  This
still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or only
serves to blunt the warning signs.

        Long live the revolution!
        Have a nice day.
We interrupt this fortune for an important announcement...
Dammit Jim, I'm an actor, not a doctor.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis.  You can't simply say,
"Today I will be brilliant."
                -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
"I'm a doctor, not a mechanic."
                -- "The Doomsday Machine", when asked if he had heard of
                   the idea of a doomsday machine.
"I'm a doctor, not an escalator."
                -- "Friday's Child", when asked to help the very pregnant
                   Ellen up a steep incline.
"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer."
                -- Devil in the Dark", when asked to patch up the Horta.
"I'm a doctor, not an engineer."
                -- "Mirror, Mirror", when asked by Scotty for help in
                   Engineering aboard the ISS Enterprise.
"I'm a doctor, not a coalminer."
                -- "The Empath", on being beneath the surface of Minara 2.
"I'm a surgeon, not a psychiatrist."
                -- "City on the Edge of Forever", on Edith Keeler's remark
                   that Kirk talked strangely.
"I'm no magician, Spock, just an old country doctor."
                -- "The Deadly Years", to Spock while trying to cure the
                   aging effects of the rogue comet near Gamma Hydra 4.
"What am I, a doctor or a moonshuttle conductor?"
                -- "The Corbomite Maneuver", when Kirk rushed off from a
                   physical exam to answer the alert.
        "It's hard to believe that something which is neither seen nor felt can
do so much harm."
        "That's true.  But an idea can't be seen or felt.  And that's what kept
the Troglytes in the mines all these centuries.  A mistaken idea."
                -- Vanna and Kirk, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5819.0
There comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face
.... One day our minds became so powerful we dared think of ourselves as gods.
                -- Sargon, "Return to Tomorrow", stardate 4768.3
There is an old custom among my people.  When a woman saves a man's
life, he is grateful.
                -- Nona, the Kanuto witch woman, "A Private Little War",
                   stardate 4211.8.
There is an order of things in this universe.
                -- Apollo, "Who Mourns for Adonais?" stardate 3468.1
        "We have the right to survive!"
        "Not by killing others."
                -- Deela and Kirk, "Wink of An Eye", stardate 5710.5
Well, Jim, I'm not much of an actor either.
You are an excellent tactician, Captain.  You let your second in
command attack while you sit and watch for weakness.
                -- Khan Noonian Singh, "Space Seed", stardate 3141.9
"`Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.'
`Very deep,' said Arthur, `you should send that in to the
"Reader's Digest". They've got a page for people like you.'"

- Ford convincing Arthur to drink three pints in ten
minutes at lunchtime.
"Pages one and two [of Zaphod's presidential speech] had
been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had
already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form
of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed
largely of papier mache and it was virtually impossible for
a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran
Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of
the species but wanted no truck with it."

- An example of Damogran wildlife.
"`Incidentally,' he said, `what does teleport mean?'
Another moment passed.
Slowly, the others turned to face him.
`Probably the wrong moment to ask,' said Arthur, `It's just
I remember you use the word a short while ago and I only
bring it up because...'
`Where,' said Ford quietly, `does it say teleport?'
`Well, just over here in fact,' said Arthur, pointing at a
dark control box in the rear of the cabin, `Just under the
word "emergency", above the word "system" and beside the
sign saying "out of order".'"

- Arthur finding an escape route from a certain death
situation.
ARTHUR        What is an Algolian Zylatburger anyway?
FORD        They're a kind of meatburger made from the most
unpleasant parts
        of a creature well known for its total lack of any
pleasant
        parts.
ARTHUR        So you mean that the Universe does actually end not
with a bang
        but with a Wimpy?

- Cut dialogue from Fit the Fifth.
"...[Arthur] leapt to his feet like an author hearing the
phone ring..."

- Who says that the character of Arthur isn't
autobiographical?
"Arthur hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife.
Then he realised there was a contradiction there and merely
hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

- Arthur realising that he's in a certain death situation
with a supernova bomb that is shaped like a cricket ball.
"As he came into the light they could see his black and
gold uniform on which the buttons were so highly polished
that they shone with an intensity that would have made an
approaching motorist flash his lights in annoyance. "
"Ford had his own code of ethics. It wasn't much of one,
but it was his and he stuck by it, more or less. One rule
he made was never to buy his own drinks. He wasn't sure if
that counted as an ethic, but you have to go with what
you've got. "
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 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 snivelling, 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
        "Are you sure you're not an encyclopedia salesman?"
        No, Ma'am.  Just a burglar, come to ransack the flat."
                -- Monty Python
Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and
none of his friends like him either.
                -- Oscar Wilde
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others.  Bozos are people who band
together for fun and profit.  They have no jobs.  Anybody who goes on a
tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street?  Because there's a Bozo
on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others.
They're the huge, fat, middle waist.  The archetype is an Irish drunk
clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin.  Fields, William Bendix.
Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness.  It has Oz in it.  They mean
well.  They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes.  They
like their comforts.  The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time,
which is all the time.
                -- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.  It's already tomorrow
in Australia.
                -- Charles Schulz
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
First, a few words about tools.

Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the
laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure
yourself.  Today, people tend to take tools for granted.  If you're ever
walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly
smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted.  If I were you,
I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
I am getting into abstract painting.  Real abstract -- no brush, no canvas,
I just think about it.  I just went to an art museum where all of the art
was done by children.  All the paintings were hung on refrigerators.
                -- Steven Wright
I argue very well.  Ask any of my remaining friends.  I can win an argument on
any topic, against any opponent.  People know this, and steer clear of me at
parties.  Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
                -- Dave Barry
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.

What a crock.  I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar.  For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
                -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
"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 if you never
called me again."
                -- Steven Wright
I have a box of telephone rings under my bed.  Whenever I get lonely, I
open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call.  One day I dropped the
box all over the floor.  The phone wouldn't stop ringing.  I had to get
it disconnected.  So I got a new phone.  I didn't have much money, so I
had to get an irregular.  It doesn't have a five.  I ran into a friend
of mine on the street the other day.  He said why don't you give me a
call.  I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone
doesn't have a five.  He asked how long had it been that way.  I said I
didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens.
                -- Steven Wright
I have an existential map.  It has "You are here" written all over it.
                -- Steven Wright
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
                -- Groucho Marx
I turned my air conditioner the other way around, and it got cold out.
The weatherman said "I don't understand it.  I was supposed to be 80
degrees today," and I said "Oops."

In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... so
I never have to go upstairs.

I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in
front of it in only eight minutes.
                -- Steven Wright
I used to live in a house by the freeway.  When I went anywhere, I had
to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway.

I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights.  Now it looks
like I'm the only one moving.

I was pulled over for speeding today.  The officer said, "Don't you know
the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?"  And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going
to be out that long."

I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out.  Now
my car goes 500 miles an hour.
                -- Steven Wright
I was in Vegas last week. I was at the roulette table, having a lengthy
argument about what I considered an Odd number.
                -- Steven Wright
I woke up this morning and discovered that everything in my apartment
had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica.  I told my roommate,
"Isn't this amazing?  Everything in the apartment has been stolen and
replaced with an exact replica."  He said, "Do I know you?"
                -- Steven Wright
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
they seem.  For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.  But
conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
misinterpreted ...
                -- Douglas Admas "The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy"
        My friends, I am here to tell you of the wonderous 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 primerally 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
imbedded so firmly we couldn't get them out.  But in Alabama the Tuscaloosa,
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 [Groucho]
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
                -- Lily Tomlin
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
                -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?  In that case, I
definitely overpaid for my carpet.
                -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
"If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently."

  -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"Calling EMACS an editor is like calling the Earth a hunk of dirt."

  -- Chris DiBona on Dirt (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"For something that does not exist, the Internet Engineering Task Force has has quite an impact."

  -- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"The basic publication series for te IETF is the RFC series. RPF once stood for 'Request for Comments,' but since documents published as RFCs have generally gone through an extensive review process before publication, RFC is now best known understood to mean 'RFC' "

  -- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"In a way they were right the basics of operating systems, and by extension the Linux kernel, were well understood by the early 70s; anything after that has been to some degree an exercise in self-gratification."

  -- Linus Torvalds (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
  It isn't an optical illusion. It just looks like one.
  "Professional certification for car people may sound like an
  oxymoron." -The Wall Street Journal, page B1, Tuesday, July 17,
  1990.
  Thank God I'm an atheist.
  An Irishman is never at peace except when he's fighting.
  After Donald Trump's stretch limousine was stolen and found
  undamaged a few blocks away; he said, "Nothing was stolen. I had
  an honest thief."-International Herald Tribune, page 3, March 2,
  1992
  Some bird populations soaring down
        -Headline of an article in
         Science News, page 126, February 20, 1993.
  An empty cab drove up and Sarah Bernhardt got out. -Arthur Baer,
  American comic and columnist
All truths are true to an extend, including this one.  -XA
What If Bill Gates Was a Stand-Up Comedian?

1. None of his jokes would be funny.
2. Subliminal message hyping Microsoft and Windows 98 would be inserted
    throughout his performance.
3. The audio system (running Windows NT) would always crash right before Bill
    got to a punch line. At that time one of the managers would announce,
    "Please hold tight while we diagnose this intermittent issue."
4. Tickets for Bill's show would be handed out for free in an attempt to
    attract customers away from Netscape's shows.
5. Industry pundits would call Bill's show "innovative" and would ask "Why
    doesn't IBM have a stand-up routine? This is exactly why OS/2 is failing in
    the market."
6. Bill's show would be called "ActiveHumor 98"
7. In a perfect imitation of his Windows 95 OS, Bill wouldn't be able to tell
    a joke and walk around at the same time.
8. Audience members would have to sign a License Agreement in which one of the
    terms is "I agree never to watch Linus Torvalds' show, 'GNU/Humorux'".
9. All audience members would receive a free CD of Internet Explorer 4.0, with
    FakeJava(R) and ActiveHex(tm) technology.
10. Bill Gates would appear on Saturday Night Live, causing ratings to drop
    even further.
An OS/2 professional visits a seminar for Windows 95. During the practice
lesson Bill Gates asks him: "What do you like about Windows95?" He answers,
"That YOU have to use it."
The word "Windows" is a word out of an old dialect of the Apaches.  It
means: "White man staring through glass-screen onto an hourglass..."
This is an air conditioned room -- do not open Windows!
Tip of the day:
The Windows 95 CD-ROM makes an excellent skeet shoot target.
Turn your Pentium into an XT -- just add Windows!
Windows: an Unrecoverable Acquisition Error!
Windows: XT emulator for an Pentium.
I once heard Bill Gates say, "WHAT?!?!  Netscape caused an invalid page
fault!?!  Only Microsoft programs have the code to do that!"
We are very nervous about the release of Windows 2000. This OS takes up
gigabytes of hard drive space. When users 'upgrade' to Win2K, they won't have
any space on their hard drive for our products! We really hate Chairman Bill.

   -- An anonymous spokesperson for Corel
Q: What is the difference between Jurassic Park and Microsoft?
A: One is an over-rated high tech theme park based on prehistoric information
   and populated mostly by dinosaurs, the other is a Steven Spielberg movie.
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for.
Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through
these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot
water.

   -- Matt Welsh
Failure is not an option -- it comes bundled with Windows.
"Microsoft technology" -- isn't that an oxymoron?

   -- Gareth Barnard
So what is the best way to protect yourself against the ILOVEYOU virus? Install
Linux. If that's not an option, try uninstalling Windows.

   -- Geoff Johnson
Every time I think that perhaps we are an advanced race, I turn around and
read ramblings on Slashdot, and realize I was wrong.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
They say never to buy a "0" release of software.
Windows 2000 has 3 of 'em.

   -- A .sig spotted on an anti-Microsoft mailing list
Trying to get Windows to run on the hardware that Linux typically runs on
is like pushing an elephant through a keyhole.

   -- Forbes Magazine
Missouri Town Changes Name to 'Linux'

LINUX, MO -- The small Missouri town of Linn, county seat of Osage County,
announced yesterday that it will be henceforth called 'Linux'. Mayor Bob Farrow
said, "Linn needed something to put it on the map. A few weeks ago my daughter
mentioned that she installed Linux on her computer and how great she thought it
was. I thought to myself, 'Self, changing the town's name to 'Linux' could be
an opportunity to attract attention -- and money -- to our town. We could even
hold a Linux Convention at the community center.' So I approached the city
council about the idea, and they loved it. The rest is history."

Farrow's daughter is organizing the Linux Linux User Group. She hopes to be
able to hold a Linux Convention this fall. "The Linn, er, Linux community
center probably won't be big enough, we'll probably have to hold it in nearby
Jefferson City," she said.

The mayor does have one reservation. "How the hell do you pronounce Linux?" One
of the mayor's contenders in the next election, Mr. Noah Morals, says he will
start an ad campaign calling Bob Farrow "the Incumbent Liar of LIE-nucks".
Needless to say, the mayor usually pronounces Linux as "LIH-nucks".
"CmdrBurrito" Launches Slashdot.org Parody

An anonymous hacker with the handle "CmdrBurrito" has launched a parody of the
Slashdot "News for Nerds" site entitled Dotslash. Dotslash has the motto
"Snooze for Slackers. Stuff that Scatters." It has fake news articles and
ficticious reader comments. Some of the recent articles include "Bill Gates
Wins Powerball Jackpot," "Linux 2.1.666 Released," and "Supercomputer Created
from 8088 and Z80 Computers." Rumor has it that "CmdrBurrito" plans to create
parodies of other sites, including Linux Weekly News ("Linsux Weakly Snooze"),
Freshmeat ("Deadmeat"), and Linux.org ("Linsux.org").

When asked about Dotslash, Slashdot webmaster Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda said, "No
problem. I simply posted an article about it on Slashdot, and watched it die
from the 'Slashdot Effect.' Six hours later, and it's still offline. I suspect
Dotslash is running Windows NT. The mystery 'CmdrBurrito' character is probably
a bored Microsoft employee."
'Kitchen Sink' OS Announced

Coding has begun on a new operating system code named 'Kitchen Sink'. The new
OS will be based entirely on GNU Emacs. One programmer explained, "Since many
hackers spend a vast amount of their time in Emacs, why not just make it the
operating system?" When asked about the name, he responded, "Well, it has been
often said that Emacs has everything except a kitchen sink. Now it will."

One vi advocate said, "What the hell?!?! Those Emacs people are nuts. It seems
that even with a programming language, a web browser, and God only knows what
else built into their text editor, they're still not satisfied. Now they want
it to be an operating system. Hell, even Windows ain't that bloated!"
Open Source Beer Revolution

Yesterday, Red Hat introduced an 'open source' beer called Red Brew. The
recipes for making the beer are available for free over the Net, and
microbrewery kits are available at low cost from Red Hat. Says a Red Hat
spokesman, "With the proliferation of free (open source) software, it was only
a matter of time before open source beer became reality. After all, the only
thing hackers like more than free software is free beer!"

Following the Red Hat annoucement, other companies are racing to launch their
own beer 'distribution'. Caldera is developing an OpenBrew beer. Meanwhile,
Patrick Volkerding is working on a SlackBeer distribution, and DebianBrew is
expected soon.

Traditional breweries and beer distributors are not thrilled about open source
beer. "This is ludicrous! People want beer that comes from time-tested, secret
recipes -- not beer from recipes invented overnight! Open source is a fad," a
spokesman for Buddwizzer Beer, Inc. said. In addition, other beverage
distributors are nervous. "First open source beer, and soon open source soft
drinks! Before we know it, we'll have RedCoke and SlackPepsi! This open source
plague must be stopped before it eats into our bottom line! Don't quote me on
that last sentence," the CEO of Croak-a-Cola said.
Microsoft Acquires Nothing

REDMOND, WA -- In an unprecedented move, Microsoft refrained from acquiring any
rival companies for a full week. "I can't believe it," one industry analyst
noted. "This is the first time in years that I haven't read any headlines about
Microsoft acquiring something."

The lack of Microsoft assimilation this week left a vacuum in computer industry
publications. "Microsoft acquisition stories make up 10% of our headlines," an
editor at Ziff-Slavis said. "We had to scramble to fill this void. We ran some
controversial Jessie Burst columns instead, hoping that we could recoup ad
revenue from people reading all the flames in the Talk Back forums. Jessie
Burst forums account for 15% of our total ad revenue."
Linux Drinking Game (Abridged)

With a group of friends, take turns reading articles about Linux from popular
media sources (Ziff-Davis AnchorDesk is recommended) or postings on Usenet (try
alt.fan.bill-gates). If the author says one of the things below, take a drink.
Continue until everyone involved is plastered.

- Linux will never go mainstream
- Any platform that can't run Microsoft Office [or some other Microsoft
  "solution"] sucks
- Linux is hard to install
- Linux tech support is lacking
- No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft
- Any OS with a command line interface is primitive
- Microsoft is an innovative company
- Could you get fired for choosing Linux?
- Linux was created by a bunch of snot-nosed 14 year old hackers with acne and
  no life
- Security through obscurity is the way to go
- Linus and Unix are 70s technology while NT is 90s technology
- All Linux software must be released under the GPL
- Linux is a great piece of shareware
Could You Get Fired for Visiting Slashdot?

PADUCAH, KY -- Matt Johnson, an employee at Paradigm Shift Consulting, Inc.,
was fired from his programming job because of his addiction to Slashdot.
Johnson typically visited Slashdot several times a day during working hours.
Citing productivity problems, Johnson's boss gave him the pink slip and
instituted a 'NoDot' policy -- no visiting Slashdot or related sites from the
office, ever.  Now Johnson has filed a lawsuit, claiming that his Slashdot
addiction is protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Matt Johnson explained, "They discriminated against me because I'm a Dothead.
Drug abuse and alcoholism are often considered handicaps.  Why not Slashdot
addiction?"  Johnson's boss sees the situation differently.   "Matt never got
any work done.  He was always visiting Slashdot, Freshmeat, or some other
nerd website.  And when he wasn't, he suffered withdrawl symptoms and
couldn't think straight.  A few months ago he spent eight consecutive hours
posting comments in a KDE vs. GNOME flame war.  I tried to offer assistance
to overcome his addiction, but he refused. Enough is enough."

The company's 'NoDot' policy has been under fire as well.  One anonymous
employee said, "We can't visit Slashdot because of Matt's addiction.  This
just sucks.  I really don't see anything wrong with visiting Slashdot during
breaks or after hours."
Linux Ported to Homer Simpson's Brain

SPRINGFIELD -- Slashdot recently reported on Homer Simpson's brain "upgrade"
to an Intel CPU.  Intel hails the CPU transplant as the "World's Greatest
Technological Achievement".  Intel originally planned to install Microsoft
Windows CE (Cerebrum Enhanced) on Homer's new PentiumBrain II processor.
However, due to delays in releasing Windows CE, Intel decided to install
DebianBrain Linux, the new Linux port for brains.

Computer industry pundits applaud the last minute switch from Windows to
Linux. One said, "I was a bit concerned for Homer.  With Windows CE, I could
easily imagine Homer slipping into an infinite loop: "General Protection
Fault.  D'oh!  D'oh!  D'oh!  D'oh..."  Or, at the worst, the Blue Screen of
Death could have become much more than a joke."

Some pundits are more concerned about the quality of the Intel CPU.  "Linux
is certainly an improvement over Windows.  But since it's running on a
PentiumBrain chip, all bets are off.  What if the chip miscalculates the core
temperature of the power plant where Homer works?  I can just imagine the
story on the evening news: 'Springfield was obliterated into countless
subatomic particles yesterday because Homer J. Simpson, power plant
button-pusher, accidentally set the core temperature to 149.992322340948290
instead of 150...'  If anything, an Alpha chip running Linux should have been
used for Homer's new brain."
The Movement Formerly Known As Open Source

The battle over the Open Source trademark is heating up.  Software in the
Public Interest and the Open Source Initiative both hold competing claims to
the trademark.  In order to put an end to the infighting, a group of free
software advocates have founded the Association for the Movement Formerly
Known as Open Source (AMFKOS)

One AMFKOS founder said, "I find it ironic that a trademark representing free
software is itself proprietary.  This situation must change.  We propose that
the free software movement adopt another name besides 'Open Source'.
Hopefully then we can all Get-Back-To-Coding(tm) instead of fighting over
Bruce Perens' and Eric Raymond's egos."

Rumor has it that Richard Stallman plans to mount a campaign to
promote the phrase "GNU/Free Software" in place of "Open Source".
In addition, the terms "Ajar Source", "Unlocked Source", "Nude Source",
"Unclosed Source", and "Just-Type-make Software" have all
been proposed by various Usenet or Slashdot posters.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #3

iTux Penguin Computer
Price: $999.95 for base model
Producer: Orange Computer, Co.; 1-800-GET-ITUX

Based on the Slashdot comments, response to the Apple iMac from the Linux
community was lukewarm at best.  Orange Computer, Co., has picked up where
Apple left behind and produced the iTux computer specifically for Linux users
who want to "Think a lot different".

The self-contained iTux computer system is built in the shape of Tux the
Penguin.  Its 15 inch monitor (17 inch available next year) is located at
Tux's large belly.  The penguin's two feet make up the split ergonomic
keyboard (without those annoying Windows keys, of course).  A 36X CD-ROM
drive fits into Tux's mouth.  Tux's left eye is actually the reboot button
(can be reconfigured for other purposes since it is rarely used) and his
right eye is the power button.  The iTux case opens up from the back,
allowing easy access for screwdriver-wielding nerds into Tux's guts.

The US$995.95 model contains an Alpha CPU and all the usual stuff found in a
Linux-class machine.  More expensive models, to be debuted next year, will
feature dual or quad Alpha CPUs and a larger size.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #4

Microsoft Destruction Kit
Price: US$29.95 (more with optional digital camera or shotgun)
Producer: The Fuzzier Image; 1-800-BILL-SUX

Mix an Internet Explorer CD-ROM, a rocket launcher, and a flamethrower. What
do you have?  A whole lot of fun!  The Microsoft Destruction Kit is the best
way to destroy those Microsoft CD-ROMs you no longer need now that you've
discovered Linux.  You can launch the CD (and registration forms, manuals,
retail boxes, license agreements, etc.) and pepper it with bullets, all while
capturing the event with a digital camera. Or, you can use the included
miniature flamethrower to burn the evil CD to a crisp.  The kit comes with a
set of IE 4.0 CDs to get you started.  Tell Microsoft "where *you* want
it to go today" in style with the Microsoft Destruction Kit.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #5

AbsoluteZero(tm) Cryogenic Refrigerator
$29,999.95 for economy model at Cryo-Me-A-River, Inc.

The pundits have been hyping new technology allowing your home appliances to
have Internet access. Most people aren't too keen with the thought of their
refrigerator sharing an IP address with their can opener.

But with the new AbsoluteZero(tm) Refrigerator, that might change. This is not
a fridge for your food -- it's a fridge for your overclocked, overheating CPU.
You stick your computer inside, bolt the door shut, turn the temperature down
to 5 degrees Kelvin, and you've got the perfect environment for accelerating
your CPU to 1 Terahertz or more.

This cryogenic cooling system may not actually reach absolute zero, but it
comes mighty close. Unfortunately, the AbsoluteZero(tm) is the size of a small
house, consumes a constant stream of liquid nitrogen, and requires it's own
nuclear reactor (not included). But that's a small price to pay for the
ability to play Quake 3 at 100,000 frames per second.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #8

Bob's Map to the Homes of the Rich & Geeky
US$29.95 at BobsEcommerceSite.com

Hollywood is full of shady street-side vendors selling "maps to the homes of
the rich and famous" that are actually photocopies of photocopies of
photocopies of an old 1984 Rand McNally map.

But what about the Bay Area? Wouldn't you like to visit the homes and
driveways of the rich and geeky in Silicon Valley? Wouldn't you like to see
Linus Torvalds' residence? Wouldn't you like to drive by the home of
permanent-interim-CEO Steve Jobs? Wouldn't you like to spit on the driveway of
Bill Gates?

Well, now you can. Bob's Map to the Homes of the Rich & Geeky is a full-color
128 page atlas filled with detailed instructions for finding the homes of
1,024 of the world's most famous geeks. From San Jose, to Seattle, to Austin,
to Boston, Bob's Map is your passport to gawk at the homes of the rich and
geeky.
Linux Advocacy Crackdown

SHERIDAN, WY -- In an unprecedented blow to Linux advocacy, Aaron McAdams, an
employee at the Sheridan Try-N-Save Discount Store, was fired last week.
According to the store's general manager, McAdams was fired because "he
constantly rearranged items on shelves so that Linux-related books and
software boxes would be displayed more prominently than Windows merchandise."
McAdams' boss added, "If he would have spent as much time actually working as
he did hiding Windows books at the back of shelves, he wouldn't have received
the pink slip."

The general manager supplied Humorix with videotapes from the store's
security cameras showing McAdams in action.  In one scene, he takes a whole
stack of "...For Dummies" books and buries them in the Cheap Romance section,
an area of the store rarely visited by computer users.  In another, McAdams
can be plainly seen setting copies of Red Hat Linux in front of a large,
eye-catching display of various Microsoft products at the front of the
store.  Finally, at one point McAdams can be seen slapping huge tags reading
"DEMO DISPLAY BOX -- NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL 1999" on boxes of Windows 98.

McAdams disputes his bosses accusations.  "If he would spend more time
actually working instead of peering over security camera footage for hours on
end, this store might actually turn a profit for a change."
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "What Slogan Do You Want to See Tommorrow?"

Microsoft's PR masterminds are planning a massive marketing campaign,
code-named "ActivePromo 2000", to promote the upcoming release of Windows
2000 (scheduled for February 2001).  This marketing campaign will include a
"What Slogan Do You Want to See Tommorrow?" promotion.

Children under age 16 will have to opportunity to create their own Microsoft
slogan to replace the aging "Where Do You Want to Go Today?"(R) motto.
Microsoft will set up a special email alias where children can submit their
entries along with detailed personal and demographic information (for
verification purposes, of course).  A panel of Microsoft employees will
select a winning entry, which will become the official slogan.  The winner
and his/her family will receive an all-expense paid week-long vacation to
Redmond, WA ("The Vacation Capital of East Central Washington State"),
including a guided tour of the Microsoft campus and a personal ten minute
photo-opportunity with Chairman Bill.

We personally believe that "Don't Think About Going Anywhere Else Today"
would make a perfect Microsoft slogan.  "Crashes Are Normal" might also be a
good choice.
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "State Innovation Day"

Microsoft has successfully lobbied for the State of Washington to declare
August 24th as State Innovation Day.  Efforts are underway to lobby the US
Congress to decree a similar designation nationally.  Several events are
scheduled on August 24, 1999 to showcase "innovation" in the computer
industry (in other words, Microsoft), including:

* An "Innovation Day Parade" held in downtown Seattle, featuring
floats and helium-filled balloons representing various Microsoft products
(Dancing Paper Clip, Microsoft Bob, Flying Windows Logo, etc.)

* An "Innovation is Cool" essay contest for high school and
college students.  Possible topics include "Why IE Should Be Integrated in
Windows", "Why Bill Gates Is My Hero", "Government Intervention is Evil",
and "Why Monopolies Improve Product Quality and Lower Prices".

* A 24-hour "Innovation in Education" telethon on NBC to raise money for
school districts nationwide to buy new Wintel computer systems and Internet
access through the Microsoft Network.
Open Source Irrational Constant

BREEZEWOOD, PA -- In a revelation that could rock the foundations of
science, a researcher in Pennsylvania has discovered that the digits of the
irrational constant PI encode a version of the Linux kernel.  "I can't
believe it," the researcher, Neil Hoffman, exclaimed.  "And yet, here I am
staring at what appears to be the source code for Linux kernel 5.0.0.
Needless to say, my whole world-view has changed..."

Hoffman explained, "My algorithm, which applies several dozen conversions and
manipulations to each digit of PI, spits out plain vanilla ASCII characters
that happen to form the source code for the Linux kernel."

Many members of the scientific community are skeptical.  One One
mathematician who has memorized the digits of PI to 10,000 places said,
"This is the kind of nonsense one would expect to find in a tabloid such as
the National Mathematics Enquirer.  Or a Linux fortune(6) file.  Hoffman's
'discovery' is obviously a hoax designed to secure government research
grants."

In a related matter, we have received an unconfirmed report that a region of
the Mandelbrot fractal contains what appear to be the words "LINUS TORVALDS
WAS HERE".  In addition, the words "TRANSMETA: THIS SECRET MESSAGE IS NOT
HERE YET" supposedly appear within the depths of the Julia Set.
Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has
turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history.
The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair",
modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines.

"It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked
through the Tuxissa virus source code.  "This virus goes well beyond the
feeble troublemaking of Melissa.  It actually configures a UMSDOS partition
on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down
version of Slackware Linux."

The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important
Message About Windows Security".  The text of the body says, "I want to let
you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT,
Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your
system against these attacks.  Visit these sites for more information..."
The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free
software.

Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy.  The "Anonymous
Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's
gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution".
Invasion of the Dancing Penguin

Those annoying, dancing cartoon characters embedded in software applications
are no longer confined to Microsoft programs.  They have entered the realm
of Linux.  A new Linux distribution under development, called LinTux,
promises to provide a more "user-friendly" environment through its "Dancing
Penguin" assistant.

Dancing Tux will "guide" users through the installation process and will be
a permanent fixture of the X root window.  The LinTux staff demonstrated a
prototype version of the Dancing Tux program to this Humorix reporter.  It
was certainly impressive, but, like the Dancing Paper Clip in Microsoft
Office, it becomes annoying very fast.

The one redeeming feature of LinTux is that, when the system is idle,
Dancing Tux becomes a make-shift screen saver.  The animations included in
the prototype were quite amusing.  For instance, in one scene, Tux chases
Bill Gates through an Antarctic backdrop.  In another animation, Tux can be
seen drinking beers with his penguin pals and telling Microsoft jokes.
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

January 2099: Rob Malda Finally Gets His Damned Nano-Technology

The Linux hacker community finally breathed a collective sigh of relief
when it was announced that Rob Malda finally got his damned
nanotechnology.

"It's about time!" exclaimed one Dothead. "He been going on about that
crap since god-knows-when. Now that he's got that and those wearable
computers, maybe we can read about something interesting on Slashdot!"

Observers were skeptical, however. Already the now-immortal Rob Malda
nano-cyborg (who reportedly changed his name to "18 of 49, tertiary
adjunct of something-or-other") has picked up a few new causes to shout
about to the high heavens until everyone's ears start bleeding. In one
Slashdot article, Malda writes "Here's an article about the potential of
large greyish high-tech mile-wide cubes flying through space, all
controlled by a collective mind set upon intergalactic conquest.
Personally, I can't wait. Yum."
When Computers Crash

HOLLYWOOD -- The FOX TV Network has announced a new series of "reality
shows" to be aired over the summer. The series, "When Computers Crash",
will consist of five hour-long shows documenting the aftermath of serious
computer crashes, failures, and other problems. This show comes on the
heels of other FOX reality shows such as "World's Funniest Antitrust Trial
Bloopers", "When Stupid TV Network Executives Create Bad Show Ideas", and
"When Lame Fortune Files Poke Fun At FOX Reality Shows"...

To coincide with the series, FOX will sponsor a publicity gimmick called
"Crash & Win!" Contest participants will download a free Windows 9x/NT
program that keeps track of the number of Blue Screens, Illegal
Operations, or other fatal errors that force a reboot. When a crash
occurs, the program will log it in an encrypted database, which will be
periodically uploaded to the "FOX Crash & Win!" server.

Prizes such as a "Deciphering Windows Error Messages for Dummies" book, a
1999 Ford "Gasguzzler" Sport Utility Vehicle, or a lifetime supply of
stress relief medication will be awarded to participants based on the
number of crashes they log.
The GPL Is Not Y2K-Compliant!

BOSTON, MA -- Panic ensued earlier today at GNU Project Headquarters when
it was discovered that the GNU General Public License is not ready for the
year 2000. Thankfully, the panic quickly subsided when RMS posted an
emergency diff file to Usenet that patches the GPL to eliminate the
problem.

The non-Y2K compliant material appears on lines 295 and 316 of version 2.0
of the GPL. Both lines contain the text, "Copyright (C) 19yy ", a classic
example of unpreparedness for the year 2000.

Microsoft was quick to respond to the news, saying in a rushed press
release, "At least our license agreements don't contain any Y2K issues."
The GNU Project immediately countered Microsoft's statement with a press
release that said simply, "Whatever".
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#1)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 1: What is your opinion of the Microsoft antitrust trial?

A. The DoJ is wasting taxpayer's money. Now, if the DOJ were to upgrade
   all of its computer systems to Windows, then the department would be
   making wise use of tax dollars.

B. All of the Microsoft email messages that the evil government has
   presented as evidence are obviously taken out of context or have been
   completely twisted around. I mean... Bill Gates would never say "let's
   cut off their air supply" in a memo; it's an obvious fabrication.

C. Judge Jackson is obviously biased in favor of the DOJ's vigilante
   persecution of Microsoft.

D. If Microsoft loses, it will be the gravest miscarriage of justice in
   all the history of mankind.
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#9)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 9: Which of the following do you prefer as a replacement for the
            current Microsoft slogan?

A. "Over 20 Years of Innovation"
B. "Wintel Inside"
C. "Your Windows And Gates To The World"
D. "Because Anti-Trust Laws Are Obsolete"
E. "One Microsoft Way. It's Much More Than An Address!"
F. "This Motto Is Not Anti-Competitive. And Neither Is Microsoft."
G. "Fighting the Department of Injustice Since Day One"
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#13)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 13: Which of the following new Microsoft products do you plan on
             buying within the next 6 months?

A. Windows For Babies(tm) - Using an enhanced "click-n-drool" interface,
   babies will be able to learn how to use a Wintel computer, giving them
   a head start in living in a Microsoft-led world.

B. Where In Redmond Is Carmen Sandiego?(tm) - The archvillian Sandiego has
   stolen the Windows source code and must be stopped before she can
   publish it on the Net.

C. ActiveKeyboard 2000(tm) - An ergonomic keyboard that replaces useless
   keys like SysRq and Scroll Lock with handy keys like "Play Solitaire"
   and "Visit Microsoft.com".

D. Visual BatchFile(tm) - An IDE and compiler for the MS-DOS batch file
   language. MSNBC calls it "better than Perl".
Slashdot Effect Vaporizes Ganymede
  -- Submitted by Dave Finton
  
In one of the more bizarre consequences of the infamous "Slashdot Effect",
Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, was completely and utterly
destroyed when CmdrTaco posted an article about the Hubble Space
Telescope's latest round of images and discoveries.

"It all started when we put up some more info on our web page about
Jupiter and Ganymede," said one NASA guy whom we believe may be in charge
of something. "CmdrTaco got wind of it, and posted it on his site."

According to observers, the webserver promptly exploded thereafter,
damaging the nearby remote control system used to aim and focus the
Hubble's cameras from the ground.

"All of the sudden our controls went wacky!" said one engineer. "The
Hubble then started shooting these death rays all over the universe. One
of those rays hit Ganymede, and *POOF*. There it went! We were all like,
'COOOOOL! Let's aim it something else!'"
Jargon Coiner (#1)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* WINCURSE: Loud expletive uttered when a Linux user comes face-to-face
  with a computer containing a WinModem.

  Example: "Eric wincursed when his mother showed him the new computer she
  bought from CompUSSR... which contained a WinModem and a WinSoundCard."

* WIND'OH KEY: Nickname given to the three useless Windows keys that come
  on virtually all new keyboards. These keys are often hit by mistake
  instead of CTRL or ALT, causing the user to shout "D'oh!"

* DE-WIND'OH!ED KEYBOARD: (1) A new keyboard produced without any wind'oh!
  keys or a "Enhanced for Windows 95/98" logo. Extremely rare. (2) A
  keyboard in which the wind'oh! keys have been physically removed.
Jargon Coiner (#2)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* SLASHDUP EFFECT, THE: Accidentally posting two or more duplicate
  comments to Slashdot, usually as the result of hitting ENTER at the
  wrong time or fumbling with the Preview option.

* YOU'VE GOT SLOGAN: The tendency for reporters to parody the stupid
  "You've Got Mail" saying when writing about AOL.

  Example: "You've Got Spam", "You've Got Merger" (the headline for an
  article about the Netscape/AOL Merger From Hell)

* PENGUINIZATION: Ongoing trend to slap a picture of Tux Penguin next to
  anything even remotely related to Linux.

* IDLESURF: Aimless surfing of the Internet; looking for something
  interesting to read while killing time. Often involves reloaded the
  Slashdot homepage every 5 minutes to see if a new article has been
  posted.
Jargon Coiner (#3)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* LILOSPLAININ': Arduous process of explaining why there's now a LILO boot
  prompt on the office computer.

  Example: "John had some lilosplainin' to do after his boss turned on the
  computer and the Windows splash screen didn't appear."

* UPTIME DOWNER: Depression that strikes a Linux sysadmin after his uptime
  is ruined. Can be caused by an extended power outtage, a pet chewing
  through the power cord, a lightning bolt striking the power line, or an
  urgent need to reboot into Windows to read a stupid Word document.

* OSTR (Off-Switch Total Recall): The sudden recollection of something
  terribly important you need to do online that occurs exactly 0.157
  seconds after you've shut down your computer.
Jargon Coiner (#4)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* FREE LECTURE: Attempting to explain the concepts of Linux, Open Source
  software, free software, and gift cultures to someone who is not
  familiar with them. Made extra difficult if the explainee has been
  misled by superficial mainstream news articles about the subject.

  Example: "Eric gave an hour-long free lecture to his mother-in-law after
  she asked him about this Linux thingy she read about in USA Today."

* LEXICON LAZINESS:  Filling a fortune file with a list of fake jargon
  instead of publishing something more substantive (and funny) that would
  take more effort to write.

* FOR(;;)TUNE LOOP: Repeatedly running fortune(6) for cheap entertainment.

  Example: "During a coffee break, Bob became bored and started a
  for(;;)tune loop. His boss had to issue a SIGTERM to get him to resume
  working."
Jargon Coiner (#5)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* DUKE OF URL: A person who publishes their Netscape bookmark file on
  their homepage.

* WWWLIZE (pronounced wuh-wuh-wuh-lize): Habit of unconsciously appending
  www. in front of URLs, even when it's not necessary.

* DUBYA-DUBYA-DUBYA: Common pronounciation of "double-u double-u double-u"
  when orally specifying a wwwlized address.

* ADVOIDANCE: iding a particularly annoying advertising banner by dragging
  another window over it, or by placing your hand on the monitor to cover
  it up.

  Example: "Bob advoided any Microsoft banners he came across."
Jargon Coiner (#6)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* STOP MIRAGE: Trying to click on an imaginary Stop button on a program's
  toolbar after doing something you didn't want to. Usually caused as the
  result of excessive use of Netscape.

* YA-PREFIX: Putting "another" or "yet another" in front of a name or
  tacking "YA" in front of an acronym.

  Example: "We could ya-prefix this fortune by titling it 'Yet Another
  Lame List of Fabricated Jargon'."

* DOMAINEERING: Using a service like Netcraft to determine what operating
  system and webserver a particular domain is running.

* NOT-A-SALTINE EXPLANATION: The canned response given to someone who
  uses the term "hacker" instead of "cracker".
Jargon Coiner (#6)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* TLDography (pronounced till-daw-graffy): The study of top leval domains.

  Example: "I asked my friend, a TLDographer, what country .ca stood for,
  and he responded, 'California, of course'."

* TLDofy (pronounced till-duh-fy): Identifying a country by its top level
  domain.

  Example: "Oh, so you're from .de? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

* HTML lapse: A period of time when the brain slips into thinking in HTML.
Jargon Coiner (#7)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* O'REILLY O'WRITING: Going to a bookstore and copying down notes from an
  O'Reilly computer book that you can't afford.

* DEEP WRITE MODE: Similar to "deep hack mode", but applies to people
  writing editorials or (very rarely) Slashdot comments. The author
  of this fortune file sometimes experiences "deep humor mode".

* EDITORIAL WAR: Skirmishes between two or more parties carried out via
  strongly-worded editorials published to sites like Slashdot, Linux
  Today, etc. ESR and RMS are frequently engaged in this.

* THREENYM: Referring to someone by the first letter of their three names.
  Used by some people (RMS and ESR), but not others (has anybody ever
  tried to refer to Linus Torvalds as "LBT"?).
Jargon Coiner (#8)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* STAR SPINOFFS: Applying themes and ideas from "Star Wars" and "Star
  Trek" to contemporary events.

  Examples: "Let the Source be with you!", "Microsoft is the Evil Empire",
  "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated by Microsoft".

* TRADEMARKIZATION(tm): Giving a phrase special meaning by appending a
  trademark symbol to it.

  Examples: "Think Free Speech, Not Free Beer(tm)", "Real Soon Now(tm)",
  "Blue Screen of Death(tm)"
Jargon Coiner (#9)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* RHYMES WITH CYNICS: The final answer to any debate about how to
  pronounce Linux. Of course, "cynics" might not be the best word to
  associate Linux with...

* WISL? (Will It Support Linux?): The very first thought that springs into
  a Linux user's mind when a cool new piece of software or hardware is
  announced.

* JJMD! (Jar Jar Must Die!): Meaningless reply given to a question or poll
  for which you don't have a good answer.

  Example: Question: "When did you stop beating your wife?"
           Answer: "JJMD!"
Jargon Coiner (#10)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* HOBTOB (Hanging Out By The O'Reilly Books): Seeking free Linux technical
  support at a bookstore by waiting near the computer books for a geek to
  come by and then casually asking them for help.

* MOOLA (Marketing Officially Organizes Linux Adoptance):  A press release
  issued by a Dot Com (or Dot Con?) heralding their "support" for Linux
  (i.e. "BigPortal.com adopts Linux as their official operating system by
  adding five Linux-related links to their BigDirectory"); used to inflate
  their stock price and rake in moola even though none of their employees
  have ever used Linux and don't really care.
  
* KARMA KOLLECTOR: Slashdot user who treats the acquisition of "karma" as
  a game; often has a detailed strategy on how to sucker moderators into
  raising the score of their posts (i.e. posting a comment with a title
  like "Microsoft Sucks!!! (Score 3, Insightful)" or using "Only a fool
  would moderate this down" as a signature). See also "Karma Whore".
Jargon Coiner (#12)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* IPO (I've Patented the Obvious): Acquiring patents on trivial things and
  then hitting other companies over the head with them.

  Example: "Amazon just IPO'd one-click spam and is now ready to sue B&N."

* IPO (I'm Pissed Off): Exclamation given by a Linux user who was unable
  to participate in a highly lucrative Linux IPO due to lack of capital or
  E*Trade problems. Also uttered by Linux hackers who did not receive The
  Letter from Red Hat or VA Linux even though their friends did.
  
* YAKBA (Yet Another Killer Backhoe Attack): The acronym that describes
  network outtages caused by a careless backhoe operator.

  Examples: "Don't blame us, our website was offline after we suffered a
  YAKBA". "Don't worry about Y2K, what we need to think about is
  YAKBA-compliance."
Jargon Coiner (#13)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* NINETY-NINERS: In 1849, a horde of people ("Forty-niners") headed to
  California to pan gold and get rich quick. In 1999, a horde of people
  ("Ninety-niners") headed to California to invest in Linux companies and
  get rich quick. Some things never change.

* ZOO: The ubiquitous shelf of O'Reilly Animal Books that many nerds keep
  next to their computer

* THEY'RE MULTIPLYING LIKE PORTALS: The proliferation of Linux portals
  that have the latest headlines from Slashdot and LinuxToday but offer
  little original content.

* YOU CAN SPELL EVIL WITHOUT vi: A curse uttered by freshman Computer
  Science students struggling with vi's insert mode for the first time.
Programming for money sucks... you have to deal with PHBs, 16 hour days,
and spending the night in your cubicle half of the time to avoid the
Commute From Hell...

I minored in Journalism, so I tried to switch into a job as an IT pundit.
You'd think they'd welcome a geek like me with open arms, but they
didn't.  Ziff-Davis wouldn't even give me an interview. I was "too
qualified" they said. Apparently my technical acumen was too much for
their organization, which employs Jesse Berst and the ilk.

It gets worse. I tried to get an entry-level reporting job for a
local-yokel paper. After the interview they gave me a "skills test": I had
to compose an article using Microsoft Word 97. Since I've never touched a
Windows box, I had no clue how to use it. When I botched the test, the
personnel manager spouted, "Your resume said you were a computer
programmer. Obviously you're a liar. Get out of my office now!"

  -- Excerpt from a horror story about geek discrimination during
     the Geek Grok '99 telethon
OPPRESSED GEEK: Everybody keeps blaming me for the Y2K problem, the
Melissa Virus, Windows crashes... you name it. When somebody finds out
you're a bona fide geek, they start bugging you about computer problems. I
frequently hear things like, "Why can't you geeks make Windows work
right?", "What kind of idiot writes a program that can't handle the year
2000?", "Geeks are evil, all they do is write viruses", and "The Internet
is the spawn of Satan".

I'm afraid to admit I have extensive computing experience. When somebody
asks what kind of job I have, I always lie. From my experience, admitting
that you're a geek is an invitation to disaster.

LARRY WALL: I know, I know. I sometimes say that I'm the founder of a
pearl harvesting company instead of admitting that I'm the founder of the
Perl programming language.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: This is tragic. We can't live in a world like this. We
need your donations to fight social oppression and ignorance against
geekdom...

   -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon      
Do-It-Yourself IPO

You too can get rich quick by translating an existing Linux
distribution into one of the following untapped markets:

- Babylonian
- Hittite
- Ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphics may be a challenge, though)
- Pig Latin (this may be the strongest type of encryption allowed by the
  DOJ in the near future)
- Mayan
- Cherokee
- Cyrillic (to take advantage of the booming Russian economy)
- Redneck
- Klingon (it's a wonder this hasn't been done yet)
- Wingdings    
      
Once you start marketing your new product, a highly lucrative
self-underwritten IPO is just months away!
Bill Gates Passes Turing Test

LONDON, ENGLAND -- Microsoft proclaimed that they have passed the Turing
Test by creating a Bill Gates multimedia simulacrum that crack BBC
interviewer Jeremy Paxman couldn't distinguish from the real thing. "I
never would have expected this," Paxman said about the Gates AI program.
"After all, this Microsoft program actually worked for an extended period
of time, something you don't see very often."

Microsoft has plans to mass-produce the Bill Gates holographic simulation
by 2010 or so. "The hardware just isn't there yet for home use," a
Microserf explained. "By then, though, Intel's Itanium 6 Super Pro Plus
III CPU running at 600 Ghz or whatever should be sufficient." Windows 2010
is expected to include the Bill Gates simulation, making the World's
Richest Man(tm) accessible to the entire world.

A newly printed brochure for the faux-Gates advertises, "Need help running
Windows 2010? Bill Gates will sit beside you and guide you through the
system. Have a question for the world's sexiest and smartest nerd? He'll
answer it. Wondering if free and open source software is a plot by
Communists freaks to overthrow the free market system? He'll be there to
explain. Want to ask for a personal loan? Sorry, won't happen."          
What Did Santa Claus Bring You In 1999? (#1)

LINUS TORVALDS: Santa didn't bring me anything, but Tim O'Reilly just gave
me a large sum of money to publish my new book, "Linus Torvalds' Official
Guide To Receiving Fame, Fortune, and Hot Babes By Producing Your Own
Unix-Like Operating System In Only 10 Years".

ORDINARY LINUX HACKER: I kept hinting to my friends and family that I
wanted to build my own Beowulf Cluster. My grandmother got mixed up and
gave me a copy of "Beowulf's Chocolate Cluster Cookbook". I like
chocolate, but I would've preferred silicon.

LINUX LONGHAIR: My friends sent me a two-year subscription to several
Ziff-Davis publications, much to my dislike. I don't want to read Jesse
Berst's rants against Linux, or John Dvorak's spiels about how great
Windows 2000 is. Still, I suppose this isn't so bad. Ziff-Davis glossy
paper makes an excellent lining for fireplaces.
What Did Santa Claus Bring You In 1999? (#2)

WEBMASTER OF LINUXSUPERMEGAPORTAL.COM: One of my in-laws gifted me a
CD-ROM containing the text of every "...For Dummies" book ever published.
It's a shame IDG never published "Hiring A Hitman To Knock Off Your
Inlaws... For Dummies", because that's something I'm itching to do. At any
rate, I'm using the CD as a beer coaster.

JESSE BERST: I got a coupon redeemable for the full copy of Windows 2000
when it comes out in February. Win2K is the most innovative,
enterprise-ready, stable, feature-enriched, easy-to-use operating system
on the market. I don't see how Linux can survive against Microsoft's far
superior offering. I ask you: could you get fired for NOT choosing Windows
2000? You bet.

LINUX CONVERT: I kept hinting for a SGI box, but instead my wife got me an
old Packard Bell. Unfortunately, she bought it at CompUSSR, which doesn't
take returns, so I'm stuck with it. I haven't been able to get Linux to
boot on it, so this machine will probably become a $750 paperweight.
Alan Cox Releases Quantum Kernel
Submitted by Dave Finton

A surprising development in the linux-kernel mailing list surfaced when
Alan Cox announced the release of a 2.2 Linux kernel existing both as an
official stable kernel and as a prepatch kernel. This immediately spurred
the creation of two different realities (and hence two different Alan
Coxes), where a kernel would not settle down to one or the other state
until someone looked at it.

"I think this resulted from the large number of 'final' prepatch kernels
prior to the 2.2.14 release," said David Miller, kernel networking guru
and gas station attendent (he'll settle down to one or the other state
when someone looks at him).

When word of this development spread to Microsoft, Bill Gates was
extremely delighted. The Redmond, WA campus has been plagued with quantum
fluctuations ever since the inception of Windows 2000 back in 1992. "Our
release date has been existing in infinitely many states since the very
beginning," said a Microsoft spokesperson. "This just shows the Linux
operating system cannot scale to multiple realities as well as our OS."
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#2)

Don't throw out that old Red Hat Linux 3.0 CD. A group of entrepreneurs
are hording vintage Linux items in the hopes that they will become hot
collector's items in the coming decades. The venture, called "Money Grows
On Binary Trees", hopes to amass a warehouse full of old Linux
distributions, books, stuffed penguins, promotional material, and Linus
Torvalds autographs.

"Nobody thought pieces of cardstock featuring baseball players would be
worth anything..." the founder of Binary Trees said. "That 'Linux For
Dummies' book sitting in your trash could be the next Babe Ruth card."

The company organized a Linux Collectibles Convention last week in Silicon
Valley, drawing in a respectable crowd of 1,500 people and 20 exhibitors.
The big attraction was a "Windows For Dummies" book actually signed by
Linus Torvalds. "He signed it back at a small Linux conference in '95,"
the owner explained. "He didn't realize it was a Dummies book because I
had placed an O'Reilly cover on it... Somebody at the convention offered
me $10,000 for it, but that seemed awfully low. I hope to sell it on eBay
next month with a reserve price containing a significant number of zeros."
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#3)

In the "Cathedral and the Bazaar", ESR mentions that one motivation behind
Open Source software is ego-gratification. That's where OpenEgo, Inc.
comes in. For a fee, the hackers at OpenEgo will produce a piece of Open
Source software and distribute it in your name, thus building up your
reputation and ego. You can quickly become the envy of all your friends --
without lifting a finger. Want a higher-paying tech job? With OpenEgo's
services, you'll look like an Open Source pro in no time, and have dozens
of hot job offers from across the country.

Says the OpenEgo sales literature, "Designing, implementing, maintaining,
and promoting a successful Open Source project is a pain. However, at
OpenEgo, we do all the work while you reap all the rewards..." A page on
the OpenEgo site claims, "We produced a Linux kernel patch for one
customer last year that was immediately accepted by Linus Torvalds...
Within days the person gained employment at Transmeta and is now on the
road to IPO riches..."

Prices range from $1,000 for a small program to $5,000 for a kernel patch.
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#4)

The buzz surrounding Linux and Open Source during 1999 has produced a
large number of billionnaires. However, people who weren't employed by Red
Hat or VA Linux, or who didn't receive The Letter, are still poor. The
visionaries at The IPO Factory want to change all that.

As the name suggests, this company helps other businesses get off the
ground, secure investments from Venture Capitalists, and eventually hold
an IPO that exits the stratosphere. "You can think of us as meta-VCs," the
IPO Factory's founder said. "You provide the idea... and we do the rest.
If your company doesn't hold a successful IPO, you get your money back,
guaranteed!" He added quickly, "Of course, if you do undergo a billion
dollar IPO, we get to keep 25% of your stock."

The company's first customer, LinuxOne, has been a failure. "From now on
we're only going to service clients that actually have a viable product,"
an IPO Factory salesperson admitted. "Oh, and we've learned our lesson:
it's not a good idea to cut-and-paste large sections from Red Hat's S-1
filing."
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#2)
(held during Super Bowl Sunday 2000 at the Silicon Valley Transmeta Dome)

BRYANT DUMBELL: Look out! Here comes Linus Torvalds himself to deliver the
starting chug. The crowd is going wild... all 64 people in the stands are
on their feet! Here we go... Linus is lifting up the Ceremonial Beer
Can... he's flipping off the top...

JOHN SPLADDEN: You can feel the excitement in the air! Wow!

DUMBELL: ...And there he goes! Wow... he chugged that beer in only 1.4
seconds... Let's see Bill top that! What a remarkable display to kick off
this grandest of all nerd sporting events.

SPLADDEN: "Nerd sporting event"? Isn't that an oxymoron?

DUMBELL: Linus is now waving to the crowd... Oops!  He just belched.
NOTICE

LinuxForecast.com has issued a Slashdot Effect Watch for your domain
effective for the next 48 hours. Forecast models indicate that Taco Boy is
planning on posting an article about your "Penguin Porn" site. The models
disagree on the timing or duration of the storm, although we can say that
a moderate risk of server crashes, excess bandwidth usage, and increased
website hosting bills are possible.

Please take appropriate action by mirroring your site. It might be too
late now, but you might also want to consider purchasing Denial Of Service
Insurance.
I Want My Bugs!

An entymologist in Georgia is threatening to sue Microsoft over false
advertising in Windows 2000. "According to Microsoft, Win2K contains
63,000 bugs," he explained. "However, the shrink-wrapped box I purchased
at CompUSSR only had one cockroach along with some worthless papers and a
shiny drink coaster. I got ripped off."

The entymologist hoped that the 63,000 promised bugs would greatly add to
his insect collection. "I had my doubts that Microsoft could deliver
63,000 insects in one small box for only US$299," he said. "However, with
a company as innovative as Microsoft, the sky is the limit. Or at least
that's what I thought." He then asked angrily, "Where do I want to go
today? Back to the store for a refund!"
Man Charged With Crashing Windows

MOUNTAIN HOME, AR -- Eric Turgent, a closet Linux advocate, was arrested
yesterday for intentionally crashing his co-worker's Windows box at the
offices of the "Roadkill Roundup" newspaper. Turgent disputes the charges,
saying, "If causing an operating system to crash is illegal, than why
isn't Bill Gates serving life without parole?"

Turgent's co-worker, Mr. Stu Poor, the clueless technology pundit for the
newspaper, is a heavy Microsoft supporter. He frequently brags in his
weekly Tech Talk column that he "once had a conversation with Bill Gates."
A heated argument broke out yesterday morning in which the two insulted
each other ("You're nothing but a Linux hippie freak on the Red Hat
payroll!" vs. "You make Jesse Berst and Fred Moody look like [expletive]
geniuses!") for two hours.

At the heat of the moment, Turgent shoved Poor aside and typed in
"C:\CON\CON". The machine crashed and the pundit lost all of his work (a
real loss to humanity, to be sure). Turgent is in jail awaiting trial for
violating the "Slash Crashes Act". This bill was enacted in 1999 after a
Senator's gigabyte cache of pornography was destroyed by a Windows crash.
If Microsoft uses the breakup as an opportunity to port Office, and its
infernal Dancing Paper Clip, to my Linux operating system, heads will fly!
I'll track down that idiot who created Clippit and sic a killer penguin on
him!

   -- Linus Torvalds, when asked by Humorix for his reaction
      to the proposed Microsoft two-way split
Right now hundreds of Anonymous Cowards are cheering the fact that only
Windows boobs are victims of ILOVEYOU and other email viruses. I realize
Outlook is so insecure that using it is like posting a sign outside your
door saying, "DOOR UNLOCKED -- ROB ME!". However, Linux isn't immune. If I
had a dollar for every pine buffer overflow uncovered, I could buy a
truckload of fresh herring.

I expect the next mass email virus to spread will be cross-platform. If
the recipient is a Windows/Outlook luser, they'll get hit. If the
recipient is a Linux/pine user, they'll find themselves staring at a
self-executing bash script that's has just allocated 1 petabyte of memory
and crashed the system (or worse).

Either that or the next mass email virus will only damage Linux systems. I
can just see Bill Gates assigning some junior programmer that very task.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

   -- A speech given at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy]
      Convention (ConConCon) by an anonymous creature said to
      be "wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo".
Security Holes Found In Microsoft Easter Eggs

REDMOND, WA -- It's damage control time for the Microsoft Marketing
Machine. Not only have exploits been found in IE, Outlook, and even the
Dancing Paper Clip, but now holes have been uncovered in Excel's Flight
Simulator and Word's pinball game.

"If you enter Excel 97's flight simulator and then hit the F1, X, and
SysRq keys while reading a file from Drive A:, you automatically gain
Administrator rights on Windows NT," explained the security expert who
first discovered the problem. "And that's just the tip of the iceberg."

Office 97 and 2000 both contain two hidden DLLs, billrulez.dll and
eastereggs.dll, that are marked as "Safe for scripting" but are not.
Arbitrary Visual BASIC code can be executed using these files. More
disturbing, however, are the undocumented API calls
"ChangeAllPasswordsToDefault", "OpenBackDoor", "InitiateBlueScreenNow",
and "UploadRegistryToMicrosoft" within easter~1.dll.

Microsoft spokesdroids have already hailed the problem as "an
insignificant byproduct of Microsoft innovation."
Brief History Of Linux (#1)
Re-Inventing the Wheel

Our journey through the history of Linux begins ca. 28000 B.C. when a
large all-powerful company called MoogaSoft monopolized the wheel-making
industry. As founder of the company, Billga Googagates (rumored to be the
distant ancestor of Bill Gates) was the wealthiest man in the known world,
owning several large rock huts, an extravagant collection of artwork (cave
paintings), and a whole army of servants and soldiers.

MoogaSoft's unfair business practices were irritating, but users were
unable to do anything about them, lest they be clubbed to death by
MoogaSoft's army. Nevertheless, one small group of hobbyists finally got
fed up and starting hacking their own wheels out of solid rock. Their
spirit of cooperation led to better and better wheels that eventually
outperformed MoogaSoft offerings.

MoogaSoft tried desperately to stop the hobbyists -- as shown by the
recently unearthed "Ooga! Document" -- but failed. Ironically, Billga
Googagates was killed shortly afterwards when one his own 900-pound wheels
crushed him.
Brief History Of Linux (#3)
Lawyers Unite

Humanity faced a tremendous setback ca. 1100 A.D., when the first law
school was established in Bologna. Ironically, the free exchange of ideas
at the law school spurred the law students to invent new ways (patents,
trademarks, copyrights) to stifle the free exchange of ideas in other
industries.

If, at some point in the future, you happen upon a time machine, we here
at Humorix (and, indeed, the whole world) implore you to travel back to
1100, track down a law teacher called Irnerius, and prevent him from
founding his school using whatever means necessary. Your contribution to
humanity will truly make the world (in an alternate timeline) a better
place.
Brief History Of Linux (#4)
Walls & Windows

Most people don't realize that many of the technological innovations taken
for granted in the 20th Century date back centuries ago. The concept of a
network "firewall", for instance, is a product of the Great Wall of China,
a crude attempt to keep raging forest fires out of Chinese territory. It
was soon discovered that the Wall also kept Asian intruders ("steppe
kiddies") out, just as modern-day firewalls keep network intruders
("script kiddies") out.

Meanwhile, modern terminology for graphical user interfaces originated
from Pre-Columbian peoples in Central and South America. These natives
would drag-and-drop icons (sculptures of the gods) into vast pits of
certain gooey substances during a ritual in which "mice" (musical
instruments that made a strange clicking sound) were played to an eerie
beat.
Brief History Of Linux (#8)
Let's all holler for Hollerith

In 1890 the US Congress wanted to extend the census to collect exhaustive
demographic information on each citizen that could be resold to marketing
companies to help pay for the newly installed gold-plated toilets on
Capitol Hill. Experts estimated that the 1890 Census wouldn't be completed
until 1900.  It was hoped that an electronic tabulating machine using
punchcards designed by Herman Hollerith would speed up the process.

It didn't quite work out that way. An infestation of termites ate their
way through the wooden base of Hollerith's machines, and then a wave of
insects devoured several stacks of punchcards.  Also, some Hollerith
models had the propensity to crash at the drop of a hat... literally. In
one instance, the operator dropped his hat and when he reached down to
pick it up, he bumped the machine, causing it to flip over and crash.

These flaws meant that the census was delayed for several years. However,
the system was, in the words of one newspaper reporter, "good enough for
government work", a guiding principle that lives on to this very day and
explains the government's insistence on using Windows-based PCs.
Brief History Of Linux (#9)
Edison's most important invention

One of Thomas Edison's most profound inventions was that of patent
litigation. Edison used his many patents on motion pictures to monopolize
the motion picture industry. One could argue that Edison was an early
pioneer for the business tactics employed by Microsoft and the MPAA.

Indeed, Edison's company, the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC), formed
in 1908, bears a striking resemblance to the modern-day Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA). Similar initials, different people, same
evil. The MPCC, with the help of hired thugs, ensured that all motion
picture producers paid tribute to Edison and played by his rules. The
MPAA, with the help of hired lawyers, ensures that all motion picture
producers pay tribute and play by their rules.

Ironically, filmmakers that found themselves facing Edison patent
litigation (or worse) fled to Texas, California, and Mexico. Those same
filmmakers outlasted Edison's monopoly and eventually banded together to
form the MPAA! History has a tendency to repeat itself; so it seems likely
that today's DVD lawsuit victims may well come to power in the future --
and soon become the evil establishment, thus completing another cycle.
Brief History Of Linux (#10)
The AnyQuack Computer

One electronic machine, Colossus, was used by the British in World War II
to decode Nazi transmissions. The code-breakers were quite successful in
their mission, except for the tiny detail that nobody knew how to read
German. They had decoded unreadable messages into... unreadable messages.

Two years later in 1945, a group of professors and students at the Univ.
of Pennsylvania were discussing computing theory. An argument ensued, in
which one professor yelled, "Any quack can build an electronic computer!
The real challenge is building one that doesn't crash every five minutes."

One graduate student, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., responded, "I'm any quack!
I'll take you up on that challenge. I'll build a device that can calculate
1,000 digits of pi in one hour... without crashing!" Several professors
laughed; "Such high-speed calculations are beyond our level of technology."

Eckert and his friends did build such a device. As a joke, he called the
machine "AnyQuack", which eventually became ENIAC -- ENIAC's Not Intended
As Crashware, the first known example of a self-referential acronym.
Brief History Of Linux (#13)
Wanted: Eunuchs programmers

Everything you know about the creation of the Unix operating system is
wrong. We have uncovered the truth: Unix was a conspiracy hatched by
Ritchie and Thompson to thwart the AT&T monopoly that they worked for. The
system, code-named EUNUCHS (Electronic UNtrustworthy User-Condemning
Horrible System), was horribly conceived, just as they had planned.

The OS, quickly renamed to a more respectable "Unix", was adopted first by
Ma Bell's Patent Department and then by the rest of the monopoly. AT&T saw
an inexpensive, multi-user, portable operating system that it had all
rights to; the authors, however, saw a horrible, multi-crashing system
that the Evil Ma Bell Empire would become hopelessly dependent on. AT&T
would go bankrupt trying to maintain the system and eventually collapse.

That didn't happen. Ritchie and Thompson were too talented to create a
crappy operating system; no matter how hard they tried the system was too
good. Their last ditch effort to sabotage the system by recoding it
obfuscated C was unsuccessful. Before long Unix spread outside of Bell
Labs and their conspiracy collapsed.
Brief History Of Linux (#14)
Military Intelligence: Not an oxymoron in 1969

It was the Department Of Defense that commissioned the ARPANET in 1969, a
rare example of the US military breaking away from its official motto,
"The Leading Edge Of Yesterday's Technology(tm)".

In the years leading up to 1969, packet switching technology had evolved
enough to make the ARPANET possible. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
received the ARPA contract in 1968 for packet switching "Interface Message
Processors". US Senator Edward Kennedy, always on the ball, sent a
telegram to BBN praising them for their non-denominational "Interfaith"
Message Processors, an act unsurpassed by elected representatives until Al
Gore invented the Internet years later.

While ARPANET started with only four nodes in 1969, it evolved rapidly.
Email was first used in 1971; by 1975 the first mailing list, MsgGroup,
was created by Steve Walker when he sent a "First post!"  messages to it.
In 1979 all productive use of ARPANET ceased when USENET and the first MUD
were created. In 1983, when the network surpassed 1,000 hosts, a study
showed that 90.4% of all traffic was devoted to email and USENET flame wars.
Brief History Of Linux (#15)
Too many hyphens: Traf-O-Data and Micro-soft

Bill Gates and Paul Allen attended an exclusive private school in Seattle.
In 1968, after raising $3,000 from a yard sale, they gained access to a
timeshare computer and became addicted. After depleting their money
learning BASIC and playing Solitaire, they convinced a company to give
them free computer time in exchange for reporting bugs -- ironically, an
early form of Open Source development!

The two then founded a small company called Traf-O-Data that collected and
analyzed traffic counts for municipalities using a crude device based on
the Intel "Pretanium" 8008 CPU. They had some success at first, but ran
into problems when they were unable to deliver their much hyped
next-generation device called "TrafficX". An engineer is quoted as saying
that "Traf-O-Data is the local leader in vaporware", the first documented
usage of the term that has come to be synonymous with Bill Gates.

Soon thereafter, the two developed their own BASIC interpreter, and sold
it to MITS for their new Altair computer. April 4, 1975 is the fateful day
that Micro-soft was founded in Albuquerque, NM as a language vendor.
Brief History Of Linux (#17)
If only Gary had been sober

When Micro-soft moved to Seattle in 1979, most of its revenue came from
sales of BASIC, a horrible language so dependant on GOTOs that spaghetti
looked more orderly than its code did. (BASIC has ruined more promising
programmers than anything else, prompting its original inventor Dartmouth
University to issue a public apology in 1986.)

However, by 1981 BASIC hit the backburner to what is now considered the
luckiest break in the history of computing: MS-DOS. (We use the term
"break" because MS-DOS was and always will be broken.) IBM was developing
a 16-bit "personal computer" and desperately needed an OS to drive it.

Their first choice was Gary Kildall's CP/M, but IBM never struck a deal
with him. We've discovered the true reason: Kildall was drunk at the time
the IBM representatives went to talk with him. A sober man would not have
insulted the reps, calling their employer an "Incredibly Bad Monopoly" and
referring to their new IBM-PC as an "Idealistically Backwards
Microcomputer for People without Clues". Needless to say, Gary "I Lost The
Deal Of The Century" Kildall was not sober.
Brief History Of Linux (#17)
Terrible calamity

IBM chose Microsoft's Quick & Dirty Operating System instead of CP/M for
its new line of PCs. QDOS (along with the abomination known as EDLIN) had
been acquired from a Seattle man, Tim Paterson, for the paltry sum of
$50,000. "Quick" and "Dirty" were truly an accurate description of this
system, because IBM's quality assurance department discovered 300 bugs in
QDOS's 8,000 lines of assember code (that's about 1 bug per 27 lines --
which, at the time, was appalling, but compared with Windows 98 today, it
really wasn't that shabby).

Thanks in part to IBM's new marketing slogan, "Nobody Ever Got Fired For
Choosing IBM(tm)", and the release of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program
that everybody and their brother wanted, IBM PCs running DOS flew off the
shelves and, unfortunately, secured Microsoft's runaway success. Bill
Gates was now on his way to the Billionaire's Club; his days as a mediocre
programmer were long gone: he was now a Suit. The only lines of code he
would ever see would be the passcodes to his Swiss bank accounts.
Brief History Of Linux (#18)
The rise and rise of the Microsoft Empire

The DOS and Windows releases kept coming, and much to everyone's surprise,
Microsoft became more and more successful. This brought much frustration
to computer experts who kept predicting the demise of Microsoft and the
rise of Macintosh, Unix, and OS/2.

Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft, which was the prime reason
that DOS and Windows prevailed. Oh, and DOS had better games as well,
which we all know is the most important feature an OS can have.

In 1986 Microsoft's continued success prompted the company to undergo a
wildly successful IPO. Afterwards, Microsoft and Chairman Bill had
accumulated enough money to acquire small countries without missing a
step, but all that money couldn't buy quality software. Gates could,
however, buy enough marketing and hype to keep MS-DOS (Maybe Some Day an
Operating System) and Windows (Will Install Needless Data On While System)
as the dominant platforms, so quality didn't matter. This fact was
demonstrated in Microsoft's short-lived slogan from 1988, "At Microsoft,
quality is job 1.1".
Brief History Of Linux (#20)
Linux is born

Linus' superhuman programming talent produced, within a year, a full
operating system that rivaled Minix. The first official announcement on
comp.os.minix came October 5th, in which Linus wrote these famous words:

   Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote
   their own device drivers? Do you want to cut your teeth on an operating
   system that will achieve world domination within 15 years? Want to get
   rich quick by the end of the century by taking money from hordes of
   venture capitalists and clueless Wall Street suits? Need to get even
   with Bill Gates but don't know what to do except throw cream pies at
   him? Then this post might just be for you :-)

Linux (which was known as "Lindows", "Freax", and "Billsux" for short
periods in 1991) hit the bigtime on January 5, 1992 (exactly one year
after Linus wasn't hit by a bus) when version 0.12 was released under the
GNU GPL. Linus called his creation a "better Minix than Minix"; the famous
Linus vs. Tanenbaum flamewar erupted soon thereafter on January 29th and
injured several Usenet bystanders.
Brief History Of Linux (#21)
The GNU Project

Meet Richard M. Stallman, an MIT hacker who would found the GNU Project
and create Emacs, the operating-system-disguised-as-a-text-editor. RMS,
the first member of the Three Initials Club (joined by ESR and JWZ),
experienced such frustration with software wrapped in arcane license
agreements that he embarked on the GNU Project to produce free software.

His journey began when he noticed this fine print for a printer driver:

   You do not own this software. You own a license to use one copy of this
   software, a license that we can revoke at any time for any reason
   whatsoever without a refund. You may not copy, distribute, alter,
   disassemble, or hack the software. The source code is locked away in a
   vault in Cleveland. If you say anything negative about this software
   you will be in violation of this license and required to forfeit your
   soul and/or first born child to us.

The harsh wording of the license shocked RMS. The computer industry was in
it's infancy, which could only mean it was going to get much, much worse.
Brief History Of Linux (#23)

Linus Torvalds certainly wasn't the only person to create their own
operating system from scratch. Other people working from their leaky
basements did create their own systems and now they are sick that they
didn't become an Alpha Geek like Torvalds or a Beta Geek like Alan Cox.

Linus had one advantage not many else did: Internet access. The world was
full of half-implemented-Unix-kernels at the time, but they were sitting
isolated on some hacker's hard drive, destined to be destroyed by a hard
drive crash. Thankfully that never happened to Linux, mostly because
everyone with Net access could download a copy instead of paying shipping
charges to receive the code on a huge stack of unreliable floppy disks.

Indeed, buried deep within a landfill in Lansing, Michigan sits a stack of
still-readable 5-1/4 floppies containing the only known copy of "Windows
Killer", a fully functional Unix kernel so elegant, so efficient, so
easy-to-use that Ken Thompson himself would be jealous of its design.
Unfortunately the author's mother threw out the stack of floppies in a
bout of spring cleaning. The 14 year old author's talents were lost
forever as his parents sent him to Law School.
Brief History Of Linux (#24)
Linus Torvalds quotes from his interview in "LinuxNews" (October 1992):

"I doubt Linux will be here to stay, and maybe Hurd is the wave of the
future (and maybe not)..."

"I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies
out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make
weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed
as much when things stabilize." [If only he knew what he was getting into.]

"World domination? No, I'm not interested in that. Galactic domination, on
the other hand..."

"Several people have already wondered if Linux should adopt a logo or
mascot. Somebody even suggested a penguin for some strange reason, which I
don't particularly like: how is a flightless bird supposed to represent an
operating system? Well, it might work okay for Microsoft or even Minix..."

"I would give Andy Tanenbaum a big fat 'F'."
Brief History Of Linux (#25)

By the mid-1990's the Linux community was burgeoning as countless geeks
fled Redmond monopolistic oppression, Armonk cluelessness, and Cupertino
click-and-drool reality distortion fields. By late 1991 there was an
informal Linux User Group in Finland, although its primary focus was Linux
advocacy, not drinking beer and telling Microsoft jokes as most do today.

Kernel development continued at a steady clip, with more and more people
joining in and hoping that their patches would be accepted by the
Benevolent Dictator himself. To have a patch accepted by Linus was like
winning the Nobel Prize, but to face rejection was like being rejected
from Clown College. The reputation game certainly sparked some flame wars.

One of the most memorable crisis was over the behavior of the delete and
backspace keys. A certain faction of hackers wanted the Backspace key to
actually backspace and the Delete key to actually delete. Linus wasn't too
keen on the proposed changes; "It Works For Me(tm)" is all he said. Some
observers now think Linus was pulling rank to get back at the unknown
hacker who managed to slip a patch by him that replaced the "Kernel panic"
error with "Kernel panic: Linus probably fscked it all up again".
Brief History Of Linux (#28)
Free, Open, Libre, Whatever Software

Eric S. Raymond's now famous paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", set
the stage for the lucrative business of giving software away. In CatB, ESR
likened the software industry to an anarchistic bazaar, with each vendor
looking out for himself, trying to hoodwink customers and fellow vendors.
The produce vendor (i.e. Apple), for instance, felt no need to cooperate
with the crystal-ball seller (Oracle) or the con artist hocking miracle
drugs (Microsoft). Each kept their property and trade secrets to
themselves, hoping to gain an edge and make money fast. "With enough
eyeballs, all bug-ridden software programs are marketable," ESR observed.

ESR contrasted the "caveat emptor" Bazaar to an idealistic Cathedral model
used by free software developers. European cathedrals of medieval days
were built block-by-block with extensive volunteer manpower from the
surrounding community. Such projects were "open" in the sense that
everybody could see their progress, and interested people could wander
inside and offer comments or praise about construction methods. "Those
medieval cathedrals are still standing," ESR mused. "But bazaars built in
the 14th Century are long gone, a victim of their inferior nature."
Brief History Of Linux (#29)

"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is credited by many (especially ESR
himself) as the reason Netscape announced January 22, 1998 the release of
the Mozilla source code. In addition, Rob Malda of Slashdot has also
received praise because he had recently published an editorial ("Give us
the damn source code so we can fix Netscape's problems ourselves!")

Of course, historians now know the true reason behind the landmark
decision: Netscape engineers were scared to death that a large
multi-national corporation would acquire them and crush Mozilla. Which
indeed did happen much later, although everybody thought the conqueror
would be Microsoft, not AOL (America's Online Lusers).

The Netscape announcement prompted a strategy session among Linux bigwigs
on February 3rd. They decided a new term to replace 'free software' was
needed; some rejected suggestions included "Free Source", "Ajar Source",
"World Domination Source", "bong-ware" (Bong's Obviously Not GNU), and
"Nude Source". We can thank Chris Peterson for coining "Open Source",
which became the adopted term and later sparked the ugly "Free Software
vs. Open Source", "Raymond vs. Stallman" flame-a-thons.
Anonymous Noncoward writes, "For my Economics 101 class, I have to pretend
to be Bill Gates and write an editorial defending Microsoft against
anti-trust charges, citing economic principles. To complete such an
assignment violates every moral fiber of my body. What should I do?"

The Oracle responds: Well, it seems that you have to make a decision among
two choices. You can blow off the assignment, thus forcing you to fail
EC101, lowering your GPA below the required minimum to keep your
scholarship, causing you to drop out of college and work at McDonalds all
your life. Or you can write a paper that's positive towards Microsoft and
make an 'A'. This seems like a no-brainer to me; I'd choose the first
option without hesitation -- a burger flipper has far more dignity and
self-respect than somebody who utters a positive statement about the Evil
Empire.
"Brown Orifice" Is Only The Beginning

Last week security holes were found in Netscape's Java implementation that
allowed it to act as a web server. Earlier today, a hacker announced that
he had found vulnerabilities in Mozilla M17 that allow it to operate as a
web browser. And that's just the beginning.

Said "3l337h4x0r", the discoverer of the M17 exploit, "This is quite a
hack! By manipulating some internal functions, I was able to use M17 to
actually surf the web. Slashdot and Humorix rendered beautifully."

Mozilla engineers were stunned. "This shouldn't be possible. M17 contains
a newsreader, a mail client, an instant messenger client, and a whole
bunch of XUL acronymn-enriched stuff, but it shouldn't be able to handle
HTTP or HTML. We haven't been planning on adding web-surfing functionality
to Mozilla until M30... maybe M25 at the earliest. I suspect this whole
thing is a hoax."
Look Out! It's Microsoft Outlook

An old maxim in the Unix community states, "All programs expand until they
can read mail... except Microsoft Outlook." Well, that's no longer true.
By taking advantage of loopholes in several undocumented APIs, a team of
geeks were able to transform Outlook from a virus-delivery system into an
actual mail client.

"It was quite a feat to accomplish this," said one of the geeks. "I mean,
the rat's nest that is the Windows API can be used to frighten small
children... or adults. And the frequency by which Outlook exploits are
discovered is directly proportional to the number of times Bill Gates uses
the word 'innovation'. But this is the first time somebody has discovered
a beneficial exploit."

Microsoft has vowed to release a patch to fix the uncovered security
flaws. "We simply cannot tolerate unauthorized reverse engineering and
hacking of our innovative solutions. Our Security Response Team will pull
an all-nighter to eliminate these known issues."
The Next Big Thing: "Clairvoyant Consultants"

Nobody likes to deal with tech support or customer service reps. A growing
number of people are getting sick of being put on hold for three hours and
then paying ridiculous "per incident" fees so some Microserf can tell them
to "reinstall the operating system!"

Desperate users are turning to an unlikely source to diagnose and fix
software problems: psychics. Palm[Pilot] readers, 1-900 number operators,
and clairvoyant consultants are quickly becoming the hottest careers in
the tech sector.

Explained Madam Cosmos, owner of the Main Street Mysticism Temple in
Keokuk, Iowa, "With my special powers, I can track down the source of any
problem. Got a rogue Registry entry that's causing Bluescreens? I'll find
it. Missing a curly bracket in your Perl program but can't locate it
because the error messages are so unhelpful? I'll know where it is even
before you walk in my door."
Throwing Windows Out The Window

The Federal Bureau Of Missing Socks has banned the use of Microsoft Windows
and Office on all employee computers. But don't get too excited; they aren't
going to replace them with Linux. Instead, this government agency has decided
to go back to using abucusses, slide rules, and manual typewriters.

The banishment of Microsoft software stems from the agency's new policy
against computer games. MS Office, which contains several games in the form of
Easter Eggs, is now verboten on all agency computers. "Flight simulators,
pinball games, magic eight balls... they all violate our policy," said the
sub-adjunct administrator second-class. "So we can't use Office."

Windows is forbidden for the same reason. "We've had way too many
employees wasting time playing Solitaire," she said. "Unfortunately,
Solitaire is an integral part of Windows -- Microsoft executives said so
during the anti-trust trial. If Solitaire is removed, the operating system
won't function properly. Therefore, we have no choice but to banish all
Windows computers."

The Bureau's Assistant Technology Consultant, Mr. Reginald "Red" Taype,
asked,  "Have you ever seen an abucus crash? Have you ever seen anybody
have fun with a slide rule? Do adding machines contain undocumented easter
eggs? No! That's why we're ditching our PCs."
Unobfuscated Perl (#1)

A rogue group of Perl hackers has presented a plan to add a "use
really_goddamn_strict" pragma that would enforce readability and
UNobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say:

* Warning: Program contains zero comments. You've probably never seen or
  used one before; they begin with a # symbol. Please start using them or
  else a representative from the nearest Perl Mongers group will come to
  your house and beat you over the head with a cluestick.

* Warning: Program uses a cute trick at line 125 that might make sense in
  C. But this isn't C!

* Warning: Code at line 412 indicates that programmer is an idiot. Please
  correct error between chair and monitor.

* Warning: While There's More Than One Way To Do It, your method at line
  523 is particularly stupid. Please try again.
UNobfuscated Perl Code Contest

The Perl Gazette has announced the winners in the First Annual Unobfuscated
Perl Code Contest. First place went to Edwin Fuller, who submitted this
unobfuscated program:

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  print "Hello world!\n";

"This was definitely a challenging contest," said an ecstatic Edwin
Fuller. "I've never written a Perl program before that didn't have
hundreds of qw( $ @ % & * | ? / \ ! # ~ ) symbols. I really had to summon
all of my programming skills to produce an unobfuscated program."

...The second place winner, Mrs. Sea Pearl, submitted the following code:

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  use strict;
  # Do nothing, successfully
  exit(0);
This nation is sinking into the quicksand of the Paperwork Age, a
postmodern world in which judges issue meta-injuctions against other
judges who issue injuctions against lawyers who file lawsuits every 3.2
minutes. It's an age where lawyers design ballots forms and then proceed
to argue over how to count them.

The United States has bluescreened. A fatal exception error occured on
Election Night, and now all of our unsaved work has been lost.

  -- Jon Splatz, Humorix's Pundit and Social Commentator, ranting about
     the 2000 US Presidential Election From Hell and the dreaded
     "Lawyerclysm"
Microsoft Website Crashes, World Does Not Come To An End

REDMOND, WA -- In a crushing blow to Bill Gates' ego, world civilization
did not collapse when the Microsoft website was offline for an extended
period last week.

During the anti-trust trial, Microsoft's lawyers repeatedly warned that if
the company was broken up or dealt any other penalty (no matter how
trivial), it would not only cost the tech industry billions of dollars,
but it could decimate the entire world economy and even bring about the
start of World War III. At the risk of sounding like a biased, slanted,
overzealous journalist, let me just say: Yeah, right!

The stunning realization that the world does not revolve around Redmond
(yet) has plunged many Microsoft executives into shock. "But microsoft.com
is the single most important website in the world! And Microsoft is the
single most important company in the Universe! This can't be happening!
Why isn't civilization teetering on the edge right now?" said one
depressed President Of Executive Vice.
"Oops," Says MPAA President

Recently, the United States filed a legal brief in support of the MPAA's
argument that linking to the DeCSS source code is not protected by the
First Amendment.

At the time, the MPAA was ecstatic. But not any longer. The tables have
turned: the Federal government has filed a lawsuit against the movie
industry, arguing that many Hollywood-produced movies 'link' to illegal
content. The MPAA is now desperately wrapping itself up in the Bill of
Rights.

"Murder is illegal. Showing a murder in a movie -- or, rather, 'linking'
to it -- is also illegal," explained a spokesperson for the Coalition Of
Angry Soccer Moms In Support Of Brow-Beating Movie Industry Executives, an
interest group that has backed the government's lawsuit.
Humorix's Vast Spy Network(tm) has discovered that the White House website
is only 124 clicks away from an illegal, pirated copy of the upcoming
movie, "Star Trek XXIII: The Search For Merchandising Opportunities".
Clearly, the President's webmaster is violating the DMCA, and we urge that
this injustice be dealt with, just as soon as we finish downloading a
copy.
It BASICally Sucks

Older versions of MS-DOS came with bundled programming languages including
GW-BASIC and QBasic. Windows XP continues the Microsoft tradition of
ruining budding programmers with horrible programming tools by including
XPBasic, an interpreted language in which all of the customary BASIC
keywords have been replaced with advertising slogans.

Nike has paid a handsome amount to Microsoft for "keyword rights". Instead
of saying PRINT "HELLO WORLD", XPBasic programmers must now type JUST DO
IT "HELLO WORLD". Other common XPBasic statements include WHERE DO YOU
WANT TO GOTO 20 TODAY? and DIM ARRAY(1 TO 20) AS INTEGER BROUGHT TO YOU BY
VERIZON WIRELESS.

  -- from Humorix's review of Windows XP (eXceptionally Pathetic)
Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Linus Torvalds

SILLYCON VALLEY -- Nearly 130 former system administrators have filed suit
against Linus Torvalds in which they claim Linux cost them their jobs.
Recently several companies migrated from Windows to Linux, increasing
their productivity but decreasing the need for a large staff of tech
workers, prompting a wave of layoffs.

"The good old days when it required five full-time system administrators
to maintain a Microsoft Exchange server are history, all because of that
cancer known as Linux," explained the lead litigant in the lawsuit.

"It all started two years ago when some pimply-faced idiot down in
Accounting decided to smuggle in a Linux box to automate some of his work.
Before long every tech-savvy person in Accounting, Billing, and Sales was
secretly using Linux."

"That's when the troubles started. Productivity soared. Downtime was
limited to an average of three milliseconds per day. Macro viruses ceased
to spread. It was horrible! The entire IT staff was replaced by one
part-time bearded wonder, who was able to administrate the entire Linux
network! Due to the layoffs, I'm now sitting in a homeless shelter with
little hope to find work. Nobody wants to hire an MCSE anymore!"
"...Earlier today a New York account executive was arrested for revealing
an account or description of a Yankees baseball game without the prior
written permission of Major League Baseball. The man has been turned over
to MLB's parent company, Nike Sports Monopoly, for sentencing at the Nike
SuperMax Prison in Albany..."

  -- Excerpt from a radio broadcast during the first day of the Month of
     Disney (formerly December), 2028
"...Smugglers were arrested at the Canadian border by Microsoft-FBI for
attempting to import copies of banned 'Linux' software. Such contraband is
prohibited by the 35th Amendment because it infringes on the inalienable
right of Microsoft to make money. Said one MS-FBI prosecutor, 'This is
just the latest salvo against Capitalism by the corporate terrorists in
Finland. We must put an end to these atrocities which irreperably harm
Microsoft employees, stockholders, customers, and ultimately the entire
world...'"

  -- Excerpt from a radio broadcast during the first day of the Month of
     Disney (formerly December), 2028
Ted Turner Unveils All-Commercial Channel

For years, the pundits have predicted that the Web would become more like
television. However, media tycoon Ted Turner is pursuing the exact
opposite. Taking a cue from pop-under advertisements, Flash ads,
get-rich-quick spam emails, viral marketing, and "Gator" programs, Turner
has unveiled "TCC", the Turner Commercial Channel, for cable TV.

TCC will feature "shows" like "Best Commercials That You've Seen A Million
Times", "Life Is A Slogan, Just Buy It", and "Name That Jingle". These
shows will occupy about 30% of the screen, while several rows of marquees
at the bottom will flash various advertising messages. An animated "TCC"
watermark will float around the screen while corporate logos are flashed
randomly in the corners.

Meanwhile, "pop-up ads" will randomly appear that obscure the other ads.
These pop-ups will sometimes be further obscured by meta-pop-ups.
Likewise, corporate jingles will play in the background, interfering with
other jingles and advertising sounds.
The Blue Screen Of Advocacy

The Federal Bureau of Investigation & Privacy Violations has issued a
national advisory warning computer stores to be on the lookout for the
"Bluescreen Bandits". These extreme Linux zealots go from store to store
and from computer to computer typing in "C:\CON\CON" and causing the demo
machines to crash and display the Blue Screen Of Death.

Efforts to apprehend the bandits have so far been unsuccessful. The
outlaws were caught on tape at a CompUSSR location in Southern California,
but in an ironic twist, the surveillance system bluescreened just before
the penguinistas came into clear view.

"We don't have many clues. It's not clear whether a small group is behind
the bluescreen vandalism, or whether hundreds or even thousands of geek
zealots are involved," said the manager of a Capacitor City store.

The manager has good reason to be upset. The bluescreen raid was the top
story in the local newspaper and quickly became a hot topic of discussion.
As a result, the local school board halted its controversial plans to
migrate their computers from Macs to PCs.
As Easy As /usr/src/linux

Wiping the sweat from his brow, the contestant diligently continues to
recite, "'i' equals 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' semicolon newline 'p' equals
ampersand 'task' bracket 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' close-bracket semicolon
newline while parens minus minus 'i' parens brace if parens star minus..."

Bzzzt! One of the judges says, "You missed an exclamation point. Ten point
penalty for that error."  The contestant realizes it's all over. He had
spent 500 hours memorizing the source code to the Linux 0.01 kernel and
then blew it all by forgetting one stupid ASCII character in sched.c.

Welcome to the First Annual Linux Kernel Memorization Contest in New
Haven, Connecticut, where the stakes are high and the frustration is
simply unbearable. Linuxer longhairs from all over the globe have
descended on the Offramp Motel to show off their memorization skills in
front of a crowd of... dozens.

"Those math freaks can memorize PI and other irrational constants all they
want. I'll stick with the Linux 0.01 kernel source code thank you very
much," said Bob Notmyrealname, the organizer of the event. %
The Humorix Oracle explains how to get a job at a major corporation:

1. Find an exploit in Microsoft IIS or another buggy Microsoft product to
   which large corporations rarely apply security patches.
2. Create a virus or worm that takes advantage of this exploit and then
   propogates itself by selecting IP numbers at random and then trying to
   infect those machines.
3. Keep an eye on your own website's server logs. When your virus starts
   propogating, your server will be hit with thousands of attacks from
   other infected systems trying to spread the virus to your machine.
4. Make a list of the IP numbers of all of the infected machines.
5. Perform a reverse DNS lookup on these IP numbers.
6. Make a note of all of the Fortune 500 companies that appear on the list
   of infected domains.
7. Send your resume to these companies and request an interview for a
   system administrator position. These companies are hiring -- whether
   they realize it or not.
8. Use your new salary to hire a good defense lawyer when the FBI comes
   knocking.
8GB Ought To Be Enough For Anybody

REDMOND, WA -- In a shocking move, Microsoft has revealed that the new
Xbox console will only contain an 8 gigabyte hard drive. This implies that
the machines will use a version of the Windows operating system that fits
within only 8GB. Squeezing Windows into such a small footprint must
certainly be one of the greatest technological achievements ever crafted
by Microsoft's Research & Assimilation Department.

"I can't believe it," said one industry observer who always happens to
show up when this Humorix reporter needs to quote somebody. "To think that
they were able to strip away the easter egg flight simulators, the
multi-gigabyte yet content-free Help files, and all of the other crap that
comes bundled with Windows is simply remarkable. I don't even want to
think about all of the manpower, blood, sweat, and tears required to
distill Windows into only 8 gigabytes of bare essentials. Wow!"

Hard drive manufacturers are deeply disturbed over the news. Explained one
PR flack at Eastern Analog, "We depend on Microsoft to continually produce
bloated software that becomes larger and larger with each passing day. We
can't sell huge 100GB drives if Microsoft Windows only occupies a measly 8
gigs! They will never buy a new drive if Microsoft doesn't force them!"
Bill Gates Receives Slap On Wrist; Carpal Tunnel Flares Up

The phrase "slap on the wrist" usually signifies an extremely minor
punishment received for a crime. In Bill Gates' case, the punishment set
forth in the tentative settlement with the Department Of Justice hasn't
been quite so minor. After receiving a slap on the wrist from the DOJ,
Bill Gates' is now suffering from a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

"Mr. Gates was slapped on the left wrist earlier today by a DOJ lawyer,"
said the chief surgeon of the mini-hospital enclosed within the Gates
Mansion. "Now he can't move that hand without extreme pain. It's obvious
that years of sitting in front of a computer plotting world domination has
caused his hands and nerves to become fragile and vulnerable to even the
slightest touch."

The Department of Justice proclaimed that the incident has vindicated
their actions. Explained the lawyer who delivered the punishment, "We've
been accused of selling out to Microsoft. We've been criticized for giving
up even though we've already won the game. But that's all wrong. It's
quite clear that the slap-on-the-wrist punishment has been anything but a
slap on the wrist. We won this case and Microsoft lost. So there!"
Jon Splatz's Movie Review: "Lord of the Pings"

I've never walked out on a movie before. When I pay $9.50 to see a movie
(plus $16.50 for snacks), I'm going to sit through every single minute no
matter how awful. The resolve to get my money's worth allowed me to watch
Jar Jar Binks without even flinching last year.

But I couldn't make it through "Lord of the Pings". This movie contains a
scene that is so appalling, so despicable, so vile, so terrible, so
crappy, and so gut-wrenching that I simply had to get up, run out of the
theater, and puke in the nearest restroom. It was just that bad.

The whole thing is completely ruined by a scene that takes place only 52
seconds into the flick. Brace yourself: big letters appear on screen that
say "An AOL/Time Warner Production".

...

Because this film is brought to you by the letters A-O-L-T-W, I must give
it an F-minus even though I've only seen 53 seconds of it.
NEW YORK -- Publishers from all across the country met this week at the
first annual Book Publishers Assocation of America (BPAA) meeting. Many of
the booths on the showroom floor were devoted to the single most important
issue facing the publishing industry: fighting copyright violations. From
"End Reader License Agreements" to age-decaying ink, the anti-copying
market has exploded into a multi-million dollar enterprise.

"How can authors and publishers hope to make ends meet when the country is
rapidly filling with evil libraries that distribute our products for free
to the general public?" asked the chairman of the BPAA during his keynote
address. "That blasted Andrew Carnegie is spending all kinds of his own
ill-gotten money to open libraries in cities nationwide. He calls it
charity. I call it anti-competitive business practices hoping to bankrupt
the entire publishing industry. We must fight these anti-profit,
pro-copying librarians and put an end to this scourge!"

  -- from the February 4, 1895 edition of the New York Democrat-Republican
Insurance Company To Offer Microsoft Audit Protection Plans

LOUDON, TENNESSEE -- Companies, organizations, and government agencies all
across the world are facing a disaster of epic proportions: the impending
invasion of the Microsoft Intellectual Property Police. The counter this
menace, Loydds of Loudon, Tennessee, the prestigious insurance firm, has
started to offer "Audit Insurance" to protect against unexpected "random"
audits from everybody's favorite software monopoly.

"We've received numerous inquiries about this type of protection," company
co-founder Bob Loydds said. "Businessmen are no longer worried about
earthquakes, fires, or other natural disasters. The big fear of the 21st
Century comes from Redmond."

The insurance firm is currently in negotiations with Red Hat to form the
"Red Berets", an elite squad of Linux geeks trained to rapidly install
Linux and hide all traces of Windows on every computer within an
organization. During a Defcon 95 emergency, Loydds will airlift the
squadron and a crate of Linux CDs to any position in the country within
hours. The Red Berets will wipe away all vestiges of Microsoft software so
that when the auditors show up they won't have anything to audit.
Severe Acronym Shortage Cripples Computer Industry

SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA (SVC) -- According to a recent study by the
Blartner Group, 99.5% of all possible five letter combinations have
already been appropriated for computer industry acronyms. The impending
shortage of 5LC's is casting a dark shadow over the industry, which relies
heavily on short, easy-to-remember acronyms for everything.

"Acronym namespace collisions (ANCs) are increasing at a fantastic rate
and threaten the very fabric of the computing world," explained one ZD
pundit. "For example, when somebody talks about XP, I don't know whether
they mean eXtreme Programming or Microsoft's eXceptionally Pathetic
operating system. We need to find a solution now or chaos will result."

Leaders of several SVC companies have floated the idea of an
"industry-wide acronym conservation protocol" (IWACP -- one of the few
5LCs not already appropriated). Explained Bob Smith, CTO of IBM, "If
companies would voluntarily limit the creation of new acronyms while
recycling outdated names, we could reduce much of the pollution within the
acronym namespace ourselves. The last thing we want is for Congress to get
involved and try to impose a solution for this SAS (Severe Acronym
Shortage) that would likely only create many new acronyms in the process."
Solving The Virus Problem Once And For All

System administrators across the globe have tried installing anti-virus
software. They've tried lecturing employees not to open unsolicited email
attachments. They've tried installing firewalls and the latest security
patches. But even with these precautions, email viruses continue to rank
third only to Solitaire and the Blue Screen Of Death in the amount of lost
productivity they cause. Meanwhile, Microsoft Exchange and LookOut! remain
as the number one virus delivery products on the market today.

But maybe not for much longer. A group of disgruntled administrators have
teamed up to produce and sell a brand new way to fight viruses, one that
attacks the root of the problem: stupid users.

Salivating Dogs, Inc. of Ohio has unveiled the "Clue Delivery System"
(CDS), a small device that plugs into the back of a standard PC keyboard
and delivers a mild electric shock whenever the luser does something
stupid. The device is triggered by a Windows program that detects when the
luser attempts to open an unsolicited email attachment or perform another
equally dangerous virus-friendly action.
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 cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.
                -- Edgar A. Shoaff
A man who keeps stealing mopeds is an obvious cycle-path.
A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
                -- Elbert Hubbard
        "...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 truly great man will neither trample on a worm nor sneak to an emperor.
                -- B. Franklin
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
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.
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
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 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 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 everything about nothing.
An idealist is one who helps the other fellow to make a profit.
                -- Henry Ford
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 optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
                -- Don Marquis
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
                -- Charles McCabe
Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
drip under pressure.
Calling you stupid is an insult to stupid people!
                -- Wanda, "A Fish Called Wanda"
Creativity is not always bred in an environment of tranquility;
sometimes you have to squeeze a little to get the paste out of the tube.
Do not think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
Dorothy:        But how can you talk without a brain?
Scarecrow:        Well, I don't know... but some people without brains
                do an awful lot of talking.
                -- The Wizard of Oz
Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.
        Everthing 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 everbody
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"
Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended,
or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar.
Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk
only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other
subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his
own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured
by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to
philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted,
but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find
in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.
                -- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
Fess:        Well, you must admit there is something innately humorous about
        a man chasing an invention of his own halfway across the galaxy.
Rod:        Oh yeah, it's a million yuks, sure.  But after all, isn't that the
        basic difference between robots and humans?
Fess:        What, the ability to form imaginary constructs?
Rod:        No, the ability to get hung up on them.
                -- Christopher Stasheff, "The Warlock in Spite of Himself"
For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
always old-fashioned.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
                -- Harrison
For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble:
and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.
                -- Sir Thomas More
He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.
                -- Andrew Lang
He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
He who is known as an early riser need not get up until noon.
Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; always busy without getting
on, always behind hand and lamenting it, without altering her ways;
wishing to be an economist, without contrivance or regularity; dissatisfied
with her servants, without skill to make them better, and whether helping, or
reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power of engaging their respect.
                -- J. Austen
Higgins:        Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue.
Doolittle:        A little of both, Guv'nor.  Like the rest of us, a
                little of both.
                -- Shaw, "Pygmalion"
Hindsight is an exact science.
I always pass on good advice.  It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never any good to oneself.
                -- Oscar Wilde, "An Ideal Husband"
I am an optimist.  It does not seem too much use being anything else.
                -- Winston Churchill
I guess I've been wrong all my life, but so have billions of other people...
Certainty is just an emotion.
                -- Hal Clement
        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 semed 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 put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of
tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If
they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go
crude.  I'm a very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.
These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even
aspire to crudeness.
                -- William Gibson, "Johnny Mnemonic"
I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
on the same day.
If only you had a personality instead of an attitude.
In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present.
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course,
you are an exceptionally good liar.
                -- Jerome K. Jerome
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people.
                -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised.
It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire,
and it were but to roast their eggs.
                -- Francis Bacon
It seems to make an auto driver mad if he misses you.
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
        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'."
Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
                -- Bergan Evans
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
is an enemy.
                -- Albert Einstein
Most people have a furious itch to talk about themselves and are restrained
only by the disinclination of others to listen.  Reserve is an artificial
quality that is developed in most of us as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
                -- W.S. Maugham
Never insult an alligator until you've crossed the river.
Nezvannyi gost'--khuzhe tatarina.
        [An uninvited guest is worse than the Mongol invasion]
                -- Russian proverb
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at
which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
                -- Quentin Crisp
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
                -- Helen Keller
Only someone with nothing to be sorry for smiles back at the rear of an
elephant.
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
                -- Eric Hoffer
People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of
attention) have often been likened to snowflakes.  This analogy is meant to
suggest that each is unique -- no two alike.  This is quite patently not the
case.  People ... are simply a dime a dozen.  And, I hasten to add, their
only similarity to snowflakes resides in their invariable and lamentable
tendency to turn, after a few warm days, to slush.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
        "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"
"See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist.  I mean, kind of ... in a way ..."
Shame is an improper emotion invented by pietists to oppress the human race.
                -- Robert Preston, Toddy, "Victor/Victoria"
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
The Least Successful Defrosting Device
        The all-time record here is held by Mr. Peter Rowlands of Lancaster
whose lips became frozen to his lock in 1979 while blowing warm air on it.
        "I got down on my knees to breathe into the lock.  Somehow my lips
got stuck fast."
        While he was in the posture, an old lady passed an inquired if he
was all right.  "Alra?  Igmmlptk", he replied at which point she ran away.
        "I tried to tell her what had happened, but it came out sort of...
muffled," explained Mr. Rowlands, a pottery designer.
        He was trapped for twenty minutes ("I felt a bit foolish") until
constant hot breathing brought freedom.  He was subsequently nicknamed "Hot
Lips".
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement.
"The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an
open doorway with an open mind.
                -- E.B. White
There is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery is, if not an antidote,
at least an alleviation.  If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else.
        --Robert Louis Stevenson: Immortelles
There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it
has not yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.
                -- Friedrich Nietzsche
To make an enemy, do someone a favor.
We are anthill men upon an anthill world.
                -- Ray Bradbury
        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"
When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the
impression you will make.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not
become a monster.  And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks
into you.
                -- Friedrich Nietzsche
You can't cheat an honest man.  Never give a sucker an even break or
smarten up a chump.
                -- W.C. Fields
You know you're in trouble when...
(1)        You've been at work for an hour before you notice that your
                skirt is caught in your pantyhose.
                Especially if you're a man.
(2)        Your blind date turns out to be your ex-wife.
(3)        Your income tax check bounces.
(4)        You put both contact lenses in the same eye.
(5)        Your wife says, "Good morning, Bill" and your name is George.
(6)        You wake up to the soothing sound of flowing water... the day
                after you bought a waterbed.
(7)        You go on your honeymoon to a remote little hotel and the desk
                clerk, bell hop, and manager have a "Welcome Back" party
                for your spouse.
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for
counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business.  For the
experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth
them; but in new things, abuseth them.  The errors of young men are the ruin
of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might
have been done, or sooner.  Young men, in the conduct and management of
actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly
to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few
principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not how they innovate,
which draws unknown inconveniences; and, that which doubleth all errors, will
not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop
nor turn.  Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little,
repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but
content themselves with a mediocrity of success.  Certainly, it is good to
compound employments of both ... because the virtues of either age may correct
the defects of both.
                -- Francis Bacon, "Essay on Youth and Age"
Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.
                -- Augustus Caesar
Your Co-worker Could Be a Space Alien, Say Experts
                ...Here's How You Can Tell
Many Americans work side by side with space aliens who look human -- but you
can spot these visitors by looking for certain tip-offs, say experts. They
listed 10 signs to watch for:
    (3) Bizarre sense of humor.  Space aliens who don't understand
        earthly humor may laugh during a company training film or tell
        jokes that no one understands, said Steiger.
    (6) Misuses everyday items.  "A space alien may use correction
        fluid to paint its nails," said Steiger.
    (8) Secretive about personal life-style and home.  "An alien won't
        discuss details or talk about what it does at night or on weekends."
   (10) Displays a change of mood or physical reaction when near certain
        high-tech hardware.  "An alien may experience a mood change when
        a microwave oven is turned on," said Steiger.
The experts pointed out that a co-worker would have to display most if not
all of these traits before you can positively identify him as a space alien.
                -- National Enquirer, Michael Cassels, August, 1984.

        [I thought everybody laughed at company training films.  Ed.]
"Message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an
excercise in computer science masturbation. It may feel good, but you
don't actually get anything DONE."

        - Linus Torvalds
"I looked all over the place for an explanation. Elves and Gremlins."

        - Mike "Heisen who?" Galbraith
"I hold open source people to higher standards. They are supposed to be
the people who do programming because it's an art-form, not because it's
their job."

         - Linus Torvalds
> Is there an API or other means to determine what video card, namely the
> chipset, that the user has installed on his machine?

On a modern X86 machine use the PCI/AGP bus data. On a PS/2 use the MCA bus
data. On nubus use the nubus probe data. On old style ISA bus PCs done a
large pointy hat and spend several years reading arcane and forbidden
scrolls

        - Alan Cox on hardware probing
"An innovation a day keeps the monopolist away"

        - Alan Cox when releasing linux-2.4.1ac19
"Guys, if you want a large subtree in /proc - whack yourself over the head
until you realize that you want an fs of your own. I'll be more than
happy to help with both parts."
        - Al Viro
David Brownell wrote:
> AMD told me I'd need an NDA to learn their workaround, and I've not
> pursued it. (Does anyone already know what kind of NDA they use?)

It varies depending on the info. They may well be able to sort out a sane
NDA with you. If they dont want to then I guess it would be best if the
ohci driver printing a message explaining the component has an undocumented
errata fix, gave AMD's phone number and refused to load..

        - Alan Cox
Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> The 'C' language can order structure members anyway it wants.

You are an idiot.

        - Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
The executive, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said,
"If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you
know, we have a lot of lawyers."

        - from a New York Times article about Microsoft vs GPL licensing
Please, don't mix _that_ flamewar into the thread, OK?

        - Al Viro in an almost-flamewar on linux-kernel
<ed__> riel: if it were a vax, gcc would probably be an opcode

        - excerpt from #kernelnewbies
If you _really_ feel this strongly about the bug, you could
either try to increase the number of hours a day for all of
us or you could talk to my boss about hiring me as a consultant
to fix the problem for you on an emergency basis :)

        - Rik van Riel explaining what to do against kernel bugs
It has always been the policy that format conversions go in user space.
The kernel is an arbitrator of resources it is not a shit bucket for
solving other peoples incompetence.

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Linus, Alan - Please apply the following self-explanatory patch.

+       /* LynuxWorks are politely reminded that removing copyright
+          notices is an offence under the Copyright Design and
+          Patents Act 1988, and under equivalent non-UK law in
+          accordance with the Berne Convention. */
+       printk("Portions (C) 2000, 2001 Red Hat, Inc.\n");

        - David Woodhouse on linux-kernel
<mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel,
<mikkei> Who thought Tux should have been an Eel,
<mikkei> Although he was a fine programmer,
<mikkei> He called the little penguin,
<mikkei> A veritably ugly hack,
<mikkei> But they all laughed and said "He's on crack!"
<mikkei>  
<mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel,
<mikkei> At whose feet the newbies would kneel,
<mikkei> Each and every day, one newbie would say:
<mikkei> "Make my patch the Patch of the Month."
<mikkei> But Riel, saying no with a negative, "hummpfh"
<mikkei> Would say "fsck off" to the newbies's dismay.

        - Anonymous on #kernelnewbies
<JALH> regex are more than some crappy posix thing
<JALH> they are an art form

        - Marc Zealey on #kernelnewbies
I recall hearing that highly-classified data must be destroyed by
physically shredding the medium.  Yes, throw your disk drive in the
shredder!  (Just imagine the class of machinery required to digest an RA81
HDA.)

        - Mark Wood on linux-kernel
I believe the Committee for the Preservation of Welsh Poetry are pretty
settled on the -ac tree. Aren't they doing an audio CD of Alan reciting
the TCP/IP stack sources?

        - Rich Hohensee on linux-kernel
> Wouldn't it have made more sense to make the 'len' parameter an unsigned int?

Oh yes.  

And wouldn't it be nicer if the sky was pink, and God came personally down
to earth and stopped all wrans and made you king?

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel?
> Sorry, at this point we are not allowed to publish the source code of the
> lcs and qeth drivers (due to the use of confidential hardware interface
> specifications).  We make those modules available only in binary form
> on our developerWorks web site.
>
Gosh. I didn't know you guys were so advanced that you didn't use
an electronic hardware interface! Your 'hardware interface specifications'
use magnetohydrodynamics, and they are top-secret, right?

        - Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
> If you took my patch for it, PLEASE don't send it for inclusion; it's an
> evil hack and no longer needed when Intel fixes the bug in their 440GX bios.

"when" is not a word I find useful about most bios bugs. Try "if" or
"less likely that being hit on the head by an asteroid"

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
This is a BP6 FAQ.  Try increasing the voltage to your CPUs by .1V, or
by taking the BP6 and introducing it to a hammer.  Either should be an
improvement.

        - Benjamian LaHaise not recommending the Abit BP6 motherboard on lkml
:) Even an (ex)girlfriend of mine said that Linux is much better than Windows,
because of the messages on boot ("superb cyber feeling a'la Matrix :)").

        - Gábor Lénárt on linux-kernel
But I do know, that an Alan at home, co-working with his under-ground
cluster of gnomes, does a hell-of-a-lot more good for free software
than an Alan in a US-prison as yet another victim of "justice".

        - David Weinehall discussing the DMCA/SSSCA on linux-kernel
Please use an explicit test - I know gcc suggest just an extra set of
parenthesis, but I'm personally convinced that is just because some gcc
people have been damaged by too much LISP.

        - Linus Torvalds discussing gcc requirements on linux-kernel
So the current heuristic provably sucks. We have cold hard numbers, and
quite frankly, Al, there is very very little point in arguing against
numbers. It's silly. "Gimme an S, gimme a U, gimme a C, gimme a K -
S-U-C-K". The current one sucks.

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
> There is an easy way for you, or even better, Linus to stop these discussions:
> Just say, in unambigous words, what kind of patch you would accept, if any.

.procmailrc one would do nicely.

        - Al Viro on linux-kernel
> ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange has detected virus-infected attachment(s).
> Warning to sender. ScanMail detected a virus in an email attachment you sent.

You are an idiot! You have deleted a correctly-written important
shell-script. You, again, are an IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT, creep.

        - Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
Using a cluster to hide the fact that the underlying systems crash
regularly is an extremely dangerous way to manage a computing environment.

        - Matt Dillon in http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=153
Davide Libenzi wrote:
> It's not easy to get this right anyway.

Balancing the pull and push mechanisms in the scheduler while trying
to predict the future?  "Not easy" is an excellent description.

        - Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
The Tao is an empty vessel; it is used, but never filled.
Oh, unfathomable source of ten thousand things!
Blunt the sharpness,
Untangle the knot,
Soften the glare,
Merge with dust.
Oh, hidden deep but ever present!
I do not know from whence it comes.
It is the forefather of the gods.
Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.
These three are indefinable;
Therefore they are joined in one.

From above it is not bright;
From below it is not dark:
An unbroken thread beyond description.
It returns to nothingness.
The form of the formless,
The image of the imageless,
It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it and there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the ancient Tao,
Move with the present.

Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.
Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.
Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.
Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted, you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.
Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.

Is there a difference between yes and no?
Is there a difference between good and evil?
Must I fear what others fear?  What nonsense!
Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial feast of the ox.
In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace,
But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am.
Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile,
I am alone, without a place to go.
Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.
I am a fool.  Oh, yes!  I am confused.
Others are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Others are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea,
Without direction, like the restless wind.
Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.
Yield and overcome;
Bend and be straight;
Empty and be full;
Wear out and be new;
Have little and gain;
Have much and be confused.

Therefore the wise embrace the one
And set an example to all.
Not putting on a display,
They shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
They are distinguished.
Not boasting,
They receive recognition.
Not bragging,
They never falter.
They do not quarrel,
So no one quarrels with them.
Therefore the ancients say, "Yield and overcome."
Is that an empty saying?
Be really whole,
And all things will come to you.
Know the strength of man,
But keep a woman's care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.

Know the white,
But keep the black!
Be an example to the world!
Being an example to the world,
Ever true and unwavering,
Return to the infinite.

Know honor,
Yet keep humility.
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.

When the block is carved, it becomes useful.
When the sage uses it, he becomes the ruler.
Thus, "A great tailor cuts little."
Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
Just do what needs to be done.
Never take advantage of power.

Achieve results,
But never glory in them.
Achieve results,
But never boast.
Achieve results,
But never be proud.
Achieve results,
Because this is the natural way.
Achieve results,
But not through violence.

Force is followed by loss of strength.
This is not the way of Tao.
That which goes against the Tao comes to an early end.
A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.

A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.

When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.

Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.

Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower.
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.
These things from ancient times arise from one:
The sky is whole and clear.
The earth is whole and firm.
The spirit is whole and strong.
The valley is whole and full.
The ten thousand things are whole and alive.
Kings and lords are whole, and the country is upright.
All these are in virtue of wholeness.

The clarity of the sky prevents its falling.
The firmness of the earth prevents its splitting.
The strength of the spirit prevents its being used up.
The fullness of the valley prevents its running dry.
The growth of the ten thousand things prevents their drying out.
The leadership of kings and lords prevents the downfall of the country.

Therefore the humble is the root of the noble.
The low is the foundation of the high.
Princes and lords consider themselves "orphaned", "widowed" and "worthless".
Do they not depend on being humble?

Too much success is not an advantage.
Do not tinkle like jade
Or clatter like stone chimes.
There is a saying among soldiers:
  I dare not make the first move but would rather play the guest;
  I dare not advance an inch but would rather withdraw a foot.

This is called marching without appearing to move,
Rolling up your sleeves without showing your arm,
Capturing the enemy without attacking,
Being armed without weapons.

There is no greater catastrophe than underestimating the enemy.
By underestimating the enemy, I almost lost what I value.

Therefore when the battle is joined,
The underdog will win.
If men are not afraid to die,
It is no avail to threaten them with death.

If men live in constant fear of dying,
And if breaking the law means that a man will be killed,
Who will dare to break the law?

There is always an official executioner.
If you try to take his place,
It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood.
If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your hand.
A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
A kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo, eventually.
        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."
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.
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"
Catproof is an oxymoron, childproof nearly so.
I opened the drawer of my little desk and a single letter fell out, a
letter from my mother, written in pencil, one of her last, with unfinished
words and an implicit sense of her departure.  It's so curious: one can
resist tears and "behave" very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But
then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window... or one notices
that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed... or
a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
                -- Letters From Colette
I tell ya, I was an ugly kid.  I was so ugly that my dad kept the kid's
picture that came with the wallet he bought.
                -- Rodney Dangerfield
I used to think I was a child; now I think I am an adult -- not because
I no longer do childish things, but because those I call adults are no
more mature than I am.
It is better to remain childless than to father an orphan.
Reinhart was never his mother's favorite -- and he was an only child.
                -- Thomas Berger
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year? Just
picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your children
open their old-fashioned presents.

Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"

You:        "A spinning top!  You spin it around, and then eventually it falls
down.  What fun!  Ha, ha!"

Son:        "Is this a joke?  Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer with
two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory, and I get this
cretin TOP?"

Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad?  Look at this."

You:        "It's figgy pudding!  What a treat!"

Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
                -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine.  You
need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion
picture star.  If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use
the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified
success.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
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 an 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 pecularly, 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.]
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if
people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses based
on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
        -- Richard Stallman
While the year 2000 (y2k) problem is not an issue for us, all Linux
implementations will impacted by the year 2038 (y2.038k) issue. The
Debian Project is committed to working with the industry on this issue
and we will have our full plans and strategy posted by the first quarter
of 2020.
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running
Linux....  And did this PC choke?  Did it stutter?  Did it, even once,
say that this program has performed an illegal operation and must be shut
down?  No. And this is just on the client.
        -- LAN Times
<stu> you should be afraid to use KDE because RMS might come to your
      house and cleave your monitor with an axe or something :)
<toor> netgod: what do you have in your kernel??? The compiled source for
       driving a space shuttle???
<Spoo> time to make a zip drive your floppy drive then. if the kernel
       doesn fit on that, the kernel is an AI
<Overfiend> xhost +localhost should only be done by people who would
            paint their hostname and root password on an interstate
            overpass.
<Cylord> Would it be acceptable to debian policy if we inserted a crontab
         by default into potato that emailed bill.gates@microsoft.com
         every morning with an email that read, "Don't worry, linux is a
         fad..."
* Overfiend ponders doing an NMU of asclock, in which he simply changes
  the extended description to "If you bend over and put your head between
  your legs, you can read the time off your assclock."
<doogie> Overfiend: go to bed.
"You have the right not to be an asshole.  If you give up that right
everything you say and do in here will be held against you. If you cannot
afford to stop being an asshole then someone will be appointed to kick
yours outta here."
        -- Your rights as an irc addict
* Overfiend sighs
<Overfiend> Netscape sucks.
<Overfiend> It is a house of cards resting on a bed of quicksand.
<Espy> during an earthquake
<Overfiend> in a tornado
<SilverStr> media ethics is an oxymoron, much like Jumbo Shrimp and
            Microsoft Works.
<MonkAway> not to mention NT Security
Moonchild without an opinion? Satan is skating to work tomorrow!
        -- Brett Manz
<Knghtbrd> I really don't want much at all...  Just a kind word, an
           attractive woman, and UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH!!
<jgoerzen> stu: ahh that machine.  Don't you think that something named
           stallman deserves to be an Alpha? :-)
<stu> jgoerzen: no, actually, I'd prolly be more inclined to name a 386
      with 4 megs of ram and a 40 meg hard drive stallman.
<stu> with a big fat case that makes tons of noise and rattles the floor
* Knghtbrd falls to the floor holding his sides laughing
<stu> and..
<stu> double-height hard drive
> > But IANAL, of course.
>
> IANAL either.  My son is, but if I asked him I might get an answer I
> wouldn't want to hear.

"Here's my invoice." ?  =D
<wichert> 8am is an ungoldly hour to be awake :)
* gorgo usually gets up at 11am
I stopped a long time ago to try to find anything in the bug list of dpkg.
We should run for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
        -- Stephane Bortzmeyer
* Knghtbrd pelts wichert with NERF darts
* wichert notes there are no ICBM nerfs yet and ignores kngtbrd
<Knghtbrd> wichert - just wait, after seeing the NERF gatling guns, ICBMs
           are not far off (just pump the damned thing for an hour or two
           is all...)
* Espy ponders an uplad queue called 'hell' so I can do dupload --to hell
For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.
<james> but, then I used an Atari, I was more likely to win the lottery in
        ten countries simultaneously than get accelerated X
<Knghtbrd> NOTE THAT THE ABOVE IS JUST AN OPINION AND SHOULD NOT BE
           TAKEN TO INCLUDE ANY MEASURE OF FACTUAL INFORMATION.  THE
           SPEAKER DISCLAIMS EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE.  DEAL WITH IT.
<Mercury> Be warned, I have a keyboard I can use to beat luser's heads
          in, and then continue to use... (=:]
<Deek> Mercury: Oh, an IBM. :)
"Nominal fee". What an ugly sentence. It's one of those things that
implies that if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
        -- Linus Torvalds
This message was written with vi!  (not that anyone in the world cares)
        -- seen on an old message from an anon.penet.fi address
<mdorman> I'm a gnus person myself.  It's an editor!  It's a floorwax!
          It's a dessert topping!
<pv2b> oh, besides, whats the best approach if i want to make a Quake
       level designed from an existing building?
<Knghtbrd> Get a floorplan of Brian's office?  =)
<pv2b> Knghtbrd: im considering my school.
<Knghtbrd> Oh great
<Knghtbrd> That's ALL we need
<Xavvy> is that really knghtbrd?
<Knghtbrd> No, I'm an EVIL IMPOSTOR!
<Knghtbrd> An evil impostor who LIKES HYBRID!
<Xavvy> haha
<Xavvy> ok, it's him :P
<wli> Yeah, I looked at esd and it looked like the kind of C code that an
      ex-JOVIAL/Algol '60 coder who had spent the last 20 years bouncing
      between Fortran-IV and Fortran '77 would write.
<aav> coffee on an empty stomach is pretty nasy
<knghtbrd> aav: time to run to the vending machine for cheetos
<aav> cheetos? :)
"Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are my "gold standard", and it has been quite a
while since I have had to report a problem to them, and even their brand
new extensions work as documented the first time I try them.  When I have
a problem on an Nvidia, I assume that it is my fault.  With anyone else's
drivers, I assume it is their fault.  This has turned out correct almost
all the time."
        -- John Carmack
<hoponpop> the difference between netbsd, freebsd, and openbsd, as an
           insider is freebsd is interested in getting things done, and
           doesn't mind hurting people who get in their way.
<hoponpop> netbsd is interested in making sure nothing gets done, and
           doesn't mind hurting people who try to accomplish things.
<hoponpop> openbsd is interested in looking good, and doesn't hurt anyone
           in their own little community, but look out everybody else!
A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing
into trees.  At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same
forest, with identical results.  They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing.
        "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally,"
apologized the rabbit.
        "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same
problem!"
        "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do
you think you could help me find out?"
        "I'll try," said the snake.  He gently coiled himself around the
rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail
and long ears.  You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!"
        "Great!" said the rabbit.  "Thanks, I really owe you one!"
        "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either.  Do you
suppose you could try and tell me?"
        The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake.  "Well, you're low, cold
and slimey..."  And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have
no balls.  You must be an attorney!"
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 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 grade school teacher was asking students what their parents did
for a living.  "Tim, you be first," she said.  "What does your mother do
all day?"
        Tim stood up and proudly said, "She's a doctor."
        "That's wonderful.  How about you, Amie?"
        Amie shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a
mailman."
        "Thank you, Amie," said the teacher.  "What about your father, Billy?"
        Billy proudly stood up and announced, "My daddy plays piano in a
whorehouse."
        The teacher was aghast and promptly changed the subject to geography.
Later that day she went to Billy's house and rang the bell.  Billy's father
answered the door.  The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded
an explanation.
        Billy's father replied, "Well, I'm really an attorney.  But how do
you explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old child?"
        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!"
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 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 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!"
Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
trousers that don't match.
Diogenes went to look for an honest lawyer. "How's it going?", someone
asked him, after a few days.
        "Not too bad", replied Diogenes. "I still have my lantern."
[District Attorneys] learn in District Attorney School that there are
two sure-fire ways to get a lot of favorable publicity:

(1) Go down and raid all the lockers in the local high school and
    confiscate 53 marijuana cigarettes and put them in a pile and hold
    a press conference where you announce that they have a street value
    of $850 million.  These raids never fail, because ALL high schools,
    including brand-new, never-used ones, have at least 53 marijuana
    cigarettes in the lockers.  As far as anyone can tell, the locker
    factory puts them there.
(2) Raid an "adult book store" and hold a press conference where you
    announce you are charging the owner with 850 counts of being a
    piece of human sleaze.  This also never fails, because you always
    get a conviction.  A juror at a pornography trial is not about to
    state for the record that he finds nothing obscene about a movie
    where actors engage in sexual activities with live snakes and a
    fire extinguisher.  He is going to convict the bookstore owner, and
    vote for the death penalty just to make sure nobody gets the wrong
    impression.
                -- Dave Barry, "Pornography"
First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer.
But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all.
Dial-A-Wombat.
        It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone
call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the
phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said.
        Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of
the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk.
        But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth.
        The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its
bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub.
        Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in
another phone booth.
        There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth.
        The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and
released it, too, in the scrub.
        But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another
telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat.
        After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect,
and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons.
        Their problem ... they cannot find a law against placing wombats in
telephone booths.
                -- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980.
For three years, the young attorney had been taking his brief
vacations at this country inn.  The last time he'd finally managed an
affair with the innkeeper's daughter.  Looking forward to an exciting
few days, he dragged his suitcase up the stairs of the inn, then stopped
short.  There sat his lover with an infant on her lap!
        "Helen, why didn't you write when you learned you were pregnant?"
he cried.  "I would have rushed up here, we could have gotten married,
and the baby would have my name!"
        "Well," she said, "when my folks found out about my condition,
we sat up all night talkin' and talkin' and finally decided it would be
better to have a bastard in the family than a lawyer."
Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:

It is a rule of evidence deduced from the experience of mankind and
supported by reason and authority that positive testimony is entitled to
more weight than negative testimony, but by the latter term is meant
negative testimony in its true sense and not positive evidence of a
negative, because testimony in support of a negative may be as positive
as that in support of an affirmative.
                -- 254 Pac. Rep. 472.
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan.  During an
impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.

DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
         having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
DINGELL: They may or may not be natural.  The simple fact of the matter
         is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
         large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
         amounts of fertilization ...
HOFFMAN: Wait a minute!  I do not want to go into that.  There are many
         teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
"Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you
can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height
on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car
or a job?  Do you ever walk around?  If so, you probably have the makings of
an excellent legal case.  Although of course every case is different, I
would definitely say that based on my experience and training, there's no
reason why you shouldn't come out of this thing with at least a cabin
cruiser.

"Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our motto
is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'"
                -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
HR 3128.  Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986.  Martin, R-Ill., motion
that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment making
changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits.  The Senate amendment
was an amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the House
amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill.  The original Senate amendment
was the conference agreement on the bill.  Agreed to.
                -- Albuquerque Journal
Humor in the Court:
Q: ...any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial
   instead of an attempted murder trial?
A: The victim lived.
Humor in the Court:
Q: The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective
   witness, isn't it. You too were shot in the fracas?
A: No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval.
        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 Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket.
In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
either flying or waiting to board a plane.
In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
        "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he can."
Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
Mental Anguish.  You would sue:

* The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
  section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
  into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
  in there".

* The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
  cretin like yourself.

* Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
  case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
  a large cash settlement anyway.
                -- Dave Barry
Men often believe -- or pretend -- that the "Law" is something sacred, or
at least a science -- an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.
        Old Barlow was a crossing-tender at a junction where an express train
demolished an automobile and its 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."
                        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

(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.
Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the
old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent
I can find for "landskap").  These laws were written down sometime in the
13th century, but date back even down into Viking times.  The oldest one is
the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some
Christian stuff.  In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the
Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc.  Here is
an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of
"lekare".
        "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it.  If an artist
        is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with
        fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring
        it out on the hillside.  Then they shall shave off all hair from the
        heifer's tail, and grease the tail.  Then the artist shall be given
        newly greased shoes.  Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,
        and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip.  If he can hold her, he
        shall have the animal.  If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what
        he received, shame and wounds."
The Least Successful Equal Pay Advertisement
        In 1976 the European Economic Community pointed out to the Irish
Government that it had not yet implemented the agreed sex equality
legislation.  The Dublin Government immediately advertised for an equal pay
enforcement officer.  The advertisement offered different salary scales for
men and women.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
during the trial."
                -- David Letterman
We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor.  Bankers are not ever
popular but at least they bank.  Policeman police and undertakers take
under.  But lawyers do not give us law.  We receive not the gladsome light
of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays,
filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour.
                -- Nolo News, summer 1989
When alerted to an intrusion by tinkling glass or otherwise, 1) Calm
yourself 2) Identify the intruder 3) If hostile, kill him.

Step number 3 is of particular importance.  If you leave the guy alive
out of misguided softheartedness, he will repay your generosity of spirit
by suing you for causing his subsequent paraplegia and seek to force you
to support him for the rest of his rotten life.  In court he will plead
that he was depressed because society had failed him, and that he was
looking for Mother Teresa for comfort and to offer his services to the
poor.  In that lawsuit, you will lose.  If, on the other hand, you kill
him, the most that you can expect is that a relative will bring a wrongful
death action. You will have two advantages: first, there be only your
story; forget Mother Teresa.  Second, even if you lose, how much could
the bum's life be worth anyway?  A Lot less than 50 years worth of
paralysis.  Don't play George Bush and Saddam Hussein.  Finish the job.
        -- G. Gordon Liddy's "Forbes" column on personal security
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster -- it is an opportunity.
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 fake fortuneteller can be tolerated.  But an authentic soothsayer should
be shot on sight.  Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.
                -- R.A. Heinlein
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.
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 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"
        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!"
Brahma said: Well, after hearing ten thousand explanations, a fool is no
wiser.  But an intelligent man needs only two thousand five hundred.
                -- The Mahabharata
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
                -- Paul Tillich, German theologian.
During the voyage of life, remember to keep an eye out for a fair wind; batten
down during a storm; hail all passing ships; and fly your colors proudly.
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect
that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers
and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the
essential death in which its subject's roots are plunged.  The natural
inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued
forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
                -- Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William
FORTUNE'S RULES TO LIVE BY: #23
        Don't cut off a police car when making an illegal U-turn.
Happiness is just an illusion, filled with sadness and confusion.
He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hopes for
the human condition is a fool.
                -- Albert Camus
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around.
Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.  I don't say embrace trouble; that's
as bad as treating it as an enemy.  But I do say meet it as a friend, for
you'll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.
                -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
If men are not afraid to die,
it is of no avail to threaten them with death.

If men live in constant fear of dying,
And if breaking the law means a man will be killed,
Who will dare to break the law?

There is always an official executioner.
If you try to take his place,
It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood.
If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter,
        you will only hurt your hand.
                -- Tao Te Ching, "Lao Tsu, #74"
In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom.
It is not always an easy sacrifice.
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live
at all.  And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result
is the only thing that makes the result come true.
                -- William James
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked him
how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.
The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.
Murphy was an optimist.
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the
Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea,
Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if
a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes
me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
                -- John Donne, "No Man is an Iland"
Not every question deserves an answer.
        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.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
                -- John Keats
Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is,
having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well
burst out in laughter.
                -- Long Chen Pa
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
                -- Seneca
Sometimes you get an almost irresistible urge to go on living.
The best you get is an even break.
                -- Franklin Adams
There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine," said
a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat.
        "And yet just a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with
an unanswerable question," said Nasrudin.
        "I could have answered it if I had been there."
        "Very well.  He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
the middle of the night?'"
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate.  The first man said,
"This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The second man said,
"He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his chambers, and spent an hour
trying to bite his own ear.  He succeeded only in falling over and bruising
his forehead.  Returning to the courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the
man whose ear was bitten. If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and
the case is dismissed.  If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it
and must pay three silver pieces."
        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," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no
wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred."
                -- The Mahabharata.
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
                -- Jeannette Rankin
You can't mend a wristwatch while falling from an airplane.
...everything on this earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure
it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.
Mourning Dove, (Salish 1888-1936)
Let's call it an accidental feature.
        --Larry Wall
> : Any porters out there should feel happier knowing that DEC is shipping
> : me an AlphaPC that I intend to try getting linux running on: this will
> : definitely help flush out some of the most flagrant unportable stuff.
> : The Alpha is much more different from the i386 than the 68k stuff is, so
> : it's likely to get most of the stuff fixed.
>
> It's posts like this that almost convince us non-believers that there
> really is a god.
        -- Anthony Lovell, to Linus's remarks about porting
I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.
Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
        -- Lawrence Foard, entropy@world.std.com
I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb.  Thank you.
        -- Vance Petree, Virginia Power
What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through
these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot
water.
        -- Matt Welsh
> I'm an idiot..  At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
Disquieting ...
        -- Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's
> I'm an idiot..  At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals
then.
        -- Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's
> I'm an idiot..  At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-).
        -- Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
        -- Unknown source
Seriously, the way I did this was by using a special /sbin/loader binary
with debugging hooks that I made ("dd" is your friend: binary editors
are for wimps).
        -- Linus Torvalds, in an article on a dnserver
(I tried to get some documentation out of Digital on this, but as far as
I can tell even _they_ don't have it ;-)
        -- Linus Torvalds, in an article on a dnserver
I forgot to mention an important fact in the 1.3.67 announcement. In order to
get a fully working kernel, you have to follow the steps below:
- Walk around your computer widdershins 3 times, chanting "Linus is
   overworked, and he makes lousy patches, but we love him anyway". Get
   your spuouse to do this too for extra effect.  Children are optional.
- Apply the patch included in this mail
- Call your system "Super-67", and don't forget to unapply the patch
   before you later applying the official 1.3.68 patch.
- reboot
        -- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch
The new Linux anthem will be "He's an idiot, but he's ok", as performed by
Monthy Python.  You'd better start practicing.
        -- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch
C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success
        -- Dennis M. Ritchie
Old MacLinus had a stack/l-i-n-u-x/and on this stack he had a trace/l-i-n-u-x
with an Oops-Oops here and an Oops-Oops there
here an Oops, there an Oops, everywhere an Oops-Oops.
        -- tjimenez@site.gmu.edu, linux.dev.kernel
*** PUBLIC flooding detected from erikyyy
<lewnie> THAT's an erik, pholx.... ;)
        -- Seen on #LinuxGER
AP/STT.  Helsinki, Dec 5th, 6:22 AM.  For immediate release.

In order to allay fears about the continuity of the Linux project, Linus
Torvalds together with his manager Tove Monni have released "Linus
v2.0", affectionately known as "Kernel Hacker - The Next Generation".

Linux stock prices on Wall Street rose sharply after the announcement;
as one well-known analyst who wishes to remain anonymous says - "It
shows a long-term commitment, and while we expect a short-term decrease
in productivity, we feel that this solidifies the development in the
long run".

Other analysts downplay the importance of the event, and claim that just
about anybody could have done it.  "I'm glad somebody finally told them
about the birds and the bees" one sceptic comments cryptically.  But
even the skeptics agree that it is an interesting turn of events.

Others bring up other issues with the new version - "I'm especially
intrigued by the fact that the new version is female, and look forward
to seeing what the impact of that will be on future development.  Will
"Red Hat Linux" change to "Pink Hat Linux", for example?"
        -- Linus Torvalds announcing that he became father of a girl
* Phaedrus wishes he could get a machine that consists of Sparc IO,
  Alpha Processors and sleek design of an SGI
<pp> And intel prices
        -- Seen on #Linux
i dont even know if it makes sense at all :) This is an experimental patch
for an experimental kernel :))
        -- Ingo Molnar on linux-kernel
>>> FreeOS is an english-centric name

Have you all been stuck in email, or have any of you tried
*pronouncing* that? free-oh-ess? free-ows? fritos? :-)
        -- Mark Eichin
(It is an old Debian tradition to leave at least twice a year ...)
        -- Sven Rudolph
<Myxie> I know. Unless htere is a cookie monster somewhere between us tat muches the amil.
<Myxie> amil/mail
<Myxie> muches/munches tat/that htere/there
<HippieGuy> heheh
<HippieGuy> problems? :)
* Myxie needs an ircii addon that pipes teh command line through ispell :)
        -- Seen on #Debian
<Stealth> How do I bind a computer to an NIS server?
<Joey> Use a rope?
        -- Seen on #Debian
Does biff in bo work
coz it biffin doesn't beep
an if biff in bo is broke
then biff in bo I will delete

I've tried biff in bo with 'y'
I've tried biff in bo with '-y'
no biffin output does it show
so poor wee biff is gonna go.
        -- John Spence <jspence@lynx.net.au> on debian-user
As I currently don't have a floppy drive in my computer, I'd like to
make an `emergency cdrom' ;)
        -- Eugene Crosser <crosser@average.org>
<james> Are we going to make an emacs out of apt?
        APT - Debian in a program.  It even does your laundry
        -- Seen on #Debian
Ha. I say let them try -- even vi+perl couldn't match the power of an
editor which is, after all, its own OS.  ;-)
        -- Johnie Ingram on debian-devel, about linking vim with libperl.so
<dark> Turns out that grep returns error code 1 when there are no matches.
       I KNEW that.  Why did it take me half an hour?
        -- Seen on #Debian
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity,
so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses
based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
        -- Richard Stallman
Die TeX-Artikel [..] aber doch inzwischen wohl nicht mehr an den
Fingern zweier Hände abzählbar (außer vielleicht von Informatikern,
die bekanntlich mit den Fingern bis 1023 zählen können.
        -- Anselm Lingnau
(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
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 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 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 holding company is a thing where you hand an accomplice the goods while
the policeman searches you.
A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
A mouse is an elephant built by the Japanese.
... 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"
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 exlaimed.
        "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."
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.
All this big deal about white collar crime -- what's WRONG with white collar
crime?  Who enjoys his job today?  You?  Me?  Anybody?  The only satisfying
part of any job is coffee break, lunch hour and quitting time.  Years ago
there was at least the hope of improvement -- eventual promotion -- more
important jobs to come.  Once you can be sold the myth that you may make
president of the company you'll hardly ever steal stamps.  But nobody
believes he's going to be president anymore.  The more people change jobs
the more they realize that there is a direct connection between working for
a living and total stupefying boredom.  So why NOT take revenge?  You're not
going to find ME knocking a guy because he pads an expense account and his
home stationery carries the company emblem.  Take away crime from the white
collar worker and you will rob him of his last vestige of job interest.
                -- J. Feiffer
An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed the Managing Director's
chance to kiss the tea-girl.  It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the
Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to anyone
who has seen the Managing Director face on).
                -- Katherine Whitehorn, "Roundabout"
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs.  The trick is to make one with none.
Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
great effort pushing boulders into a single word.

It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
both Parliament and Party.

It stands today, a monument to human spirit.  If life exists on other
planets, this may be the first message received from us.
                -- The Realist, November, 1964.
Bullwinkle:        You just leave that to my pal.  He's the brains of the outfit.
General:        What does that make YOU?
Bullwinkle:        What else?  An executive.
                -- Jay Ward
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a
brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and
lived in New Jersey.  Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the
phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where
it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented.  But Edison's
greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company.
Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit:
the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then
immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is
the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of
electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few
customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the
last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937;
the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is
why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
                -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation,
all our researches ... point to an average increase of 5.75% per year.
                -- C.N. Parkinson
Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?

Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business signs
to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a word, as in:
WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S.
Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand- lettered
small-business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random
words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
                -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
        "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
        "Of course it's wrong!  It's illegal!"
        "I've never done anything illegal before."
        "I thought you said you were an accountant!"
        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"
        "Hey, Sam, how about a loan?"
        "Whattaya need?"
        "Oh, about $500."
        "Whattaya got for collateral?"
        "Whattaya need?"
        "How about an eye?"
                -- Sam Giancana
Hideously disfigured by an ancient Indian curse?

                WE CAN HELP!

Call (511) 338-0959 for an immediate appointment.
        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"
I never cheated an honest man, only rascals.  They wanted something for
nothing.  I gave them nothing for something.
                -- Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ...
in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent
to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who
have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
                -- Dr. Laurence J. Peter, "The Peter Principle"
Is a person who blows up banks an econoclast?
It is ridiculous to call this an industry.  This is not.  This is rat eat
rat, dog eat dog.  I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they
kill me.  You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.
                -- Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's
It's fabulous!  We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
                -- Macy's
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this--
no dog exchanges bones with another.
                -- Adam Smith
Men's skin is different from women's skin.  It is usually bigger, and
it has more snakes tattooed on it.  Also, if you examine a woman's skin
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events
such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the
woman's skin.  Thank you.]

... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"!  And what is even more
interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying!  This is a fact.  Your
skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran
cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices
with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first,
without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from
below.
                -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him.
None of our men are "experts."  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
                -- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work"
Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss put in an honest day's work.
        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"
        "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 years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big
store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable
prices?  Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home
center.  And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all
over the United States.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
                -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.
                -- James Baldwin
The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
warranty.  Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing
the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market
award for achievement.  It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal
gesture by the individual to himself.
                -- John Kenneth Galbraith, "Annals of an Abiding Liberal"
The term "fire" brings up visions of violence and mayhem and the ugly scene
of shooting employees who make mistakes.  We will now refer to this process
as "deleting" an employee (much as a file is deleted from a disk).  The
employee is simply there one instant, and gone the next.  All the terrible
temper tantrums, crying, and threats are eliminated.
                -- Kenny's Korner
The Worst Car Hire Service
        When David Schwartz left university in 1972, he set up Rent-a-wreck
as a joke.  Being a natural prankster, he acquired a fleet of beat-up
shabby, wreckages waiting for the scrap heap in California.
        He put on a cap and looked forward to watching people's faces as he
conducted them round the choice of bumperless, dented junkmobiles.
        To his lasting surprise there was an insatiable demand for them and
he now has 26 thriving branches all over America.  "People like driving
round in the worst cars available," he said.  Of course they do.
        "If a driver damages the side of a car and is honest enough to
admit it, I tell him, `Forget it'.  If they bring a car back late we
overlook it.  If they've had a crash and it doesn't involve another vehicle
we might overlook that too."
        "Where's the ashtray?" asked on Los Angeles wife, as she settled
into the ripped interior.  "Honey," said her husband, "the whole car's the
ash tray."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Their idea of an offer you can't refuse is an offer... and you'd better
not refuse.
        Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
        He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the
Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an
open market.
        If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he
should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of
himself.

        Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
        Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
        Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
                -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
There are worse things in life than death.  Have you ever spent an evening
with an insurance salesman?
                -- Woody Allen
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because
the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it
recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated"
the airline industry.  What this means for you, the consumer, is that the
airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever.  They can
show snuff movies.  They can charge for oxygen.  They can hire pilots right
out of Vending Machine Refill Person School.  They can conserve fuel by
ejecting husky passengers over water.  They can ram competing planes in
mid-air.  These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which
have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
amazingly low fares, such as $29.  Of course, certain restrictions do apply,
the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must
pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
                -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
To understand this important story, you have to understand how the telephone
company works.  Your telephone is connected to a local computer, which is in
turn connected to a regional computer, which is in turn connected to a
loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of
Lawrence, Kan.

Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in.  If it
suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the computer
above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the one above it,
until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe break down in tears
and tell your closest friend about a sordid incident from your past
involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse, an entire religious order, a
garden hose and six quarts of tapioca pudding, the top computer feeds your
conversation into Edna's loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on
the porch to listen and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
                -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own Phones?"
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere.  A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit.  The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting.  Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years.  Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw.  This, when found, will get thrown away.  No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this.  Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
XVI:
        In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one
        aircraft.  This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and
        Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be
        made available to the Marines for the extra day.
XVII:
        Software is like entropy.  It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing,
        and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., it always increases.
XVIII:
        It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability.  It is not uncommon
        to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of
        ten degradation accomplished.
XIX:
        Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will
        be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them.
XX:
        In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of funding
        approved the prior year plus three-fourths of whatever change the
        administration requests -- minus 4-percent tax.
                -- Norman Augustine
XXI:
        It's easy to get a loan unless you need it.
XXII:
        If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock,
        not selling advice.
XXIII:
        Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is
        currently estimated.
XXIV:
        The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an
        established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most
        costly action known to man.
XXV:
        A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an athlete
        or a new canvas to an artist.
                -- Norman Augustine
XXXI:
        The optimum committee has no members.
XXXII:
        Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of
        turning problems into gold -- your problems into their gold.
XXXIII:
        Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.
XXXIV:
        The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work
        is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed
        randomly.
XXXV:
        The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion,
        the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give
        the data authenticity.
                -- Norman Augustine
"I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation.
Or is it a BUG?"
"Let's call it an accidental feature. :-)"
             -- Larry Wall in <6909@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are
going to start thinking you're from New York.   :-)
             -- Larry Wall to Dan Bernstein in <10187@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
I think it's a new feature.  Don't tell anyone it was an accident.  :-)
         -- Larry Wall on s/foo/bar/eieio in <10911@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
It is, of course, written in Perl.  Translation to C is left as an
exercise for the reader.  :-)  -- Larry Wall in <7448@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Perl programming is an *empirical* science!
             -- Larry Wall in <10226@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
True, it returns "" for false, but "" is an even more interesting
number than 0.
             -- Larry Wall in <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org>
It's possible that I'm just an idiot, and don't recognize a sleepy
slavemaster when I see one.
             -- Larry Wall in <199708040319.UAA16213@wall.org>
As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says "optimize
the heck out of this routine", and your definition of heck would be a
parameter to the optimizer.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709081854.LAA20830@wall.org>
This has been planned for some time.  I guess we'll just have to find
someone with an exceptionally round tuit.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709302338.QAA17037@wall.org>
Because the demand for it is low enough that it would be best handled
as an XSUB, and the demand for it is low enough that nobody has
bothered to write it as an XSUB.
             -- Larry Wall on in-place Perl sorting
If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just
installing delayed bugs, whereas with this feature, you're installing an
instant bug that's easily fixed.  Whoopee.
             -- Larry Wall in <199710050130.SAA04762@wall.org>
Suppose you're working on an optimizer to render \X unnecessary (or
rather, redundant, which isn't the same thing in my book).
             -- Larry Wall in <199710211624.JAA17833@wall.org>
I suppose one could claim that an undocumented feature has no
semantics.  :-(
             -- Larry Wall in <199710290036.QAA01818@wall.org>
"He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion."
                -- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
        "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"
In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to
be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's
beloved.
                -- Russell Baker
People think love is an emotion.  Love is good sense.
                -- Ken Kesey
Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.
                -- Charles Baudelaire
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but ...
        -- I have to floss my cat.
        -- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
        -- I need to spend more time with my blender.
        -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
        -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
        -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
        -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
        -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
        -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
        -- I have some really hard words to look up.
        -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
        -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but...
        -- I have to answer all of my "occupant" letters.
        -- None of my socks match.
        -- I'm having all my plants neutered.
        -- I changed the lock on my door and now I can't get out.
        -- My yucca plant is feeling yucky.
        -- I'm touring China with a wok band.
        -- My chocolate-appreciation class meets that night.
        -- I'm running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student
                named Basil Metabolism.
        -- There are important world issues that need worrying about.
        -- I'm going to count the bristles in my toothbrush.
        -- I prefer to remain an enigma.
        -- I think you want the OTHER Peggy/Cathy/Mike/whomever.
        -- I feel a song coming on.
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but...
        -- I have to draw "Cubby" for an art scholarship.
        -- I have to sit up with a sick ant.
        -- I'm trying to be less popular.
        -- My bathroom tiles need grouting.
        -- I'm waiting to see if I'm already a winner.
        -- My subconscious says no.
        -- I just picked up a book called "Glue in Many Lands" and I
                can't seem to put it down.
        -- My favorite commercial is on TV.
        -- I have to study for my blood test.
        -- I've been traded to Cincinnati.
        -- I'm having my baby shoes bronzed.
        -- I have to go to court for kitty littering.
All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
An air of FRENCH FRIES permeates my nostrils!!
An INK-LING?  Sure -- TAKE one!!  Did you BUY any COMMUNIST UNIFORMS??
An Italian is COMBING his hair in suburban DES MOINES!
Are you still an ALCOHOLIC?
Can I have an IMPULSE ITEM instead?
Concentrate on th'cute, li'l CARTOON GUYS!  Remember the SERIAL
NUMBERS!!  Follow the WHIPPLE AVE. EXIT!!  Have a FREE PEPSI!!  Turn
LEFT at th'HOLIDAY INN!!  JOIN the CREDIT WORLD!!  MAKE me an OFFER!!!
Content:  80% POLYESTER, 20% DACRONi ... The waitress's UNIFORM sheds
TARTAR SAUCE like an 8" by 10" GLOSSY ...
Did an Italian CRANE OPERATOR just experience uninhibited sensations in
a MALIBU HOT TUB?
Did I do an INCORRECT THING??
Hmmm ... a PINHEAD, during an EARTHQUAKE, encounters an ALL-MIDGET
FIDDLE ORCHESTRA ... ha ... ha ...
Hmmm ... an arrogant bouquet with a subtle suggestion of POLYVINYL
CHLORIDE ...
I guess it was all a DREAM ... or an episode of HAWAII FIVE-O ...
I had a lease on an OEDIPUS COMPLEX back in '81 ...
I have a VISION!  It's a RANCID double-FISHWICH on an ENRICHED BUN!!
I think I am an overnight sensation right now!!
I used to be a FUNDAMENTALIST, but then I heard about the HIGH
RADIATION LEVELS and bought an ENCYCLOPEDIA!!
I would like to urinate in an OVULAR, porcelain pool --
I'm dressing up in an ill-fitting IVY-LEAGUE SUIT!!  Too late...
I'm having a tax-deductible experience!  I need an energy crunch!!
I'm having an emotional outburst!!
I'm having an EMOTIONAL OUTBURST!!  But, uh, WHY is there a WAFFLE in
my PAJAMA POCKET??
I'm not an Iranian!!  I voted for Dianne Feinstein!!
I've got an IDEA!!  Why don't I STARE at you so HARD, you forget your
SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!!
Is this an out-take from the "BRADY BUNCH"?
It's OBVIOUS ... The FURS never reached ISTANBUL ... You were an EXTRA
in the REMAKE of "TOPKAPI" ... Go home to your WIFE ... She's making
FRENCH TOAST!
It's OKAY -- I'm an INTELLECTUAL, too.
OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS??  Oh, YEH!!  First you need four GALLONS of JELL-O
and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th'WRENCH in the JELL-O as if
it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... ... or ... I ... um ... WHERE'S
the WASHING MACHINES?
On the other hand, life can be an endless parade of TRANSSEXUAL
QUILTING BEES aboard a cruise ship to DISNEYWORLD if only we let it!!
Somewhere in suburban Honolulu, an unemployed bellhop is whipping up a
batch of illegal psilocybin chop suey!!
The PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY is CRYING for an END to BURT REYNOLDS movies!!
We are now enjoying total mutual interaction in an imaginary hot tub ...
What a COINCIDENCE!  I'm an authorized "SNOOTS OF THE STARS" dealer!!
When you said "HEAVILY FORESTED" it reminded me of an overdue CLEANING
BILL ... Don't you SEE?  O'Grogan SWALLOWED a VALUABLE COIN COLLECTION
and HAD to murder the ONLY MAN who KNEW!!
Yes, but will I see the EASTER BUNNY in skintight leather at an IRON
MAIDEN concert?
You can't hurt me!!  I have an ASSUMABLE MORTGAGE!!
YOU!!  Give me the CUTEST, PINKEST, most charming little VICTORIAN
DOLLHOUSE you can find!!  An make it SNAPPY!!
An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for
broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
It is well known that *things* from undesirable universes are always seeking
an entrance into this one, which is the psychic equivalent of handy for the
buses and closer to the shops.
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about
problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that
if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be
embarrassingly good at it ...
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
Watch Rincewind.

Look at him.  Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on
which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might
have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his
master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for
heterosexuality.  Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon
that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic
whose time-and-space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There.
Graduates were usually destined for mageship at least, but Rincewind--after
an unfortunate event--had left knowing only one spell and made a living of
sorts around the town by capitalizing on an innate gift for languages.  He
avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his
acquaintances in mind of a bright rodent.
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
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!"
After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages,
claming 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."
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
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 bedisde 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!"
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life
to date.  He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now.  He has
the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly
realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet
and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object.
He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists
entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning
cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for
legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy
Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast").
                -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
Fortune's Exercising Truths:

1:  Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic.  You don't.
2.  Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart.  So do heart attacks.
3.  Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life.
4.  Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing.
5.  No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done
    quietly at your desk at work.  People will suspect manic tendencies as
    you twitter around in your chair.
6.  Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers.
7.  Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around
    for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard
    racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity.
8.  Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups,
    followed by one throw-up.
9.  Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.
[From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
Association, in Rome]:

The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria and
of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not spring
from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods, or of means
of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in millions of
individuals in system functions which, once they have reached the event
maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology engaging a suitable
stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general, president, political
party, etc.) to consummate the act of social schizophrenia in mass genocide.
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929.
Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating
table to prevent her interference, he placed a ureteral catheter into
a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and
walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory
x-ray film.  In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize.
        If I kiss you, that is an 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"
        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"
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree
that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.
The Vet Who Surprised A Cow
        In the course of his duties in August 1977, a Dutch veterinary
surgeon was required to treat an ailing cow.  To investigate its internal
gases he inserted a tube into that end of the animal not capable of facial
expression and struck a match.  The jet of flame set fire first to some
bales of hay and then to the whole farm causing damage estimate at L45,000.
The vet was later fined L140 for starting a fire in a manner surprising to
the magistrates.  The cow escaped with shock.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
We have the flu.  I don't know if this particular strain has an official
name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu".  You
may have had it yourself.  The main symptom is that you wish you had another
setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION".
        Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a)
your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength.  Midway through the brushing
process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple
of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your
mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that
would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the
police would find you.
        You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
                -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
        "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
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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