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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned
things is ample.
                -- Rebecca West
        A hard-luck actor who appeared in one coloossal disaster after another
finally got a break, a broken leg to be exact.  Someone pointed out that it's
the first time the poor fellow's been in the same cast for more than a week.
A rose is a rose is a rose.  Just ask Jean Marsh, known to millions of
PBS viewers in the '70s as Rose, the maid on the LWT export "Upstairs,
Downstairs."  Though Marsh has since gone on to other projects, ... it's
with Rose she's forever identified.  So much so that she even likes to
joke about having one named after her, a distinction not without its
drawbacks.  "I was very flattered when I heard about it, but when I looked
up the official description, it said, `Jean Marsh: pale peach, not very
good in beds; better up against a wall.'  I want to tell you that's not
true.  I'm very good in beds as well."
Around the turn of this century, a composer named Camille Saint-Saens wrote
a satirical zoological-fantasy called "Le Carnaval des Animaux."  Aside from
one movement of this piece, "The Swan", Saint-Saens didn't allow this work
to be published or even performed until a year had elapsed after his death.
(He died in 1921.)
        Most of us know the "Swan" movement rather well, with its smooth,
flowing cello melody against a calm background; but I've been having this
fantasy...
        What if he had written this piece with lyrics, as a song to be sung?
And, further, what if he had accompanied this song with a musical saw?  (This
instrument really does exist, often played by percussionists!)  Then the
piece would be better known as:
        SAINT-SAENS' SAW SONG "SWAN"!
Best Mistakes In Films
        In his "Filmgoer's Companion", Mr. Leslie Halliwell helpfully lists
four of the cinema's greatest moments which you should get to see if at all
possible.
        In "Carmen Jones", the camera tracks with Dorothy Dandridge down a
street; and the entire film crew is reflected in the shop window.
        In "The Wrong Box", the roofs of Victorian London are emblazoned
with television aerials.
        In "Decameron Nights", Louis Jourdain stands on the deck of his
fourteenth century pirate ship; and a white lorry trundles down the hill
in the background.
        In "Viking Queen", set in the times of Boadicea, a wrist watch is
clearly visible on one of the leading characters.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
that shot down the Korean jet?  At one point he definitely states:

        "Natasha!  First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and squirrel."

                -- ihuxw!tommyo
Ever get the feeling that the world's on tape and one of the reels is missing?
                -- Rich Little
G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy.  One
of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
`No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
that's your chance, my boy."
George Bernard Shaw once sent two tickets to the opening night of one of
his plays to Winston Churchill with the following note:
        "Bring a friend, if you have one."

Churchill wrote back, returning the two tickets and excused himself as he
had a previous engagement.  He also attached the following:
        "Please send me two tickets for the next night, if there is one."
I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
                -- Fred Allen
I dread success.  To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on
earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has
succeeded in his courtship.  I like a state of continual becoming, with a
goal in front and not behind.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
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 remember Ulysses well...  Left one day for the post office to mail a letter,
met a blonde named Circe on the streetcar, and didn't come back for 20 years.
If you lose a son you can always get another, but there's only one
Maltese Falcon.
                -- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
In the Old West a wagon train is crossing the plains.  As night falls the
wagon train forms a circle, and a campfire is lit in the middle.  After
everyone has gone to sleep two lone cavalry officers stand watch over the
camp.
        After several hours of quiet, they hear war drums starting from
a nearby Indian village they had passed during the day.  The drums get
louder and louder.
        Finally one soldier turns to the other and says, "I don't like
the sound of those drums."
        Suddenly, they hear a cry come from the Indian camp:  "IT'S
NOT OUR REGULAR DRUMMER."
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
                -- Rod Serling
Lamonte Cranston once hired a new Chinese manservant.  While describing his
duties to the new man, Lamonte pointed to a bowl of candy on the coffee
table and warned him that he was not to take any.  Some days later, the new
manservant was cleaning up, with no one at home, and decided to sample some
of the candy.  Just than, Cranston walked in, spied the manservant at the
candy, and said:
        "Pardon me Choy, is that the Shadow's nugate you chew?"
        Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
lived with was made up of idiots.  Remember?  One of them was always
getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
the farmhouse to alert the other ones.  She'd whimper and tug at their
sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
you think something's wrong?  Do you think she wants us to follow her?
What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
of every week.  What with all the time these people spent pinned under
the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever.
They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the
applications for.
                -- Dave Barry
        Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and
tries to hide behind a beard.  No good.  There are still too many people
and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking.  He moves to the
outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,
caretaker included.  He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,
day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.
        Nobody's cut the grass in months.  What's happened to that caretaker?
What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are
start to get curious.  A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.
Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared.  The senior
class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a
movie one night and stays out.  The town's up in arms, but just before the
police take action, the kids turn up.  They've found a purpose.  They go
home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going
now.  They're in a band.
                -- Ira Kaplan
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"
No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of
them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe
their wish has been granted.
                -- W.H. Auden, "The Dyer's Hand"
One big pile is better than two little piles.
                -- Arlo Guthrie
        Penn's aunts made great apple pies at low prices.  No one else in
town could compete with the pie rates of Penn's aunts.
"Spare no expense to save money on this one."
                -- Samuel Goldwyn
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest
science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who!  And I'll take you all
on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
                -- Harlan Ellison
        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 capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
greater than that of any other animals.  Some of their most esteemed
inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party
of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
                -- H. L. Mencken
The difference between waltzes and disco is mostly one of volume.
                -- T.K.
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:

The Miracle of the Age!!!  A LION in your lap!  A LOVER in your arms!
                -- Bwana Devil (1952)

OVERWHELMING!  ELECTRIFYING!  BAFFLING!
Fire Can't Burn Them!  Bullets Can't Kill Them!  See the Unfolding of
the Mysteries of the Moon as Murderous Robot Monsters Descend Upon the
Earth!  You've Never Seen Anything Like It!  Neither Has the World!
        SEE... Robots from Space in All Their Glory!!!
                -- Robot Monster (1953)

1,965 pyramids, 5,337 dancing girls, one million swaying bullrushes,
802 scared bulls!
                -- The Egyptian (1954)
The ultimate game show will be the one where somebody gets killed at the end.
                -- Chuck Barris, creator of "The Gong Show"
There are three rules for writing a novel.  Unfortunately, no one knows
what they are.
                -- Somerset Maugham
There are two jazz musicians who are great buddies.  They hang out and play
together for years, virtually inseparable.  Unfortunately, one of them is
struck by a truck and killed.  About a week later his friend wakes up in
the middle of the night with a start because he can feel a presence in the
room.  He calls out, "Who's there?  Who's there?  What's going on?"
        "It's me -- Bob," replies a faraway voice.
        Excitedly he sits up in bed.  "Bob!  Bob!  Is that you?  Where are
you?"
        "Well," says the voice, "I'm in heaven now."
        "Heaven!  You're in heaven!  That's wonderful!  What's it like?"
        "It's great, man.  I gotta tell you, I'm jamming up here every day.
I'm playing with Bird, and 'Trane, and Count Basie drops in all the time!
Man it is smokin'!"
        "Oh, wow!" says his friend. "That sounds fantastic, tell me more,
tell me more!"
        "Let me put it this way," continues the voice.  "There's good news
and bad news.  The good news is that these guys are in top form.  I mean
I have *never* heard them sound better.  They are *wailing* up here."
        "The bad news is that God has this girlfriend that sings..."
There are two ways of disliking art.   One is to dislike it.  The other is
to like it rationally.
                -- Oscar Wilde
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope.
                -- Oscar Wilde
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
                -- Oscar Wilde
There's nothing remarkable about it.  All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
                -- J.S. Bach
This is the Baron.  Angel Martin tells me you buy information.  Ok,
meet me at one a.m. behind the bus depot, bring five-hundred dollars
and come alone.  I'm serious!
                -- "The Rockford Files"
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
When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony concerts,
she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years -- and I find I mind
it less and less."
                -- Louise Andrews Kent
While he was in New York on location for _Bronco Billy_ (1980), Clint
Eastwood agreed to a television interview.  His host, somewhat hostile,
began by defining a Clint Eastwood picture as a violent, ruthless,
lawless, and bloody piece of mayhem, and then asked Eastwood himself to
define a Clint Eastwood picture.  "To me," said Eastwood calmly, "what
a Clint Eastwood picture is, is one that I'm in."
                -- Boller and Davis, "Hollywood Anecdotes"
Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet.  I've got eight slugs in me.  One's lead,
the rest bourbon.  The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver.  I'm
a private eye.
                -- "Calvin & Hobbes"
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be
liable to a fine of one pound.  Any animal leading a blind person shall
be deemed to be a cat.
                -- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
                -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
"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.)
lp1 on fire
(One of the more obfuscated kernel messages)
"On the Internet, no one knows you're using Windows NT"
(Submitted by Ramiro Estrugo, restrugo@fateware.com)
There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and
those who can't. There is a constant pitched battle between the two.
(From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a)
Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse
for some of the brain-damages of minix.
(Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum)
Some one needed the powerstrip, so they pulled the switch plug.
We are currently trying a new concept of using a live mouse.  Unfortuantely, one has yet to survive being hooked up to the computer.....please bear with us.
What office are you in? Oh, that one.  Did you know that your building was built over the universities first nuclear research site? And wow, are'nt you the lucky one, your office is right over where the core is buried!
Due to Federal Budget problems we have been forced to cut back on the number of users able to access the system at one time. (namely none allowed....)
error: one bad user found in front of screen
        A man was reading The Canterbury Tales one Saturday morning, when his
wife asked "What have you got there?"  Replied he, "Just my cup and Chaucer."
All generalizations are false, including this one.
                -- Mark Twain
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
in 1959.
                -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
                   bad fiction contest.
Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"--which is
but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise
man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET."
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel.  And if one can
neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
                -- Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse"

        [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
         referring to powerfail recovery.]
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use
in reading it at all.
                -- Oscar Wilde
In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
                -- Mark Twain
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.  Therefore ... in the Old
Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred
thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the
Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.  ... There is
something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesome returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
                -- Mark Twain
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition.  There was once a man
who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that
there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best
judge of one.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories,
his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the
worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one
day like any other day, only shorter.
                -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
        My dear People.
        My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks,
and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers,
Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots.  Also my good
Sackville Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End.  Today is my
one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today!"
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
October.

This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.

The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June,
December, August, and February.

                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has
only nine lives.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
"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"
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
                -- Mark Twain
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
                -- Blaise Pascal
The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
        The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax.  A
most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
give a public reading of his latest poem.
        Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
        Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece.  "Be so good as to mark
the place and consider at your leisure.  I'm sure you can give it a better
turn."
        After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side.  "There is no need to touch the
lines," he said.  "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
on those passages, and then read them to him as altered.  I have known him
much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
        Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem
exactly as it was before.  His unique critical faculties had lost none of
their edge.  "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right.  Nothing can
be better."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The Least Successful Collector
        Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting.  She
was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had
amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the
works of Shakespeare.
        One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond
legibility.  Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms.  The
remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.
        The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned
the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the
French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
commoner things.  It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
over all the fruits of the earth.  When one has tasted it, he knows what the
angels eat.  It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because
she repented.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
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 always one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.
                -- Joan Didion, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"
This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a
little ironic since we may not have one.
                -- Arthur Clarke
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
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
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
                -- Dylan Thomas
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
                -- J.P. Donleavy
"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"
A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on
a photo-safari in Africa.  As they're driving along the savannah in their
jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.

The biologist: "Look!  A herd of zebras!  And there's a white zebra!
        Fantastic!  We'll be famous!"
The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant.  We only know
        there's one white zebra."
The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
        white on one side."
The computer scientist : "Oh, no!  A special case!"
A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who
had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether
various objects had Buddha-nature or not.  To such a question Tortue
invariably sat silent.  The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,
and a moonlit night.  One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and
asked the same question.  In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop
between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex
string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk.  At that moment, the monk
was enlightened.

From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue.  Instead, he made string after
string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,
who passed it on to theirs.
A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling
the president one of the latest talking computers.
Salesman:        "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question
                and it'll give the correct answer.  Computer, what is the
                speed of light?"
Computer:        186,282 miles per second.
Salesman:        "Who was the first president of the United States?"
Computer:        George Washington.
President:        "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question.
                Where is my father?"
Computer:        Your father is fishing in Georgia.
President:        "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty
                years ago!"
Computer:        Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just
                landed a twelve pound bass.
A debugged program is one for which you have not yet found the conditions
that make it fail.
                -- Jerry Ogdin
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 little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.  Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
                -- Fred Brooks
        A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master,
Knuth.  When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found.  "Where is the
wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student.
        "Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a
pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new
disciples."
        Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
        A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements
document for a new application.  The manager asked the master: "How long will
it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"
        "It will take one year," said the master promptly.
        "But we need this system immediately or even sooner!  How long will it
take it I assign ten programmers to it?"
        The master programmer frowned.  "In that case, it will take two years."
        "And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"
        The master programmer shrugged.  "Then the design will never be
completed," he said.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day.  The master
noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game.  "Excuse me",
he said, "may I examine it?"
        The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master.
"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium,
and Hard", said the master.  "Yet every such device has another level of play,
where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the
human."
        "Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this
mysterious setting?"
        The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices.
"The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant,"
said the master.
        "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
        "It is," came the reply.
        "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
        "It is even in a video game," said the master.
        "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
        The master coughed and shifted his position slightly.  "The lesson
is over for today," he said.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A novice asked the Master: "Here is a programmer that never designs,
documents, or tests his programs.  Yet all who know him consider him one of
the best programmers in the world.  Why is this?"
        The Master replies: "That programmer has mastered the Tao.  He has
gone beyond the need for design; he does not become angry when the system
crashes, but accepts the universe without concern.  He has gone beyond the
need for documentation; he no longer cares if anyone else sees his code.  He
has gone beyond the need for testing; each of his programs are perfect within
themselves, serene and elegant, their purpose self-evident.  Truly, he has
entered the mystery of the Tao."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A novice asked the master: "I 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 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?]
A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
undreamed of by its author.
                -- S. C. Johnson
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
                -- F. Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month"

Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by
close application thereto, it is worse execute by two persons and
scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.
                -- George Washington, 1732-1799
===  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.
Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for
buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham
Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that
reason.  He knows it because he fired the guy.
        "He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I
bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'"  Mr. O'Neil says.
"I said, 'No.  Wrong.  Game over.  Next contestant, please.'"
                -- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989
Anyone who has attended a USENIX conference in a fancy hotel can tell you
that a sentence like "You're one of those computer people, aren't you?"
is roughly equivalent to "Look, another amazingly mobile form of slime
mold!" in the mouth of a hotel cocktail waitress.
                -- Elizabeth Zwicky
At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be
solved.  The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will
take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology
available.  The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution.
In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it.  There
is only one solution, he says.  Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general
relativity and all.  She replies, "What does that have to do with solving
a computer problem?"
        "Remember the twin paradox?"
        After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very
fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but
that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course!  Leave the
computer here, and accelerate the earth!"
        The problem was so important that they did exactly that.  When
the earth came back, they were presented with the answer:

        IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card.
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
CCI Power 6/40: one board, a megabyte of cache, and an attitude...
COMPASS [for the CDC-6000 series] is the sort of assembler one expects from
a corporation whose president codes in octal.
                -- J.N. Gray
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed
from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
                -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
Congratulations!  You are the one-millionth user to log into our system.
If there's anything special we can do for you, anything at all, don't
hesitate to ask!
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
Each of these cults correspond to one of the two antagonists in the age of
Reformation.  In the realm of the Apple Macintosh, as in Catholic Europe,
worshipers peer devoutly into screens filled with "icons."  All is sound and
imagery and Appledom.  Even words look like decorative filigrees in exotic
typefaces.  The greatest icon of all, the inviolable Apple itself, stands in
the dominate position at the upper-left corner of the screen.  A central
corporate headquarters decrees the form of all rites and practices.
Infalliable doctrine issues from one executive officer whose selection occurs
in a sealed boardroom.  Should anyone in his curia question his powers, the
offender is excommunicated into outer darkness.  The expelled heretic founds
a new company, mutters obscurely of the coming age and the next computer,
then disappears into silence, taking his stockholders with him.  The mother
company forbids financial competition as sternly as it stifles ideological
competition; if you want to use computer programs that conform to Apple's
orthodoxy, you must buy a computer made and sold by Apple itself.
                -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
Established technology tends to persist in the face of new technology.
                -- G. Blaauw, one of the designers of System 360
Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer
technology?  U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation.
The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in
computer technology during World War II.  At the C.W. Post Center of Long
Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school adminis-
trators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug--a moth.  At Harvard
one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working on the
"granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I.  "Things were going badly;
there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long glass-enclosed
computer," she said.  "Finally, someone located the trouble spot and, using
ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch moth.  From then on, when
anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it."  Hopper
said that when the veracity of her story was questioned recently, "I referred
them to my 1945 log book, now in the collection of the Naval Surface Weapons
Center, and they found the remains of that moth taped to the page in
question."
                [actually, the term "bug" had even earlier usage in
                regard to problems with radio hardware.  Ed.]
"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one
idiot.  Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's
sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated,
caustic twits."
                -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
        "Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
        "Yes, I don't have one."
        "Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..."
                -- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
I had the rare misfortune of being one of the first people to try and
implement a PL/1 compiler.
                -- T. Cheatham
I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister.
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
                -- Isaac Newton

In the sciences, we are now uniquely priviledged to sit side by side with
the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
                -- Gerald Holton

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on
my shoulders.
                -- Hal Abelson

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
                -- Gauss

Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists
stand on each other's toes.
                -- Richard Hamming

It has been said that physicists stand on one another's shoulders.  If
this is the case, then programmers stand on one another's toes, and
software engineers dig each other's graves.
                -- Unknown
If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot
to send it.  But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think
the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.  And if *fifty*
pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get
lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!  And if 1Gb of mail gets
lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa [ucbarpa.berkeley.edu] is down and
think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive
Net Mail ...
                 -- Casey Leedom
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery.
But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine,
is somehow enobled and no-one dare criticise it.
                -- Pierre Gallois
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
In every non-trivial program there is at least one bug.
        In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of
IBM was moving over the face of the market.  And DEC said, "Let there
be registers"; and there were registers.  And DEC saw that they
carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions.  DEC called
the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code.  And there was
evening and there was morning, one interrupt.
                -- Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk"
Introducing, the 1010, a one-bit processor.

INSTRUCTION SET
        Code        Mnemonic        What
        0        NOP                No Operation
        1        JMP                Jump (address specified by next 2 bits)

Now Available for only 12 1/2 cents!
        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 easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.
                -- K&R
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

        ...
        The central Superhighway site called ``sunsite.unc.edu''
collapsed in the morning before the release.  News about the release had
been leaked by a German hacker group, Harmonious Hardware Hackers, who
had cracked into the author's computer earlier in the week.  They had
got the release date wrong by one day, and caused dozens of eager fans
to connect to the sunsite computer at the wrong time.  ``No computer can
handle that kind of stress,'' explained the mourning sunsite manager,
Erik Troan.  ``The spinning disks made the whole computer jump, and
finally it crashed through the floor to the basement.''  Luckily,
repairs were swift and the computer was working again the same evening.
``Thank God we were able to buy enough needles and thread and patch it
together without major problems.''  The site has also installed a new
throttle on the network pipe, allowing at most four clients at the same
time, thus making a new crash less likely.  ``The book is now in our
Incoming folder'', says Troan, ``and you're all welcome to come and get it.''
                -- 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

        ...
        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]
        Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack.  Jack and his relations were poor.  Often their
hash table was bare.  One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse.  You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs."  She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
        So Jack set out.  But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
        "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
        "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
        "I have a much better algorithm.  You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
        Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house.  But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
        "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence?  All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window...
                -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack"
Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz.
can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look
identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The
ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the
ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the
side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
                -- Wernher von Braun
Meantime, in the slums below Ronnie's Ranch, Cynthia feels as if some one
has made voodoo boxen of her and her favorite backplanes. On this fine
moonlit night, some horrible persona has been jabbing away at, dragging
magnets over, and surging these voodoo boxen.  Fortunately, they seem to
have gotten a bit bored and fallen asleep, for it looks like Cynthia may
get to go home.  However, she has made note to quickly put together a totem
of sweaty, sordid static straps, random bits of wire, flecks of once meaniful
oxide, bus grant cards, gummy worms, and some bits of old pdp backplane to
hang above the machine room.  This totem must be blessed by the old and wise
venerable god of unibus at once, before the idolatization of vme, q and pc
bus drive him to bitter revenge.  Alas, if this fails, and the voodoo boxen
aren't destroyed,  there may be more than worms in the apple. Next, the
arrival of voodoo optico transmitigational magneto killer paramecium, capable
of teleporting from cable to cable, screen to screen, ear to ear and hoof
to mouth...
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
        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"
"One Architecture, One OS" also translates as "One Egg, One Basket".
"One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."

Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
                -- Chuq Von Rospach
        One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make
a better garbage collector.  We must keep a reference count of the pointers
to each cons."
        Moon patiently told the student the following story -- "One day a
student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage
collector..."
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
                -- Robert Firth
One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is...  If they do
foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little.
                -- Joe Martin
        One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic
is our support for UNIX?
        Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago.
Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our
VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand,
easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual
users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines.
And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
        It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run
out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end
up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
        With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly
check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With VMS, no matter
what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if
you look long enough it's there.  That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX
is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there.
                -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain.  Ed.]
One person's error is another person's data.
One picture is worth 128K words.
        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"
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
moment.  They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
systems could be virtual at *___all* levels.  They would like personal
computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
Correctness Verification Aid packages.
Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
down the system for days.
        Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly,
uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the
rational functions needed to represent the integrand.  Although the
algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure
of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot
claim that the algorithm is a natural one.  In fact, the creator of
differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's,
largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work.  Probably
he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as well.
                -- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub
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.
So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh?  In reality
all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have
tomorrow, why, it already happened.  You see, it's just a little universal
recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of
the instant.  So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment
and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of
eternity, the anti-time.  So go to sleep...
        *** STUDENT SUCCESSES ***

Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of
programming.  One former student developed the concept of the personalized
form letter.  Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a
winner!," sound familiar?  Another student writes "After only five lessons I
sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine.
Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management
program for my department manager.  My program touched him so deeply that he
was speechless.  He told me later that he had never seen such a program in
his entire career.  Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could
have made this possible."  Send for our introductory brochure which explains
in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll
be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which
can vie for a set of free steak knives.  If you don't do it now, you'll hate
yourself in the morning.
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
                -- J. Finnegan, USC.
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip
objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air
due to levitation.
        Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur
if the character does not have fire resistance.
                -- README file from the NetHack game
                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 salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the
forest, hunting bear.  They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took
their backpacks off and put them inside.  At which point the salesman turned
to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
        Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down
on the porch.  Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest.  The noises
got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like
hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and
most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
        "Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
        The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door,
suddenly stopped, and stepped aside.  The bear, unable to stop, continued
through the door and into the cabin.  The salesman slammed the door closed
and grinned at his friend.  "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this
one and I'll go rustle us up another!"
The sendmail configuration file is one of those files that looks like someone
beat their head on the keyboard.  After working with it... I can see why!
                -- Harry Skelton
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 STORY OF CREATION
                               or
                         THE MYTH OF URK

In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and null, and
darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving
over the face of the market.  And DEC said, "Let there be registers;" and
there were registers.  And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the
data from the instructions.  DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions
they called Code.  And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt
...
                -- Rico Tudor
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
                -- C.A.R. Hoare
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names.
For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read
permissions for everyone, you could say

        #define creat(file, mode)        creat(file, mode | 0444)

        I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it
hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away
from its uses.
        To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that
is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of
the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon.  While a macro is
being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro
name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology
-- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded
recursively.  (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it
was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.)
                -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which,
in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed.  The term
that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the
practice -- was `signing up.'  By signing up for the project you agreed
to do whatever was necessary for success.  You agreed to forsake, if
necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left
(and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before).
                -- Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine"
"This is lemma 1.1.  We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one."
                -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
This is the first numerical problem I ever did.  It demonstrates the
power of computers:

Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods.  Instruct
the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content.  The
results are that one should eat each day:

        1/2 chicken
        1 egg
        1 glass of skim milk
        27 heads of lettuce.
                -- Rev. Adrian Melott
        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
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.

        One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
        Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
        computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
        which identifies errors in the original program.
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for
anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations
in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
                -- Instrument News
                [Once is too often.  Ed.]
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.
Von Neumann was the subject of many dotty professor stories.  Von Neumann
supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on
the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked
how to solve problems.  One time one of his students tried to get more helpful
information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem.  Von
Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes.".
... when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer
has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
                -- Fred Brooks
Why are programmers non-productive?
Because their time is wasted in meetings.

Why are programmers rebellious?
Because the management interferes too much.

Why are the programmers resigning one by one?
Because they are burnt out.

Having worked for poor management, they no longer value their jobs.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Writers who use a computer swear to its liberating power in tones that bear
witness to the apocalyptic power of a new divinity.  Their conviction results
from something deeper than mere gratitude for the computer's conveniences.
Every new medium of writing brings about new intensities of religious belief
and new schisms among believers.  In the 16th century the printed book helped
make possible the split between Catholics and Protestants.  In the 20th
century this history of tragedy and triumph is repeating itself as a farce.
Those who worship the Apple computer and those who put their faith in the IBM
PC are equally convinced that the other camp is damned or deluded.  Each cult
holds in contempt the rituals and the laws of the other.  Each thinks that it
is itself the one hope for salvation.
                -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
X windows:
        Accept any substitute.
        If it's broke, don't fix it.
        If it ain't broke, fix it.
        Form follows malfunction.
        The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
        The trailing edge of software technology.
        Armageddon never looked so good.
        Japan's secret weapon.
        You'll envy the dead.
        Making the world safe for competing window systems.
        Let it get in YOUR way.
        The problem for your problem.
        If it starts working, we'll fix it.  Pronto.
        It could be worse, but it'll take time.
        Simplicity made complex.
        The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
        Flakey and built to stay that way.

One thousand monkeys.  One thousand MicroVAXes.  One thousand years.
        X windows.
X windows:
        We will dump no core before its time.
        One good crash deserves another.
        A bad idea whose time has come.  And gone.
        We make excuses.
        It didn't even look good on paper.
        You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later!
        A new concept in abuser interfaces.
        How can something get so bad, so quickly?
        It could happen to you.
        The art of incompetence.
        You have nothing to lose but your lunch.
        When uselessness just isn't enough.
        More than a mere hindrance.  It's a whole new barrier!
        When you can't afford to be right.
        And you thought we couldn't make it worse.

If it works, it isn't X windows.
"Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
their endless search for "one more feature."  Their irritating
unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
                -- S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long
when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to
make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie
chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.
"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 good name lost is seldom regained.  When character is gone,
all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.
                -- J. Hawes
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.
                -- Lao Tsu
A man with one watch knows what time it is.
A man with two watches is never quite sure.
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion.
                -- Chinese proverb
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or
one-and-a-half truths.
                -- Karl Kraus
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 to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
                -- motto of the Christopher Society
God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as
we speak.
                -- Arab proverb
He who fears the unknown may one day flee from his own backside.
                -- Sinbad
If you wish to be happy for one hour, get drunk.
If you wish to be happy for three days, get married.
If you wish to be happy for a month, kill your pig and eat it.
If you wish to be happy forever, learn to fish.
                -- Chinese Proverb
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
                -- Aeschylus
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
                -- Titus Lucretius Carus
One good turn asketh another.
                -- John Heywood
One good turn deserves another.
                -- Gaius Petronius
One good turn usually gets most of the blanket.
One man's Mede is another man's Persian.
                -- George M. Cohan
One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.
                -- Chinese proverb
Rome was not built in one day.
                -- John Heywood
Small change can often be found under seat cushions.
                -- One of Lazarus Long's most penetrating insights
Two heads are better than one.
                -- John Heywood
Two heads are more numerous than one.
What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
                -- John Lilly
What one fool can do, another can.
                -- Ancient Simian Proverb
When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, "The handle is one of us!"
                -- Turkish proverb
You can never do just one thing.
                -- Hardin
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
- Oscar Wilde
How beautiful, how entrancing you are, my loved one, daughter of delights!
You are stately as a palm-tree, and your breasts are the clusters of dates.
I said, "I will climb up into the palm to grasp its fronds."  May I find your
breast like clusters of grapes on the vine, the scent of your breath like
apricots, and your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my
caresses, gliding down through lips and teeth.
[Song of Solomon 7:6-9 (NEB)]
In the beginning, I was made.  I didn't ask to be made.  No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the
Galaxy Radio Scripts
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capabe of. ... And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
- General James Gavin
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
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
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.
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.  Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
- Fred Brooks, 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.
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple
his world.  To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than
against them is to attain literacy."
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
"And they told us, what they wanted...
Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance." -- Kate Bush
One of the saddest lessons of history is this:  If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no
longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured
us.  it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
we've been so credulous.  (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
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
Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as concious selection.
We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we can be.
Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves unrecognizably.
-- Greg Bear
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
never sure.   Proverb
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two.  -- Seneca
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.  -- Henry Brook Adams
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.  -- James Baldwin
"Morality is one thing.  Ratings are everything."
- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
"Well, well, well!  Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
poison!  How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil?  Come
and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!"
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
"There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts.  I could never stand to
see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was."
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials
(out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
but appeared "abruptly."
- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient.
Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
the long run.  I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary
challenging spirit today.
- Hajime Karatsu
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
- Francis Bellamy, 1892
"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
Felson's Law:
        To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
        many is research.
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
And the crowd was stilled.  One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said.  Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes!  He is naked!"
- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion.  The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other.  Is uniformity
attainable?  Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored
power tools.
How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.  Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.  And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
- Thomas Jefferson
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
- Thomas Jefferson
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
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
levitation.

Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
character does not have fire resistance.

- README file from the NetHack game
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
  commenting on psi research
"Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards."
- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters
  of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function
are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other.  There is
no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and
make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.  Actually, of course, this
is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the
assumption will have to be rejected.  But it is important also to see that we
have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and
there is no real evidence opposed to it.  Our failure to solve a problem so
far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot logically be a determinist in
physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior:  A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ?

Seven:  One to install the new bulb, and six to determine what to do
        with the old one for the next 10,000 years.
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
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
However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise.
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
beliefs.  There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf
should be used sparingly.  The religious factions that are growing
throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.
They are trying to force government leaders into following their position
100 percent.  If you disagree with these religious groups on a
particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of
money or votes or both.  I'm frankly sick and tired of the political
preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D."  Just who do
they think they are?  And from where do they presume to claim the
right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?  And I am even more angry as
a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate.  I am warning them today:  I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of "conservatism."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
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
"Plan to throw one away.  You will anyway."
- Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
...One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of,
this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of
government.  We are constituted not for efficient operation of government,
but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power.  It took the events
of the Roosevelt era -- a catastrophic economic collapse and a world war --
to introduce the strong central government that we now know.  But in most
parts of the country today, the reluctance to have government is still
strong.  I think, barring a series of catastrophic events, that we can
look to at least another decade during which many of the big problems
around this country will have to be addressed by institutions other than
federal government.
- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence,
  vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy directory of
  Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
[the statist opinions expressed herein are not those of the cookie editor -ed.]
"I have just one word for you, my boy...plastics."
- from "The Graduate"
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who
are equally certain that they represent the divine will.  I am sure that
either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some
respects, both.

I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that
God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty,
it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.
- Abraham Lincoln
In space, no one can hear you fart.
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
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
"One lawyer can steal more than a hundred men with guns."
-- The Godfather
I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
that they didn't rehearse at all.  And so the first time when I found that out,
I rehearsed the orchestra myself in front of the audience of 3,000 people and
the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
_Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed.  The Dutch people were ashamed
and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
rehearse.  And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
again, they hadn't rehearsed.  So they were no more prepared the second time
than they had been the first.  I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
cancelling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."  
Can you believe it?
-- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
"One day I woke up and discovered that I was in love with tripe."
-- Tom Anderson
"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
"But this one goes to eleven."
-- Nigel Tufnel
"I don't believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person,
unless he has an atomic weapon."
-- Howard Chaykin
"Ever free-climbed a thousand foot vertical cliff with 60 pounds of gear
strapped to your butt?"
   "No."
"'Course you haven't, you fruit-loop little geek."
-- The Mountain Man, one of Dana Carvey's SNL characters
[ditto]
"Remember kids, if there's a loaded gun in the room, be sure that you're the
one holding it"
-- Captain Combat
"Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is
good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"One of the problems I've always had with propaganda pamphlets is that they're
real boring to look at.  They're just badly designed.  People from the left
often are very well-intended, but they never had time to take basic design
classes, you know?"
-- Art Spiegelman
"There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it
is I'll get married again."
-- Clint Eastwood
Q:  How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A:  Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
"If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?"
-- Lily Tomlin
"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
"The pyramid is opening!"
   "Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
-- The Firesign Theatre
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
Abstainer:  A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.  A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but
abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Physician:  One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
-- Ambrose Bierce
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
   "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is
published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship.
Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century.
Do you think that fair criticism?"
   "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not
occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
-- Ambrose Bierce
  "Emergency!"  Sgiggs screamed, ejecting himself from the tub like it was
a burning car.  "Dial 'one'!  Get room service!  Code red!"  Stiggs was on
the phone immediately, ordering more rose blossoms, because, according to
him, the ones floating in the tub had suddenly lost their smell.  "I demand
smell," he shrilled.  "I expecting total uninterrupted smell from these
f*cking roses."

  Unfortunately, the service captain didn't realize that the Stiggs situation
involved fifty roses.  "What am I going to do with this?" Stiggs sneered at
the weaseling hotel goon when he appeared at our door holding a single flower
floating in a brandy glass.  Stiggs's tirade was great.  "Do you see this
bathtub?  Do you notice any difference between the size of the tub and the
size of that spindly wad of petals in your hand?  I need total bath coverage.
I need a completely solid layer of roses all around me like puffing factories
of smell, attacking me with their smell and power-ramming big stinking
concentrations of rose odor up my nostrils until I'm wasted with pleasure."
It wasn't long before we got so dissatisfied with this incompetence that we
bolted.
-- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
   National Lampoon, October 1982
In recognizing AT&T Bell Laboratories for corporate innovation, for its
invention of cellular mobile communications, IEEE President Russell C. Drew
referred to the cellular telephone as a "basic necessity."  How times have
changed, one observer remarked: many in the room recalled the advent of
direct dialing.
-- The Institute, July 1988, pg. 11
"...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet
people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business
there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press.  But so far, the whole
country is like a concentration camp.  The barbed wire on the fence around
the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark.  This openness that
you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed
to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders.  These
leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or
appease it.  He will say: "Yes, we can do business!"  This while his
military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
population of 17 million.  Can you imagine that?
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
"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.
    UNIX Shell is the Best Fourth Generation Programming Language

    It is the UNIX shell that makes it possible to do applications in a small
    fraction of the code and time it takes in third generation languages.  In
    the shell you process whole files at a time, instead of only a line at a
    time.  And, a line of code in the UNIX shell is one or more programs,
    which do more than pages of instructions in a 3GL.  Applications can be
    developed in hours and days, rather than months and years with traditional
    systems.  Most of the other 4GLs available today look more like COBOL or
    RPG, the most tedious of the third generation lanaguages.

"UNIX Relational Database Management:  Application Development in the UNIX
Environment" by Rod Manis, Evan Schaffer, and Robert Jorgensen.  Prentice
Hall Software Series.  Brian Kerrighan, Advisor.  1988.
The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it
should have done.  Calculate that one rebellion in 13 states in the course
of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century and a half.  No country
should be so long without one.
-- Thomas Jefferson in letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787
"Neighbors!!  We got neighbors!  We ain't supposed to have any neighbors, and
I just had to shoot one."
-- Post Bros. Comics
I ask only one thing.  I'm understanding.  I'm mature.  And it isn't much to
ask.  I want to get back to London, and track her down, and be alone with my
Selina -- or not even alone, damn it, merely close to her, close enough to
smell her skin, to see the flecked webbing of her lemony eyes, the moulding
of her artful lips.  Just for a few precious seconds.  Just long enough to
put in one good, clean punch.  That's all I ask.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
Now I was heading, in my hot cage, down towards meat-market country on the
tip of the West Village.  Here the redbrick warehouses double as carcass
galleries and rat hives, the Manhattan fauna seeking its necessary
level, living or dead.  Here too you find the heavy faggot hangouts,
The Spike, the Water Closet, the Mother Load.  Nobody knows what goes on
in these places.  Only the heavy faggots know.  Even Fielding seems somewhat
vague on the question.  You get zapped and flogged and dumped on -- by
almost anybody's standards, you have a really terrible time.  The average
patron arrives at the Spike in one taxi but needs to go back to his sock
in two.  And then the next night he shows up for more.  They shackle
themselves to racks, they bask in urinals.  Their folks have a lot of
explaining to do, if you want my opinion, particularly the mums.  Sorry
to single you ladies out like this but the story must start somewhere.  
A craving for hourly murder -- it can't be willed.  In the meantime,
Fielding tells me, Mother Nature looks on and taps her foot and clicks
her tongue.  Always a champion of monogamy, she is cooking up some fancy
new diseases.  She just isn't going to stand for it.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
"Data is a lot like humans:  It is born.  Matures.  Gets married to other data,
divorced. Gets old.  One thing that it doesn't do is die.  It has to be killed."
-- Arthur Miller
"An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt."
-- a saying at RPI
"This generation may be the one that will face Armageddon."
-- Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985
... 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_
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
"All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one thing or another."
-- Ortega y Gasset
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
"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
"After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United
States.  Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of
the mentality of being open-minded, always positive.  Everything you want to
do in Europe is just, 'No way.  No one has ever done it.'  They haven't any
more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much
more the American spirit."
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger
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
        [May one] doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated,
        or, if beetles and wasps, in cow-dung, or if butterflies, locusts,
        shellfish, snails, eels, and such life be procreated of putrefied
        matter, which is to receive the form of that creature to which it
        is by formative power disposed[?]  To question this is to question
        reason, sense, and experience.  If he doubts this, let him go to
        Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice begot
        of the mud of the Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants.
                A seventeenth century opinion quoted by L. L. Woodruff,
                in *The Evolution of Earth and Man*, 1929
"Let me guess, Ed.  Pentescostal, right?"
-- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu

"Nope.  Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels
mean)."
-- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com

"Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain
cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him.  Good work!"
-- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP
>One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative.

Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@Apple.COM
"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one idiot.
Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's sometimes hard
to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and
pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits."
-- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet
"It doesn't much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next
morning it was someone else."
-- Rogers
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature.  They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic
depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient
is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it
the *one* mortal blemish of mankind."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs."
-- Robert Firth
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars.  What
should I do?

A: Post the correct answer at once!  We can't have people go on believing
that!  Very good of you to spot this.  You'll probably be the only one to
make the correction, so post as soon as you can.  No time to lose, so
certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the
correction.

And it's not good enough to send the message by mail.  Since you're the
only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform
the whole net right away!

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
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_
A selection from the Taoist Writings:

"Lao-Tan asked Confucius: `What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?'
Confucius said:  `To be in one's inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all
things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature
of benevolence and righteousness.'"
-- Kwang-tzu
"Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator."
-- Claude Shouse (shouse@macomw.ARPA)

"Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist."
-- Joseph C. Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu)
How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb?

Two.  One to change it and one not to change it.
"Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
those inside desperate to get out."
-- Montaigne
"No, no, I don't mind being called the smartest man in the world.  I just wish
it wasn't this one."
-- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN
"If you can't debate me, then there is no way in hell you'll out-insult me."
-- Scott Legrand (Scott.Legrand@hogbbs.Fidonet.Org)

"You may be wrong here, little one."
-- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM)
        "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)
                     THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO
Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other
reader.  Fun With Usenet postings are no exception.  Since there are some who
might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have
written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these
postings.

        One.  I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY
good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses.  For
instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too
mundane to bother with.  "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become
"I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it.

        Two.  If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't
put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized
before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful
place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place".  Imagine
the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts.  If I can set
up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing,
I don't put ellipses in.  And by the way, I love using this mechanism for
turning things around.  If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you
don't think it's wonderful.   ...
-- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP)
"I have more information in one place than anybody in the world."  
-- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in
one way or another, almost every member of the team passed.  The term that
the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice --
was `signing up.'  By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever
was necessary for success.  You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family,
hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if
you had signed up too many times before).
-- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_
   n = ((n >>  1) & 0x55555555) | ((n <<  1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
   n = ((n >>  2) & 0x33333333) | ((n <<  2) & 0xcccccccc);
   n = ((n >>  4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n <<  4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
   n = ((n >>  8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n <<  8) & 0xff00ff00);
   n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);

-- Yet another mystical 'C' gem. This one reverses the bits in a word.
"Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many
men happy."
-- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand
hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was reknowned for
being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which
obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be puzzled
rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror."
-- W. K. Hartmann
"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 fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
                -- Winston Churchill
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
                -- Adlai Stevenson
A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
man a century.
A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having
his neighbour notice it.
                -- Trygve Lie
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
                -- Ramsey Clark
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
which he was born.
                -- Francois Fenelon
America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one
dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
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
Every one says that politicians lie all the time, and that just isn't so!
But you do have to understand body language to know when they're lying and
when they aren't.

        When a politician rubs his nose, he isn't lying.
        When a politician tugs on his ear, he isn't lying.
        When a politician scratches his collar bone, he isn't lying.
        When his mouth starts moving, that's when he's lying!
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
Freedom of the press is for those who happen to own one.
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
I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend
than be one.
                -- Clarence Darrow
I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.
                -- Jay Gould
I have a dream.  I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia,
the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to
sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
                -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote
peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them
have it.
                -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
                -- Francis Bellamy, 1892
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"
I was offered a job as a hoodlum and I turned it down cold.  A thief is
anybody who gets out and works for his living, like robbing a bank or
breaking into a place and stealing stuff, or kidnapping somebody.  He really
gives some effort to it.  A hoodlum is a pretty lousy sort of scum.  He
works for gangsters and bumps guys off when they have been put on the spot.
Why, after I'd made my rep, some of the Chicago Syndicate wanted me to work
for them as a hood -- you know, handling a machine gun.  They offered me
two hundred and fifty dollars a week and all the protection I needed.  I
was on the lam at the time and not able to work at my regular line.  But
I wouldn't consider it.  "I'm a thief," I said.  "I'm no lousy hoodlum."
                -- Alvin Karpis, "Public Enemy Number One"
I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.
                -- Marcus Procius Cato
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
                -- Adlai Stevenson
In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a Communist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.  Then they came for the
Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.  Then they came
for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up.
                -- Pastor Martin Niemoller
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
                -- Alfred Adler
It is enough to make one sympathize with a tyrant for the determination
of his courtiers to deceive him for their own personal ends...
                -- Russell Baker and Charles Peters
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged
to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the
youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
It pays in England to be a revolutionary and a bible-smacker most of
one's life and then come round.
                -- Lord Alfred Douglas
It took a while to surface, but it appears that a long-distance credit card
may have saved a U.S. Army unit from heavy casualties during the Grenada
military rescue/invasion. Major General David Nichols, Air Force ... said
the Army unit was in a house surrounded by Cuban forces.  One soldier found
a telephone and, using his credit card, called Ft. Bragg, N.C., telling Army
officiers there of the perilous situation. The officers in turn called the
Air Force, which sent in gunships to scatter the Cubans and relieve the unit.
                -- Aviation Week and Space Technology
"It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country.  The
Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything.  They had no vital lies."
                -- Edith Hamilton, "The Greek Way"
Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions
seldom black or white.  Beware of the solution that requires one side to be
totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner.  The reason
there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all
the facts.  Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is
not acting from political motivation.  Rather, he is acting from a deep
sense of respect for the whole truth.
                -- Stephen R. Schwambach
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
Nemo me impune lacessit.
        [No one provokes me with impunity]
                -- Motto of the Crown of Scotland
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it
all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly
the functions he is competent to.  It is by dividing and subdividing these
republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until it
ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under
every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.
                -- Thomas Jefferson, to Joseph Cabell, 1816
No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only had good
intentions.  He had money as well.
                -- Margaret Thatcher
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
                -- Andrew Young
        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.
Once you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all.
One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do and always a clever thing to say.
                -- Will Durant
One organism, one vote.
One planet is all you get.
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
Persistence in one opinion has never been considered a merit in political
leaders.
                -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares", 1st century BC
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
"Rights" is a fictional abstraction.  No one has "Rights", neither machines
nor flesh-and-blood.  Persons... have opportunities, not rights, which they
use or do not use.
                -- Lazarus Long
So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way.
                -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
The greatest disloyalty one can offer to great pioneers is to refuse to
move an inch from where they stood.
The Least Successful Police Dogs
        America has a very strong candidate in "La Dur", a fearsome looking
schnauzer hound, who was retired from the Orlando police force in Florida
in 1978.  He consistently refused to do anything which might ruffle or
offend the criminal classes.
        His handling officer, Rick Grim, had to admit: "He just won't go up
and bite them.  I got sick and tired of doing that dog's work for him."
        The British contenders in this category, however, took things a
stage further.  "Laddie" and "Boy" were trained as detector dogs for drug
raids.  Their employment was terminated following a raid in the Midlands in
1967.
        While the investigating officer questioned two suspects, they
patted and stroked the dogs who eventually fell asleep in front of the
fire.  When the officer moved to arrest the suspects, one dog growled at
him while the other leapt up and bit his thigh.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.  The
man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
                -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
The mark of the 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.
                -- Wilhelm Stekel
The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish to be
addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified.  But it is equally
important to accept and tolerate different standards of courtesy, not
expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own preferences.  Only then can
we hope to restore the insult to its proper social function of expressing
true distaste.
                -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly
                   Correct Behavior"
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
The two party system ... is a triumph of the dialectic.  It showed that
two could be one and one could be two and had probably been fabricated
by Hegel for the American market on a subcontract from General Dynamics.
                -- I.F. Stone
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.  Instead of
altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their
views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the
facts that needs altering.
                -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
The Worst Bank Robbery
        In August 1975 three men were on their way in to rob the Royal Bank of
Scotland at Rothesay, when they got stuck in the revolving doors.  They
had to be helped free by the staff and, after thanking everyone,
sheepishly left the building.
        A few minutes later they returned and announced their intention of
robbing the bank, but none of the staff believed them.  When they demanded
5,000 pounds in cash, the head cashier laughed at them, convinced that it
was a practical joke.
        Then one of the men jumped over the counter, but fell to the floor
clutching his ankle.  The other two tried to make their getaway, but got
trapped in the revolving doors again.
The Worst Prison Guards
        The largest number of convicts ever to escape simultaneously from a
maximum security prison is 124.  This record is held by Alcoente Prison,
near Lisbon in Portugal.
        During the weeks leading up to the escape in July 1978 the prison
warders had noticed that attendances had fallen at film shows which
included "The Great Escape", and also that 220 knives and a huge quantity
of electric cable had disappeared.  A guard explained, "Yes, we were
planning to look for them, but never got around to it."  The warders had
not, however, noticed the gaping holes in the wall because they were
"covered with posters".  Nor did they detect any of the spades, chisels,
water hoses and electric drills amassed by the inmates in large quantities.
The night before the breakout one guard had noticed that of the 36
prisoners in his block only 13 were present.  He said this was "normal"
because inmates sometimes missed roll-call or hid, but usually came back
the next morning.
        "We only found out about the escape at 6:30 the next morning when
one of the prisoners told us," a warder said later.  [...]  When they
eventually checked, the prison guards found that exactly half of the gaol's
population was missing.  By way of explanation the Justice Minister, Dr.
Santos Pais, claimed that the escape was "normal" and part of the
"legitimate desire of the prisoner to regain his liberty."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
There are only two things in this world that I am sure of, death and
taxes, and we just might do something about death one of these days.
                -- shades
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good."
And one says, "This is new, and therefore better"
                -- John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider"
There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist --
the taxidermist leaves the hide.
                -- Mortimer Caplan
There is only one way to kill capitalism -- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.
                -- Karl Marx
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the
system from within.  I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them.  First
we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens.  I'm guided by this birthmark on
my skin.  I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons.  First we take Manhattan,
then we take Berlin.

I'd really like to live beside you, baby.  I love your body and your spirit
and your clothes.  But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you I told you I told you I was one of those.
        -- Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan"
To be excellent when engaged in administration is to be like the North
Star.  As it remains in its one position, all the other stars surround it.
                -- Confucius
To think contrary to one's era is heroism.  But to speak against it is madness.
                -- Eugene Ionesco
We should have a Vollyballocracy.  We elect a six-pack of presidents.
Each one serves until they screw up, at which point they rotate.
                -- Dennis Miller
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
                -- General James Gavin
        Will Rogers, having paid too much income tax one year, tried in
vain to claim a rebate.  His numerous letters and queries remained
unanswered.  Eventually the form for the next year's return arrived.  In
the section marked "DEDUCTIONS," Rogers listed: "Bad debt, US Government
-- $40,000."
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"
Is uniformity attainable?  Millions of innocent men, women, and
children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt,
tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards
uniformity.  What has been the effect of coercion?  To make one half
of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
                -- Thomas Jefferson
A musician, an artist, an architect:
        the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
                -- William Blake
Absurdity, n.:
        A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Adult, n.:
        One old enough to know better.
Bachelor:
        A man who chases women and never Mrs. one.
Bagbiter:
        1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually intermittently.  2.
adj.: Failing hardware or software.  "This bagbiting system won't let me get
out of spacewar." Usage: verges on obscenity.  Grammatically separable; one
may speak of "biting the bag".  Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS,
BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS, CHOMPER, CHOMPING.
Ballistophobia:
        Fear of bullets;
Otophobia:
        Fear of opening one's eyes.
Peccatophobia:
        Fear of sinning.
Taphephobia:
        Fear of being buried alive.
Sitophobia:
        Fear of food.
Trichophobbia:
        Fear of hair.
Vestiphobia:
        Fear of clothing.
beta test, v:
        To voluntarily entrust one's data, one's livelihood and one's
        sanity to hardware or software intended to destroy all three.
        In earlier days, virgins were often selected to beta test volcanos.
Blore's Razor:
        Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
        (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse.
        (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
        (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly
            balanced.
        (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
                -- Robert Burns
C, n:
        A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like
        assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything
        else.  It is either the best language available to the art today, or
        it isn't.
                -- Ray Simard
Cache:
        A very expensive part of the memory system of a computer that no one
        is supposed to know is there.
Canonical, adj.:
        The usual or standard state or manner of something.  A true story:
One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use
of jargon.  Over his loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as
much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in.
Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like
fashion without thinking.
        Steele: "Aha!  We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
        Stallman: "What did he say?"
        Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
        The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
        dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
        putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
Carson's Observation on Footwear:
        If the shoe fits, buy the other one too.
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"
Complex system:
        One with real problems and imaginary profits.
Confidant, confidante, n:
        One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided to himself by C.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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.
Conversation, n.:
        A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
        is called the listener.
Conway's Law:
        In any organization there will always be one person who knows
        what is going on.

        This person must be fired.
Coward, n.:
        One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Cursor, n.:
        One whose program will not run.
                -- Robb Russon
Cutler Webster's Law:
        There are two sides to every argument, unless a person
        is personally involved, in which case there is only one.
Cynic, n.:
        One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
Death wish, n.:
        The only wish that always comes true, whether or not one wishes it to.
Deliberation, n.:
        The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
        buttered on.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Dentist, n.:
        A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
        coins out of one's pockets.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
DeVries' Dilemma:
        If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
        hits the paper.
Duty, n:
        What one expects from others.
                -- Oscar Wilde
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.
Elbonics, n.:
        The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie
        theatre.
                -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends
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.
Envy, n.:
        Wishing you'd been born with an unfair advantage,
        instead of having to try and acquire one.
Every program has (at least) two purposes:
        the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
        Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
        there is nothing important to do.
First Law of Procrastination:
        Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
        for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who
        imposed the deadline).

Fifth Law of Procrastination:
        Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
        there is nothing important to do.
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.
Fourth Law of Revision:
        It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
        interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
        If the probability of success is not almost one, it is damn near zero.
                -- David Ellis
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.
Galbraith's Law of Human Nature:
        Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that
        there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.
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.
Ginsberg's Theorem:
        (1) You can't win.
        (2) You can't break even.
        (3) You can't even quit the game.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
        Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
        meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
        Theorem.  To wit:

        (1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
        (2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
        (3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
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.
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
Hacker's Law:
        The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
        a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
Hale Mail Rule, The:
        When you are ready to reply to a letter, you will lack at least
        one of the following:
                (a) A pen or pencil or typewriter.
                (b) Stationery.
                (c) Postage stamp.
                (d) The letter you are answering.
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"
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"
insecurity, n.:
        Finding out that you've mispronounced for years one of your
        favorite words.

        Realizing halfway through a joke that you're telling it to
        the person who told it to you.
Interpreter, n.:
        One who enables two persons of different languages to
        understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
        the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Jim Nasium's Law:
        In a large locker room with hundreds of lockers, the few people
        using the facility at any one time will all have lockers next to
        each other so that everybody is cramped.
Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee:
        (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
           straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
           force is technically termed "car suck").
        (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
           than "Watch this!"
        (3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly
           proportional to the cost of hitting it.  For instance, a
           Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or
           a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy.
        (4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the
           cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the
           Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you
           in the head and knock you silly.
Knebel's Law:
        It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading
        causes of statistics.
Labor, n.:
        One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Lactomangulation, n.:
        Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
        that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
Law of Procrastination:
        Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has
        the feeling that there is nothing important to do.
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.
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
        No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
        approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
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
Lie, n.:
        A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
        discovered to date.
life, n.:
        Learning about people the hard way -- by being one.
Lockwood's Long Shot:
        The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street
        aren't one in a million, but once would be enough.
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
        There's always one more bug.
Magnet, n.:
        Something acted upon by magnetism.

Magnetism, n.:
        Something acting upon a magnet.

The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of
one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with
a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Major premise:
        Sixty men can do sixty times as much work as one man.
Minor premise:
        A man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion:
        Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Secondary Conclusion:
        Do you realize how many holes there would be if people
        would just take the time to take the dirt out of them?
manual, n.:
        A unit of documentation.  There are always three or more on a given
        item.  One is on the shelf; someone has the others.  The information
        you need is in the others.
                -- Ray Simard
Mason's First Law of Synergism:
        The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.
mathematician, n.:
        Some one who believes imaginary things appear right before your _i's.
meterologist, n.:
        One who doubts the established fact that it is
        bound to rain if you forget your umbrella.
Miksch's Law:
        If a string has one end, then it has another end.
millihelen, n.:
        The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
Moore's Constant:
        Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody
        does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
        A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
Old timer, n.:
        One who remembers when charity was a virtue and not an organization.
One Page Principle:
        A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
        paper cannot be understood.
                -- Mark Ardis
"One size fits all":
        Doesn't fit anyone.
One-Shot Case Study, n.:
        The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which it is
        concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes green.
pain, n.:
        One thing, at least it proves that you're alive!
Pedaeration, n.:
        The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
        sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
pediddel:
        A car with only one working headlight.
                -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends
perfect guest:
        One who makes his host feel at home.
Peter's Law of Substitution:
        Look after the molehills, and the
        mountains will look after themselves.

Peter's Principle of Success:
        Get up one time more than you're knocked down.
Peterson's Rules:
        (1) Trucks that overturn on freeways are filled with something sticky.
        (2) No cute baby in a carriage is ever a girl when called one.
        (3) Things that tick are not always clocks.
        (4) Suicide only works when you're bluffing.
Positive, adj.:
        Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
program, n.:
        A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input
        into error messages.  tr.v. To engage in a pastime similar to banging
        one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
program, n.:
        Any task that can't be completed in one telephone call or one
        day.  Once a task is defined as a program ("training program,"
        "sales program," or "marketing program"), its implementation
        always justifies hiring at least three more people.
QOTD:
        "I thought I saw a unicorn on the way over, but it was just a
        horse with one of the horns broken off."
QOTD:
        "I've got one last thing to say before I go; give me back
        all of my stuff."
QOTD:
        "This is a one line proof... if we start sufficiently far to the
        left."
QOTD:
        I looked out my window, and saw Kyle Pettys' car upside down,
        then I thought 'One of us is in real trouble'.
                -- Davey Allison, on a 150 m.p.h. crash
QOTD:
        I've heard about civil Engineers, but I've never met one.
QOTD:
        Some people have one of those days.  I've had one of those lives.
Quality Control, n.:
        The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
        a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
QWERT (kwirt) n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]   1. a unit of weight
equal to 13 poiuyt  avoirdupois  (or 1.69 kiloliks), commonly used in
structural engineering  2. [Colloq.] one thirteenth the load that a fully
grown sligo can carry.  3. [Anat.] a painful  irritation  of  the dermis
in the region of the anus  4. [Slang] person who excites in others the
symptoms of a qwert.
                -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.
scribline, n.:
        The blank area on the back of credit cards where one's signature goes.
                -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends
Second Law of Business Meetings:
        If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
        will pick the wrong one.

Corollary:
        If there is only one way to spell a name,
        you will spell it wrong, anyway.
senility, n.:
        The state of mind of elderly persons with whom one happens to disagree.
Steele's Law:
        There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than ten men
        or fewer than one hundred.
Stone's Law:
        One man's "simple" is another man's "huh?"
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"
The Briggs-Chase Law of Program Development:
        To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
        program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
        one, and convert to the next higher units.
The Gordian Maxim:
        If a string has one end, it has another.
The Roman Rule:
        The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
        one who is doing it.
The rules:
         (1) Thou shalt not worship other computer systems.
         (2) Thou shalt not impersonate Liberace or eat watermelon while
              sitting at the console keyboard.
         (3) Thou shalt not slap users on the face, nor staple their silly
             little card decks together.
         (4) Thou shalt not get physically involved with the computer system,
             especially if you're already married.
         (5) Thou shalt not use magnetic tapes as frisbees, nor use a disk
             pack as a stool to reach another disk pack.
         (6) Thou shalt not stare at the blinking lights for more than one
             eight hour shift.
         (7) Thou shalt not tell users that you accidentally destroyed their
             files/backup just to see the look on their little faces.
         (8) Thou shalt not enjoy cancelling a job.
         (9) Thou shalt not display firearms in the computer room.
        (10) Thou shalt not push buttons "just to see what happens".
Theorem: a cat has nine tails.
Proof:
        No cat has eight tails. A cat has one tail more than no cat.
        Therefore, a cat has nine tails.
Theory of Selective Supervision:
        The one time in the day that you lean back and relax is
        the one time the boss walks through the office.
timesharing, n:
        An access method whereby one computer abuses many people.
Wedding, n:
        A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes
        to become nothing and nothing undertakes to become supportable.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Weed's Axiom:
        Never ask two questions in a business letter.
        The reply will discuss the one in which you are
        least interested and say nothing about the other.
Yinkel, n.:
        A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
        will notice.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
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"
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"
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"
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"
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"
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"
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"
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"
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"
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"
Poor Buoyancy:
        The realization that one was a better person when one had less
money.
                -- 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"
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"
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"
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"
greenrd's law
        Evey post disparaging someone else's spelling or grammar, or lauding
        one's own spelling or grammar, will inevitably contain a spelling or
        grammatical error.
                -- greenrd in http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/4/16/61744/5230?pid=5#6
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".
AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
        If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
        across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
Did you know ...

That no-one ever reads these things?
Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle?
Everything might be different in the present if only one thing had
been different in the past.
"If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far."
                -- Paul White
If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?
If God is One, what is bad?
                -- Charles Manson
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
                -- John Galsworthy
If you stick your head in the sand, one thing is for sure, you're gonna
get your rear kicked.
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
                -- Jules de Gaultier
It is better never to have been born.  But who among us has such luck?
One in a million, perhaps.
It is easier to run down a hill than up one.
It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a breeze
was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was broken ...
                --- James Dent
It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day.  Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it.  I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at).  There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty.  Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread.  One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime.
                -- Thomas Aldrich
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
                -- Paul Gauguin
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
Most general statements are false, including this one.
                -- Alexander Dumas
Nothing can be done in one trip.
                -- Snider
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
See, these two penguins walked into a bar, which was really stupid, 'cause
the second one should have seen it.
Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will
probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a
blood-curdling maniacal scream... but still it will be a laugh.
                -- Mister Boffo
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to
cringe.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
When a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far!
When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.
                -- Gen. C. Abrams
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
                -- Wittgenstein
I am tired of fighting...The old men are all dead...The little children
are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the
hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are...Hear
me, my Chiefs!! I am tired: my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun
now stands, I will fight no more.              Chief Joseph, (Nez Perce)
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with
-- even if he drank.
                -- H.L. Mencken
Best Beer: A panel of tasters assembled by the Consumer's Union in 1969
judged Coors and Miller's High Life to be among the very best. Those who
doubt that beer is a serious subject might ponder its effect on American
history. For example, New England's first colonists decided to drop anchor
at Plymouth Rock instead of continuing on to Virginia because, as one of
them put it, "We could not now take time for further consideration, our
victuals being spent and especially our beer."
        -- Felton & Fowler's Best, Worst & Most Unusual
Coach: Can I draw you a beer, Norm?
Norm:  No, I know what they look like.  Just pour me one.
                -- Cheers, No Help Wanted

Coach: How about a beer, Norm?
Norm:  Hey I'm high on life, Coach.  Of course, beer is my life.
                -- Cheers, No Help Wanted

Coach: How's a beer sound, Norm?
Norm:  I dunno.  I usually finish them before they get a word in.
                -- Cheers, Fortune and Men's Weights
Coach: What's up, Norm?
Norm:  Corners of my mouth, Coach.
                -- Cheers, Fortune and Men's Weights

Coach:  What's shaking, Norm?
Norm:   All four cheeks and a couple of chins, Coach.
                -- Cheers, Snow Job

Coach:  Beer, Normie?
Norm:   Uh, Coach, I dunno, I had one this week.  Eh, why not, I'm still young.
                -- Cheers, Snow Job
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.
FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS                #14

Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
liquor at BYOB parties?  Take along a candle, which you insert and
light after you've opened the bottle.  No one ever expects anything
drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
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.
In 1967, the Soviet Government minted a beautiful silver ruble with Lenin
in a very familiar pose -- arms raised above him, leading the country to
revolution.  But, it was clear to everybody, that if you looked at it from
behind, it was clear that Lenin was pointing to 11:00, when the Vodka
shops opened, and was actually saying, "Comrades, forward to the Vodka shops.

It became fashionable, when one wanted to have a drink, to take out the
ruble and say, "Oh my goodness, Comrades, Lenin tells me we should go.
Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best way
they can. I'm sick of the job.  It's a thankless one and full of grief.
                -- Al Capone
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
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."
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...
Said the attractive, cigar-smoking housewife to her girl-friend: "I got
started one night when George came home and found one burning in the ashtray."
Sam:   What's the good word, Norm?
Norm:  Plop, plop, fizz, fizz.
Sam:   Oh no, not the Hungry Heifer...
Norm:  Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Sam:   One heartburn cocktail coming up.
                -- Cheers, I'll Gladly Pay You Tuesday

Sam:   Whaddya say, Norm?
Norm:  Well, I never met a beer I didn't drink.  And down it goes.
                -- Cheers, Love Thy Neighbor

Woody:  What's your pleasure, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:   Boxer shorts and loose shoes.  But I'll settle for a beer.
                -- Cheers, The Bar Stoolie
Sam:  What's new, Norm?
Norm: Most of my wife.
                -- Cheers, The Spy Who Came in for a Cold One

Coach: Beer, Norm?
Norm:  Naah, I'd probably just drink it.
                -- Cheers, Now Pitching, Sam Malone

Coach: What's doing, Norm?
Norm:  Well, science is seeking a cure for thirst.  I happen
       to be the guinea pig.
                -- Cheers, Let Me Count the Ways
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
                -- Fletcher Knebel
Symptom:                Floor swaying.
Fault:                        Excessive air turbulence, perhaps due to air-hockey
                        game in progress.
Action Required:        Insert broom handle down back of jacket.

Symptom:                Everything has gone dim, strange taste of peanuts
                        and pretzels or cigarette butts in mouth.
Fault:                        You have fallen forward.
Action Required:        See above.

Symptom:                Opposite wall covered with acoustic tile and several
                        flourescent light strips.
Fault:                        You have fallen over backward.
Action Required:        If your glass is full and no one is standing on your
                        drinking arm, stay put.  If not, get someone to help
                        you get up, lash yourself to bar.
                -- Bar Troubleshooting
The father, passing through his son's college town late one evening on a
business trip, thought he would pay his boy a suprise visit.  Arriving at the
lad's fraternity house, dad rapped loudly on the door.  After several minutes
of knocking, a sleepy voice drifted down from a second-floor window,
        "Whaddaya want?"
        "Does Ramsey Duncan live here?" asked the father.
        "Yeah," replied the voice.  "Dump him on the front porch."
To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of Angostura
bitters.  Shake.
                -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, recipe for turkey cocktail.
Two friends were out drinking when suddenly one lurched backward off his
barstool and lay motionless on the floor.
        "One thing about Jim," the other said to the bartender, "he sure
knows when to stop."
Why on earth do people buy old bottles of wine when they can get a
fresh one for a quarter of the price?
Woody:  What's the story, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:   The Bobbsey twins go to the brewery.
        Let's just cut to the happy ending.
                -- Cheers, Airport V

Woody:  Hey, Mr. Peterson, there's a cold one waiting for you.
Norm:   I know, and if she calls, I'm not here.
                -- Cheers, Bar Wars II: The Woodman Strikes Back

Sam:  Beer, Norm?
Norm: Have I gotten that predictable?  Good.
                -- Cheers, Don't Paint Your Chickens
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, what do you say to a cold one?
Norm:  See you later, Vera, I'll be at Cheers.
                -- Cheers, Norm's Last Hurrah

Sam:   Well, look at you.  You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.
Norm:  And I need a beer to wash him down.
                -- Cheers, Norm's Last Hurrah

Woody:  Would you like a beer, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:   No, I'd like a dead cat in a glass.
                -- Cheers, Little Carla, Happy at Last, Part 2
Woody: What's happening, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  The question is, Woody, why is it happening to me?
                -- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 1

Woody: What's going down, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  My cheeks on this barstool.
                -- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 2

Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, can I pour you a beer?
Norm:  Well, okay, Woody, but be sure to stop me at one. ...
       Eh, make that one-thirty.
                -- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 2
Q:        Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A:        One per person.
Q:        How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Two.  One to assure everyone that everything possible is being
        done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
Q:        How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Five.  One to screw in the light bulb and four to share the
                experience.  (Actually, Californians don't screw in
                light bulbs, they screw in hot tubs.)

Q:        How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all
                those Californians trying to share the experience.
Q:        How many college football players does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Only one, but he gets three credits for it.
Q:        How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A:        Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.

Q:        How long does it take?
A:        It's indeterminate.
        It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them.

Q:        What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A:        They replace your generator.
Q:        How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Two.  One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb
        itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
        reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
        maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
Q:        How many Harvard MBA's does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Just one.  He grasps it firmly and the universe revolves around him.
Q:        How many IBM 370's does it take to execute a job?
A:        Four, three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
Q:        How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Fifteen.  One to do it, and fourteen to write document number
        GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility,
        of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally
        left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A:.....
        consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
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:        One.  Only it's his light bulb when he's done.
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 Martians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        One and a half.
Q:        How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        One.  He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
        to the earlier joke.
Q:        How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all those
        Californians trying to share the experience.
Q:        How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has
        to really want to change.
Q:        How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub
        with brightly colored machine tools.

        [Surrealist jokes just aren't my cup of fur.  Ed.]
Q:        How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        One.
Q:        What is the difference between a duck?
A:        One leg is both the same.
Q:        What is the sound of one cat napping?
A:        Mu.
Q:        What's a light-year?
A:        One-third less calories than a regular year.
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 an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?
A:        One less drunk.
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 don't Scotsmen ever have coffee the way they like it?
A:        Well, they like it with two lumps of sugar.  If they drink
        it at home, they only take one, and if they drink it while
        visiting, they always take three.
A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen
floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for
its species, managed to trap them in a corner.  The children cowered,
terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother!
Save us!  Save us!  We're scared, Mother!"
        Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its
children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them,
and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman
proud.  The startled cat fled in fear for its life.
        As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother,
you saved us!" and "Yay!  You scared the cat away!" she turned to them
purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second
language?"
A Parable of Modern Research:

        Bob has lost his keys in a room which is dark except for one
brightly lit corner.
        "Why are you looking under the light, you lost them in the dark!"
        "I can only see here."
         A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
                          by Mark Twain

        For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.  Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
        Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
        Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE ===============

To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one
course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is
offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to
afford maximum inconvenience to the student.  For example, if you happen
to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes.  If you commute,
there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes.
Dear Miss Manners:
        My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
elbows on the table.  However, I have read that one elbow, in between
courses, is all right.  Which is correct?

Gentle Reader:
        For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics
class, your teacher is correct.  Catching on to this principle of
education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning
correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is.
Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue
ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature.
This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.
                -- Robert Parker, quoted in "Murder Ink",  ed. D. Wynn
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths good theatre.
                -- Gail Godwin
I think your opinions are reasonable, except for the one about my mental
instability.
                -- Psychology Professor, Farifield University
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
                -- Pope John Paul I
If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
                -- Lily Tomlin
        In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
Junior, what are you up to?"
        "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
        "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!  No one
will publish such rubbish!"
        "Well, follow me and I'll show you."
        They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the
rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face.  Comes along a
wolf.  "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"
        "I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour
wolves."
        "Are you crazy?  Where's your academic honesty?"
        "Come with me and I'll show you."
        As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face
and a diploma in his paw.  Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave
and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge
lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody
remnants of the wolf and the fox.

        The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are
important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
anything?  If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five
years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
                -- The Best of Will Rogers
It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that
one can learn."
                -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
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
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
Rules for Good Grammar #4.
         (1) Don't use no double negatives.
         (2) Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents.
         (3) Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
         (4) About them sentence fragments.
         (5) When dangling, watch your participles.
         (6) Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
         (7) Just between you and i, case is important.
         (8) Don't write run-on sentences when they are hard to read.
         (9) Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
        (10) Try to not ever split infinitives.
        (11) It is important to use your apostrophe's correctly.
        (12) Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.
        (13) Correct speling is essential.
        (14) A preposition is something you never end a sentence with.
        (15) While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally
             careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not
             become ensconsed in obscurity.  In other words, eschew obfuscation.
The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from
one graveyard to another.
                -- J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England"
        "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff
and blow, "is to learn something.  That's the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love,
you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your
honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for
it then -- to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is
the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be
tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.  Learning
is the only thing for you.  Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
                -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.
                -- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.  To accuse neither
oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
                -- Epictetus
What's page one, a preemptive strike?
                -- Professor Freund, Communication, Ramapo State College
A New Way of Taking Pills
        A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and
having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with
small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks
will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
                -- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861
"A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today.  The results blacked
out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon."
                -- Steel City News
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
I read the newspaper avidly.  It is my one form of continuous fiction.
                -- Aneurin Bevan
One of the signs of Napoleon's greatness is the fact that he once had a
publisher shot.
                -- Siegfried Unseld
        A German, a Pole and a Czech left camp for a hike through the woods.
After being reported missing a day or two later, rangers found two bears,
one a male, one a female, looking suspiciously overstuffed.  They killed
the female, autopsied her, and sure enough, found the German and the Pole.
        "What do you think?" said the the first ranger.
        "The Czech is in the male," replied the second.
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
Hear about the young Chinese woman who just won the lottery?
One fortunate cookie...
Iowans ask why Minnesotans don't drink more Kool-Aid.  That's because
they can't figure out how to get two quarts of water into one of those
little paper envelopes.
Minnesota --
        home of the blonde hair and blue ears.
        mosquito supplier to the free world.
        come fall in love with a loon.
        where visitors turn blue with envy.
        one day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold.
        land of many cultures -- mostly throat.
        where the elite meet sleet.
        glove it or leave it.
        many are cold, but few are frozen.
        land of the ski and home of the crazed.
        land of 10,000 Petersons.
One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
seat to another passenger.  This may seem callous, but it is the best
way, really.  If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who fainted
in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become disoriented and
imagine they were in Topeka Kansas.
Providence, New Jersey, is one of the few cities where Velveeta cheese
appears on the gourmet shelf.
        Some 1500 miles west of the Big Apple we find the Minneapple, a
haven of tranquility in troubled times.  It's a good town, a civilized town.
A town where they still know how to get your shirts back by Thursday.  Let
the Big Apple have the feats of "Broadway Joe" Namath.  We have known the
stolid but steady Killebrew.  Listening to Cole Porter over a dry martini
may well suit those unlucky enough never to have heard the Whoopee John Polka
Band and never to have shared a pitcher of 3.2 Grain Belt Beer.  The loss is
theirs.  And the Big Apple has yet to bake the bagel that can match peanut
butter on lefse.  Here is a town where the major urban problem is dutch elm
disease and the number one crime is overtime parking.  We boast more theater
per capita than the Big Apple.  We go to see, not to be seen.  We go even
when we must shovel ten inches of snow from the driveway to get there.  Indeed
the winters are fierce.  But then comes the marvel of the Minneapple summer.
People flock to the city's lakes to frolic and rejoice at the sight of so
much happy humanity free from the bonds of the traditional down-filled parka.
Here's to the Minneapple.  And to its people.  Our flair for style is balanced
by a healthy respect for wind chill factors.
        And we always, always eat our vegetables.
        This is the Minneapple.
Someone did a study of the three most-often-heard phrases in New York
City.  One is "Hey, taxi."  Two is, "What train do I take to get to
Bloomingdale's?"  And three is, "Don't worry.  It's just a flesh wound."
                -- David Letterman
        There once was this swami who lived above a delicatessan.  Seems one
day he decided to stop in downstairs for some fresh liver.  Well, the owner
of the deli was a bit of a cheap-skate, and decided to pick up a little extra
change at his customer's expense.  Turning quietly to the counterman, he
whispered, "Weigh down upon the swami's liver!"
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"
Traveling through New England, a motorist stopped for gas in a tiny village.
"What's this place called?" he asked the station attendant.
        "All depends," the native drawled.  "Do you mean by them that has
to live in this dad-blamed, moth-eaten, dust-covered, one-hoss dump, or
by them that's merely enjoying its quaint and picturesque rustic charms
for a short spell?"
Yes, I've now got this nice little apartment in New York, one of those
L-shaped ones.  Unfortunately, it's a lower case l.
                -- Rita Rudner
1 Billion dollars of budget deficit                = 1 Gramm-Rudman
6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears        = Avocado's number
2 pints                                                = 1 Cavort
Basic unit of Laryngitis                        = The Hoarsepower
Shortest distance between two jokes                = A straight line
6 Curses                                        = 1 Hexahex
3500 Calories                                        = 1 Food Pound
1 Mole                                                = 007 Secret Agents
1 Mole                                                = 25 Cagey Bees
1 Dog Pound                                        = 16 oz. of Alpo
1000 beers served at a Twins game                = 1 Killibrew
2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League
2000 pounds of chinese soup                        = 1 Won Ton
10 to the minus 6th power mouthwashes                = 1 Microscope
Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier        = 1 Machturtle
8 Catfish                                        = 1 Octo-puss
365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer.                = 1 Lite-year
16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone                        = 1 Rod Serling
Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies        = 1 Fig-newton
        to 1 meter per second
One half large intestine                        = 1 Semicolon
10 to the minus 6th power Movie                        = 1 Microfilm
1000 pains                                        = 1 Megahertz
1 Word                                                = 1 Millipicture
1 Sagan                                                = Billions & Billions
1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety                = 1000 nail-bytes
10 to the 12th power microphones                = 1 Megaphone
10 to the 6th power Bicycles                        = 2 megacycles
The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship        = 1 Millihelen
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 rope lying over the top of a fence is the same length on each side.  It
weighs one third of a pound per foot.  On one end hangs a monkey holding a
banana, and on the other end a weight equal to the weight of the monkey.
The banana weighs two ounces per inch.  The rope is as long (in feet) as
the age of the monkey (in years), and the weight of the monkey (in ounces)
is the same as the age of the monkey's mother.  The combined age of the
monkey and its mother is thirty years.  One half of the weight of the monkey,
plus the weight of the banana, is one forth as much as the weight of the
weight and the weight of the rope.  The monkey's mother is half as old as
the monkey will be when it is three times as old as its mother was when she
she was half as old as the monkey will be when when it is as old as its mother
will be when she is four times as old as the monkey was when it was twice
as its mother was when she was one third as old as the monkey was when it
was old as is mother was when she was three times as old as the monkey was
when it was one fourth as old as it is now.  How long is the banana?
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
        As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the
multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt...
for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its
flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
charges it then might have left.  Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in
Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to
lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
                -- New York Times Editorial, 1920
Actually, the probability is 100% that the elevator will be going in the
right direction.  Proof by induction:

N=1.        Trivially true, since both you and the elevator only have one
        floor to go to.

Assume true for N, prove for N+1:
        If you are on any of the first N floors, then it is true by the
        induction hypothesis.  If you are on the N+1st floor, then both you
        and the elevator have only one choice, namely down.  Therefore,
        it is true for all N+1 floors.
QED.
        After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years
in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would
finally find and enter the Promised Land.  With him, he brought his
favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do
assorted camp chores.
        The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and,
as the months passed, became very fond of him.  Patriarchs took to
discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the
children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed.
Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was
ending, he abruptly wore out.  Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
        "It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend
Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it.  He must be properly
interred.  We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians.  Nor have we wood for
a coffin.  But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own
cattle.  We shall bury him in it."
        Feghoot agreed.  "Yes, let this be his last rusting place."
        "Rusting?" Moses cried.  "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
        "Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not
realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
                -- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
                   Feghoot!"
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
        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 egghead is one who stands firmly on both feet, in mid-air, on both
sides of an issue.
                -- Homer Ferguson
And this is a table ma'am.  What in essence it consists of is a horizontal
rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports,
which we call legs.  The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced
in design as one will find anywhere in the world.
                -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts
which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
"Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator."
                -- Claude Shouse

"Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist."
                -- Joseph C. Wang
As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one.
                -- Dave "First Strike" Pare
Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
                -- Edgar R. Fiedler
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.
"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
marvelous things.  It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory",
quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can
claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed.
                -- Randy Davis
Earl Wiener, 55, a University of Miami professor of management science,
telling the Airline Pilots Association (in jest) about 21st century aircraft:

        "The crew will consist of one pilot and a dog.  The pilot will
        nurture and feed the dog.  The dog will be there to bite the
        pilot if he touches anything.
                -- Fortune, Sept. 26, 1988
                   [the *magazine*, silly!]
Economists can certainly disappoint you.  One said that the economy would
turn up by the last quarter.  Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't.
                -- Robert Orben
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"
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"
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can
doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all present
life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is
as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ only with
respect to theories about how the process operates.
                -- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life".
Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
                -- Robert Firth

"One, two, five."
                -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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"
For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL:                #1
        A guinea pig is not from Guinea but a rodent from South America.
        A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle.
        A giant panda bear is really a member of the racoon family.
        A black panther is really a leopard that has a solid black coat
            rather then a spotted one.
        Peanuts are not really nuts.  The majority of nuts grow on trees
                while peauts grow underground.  They are classified as a
                legume -- part of the pea family.
        A cucumber is not a vegetable but a fruit.
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.
(German philosopher) Georg Wilhelm Hegel, on his deathbed, complained,
"Only one man ever understood me."  He fell silent for a while and then added,
"And he didn't understand me."
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?"
Hi! How are things going?
        (just fine, thank you...)
Great! Say, could I bother you for a question?
        (you just asked one...)
Well, how about one more?
        (one more than the first one?)
Yes.
        (you already asked that...)
[at this point, Alphonso gets smart...        ]
May I ask two questions, sir?
        (no.)
May I ask ONE then?
        (nope...)
Then may I ask, sir, how I may ask you a question?
        (yes, you may.)
Sir, how may I ask you a question?
        (you must ask for retroactive question asking privileges for
         the number of questions you have asked, then ask for that
         number plus two, one for the current question, and one for the
         next one)
Sir, may I ask nine questions?
        (go right ahead...)
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 had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all.  Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus.  I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable -- but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
                -- Winston Churchill
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres
and planets.  Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit
-- around the sun.  If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if
we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand
feet for the base.

And it has advantages.  The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson
sphere.  We can spin it on its axis for gravity.  A rotation speed of 770
m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal.  We wouldn't even need to
roof it over.  Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the
sun.  Very little air will leak over the edges.

Lord knows the thing is roomy enough.  With three million times the surface
area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the
crowding.
                -- Larry Niven, "Ringworld"
"I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
to blue, and it has to do with where the light is.  You know, the
farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
out, it's the shifting of color.  We mentioned before about the stars
singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
                -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical
world.  One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by
the use of the mathematics of probability.
                -- Vannevar Bush
If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from
many it's research.
                -- Wilson Mizner
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 dial out, it is necessary to broaden one's dimension.
        In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist.  And they grew to
large numbers and prospered.
        One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
as the eye could see.  So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
was to reach up as far as "up" went.  Further and further up they went ...
until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
        The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens.  One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
out from under the rubble.  It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not
understand each other.  They all spoke different languages.  They all fought
amongst themselves and each went about their own way.  To this day the
Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
                -- The Story of Babel
In the course of reading Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the
Mathematical Field", I have come across evidence supporting a fact
which we coffee achievers have long appreciated:  no really creative,
intelligent thought is possible without a good cup of coffee.  On page
14, Hadamard is discussing Poincare's theory of fuchsian groups and
fuchsian functions, which he describes as "... one of his greatest
discoveries, the first which consecrated his glory ..."  Hadamard refers
to Poincare having had a "... sleepless night which initiated all that
memorable work ..." and gives the following, very revealing quote:

        "One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and
        could not sleep.  Ideas rose in crowds;  I felt them collide
        until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable
        combination."

Too bad drinking black coffee was contrary to his custom.  Maybe he
could really have amounted to something as a coffee achiever.
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable,
as one's hat keeps blowing off.
                -- Woody Allen
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
                -- Phil White
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what
one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
                -- Russell
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural
function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the
other.  There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the
brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.
Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only. ... It is quite
conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected.  But it
is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working
assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.
Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot
logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
                -- D.O. Hebb, "Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological
                   Theory", 1949
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads.  One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.
Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
                -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
"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"
Nature abhors a hero.  For one thing, he violates the law of conservation
of energy.  For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the
fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be
creamed?
                -- Solomon Short
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in
their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it
was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put
them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
and everything was just fine ...
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
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 Bell System - it sometimes works.
One Bell System - it used to work before they installed the Dimension!
One Bell System - it works.
One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the
mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.
                -- J. Gustav White
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.
                -- J.D. Watson, "The Double Helix"
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 has to look out for engineers -- they begin with sewing machines
and end up with the atomic bomb.
                -- Marcel Pagnol
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering.  "Supernatural" is a null word.
                -- Robert Heinlein
One man's constant is another man's variable.
                -- A.J. Perlis
One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor...
is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics.
                -- N. Wiener
One small step for man, one giant stumble for mankind.
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror.
                -- W.K. Hartmann
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
Progress means replacing a theory that is wrong with one more subtly wrong.
Review Questions

(1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
    and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
    he exceeds the speed of light?  How long will it be before the
    Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?

(2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
    twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
    every bone in his body?  How long will it be before they cut off
    his insurance?  Where does he get a new car every week?

(3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
    the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
    pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
    Tut's?  When will it fall on him?  Will he notice?
Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them
over the horizon.
                -- K.A. Arsdall
That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.
                -- Neil Armstrong
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:

(5)        Take care that thou useth the proper method when thou takest the
        measures of high-voltage circuits too, that thou dost not incinerate
        both thee and thy test meter, for verily, though thou has no company
        property number and can be easily surveyed, the test meter has
        one and, as a consequence, bringeth much woe unto a purchasing agent.
(6)        Take care that thou tamperest not with interlocks and safety devices,
        for this incurreth the wrath of the chief electrician and bring
        the fury of the engineers on his head.
(7)        Work thou not on energized equipment for if thou doest so, thy
        friends will surely be buying beers for thy widow and consoling
        her in certain ways not generally acceptable to thee.
(8)        Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service equipment alone,
        for electrical cooking is a slow process and thou might sizzle in
        thy own fat upon a hot circuit for hours on end before thy maker
        sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into his fold.
The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer
and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown
suit in the city.  Colleges may be to blame.  English majors are encouraged,
I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not
dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the
quad.  And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors,
and they are squeamish about technology to this very day.  So it is natural
for them to despise science fiction.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"
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 most advantageous, pre-eminent thing thou canst do is not to exhibit
nor display thyself within the limits of our galaxy, but rather depart
instantaneously whence thou even now standest and flee to yet another rotten
planet in the universe, if thou canst have the good fortune to find one.
                -- Carlyle
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
                -- Isaac Asimov
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data.  Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all.  The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that.  With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven.  The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C).  The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C  (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.)  We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
                -- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972
There are three schools of magic.  One:  State a tautology, then ring the
changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy.  Two:  Record many facts.
Try to find a pattern.  Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's
science.  Three:  Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled
by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering.
There is a building with four floors.  On the first floor, there
is a convention of architects.  On the second floor, there is a
vinyl manufacturing plant.  On the third floor there is a fast food
stand, and on the fourth floor there is a library.

Q:        What would happen if a librarian traveled down in a small
        elevator with one other person from each floor?
A:        The elevator would be full.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved.
                -- Darwin
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.
Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the earth's
supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century. As man
struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help. Please...

                        CONSERVE GRAVITY

Follow these simple suggestions:

(1)  Walk with a light step.  Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2)  Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3)  Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like curling.
(4)  Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
(5)  Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big pile.
(6)  Stop flipping pancakes
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."
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
                -- Doug Larson
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his
own facts.
                -- Patrick Moynihan
We dedicate this book to our fellow citizens who, for love of truth, take from
their own wants by taxes and gifts, and now and then send forth one of
themselves as dedicated servant, to forward the search into the mysteries and
marvelous simplicities of this strange and beautiful Universe, Our home.
                -- "Gravitation", Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical
problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
What is algebra, exactly?  Is it one of those three-cornered things?
                -- J.M. Barrie
When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, the telephone people interrupted
service for one minute in his honor.  They've been honoring him intermittently
ever since, I believe.
                -- The Grab Bag
        "Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his
mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
        "What do you keep that mouse for?" I said.  "You should either
bury it or else throw it into the brook."
        "Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno.  "How ever would you
do a garden without one?  We make each bed three mouses and a half
long, and two mouses wide."
        I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me
how it was used...
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
You are a taxi driver.  Your cab is yellow and black, and has been in
use for only seven years.  One of its windshield wipers is broken, and
the carburetor needs adjusting.  The tank holds 20 gallons, but at the
moment is only three-quarters full.  How old is the taxi driver?"
Consider the following axioms carefully:
        "Everything's better when it sits on a Ritz."
        and
        "Everything's better with Blue Bonnet on it."
What happens if one spreads Blue Bonnet margarine on a Ritz cracker?  The
thought is frightening.  Is this how God came into being?  Try not to
consider the fact that "Things go better with Coke".
How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by
a waiter at a nice party?
        Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
d'oeuvre.  If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's
inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say:  "This is
cheese!  I hate cheese!"  Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and
bite another one and go, "Darn it!  Another cheese!" and so on.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
I have never been one to sacrifice my appetite on the altar of appearance.
                -- A.M. Readyhough
It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings
about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still
safe to eat.
                -- Robert Fuoss
Just a few of the perfect excuses for having some strawberry shortcake.
Pick one.

         (1)        It's less calories than two pieces of strawberry shortcake.
         (2)        It's cheaper than going to France.
         (3)        It neutralizes the brownies I had yesterday.
         (4)        Life is short.
         (5)        It's somebody's birthday.  I don't want them to celebrate alone.
         (6)        It matches my eyes.
         (7)        Whoever said, "Let them eat cake." must have been talking to me.
         (8)        To punish myself for eating dessert yesterday.
         (9)        Compensation for all the time I spend in the shower not eating.
        (10)        Strawberry shortcake is evil.  I must help rid the world of it.
        (11)        I'm getting weak from eating all that healthy stuff.
        (12)        It's the second anniversary of the night I ate plain broccoli.
Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes
you weep.
                -- Carl Sandburg
Lobster:
        Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only
proper method of preparing them.  Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your
guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're cooked.
The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on the sea
floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs.  Grasp the lobster
behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say,
"Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a
scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural
apparatus you call a memory!"  The lobster will squirm noticeably.  It may
even take a swipe at you with one of its claws.  Incorrigible.  Pop it into
the pot.  Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will
be, too.
                -- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and
                   Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)

  Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie        36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water                                 2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar                 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  Grated rind of one lemon                   Butter or margarine
  Cinnamon

Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate.  Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate.  Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes.  Add lemon
juice and rind.  Cool.  Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Cover with top
crust.  Trim and flute edges together.  Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape.  Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden.  Serve warm.  Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
                -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
eating one peanut.
                -- Channing Pollock
Remember, DESSERT is spelled with two `s's while DESERT is spelled with
one, because EVERYONE wants two desserts, but NO ONE wants two deserts.
                -- Miss Oglethorp, Gr. 5, PS. 59
The black bear used to be one of the most commonly seen large animals
because in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks they lived off of garbage
and tourist handouts.  This bear has learned to open car doors in
Yosemite, where damage to automobiles caused by bears runs into the tens
of thousands of dollars a year.  Campaigns to bearproof all garbage
containers in wild areas have been difficult, because as one biologist
put it, "There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels
of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is one
of them.
        ... 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"
Two peanuts were walking through the New York.  One was assaulted.
Waiter:        "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
        (Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas.  Which one asked for the clean glass?"
What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
                -- Titus Lucretius Carus
What is important is food, money and opportunities for scoring off one's
enemies.  Give a man these three things and you won't hear much squawking
out of him.
                -- Brian O'Nolan, "The Best of Myles"
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
100 buckets of bits on the bus        
100 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FF buckets of bits on the bus        

FF buckets of bits on the bus        
FF buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FE buckets of bits on the bus        

ad infinitum...
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 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 single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
                -- Dorothy Parker, "One Perfect Rose"
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"
Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tin'uviel!  Tin'uviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came
And doom fell on Tin'uviel
That in his arms lay glistening.

As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tin'uviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.

Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of iron and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
there's the rub.

For all dreams are not equal,
some exit to nightmare
most end with the dreamer

But at least one must be lived ... and died.
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
All the lines have been written                There's been Sandburg,
It's sad but it's true                        Keats, Poe and McKuen
With all the words gone,                They all had their day
What's a young poet to do?                And knew what they're doin'

But of all the words written                The bird is a strange one,
And all the lines read,                        So small and so tender
There's one I like most,                Its breed still unknown,
And by a bird it was said!                Not to mention its gender.

It reminds me of days of                So what is this line
Both gloom and of light.                Whose author's unknown
It still lifts my spirits                And still makes me giggle
And starts the day right.                Even now that I'm grown?

I've read all the greats
Both starving and fat,
But none was as great as
"I tot I taw a puddy tat."
                -- Etta Stallings, "An Ode To Childhood"
All the world's a VAX,
And all the coders merely butchers;
They have their exits and their entrails;
And one int in his time plays many widths,
His sizeof being _N bytes.  At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
And shining morning face, creeping like slug
Unwillingly to school.
                -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
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.]
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word, "unless."
Whatever THAT meant, well, I just couldn't guess.
That was long, long ago, and each day since that day,
I've worried and worried and worried away.
Through the years as my buildings have fallen apart,
I've worried about it with all of my heart.

"BUT," says the Oncler, "now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear!
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better - it's not.
So... CATCH!" cries the Oncler.  He lets something fall.
"It's a truffula seed.  It's the last one of all!

"You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds.
And truffula trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new truffula -- treat it with care.
Give it clean water and feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest -- protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back!"
As I was walking down the street one dark and dreary day,
I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay,
The words were torn and tattered,
From the storm the night before,
The wind and rain had done its work and this is how it goes,

Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, chew Wrigleys Spearmint beer,
Ken-L-Ration dog food makes your complexion clear,
Simonize your baby in a Hershey candy bar,
And Texaco's a beauty cream that's used by every star.

Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigedaire,
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear,
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three,
And people over sixty-five should bathe in Lipton tea.
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"
By the time you swear you're his,
shivering and sighing
and he vows his passion is
infinite, undying --
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
                -- Dorothy Parker, "Unfortunate Coincidence"
Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes,
Calm down, it's only bits and bytes,
Calm down, and speak to me in English,
Please realize that I'm not one of your computerites.
Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously alive and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will *___and* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
                -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
                   of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
Come on, Virginia, don't make me wait!
Catholic girls start much too late,
Ah, but sooner or later, it comes down to fate,
I might as well be the one.
Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray,
Built you a temple and locked you away,
Ah, but they never told you the price that you paid,
The things that you might have done.
So come on, Virginia, show me a sign,
Send up a signal, I'll throw you a line,
That stained glass curtain that you're hiding behind,
Never lets in the sun.
Darling, only the good die young!
                -- Billy Joel, "Only The Good Die Young"
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"
Didja' ever have to make up your mind,
Pick up on one and leave the other behind,
It's not often easy, and it's not often kind,
Didja' ever have to make up your mind?
                -- Lovin' Spoonful
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"]
Eleanor Rigby
        Sits at the keyboard
        And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
        Finding some code
        That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Hacker MacKensie
Writing the code for a program that no one will run
It's nearly done
Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's
        nobody there.
What does he care?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Five names that I can hardly stand to hear,
Including yours and mine and one more chimp who isn't here,
I can see the ladies talking how the times is gettin' hard,
And that fearsome excavation on Magnolia boulevard,
Yes, I'm goin' insane,
And I'm laughing at the frozen rain,
Well, I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
        Bad sneakers and a pina colada my friend,
        Stopping on the avenue by Radio City, with a
        Transistor and a large sum of money to spend...
You fellah, you tearin' up the street,
You wear that white tuxedo, how you gonna beat the heat,
Do you take me for a fool, do you think that I don't see,
That ditch out in the Valley that they're diggin' just for me,
Yes, and goin' insane,
You know I'm laughin' at the frozen rain,
Feel like I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
(chorus)
                -- Bad Sneakers, "Steely Dan"
Have you seen the old man in the closed down market,
Kicking up the papers in his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride, hands hang loosely at his side
Yesterdays papers, telling yesterdays news.

How can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand
Lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind...

Have you seen the old man outside the sea-man's mission
Memories fading like the metal ribbons that he wears.
In our winter city the rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero and a world that doesn't care...
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Of music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.

When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mice ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
The others escaped with minor injuries.
I always will remember --                I was in no mood to trifle;
'Twas a year ago November --                I got down my trusty rifle
I went out to shoot some deer                And went out to stalk my prey --
On a morning bright and clear.                What a haul I made that day!
I went and shot the maximum                I tied them to my bumper and
The game laws would allow:                I drove them home somehow,
Two game wardens, seven hunters,        Two game wardens, seven hunters,
And a cow.                                And a cow.

The Law was very firm, it                People ask me how I do it
Took away my permit--                        And I say, "There's nothin' to it!
The worst punishment I ever endured.        You just stand there lookin' cute,
It turns out there was a reason:        And when something moves, you shoot."
Cows were out of season, and                And there's ten stuffed heads
One of the hunters wasn't insured.        In my trophy room right now:
                                        Two game wardens, seven hunters,
                                        And a pure-bred guernsey cow.
                -- Tom Lehrer, "The Hunting Song"
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I'd rather see than be one.
                -- Gellett Burgess

I've never seen a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But from the milk we're getting now
There certainly must be one
                -- Odgen Nash

Ah, yes, I wrote "The Purple Cow"  
I'm sorry now I wrote it
But I can tell you anyhow
I'll kill you if you quote it.
                -- Gellett Burgess, many years later
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've built a better model than the one at Data General
For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.

I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
I've built a better model than the one at Data General.

                -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
                   "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
                   by Gilbert & Sullivan)
If all be true that I do think,
There be five reasons why one should drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
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
If you had just a minute to breathe,
And they granted you one final wish,
Would you ask for something
Like another chance?
                -- Traffic, "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"
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 the early morning queue,
With a listing in my hand.
With a worry in my heart,        There on terminal number 9,
Waitin' here in CERAS-land.        Pascal run all set to go.
I'm a long way from sleep,        But I'm waitin' in the queue,
How I miss a good meal so.        With this code that ever grows.
In the early mornin' queue,        Now the lobby chairs are soft,
With no place to go.                But that can't make the queue move fast.
                                Hey, there it goes my friend,
                                I've moved up one at last.
                -- Ernest Adams, "Early Morning Queue", to "Early
                   Morning Rain" by G. Lightfoot
It was one time too many
One word too few
It was all too much for me and you
There was one way to go
Nothing more we could do
One time too many
One word too few
                -- Meredith Tanner
It's just apartment house rules,
So all you 'partment house fools
Remember:  one man's ceiling is another man's floor.
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
                -- Paul Simon, "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor"
It's so confusing choosing sides in the heat of the moment,
        just to see if it's real,
Oooh, it's so erotic having you tell me how it should feel,
But I'm avoiding all the hard cold facts that I got to face,
So ask me just one question when this magic night is through,
Could it have been just anyone or did it have to be you?
                -- Billy Joel, "Glass Houses"
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"
Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one...
Lady, lady, better run!
                -- Dorothy Parker, "Social Note"
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"
Love, which is quickly kindled in a gentle heart,
        seized this one for the fair form
        that was taken from me-and the way of it afficts me still.
Love, which absolves no loved one from loving,
        seized me so strongly with delight in him,
        that, as you see, it does not leave me even now.
Love brought us to one death.
                -- La Divina Commedia: Inferno V, vv. 100-06
Most folks they like the daytime,
        'cause they like to see the shining sun.
They're up in the morning,
        off and a-running till they're too tired for having fun.
But when the sun goes down,
        and the bright lights shine, my daytime has just begun.

Now there are two sides to this great big world,
        and one of them is always night.
If you can take care of business in the sunshine, baby,
        I guess you're gonna be all right.
Don't come looking for me to lend you a hand.
        My eyes just can't stand the light.

'Cause I'm a night owl honey, sleep all day long.
                -- Carly Simon
My analyst told me that I was right out of my head,
        But I said, "Dear Doctor, I think that it is you instead.
Because I have got a thing that is unique and new,
        To prove it I'll have the last laugh on you.
'Cause instead of one head -- I've got two.

And you know two heads are better than one.
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
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;

One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.
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"
"No program is perfect,"
They said with a shrug.
"The customer's happy--
What's one little bug?"

But he was determined,                        Then change two, then three more,
The others went home.                        As year followed year.
He dug out the flow chart                And strangers would comment,
Deserted, alone.                        "Is that guy still here?"

Night passed into morning.                He died at the console
The room was cluttered                        Of hunger and thirst
With core dumps, source listings.        Next day he was buried
"I'm close," he muttered.                Face down, nine edge first.

Chain smoking, cold coffee,                And his wife through her tears
Logic, deduction.                        Accepted his fate.
"I've got it!" he cried,                Said "He's not really gone,
"Just change one instruction."                He's just working late."
                -- The Perfect Programmer
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
Now's the time to have some big ideas
Now's the time to make some firm decisions
We saw the Buddha in a bar down south
Talking politics and nuclear fission
We see him and he's all washed up --
Moving on into the body of a beetle
Getting ready for a long long crawl
He  ain't nothing -- he ain't nothing at all...

Death and Money make their point once more
In the shape of Philosophical assassins
Mark and Danny take the bus uptown
Deadly angels for reality and passion
Have the courage of the here and now
Don't taking nothing from the half-baked buddhas
When you think you got it paid in full
You got nothing -- you got nothing at all...
        We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
        We know his name and he mustn't get away.
        We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
        It would take one shot -- to blow him away...
                -- Shriekback, "Gunning for the Buddah"
"Oh, 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments such prosperi-ty?"
"Oh, didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"
"Yes: That's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

"At home in the barton you said `thee' and `thou,'
And `thik oon' and `theas oon' and `t'other;' but now
Your talking quite fits 'ee for compa-ny!"
"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

"Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak
But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,
And your little gloves fit like as on any la-dy!"
"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.

"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,
And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem
To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!"
"True.  One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.

"I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,
And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!"
"My dear--a raw country girl, such as you be,
Cannot quite expect that.  You ain't ruined," said she.
                --Thomas Hardy
Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?
                -- Pink Floyd
Once again dread deed is done.
Canon sleeps,
his all-knowing eye shaded
to human chance and circumstance.
Peace reigns anew o'er Pine Valley,
but Canon's sleep is troubled.

Beware, scant days past the Ides of July.
Impatient hands wait eagerly
to grasp, to hold
scant moments of time
wrested from life in the full
glory of Canon's power;
held captive by his unblinking eye.

Three golden orbs stand watch;
one each to toll the day, hour, minute
until predestiny decrees his reawakening.
When that feared moment arives,
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
                -- "I extended the loan on your Camera, at the Pine
                   Valley Pawn Shop today"
One bright Sunday morning, in the shadows of the steeple,
By the Relief Office, I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling,
This land was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back,
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said: "No Trespassing."
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
                -- Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land" (verses 4, 6, 7)
        [If you ever wondered why Arlo was so anti-establishment when his dad
         wrote such wonderful patriotic songs, the answer is that you haven't
         heard all of Woody's songs]
One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
[...]
sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
One good thing about music,
Well, it helps you feel no pain.
So hit me with music;
Hit me with music now.
                -- Bob Marley, "Trenchtown Rock"
One pill makes you larger,                And if you go chasing rabbits
And one pill makes you small.                And you know you're going to fall.
And the ones that mother gives you,        Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Don't do anything at all.                Has given you the call.
Go ask Alice                                Call Alice
When she's ten feet tall.                When she was just small.

When men on the chessboard                When logic and proportion
Get up and tell you where to go.        Have fallen sloppy dead,
And you've just had some kind of        And the White Knight is talking
        mushroom                                backwards
And your mind is moving low.                And the Red Queen's lost her head
Go ask Alice                                Remember what the dormouse said:
I think she'll know.                                Feed your head.
                                                Feed your head.
                                                Feed your head.
                -- Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
One reason why George Washington
Is held in such veneration:
He never blamed his problems
On the former Administration.
                -- George O. Ludcke
One thing about the past.
It's likely to last.
                -- Ogden Nash
One toke over the line, sweet Mary,
One toke over the line,
Sittin' downtown in a railway station,
One toke over the line.
Waitin' for the train that goes home,
Hopin' that the train is on time,
Sittin' downtown in a railway station,
One toke over the line.
Planet Claire has pink hair.
All the trees are red.
No one ever dies there.
No one has a head....
Say!  You've struck a heap of trouble--
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die--
Why, you've still the sunshine left you
And the big blue sky.
                -- R.W. Service
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"
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
        And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
        Because the paging thrashes!
        Wow!  Wow!  Wow!

I speak severely to my VAX,
        And boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
        My jobs it always thrashes!
        Wow!  Wow!  Wow!
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time,
There's something wrong here, there can be no more denying,
One of us is changing, or maybe we just stopped trying,

And it's too late, baby, now, it's too late,
Though we really did try to make it,
Something inside has died and I can't hide and I just can't fake it...

It used to be so easy living here with you,
You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do
Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool.

There'll be good times again for me and you,
But we just can't stay together, don't you feel it too?
But I'm glad for what we had and that I once loved you...

But it's too late baby...
It's too late, now darling, it's too late...
                -- Carol King, "Tapestry"
Strange things are done to be number one
In selling the computer                        The Druids were entrepreneurs,
IBM has their strategem                        And they built a granite box
Which steadily grows acuter,                It tracked the moon, warned of monsoons,
And Honeywell competes like Hell,        And forecast the equinox
But the story's missing link                Their price was right, their future
Is the system old at Stonemenge sold                bright,
By the firm of Druids, Inc.                The prototype was sold;
                                        From Stonehenge site their bits and byte
                                        Would ship for Celtic gold.
The movers came to crate the frame;
It weighed a million ton!
The traffic folk thought it a joke        The man spoke true, and thus to you
(the wagon wheels just spun);                A warning from the ages;
"They'll nay sell that," the foreman        Your stock will slip if you can't ship
        spat,                                What's in your brochure's pages.
"Just leave the wild weeds grow;        See if it sells without the bells
"It's Druid-kind, over-designed,        And strings that ring and quiver;
"And belly up they'll go."                Druid repute went down the chute
                                        Because they couldn't deliver.
                -- Edward C. McManus, "The Computer at Stonehenge"
Suffering alone exists, none who suffer;
The deed there is, but no doer thereof;
Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it;
The Path there is, but none who travel it.
                -- "Buddhist Symbolism", Symbols and Values
T:        One big monster, he called TROLL.
        He don't rock, and he don't roll;
        Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
        He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
                -- The Roguelet's ABC
Take a look around you, tell me what you see,
A girl who thinks she's ordinary lookin' she has got the key.
If you can get close enough to look into her eyes
There's something special right behind the bitterness she hides.
        And you're fair game,
        You never know what she'll decide, you're fair game,
        Just relax, enjoy the ride.
Find a way to reach her, make yourself a fool,
But do it with a little class, disregard the rules.
'Cause this one knows the bottom line, couldn't get a date.
The ugly duckling striking back, and she'll decide her fate.
        (chorus)
The ones you never notice are the ones you have to watch.
She's pleasant and she's friendly while she's looking at your crotch.
Try your hand at conversation, gossip is a lie,
And sure enough she'll take you home and make you wanna die.
        (chorus)
                -- Crosby, Stills, Nash, "Fair Game"
The bank called to tell me that I'm overdrawn,
Some freaks are burning crosses out on my front lawn,
And I *can't*believe* it, all the Cheetos are gone,
        It's just ONE OF THOSE DAYS!
                -- Weird Al Yankovic, "One of Those Days"
The good (I am convinced, for one)
Is but the bad one leaves undone.
Once your reputation's done
You can live a life of fun.
                -- Wilhelm Busch
The man she had was kind and clean
And well enough for every day,
But oh, dear friends, you should have seen
The one that got away.
                -- Dorothy Parker, "The Fisherwoman"
The one L lama, he's a priest
The two L llama, he's a beast
And I will bet my silk pyjama
There isn't any three L lllama.
                -- O. Nash, to which a fire chief replied that occasionally
                his department responded to something like a "three L lllama."
The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
        Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
        Do I want one?  God Forbiddie!
                -- Ogden Nash
The Rabbits                                The Cow
Here is a verse about rabbits                The cow is of the bovine ilk;
That doesn't mention their habits.        One end is moo, the other, milk.
                -- Ogden Nash
The Worst American Poet
        Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that
Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years.
        Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire
of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen.
        Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the
formula was the same:
                Have you heard of the dreadful fate
                Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife?
                Of their death I will relate,
                And also others lost their life
                (in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster,
                Where so many people died.
        Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems,
the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a
river or struck by lightning.  A critic of the day said she was "worse than
a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded.
        Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even
suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate".  Her reply was
forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went
beyond reason."  She added that "literary work is very difficult to do".
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The, uh, snowy mountains are like really cold, eh?
And the, um, plains stretch out like my moms girdle, eh?
There's lotsa beers and doughnuts for everyone, eh?
So the last one to be peaceful and everything is a big idiot,
Eh?
So shut yer face up and dry yer mucklucks by the fire, eh?
And dream about girls with their high beams on, eh?
They may be cold, but that's okay!  Beer's better that way!
Eh?
                -- A, like, Tribute to the Great White North, eh?
Beauty!
There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed.
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still recall.
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I've loved them all.

But of all these friends and lovers,
There is no one compared with you,
All these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I'll love you more.
                -- Lennon/McCartney, "In My Life", 1965
There is in certain living souls
A quality of loneliness unspeakable,
So great it must be shared
As company is shared by lesser beings.
Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this
That in immensity
There is one lonelier than you.
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"
There's little in taking or giving,
        There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
        Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
        The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
        And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
        And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
        Would you kindly direct me to hell?
                -- Dorothy Parker
Thinks't thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs; mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore,
Innumerable atoms; and one desert,
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.
This land is my land, and only my land,
I've got a shotgun, and you ain't got one,
If you don't get off, I'll blow your head off,
This land is private property.
                -- Apologies to Woody Guthrie
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
                -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings"
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"
Tim and I a hunting went
We found three damsels in a tent,
As they were three, and we were two,
I bucked one and Timbuktu.
                -- the only known poem using the word "Timbuktu"
To code the impossible code,                This is my quest --
To bring up a virgin machine,                To debug that code,
To pop out of endless recursion,        No matter how hopeless,
To grok what appears on the screen,        No matter the load,
                                        To write those routines
To right the unrightable bug,                Without question or pause,
To endlessly twiddle and thrash,        To be willing to hack FORTRAN IV
To mount the unmountable magtape,        For a heavenly cause.
To stop the unstoppable crash!                And I know if I'll only be true
                                        To this glorious quest,
And the queue will be better for this,        That my code will run CUSPy and calm,
That one man, scorned and                When it's put to the test.
        destined to lose,
Still strove with his last allocation
To scrap the unscrappable kludge!
                -- To "The Impossible Dream", from Man of La Mancha
"Twas bergen and the eirie road
Did mahwah into patterson:                "Beware the Hopatcong, my son!
All jersey were the ocean groves,        The teeth that bite, the nails
And the red bank bayonne.                        that claw!
                                        Beware the bound brook bird, and shun
He took his belmar blade in hand:        The kearney communipaw."
Long time the folsom foe he sought
Till rested he by a bayway tree                And, as in nutley thought he stood,
And stood a while in thought.                The Hopatcong with eyes of flame,
                                        Came whippany through the englewood,
One, two, one, two, and through                And garfield as it came.
        and through
The belmar blade went hackensack!        "And hast thou slain the Hopatcong?
He left it dead and with it's head        Come to my arms, my perth amboy!
He went weehawken back.                        Hohokus day!  Soho!  Rahway!"
                                        He caldwell in his joy.
Did mahwah into patterson:
All jersey were the ocean groves,
And the red bank bayonne.
                -- Paul Kieffer
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.        "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
All mimsy were the borogroves                The jaws that bite, the claws
And the mome raths outgrabe.                        that catch!
                                        Beware the Jubjub bird,
He took his vorpal sword in hand        And shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
Long time the manxome foe he sought.
So rested he by the tumtum tree                And as in uffish thought he stood
And stood awhile in thought.                The Jabberwock, with eyes aflame
                                        Came whuffling through the tulgey wood
One! Two! One! Two!  And through and        And burbled as it came!
        through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.        "Hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
He left it dead, and took its head,        Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
And went galumphing back.                Oh frabjous day!  Calooh!  Callay!"
                                        He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky"
'Twas midnight on the ocean,                Her children all were orphans,
Not a streetcar was in sight,                Except one a tiny tot,
So I stepped into a cigar store                Who had a home across the way
To ask them for a light.                Above a vacant lot.

The man        behind the counter                As I gazed through the oaken door
Was a woman, old and gray,                A whale went drifting by,
Who used to peddle doughnuts                Its six legs hanging in the air,
On the road to Mandalay.                So I kissed her goodbye.

She said "Good morning, stranger",        This story has a morale
Her eyes were dry with tears,                As you can plainly see,
As she put her head between her feet        Don't mix your gin with whiskey
And stood that way for years.                On the deep and dark blue sea.
                -- Midnight On The Ocean
        Two men looked out from the prison bars,
        One saw mud--
        The other saw stars.

Now let me get this right: two prisoners are looking out the window.
While one of them was looking at all the mud -- the other one got hit
in the head.
Wake up all you citizens, hear your country's call,
Not to arms and violence, But peace for one and all.
Crush out hate and prejudice, fear and greed and sin,
Help bring back her dignity, restore her faith again.

Work hard for a common cause, don't let our country fall.
Make her proud and strong again, democracy for all.
Yes, make our country strong again, keep our flag unfurled.
Make our country well again, respected by the world.

Make her whole and beautiful, work from sun to sun.
Stand tall and labor side by side, because there's so much to be done.
Yes, make her whole and beautiful, united strong and free,
Wake up, all you citizens, It's up to you and me.
                -- Pansy Myers Schroeder
Wanna tell you all a story 'bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.
But then one day he was shootin' at some food,
When up through the ground come a bubblin' crude -- oil, that is;
        black gold; 'Texas tea' ...

Well the next thing ya know, old Jed's a millionaire.
The kinfolk said, 'Jed, move away from there!'
They said, 'Californy is the place ya oughta be',
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly -- Hills, that is;
        swimmin' pools; movie stars.
We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands!  Standby!  Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet--

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
                -- Robert A. Heinlein, 1941
Well, fancy giving money to the Government!
Might as well have put it down the drain.
Fancy giving money to the Government!
Nobody will see the stuff again.
Well, they've no idea what money's for --
Ten to one they'll start another war.
I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'!
Fancy giving money to the Government!
                -- A.P. Herbert
What did ya do with your burden and your cross?
Did you carry it yourself or did you cry?
You and I know that a burden and a cross,
Can only be carried on one man's back.
                -- Louden Wainwright III
When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,        Sixty years in these folks' world
A dance that's walked                        The child I works for calls me girl
A song that's spoke,                        I say "Yes ma'am" for working's sake.
I laugh so hard I almost choke                Too proud to bend
When I think about myself.                Too poor to break,
                                        I laugh until my stomach ache,
                                        When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard I nearly died,
The tales they tell, sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit,
But eat the rind,
I laugh until I start to crying,
When I think about my folks.
                -- Maya Angelou
When my fist clenches crack it open,
Before I use it and lose my cool.
When I smile tell me some bad news,
Before I laugh and act like a fool.

And if I swallow anything evil,
Put you finger down my throat.
And if I shiver please give me a blanket,
Keep me warm let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like to be the bad man,
        to be the sad man.
Behind blue eyes.
No one knows what its like to be hated,
        to be fated,
To telling only lies.
                        -- The Who
When the Guru administers, the users
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a sysop who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
And worst, one who is despised.

If you don't trust the users,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Guru doesn't talk, he hacks.
When his work is done,
the users say, "Amazing:
we implemented it, all by ourselves!"
When users see one GUI as beautiful,
other user interfaces become ugly.
When users see some programs as winners,
other programs become lossage.

Pointers and NULLs reference each other.
High level and assembler depend on each other.
Double and float cast to each other.
High-endian and low-endian define each other.
While and until follow each other.

Therefore the Guru
programs without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Warnings arise and he lets them come;
processes are swapped and he lets them go.
He has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When his work is done, he deletes it.
That is why it lasts forever.
When you find yourself in danger,
When you're threatened by a stranger,
When it looks like you will take a lickin'...

There is one thing you should learn,
When there is no one else to turn to,
        Caaaall for Super Chicken!!    (**bwuck-bwuck-bwuck-bwuck**)
        Caaaall for Super Chicken!!
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
        For it isn't your father or mother or wife
        Whose judgement upon you must pass;
        The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
        Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think you a straight-shootin' chum
And call you a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
        He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
        For he's with you clear up to the end,
        And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
        If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
        We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
        Clean-favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
        And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
        "Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king --
        And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
        To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
        And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
        Went home and put a bullet through his head.
                -- E.A. Robinson, "Richard Cory"
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
                -- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

        [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
         referring to hardware interrupts.]

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine.
                -- William Wordsworth, "She Was a Phantom of Delight"

        [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
         referring to software interrupts.]
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.
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
        "And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
        Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
        "I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
        Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
        And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
        Pray what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
        "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
        Allow me to sell you a couple?"
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
        That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
        Don't you think that you should save your breath?"

"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 downstairs!"
"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 are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
        And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
        Have you thought about taking a hike?"

"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
        "Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
        And don't realize that they've been had."
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.

Buy the negatives at any price.
Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
Beware of a tall black man with one blond shoe.
Beware of a tall blond man with one black shoe.
Beware the one behind you.
If you learn one useless thing every day, in a single year you'll learn
365 useless things.
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.
Love is in the offing.  Be affectionate to one who adores you.
Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you.
You are number 6!  Who is number one?
You don't become a failure until you're satisfied with being one.
You will hear good news from one you thought unfriendly to you.
        A boy scout troop went on a hike.  Crossing over a stream, one of
the boys dropped his wallet into the water.  Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed
the wallet and tossed it to another carp.  Then that carp passed it to
another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet back
and forth.
        "Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a rare case
of carp-to-carp walleting."
A couple of young fellers were fishing at their special pond off the
beaten track when out of the bushes jumped the Game Warden.  Immediately,
one of the boys threw his rod down and started running through the woods
like the proverbial bat out of hell, and hot on his heels ran the Game
Warden.  After about a half mile the fella stopped and stooped over with
his hands on his thighs, whooping and heaving to catch his breath as the
Game Warden finally caught up to him.
        "Let's see yer fishin' license, boy," the Warden gasped.  The
man pulled out his wallet and gave the Game Warden a valid fishing
license.
        "Well, son", snarled the Game Warden, "You must be about as dumb
as a box of rocks!  You didn't have to run if you have a license!"
        "Yes, sir," replied his victim, "but, well, see, my friend back
there, he don't have one!"
A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
"you could blow it in" may be blown in.  This rule does not apply if
the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
to make a travesty of the game.
                -- Donald A. Metz
                Accidentally Shot

        Colonel Gray, of Petaluma, came near losing his life a few days ago,
in a singular manner.  A gentleman with whom he was hunting attempted to
bring down a dove, but instead of doing so put the load of shot through the
Colonel's hat.  One shot took effect in his forehead.
                -- Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1861
"Ain't that something what happened today.  One of us got traded to
Kansas City."
                -- Casey Stengel, informing outfielder Bob Cerv he'd
                   been traded.
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)
George's friend Sam had a dog who could recite the Gettysburg Address.  "Let
me buy him from you," pleaded George after a demonstration.
        "Okay," agreed Sam.  "All he knows is that Lincoln speech anyway."
        At his company's Fourth of July picnic, George brought his new pet
and announced that the animal could recite the entire Gettysburg Address.
No one believed him, and they proceeded to place bets against the dog.
George quieted the crowd and said, "Now we'll begin!"  Then he looked at
the dog.  The dog looked back.  No sound.  "Come on, boy, do your stuff."
Nothing.  A disappointed George took his dog and went home.
        "Why did you embarrass me like that in front of everybody?" George
yelled at the dog.  "Do you realize how much money you lost me?"
        "Don't be silly, George," replied the dog.  "Think of the odds we're
gonna get on Labor Day."
HARVARD:
Quarterback:
        Sophomore Dave Strewzinski... likes to pass.  And pass he does, with
a record 86 attempts (three completions) in 87 plays....  Though Strewzinksi
has so far failed to score any points for the Crimson, his jackrabbit speed
has made him the least sacked quarterback in the Ivy league.
Wide Receiver:
        The other directional signal in Harvard's offensive machine is senior
Phil Yip, who is very fast.  Yip is so fast that he has set a record for being
fast.  Expect to see Yip elude all pursuers and make it into the endzone five
or six times, his average for a game.  Yip, nicknamed "fumblefingers" and "you
asshole" by his teammates, hopes to carry the ball with him at least one of
those times.
YALE:
Defense:
        On the defensive side, Yale boasts the stingiest line in the Ivies.
Primarily responsible are seniors Izzy "Shylock" Bloomberg and Myron
Finklestein, the tightest ends in recent Eli history.  Also contributing to
the powerful defense is junior tackle Angus MacWhirter, a Scotsman who rounds
out the offensive ethnic joke.  Look for these three to shut down the opening
coin toss.
                -- Harvard Lampoon 1988 Program Parody, distributed at The Game
I do not care if half the league strikes.  Those who do will encounter
quick retribution.  All will be suspended, and I don't care if it wrecks
the National League for five years.  This is the United States of America
and one citizen has as much right to play as another.
                -- Ford Frick, National League President, reacting to a
                   threatened strike by some Cardinal players in 1947 if
                   Jackie Robinson took the field against St. Louis.  The
                   Cardinals backed down and played.
I would be batting the big feller if they wasn't ready with the other one,
but a left-hander would be the thing if they wouldn't have knowed it already
because there is more things involved than could come up on the road, even
after we've been home a long while.
                -- Casey Stengel
It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another --
but which one?  Differences are crucial.
                -- Lazarus Long
Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee:
        (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
           straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
           force is technically termed "car suck").
        (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
           than "Watch this!"
        (3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly
           proportional to the cost of hitting it.  For instance, a
           Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or
           a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy.
        (4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the
           cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the
           Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you
           in the head and knock you silly.
MARTA WAS WATCHING THE FOOTBALL GAME with me when she said, "You know most
of these sports are based on the idea of one group protecting its
territory from invasion by another group."

"Yeah," I said, trying not to laugh.  Girls are funny.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
"Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the
dog] is good for almost every kind of game.  He went duck hunting one time
and did real well at it.  Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but,
you know, farm ducks.  And it got Don Carlos all mixed up.  Since the
ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he
wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something.  So one morning
last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and
buried them."  "What do you mean, buried them?"  "Oh, he didn't hurt them.
He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth
and put them in the holes.  Then he covered them up with mud except for
their heads.  He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for
another one when Tony found him.  We talked about it for a long time.  Papa
said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't
know how to build a cage he put them in holes.  He's a smart dog."
                -- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning"
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.
One thought driven home is better than three left on base.
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
Pedro Guerrero was playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984
when he made the comment that earns him a place in my Hall of Fame.  Second
baseman Steve Sax was having trouble making his throws.  Other players were
diving, screaming, signaling for a fair catch.  At the same time, Guerrero,
at third, was making a few plays that weren't exactly soothing to manager
Tom Lasorda's stomach.  Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous
motivational meetings and zeroed in on Guerrero: "How can you play third
base like that?  You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball.
What is it?"
        "I'm only thinking about two things," Guerrero said.  "First, `I
hope they don't hit the ball to me.'"  The players snickered, and even
Lasorda had to fight off a laugh.  "Second, `I hope they don't hit the ball
to Sax.'"
                -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city.  I don't mean the
people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy.  When
they boo you, you know they mean *you*.  Music, that's what it is to me.
One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo.
                -- George Halas, professional football coach
Ten of the meanest cons in the state pen met in the corner of the yard to
shoot some craps.  The stakes were enormous, the tension palpable.
        When his turn came to shoot, Dutsky nervously plunked down his
entire wad, shook the dice and rolled.  A smile crossed his face as a
seven showed up, but it quickly changed to horror as third die slipped out
of his sleeve and fell to the ground with the two others.  No one said a
word.  Finally, Killer Lucci picked up the third die, put it in his pocket
and handed the others to Dutsky.
        "Roll 'em," Lucci said.  "Your point is thirteen."
Texas A&M football coach Jackie Sherrill went to the office of the Dean
of Academics because he was concerned about his players' mental abilities.
"My players are just too stupid for me to deal with them", he told the
unbelieving dean.  At this point, one of his players happened to enter
the dean's office.  "Let me show you what I mean", said Sherrill, and he
told the player to run over to his office to see if he was in.  "OK, Coach",
the player replied, and was off.  "See what I mean?" Sherrill asked.
"Yeah", replied the dean.  "He could have just picked up this phone and
called you from here."
The one sure way to make a lazy man look respectable is to put a fishing
rod in his hand.
There's a couple of million dollars worth of baseball talent on the loose,
ready for the big leagues, yet unsigned by any major league.  There are
pitchers who would win 20 games a season ... and outfielders [who] could
hit .350, infielders who could win recognition as stars, and there's at
least one catcher who at this writing is probably superior to Bill Dickey,
Josh Gibson.  Only one thing is keeping them out of the big leagues, the
pigmentation of their skin.  They happen to be colored.
                -- Shirley Povich, 1941
Two golfers were being held up as the twosome of women in front of them
whiffed shots, hunted for lost balls and stood over putts for what seemed
like hours.
        "I'll ask if we can play through," Bill said as he strode toward
the women.  Twenty yards from the green, however, he turned on his heel
and went back to where his companion was waiting.
        "Can't do it," he explained, sheepishly.  "One of them's my wife
and the other's my mistress!"
        "I'll ask," said Jim.  He started off, only to turn and come back
before reaching the green.
        "What's wrong?" Bill asked.
        "Small world, isn't it?"
We was playin' the Homestead Grays in the city of Pitchburgh.  Josh [Gibson]
comes up in the last of the ninth with a man on and us a run behind.  Well,
he hit one.  The Grays waited around and waited around, but finally the
empire rules it ain't comin' down.  So we win.  The next day, we was disputin'
the Grays in Philadelphia when here come a ball outta the sky right in the
glove of the Grays' center fielder.  The empire made the only possible call.
"You're out, boy!" he says to Josh.  "Yesterday, in Pitchburgh."
                -- Satchel Paige
3M, under the Scotch brand name, manufactures a fine adhesive for art
and display work.  This product is called "Craft Mount".  3M suggests
that to obtain the best results, one should make the bond "while the
adhesive is wet, aggressively tacky."  I did not know what "aggressively
tacky" meant until I read today's fortune.

                [And who said we didn't offer equal time, huh? Ed.]
If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
Ahead warp factor one, Mr. Sulu.
Blast medicine anyway!  We've learned to tie into every organ in the
human body but one.  The brain!  The brain is what life is all about.
                -- McCoy, "The Menagerie", stardate 3012.4
Compassion -- that's the one things no machine ever had.  Maybe it's
the one thing that keeps men ahead of them.
                -- McCoy, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to
serve under them.  Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one
man.  And nothing can replace it or him.
                -- Spock, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
Do you know the one -- "All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer
her by ..."  You could feel the wind at your back, about you ...  the
sounds of the sea beneath you.  And even if you take away the wind and
the water, it's still the same.  The ship is yours ... you can feel her
... and the stars are still there.
                -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
Either one of us, by himself, is expendable.  Both of us are not.
                -- Kirk, "The Devil in the Dark", stardate 3196.1
Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man.
                -- Klingon Soldier, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
It is more rational to sacrifice one life than six.
                -- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
No one can guarantee the actions of another.
                -- Spock, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
No one may kill a man.  Not for any purpose.  It cannot be condoned.
                -- Kirk, "Spock's Brain", stardate 5431.6
        "No one talks peace unless he's ready to back it up with war."
        "He talks of peace if it is the only way to live."
                -- Colonel Green and Surak of Vulcan, "The Savage Curtain",
                   stardate 5906.5.
No one wants war.
                -- Kirk, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7
Not one hundred percent efficient, of course ... but nothing ever is.
                -- Kirk, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
One does not thank logic.
                -- Sarek, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4
One of the advantages of being a captain is being able to ask for
advice without necessarily having to take it.
                -- Kirk, "Dagger of the Mind", stardate 2715.2
The only solution is ... a balance of power.  We arm our side with exactly
that much more.  A balance of power -- the trickiest, most difficult,
dirtiest game of them all.  But the only one that preserves both sides.
                -- Kirk, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
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's only one kind of woman ..."
        "Or man, for that matter.  You either believe in yourself or you don't."
                -- Kirk and Harry Mudd, "Mudd's Women", stardate 1330.1
You go slow, be gentle.  It's no one-way street -- you know how you
feel and that's all.  It's how the girl feels too.  Don't press.  If
the girl feels anything for you at all, you'll know.
                -- Kirk, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8
"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.
"`How do you feel?' he asked him.
`Like a military academy,' said Arthur, `bits of me keep
passing out.'" ....
`We're safe,' he said.
`Oh good,' said Arthur.
`We're in a small galley cabin,' said Ford, `in one of the
spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.'
`Ah,' said Arthur, `this is obviously some strange usage of
the word "safe" that I wasn't previously aware of.'

- Arthur after his first ever teleport ride.
"`The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick
your finger down his throat...'"

- The Book, on one of the Vogon's social inadequacies.
"`Er, hey Earthman...'
`Arthur,' said Arthur.
`Yeah, could you just sort of keep this robot with you and
guard this end of the passageway. OK?'
`Guard?' said Arthur. `What from? You just said there's no
one here.'
`Yeah, well, just for safety, OK?' said Zaphod.
`Whose? Yours or mine?'"

- Arthur drawing the short straw on Magrathea.
"`Right,' said Ford, `I'm going to have a look.'
He glanced round at the others.
`Is no one going to say, "No you can't possibly, let me go
instead"?'
They all shook their heads.
`Oh well.'"

- Ford attempting to be heroic whilst being seiged by
Shooty and Bangbang.
"`You ARE Zaphod Beeblebrox?'
`Yeah,' said Zaphod, `but don't shout it out or they'll all
want one.'
`THE Zaphod Beeblebrox?'
`No, just A Zaphod Bebblebrox, didn't you hear I come in
six packs?'
`But sir,' it squealed, `I just heard on the sub-ether
radio report. It said you were dead...'
`Yeah, that's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet.'"

- Zaphod and the Guide's receptionist.
"I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg."

- A poem about matter transference beams.
BOOK        Meanwhile, the starship has landed on the surface
of Magrathea
        and Trillian is about to make one of the most
important
        statements of her life. Its importance is not
immediately
        recognised by her companions.
TRILL.        Hey, my white mice have escaped.
ZAPHOD        Nuts to your white mice.
ARTHUR        It's not a question of whose habitat it is, it's a
question of
        how hard you hit it.

- Arthur pointing out one of the disadvantages of gravity,
Fit the Tenth.
"Trillian did a little research in the ship's copy of
THHGTTG. It had some advice to offer on drunkenness.
`Go to it,' it said, `and good luck.'
It was cross-referenced to the entry concerning the size of
the Universe and ways of coping with that."

- One of the more preferable pieces of advice contained in
the Guide.
"Arthur yawed wildly as his skin tried to jump one way and
his skeleton the other, whilst his brain tried to work out
which of his ears it most wanted to crawl out of.
`Bet you weren't expecting to see me again,' said the
monster, which Arthur couldn't help thinking was a strange
remark for it to make, seeing as he had never met the
creature before. He could tell that he hadn't met the
creature before from the simple fact that he was able to
sleep at nights."

- Arthur discovering who had diverted him from going to a
party.
"`That young girl is one of the least benightedly
unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound
lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.'"

- Marvin's first ever compliment about anybody.
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong
and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a
thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually
turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

- One of the laws of computers and programming revealed.
"You're very sure of your facts, " he said at last, "I
couldn't trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe
- if there is one - for granted. "
"One's never alone with a rubber duck. "
"You're one hundred percent positive that the ship which is
crashed on the bottom of this ocean is the ship which you
said you were one hundred percent positive could one
hundred percent positively never crash? "
"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
High Priest:        Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven:
Bro. Maynard:        And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high
        saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it
        smash our enemies to tiny bits."  And the Lord did grin, and the
        people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and
        breakfast cereals, and lima bean-
High Priest:        Skip a bit, brother.
Bro. Maynard:        And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take
        out the holy pin.  Then shalt thou count to three.  No more, no less.
        *Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the
        counting shall be three.  *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither
        count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three.  Five is
        RIGHT OUT.  Once the number three, being the third number be reached,
        then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being
        naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.  Amen.
All:        Amen.
                -- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
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 a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything.  Every once
in a while I turn it on and off.  On and off.  On and off.  One day I
got a call from a woman in France who said "Cut it out!"
                -- Steven Wright
I put contact lenses in my dog's eyes.  They had little pictures of cats
on them.  Then I took one out and he ran around in circles.
                -- 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 went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?

He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
for him then.
                -- Steven Wright
I'm going to give my psychoanalyst one more year, then I'm going to Lourdes.
                -- Woody Allen
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be
to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to
say they had a nice time.  Now you'll be be expected to throw another party
next year.
        What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake
up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been
indicted for anything.  You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a
recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their
own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ...
        If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door,
unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window.  As host, your job is to make sure that
they don't arrest anybody.  Or if they're dead set on arresting someone,
your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
                -- Dave Barry
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
                -- Woody Allen
Last year we drove across the country...  We switched on the driving...
every half mile.  We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip.
I don't remember what it was.
                -- Steven Wright
        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]
One doesn't have a sense of humor.  It has you.
                -- Larry Gelbart
The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
is a match.
                -- Will Rogers
The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
                -- Benjamin Franklin.
        "The pyramid is opening!"
        "Which one?"
        "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
                -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
                   Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
                -- John Kenneth Galbraith
FORTUNE'S RANDOM QUOTES FROM MATCH GAME 75, NO. 1:

Gene Rayburn: We'd like to close with a thought for the day, friends ---
               something ...

      Someone: (interrupting) Uh-oh

Gene Rayburn: ...pithy, full of wisdom --- and we call on the Poet
               Laureate, Lipsy Russell

Lipsy Russell: The young people are very different today, and there is
               one sure way to know: Kids to use to ask where they came
               from, now they'll tell you where you can go.

          All: (laughter)
"The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly fast, the kernel, is inherently counter productive."

  -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly & Associates)
  It isn't an optical illusion. It just looks like one.
  No one goes to that restaurant anymore-it's always too crowded.
  (attributed to Yogi Berra)
  Most bacteria have the decency to be microscopic. Epulopiscium
  fishelsoni is not among them. The newly identified one-celled
  macro-microorganism is a full .5 mm long, large enough to be seen
  with the naked eye. Described in the current Nature, "It is a
  million times as massive as a typical bacterium."-Time, page 25,
  March 29, 1993
  William Safire's rules for writing as seen in the New York Times

     Do not put statements in the negative form.
     And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
     If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great
     deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
     Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
     Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
     If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
     Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
     Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
     Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
     Last, but not least, avoid cliche's like the plague.
All truths are true to an extend, including this one.  -XA
Yes... I feel your pain... but as a former first poster (I scored mine a
couple months ago) I know what you went through. Here's where you screwed
up though... YOU DIDN'T PULL THE TRIGGER. You didn't carpe diem.

Yep... When I saw that nice clean article with no posts I didn't hesitate,
yes the adrenaline was surging... my palms were wet, heart pounding. I was
standing at the peak of greatness... I knew I had but one thing to do,
there was no turning back now... I rapidly typed in a one word post.. then
with no hesitation I navigated my mouse over the submit button... and
WHAM.. seconds later I was looking at my feeble post with a #1 attached to
the header. At that mmoment I knew a feeling that only few will ever
know... I was at one with Slashdot... Zen masters and Kings will relate
I'm sure. That one sweet moment when the ying and the yang converge...
bliss... eternal bliss... ahhh!

Then I smoked a cigarette and went to bed.

   -- Anonymous Coward, in response to a "First Post!" that clearly wasn't.
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.
If Microsoft Owned McDonald's
Source: Unknown

1. Every order would come with fries whether you asked for them or not.
2. When they introduce McPizza, the marketing makes it seem that they invented
    pizza.
3. "A McDonald's on every block" -- Bill Gates.
4. You'd be constantly pressured to upgrade to a more expensive burger.
5. Sometimes you'll find that the burger box is empty. For some strange reason
    you'll accept this and purchase another one.
6. They'd claim the burgers are the same size as at other fast food chains,
    but in reality it's just a larger bun hiding the small beef patty.
7. Straws wouldn't be available until after you finish your drink.
8. "Push" technology -- they have McD employees come to your door and sell you
    Happy Meals.
9. Your order would never be right but the cash register would work perfectly
    for taking your money.
10. The "Special Sauce" cannot be reverse engineered, decompiled, or placed on
    more than 1 Big Mac.
Bill Gates is surfing the Internet, collecting the URLs of anti-Micrsoft
websites to send to the legal department for possible libel lawsuits. Suddenly
the devil appears, and says, "Bill, I've got a deal for you. I will turn
Microsoft into a complete software monopoly. Every computer will run Windows.
Every user will be forced to buy Microsoft software. The Justice Department
will look the other way. Everyone will love you. You only have to do one thing:
give me your soul." Bill Gates looks at him and replies, "Ok, sure. But what's
the catch?"
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were playing a friendly game of Frisbee at the Gates
estate on the shore of Lake Washington. At one point, Bill accidentally sends
the Frisbee over Steve's head, and the Frisbee lands in the lake. Steve walks
out onto the surface of the lake and retrieves the Frisbee.

The next day the newspapers report:

Gates' Throw Exceeds Expectations

Apple CEO Unable to Swim
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.
Q: How many Bill Gateses does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One. He puts the bulb in and lets the world revolve around him.
A: None. He declares Darkness(tm) the new industry standard.
Q: How many Microsoft support staff does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Four. One to ask "What is the registration number of the light bulb?", one
   to ask "Have you tried rebooting it?", another to ask "Have you tried
   reinstalling it?" and the last one to say "It must be your hardware because
   the light bulb in our office works fine..."
Q: How many Microsoft vice presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Eight. One to work the bulb, and seven to make sure that Microsoft gets $2
   for every light bulb ever changed anywhere in the world.
Q: How many Microsoft tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Twelve.  One to work the bulb, and eleven to write a 1,123 page guide to
   changing lightbulbs ("Learn Lightbulb Management in 21 Days").
Q: How many Micro$oft programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: 472. One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle.  One to write
   WinQueryStatusLightBulb. One to write WinGetLightSwitch-Handle...
You Might be a Microsoft Employee If...

1. Every night you dream of torturing Linus Torvalds
2. Every morning you say, "I pledge allegiance to the logo of the United
    Corporation of Microsoft. And to the stock options for which it stands, one
    company, under Bill, with headaches and buggy software for all."
3. Your favorite pick-up line is, "Hey baby...do you want to see a little
    ActiveX?"
4. Everytime you see a website with "Best viewed with Netscape" on it you
    feel like filing a lawsuit against its webmaster
5. You feel that all Anti-Microsoft websites should be censored because they
    are on the Internet, something Bill "invented."
6. You've set a goal to invent at least one new buzzword or acronym per day
7. You've ever been nervous because you haven't registered your Microsoft
    software yet.
8. You've trained your parrot to say "Unix sucks!" and "All hail Bill Gates!"
9. You own a limited edition Monopoly game in which Boardwalk is Microsoft and
    Jail is replaced by Justice Department Investigation
10. You've spent countless hours tracking down the source of the "Microsoft
    Acquires Vatican Church" rumor
Windows: Where do you WANT to go TODAY? You WANT to, but you'll never
get there. And you can go to only ONE place per day.

   -- Ewout Stam
Q: How many Microsoft Programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: It cannot be done. You will need to upgrade your house.

Q: How many Linux users does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to write the HOWTO-LIGHTBULB-CRONJOB, and another to read
it.

   -- Geoff Johnson
I'm not a programmer, but I play one at Microsoft.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
Microsoft Zen - Become one with the blue screen.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
The rules of editing press releases are:

1. Identify the crucial elements of the story.
2. Omit at least one of them.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post. We can only guess whether Microsoft
      uses this policy or not.
Linus was the instructor of Hercules in music, but having one day reproved
his pupil rather harshly, he roused the anger of Hercules, who struck him
with his lyre and killed him.

   -- Bulfinch's Mythology
Have you ever noticed that at trade shows Microsoft is always the
one giving away stress balls...

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
"I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
   -- Al Gore
  
"Today I am one of the senior technical cadre that makes the Internet
work, and a core Linux and open-source developer. I have closely studied
the history of the Internet technical culture."
   -- Eric S. Raymond
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".
Linux Rally Held in Pennsylvania

HARRISBURG, PA -- Thousands of Linux advocates gathered at the Pennsylvania
state capitol building earlier today. They were protesting the state's recent
three year deal with Microsoft to install Windows NT on all state computer
systems. "Whatever pointy haired boss made this deal ought to be shot on
sight," one protestor exclaimed. "Windows NT is a piece of [expletive] compared
to Linux. The taxpayers of Pennsylvania are going to be sorry three years from
now when this 'deal' concludes. The state has sold its soul to Satan [Bill
Gates]."

Brief hostilities broke out when a group of police officers armed with riot
gear descended on the protestors. After the police threatened to use tear gas,
the protestors threw thousands of Linux CDs at them. Once the supply of CDs was
depleted, the protest became peaceful again. "I saw several policemen pick up
Linux CDs and put them in their pockets," one protestor noted.

The protest broke up a few minutes later once it was realized that the state
legislature wasn't in session. "We may have wasted our time today," one
advocate said, "But we'll be back later." State and Microsoft officials were
unavailable for comment at press time. How typical.
'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!"
Red Hat Unveils New Ad Campaign

Linux distributor Red Hat has announced plans for a $650,000 ad campaign. The
ads will appear on several major newspapers as well as on a few selected
websites. "These ads will be targetted towards Windows users who are fed up but
aren't aware of any OS alternatives," a Red Hat spokesman said. "We feel that
there is a large audience for this."

One of the ads will be a half page spread showing two computers side-by-side: a
Wintel and a Linux box. The title asks "Is your operating system ready for the
year 2000?" Both computers have a calendar/clock display showing. The Windows
box shows "12:00:01AM -- January 1, 1900" while the Linux box shows "12:00:01AM
-- January 1, 2000". The tagline at the bottom says "Linux -- a century ahead
of the competition."
Linux Infiltrates Windows NT Demo

SILICON VALLEY, CA -- Attendees at the Microsoft ActiveDemo Conference held
this week in San Jose were greeted by a pleasant surprise yesterday: Linux.
Somehow a group of Linux enthusiasts were able to replace a Windows NT box with
a Linux box right before the "ActiveDemo" of Windows NT 5 beta. "I have no clue
how they were able to pull off this prank," a Microserf spokesman said. "Rest
assured, Microsoft will do everything to investigate and prosecute the Linux
nuts who did this. Our bottom line must be protected."

Bill Gates said, "I was showing off the new features in Windows NT 5 when I
noticed something odd about the demo computer. It didn't crash. Plus, the font
used on the screen wasn't MS San Serif -- trust me, I know. My suspicions were
confirmed when, instead of the "Flying Windows" screensaver, a "Don't Fear the
Penguins" screensaver appeared. The audience laughed and applauded for five
straight minutes. It was so embarrasing -- even more so than the pie incident.

One attendee said, "Wow! This Linux is cool -- it didn't crash once during the
entire demo! I'd like to see NT do that." Another asked, "You guys got any
Linux CDs? I want one. Forget about vaporware NT." Yet another remarked, "I
didn't know it was possible to hack Linux to make it look like NT. I can
install Linux on my company's computers without my boss knowing!"
Tux Penguin Beanie Baby Sales Skyrocket

Two weeks ago Ty released a 'Tux the Penguin' Beanie Baby. Sales of the stuffed
toy have exceeded expectations. All 100,000 of them have been sold, and it will
be another week before more can be produced and distributed. Tux is now the one
of the most valuable Beanie Babies, with some stores selling remaining ones for
over $500.

Tux's strong sales constrast sharply with Ty's other computer-related Beanie
Baby, 'Billy the Billionaire'. "Billy's sales are dismal. Except for the 2,000
that Bill Gates bought for himself and his daughter Jennifer, Billy has been a
failure. People just aren't responsive to toys that represent greedy,
capitalistic billionaires with bad haircuts," a member of the Church of Beanie
Baby Collecting said.

Ty is considering releasing other Beanie Babies similar to Tux. Some
possibities include 'Steve the Apple Worm' and 'Wilbur the Gimp'.
"Computer-related Beanie Babies are selling extremely well," a Ty spokesman
said. "I don't understand why people are obsessed with these stupid stuffed
toys. But as long as they're making me lots of money, I don't care! Oops...
Please don't quote me on that."
ARE YOU ADDICTED TO SLASHDOT?
Take this short test to find out if you are a Dothead.

1. Do you submit articles to Slashdot and then reload the main page every 3.2
    seconds to see if your article has been published yet?
2. Have you made more than one "first comment!" post within the past week?
3. Have you ever participated in a Gnome vs. KDE or a Linux vs. FreeBSD
    flamewar on Slashdot?
4. Do you write jokes about Slashdot?
5. Do you wake up at night, go to the bathroom, and fire up your web browser
    to get your Slashdot fix on the way back?
6. Do you dump your date at the curb so you can hurry home to visit Slashdot?
7. Do you think of Slashdot when you order a taco at a restaurant?
8. Are you a charter member of the Rob Malda Fan Club?
9. Did you lease a T3 line so you could download Slashdot faster?
10. Is Slashdot your only brower's bookmark?
11. Do you get a buzz when your browser finally connects to Slashdot?
12. Do you panic when your browser says "Unable to connect to slashdot.org"?
13. Have you even made a New Year's Resolution to cut back on Slashdot
    access... only to visit it at 12:01?
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
Tux Penguin Boxing Match

LAS VEGAS, NV -- The unofficial Linux mascot Tux the Penguin will face his arch
rival the BSD Daemon in a boxing match this Saturday night. The match is part
of the International Computer Mascot Boxing Federation's First Annual World
Championship Series. The winner will advance to face one of the Intel "Bunny
People".

Boxing pundits favor Tux as the winner. Last week Tux won his first match in
the Championship Series against Wilbur the Gimp. "The Gimp didn't have a
chance," one spectator said. "With Tux's ability to run at top speeds of over
100mph, I don't see how he could possibly lose." The BSD Daemon, however, is
certainly a formidible opponent. While boxing rules prohibit the Daemon from
using his patented pitchfork, his pointy horns are permitted in the ring.

Some observers think the whole Computer Mascot Boxing Federation is a fake.
"WWF is all scripted," one sports writer pointed out. "And so is this. You
actually think that a penguin is capable of boxing? The idea of a penguin
fighting a demon is patently absurd. This whole Championship Series has no
doubt been scripted. It's probably nothing more than two little kids in
penguin and demon suits duking it out in a boxing ring. What a waste of time."
Increased Electricity Consumption Blamed on Linux

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The US Department of Energy claims Linux is partially
responsible for the increased demand for electricity during the past year.
Electricity use was up 2.5% from January to September of 1998 compared with
the same period in 1997.  "While some of the increase can be attributed to
higher temperatures over the summer," one Department bureaucrat explained,
"Linux is certainly a contributor to the increased demand for power."  

When asked for clarification, the bureaucrat responded, "In the past, most
PCs have been turned off when not in use.  Linux users, on the other hand,
usually don't turn off their computers.  They leave them on, hoping to
increase their uptime to impress their friends.  And since Linux rarely
crashes the entire system, those computers stay on for weeks, months, even
years at a time.  With Linux use continuing to grow, we expect demand for
electricity to increase steadily over the next several years."

In response to the news, several utility companies have announced plans to
give away free Linux CDs to paying customers who request them.  One anonymous
executive said, "The more people who use Linux, the more power they consume.
The more electricity they use, the more money we make. It's a win-win
combination."  Yesterday Linus Torvalds was nominated as a candidate for the
Assocation of American Utility Companies Person of the Year.
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."
Operation Desert Slash

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- High officials in the US military are planning on putting
the  'Slashdot Effect' to use against Iraq. Pentagon computer experts think
that the Slashdot Effect could topple key Net-connected Iraqi computer
systems.  Such a Denial of Service attack could prove instrumental when the
US invades.

One Pentagon official said, "If I had a million dollars for every server that
crashed as a result of being linked on Slashdot, I'd be richer than Bill
Gates.  The Slashdot Effect is a very powerful weapon that the US military
wants to tap into."

Rob Malda has been contacted by top military brass.  According to anonymous
sources, Malda will play a key part in the so-called "Operation Desert
Slash".  Supposedly Malda will post several Slashdot articles with links to
critical Iraqi websites right when the US invasion is set to begin.
Meanwhile, Pentagon operatives will begin a series of Denial of Service
attacks on other key Iraqi computer systems. One source notes, "Since many
Iraqi systems rely on Microsoft software, this task should be relatively
simple."
Linux Dominates Academic Research

A recent survey of colleges and high school reveals that Linux, Open Source
Software, and Microsoft are favorite topics for research projects.  Internet
Censorship, a popular topic for the past two years, was supplanted by Biology
of Penguins as another of this year's most popular subjects for research
papers.

"The Internet has changed all the rules," one college professor told
Humorix.  "Nobody wants to write papers about traditional topics like the
death penalty, freedom of speech, abortion, juvenile crime, etc. Most of the
research papers I've seen the past year have been computer related, and most
of the reference material has come from the Net.  This isn't necessarily
good; there's a lot of crap on the Net.  One student tried to use 'Bob's
Totally Wicked Anti-Microsoft Homepage of Doom' and 'The Support Group for
People Used by Microsoft' as primary sources of information for his paper
about Microsoft."

A high school English teacher added, "Plagarism is a problem with the Net.
One of my students 'wrote' a brilliant piece about the free software
revolution. Upon further inspection, however, almost everything was stolen
from Eric S. Raymond's website.  I asked the student, "What does noosphere
mean?"  He responded, 'New-what?'  Needless to say, he failed the class."
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 #1

Linux-of-the-Month Club
Price: US$60 for a one year membership
Producer: CheapNybbles; 1-800-LINUX-CD

It's the gift that keeps on giving.  Every month a CD-ROM with a different
Linux distribution or BSD Unix flavor will be sent in the mail.  This is the
perfect gift for those that have been using Slackware since day one and
haven't gotten around to trying another distribution.  Or, for those friends
or relatives that still cling to Windows, a Linux-of-the-Month club
membership is the perfect way to say, "Your OS sucks".
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #7

Bluescreen Computer Case
US$27.97 at Bud's Beige Box Bazaar

Real Geeks may not admit to using Windows, but there's still countless geeks
out there who must suffer through the humiliation of using Windows while at
work. The patent-not-pending Bluescreen Case, though, will ease the stress of
working with Microsoft "solutions".

This computer case is very similar to other beige boxes, but with one
important difference: the reboot button is covered with a picture of Bill
Gates. When the machine bluescreens for the millionth time, all you have to do
is punch Bill Gates in the face as hard as you can, and the computer will
restart. This provides invaluable therapeutic stress relief.
Microsoft Open Source Solitaire

REDMOND, WA -- In a first attempt at "embrace-and-extend" of open source
software, Microsoft will release its popular Solitaire and FreeCell games as
open source under the MILA (Microsoft Innovative License Agreement).
According to a Microsoft press release, the Visual C++ source code for the
two games will be available from the Microsoft website "in the first quarter"
(no year was specified).

Industry pundits hail the move as revolutionary.  "Microsoft's release of its
most popular Windows feature as open source software demonstrates just how
innovative the company really is.  The DoJ is clearly barking up the wrong
tree," wrote one Ziff-Davis flunkie. One executive at a large company said,
"Freely available source code is the best idea Microsoft has ever invented."

One Linux developer told Humorix, "Let's just hope some fool doesn't try to
port this thing to Linux.  Imagine the havoc that could ensue if a bunch of
core Linux contributors downloaded Solitaire and became addicted to it.  It
would be a disaster!  Linux and open source development would grind to a halt
while the hackers wasted their time playing Solitaire or FreeCell.  'Just one
more game...' they would say."
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."
Red Hat Linux 10.0

RALEIGH-DURHAM, NC -- HypeNewsWire -- Red Hat, the producer of the most
popular Linux distribution with over 25 million estimated users, is proud to
announce the availability of Red Hat Linux 10.0.  The latest version
contains the new Linux 6.2 kernel, the Z Window System 2.0, full support for
legacy Windows 3.x/9x/200x/NT software apps, and more. Copies of Red Hat
Linux 10.0 will be available in stores on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or GNUDE (GNU
Digital Encoding) disks within the next week.

Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and several other large computer manufacturers have
announced that they will offer computer systems with Red Hat 10.0
pre-installed.  "We can sell systems with Red Hat pre-installed for
considerably less than systems with Microsoft ActiveWindows 2001. Overall,
Red Hat Linux's superior quality, low price, and modest system requirements
puts Windows to shame," one Dell spokesperson said at last week's LinDex
convention.
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "Windows Competitive Upgrade Offer"

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
"Windows Competitive Upgrade Offer" promotion.

Users of non-Microsoft operating systems (Linux in particular) will be given
the opportunity to trade-in their present OS for a free copy of Windows 98
(or NT 4.0) and Office 97.  People (all three of them) who want to
participate in this program will have to:

1. Mail their operating system's floppy disks or CD-ROMs to Microsoft

2. Agree to a two year contract with the Microsoft Network.

3. Agree (in writing) to the Competitive Upgrade License Agreement; one of
the terms of which is that the user may not install, copy, or otherwise use
a non-Microsoft OS for five years.
Is Windows Antique?

SILICON VALLEY -- The first ever antique mall devoted to computers has
opened its doors deep in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Named "Stacks
of Antiqueues", the new mall features obsolete hardware, old software,
and other curiosities that only a nerd would want to buy.  The mall
also features a whole collection of Microsoft software, which, as can
be expected, has the Redmond giant up in arms.

The mall, founded by a group of Linux, FreeBSD, and BeOS users, has a whole
section devoted to Microsoft "antiques".  Offerings range from a rare
(and expensive) copy of Windows 1.0 all the way up to Windows 98.  All
versions of DOS from 1.0 up are available, in addition to such Microsoft
products as Bob, Profit, and Multiplan.

Bob Hinesdorf, one of the mall's founders, defends the decision to
include Microsoft products in its selection of antique computer stuff.
"Windows 98 is surely antique; it's based on 16 bit Windows 3.x code,
which was based on 16 bit DOS code, which was based loosely on 8 bit
CP/M."
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".
New Crime Identified: "Tech Rage"

HARRISBURG, IL -- The police department in this Illinois town has coined a
new term for a growing trend in crime: "tech rage". Tech rage shares many
similarities with another modern crime, "road rage", but instead of
affecting drivers, tech rage is experienced by disgruntled computer users.

The first documented case of tech rage involves a Microsoft salesman, Bob
Glutzfield, who convinced the local TV station to "upgrade" its computer
systems from Macintosh to Wintel.  While the migration seemed successful at
first, the Blue Screen became more prevalent during the following months.

Then, in January, the entire computer system crashed in the middle of the
weather forecast during the 10 o'clock evening news. Viewers could plainly
see the Blue Screen of Death showing in the monitors behind James Roland,
the chief meteorologist. The instability of Windows 98 stretched Roland's
patience until he snapped last week and succumbed to tech rage.

Roland tracked down the Microsoft salesman and followed him one evening to
his apartment.  The weatherman yelled at the bewildered Microserf, "You
[expletive]! Because of you, I'm the [expletive] laughing stock of Southern
Illinois!" and then proceeded to beat him up.  Roland is currently out on
bond pending trial next month.
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.
BSOD Simulator

Users of Red Hat 6.0 are discovering a new feature that hasn't been widely
advertised: a Blue Screen of Death simulator.  By default, the bsodsim
program activates when the user hits the virtually unused SysRq key (this is
customizable) causing the system to switch to a character cell console to
display a ficticious Blue Screen.

Red Hat hails the bsodsim program as the "boss key" for the Linux world. One
RH engineer said, "Workers are smuggling Linux boxes into companies that
exclusively use Windows.  This is all good and well until the PHB walks by
and comments, 'That doesn't look like Windows...' With bsodsim, that problem
is solved.  The worker can hit the emergency SysRq key, and the system will
behave just like Windows..."

The bsodsim program doesn't stop at just showing a simulated error message.
If the boss doesn't walk away, the worker can continue the illusion by
hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL, which causes a simulated reboot.  After showing the
usual boot messages, bsodsim will run a simulated SCANDISK program
indefinitely. The boss won't be able to tell the difference.  If the boss
continues to hang around, the worker can say, "SCANDISK is really taking a
long time... maybe we should upgrade our computers.  And don't you have
something better to do than watch this computer reboot for the tenth time
today?"
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

July 2000: Government Issues Update on Y2K Crisis to American Public

In a statement to all U.S. citizens, the President assured that the
repairs to the nation's infrastructure, damaged severely when the Y2K
crisis hit on January 1, is proceeding on track with the Government's
guidelines. The message was mailed to every citizen by mail carriers via
horseback. The statement itself was written on parchment with hand-made
ink written from fountain pens.

"Our technological progress since the Y2K disaster has been staggering,"
said the statement. "We have been able to fix our non-Y2K compliant horse
carriages so that commerce can once again continue. We believe that we
will be able to reinvent steam-powered engines within the next decade.
Internal combustion engines should become operational once again sometime
before the dawn of the next century."

No one knows when the technological luxuries we once enjoyed as little as
6 months ago will return. Things such as e-mail, the Internet, and all
computers were lost when the crisis showed itself for what it really was:
a disaster waiting to happen. Scholars predict the mainframe computer will
be invented again during the 24th century...
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."
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#4)

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 4: What is your favorite Microsoft Office feature?

A. Dancing Paper Clip

B. Takes up enough hard drive space to prevent my children from installing
   violent video games or downloading pornography

C. Everyone else has it, so I can easily exchange documents with others

D. I have so many favorites, I can't choose just one!
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#8)

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 8: If you could meet Bill Gates for one minute, what would you
            say to him?

A. "Can you give me a loan for a million or so?"

B. "I just love all the new features in Windows 98!"

C. "Could you autograph this box of Windows 98 for me?"

D. "I really enjoyed reading 'Business @ the Speed of Thought'. It's so
   cool!"

E. "Give the government hell, Bill!"
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"
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 (#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."
Treaty of Helsinki Signed

HELSINKI, FINLAND -- A cease-fire in the flame war between Linux and
FreeBSD has been reached. A group of two dozen Linux and FreeBSD zealots
met in Helsinki to ratify a treaty bringing a temporary end to the hostile
fighting between both camps. "Today is a good day for peace," one observer
noted. "Now both sides can lay down their keyboards and quit flaming the
opposing side on Usenet and Slashdot."

The cease-fire is a response to the sudden increase in fighting that has
occured over the past two weeks. The Slashdot server became a victim of
the cross-fire this week when thousands of Anonymous Cowards and Geek
Zealots posted inflammatory comments that amounted to, "My OS is better
than your OS!" Many nerds, suffering withdrawl symptoms when the Slashdot
site slowed to a crawl, demanded that the bickering stop.

"I can't take it anymore! It takes two minutes to download the Slashdot
homepage -- assuming the site is actually online. I must have my 'News for
Nerds' now! The fighting must stop," one Anonymous Coward ranted.
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!
This is excellent news! I haven't thought about remedies yet... well, you
know, I can think of one thing the court should do: require that Microsoft
remove the Dancing Paper Clip and associated crap from Office... Oh, and
while they're at it, get rid of those multi-megabyte easter eggs. Why does
Excel need a flight simulator? So I can see the Blue Screen of Death in
3D? Oh, and another thing, the court needs to put a hex on ActiveX...

  -- Anonymous Coward's response to Judge Jackson's harsh Findings
     Of Fact against Microsoft
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 (#1)

Adopt-A-Beowulf: the latest company to hop the Linux bandwagon
as it tramples down Wall Street.

Every geek dreams of owning their own Beowulf supercomputer. Very few
people (except for dotcom billionnaires) can afford to build one, but the
folks at Adopt-a-Beowulf can provide the next best thing: a virtual
beowulf. For US$49.95, you can "adopt" your own 256-node Beowulf cluster.
You won't own it, or even get to see it in person, but you will receive
photos of the cluster, a monthly newsletter about its operation, and a
limited shell account on it.

The company hopes to branch out into other fields. Some slated products
include Adopt-A-Penguin, Lease-A-Camel (for Perl mongers), and
Adopt-A-Distro (in which your name will be used as the code-name for a
beta release of a major Linux distribution or other Open Source project).
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.
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#1)

JOHN SPLADDEN: Hi, and welcome to the first annual Nerd Bowl in sunny
Silicon Valley.

BRYANT DUMBELL: We're coming to you live from the Transmeta Dome to watch
the battle between the North Carolina Mad Hatters and the Michigan
Portalbacks as they compete for the coveted Linus Torvalds Trophy.

SPLADDEN: This is shaping up to be one hell of a match. The Mad Hatters --
sponsored by Linux distributor Red Hat -- have been on fire the past
month. But the Andover.Net sponsored Michigan Portalbacks are on a tear as
well, thanks in part to the stellar performance of Rob "Taco Boy" Malda.

DUMBELL: Taco Boy is quite a star, John. Last week at the Kernelbowl he
blew away the Transmeta Secret Agents when he scored 51 points
singlehandedly in the Flying CompactDiscus round.

SPLADDEN: But then Mad Hatter's Alan Cox was voted this season's Most
Valuable Hacker in the Eastern Division. So, this game is going to be
quite a show.
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#3)

BRYANT DUMBELL: It's time for Round One: The Flying CompactDiscus.

JOHN SPLADDEN: That's right, Bryant. Each team member will hurl one CD-ROM
and receive points for both the distance thrown and whether the disc is
still readable afterwards.

DUMBELL: First up is Mad Hatter's Alan Cox. He struts, he winds up, and
there it goes! Look at the trajectory on that baby... Now it's time for
the Portalback's Anonymous Coward #521 to throw. This guy was voted as the
best CompactDiscus thrower in the league by popular vote on Slashdot.

SPLADDEN: Indeed, AnonCow has got some powerful muscles. No brain though.
Did you know that he dropped out of college to join the Andover.Net team?

DUMBELL: Yeah, what a tough decision to make. It's now becoming quite
common for nerd superstars to ditch college and move to Silicon Valley and
receive Big League stock options. Still, AnonCow was out for several games
this season due to a Carpal Tunnel flareup. I hope he isn't squandering
his millions... he might be forced to retire early.
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#4)

BRYANT DUMBELL: Welcome back. After Round 1, the Mad Hatters are ahead 15
to 12. Round 2, the Caffeine Craziness event, is now underway.

JOHN SPLADDEN: This is my favorite part of the Nerdbowl. Each player tries
to consume as many gallons of caffeinated beverages within one minute, and
then points are awarded based on the redness of their eyes.

DUMBELL: I like this event too... I must admit, it's much better than the
"Crash It" event that was played in the Zeroth Annual Nerdbowl last year.
Players were each seated in front of a PC running Windows 98... points
were awarded based on how fast the player could cause a Blue Screen.

SPLADDEN: Ah, yes, I remember that. Everybody complained that the event
was too easy. "Where the hell is the challenge?" yelled Chris DiBona while
doing a victory dance after the VA Linux Rich Penguins beat the SuSE Cats
In The Hats last year 121-96.
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#6)
(Round 4, the Who Wants To Be A Billionaire? Round)

ERIC RAYMOND (Moderator): Here's the second question: Who is the primary
author of the world-renowned fetchmail program? [Bzzz] Yes, Hemos?

HEMOS: Mr. Eric... Fetch of Cincinnati, Ohio.

RAYMOND: No, no, no! The answer is me, me, me, you idiots! Sheesh. I'm
resetting your points to zero for that.

ALAN COX: Are you going to ask any questions that are not about you?

RAYMOND: Um... let's see... yeah, there's one or two here... Okay, here's
  question three... What loud-mouthed hippie-spirtualist founder of the
  GNU Project keeps demanding that everybody use the crappy term "Free
  Software" instead of "Open Source"? [Bzzz] Yes, Anonymous Coward?

ANONCOW: Eric Raymond!

RAYMOND: Why you little [expletive]! I'm going to...
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#7)

JOHN SPLADDEN: In this final round, the two teams must assemble a 16-node
Beowulf cluster from scratch, install Linux on them, and then use the
system to calculate pi to 1 million digits. This is the ultimate test for
nerds... only people in the Big Leagues should attempt this... [snip]

BRYANT DUMBELL: Look at that! Instead of messing with screws, the
Portalbacks are using duct tape to attach their motherboards to the cases!
That should save some time. [snip] They've done it! The Mad Hatters have
completed the Final Round in 2 hours, 15 minutes. That's one hell of a
Beowulf cluster they produced... drool.

SPLADDEN: With that, the Mad Hatters win the Nerd Bowl 105 to 68! There's
going to be some serious beer-drinking tonight back at the Red Hat offices.

DUMBELL: Linus Torvalds has emerged from the sidelines to present his
Linus Torvalds Trophy to the winners. What a glorious sight! This has
definitely been the best Nerdbowl ever. I pity those people that have been
watching the Superbowl instead.
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!"
Freaks In Linux Houses Shouldn't Throw FUD

By Mr. Stu Poor, technology pundit for the Arkansas "Roadkill
Roundup" newspaper. [Editor's Note: He's the local equivalent of Jesse
Berst].

As you all know, February 17th was the happy day that Microsoft officially
released Windows 2000. I went down to the local Paperclips computer store
and asked if they had any copies in stock.

One of the pimply-faced Linux longhairs explained that Paperclips didn't
carry Win2K because it is not intended for consumers. What FUD! I can't
believe the gall of those Linux Communists to spread such FUD (Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt) about Windows 2000, which is _the_ best, most
stable operating system ever produced in the history of mankind!
Affordable Virtual Beowulf Cluster

Every nerd drools over Beowulf clusters, but very few have even seen one,
much less own one. Until now, that is. Eric Gylgen, the open source hacker
famous for EviL (the dancing ASCII paperclip add-on to vi), is working on
a program that will emulate Beowulf clusters on a standard desktop PC.

"Of course," he added candidly, "the performance of my virtual cluster
will be many orders of magnitude less than a real cluster, but that's not
really the point. I just want to be able to brag that I run a 256 node
cluster. Nobody has to know I only spent $500 on the hardware it uses."

Eric has prior experience in this field. Last month he successfully built
a real 32 node Beowulf cluster out of Palm Pilots, old TI-8x graphing
calculators, various digital cameras, and even some TRS-80s.

He demonstrated a pre-alpha version of his VirtualEpicPoem software to us
yesterday. His Athlon machine emulated a 256 node Beowulf cluster in which
each node, running Linux, was emulating its own 16 node cluster in which
each node, running Bochs, was emulating VMWare to emulate Linux running
old Amiga software. The system was extremely slow, but it worked.
  Another Satisfied
          
        MICROSOFT Customer...
  
+----------+   As the inventor of the Internet, I know a
|          |   quality server operating system when I see
| SMILING  |   one.  Microsoft Windows 2000(tm) provides
|          |   innovative features that no other competitor
|   GORE   |   can claim.
|          |
|  PHOTO   |   We've been using Windows at the White House
|          |   for five years now without any problems.
|          |   Windows' BlueScreen(tm) technology
+----------+   automatically crashes our Exchange(tm) email
               server whenever Federal investigators are
  Al Gore      around.  Thanks to this feature, archives of
               incriminating emails have been wiped clean.
               This is what I call innovation. Thank you,
               Microsoft!
Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell

HELL, MICHIGAN -- A group of long-time Linux zealots and newbie haters
have thrown together a new Linux distro called Hellix that is so
user-hostile, so anti-newbie, so cryptic, and so old-fashioned that it
actually makes MS-DOS look like a real operating system. Said the founder
of the project, "I'm sick and tired of the Windowsification of the Linux
desktop in a fruitless attempt to make the system more appealing to
newbies, PHBs, and MCSEs. Linux has always been for nerds only, and we
want to make sure it stays that way!"

One of the other Bastard Distributors From Hell explained, "In the last
five years think of all the hacking effort spent on Linux... and for what?
We have nothing to show for it but half-finished Windows-like desktops, vi
dancing paperclips, and graphical front-ends to configuration files. Real
nerds use text files for configuration, darnit, and they like it! It's
time to take a stand against the hordes of newbies that are polluting our
exclusive operating system."

One Anonymous Coward said, "This is so cool... It's just like Unix back in
the good old days of the 70's when men were men and the only intuitive
interface was still the nipple."
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 (#2)
Hammurabi's Open-Source Code

Hammurabi became king of Babylonia around 1750BC. Under his reign, a
sophisticated legal code developed; Version 1, containing 282 clauses, was
carved into a large rock column open to the public. However, the code
contained several errors (Hammurabi must have been drunk), which numerous
citizens demanded be fixed.

One particularly brave Babylonian submitted to the king's court a stack of
cloth patches that, when affixed to the column, would cover up and correct
the errors. With the king's approval, these patches were applied to the
legal code; within a month a new corrected rock column (Version 2.0) was
officially announced. While future kings never embraced this idea (who
wanted to admit they made a mistake?), the concept of submitting patches
to fix problems is now taken for granted in modern times.
Brief History Of Linux (#5)
English Flame War

The idea behind Slashdot-style discussions is not new; it dates back to
London in 1699. A newspaper that regularly printed Letters To The Editor
sparked a heated debate over the question, "When would the 18th Century
actually begin, 1700 or 1701?" The controversy quickly became a matter of
pride; learned aristocrats argued for the correct date, 1701, while others
maintained that it was really 1700. Another sizable third of participants
asked, "Who cares?"

Ordinarily such a trivial matter would have died down, except that one
1700er, fed up with the snobbest 1701 rhetoric of the educated class,
tracked down one letter-writer and hurled a flaming log into his manor
house in spite. The resulting fire was quickly doused, but the practice
known as the "flame war" had been born. More flames were exchanged between
other 1700ers and 1701ers for several days, until the Monarch sent out
royal troops to end the flamage.
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 (#19)
Boy meets operating system

The young Linus Torvalds might have been just another CompSci student if
it wasn't for his experiences in the Univ. of Helsinki's Fall 1990 Unix &
C course. During one class, the professor experienced difficulty getting
Minix to work properly on a Sun box. "Who the heck designed this thing?"
the angry prof asked, and somebody responded, "Andrew Tanenbaum".

The name of the Unix & C professor has already escaped from Linus, but the
words he spoke next remain forever etched in his grey matter:
"Tanenbaum... ah, yes, that Amsterdam weenie who thinks microkernels are
the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, they're not. I would just
love to see somebody create their own superior Unix-like 32-bit operating
system using a monolithic kernel just to show Tanenbaum up!"

His professor's outburst inspired Linus to order a new IBM PC so he could
hack Minix. You can probably guess what happened next. Inspired by his
professor's words, Linus Torvalds hacks together his own superior
Unix-like 32-but operating system using a monolithic kernel just to show
Mr. Christmas Tree up.
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 (#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 (#26)

On the surface, Transmeta was a secretive startup that hired Linus
Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some kind of
microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later, was actually hired as
part of a low-budget yet high-yield publicity stunt. While other dotcoms
were burning millions on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and
Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom, Transmeta was
spending only pocket change on marketing. Most of that pocket change went
towards hosting the Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet)
which, incidentally, contained more original content and received more
visitors than the typical dotcom portal.

Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain ahem stipends given to
journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for new products, but
Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Personality Cult
of Linus to build up its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the
Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile processors and
code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple days. Then everyone yawned and
went back to playing Quake. It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta
is actually supposed to start selling something.
DeCSS T-Shirt Used To Commit Piracy!

College student Cody Potter stunned the world yesterday when he used a
T-shirt with the printed DeCSS source code to illegally copy a DVD of
"Star Trek XXI: We Promise This Is The Last One". Well, it wasn't the
actual DeCSS source code. The shirt contained a Perl script which spits
out a bash shell script which produces a GW-BASIC program which outputs a
ROT13-encoded Python script that manufactures a Pig-Latin-encoded Java
program that finally produces the real DeCSS C source code when executed.
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."
Clippit Charged With Attempted Murder

Microsoft's Dancing Paper Clip turned violent last week and nearly killed
a university student testing a new Windows-based human-computer interface.
The victim is expected to make a full recovery, although psychiatrists
warn that the incident may scar him emotionally for life. "You can bet
this kid won't be using Windows or Office ever again," said one shrink.

The victim had been alpha-testing CHUG (Computer-Human Unencumbered
Groupware), a new interface in which the user controls the computer with
force-feedback gloves and voice activation.

"I was trying to write a term paper in Word," he said from his hospital
bed. "But then that damned Dancing Paper Clip came up and started annoying
me. I gave it the middle finger. It reacted by deleting my document, at
which point I screamed at it and threatened to pull the power cord. I
didn't get a chance; the force-feedback gloves started choking me."

"We told Clippit it had the right to remain silent, and so on," said a
campus police officer. "The paperclip responded, 'Hi, I'm Clippit, the
Office Assistant. Would you like to create a letter?' I said, 'Look here,
Mr. Paperclip. You're being charged with attempted murder.' At that point
the computer bluescreened."
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.
World Domination, One CPU Cycle At A Time

Forget about searching for alien signals or prime numbers. The real
distributed computing application is "Domination@World", a program to advocate
Linux and Apache to every website in the world that uses Windows and IIS.

The goal of the project is to probe every IP number to determine what kind of
platform each Net-connected machine is running. "That's a tall order... we
need lots of computers running our Domination@World clients to help probe
every nook and cranny of the Net," explained Mr. Zell Litt, the project head.

After the probing is complete, the second phase calls for the data to be
cross-referenced with the InterNIC whois database. "This way we'll have the
names, addresses, and phone numbers for every Windows-using system
administrator on the planet," Zell gloated. "That's when the fun begins."

The "fun" part involves LART (Linux Advocacy & Re-education Training), a plan
for extreme advocacy. As part of LART, each Linux User Group will receive a
list of the Windows-using weenies in their region. The LUG will then be able
to employ various advocacy techniques, ranging from a soft-sell approach
(sending the target a free Linux CD in the mail) all the way to "LARTcon 5"
(cracking into their system and forcibly installing Linux).
The Socioeconomic Group Formerly Known As "Geeks"

Nobody wants to be called a "geek" anymore. The label, once worn proudly by
members of the tech community as a symbol of their separation from mainstream
society, is now suddenly out of style.

It all started last week when some clueless PR firm released a list of the
"Top 100 Geeks", including such anti-geeks as Bill Gates, Janet Reno, Paul
Allen, and Jeff "One-Click" Bezos. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported
that businessmen in South Korea are striving for the "Geek Chic" image by
dressing like Bill Gates.

Now that the Chief Bloatware Architect has been identified as a "geek",
everybody else has bailed ship. Still undecided on a new label, the community
now calls itself the S.E.G.K.A.G. (SocioEconomic Group formerly Known As
Geeks).

"I cannot tolerate belonging to the same subculture as Bill Gates!" explained
one former geek. "If that manifestation of evil is called a 'geek', then so be
it. I am now officially a nerd."
Microsoft Fights Linux -- By Contributing Kernel Patches

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... and then destory 'em. That seems to be the
new Microsoft strategy for dealing with Linux. Instead of fighting a FUD or
patent war, Microsoft operatives are doing something totally out of character:
they are contributing patches for the Linux kernel and other programs.

Don't worry, Microsoft is still evil. It's all part of a massive denial of
service attack against Linus Torvalds designed to bring kernel development to
a standstill. By sending over 10,000 patches per minute by email to Linus and
other top kernel hackers, Microsoft has exposed Linux's Achilles heel.

"I can't believe this is happening!" one stressed-out kernel hacker said at a
press conference on IRC. "If this goes on, we may have to conduct kernel
development over some other network protocol, like avian carriers... Aw crap,
there's smoke coming from my email server! Ahh... it can't handle the load!"
At this point the developer cut off and we haven't heard from him since.

At first Linus was unsure where the deluge of patches was coming from. But
when he saw one patch to replace kernel panics with bluescreens, the source
was pretty obvious. "Oh, and the fact that all of the patches are covered by
Microsoft's GPL [Grossly Private License] was a dead giveaway, too,"
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.
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!"
"...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
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. %
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!"
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 gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to
you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to
you about yourself.
                -- Lisa Kirk
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.  The
green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that
grew in the ears themselvse, stuck out on either side like turn signals
indicating two directions at once.  Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the
bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled
with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.  In the shadow under the green visor
of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down
upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department
store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.  Several
of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be
properly considered offenses against taste and decency.  Possession of
anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and
geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.
                -- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces"
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own
weight in other people's patience.
                -- John Updike
A pretty foot is one of the greatest gifts of nature... please send me your
last pair of shoes, already worn out in dancing... so I can have something
of yours to press against my heart.
                -- Goethe
        "...A 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 total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
        A young honeymoon couple were touring southern Florida and happened
to stop at one of the rattlesnake farms along the road.  After seeing the
sights, they engaged in small talk with the man that handled the snakes.
"Gosh!" exclaimed the new bride.  "You certainly have a dangerous job.
Don't you ever get bitten by the snakes?"
        "Yes, upon rare occasions," answered the handler.
        "Well," she continued, "just what do you do when you're bitten by
a snake?"
        "I always carry a razor-sharp knife in my pocket, and as soon as I
am bitten, I make deep criss-cross marks across the fang entry and then
suck the poison from the wound."
        "What, uh... what would happen if you were to accidentally *sit* on
a rattler?" persisted the woman.
        "Ma'am," answered the snake handler, "that will be the day I learn
who my real friends are."
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
And the crowd was stilled.  One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said.  Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes!  He is naked!"
                -- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

1. I salivate at the sight of mittens.
2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse.
3. Some people never look at me.
4. Spinach makes me feel alone.
5. My sex life is A-okay.
6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
7. I like to kill mosquitoes.
8. Cousins are not to be trusted.
9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down.
10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating.
11. I think most people would cry to gain a point.
12. I cannot read or write.
13. I am bored by thoughts of death.
14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.
15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker.
16. I am never startled by a fish.
17. My mother's uncle was a good man.
18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten.
19. People who break the law are wise guys.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

1. I think beavers work too hard.
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
3. God is love.
4. I like mannish children.
5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room
    full of mice.
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
16. My eyes are always cold.
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
19. I am never startled by a fish.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
But Officer, I stopped for the last one, and it was green!
Do you know, I think that Dr. Swift was silly to laugh about Laputa.  I
believe it is a mistake to make a mock of people, just because they think.
There are ninety thousand people in this world who do not think, for every
one who does, and these people hate the thinkers like poison.  Even if some
thinkers are fanciful, it is wrong to make fun of them for it.  Better to
think about cucumbers even, than not to think at all.
                -- T.H. White
Don't despise your poor relations, they may become suddenly rich one day.
                -- Josh Billings
        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"
Everyone complains of his memory, no one of his judgement.
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
                -- Rudyard Kipling
Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____does anything about it.
Everyone wants results, but no one is willing to do what it takes to get them.
                -- Dirty Harry
Evil is that which one believes of others.  It is a sin to believe evil
of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
                -- H.L. Mencken
Good advice is one of those insults that ought to be forgiven.
History repeats itself only if one does not listen the first time.
History repeats itself.  That's one thing wrong with history.
How many "coming men" has one known!  Where on earth do they all go to?
                -- Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
I consider the day misspent that I am not either charged with a crime,
or arrested for one.
                -- "Ratsy" Tourbillon
"I don't understand," said the scientist, "why you lemmings all rush down
to the sea and drown yourselves."

"How curious," said the lemming. "The one thing I don't understand is why
you human beings don't."
                -- James Thurber
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know
how bad I am.
                -- Samuel Johnson
I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming
that I have never made one.
                -- James Gordon Bennett
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better
take one along that worked.
                -- Raymond Chandler
I think I'm schizophrenic.  One half of me's paranoid and the other half's
out to get him.
If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
                -- A. Einstein.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
                -- Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use
                of the Young"
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
In this world there are only two tragedies.  One is not getting what one
wants, and the other is getting it.
                -- Oscar Wilde
Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.
                -- Joan Didion, "On Self Respect"
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
                -- Benjamin Disraeli
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
It is equally bad when one speeds on the guest unwilling to go, and when he
holds back one who is hastening.  Rather one should befriend the guest who
is there, but speed him when he wishes.
                -- Homer, "The Odyssey"

        [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
         referring to scheduling.]
It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
                -- Cervantes
It takes two to tell the truth: one to speak and one to hear.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
        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'."
Murder is always a mistake -- one should never do anything one cannot
talk about after dinner.
                -- Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
No one becomes depraved in a moment.
                -- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a
dirty little beast.
                -- W.S. Gilbert
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
                -- Eleanor Roosevelt
No one can put you down without your full cooperation.
"No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid."
No one knows what he can do till he tries.
                -- Publilius Syrus
No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.
                -- Quintus Ennius
No one so thoroughly appreciates the value of constructive criticism as the
one who's giving it.
                -- Hal Chadwick
No question is so difficult as one to which the answer is obvious.
Nobody is one block of harmony.  We are all afraid of something, or feel
limited in something.  We all need somebody to talk to.  It would be good
if we talked to each other--not just pitter-patter, but real talk.  We
shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact;
that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too.
It's so much easier to be together when we drop our masks.
                -- Liv Ullman
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Conscience makes egotists of us all.
                -- Oscar Wilde
Oh wearisome condition of humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound.
                -- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke
One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's
listening.
                -- Franklin P. Jones
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
                -- Helen Keller
One family builds a wall, two families enjoy it.
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.
                -- Henry Brook Adams
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
                -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
One is often kept in the right road by a rut.
                -- Gustave Droz
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends
can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
                -- Clifton Fadiman
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
One of the large consolations for experiencing anything unpleasant is
the knowledge that one can communicate it.
                -- Joyce Carol Oates
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't
understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was
reknowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the
time, which obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be
puzzled rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they
need no answer.
                -- George Gordon, Lord Byron
One of the worst of my many faults is that I'm too critical of myself.
One would like to stroke and caress human beings, but one dares not do so,
because they bite.
                -- Vladimir Il'ich Lenin
Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is
paranoid and the other one is out to get him.
Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
... relaxed in the manner of a man who has no need to put up a front of
any kind.
                -- John Ball, "Mark One: the Dummy"
Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have
only one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
The difference between a good haircut and a bad one is seven days.
The great merit of society is to make one appreciate solitude.
                -- Charles Chincholles, "Reflections on the Art of Life"
The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right.
The odds are a million to one against your being one in a million.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds
the other fellow of a dull one.
                -- Sid Caesar
The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.
                -- Miguel de Cervantes
The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.
                -- G.B. Shaw
The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and
not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could
have materialized -- and never knowing.
                -- David Viscott
There is only one word for aid that is genuinely without strings,
and that word is blackmail.
                -- Colm Brogan
To be who one is, is not to be someone else.
To find a friend one must close one eye; to keep him -- two.
                -- Norman Douglas
We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
We are each only one drop in a great ocean -- but some of the drops sparkle!
What do I consider a reasonable person to be?  I'd say a reasonable person
is one who accepts that we are all human and therefore fallible, and takes
that into account when dealing with others.  Implicit in this definition is
the belief that it is the right and the responsibility of each person to
live his or her own life as he or she sees fit, to respect this right in
others, and to demand the assumption of this responsibility by others.
What's the matter with the world?  Why, there ain't but one thing wrong
with every one of us -- and that's "selfishness."
                -- The Best of Will Rogers
What, after all, is a halo?  It's only one more thing to keep clean.
                -- Christopher Fry
When among apes, one must play the ape.
When there are two conflicting versions of the story, the wise course
is to believe the one in which people appear at their worst.
                -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
When you jump for joy, beware that no-one moves the ground from beneath
your feet.
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
Why, every one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
                -- Rabelais
You must know that a man can have only one invulnerable loyalty, loyalty
to his own concept of the obligations of manhood.  All other loyalties
are merely deputies of that one.
                -- Nero Wolfe
You're always thinking you're gonna be the one that makes 'em act different.
                -- Woody Allen, "Manhattan"
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.]
I'm enthralled by combine harvesters. In fact, I yearn to have one --
as a pet.
                -- "The Day of the Jackal"
"Hardware simply does not work like the manual says and no amount
of Zen contemplation will ever make you at one with a 3c905B
ethernet card."

        - Alan Cox
"Truncate - the never-ending story.  Makes me feel like a long
Kurosawa movie.  But in this one the hero _will_ survive, or my
name isn't Maxwell."

        - Linus Torvalds
"Yeah. Maybe we fixed truncate, and maybe we didn't. I've thought that we
fixed it now several times, and I was always wrong. Time for some reverse
psychology:

I'm sure this one doesn't fix the truncate bug either.

        - Linus Torvalds
Do one thing and do it well.

        - Andrew Grover, ACPI maintainer on Linux-power.
> Not that the kernel list is the best place to bring this up, but NVIDIA
> would NOT be on that list.  They are by far one of the best companies out
> there providing support for their cards.  I bought my GF2 for exactly that
> reason too....

Sure. I spent much happy time telling people to report bugs to nvidia because
their closed drivers mean that only nvidia can debug all the crashes people
see with them loaded - at least some of which dont occur without the modules

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
<phillips> as a perl god, just tell me how to find any string with
           kernel-doc on it
<phillips> I'll trade for some heavyduty vfs consulting one day ;-)

        - Daniel Phillips on #kernelnewbies
I'm not a lawyer. I don't even play one on TV.

        - Linus Torvalds on the gcc mailing list
        Hurd and architecture in one sentence? Uh-oh...

        - Al Viro 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
Let me explain it to you slowly:

Disks.  Write.  One.  Write.  At.  A.  Time.

        - Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
> ...  And aren't you one of the Preists of Text in
> /proc -- those of the belief in managing everything with 'cat' and 'vi'.

No. That would be Al Viro.

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> (infact I never had a single report), but well we'll verify that in

Richard, is that you?  What had you done with real Andrea?

        - Al Viro trying to beat two people with one cluebat
The last time I looked, Solaris and AIX and all the rest of the "scalable"
systems were absolute pigs on smaller hardware, and the "scalability" in
them often translates into "we scale linearly to many CPU's by being
really bad even on one".

        - Linus Torvalds
>    In short, now you need filesystem versioning at a per-page level etc.

*ding* *ding* *ding* we have a near winner.  Remember, folks, Hurd had been
started by people who not only don't understand UNIX, but detest it.
ITS/TWENEX refugees.  And semantics in question comes from there -
they had "open and make sure that anyone who tries to modify will get
a new version, leaving one we'd opened unchanged".

        - Al Viro on linux-kernel
HP LaserJetIII wrote:
> How to turn off faucet?
>
Now that's a good one! Somebody's mucking with my print-server.
Sorry. I'm gonna get my gun....

        - Richard Johnson on linux-kernel
Oh, come on.  Every government is right on some issues.  Proof:                
                                                                                
        For every government X there is at least one government Y such that X
would claim that Y is a bunch of corrupt assholes.  Since every government    
is  a bunch of corrupt assholes, every government is right at least in one    
of its claims.

        - Al Viro discussing politics 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
"90% of everything is crap", Its called Sturgeon's law 8)                    
One of the problems is indeed finding the good bits

        - Alan Cox
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
        * buggers who use typedefs like WORD, DWORD, BYTE, IMANIDIOTSHOOTME
        and other crap from the same source (OK, they don't write the last one
        explicitly - not that it wasn't obvious from the rest of their,
        ahem, code).

        - Alexander Viro on coding style
Alexander Viro wrote:
> Al, -><- close to setting up a Linux Kernel Hall of Shame - one with names of
> wankers (both individual and coprorat ones) responsible, their code and
> commentary on said code...

Please, please, please, I'm begging you, please do this.  It's the only way
people learn quickly.  Being nice is great, but nothing works faster than
a cold shower of public humiliation :-)

        - Larry McVoy on linux-kernel
Daniel Phillips wrote:
> Hi Dana,
>
> Are you still interested in signing up for a kernel project?  I've got a good
> one I think would be perfect for you.

Hey Dana,

I have a long list of projects you can work on, too.  Let me know.

        Jeff

;-)

        - Jeff Garzik on linux-kernel
And there was much suffering among the people, for g++ was a necessity. And
one rose up from the mass and cried, "Lord Root, if thou canst not help us,
then call upon the gods of far gcc@gcc.gnu.org for among them are sages of
wisdom who may be of help!"

        - bug report from Sean Callanan send to the GCC mailing list
There is a bog-standard way to combine several files in one - cpio.  Or tar.
No need to bring Apple Shit-For-Design(tm)(r) when standard tools are quite
enough.

        - Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.
Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not.
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.
Heaven and Earth last forever.
Why do heaven and Earth last forever?
They are unborn,
So ever living.
The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.
He is detached, thus at one with all.
Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.
Better to stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of heaven.
Carrying body and soul and embracing the one,
Can you avoid separation?
Attending fully and becoming supple,
Can you be as a newborn babe?
Washing and cleansing the primal vision,
Can you be without stain?
Loving all men and ruling the country,
Can you be without cleverness?
Opening and closing the gates of heaven,
Can you play the role of woman?
Understanding and being open to all things,
Are you able to do nothing?
Giving birth and nourishing,
Bearing yet not possessing,
Working yet not taking credit,
Leading yet not dominating,
This is the Primal Virtue.
The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.
Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.
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 sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better for everyone.

Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will rediscover filial piety and love.

Give up ingenuity, renounce profit,
And bandits and thieves will disappear.

These three are outward forms alone; they are not sufficient in themselves.
It is more important
To see the simplicity,
To realize one's true nature,
To cast off selfishness
And temper desire.
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.
To talk little is natural.
High winds do not last all morning.
Heavy rain does not last all day.
Why is this?  Heaven and Earth!
If heaven and Earth cannot make things eternal,
How is it possible for man?
He who follows the Tao
Is at one with the Tao.
He who is virtuous
Experiences Virtue.
He who loses the way
Is lost.
When you are at one with the Tao,
The Tao welcomes you.
When you are at one with Virtue,
The Virtue is always there.
When you are at one with loss,
The loss is experienced willingly.

He who does not trust enough
Will not be trusted.
Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and Earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it great.

Being great, it flows
I flows far away.
Having gone far, it returns.

Therefore, "Tao is great;
Heaven is great;
Earth is great;
The king is also great."
These are the four great powers of the universe,
And the king is one of them.

Man follows Earth.
Earth follows heaven.
Heaven follows the Tao.
Tao follows what is natural.
The heavy is the root of the light.
The still is the master of unrest.

Therefore the sage, traveling all day,
Does not lose sight of his baggage.
Though there are beautiful things to be seen,
He remains unattached and calm.

Why should the lord of ten thousand chariots act lightly in public?
To be light is to lose one's root.
To be restless is to lose one's control.
A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no slips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.
A good door needs no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it.

Therefore the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called "following the light."

What is a good man?
A teacher of a bad man.
What is a bad man?
A good man's charge.
If the teacher is not respected,
And the student not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.
Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.

Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.
The Tao is forever undefined.
Small though it is in the unformed state, it cannot be grasped.
If kings and lords could harness it,
The ten thousand things would come together
And gentle rain fall.
Men would need no more instruction and all things would take their course.
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble.
Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.
All men will come to him who keeps to the one,
For there lie rest and happiness and peace.

Passersby may stop for music and good food,
But a description of the Tao
Seems without substance or flavor.
It cannot be seen, it cannot be heard,
And yet it cannot be exhausted.
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.
The Tao begot one.
One begot two.
Two begot three.
And three begot the ten thousand things.

The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang.
They achieve harmony by combining these forces.

Men hate to be "orphaned," "widowed," or "worthless,"
But this is how kings and lords describe themselves.

For one gains by losing
And loses by gaining.

What others teach, I also teach; that is:
"A violent man will die a violent death!"
This will be the essence of my teaching.
Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed.
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.
Mask your brightness.
Be at one with the dust of the Earth.
This is primal union.

He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.
In caring for others and serving heaven,
There is nothing like using restraint.
Restraint begins with giving up one's own ideas.
This depends on Virtue gathered in the past.
If there is a good store of Virtue, then nothing is impossible.
If nothing is impossible, then there are no limits.
If a man knows no limits, then he is fit to be a ruler.
The mother principle of ruling holds good for a long time.
This is called having deep roots and a firm foundation,
The Tao of long life and eternal vision.
Ruling the country is like cooking a small fish.
Approach the universe with Tao,
And evil is not powerful,
But its power will not be used to harm others.
Not only will it do no harm to others,
But the sage himself will also be protected.
They do not hurt each other,
And the Virtue in each one refreshes both.
Peace is easily maintained;
Trouble is easily overcome before it starts.
The brittle is easily shattered;
The small is easily scattered.

Deal with it before it happens.
Set things in order before there is confusion.

A tree as great as a man's embrace springs up from a small shoot;
A terrace nine stories high begins with a pile of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.

He who acts defeats his own purpose;
He who grasps loses.
The sage does not act, and so is not defeated.
He does not grasp and therefore does not lose.

People usually fail when they are on the verge of success.
So give as much care to the end as to the beginning;
Then there will be no failure.

Therefore the sage seeks freedom from desire.
He does not collect precious things.
He learns not to hold on to ideas.
He brings men back to what they have lost.
He help the ten thousand things find their own nature,
But refrains from action.
Knowing ignorance is strength.
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.
The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness.
Therefore he is not sick.
Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says:
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves to be king of the universe.
The truth often sounds paradoxical.
After a bitter quarrel, some resentment must remain.
What can one do about it?
Therefore the sage keeps his half of the bargain
But does not exact his due.
A man of Virtue performs his part,
But a man without Virtue requires others to fulfill their obligations.
The Tao of heaven is impartial.
It stays with good men all the time.
A small country has fewer people.
Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster than man, they are not needed.
The people take death seriously and do not travel far.
Though they have boats and carriages, no one uses them.
Though they have armor and weapons, no one displays them.
Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.
Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple, their homes secure;
They are happy in their ways.
Though they live within sight of their neighbors,
And crowing cocks and barking dogs are heard across the way,
Yet they leave each other in peace while they grow old and die.
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
        A young married couple had their first child.  Their original pride
and joy slowly turned to concern however, for after a couple of years the
child had never uttered any form of speech.  They hired the best speech
therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, all to no avail.  The child simply refused
to speak.  One morning when the child was five, while the husband was reading
the paper, and the wife was feeding the dog, the little kid looks up from
his bowl and said, "My cereal's cold."
        The couple is stunned.  The man, in tears, confronts his son.  "Son,
after all these years, why have you waited so long to say something?".
        Shrugs the kid, "Everything's been okay 'til now".
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped
teething.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower.  "This," cried the Mayor,
"is your town's darkest hour!  The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!" he said.  "We've GOT to make noises in
greater amounts!  So, open your mouth, lad!  For every voice counts!"  Thus he
spoke as he climbed.  When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and
he shouted out, "YOPP!"
        And that Yopp...  That one last small, extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last!  From the speck on that clover their voices were heard!
They rang out clear and clean.  And they elephant smiled.  "Do you see what
I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small.  And their
whole world was saved by the smallest of All!"
        "How true!  Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo.  "And, from now
on, you know what I'm planning to do?  From now on, I'm going to protect
them with you!"  And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO!  From
the sun in the summer.  From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect
them.  No matter how small-ish!"
                -- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who"
Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that this
country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a whole week.
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

        Do as I say, not as I do.
        Do me a favour and don't tell me about it.  I don't want to know.
        What did you do *this* time?
        If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you.
        When I was your age...
        I won't love you if you keep doing that.
        Think of all the starving children in India.
        If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar.
        I'm going to kill you.
        Way to go, clumsy.
        If you don't like it, you can lump it.
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 told my kids, "Someday, you'll have kids of your own."  One of them said,
"So will you."
                -- Rodney Dangerfield
My boy is a mean kid.  I came home the other day and saw him taping worms
to the sidewalk, he sits there and watches the birds get hernias.  Well,
only last Christmas I gave him a B-B gun and he gave me a sweatshirt with
a bulls-eye on the back.

I told my kids, "Someday, you'll have kids of your own."  One of them
said, "So will you."
                -- Rodney Dangerfield
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
                -- Groucho Marx
My ritual differs slightly.  What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I
hop into the shower stall.  Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped
in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot
character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off
of while he showers.  Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog,
Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful
dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants
to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear
in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind
-- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new
part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift.  Then I hop
right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children
have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen
exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets.  Perhaps several of them.
                -- Dave Barry
        On this morning in August when I was 13, my mother sent us out pick
tomatoes.  Back in April I'd have killed for a fresh tomato, but in August
they are no more rare or wonderful than rocks.  So I picked up one and threw
it at a crab apple tree, where it made a good *splat*, and then threw a tomato
at my brother.  He whipped one back at me.  We ducked down by the vines,
heaving tomatoes at each other.  My sister, who was a good person, said,
"You're going to get it."  She bent over and kept on picking.
        What a target!  She was 17, a girl with big hips, and bending over,
she looked like the side of a barn.
        I picked up a tomato so big it sat on the ground.  It looked like it
had sat there a week.  The underside was brown, small white worms lived in it,
and it was very juicy.  I stood up and took aim, and went into the windup,
when my mother at the kitchen window called my name in a sharp voice.  I had
to decide quickly.  I decided.
        A rotten Big Boy hitting the target is a memorable sound, like a fat
man doing a belly-flop.  With a whoop and a yell the tomatoee came after
faster than I knew she could run, and grabbed my shirt and was about to brain
me when Mother called her name in a sharp voice.  And my sister, who was a
good person, obeyed and let go -- and burst into tears.  I guess she knew that
the pleasure of obedience is pretty thin compared with the pleasure of hearing
a rotten tomato hit someone in the rear end.
                -- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
                -- George Herbert
One of the disadvantages of having children is that they eventually get old
enough to give you presents they make at school.
                -- Robert Byrne
Tout choses sont dites deja, mais comme personne n'ecoute, il faut
toujours recommencer.
                -- A. Gide

[ All things have already been said, but since no one listens, one
  must always start again. ]
<sel> need help: my first packet to my provider gets lost :-(
<netgod> sel:  dont send the first one, start with #2
"my biggest problem with RH (and especially RH contrib packages) is that
they DON'T have anything like our policy.  That's one of the main reasons
why their packages are so crappy and broken.  Debian has the teamwork
side of building a distribution down to a fine art."
<Silvrbear> Oxymorons?  I saw one yesterday - the pamphlet on "Taco Bell
            Nutritional Information"
<DarthVadr> Kira: JOIN THE DARK SIDE, YOUNG ONE.
<kira> darth, I *am* the dark side.
<Crow-> Manoj: well, i cant understand stuff like "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245 }"
<Manoj> Crow: That is not quite legal ;-)
<Knghtbrd> Manoj - how would one make "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245 }" legal
           anyway? (and what would it do?  hehe)
<Manoj> Knghtbrd: You need to finish the s/// expression.
<Knghtbrd> oh, is that all?
<Slackware> uh oh, what have I started :)
<Debian> rofl... distro nick wars.
* Slackware just waits for /nick Gnome, /nick KDE, and then world war 4
   to break out
<WinNT> :oP
<OpenBSD> <duck>
<PalmOS> :)
<Slackware> no'one would dare /nick RedHat
<tru64> mew.
<Culus> dhd:  R you part of the secret debian overstructure?
<dhd> no. there is no secret debian overstructure.
<CosmicRay> although, now that somebody brought it up, let's start one
            :-)
<Knghtbrd> CosmicRay - why not, sounds like a fun way to spend the
           afternoon =D
<Knghtbrd> Okay, you people have started talking about BSDM applications of
           network hardware...  I think I'll run off and do something useful
           and Debianish and stay OUT of this one...
<Knghtbrd> (for a change)
<netgod> my client has been owned severely
<netgod> this guy got root, ran packet sniffers, installed .rhosts and
         backdoors, put a whole new dir in called /lib/"   ", which has a
         full suite of smurfing and killing tools
<netgod> the only mistake was not deleting the logfiles
<netgod> question is how was root hacked, and that i couldnt tell u
<netgod> it is, of course, not a debian box
* netgod notes the debian box is the only one left untouched by the hacker
         -- wonder why
<Knghtbrd> It's a trackball for one
<wichert> so it's not a rodent
<wichert> it's a turd with a ball sticking out
<wichert> which you fondle constantly
<Knghtbrd> JHM: I'm not putting quake in the kernel source
<Knghtbrd> but we should put quake in the boot floppies to one-up
           Caldera's tetris game..  ;>
<doogie> there is one bad thing about having a cell phone.
<doogie> I can be reached at any time. :|
<wmono> that's why I leave mine off at all times. ;>
<Mercury> <CJ|BiZKiT-0-> i can upload to linux server tho
<Mercury> <CJ|BiZKiT-0-> i got a shell account on one
<Mercury> <Mercury> Whats it running?
<Mercury> <CJ|BiZKiT-0-> umm
<Mercury> <CJ|BiZKiT-0-> apache i think
<Mercury> Help, please help..
* Omni chuckles
<jt> should a bug be marked critical if it only affects one arch?
<james-workaway> jt: rc for that arch maybe, but those kind of arch
                 specific bugs are rare...
<jt> not when it's caused by a bug in gcc
<doogie> jt: get gcc removed from that arch. :)
"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
Making one brilliant decision and a whole bunch of mediocre ones isn't as
good as making a whole bunch of generally smart decisions throughout the
whole process.
        -- John Carmack
<knghtbrd> eek, not another one...
<knghtbrd> Seems ever developer and their mother now has a random
           signature using irc quotes ...
<knghtbrd> WHAT HAVE I STARTED HERE??
<Endy> taniwha: Have you TESTED this one? :)
<taniwha> Endy: of course not
* shortc wants to get in one of knghtbrd's sigs one of these days.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
        fix one bug, compile it again...
        101 little bugs in the code....
* weasel wonders how stupid one has to be to spam alt.anonymous.messages
<knghtbrd> weasel: about half as stupid as one has to be to harvest it.
* wolfie ponders how many debianites it takes to screw in a lightbulb
<Viiru> wolfie: Somewhere around 600? One screw's the bulb, and the rest
        flame him for doing it wrong.
<part> wolfie: is the bulb free software?
<Tv> Can we vote on whether to screw it or not?
<Addi> Alter.net seems to have replaced one of its router with a zucchini.
<|Rain|> *nod* I'm not fond of using smarthosts, myself
<|Rain|> as it relies on both the remote host and your host being smart
<|Rain|> and too often you miss one of both of those goals
<|Rain|> with sane code, maybe I could figure out the renderer :)
<LordHavoc> rain: I'd probably be the one writing the renderer
<|Rain|> well, er, uh
<Electro> my computer was once one of the building blocks of a great
          pyramid
<knghtbrd> but one sort per tab and none per list is arguably better than
           O(n + n**2) per tab and O(n**2) per list.
<knghtbrd> OMG, someone shoot me.
<Coderjoe2> ?
<knghtbrd> I can't believe I just used the big goose-egg to explain why my
           way is probably best in the long run.
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 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 small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.
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.
        How do you insult a lawyer?
        You might as well not even try.  Consider: of all the highly
trained and educated professions, law is the only one in which the prime
lesson is that *winning* is more important than *truth*.
        Once someone has sunk to that level, what worse can you say about them?
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer.  Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:

[110.13]:
       "When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
        to interfere with oncoming traffic."

[22.17b]:
       "Learning to change lanes takes time and patience.  The best
        recommendation that can be made is to go to a Celtics [basketball]
        game; study the fast break and then go out and practice it
        on the highway."

[41.16]:
       "Never bump a baby carriage out of a crosswalk unless the kid's really
        asking for it."
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer.  Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:

[131.16d]:
       "Directional signals are generally not used except during vehicle
        inspection; however, a left-turn signal is appropriate when making
        a U-turn on a divided highway."

[96.7b]:
       "When paying tolls, remember that it is necessary to release the
        quarter a full 3 seconds before passing the basket if you are
        traveling more than 60 MPH."

[110.13]:
       "When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
        to interfere with oncoming traffic."
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.
It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
Boulevard at one time.
Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards."
                -- H.L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan,
                   counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution
                   law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm.  One thing
I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition.  If somebody
gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal
stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person
would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
                -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
                        Pittsburgh Driver's Test

(7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
    but a steady left tail light.  This means

        (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
            to call the problem to the driver's attention.
        (b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
        (c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
        (d) the driver is from out of town.

The correct answer is (d).  Tail lights are used in some foreign
countries to signal turns.
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 animals are not as stupid as one thinks -- they have neither
doctors nor lawyers.
                -- L. Docquier
The Worst Jury
        A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when
one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the
remotest clue what was happening.
        The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any
evidence at all and, when there was no reply, dismissed him.
        The excitement which this caused was only equalled when a second
juror revealed that he spoke not a word of English.  A fluent French
speaker, he exhibited great surprised when told, after two days, that he
was hearing a murder trial.
        The trial was abandoned when a third juror said that he suffered
from both conditions, being simultaneously unversed in the English language
and nearly as deaf as the first juror.
        The judge ordered a retrial.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
This product is meant for educational purposes only.  Any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.  Void where prohibited.  Some
assembly may be required.  Batteries not included.  Contents may settle during
shipment.  Use only as directed.  May be too intense for some viewers.  If
condition persists, consult your physician.  No user-serviceable parts inside.
Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement.  Not responsible for direct,
indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error
or failure to perform.  Slippery when wet.  For office use only.  Substantial
penalty for early withdrawal.  Do not write below this line.  Your cancelled
check is your receipt.  Avoid contact with skin.  Employees and their families
are not eligible.  Beware of dog.  Driver does not carry cash.  Limited time
offer, call now to insure prompt delivery.  Use only in well-ventilated area.
Keep away from fire or flame.  Some equipment shown is optional.  Price does
not include taxes, dealer prep, or delivery.  Penalty for private use.  Call
toll free before digging.  Some of the trademarks mentioned in this product
appear for identification purposes only.  All models over 18 years of age.  Do
not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment.  Postage will be
paid by addressee.  Apply only to affected area.  One size fits all.  Many
suitcases look alike.  Edited for television.  No solicitors.  Reproduction
strictly prohibited.  Restaurant package, not for resale.  Objects in mirror
are closer than they appear.  Decision of judges is final.  This supersedes
all previous notices.  No other warranty expressed or implied.
A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk.
        "It is right before your eyes," said the master.
        "Why do I not see it for myself?"
        "Because you are thinking of yourself."
        "What about you: do you see it?"
        "So long as you see double, saying `I don't', and `you do', and so
on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.
        "When there is neither `I' nor `You', can one see it?"
        "When there is neither `I' nor `You',
who is the one that wants to see it?"
A 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.
As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp
the meaning of existence.  Both make one feel like a baby clutching at
a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
                -- Joseph Brodsky
Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.
                -- Jean Anouilh
        Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
        took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of
his followers.
        One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
        "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile?  What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
        Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU".  (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
        Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
        Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
                -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.
                -- Titus Lucretius Carus
Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.
                -- Woody Allen
Everything is possible.  Pass the word.
                -- Rita Mae Brown, "Six of One"
For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our
thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another
in the waking state?
                -- Plato
I didn't believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives.  I don't see why
I should have to believe in it in this one.
                -- Strange de Jim
If a guru falls in the forest with no one to hear him, was he really a
guru at all?
                -- Strange de Jim, "The Metasexuals"
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time.  I
would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this
trip.  I know of very few things I would take seriously.  I would be crazier.
I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets.  I'd
travel and see.  I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly
and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh, I have had my moments and,
if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them.  In fact, I'd try to
have nothing else.  Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many
years ahead each day.  I have been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hotwater bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel
lighter than I have.  If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.  I would play hooky
more.  I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more.  I would
ride on more merry-go-rounds.  I'd pick more daisies.
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.
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
It is only with the heart one can see clearly; what is essential is
invisible to the eye.
                -- The Fox, 'The Little Prince"
Life only demands from you the strength you possess.
Only one feat is possible -- not to have run away.
                -- Dag Hammarskjold
Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to serve
him.  Nasrudin said, "First things first.  Did you see me walk into your
shop?"
        "Of course."
        "Have you ever seen me before?"
        "Never."
        "Then how do you know it was me?"
        Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great
crystal river.  Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs
and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and
resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  But one creature
said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going.  I shall
let go, and let it take me where it will.  Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
        The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool!  Let go, and that current
you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will
die quicker than boredom!"
        But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at
once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.  Yet, in time,
as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the
bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
        And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See
a miracle!  A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!  See the Messiah, come
to save us all!"  And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more
Messiah than you.  The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go.
Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.
        But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the
rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
                -- Richard Bach
        One day it was announced that the young monk Kyogen had reached
an enlightened state.  Much impressed by this news, several of his peers
went to speak with him.
        "We have heard that you are enlightened.  Is this true?" his fellow
students inquired.
        "It is", Kyogen answered.
        "Tell us", said a friend, "how do you feel?"
        "As miserable as ever", replied the enlightened Kyogen.
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the
truth.  A gallows was erected in front of the city gates.  A herald announced,
"Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question
which will be put to him."  Nasrudin was first in line.  The captain of the
guard asked him, "Where are you going?  Tell the truth -- the alternative
is death by hanging."
        "I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows."
        "I don't believe you."
        "Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!"
        "But that would make it the truth!"
        "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
One learns to itch where one can scratch.
                -- Ernest Bramah
One meets his destiny often on the road he takes to avoid it.
One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How will it
live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net, I'll tell you."
Remember, Grasshopper, falling down 1000 stairs begins by tripping over
the first one.
                -- Confusion
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
Suffering alone exists, none who suffer;
The deed there is, but no doer thereof;
Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it;
The Path there is, but none who travel it.
                -- "Buddhist Symbolism", Symbols and Values
The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
                -- Maurice Chapelain, "Main courante"
The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal.
The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may
experience it as such.  Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and
thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid.  Whoever
could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very
swift.  Thinking of oneself gives little happiness.  If, however, one feels
much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of
oneself but of one's ideal.  This is far, and only the swift shall reach
it and are delighted.
                -- Nietzsche
The Poems, all three hundred of them, may be summed up in one of their phrases:
"Let our thoughts be correct".
                -- Confucius
There's only one everything.
To get something clean, one has to get something dirty.
To get something dirty, one does not have to get anything clean.
Two men were sitting over coffee, contemplating the nature of things,
with all due respect for their breakfast.  "I wonder why it is that
toast always falls on the buttered side," said one.
        "Tell me," replied his friend, "why you say such a thing.  Look
at this."  And he dropped his toast on the floor, where it landed on the
dry side.
        "So, what have you to say for your theory now?"
        "What am I to say?  You obviously buttered the wrong side."
        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
When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later
something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend
your parents' limitations...  At the same time, you feel sure that in all
the wilderness of possibility; in all the forests of opinion, there is a
vital something that can be known -- known and grasped.  That we will
eventually know it, and convert the whole mystery into a coherent
narrative.  So that then one's true life -- the point of everything --
will emerge from the mist into a pure light, into total comprehension.
But it isn't like that at all.  But if it isn't, where did the idea come
from, to torture and unsettle us?
                -- Brian Aldiss, "Helliconia Summer"
[Wisdom] is a tree of life to those laying
hold of her, making happy each one holding her fast.
                -- Proverbs 3:18, NSV
Save yourself from the 'Gates' of hell, use Linux."  -- like that one.
        -- The_Kind @ LinuxNet
lp1 on fire
        -- One of the more obfuscated kernel messages
There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and
those who can't.  There is a constant pitched battle between the two.
        -- From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a
Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse
for some of the brain-damages of minix.
        -- Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum
On the Internet, no one knows you're using Windows NT
        -- Submitted by Ramiro Estrugo, restrugo@fateware.com
.. I used to get in more fights with SCO than I did my girlfriend, but
now, thanks to Linux, she has more than happily accepted her place back at
number one antagonist in my life..
        -- Jason Stiefel, krypto@s30.nmex.com
One of the things that hamper Linux's climb to world domination is the
shortage of bad Computer Role Playing Games, or CRaPGs. No operating system
can be considered respectable without one.
        -- Brian O'Donnell, odonnllb@tcd.ie
So in the future, one 'client' at a time or you'll be spending CPU time with
lots of little 'child processes'.
        -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd
> Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code.
> It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is
> source code available to the product you are using.  It allows everybody
> to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s)
> would get the time/chance to.

I think this is one the really BIG reasons for the snowball/onslaught
of Linux and the wealth of stuff available that gets enhanced faster
than the real vendors can keep up.
        -- Norman
Whoever asked if the debian organization was dead isn't reading
debian-devel. 66 messages in one day, and it's not over. I find it
difficult to keep up.
        -- Bruce Perens
* gb notes that fdisk thinks his cdrom can store one terabyte
        -- Seen on #Linux
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
AUTHOR
FvwmAuto just appeared one day, nobody knows how.
        -- FvwmAuto(1x)
Winnuke in one line?  No problem:
perl -MIO::Socket -e 'IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")->send("bye",MSG_OOB)'

And formatted so it's a little easier to read:

        #!/usr/bin/perl
        use IO::Socket;
        IO::Socket::INET
                ->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")
                ->send("bye", MSG_OOB);

        -- Randal Schwartz
Uh... deity is a word, and diety isn't.

Or is it supposed to be one of those recursive acronyms?  Diety Is
Excellent To You.  Deity Eats Icecream That's Yellow.  Diety Is
Eloping To Yokohama.  I'll stop now.
        -- Guy Maor
Do people like check the Debian website every 5 minutes to check it hasn't morphed into another one?
Not that I'm one to talk, but some people seriously need to get a life
        -- james on #Debian
One tree to rule them all,
One tree to find them,
One tree to bring them all,
and to itself bind them.
        -- Gavin Koch <gavin@cygnus.com>
When you have 200 programmers trying to write code for one
product, like Win95 or NT, what you get is a multipule personality
program.  By definition, the real problem is that these programs are
psychotic by nature and make people crazy when they use them.
        -- Joan Brewer on alt.destroy.microsoft
I just uploaded xtoolplaces-1.6. It fixes all bugs but one: It still
coredumps instead of doing something useful.  The upstream author's
e-mail address bounces, Redhat doesn't provide it and I never used it.
        -- Sven Rudolph <sr1@os.inf.tu-dresden.de>
> I thing you're missing the capability of Makefiles.

        It takes several _hours_ to do `make' a second time on my
machine with the latest glibc sources (and no files are recompiled a
second time).  I think I'll remove `build' after changing one file if
I want to recompile it.
        -- Juan Cespedes <cespedes@debian.org>
<sel> need help: my first packet to my provider gets lost :-(
<netgod> sel:  dont send the first one, start with #2
* netgod is kidding
Alex Buell:
Or how about a Penguin logo painted in really really trippy
colours, and emblazoned with the word LSD. :o)

Geert Uytterhoeven:
We already had that one, but unfortunately Russell King fixed that nasty
palette bug in drivers/video/fbcon.c :-)
        -- linux-kernel
I am amazed that no-one's based a commercial distribution on Debian
yet - it is by far the most solid UNIX-like OS I've ever installed,
and I've played with HP/UX, Solaris, FreeBSD, BSDi, and SCO (not to
mention OS/2, Novell, Win95/NT)
        -- Nathan E. Norman
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 freelance is one who gets paid by the word -- per piece or perhaps.
                -- Robert Benchley
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs.  The trick is to make one with none.
... before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech
or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.  What
did it matter what anyone knew or ignored?  What did it matter who was
manager?  One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of
this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my
power of meddling.
                -- Joseph Conrad
        By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in
the South, were of the present standard gauge.  The southern roads were
still five feet between rails.
        It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard,
in one day.  This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May
of 1886.  For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the
axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which
could run on the new track as soon as it was ready.  Finally, on the day set,
great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn.  Everywhere one
rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its
new position.  By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate
over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere
was possible.
                -- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957
Column 1                Column 2                Column 3

0. integrated                0. management                0. options
1. total                1. organizational        1. flexibility
2. systematized                2. monitored                2. capability
3. parallel                3. reciprocal                3. mobility
4. functional                4. digital                4. programming
5. responsive                5. logistical                5. concept
6. optional                6. transitional                6. time-phase
7. synchronized                7. incremental                7. projection
8. compatible                8. third-generation        8. hardware
9. balanced                9. policy                9. contingency

        The procedure is simple.  Think of any three-digit number, then select
the corresponding buzzword from each column.  For instance, number 257 produces
"systematized logistical projection," a phrase that can be dropped into
virtually any report with that ring of decisive, knowledgeable authority.  "No
one will have the remotest idea of what you're talking about," says Broughton,
"but the important thing is that they're not about to admit it."
                -- Philip Broughton, "How to Win at Wordsmanship"
Competitive fury is not always anger.  It is the true missionary's courage
and zeal in facing the possibility that one's best may not be enough.
                -- Gene Scott
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to
stick to one thing till it gets there.
                -- Josh Billings
Dear Lord:
        I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
the other hand", again.
Every young man should have a hobby: learning how to handle money is
the best one.
                -- Jack Hurley
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:

Support:  "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
        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"
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
                -- Thomas Alva Edison
        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 for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
        Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything:  "I came
by subway."  Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
                -- Lucinda Childs "Einstein On The Beach"
I:
        The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin
        with a silk sow.  The same is true of money.
II:
        If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would
        probably be twice as good as yesterday was.
III:
        There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.
IV:
        If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.
V:
        One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output.
        Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average
        output.
                -- Norman Augustine
If ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other, there
better be no trade.  A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.
                -- Dagny Taggart, "Atlas Shrugged"
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of
work to do.
                -- Jerome Klapka Jerome
It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.
Lonesome?

Like a change?
Like a new job?
Like excitement?
Like to meet new and interesting people?

JUST SCREW-UP ONE MORE TIME!!!!!!!
Management:        How many feet do mice have?
Reply:                Mice have four feet.
M:        Elaborate!
R:        Mice have five appendages, and four of them are feet.
M:        No discussion of fifth appendage!
R:        Mice have five appendages; four of them are feet; one is a tail.
M:        What?  Feet with no legs?
R:        Mice have four legs, four feet, and one tail per unit-mouse.
M:        Confusing -- is that a total of 9 appendages?
R:        Mice have four leg-foot assemblies and one tail assembly per body.
M:        Does not fully discuss the issue!
R:        Each mouse comes equipped with four legs and a tail.  Each leg
        is equipped with a foot at the end opposite the body; the tail
        is not equipped with a foot.
M:        Descriptive?  Yes.  Forceful NO!
R:        Allotment of appendages for mice will be:  Four foot-leg assemblies,
        one tail.  Deviation from this policy is not permitted as it would
        constitute misapportionment of scarce appendage assets.
M:        Too authoritarian; stifles creativity!
R:        Mice have four feet; each foot is attached to a small leg joined
        integrally with the overall mouse structural sub-system.  Also
        attached to the mouse sub-system is a thin tail, non-functional and
        ornamental in nature.
M:        Too verbose/scientific.  Answer the question!
R:        Mice have four feet.
Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years.
Never appeal to a man's "better nature."  He may not have one.
Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
                -- Lazarus Long
Never ask two questions in a business letter.  The reply will discuss
the one you are least interested, and say nothing about the other.
        NEW YORK-- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of
directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip
Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the
offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the
true value of the company.
        Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story.
Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover
agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of
their major Middle East subsidiaries.  To a person, the board voted to
reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to
reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of Nazareth.
No one gets sick on Wednesdays.
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"
        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"
Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
amount of hot air.
                -- Thomas L. Martin
        One fine day, the bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus,
and drove off along the route.  No problems for the first few stops -- a few
people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well.  At the next
stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on.  Six feet eight, built like a
wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground.  He glared at the driver and said,
"Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.
        Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically
meek?  Well, he was.  Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't
happy about it.  Well, the next day the same thing happened -- Big John got on
again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down.  And the next day, and the
one after that, and so forth.  This grated on the bus driver, who started
losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him.  Finally he
could stand it no longer. He signed up for bodybuilding courses, karate, judo,
and all that good stuff.  By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong;
what's more, he felt really good about himself.
        So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus
and said "Big John doesn't pay!," the driver stood up, glared back at the
passenger, and screamed, "And why not?"
        With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a
bus pass."
One good suit is worth a thousand resumes.
One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one
man would have produced alone.  These two plus two more will produce half
again as many ideas.  These four plus four more begin to represent a
creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ...
                -- Anthony Chevins
One of your most ancient writers, a historian named Herodotus, tells of a
thief who was to be executed.  As he was taken away he made a bargain with
the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing
hymns.  The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and
laughed.  "You will not succeed," they told him.  "No one can."
        To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might
happen in that time.  The king might die.  The horse might die.  I might die.
And perhaps the horse will learn to sing.
                -- "The Mote in God's Eye", Niven and Pournelle
One possible reason that things aren't going according to plan
is that there never was a plan in the first place.
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be
installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips.  Let's say your
congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how
the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet.  Just when he
got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would
inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the
plane door.  It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman
proposed a law.  ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be
designated as Cuticle Inspection Month?  And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.")
This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public
would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen.  The problem
is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500
members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil,
are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
                -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
        Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a
clogged toilet.  In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as
annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the radio.  But before we get
into specific techniques, let's look at how plumbing works.
        A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except
that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has
pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets.
So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at all like your
electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead of the sword.
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but its the only one we've got.
        "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"
The annual meeting of the "You Have To Listen To Experience" Club is now in
session.  Our Achievement Awards this year are in the fields of publishing,
advertising and industry.  For best consistent contribution in the field of
publishing our award goes to editor, R.L.K., [...] for his unrivalled alle-
giance without variation to the statement: "Personally I'd love to do it,
we'd ALL love to do it.  But we're not going to do it.  It's not the kind of
book our house knows how to handle."  Our superior performance award in the
field of advertising goes to media executive, E.L.M., [...] for the continu-
ally creative use of the old favorite: "I think what you've got here could be
very exciting.  Why not give it one more try based on the approach I've out-
lined and see if you can come up with something fresh."  Our final award for
courageous holding action in the field of industry goes to supervisor, R.S.,
[...] for her unyielding grip on "I don't care if they fire me, I've been
arguing for a new approach for YEARS but are we SURE that this is the right
time--"  I would like to conclude this meeting with a verse written specially
for our prospectus by our founding president fifty years ago -- and now, as
then, fully expressive of the emotion most close to all our hearts --
        Treat freshness as a youthful quirk,
                And dare not stray to ideas new,
        For if t'were tried they might e'en work
                And for a living what woulds't we do?
The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do
what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with
them while they do it.
                -- Theodore Roosevelt
        The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff
in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up.  Everybody but one girl
laughed uproariously.  "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you
got a sense of humor?"
        "I don't have to laugh," she said.  "I'm leaving Friday anyway.
The most delightful day after the one on which you buy a cottage in
the country is the one on which you resell it.
                -- J. Brecheux
The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.
                -- James Baldwin
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
"There is no Father Christmas.  It's just a marketing ploy to make low income
parents' lives a misery."
"... I want you to picture the trusting face of a child, streaked with tears
because of what you just said."
"I want you to picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't
pay for one Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!"
                -- Filthy Rich and Catflap
There is one way to find out if a man is honest -- ask him.  If he says
"Yes" you know he is crooked.
                -- Groucho Marx
        There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by
going from house to house offering to do odd jobs.  He explained this to
a man who answered one door.
        "How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man.
        "Forty dollars."
        "Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes.
        Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again.
"All done!", he says, and collects his money.  "By the way," the student says,
"That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
        They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man.  These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
        They are fools that think otherwise.  No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind.  No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone.  The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
        To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man!  To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
                -- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
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 spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest
and cost the most.
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?"
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
                -- Howard Kandel
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.
We are not a loved organization, but we are a respected one.
                -- John Fisher
"We maintain that the very foundation of our way of life is what we call
free enterprise," said Cash McCall, "but when one of our citizens
show enough free enterprise to pile up a little of that profit, we do
our best to make him feel that he ought to be ashamed of himself."
                -- Cameron Hawley
What they said:
        What they meant:

"If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much
of him as I do."
        (Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.)
"Her input was always critical."
        (She never had a good word to say.)
"I have no doubt about his capability to do good work."
        (And it's nonexistent.)
"This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which
already has so many outstanding members."
        (Unless you already have a moron.)
"His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable:
one unbelievable result after another."
        (And we didn't believe them, either.)
"She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her."
        (In fact, to life in general...)
What they said:
        What they meant:

"You will be fortunate if you can get him to work for you."
        (We certainly never succeeded.)
There is no other employee with whom I can adequately compare him.
        (Well, our rats aren't really employees...)
"Success will never spoil him."
        (Well, at least not MUCH more.)
"One usually comes away from him with a good feeling."
        (And such a sigh of relief.)
"His dissertation is the sort of work you don't expect to see these days;
in it he has definitely demonstrated his complete capabilities."
        (And his IQ, as well.)
"He should go far."
        (The farther the better.)
"He will take full advantage of his staff."
        (He even has one of them mowing his lawn after work.)
What they say:                        What they mean:

New                                Different colors from previous version.
All New                                Not compatible with previous version.
Exclusive                        Nobody else has documentation.
Unmatched                        Almost as good as the competition.
Design Simplicity                The company wouldn't give us any money.
Fool-proof Operation                All parameters are hard-coded.
Advanced Design                        Nobody really understands it.
Here At Last                        Didn't get it done on time.
Field Tested                        We don't have any simulators.
Years of Development                Finally got one to work.
Unprecedented Performance        Nothing ever ran this slow before.
Revolutionary                        Disk drives go 'round and 'round.
Futuristic                        Only runs on a next generation supercomputer.
No Maintenance                        Impossible to fix.
Performance Proven                Worked through Beta test.
Meets Tough Quality Standards        It compiles without errors.
Satisfaction Guaranteed                We'll send you another pack if it fails.
Stock Item                        We shipped it before and can do it again.
XI:
        If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would
        get twice as much done.  If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty
        times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all
        the managers would fly off.
XII:
        It costs a lot to build bad products.
XIII:
        There are many highly successful businesses in the United States.
        There are also many highly paid executives.  The policy is not to
        intermingle the two.
XIV:
        After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes.  There will
        be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent
        of every airplane's weight.
XV:
        The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost
        and two-thirds of the problems.
                -- Norman Augustine
XLI:
        The more one produces, the less one gets.
XLII:
        Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing.
XLIII:
        Hardware works best when it matters the least.
XLIV:
        Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a westerly
        direction, preferably supersonic, crossing time zones to provide the
        additional hours needed to fix the broken electronics.
XLV:
        One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the
        unexpected should have been expected.
XLVI:
        A billion saved is a billion earned.
                -- Norman Augustine
XLVII:
        Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water.  The other
        third is covered with auditors from headquarters.
XLVIII:
        The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the
        less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about.
        Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less
        until finally you spend all your time talking about nothing.
XLIX:
        Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds.
L:
        The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a
        chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's -- but four times
        as long as the official's who created it.
LI:
        By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more
        government workers than there are workers.
LII:
        People working in the private sector should try to save money.
        There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again.
                -- Norman Augustine
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
XXXVI:
        The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar
        contract is about one millimeter per million dollars.  If all the
        proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other
        at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea.
XXXVII:
        Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect.
        The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.
XXXVIII:
        The early bird gets the worm.
        The early worm ... gets eaten.
XXXIX:
        Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of
        the year -- in either direction.
XL:
        Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off.
                -- Norman Augustine
Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate
to make 10 ways to do something.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <9695@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space,
because that's exactly how much difference there is.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <10209@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so
consider picking the most readable one.
             -- Larry Wall in the perl man page
/* This bit of chicanery makes a unary function followed by
a parenthesis into a function with one argument, highest precedence. */
             -- Larry Wall in toke.c from the perl source code
You want it in one line?  Does it have to fit in 80 columns?   :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <7349@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Randal can write one-liners again.  Everyone is happy, and peace spreads
over the whole Earth.
             -- Larry Wall in <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org>
P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the
world like English did.  Er, *as* English did...
             -- Larry Wall in <199705201832.LAA28393@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>
One of the reasons Perl is faster than certain other unnamed interpreted
languages is that it binds variable names to a particular package (or
scope) at compile time rather than at run time.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709050035.RAA29328@wall.org>
It's getting harder and harder to think out loud.  One of these days
someone's gonna go off and kill Thomas a'Becket for me...
             -- Larry Wall in <199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org>
: The following (relative to AutoSplit 1.03) attempts to please everyone
: and perhaps pleases no one:

I think that's way cool.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709292015.NAA09627@wall.org>
But that looks a little too much like a declaration for my tastes, when
in fact it isn't one.  So forget I mentioned it.
             -- Larry Wall in <199710011704.KAA21395@wall.org>
I suppose one could claim that an undocumented feature has no
semantics.  :-(
             -- Larry Wall in <199710290036.QAA01818@wall.org>
Er, Tom, I hate to be the one to point this out, but your fix list
is starting to resemble a feature list.  You must be human or something.
             -- Larry Wall in <199801081824.KAA29602@wall.org>
Always there remain portions of our heart into which no one is able to enter,
invite them as we may.
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
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
"Maybe we should think of this as one perfect week... where we found each
other, and loved each other... and then let each other go before anyone
had to seek professional help."
Oh, love is real enough, you will find it some day, but it has one
arch-enemy -- and that is life.
                -- Jean Anouilh, "Ardele"
On a tous un peu peur de l'amour, mais on a surtout peur de souffrir
ou de faire souffrir.
        [One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is
         afraid of pain or causing pain.]
One expresses well the love he does not feel.
                -- J.A. Karr
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these
days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate
with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children
who can't communicate with their parents, and so on.  And the characters in
these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours
bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate.  I feel that if a person can't
communicate, the very _____least he can do is to shut up!
                -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love,
that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love
in the same way as us.
                -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
        The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time
for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
        It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance.  Miss Manners
has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a
curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a
foot or two under the dinner table.  Miss Manners also believes that the
sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand
dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of
people shaking umbrellas at one another.  What Miss Manners objects to
is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street...
The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 A.M.
                -- Charles Pierce
There is only one way to be happy by means of the heart -- to have none.
                -- Paul Bourget
An INK-LING?  Sure -- TAKE one!!  Did you BUY any COMMUNIST UNIFORMS??
Awright, which one of you hid my PENIS ENVY?
If I am elected no one will ever have to do their laundry again!
Is it 1974?  What's for SUPPER?  Can I spend my COLLEGE FUND in one
wild afternoon??
One FISHWICH coming up!!
ONE LIFE TO LIVE for ALL MY CHILDREN in ANOTHER WORLD all THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES.
ONE:    I will donate my entire "BABY HUEY" comic book collection to
        the downtown PLASMA CENTER ...
TWO:        I won't START a BAND called "KHADAFY & THE HIT SQUAD" ...
THREE:        I won't ever TUMBLE DRY my FOX TERRIER again!!
Pardon me, but do you know what it means to be TRULY ONE with your BOOTH!
Place me on a BUFFER counter while you BELITTLE several BELLHOPS in the
Trianon Room!!  Let me one of your SUBSIDIARIES!
The entire CHINESE WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL TEAM all share ONE personality --
and have since BIRTH!!
A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength.  It has been universally
established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon
or three normal sized billiard balls.
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
"A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit,
let alone discuss with prospective clients.  Still, the fact remains that
there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another,
completely immune to any direct magical spell.  It is for this group of
beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells.
It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club
near your person at all times."
                -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because
one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots
who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally
suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses.  Oh, say
the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those
studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association?
To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation from a bunch of
wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their
mystical power being sort of drained out.  Right, say the wizards, that just
about does it, you and your leather posing pouches.  Oh yeah, say the the
heroes, why don't you ...
                -- 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"
        It seems there's this magician working one of the luxury cruise ships
for a few years.  He doesn't have to change his routines much as the audiences
change over fairly often, and he's got a good life.   The only problem is the
ship's parrot, who perches in the hall and watches him night after night, year
after year.  Finally, the parrot figures out how almost every trick works and
starts giving it away for the audience.  For example, when the magician makes
a bouquet of flowers disappear, the parrot squawks "Behind his back!  Behind
his back!"  Well, the magician is really annoyed at this, but there's not much
he can do about it as the parrot is a ship's mascot and very popular with the
passengers.
        One night, the ship strikes some floating debris, and sinks without
a trace.  Almost everyone aboard was lost, except for the magician and the
parrot.  For three days and nights they just drift, with the magician clinging
to one end of a piece of driftwood and the parrot perched on the other end.
As the sun rises on the morning of the fourth day, the parrot walks over to
the magician's end of the log.  With obvious disgust in his voice, he snaps
"OK, you win, I give up.  Where did you hide the ship?"
        The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he
reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.  The Gray
Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace
of Gilpkerio Kistomerces.  Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of
him are dead, he is alive.
        "Now about Lankhmar.  She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce
host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one -- and
equipped with all modern weapons.  Yet you can save the city."
        "How?" demanded Fafhrd.
        Ningauble shrugged.  "You're a hero.  You should know."
                -- Fritz Leiber, "The Swords of Lankhmar"
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 CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
        You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,
        to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.

8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
        It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.

9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE
   OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
        The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
        sacred duty to protect him from exposure.

10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
        This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
A 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."
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.
"Good health" is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
        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"
It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist.
It produces a false impression.
                -- Oscar Wilde.
        "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!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2023
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