Web - Mit.edu Jik Sipbsrc Sun4 Fortune Fortunes

"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
thinks of complaining."
-- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
%%
Hide the wenches and batten down the access codes... yer about to be
boarded, ye scurvy dogs! Har Har....
-- Bloom County
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my
blender."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to say
tuned."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma
transplant."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
cottage cheese sculpture."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
to undo it."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
static cling."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my
garage door."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
Julian to Gregorian."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
came back."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in
`Y.'"
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"I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
need worrying about."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
snore."
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"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
it."
-- C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
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Well, we've come full circle, Lord; I'd like to think there's some
higher meaning to all this. It would certainly reflect well on you.
-- Matthew Broderick in LADYHAWKE
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I can give you my word, but I know what it's worth and you don't.
-- Nero Wolfe
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Save the whales -- collect the whole set.
%%
"My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!"
"Oh, my God.... You've... you've turned him into a DEMOCRAT!"
-- Doonesbury
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"Scotty, I need warp drive in three minutes or we're all dead!"
%%
"You are WRONG, you ol' brass-breasted fascist poop!"
-- Bloom County
%%
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make
his own."
It was so granted.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Ink: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
intellectual crime.
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Kleptomaniac: A rich thief.
%%
Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
%%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."
Then Justice came. His Honor cried:

"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"

%%
Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
%%
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

%%
Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
%%
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.
%%
Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species,
which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest
the whole habitable earth and Canada.
%%
Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.
%%
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
%%
Molecule: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is
distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit
of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate,
indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the
corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion ...
%%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.
%%
Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
%%
Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
%%
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.
%%
November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
%%
Once, adv.: Enough.
%%
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
%%
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by
the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior
in scope, for it balks at pig.
%%
Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
Keep in mind always the two 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!"
%%
Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the
on roof and gets stuck.
%%
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%%
"It is bad luck to be superstitious."
-- Andrew W. Mathis
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If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-- Roy Santoro
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Beckhap's Law:
Beauty times brains equals a constant.
%%
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.
%%
"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
%%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
It's on the other side.
%%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
1. Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
check.
2. A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
3. There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.
%%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-- Noelie Altito
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Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a
larger object.
%%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
-- Marguerite Emmons
%%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%%
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
to ..... to ........ uh ..............
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
%%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%%
"And that was the end of Grogan, the man who killed my father, raped and
murdered my sister, burned my ranch, shot my dog, and stole my Bible!"
-- from ROMANCING THE STONE
%%
"If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin'
it, even if they don't know what it means."
-- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
%%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
also a psychological interaction.
The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so

friendly.
The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.

-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%%
"You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."
%%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark.
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Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
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Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
%%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
worse in Cleveland.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
%%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
%%
For a good time, call (415) 642-9483
%%
#####################AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!#
You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
%%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).
%%
To be is to do.
-- I. Kant
To do is to be.
-- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
-- F. Flinstone
%%
God is Dead
-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
-- God
Nietzsche is God
-- The Dead
%%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%%
Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
%%
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
%%
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
how many?
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Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
%%
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
%%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
%%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts.
%%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.
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If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
Heads.
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears.
%%
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"

%%
You're at the end of the road again.
%%
"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."
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
"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?"
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
"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."
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
"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!"
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
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"
%%
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
%%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
%%
I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
%%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
%%
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _#a-squared cos 2(phi)!
%%
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
The system, you see,
Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
%%
This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need,
please use the program "________########randchar". This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%%
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.
Wow! wow! wow!
I speak severely to my boy,

And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! wow! wow!

%%
"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
%%
Il brilgue: les t^#oves libricilleux
Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^#im'#es sont les gougebosquex,
Et le m^#omerade horgrave.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-m"#umsige Burggoven
Dir mohmen R"#ath ausgraben.
%%
"I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't--
till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean à nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
%%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,

And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.

%%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency.
-- the Peter Principle
%%
Pohl's law:
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what ____####does exist. Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way ...
%%
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
you will look forward to the trip.
%%
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
%%
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%%
When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%%
HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
-- Walt Kelley
%%
Look out! Behind you!################################
%%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
%%
Dentist: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
%%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%%
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 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.
%%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
%%
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
"Murphy was an optimist."
%%
Boling's postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%%
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
%%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
%%
Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%%
Scott's second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
equation.
%%
Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle's Third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries:
1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%%
Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
makes it worse.
%%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
The Course of Progress:

Most things get steadily worse.
The Path of Progress:

A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%%
Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%%
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.
%%
Ehrman's Commentary:
1. Things will get worse before they get better.
2. Who said things would get better?
%%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.
%%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
some useful work done.
%%
Brooks' Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.
%%
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
want to use it.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.
%%
Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary:
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
%%
Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.
%%
Johnson's First Law:
When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
number and significance of any persons watching it.
%%
Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
Lowery's Law:
If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
%%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%%
Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
Jenkinson's Law:
It won't work.
%%
Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
disposed of.
Corollaries:
1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%%
Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
statistical methods.
%%
Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the
organism will do as it damn well pleases.
%%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
out.
%%
Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or
expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Meskimen's Law:
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
do it over.
%%
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.
%%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
themselves.
%%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
%%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%%
Jone's Law:
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
to blame it on.
%%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
bathroom.
%%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.
%%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
removed.
%%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.
%%
Boob's Law:
You always find something in the last place you look.
%%
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
%%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
should have gotten.
%%
Miksch's Law:
If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Law of Communications:
The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
area of misunderstanding.
%%
Harris's Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S Truman
%%
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%%
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).
%%
Second Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.
%%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%%
Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%%
Gray's Law of Programming:
`_#n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
time as `_#n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:

`_#n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_#n' trivial tasks.
%%
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety
percent.
%%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%%
Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
%%
Paul's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.
%%
Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%%
Weinberg's Principle:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
%%
Barth's Distinction:
There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
types, and those who don't.
%%
Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when
he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3)
a better looking and richer male friend.
%%
Hartley's Second Law:
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%%
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
%%
Parker's Law:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%%
Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%%
Katz' Law:
Man and nations will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
%%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
another drink.
%%
The Kennedy Constant:
Don't get mad -- get even.
%%
Canada Bill Jones' Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Supplement:
A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%%
Jone's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
on his back, you've got something.
%%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%%
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
be out of a job.
%%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
%%
"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
-- Mark Twain
%%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
-- Mark Twain
%%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
-- Mark Twain
%%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
-- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%%
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering
voice.
"No," Said Gandalf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,

Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
%%
"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved"
-- Mark Twain
%%
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
-- Mark Twain
%%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
-- Mark Twain
%%
"... all the modern inconveniences ..."
-- Mark Twain
%%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly
%%
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
-- William Gilbert
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
cork makes when it is popped.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
can never hope to acquire it.
%%
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
-- Tom Leher
%%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
-- Tom Leher
%%
The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
-- Su Tung-p'o
%%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smith
%%
we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentle
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
%%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
-- A. E. Housman
%%
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 ...
%%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
%%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
-- Ralph Emerson
%%
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue,
a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to
the contrary, nohow.
%%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%%
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
as it is to invent. (R. Emerson)"
-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
(whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
[to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
%%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
%%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%%
"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
-- Samuel Foote
%%
Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1. If it should exist, it doesn't.
2. If it does exist, it's out of date.
3. Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
%%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
equipment ruined.
%%
Boren's Laws:
1. When in charge, ponder.
2. When in trouble, delegate.
3. When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%%
Rudin's Law:
If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will
do it every time.
%%
Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%%
Hacker's Law:
The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%%
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
-- Frederick Winsor
%%
Vail's Second Axiom:
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
amount of work already completed.
%%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.
%%
"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
the only ashtray."
%%
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
Must be a pacifist.
What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
-- Arlo Guthrie
%%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
-- Howard Kandel
%%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
people.
%%
Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly
thrust into somebody's pocket.
%%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
-- Henrick Ibsen
%%
Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery...
by leaving it out.
%%
Yield to Temptation... it may not pass your way again.
%%
I like work...
I can sit and watch it for hours.
%%
Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%%
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%%
Crime does not pay... as well as politics.
-- A. E. Newman
%%
Keep your Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now... try to get something DONE!
%%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Magpie: A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
%%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday....
-- Walt Kelly,
%%
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
%%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he
says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
will be right.
-- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
%%
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
haven't what they want that they don't want it.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
%%
Receiving a million dollars tax-free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
%%
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:
1. They all had moderate appetites.

2. They all came from middle class homes
3. All but two of them were dead.
%%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
Did you ever try buying then without money?
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with
a tempest of words.
%%
"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
-- W. C. Fields
%%
Fats Loves Madelyn!
%%
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
-- W. C. Fields
%%
A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five time eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
%%
Who's on first?
%%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
-- Mark Twain
%%
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.
%%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
-- Art Hoppe
%%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%%
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
%%
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
%%
"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...."
%%
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
THEORY
Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
And I wish I'd never met him.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
And I wish he were in Asia.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"#el;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;

Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me R'#ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor Nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies

At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,

Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,

Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,

And I get me another man!
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Rumania.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:

Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:

Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:

Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%%
The Abrams' Principle:
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%%
"He's just a politician trying to save both his faces...."
%%
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
%%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known
as Wheels.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%%
Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%%
"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous."
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
-- Mae West
%%
Famous last words:
%%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%%
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
%%
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.
%%
Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not
well enough to lend to.
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
%%
Adore: To venerate expectantly.
%%
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
%%
Alone: In bad company.
%%
Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a
left.
%%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%%
Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already
sufficiently slippery.
%%
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
%%
Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather
we are having.
%%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.
But to our modern married fair,

Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%%
Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
%%
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
%%
Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think.
%%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption
from the cares of office.
%%
Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
%%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
%%
Critic: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
%%
Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed.
%%
Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side
it is buttered on.
%%
Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
%%
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
%%
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
%%
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
%%
Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%%
Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
%%
Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
%%
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
%%
Hippogriff: 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.
%%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy ...
%%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%%
Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
%%
... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
%%
Incumbent: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
%%
Interpreter: 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.
%%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
-- Disraeli
%%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger
%%
Please take note:
%%
"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
-- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
-- Alfred Kahn
%%
gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and
also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular 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
%%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%%
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
%%
United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.
Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the

world.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.
%%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
tellers?
%%
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%%
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser. The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caeser really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down.
%%
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.
%%
Did you know ...
That no one ever reads these things?

%%
Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
From "The Thirteen Clocks"
%%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard
-- Prof. Steiner
%%
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
%%
"Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..."
-- "The Begatting of a President"
%%
...But among the children of the Great Society there were
those whose skins were black. And lo! Their portion was niggardly,
and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat....
Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and
they called him King. And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let my
people go to the front of the bus."
But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all
deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass. When ye shall prove
yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea, verily, like
unto a snowball in Hell."
-- "The Begatting of a President"
%%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
%%
$3,000,000
%%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
%%
77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme

--- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9) the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates
--- --- (8) to nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
Nine in the second place means:

The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
Six in the third place means:

In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
%%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
%%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%%
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
%%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
%%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%%
Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S Audit! Just type
in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:
Name #
%%
You might have mail
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
%%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
take a bath....
%%
"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
eyes...."
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
%%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%%
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
"What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
whistles?"
I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
gave up.
"A herring," said my father.
"A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
"So hang it there."
"But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
"Paint it."
"But a herring isn't wet."
"If its just painted its still wet."
"But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
doesn't whistle!!"
"Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
hard."
-- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
%%
"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
-- Yiddish saying
%%
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?"
%%
On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"

%%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
-- W. C. Fields
%%
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
%%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
%%
Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change.
%%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%%
Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic
tickets.
%%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
thing he tells you.
%%
Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon.
%%
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
%%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
%%
Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
%%
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
%%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
%%
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
%%
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%%
Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
%%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%%
Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
%%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%%
Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%%
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
%%
Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
%%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%%
Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
%%
You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior
executive.
%%
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%%
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%%
Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer crashes.
%%
Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
%%
Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
a new town.
%%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow!
%%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%%
You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry.
%%
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
%%
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your
nails.
%%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
they charge fifteen cents for them.
%%
Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?
%%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
-- Jerome Lettvin
%%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
writing.
-- R. Geis
%%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
-- D. J. Hicks
%%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
%%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
%%
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
totally worthless.
%%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
%%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
%%
Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike office water cooler.
%%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%%
A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
%%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%%
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
%%
Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
%%
Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
%%
Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
%%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%%
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
%%
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%%
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live
in eucalyptus trees.
%%
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
%%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
%%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
%%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
%%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
Avoid him. He's a Commie.
%%
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, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"

%%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%%
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%%
Vote anarchist.
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%%
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
%%
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
%%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.
%%
Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
%%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
for a dial tone.
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
Condense soup, not books!
%%
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
%%
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersey.
%%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%%
Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of
Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%%
"All flesh is grass."
-- Isaiah
Smoke a friend today.
%%
"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
%%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%%
Chicken Little was right.
%%
"Qvid me anxivs svm?"
%%
"Hackito ergo sum."
%%
"PVNT!"
%%
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
%%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%%
Cleveland still lives. God ____####must be dead.
%%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%%
Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra! Ra! Ra!
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
%%
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger hands.
%%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%%
Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"
%%
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
%%
A diva who specializes in risqu'#e arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
%%
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvor Hardin
%%
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."
%%
"There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor."
%%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%%
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
%%
Down with categorical imperative!
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%%
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
%%
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
%%
Familiarity breeds attempt.
%%
Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
bomb.
%%
Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
%%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
%%
Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
%%
Honorable: 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."
%%
Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
%%
God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days
and then pulled an all-nighter.
%%
God is a polytheist.
%%
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
%%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
"Diet."
%%
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca, and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
%%
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
to work.
%%
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
%%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
-- R. Geis
%%
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
%%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind
%%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%%
There was a young poet named Dan,
Whose poetry never would scan.
When told this was so,
He said, "Yes, I know.
It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can."
%%
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
%%
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
%%
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth...."
%%
"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's.
%%
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
%%
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
%%
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the mobius strip;
The strip revolved,
The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
%%
... And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man
-- A. E. Housman
%%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
Oh, dear, where can the matter be

When it's converted to energy?
There is a slight loss of parity.
Johnny's so long at the fair.
%%
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.

If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
%%
IBM had a PL/I,
Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
It was a total loss.
%%
System/3! System/3!
See how it runs! See how it runs!
Its monitor loses so totally!
It runs all its programs in RPG!
It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
%%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%%
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
%%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!
100 blocks of crud on the disk,

100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk! ...
%%
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrave.
"Beware the software rot, my son!

The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
%%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
%%
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
%%
"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place."
-- IEEE Grid newsmagazine
%%
A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive
%%
Accident: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
%%
Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats.
%%
Accuracy: The vice of being right.
%%
"Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing."
%%
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
%%
Adult: One old enough to know better.
%%
Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
-- La Rouchefoucauld
%%
Afternoon: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted
the morning.
%%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce
%%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy
%%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
to decadence without touching civilization.
-- John O'Hara
%%
Antonym: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
%%
Ass: The masculine of "lass".
%%
Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
pedestrians.
%%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
%%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
-- Don Quinn
%%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Boy: A noise with dirt on it.
%%
Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
as afterward.
%%
California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
-- Fred Allen
%%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
%%
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
%%
Cigarette: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of
tobacco in between.
%%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
-- Herbert Prochnow
%%
"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
elsewhere."
%%
Collaboration: A literary partnership based on the false assumption
that the other fellow can spell.
%%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conversation: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his
breath is called the listener.
%%
"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont."
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to
eat.
-- John McNulty
%%
Cynic: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
%%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-- Senator Soaper
%%
Die: To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a
fur coat.
%%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks
%%
Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a
mistake when you make it again.
-- F. P. Jones
%%
"It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
hour!"
-- Macy's
%%
Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
-- Maxwell Smart
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%%
There was a young lady from Hyde
Who ate a green apple and died.
While her lover lamented
The apple fermented
And made cider inside her inside.
%%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
-- Bert Whitney
%%
Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%%
Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%%
Naeser's Law:
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.
%%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If
the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the
bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
exceed all expectations.
-- Reverend Chichester
%%
The Third Law of Photography:
If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
the dark leaks out.
%%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
it wasn't worth doing.
%%
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows
what is going on.
This person must be fired.

%%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
%%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing.
%%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
%%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%%
DeVries's Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
hits the paper.
%%
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%%
Finagle's Creed:
Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
once.
2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
points.
%%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
reject the proposal.
%%
Jones's First Law:
Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
importance of their original contribution.
%%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.
%%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.
%%
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
other.
%%
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity.
%%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
Corollary:
Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
except study for that instructor's course.
%%
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
Corollary:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
live.
%%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
%%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
$19.95.
%%
Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.
%%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
remind them of someone else.
2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will
be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool
of yourself in person.
%%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or
it won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary
Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
Superiority is recessive.
%%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%%
Ducharm's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
%%
A Law of Computer Programming:
Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
will find the programmers cannot write in English.
%%
Turnaucka's Law:
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.
%%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
committee -- that will do them in.
%%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
%%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
%%
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
%%
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?
%%
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
-- John Ciardi
%%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
by the number of people in the group.
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%%
Ingrate: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.
%%
Justice: A decision in your favor.
%%
Kin: An affliction of the blood.
%%
Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered
to date.
%%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
%%
Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.
%%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
Menu: A list of dishes of which the restaurant has just run out.
%%
"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune."
%%
Noncombatant: A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
-- Anatole France
%%
BLISS is ignorance.
%%
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

%%
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.
%%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together....
-- Carl Zwanzig
%%
Xerox does it again and again and again and....
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
%%
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
%%
"All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane."
%%
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce."
-- Winston Churchill
%%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
-- Hilaire Belloc
%%
The three laws of thermodynamics:
The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break
even.
The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
%%
Famous last words:
1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
2) "You and what army?"
3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
a cop."
%%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
in kernel as it is in user!
%%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before

the light comes on.
%%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie
a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and
impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over
again. People think you are stupid.
%%
PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by
the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your associates and
people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack confidence and
you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible things to small
animals.
%%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You are
quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are not very
nice.
%%
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and
work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed.
You are a Communist.
%%
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you
are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much for too
little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for committing
incest.
%%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's problems. They
think you are a sucker. You are always putting things off. That's why
you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare recipients are
Cancer people.
%%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are pushy. Most
Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike honest criticism.
Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieves.
%%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus drivers.
%%
LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality. If
you are a man, you are more than likely gay. Chances for employment
and monetary gains are excellent. Most Libra women are prostitutes.
All Libra people die of Venereal disease.
%%
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will achieve the
pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. Most Scorpio
people are murdered.
%%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to
rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority of Sagittarians are
drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at you a great deal.
%%
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do much of
anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
%%
Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb in
San Francisco?
A: Both of them.
%%
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
-- Herb Caen
%%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%%
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an
architect."
The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%%
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
%%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-- Mark Twain
"Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
%%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his
decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
%%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
Eng. 130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point
on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's
earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%.
%%
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
-- Walt Kelly
%%
Laetrile is the pits.
%%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
%%
There's no future in time travel.
%%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.
%%
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.
%%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%%
"Really?? What a coincidence---I'm shallow too!!"
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
-- Bruce Leverett
"Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
three friends. If they're ok, you're it.
%%
Support Mental Health, or I'll kill you.
%%
We're all Bozos on this bus.
-- The Firesign Theatre
%%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
%%
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.
%%
USER n.: A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%%
Worst Month of the Year: February. February has only 28 days in it,
which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying for three
full days you don't get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%%
Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also the
worst vegetable of next year.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black. Simply remove all the
little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will
now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black.
According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%%
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing: August. The lines are the
shortest, though.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%%
There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene
But she started absorbin'
A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.
%%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts.
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88.
%%
"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
-- Bill Hoest
%%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
Californians trying to share the experience.
%%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
have poured on a waffle....
%%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
hope I don't get run over again.
%%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%%
Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out of it alive.
%%
Forgetfulness: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for
their destitution of conscience.
%%
Absentee: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
himself from the sphere of exaction.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
"In short, _#N is Richardian if, and only if, _#N is not Richardian."
%%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%%
Absent: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%%
Brain, v.: [as in "to brain"] To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to
dispel a source of error in an opponent.
%%
Truthful: Dumb and illiterate.
%%
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
-- Gigo
%%
Corrupt: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!

Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
-- Mark Twain
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
-- Henry Kissinger
%%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
--Oscar Wilde
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
%%
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
-- Woody Allen.
%%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh
%%
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%%
JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
by Mark Isaak
Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL

character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
"Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
"I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
"I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
"Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window ...
%%
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
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
%%
FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
the little hand is on the ....
%%
Only God can make random selections.
%%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

%%
Kinkler's First Law:
Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law:

All the easy problems have been solved.
%%
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
-- Bertold Brecht
%%
"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
-- Bertold Brecht
%%
Matrimony isn't a word. It's a sentence.
%%
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of
the way.
%%
University: Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...
%%
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None: "We'll document it in the manual."
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None: "The user can work it out."
%%
William Safire's Rules for Writers:
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never

be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to
agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
viable alternatives.
%%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss.
%%
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
Let others think his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese.
%%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
Go 'way! You're bothering me!
%%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%%
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"
%%
There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
this?
Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___###you
can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
-- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
%%
An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
"Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
%%
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound

than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
"Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow ...
Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
think not, my friend, I think not.
%%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders"
Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech

at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish
saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth
though; why would he lie about a thing like that?
%%
Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle,
as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
"I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.

Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
"Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are ____####very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
goyish. Lime soda is ____####very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them ..."

%%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________########somebody has to
buy
retail."
%%
Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference
between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
the the difference between life and death.
You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
%%
A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
"No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
"But the collar is up around my ears!"
"It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
little more ... that's it."
"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
%%
Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
"This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
spits in the sergeants face.
"Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
%%
Shamus: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be
bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
he's nobody!"
%%
"I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
-- Paul McCracken
%%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maughm
%%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words
%%
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore's dying words
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%%
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was
written and another for which it wasn't.
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how ___###not to. So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those that describe
the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
with pictures.
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
works.
%%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free
variable."
%%
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
%%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.
%%
In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?
%%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
in God.
%%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%%
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
improve.
%%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%%
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
automation?
%%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%%
Be different: conform.
%%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
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.
%%
Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
market.
If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.

Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.

%%
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
%%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
too.

%%
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
%%
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
%%
"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
%%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
%%
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets."
-- The Brigader, from Dr. Who
%%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
Support your right to bare arms!
%%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
-- Alan Perlis
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
[Confound those who have said our remarks before us.]
-- Aelius Donatus
%%
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
-- Voltaire
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire
%%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, "H.M.S. Pinafore"
%%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
%%
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
%%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%%
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
%%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%%
"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer
%%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has
already happened.
%%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun
%%
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right
through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
%%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%%
"Grub first, then ethics."
-- Bertolt Brecht
%%
"I drink to make other people interesting."
-- George Jean Nathan
%%
DETERIORATA
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,

And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three lefts do.
Wherever possible, put people on `HOLD'.
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
You are a fluke of the universe ...

You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
Is laughing behind your back.
-- National Lampoon
%%
I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But ...
"Is that all?" asked Alice.

"That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."

%%
"Pascal is not a high-level language."
-- Steven Feiner
%%
E Pluribus Unix
%%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%%
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
more important to do.
%%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
%%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young
%%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%%
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
-- J. Paul Getty
%%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
down.
%%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
-- Gloria Steinem
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Pogo
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell
%%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
-- Russell Long
%%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
%%
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy
%%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
-- Earl Wilson
%%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
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.
%%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
%%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
-- Richard Nixon
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it

would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
%%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
%%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or

to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
Sevenoaks
%%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:
"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
because it is impossible."
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of

philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).

%%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%%
SOFTWARE -- formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
%%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
-- Art Linkletter
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
-- Frank Zappa
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the
world put together.
-- Sir Peter Medawar
%%
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%%
Flon's Law:
There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%%
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#21): July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%%
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood."
-- Alexander Haig
%%
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life,
you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
to go.
%%
"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."
-- Jeff Berner
%%
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
%%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%%
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain
%%
When in doubt, book 'em.
-- Steve McGarret, Hawaii Five-O
%%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
`fortune'. Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before
you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%%
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 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.
%%
SEMINARS: From `semi' and àrse', hence, any half-assed discussion.
%%
POLITICIAN: From the Greek `poly' ("many") and the French `tete'
("head" or "face," as in `tete-a-tete': head to head or face to face).
Hence `polytetien', a person of two or more faces.
-- Martin Pitt
%%
CALIFORNIA: From Latin `calor', meaning "heat" (as in English `calorie'
or Spanish `caliente'); and `fornia', for "sexual intercourse" or
"fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
-- Ed Moran
%%
ETYMOLOGY: Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations
that were hard for the public to believe. The term ètymology' was
formed from the Latin ètus' ("eaten"), the root `mal' ("bad"), and
`logy' ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to
swallow."
-- Mike Kellen
%%
Another Glitch in the Call
------- ------ -- --- ----
(Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)
We don't need no indirection

We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?
Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
Chorus:
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
%%
Armadillo: to provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%%
Micro Credo:
Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%%
Bumper sticker:
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
manufacture."
%%
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
%%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

%%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____#####there. They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Serocki's Stricture:
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%%
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
respect their good judgement.
%%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
that the system works.
%%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked.
%%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
it today you can do it again tomorrow.
%%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%%
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he
grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
%%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.
%%
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge it.
%%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%%
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
%%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
%%
Politics is like coaching a football team. you have to be smart enough
to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
%%
Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
%%
History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
%%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
another chance later on.
%%
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.
%%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
%%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
just how busy they are.
%%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not a
fence.
%%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, when discarded will last forever... and a $7,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
%%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
%%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
%%
Behold the warranty... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
away.
%%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
back.
%%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh
paint.
%%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
crack in your sidewalk?
%%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls... if thou art in the
bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%%
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
%%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything... a good reason and
the real reason.
%%
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%%
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
%%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.
%%
X-rated movies are all alike... the only thing they leave to the
imagination is the plot.
%%
People usually get what's coming to them... unless it's been mailed.
%%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
%%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else --
unless it is an enemy.
-- A. Einstein
%%
There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the universe
is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely
inexplicable."
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- "Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"

%%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional
objects....
%%
"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%%
"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope."
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%%
A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
"If what?" asked the composer.
"If... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
%%
"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him
out again, it would be a calamity."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
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, Ìs 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."
%%
"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
%%
"MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
%%
Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
it!"
%%
"Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
-- Samuel Johnson
%%
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
-- Mark Twain
%%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli
%%
Leibowitz's Rule:
When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
of your eyes.
%%
Langsam's Laws:
1) Everything depends.
2) Nothing is always.
3) Everything is sometimes.
%%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
distributed.
%%
Meader's Law:
Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
everyone you know, only more so.
%%
Fourth Law of Revision:
It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for
you.
%%
Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
bound to occur.
%%
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
work.
%%
Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the
question back at him.
%%
Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%%
Rule of Creative Research:
1) Never draw what you can copy.
2) Never copy what you can trace.
3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%%
Barach's Rule:
An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
physician.
%%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,

"I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
Made it pointless to think any more."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
Do you really think this is quite fair?"
"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,

"But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
And to stop me it's now far too late."
%%
"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."
%%
"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!"
%%
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!

%%
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.
-- R. A. Lafferty
%%
"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies."
%%
"One planet is all you get."
%%
"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they
don't."
-- Dagwood Bumstead
%%
"If you have to hate, hate gently."
%%
Elevators smell different to midgets.
%%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%%
Air is water with holes in it.
%%
"Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it."
%%
"Heisenberg may have slept here."
%%
"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
%%
The Roman Rule
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
one who is doing it.
%%
Lackland's Laws:
1. Never be first.
2. Never be last.
3. Never volunteer for anything
%%
Tussman's Law:
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%%
Oliver's Law:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
it.
%%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
held to discuss it.
%%
Baruch's Observation:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
corner of the workshop.
Corollary:
On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
your toes.
%%
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.
%%
Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
%%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%%
Rule of the Great:
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%%
Lieberman's Law:
Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%%
Goldenstern's Rules:
1. Always hire a rich attorney.
2. Never buy from a rich salesman.
%%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross references.
%%
Brook's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
Murphy was an optimist.
%%
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
%%
If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
%%
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
%%
"Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
like you...."
--- Gilda Radner
%%
The trouble with a kitten is that
When it grows up, it's always a cat
-- Ogden Nash.
%%
"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical."
-- Jon Carroll
%%
Love's Drug
My love is like an iron wand

That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium
That I take before me bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch
That I drink when I be dry;
And I shall love thee still my dear,
Until my wife is wise.
%%
"He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is...."
%%
Absence makes the heart go wander.
%%
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
%%
Taxes, n.: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can
get an extension.
%%
Concept, n.: Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more
than $25,000.
%%
Boss, n.: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle
Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that
boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
ornamental stud."
%%
Decisionmaker, n.: The person in your office who was unable to form a
task force before the music stopped.
%%
Expense Accounts, n.: Corporate food stamps.
%%
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.
%%
[1] Alexander the Great was a great general.
[2] Great generals are forewarned.
[3] Forewarned is forearmed.
[4] Four is an even number.
[5] Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
[6] The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.

%%
1. Everything depends.
2. Nothing is always.
3. Everything is sometimes.
%%
101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
1. Scarecrow for centipedes
2. Dead cat brush
3. Hair barrettes
4. Cleats
5. Self-piercing earrings
6. Fungus trellis
7. False eyelashes
8. Prosthetic dog claws
.
.
.
99. Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
100. Killer velcro
101. Currency
%%
186,282 miles per second:
It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!

%%
A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it
adds up to be real money.
-- Everett McKinley Dirksen
%%
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
%%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject.
%%
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%%
A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work
by being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt
%%
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any
price.
%%
A new koan:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.

If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
It is an ice cream koan.

%%
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
%%
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald
%%
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-- O'Henry
%%
A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by
its author.
-- S. C. Johnson
%%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%%
Alex Haley was adopted!
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
All things are possible except skiing thru a revolving door.
%%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%%
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
is always polite to traffic cops.
%%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%%
Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
1. None. (Moses didn't have an ark).

2. Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
3. I don't know.
4. Who cares?
5. 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
6. There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
Papyrus Books).
%%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop
%%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
sell it.
%%
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
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.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- A. Clarke
%%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%%
Any woman is a volume if one knows how to read her.
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publilius Syrus
%%
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.
%%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
%%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
%%
At least I thought I was dancing, till somebody stepped on my hand.
-- J. B. White
%%
Bureaucrat: A politician who has tenure.
%%
Bagdikian's Observation:
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion"
on a ukelele.
%%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
by governors.
%%
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
%%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-- Leonard Brandwein
%%
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it."
-- Donald Knuth
%%
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%%
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone
Ranger have handled this?"
%%
But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
-- S. J. Gould [Wide Hats and Narrow Minds]
%%
"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a
kludge, after all, but not enough K's, not enough ROM's, not enough
RAM's, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I
explained yet about the bytes?"
%%
By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
completely overwhelm you.
%%
Cold: When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
%%
Cold: When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
pockets.
%%
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
theory.
%%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb
%%
Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
out of it?
Jaka: Ugh!
Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
-- Cerebus [#6, "The Secret"]

%%
Chism's Law of Completion:
The amount of time required to complete a government project is
precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
%%
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
good for dandruff.
-- Peter de Vries
%%
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
%%
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with
nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
%%
Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents
for postage and 30 cents for storage.
-- Gerald Regan [Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post]
%%
DELETE A FORTUNE!
Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
`fortune' with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
gets expunged.
%%
Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
%%
Dear Miss Manners:
Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
your face.
Gentle Reader:
Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
your face ...
%%
"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
%%
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
-- E. B. White
%%
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
%%
Disc space -- the final frontier!
%%
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
%%
Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
%%
Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
%%
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you
nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
%%
Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
%%
/Earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
%%
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
%%
Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
-- Ronald Reagan [famous movie star]
%%
Eisenhower was very nice,
Nixon was his only vice.
-- C. Degen
%%
Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
-- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
%%
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
%%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
-- Woody Allen
%%
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
%%
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
-- Don Vonada
%%
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett
%%
Everything you know is wrong!
%%
Excessive login messages are a sure sign of senility.
%%
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
ones.
%%
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
%%
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
%%
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
-- Olivier
%%
Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only 2 cents a day.
%%
Faith, n: That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be
untrue.
%%
Fakir, n: A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
%%
Famous last words:
1. Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
2. Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
3. What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
4. We won't need reservations.
5. It's always sunny there this time of the year.
6. Don't worry, it's not loaded.
7. They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
%%
Flugg's Law:
When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
%%
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
ì' 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.
%%
"For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with
computers altogether?"
-- Jehan Shuman
%%
For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
-- Justin Richardson.
%%
Fresco's Discovery:
If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
%%
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
-- Swinburne
%%
Genius, n.: A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
"bright".
%%
Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
%%
Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall
on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
-- Adventures of Asterix.
%%
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.
%%
Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
%%
Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
to stand, and I will drain the world.
%%
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
person a car.
%%
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
%%
Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.
%%
Grabel's Law:
2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
%%
Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
%%
... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.
%%
Hanson's Treatment of Time:
There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
before Saturday.
%%
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
of ever behaving "normally."
-- Hunter S. Thompson [Fear and Loathing '72]
%%
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
-- John Mason Brown [drama critic]
%%
He thought he saw an albatross
That fluttered 'round the lamp.
He looked again and saw it was
A penny postage stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said,
"The nights are rather damp."
%%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%%
Here I sit, broken-hearted,
All logged in, but work unstarted.
First net.this and net.that,
And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
The boss comes by, and I play the game,

Then I turn back to net.flame.
Is there a cure (I need your views),
For someone trapped in net.news?
I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,

'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
%%
He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
%%
Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs,
then they'd be algorithms.
%%
Hlade's Law:
If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
will find an easier way to do it.
%%
Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
-- Rex Reed
%%
Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
-- F. M. Hubbard
%%
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
%%
Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
%%
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
%%
How doth the VAX's C compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.
How patiently it seems to run

And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.
%%
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a uretheral
catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
Nobel Prize.
%%
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
%%
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers
%%
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
-- Marvin Minsky
%%
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman
%%
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
%%
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%%
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 generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-- Mae West
%%
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?

My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
-- Pete Seeger
%%
I hate quotations.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal
%%
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
%%
I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
-- Art Leo
%%
"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."
%%
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
always worked for me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
green, baggy skin.
%%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
-- Ted Turner
%%
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
of it.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%%
If a group of _#N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _#N-1
passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
-- T. Cheatham
%%
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
-- Paul Beatty
%%
If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
conclusion.
-- William Baumol
%%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%%
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 the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The
college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by
opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
%%
If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
%%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
-- Graham Summer
%%
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Maslow
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%%
I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
She's traversed me seven times before.
And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
N-ary the tree I am, I am,
N-ary the tree I am.
%%
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
die in.
-- George McGovern
%%
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and
make it better.
%%
In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
Dead.
-- Egyptian Book of the Dead
%%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%%
Innovation is hard to schedule.
-- Dan Fylstra
%%
It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your
parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all
to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will
have to act like mature human beings ...
-- Playboy, January 1983
%%
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.
-- R. Serling
%%
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
damn thing over and over.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
%%
It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
-- Elizabeth Carpenter
%%
It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a
pit.
%%
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
%%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%%
It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
icepacks.
-- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%%
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.
%%
It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
-- Alexander Korda
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams [An Orthographic Lament]
%%
Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune
to bullets.
-- The Brigader [Dr. Who]
%%
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
"Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack."
%%
Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
%%
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
%%
Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
%%
Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
-- Henry N. Camp
%%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of
fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
a sick sense of humor.
%%
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
before.
%%
LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
%%
Larkinson's Law:
All laws are basically false.
%%
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
%%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%%
"Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove."
%%
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.
%%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up
to.
%%
MOSQUITO:
The state bird of New Jersey.
-- Andy Warhol
%%
Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
-- W. C. Fields
%%
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
%%
Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
simple yes or no answer.
%%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
receipt.
%%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
-- R. S. Barton
%%
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%%
Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams
%%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
%%
Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum
and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they
are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all
the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert
Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
black.
-- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
%%
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.
%%
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
%%
Murphy's Discovepy:
Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and
everything will be all right." And what happens? Nine months
latgr, you're in trouble!
%%
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited
love.
-- Charlie Brown
%%
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're
guessing.
%%
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
-- Plato
%%
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
%%
Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
up.
%%
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
%%
Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
%%
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
-- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
%%
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.
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 of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at
least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts
are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but
when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
-- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
%%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%%
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.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were
you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
%%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams
%%
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
-- Roy L. Ash [ex-president Litton Industries]
%%
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
%%
Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
%%
Ozman's Laws:
1. If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
won't.
2. The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
make.
3. People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
4. Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
%%
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
-- E. W. Dijkstra
%%
Pascal Users:
To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half
speed.
%%
Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
it.
%%
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.
%%
Pittsburgh Driver's Test
7: The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail

light but a steady left tail light. This means
(a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
to call the problem to the driver's attention.
(b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
(c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
(d) the driver is from out of town.
The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
countries to signal turns.
%%
Pittsburgh Driver's Test
8: Pedestrians are
(a) irrelevant.
(b) communists.
(c) a nuisance.
(d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
%%
Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any bazingas'
until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.' Once punched
out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
and such.
-- N. Meyrowitz
%%
Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
%%
President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the
vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
-- The Washington Post
%%
[Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
to see him work.
%%
Power, n: The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
%%
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
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
lightbulb-assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
%%
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.
%%
Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
A: To stamp out forest fires.
Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?

A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
%%
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
spring up in the middle of the machine room.
%%
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
%%
SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
-- Ken Thompson
%%
Stupid: Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
%%
"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
%%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
-- M. C. Reed.
%%
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
%%
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell
%%
Someone will try to honk your nose today.
%%
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already
paid may disregard this fortune).
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17 -- SARTRE
Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an

extremely unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose;
they just are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own
functions. SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are
no fun at parties.
%%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
%%
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%%
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
-- T. Lehrer
%%
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
-- Bill Murray
%%
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,

Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of
Corporate Planning."
%%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
time.
-- Merrick Furst
%%
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 chief cause of problems is solutions.
%%
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 debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
%%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
-- L. Ogborn
%%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
-- Abbie Hoffman
%%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
chance.
%%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
-- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
%%
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain
%%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train.
%%
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
-- Henry Kissinger
%%
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 moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%%
The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and
robbers there will be.
-- Lao Tsu
%%
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
%%
The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
is right.
%%
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 nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%%
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
80-column card.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%%
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
`social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%%
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
and take a rest.
%%
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 pm.
%%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Bohr
%%
The optimum committee has no members.
-- Norman Augustine
%%
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
-- Dizzy Dean
%%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%%
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
to erase it.
-- Glaser and Way
%%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
%%
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
%%
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 revolution will not be televised.
%%
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
-- Emerson
%%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
vice versa.
%%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
-- E. W. Dijkstra
%%
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
%%
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
the answers.
%%
There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
the two had the following record: The Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the
transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
telephone business?
%%
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
-- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour
%%
There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
%%
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
-- Mark Twain
%%
There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
started debating who should be allowed to stay.
The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley
said, "Look! We're not solving anything like this! The only fair
thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
votes.
%%
There was a young man who said "God,
I find it exceedingly odd,
That the willow oak tree
Continues to be,
When there's no one about in the Quad."
"Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd,

For I'm always about in the Quad;
And that's why the tree,
Continues to be,"
Signed "Yours faithfully, God."
%%
[In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
___###see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
rolled back.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%%
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.
-- Mark Twain
%%
They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results
About a month before. Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it
But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL.
He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this
To pass where they had failed For it must ever be
And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest
The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me.
My notion was to start again

Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
To see if it would run.
%%
Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city
nativity scene removed:
"They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men
and a virgin in the whole organization."
%%
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
paper that were unhappy.
-- Douglas Adams
%%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
-- Aristotle
%%
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
%%
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy
%%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
-- Thomas Edison
%%
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant
intelligence.
-- Henrik Tikkanen
%%
Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no
good.
%%
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
%%
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
specification is that it should run noiselessly.
%%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%%
Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
hammer or get a splinter in it.
%%
Unnamed Law:
If it happens, it must be possible.
%%
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
%%
Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
-- S. C. Johnson
%%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
that old underwear you own.
%%
"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past
year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley
reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue
moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the
entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the
sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made

good copy."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"

%%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%%
WARNING:
Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of
hair on your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of
your favorite war.
%%
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
-- Charles Edward Montague
%%
Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
-- John F. Kennedy
%%
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
-- Whole Earth Catalog
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%%
We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
no matter how self-seeking.
-- F. G. Withington
%%
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
%%
Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,

But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
-- Core Dumped Blues
%%
Westheimer's Discovery:
A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
couple of hours in the library.
%%
Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%%
What I tell you three times is true.
%%
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
%%
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
%%
What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
entrance?
%%
What is a magician but a practising theorist?
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
%%
What makes the Universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%%
What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes,
women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
-- Susan Gordon
%%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent
bagel.
%%
Whatever became of eternal truth?
%%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon
%%
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
thing," it's the money.
-- Kim Hubbard
%%
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
-- Robert Heinlein
%%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%%
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
%%
When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
-- Laurie Anderson
%%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
results.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%%
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine
%%
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
-- The Wall Street Journal
%%
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
-- Mark Twain
%%
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
correctness never does.
%%
Whistler's Law:
You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
charge.
%%
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?
%%
Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils
as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding
hundred dollar bills."
-- Herb Caen
%%
What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
in his footsteps?
%%
"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 can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
supercomputers.
-- Steven Feiner
%%
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
beach.
%%
To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
%%
A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
%%
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
-- J. Finnegan, USC.
%%
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
to use either.
-- Mark Twain
%%
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
money is.
-- Robespierre
%%
"Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
get more wax!!"
%%
"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
nominating"
-- Boss Tweed
%%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
your wife will give you for free.
%%
Accidents cause History.
If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
... if forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
%%
America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
changed its name to "America".
%%
Some points to remember [about animals]:
1. Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants,

rhinoceri, hippopotamuses;
2. Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
front of your clothes;
3. Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or
dogs you have just kicked.
%%
The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once
tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
%%
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
%%
In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you
stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
enough to punch you.
%%
Economics: Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
Galbraith ...
%%
Gold: A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It is
mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
hasn't done anything to them.
%%
The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog: The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of
Billericay displays, in courtship, his single prickle and does
impressions of Holiday Inn desk clerks. Since this means him standing
motionless for enormous periods of time he is often eaten in full
display by The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog Eater.
%%
The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the
Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a
large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress'
it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the
apparatus for a spectator sport.
The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for

castrating pigs during Sunday service.
%%
When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____####that.
%%
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
%%
The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
take it too seriously.
%%
British Israelites: The British Israelites believe the white
Anglo-Saxons of Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of
Israel deported by Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721
B.C. ... They further believe that the future can be foretold by the
measurements of the Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big
and yellow and in the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you
sleep with your head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all
your teeth.
%%
Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The
white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with
laughter, singing
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the chimney smokes
Pope Goestheveezl
The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of
laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for
hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
Hans Neizant B"#ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"#oln in 1653.
%%
Encyclopedia Salesmen: Invite them all in. Nip out the back door.
Phone the police and tell them your house is being burgled.
%%
If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
you've got in the house.
%%
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
right?"
-- MacNelley, "Shoe"
%%
A new dramatist of the absurd
Has a voice that will shortly be heard.
I learn from my spies
He's about to devise
An unprintable three-letter word.
%%
"Don't say yes until I finish talking."
-- Darryl F. Zanuck
%%
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
longer."
-- Henry Kissinger
%%
Bug, n.: An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
PROGRAMMER was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
wrote the program.
Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
-- Ray Simard
%%
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
%%
Goto, n.: A programming tool that exists to allow structured
programmers to complain about unstructured programmers.
-- Ray Simard
%%
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 in in the others.
-- Ray Simard
%%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
%%
Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
the time to take the dirt out of them?
%%
A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
She found a good way
To combine work and play:
She sells C shells by the seashore.
%%
You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll
be dead.
%%
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the girrafe and the other to fill the bathtub with
brightly colored machine tools.
%%
Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
(depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
tadpole".
Bite the wax tadpole.
There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
-- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle

%%
Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 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 existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two: One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself
symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a
netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin
cosmos of nothingness.
%%
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
when I was young!"
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen!"
-- Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

%%
If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
the page number.
%%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%%
Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
%%
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
of another color, and by the [above] lemma [All horses are the same
color], that does not exist.
%%
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the
existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god
coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)
%%
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
planning to reduce the time it takes.
%%
"His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice"
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%%
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on
Some people's n'oeuvres.
-- Warren Knox
%%
'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
throughout our place of residence,
Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
possessors of this potential, including that
species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
imminent visitation from an eccentric
philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations
is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
%%
Nobody here but us folk heroes....
-- Doonesbury
%%
Greener's Law:
Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
%%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%%
Self Test for Paranoia:
You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
your own fault.
%%
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.
%%
"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence."
-- Time Bandits
%%
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
me!"
-- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
%%
'Twas the Night before Crisis
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
%%
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
%%
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they
like.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that
I have never made one.
-- James Gordon Bennett
%%
She's genuinely bogus.
%%
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 ...
%%
Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
the little hammers strike.
Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless

you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
%%
Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
the "nog" comes from.
To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine, gin, and, if they are in
season, eggs...
%%
Police: Good evening, are you the host?
Host: No.
Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host: About the drugs?
Police: No.
Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police: No, the noise.
Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
The neighbors?
Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
ask the host to quiet things down?
Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
down.
%%
"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
computers?"
%%
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

%%
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.
%%
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any
of these things, which is just as well because there was no place to
plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin
Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a serious
electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the same
force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely that
he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny
saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job running
the post office.

%%
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names
have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise
Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many
important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani
discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds
of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the
frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog,
which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in
the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can
take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of
metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a
normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone.

%%
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: The electric company sends
electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part)
sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very
few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In
fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
increases.
%%
Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your
chairs.
%%
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%%
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
"The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with the
Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money and go
to a mall.

%%
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO RULES.
You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you want in any
direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking lot when my
car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a squat man
with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out and
explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault, his
reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was neither.
This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking lots.

%%
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.

%%
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to
love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about a
young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop quickly.

%%
-- Gifts for Men --
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional ice
hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three
of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if
he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him
("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?"). So he
has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years
without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to
like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More

than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
%%
-- Gifts for Children --
This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can
Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it might
help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe me,
you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child who is
convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.

%%
We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from the
fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging you to
purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right in his
bowl full of jelly.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"

%%
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year? Just
picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
children open their old-fashioned presents.
Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
and I get this cretin TOP?"
Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."

%%
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because nobody
ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes they
receive and send them back to the original givers the next year; some
fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then pound
some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear safety
glasses.

%%
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
developed cancer.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"

%%
Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
come back.
Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
although their insurance rates went way up.

%%
You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.

%%
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.

%%
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good

grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause of
slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
-- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"

%%
(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
To code the impossible code,

To bring up a virgin machine,
To pop out of endless recursion,
To grok what appears on the screen,
To right the unrightable bug,

To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
To mount the unmountable magtape,
To stop the unstoppable crash!
%%
"We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
%%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%%
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
%%
You should emulate your heroes, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.
%%
You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"

%%
All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around
you. Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making
average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents,
insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll
realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins
in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real
successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John,
Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They
all dress funny -- and they all succeed. Are you catching on?
-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"

%%
Binary: Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
%%
Bipolar: Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
New York
%%
Bubble Memory: a derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
%%
Bug: small living things that small living boys throw on small living
girls.
%%
Character Density: the number of very weird people in the office.
%%
Command: Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
%%
Real Time: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs
there and then.
%%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
%%
ADA: Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
awareness."
%%
Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%%
Information center: A room staffed by professional computer people
whose job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you
require.
%%
Meeting: An assembly of people coming together to decide what person
or department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%%
Office automation: The use of computers to improve efficiency by
removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee.
%%
On-line: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.
%%
Pascal: A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
his grave if he knew about it.
%%
The C Programming Language: A language which combines the flexibility
of assembly language with the power of assembly language.
%%
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
%%
How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
%%
Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.
%%
You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
%%
"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
-- Victor Borge
%%
She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Reagan can't _#a_#c_#t either
%%
I wouldn't mind dying -- it's that business of having to stay dead that
scares the shit out of me.
-- R. Geis
%%
In the beginning was the DEMO Project. And the Project was
without form. And darkness was upon the staff members thereof. So
they spake unto their Division Head, saying, "It is a crock of shit,
and it stinks."
And the Division Head spake unto his Department Head, saying,
"It is a crock of excrement and none may abide the odor thereof." Now,
the Department Head spake unto his Directorate Head, saying, "It is a
container of excrement, and is very strong, such that none may abide
before it." And it came to pass that the Directorate Head spake unto
the Assistant Technical Director, saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer
and none may abide by its strength."
And the assistant Technical Director spake thus unto the

Technical Director, saying, "It containeth that which aids growth and
it is very strong." And, Lo, the Technical Director spake then unto
the Captain, saying, "The powerful new Project will help promote the
growth of the Laboratories."
And the Captain looked down upon the Project, and He saw that
it was Good!
%%
"When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that
can't happen."
-- Richard Nixon as a boy (on the Teapot Dome scandal)
%%
Avoid fruits, nuts, flakes, and vegetables -- after all, you are what
you eat.
%%
"White House carpenters have reworked the master bedroom, remodeling it
so that Ronnie can sleep with his head in the hall. That way, by the
time he wakes up, somebody will have already shined his hair."
%%
He wasn't much of an actor, he wasn't much of a Governor -- Hell, they
_#H_#A_#D to make him President of the United States. It's the only
job he's qualified for!
-- Michael Cain
%%
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never
learned to walk.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%%
Conservative: One who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
-- Leo C. Rosten
%%
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for
the first time.
-- Alfred E. Wiggam
%%
Sure, Reagan has promised to take senility tests. But what if he
forgets?
%%
"How do you like the new America? We've cut the fat out of the
government, and more recently the heart and brain (the backbone was
gone some time ago). All we seem to have left now is muscle. We'll be
lucky to escape with our skins!"
%%
A person who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely
called a liberal.
%%
If Reagan is the answer, it must have been a VERY silly question.
%%
Ronald Reagan: America's favorite placebo.
%%
Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion.
-- Robert Burton
%%
"A witty saying proves nothing."
-- Voltaire
%%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%%
"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
--English Professor, Ohio University
%%
"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
--English Professor
%%
"Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
is from the wrong kind of tree."
--Professor W.
%%
"As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500
programs -- a process that traditionally requires some debugging."
--- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
computer system.
%%
"When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
-- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war
%%
"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
-- Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
%%
"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense."
%%
Aquadextrous, adj.: Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet
on and off with your toes.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
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.
%%
Cinemuck, n.: The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate
which covers the floors of movie theaters.
%%
Furbling, v.: Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or
bank even when you are the only person in line.
%%
Genderplex, n.: The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is
unable to determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
tortoises).
%%
Idiot Box, n.: The part of the envelope that tells a person where to
place the stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
%%
Krogt, n.: (chemical symbol: Kr) The metallic silver coating found on
fast-food game cards.
%%
Lactomangulation, n.: Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk
carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
%%
Slurm, n.: The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar
when it sits in the dish too long.
%%
Snacktrek, n.: The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of
constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new
will have materialized.
%%
Yinkel, n.: A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no
one will notice.
%%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%%
Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars:
For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return
around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours
poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you
can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it
to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his
money.
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%%
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.
%%
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
%%
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
if it rains?"
%%
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
just like Richard Nixon."
-- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
%%
Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
primitive umpire.
What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
%%
Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDED AND
SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH HE KNOBS,
RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%%
Besides the device, the box should contain:
* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
cable.
IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your

spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
why."
WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.

-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%%
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
loop?
%%
"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up."
-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
%%
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
%%
Yoda
by Weird Al Yankovic
(sung to the tune of "Lola" by the Kinks)
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah

Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I've been around but I ain't never seen

A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
%%
"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
%%
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
-- Bob "Mountain" Beck
%%
Attributed to Ray Bradbury:
"A horrible little boy came up to me and said, `You know in your book
_The_Martian_Chronicles_?' I said, `Yes?' He said, `You know where you
talk about Deimos rising in the East?' I said, `Yes?' He said `No.'
-- So I hit him."
%%
The Hydrogen Dog and the Cobalt Cat
Side by side in the Armory sat.
Nobody thought about fusion or fission,
Everyone spoke of their peacetime mission,
Till somebody came and opened the door.
There they were, in a neutron fog,
The Codrogen Cat and the Hybalt Dog;
They mushroomed up with a terrible roar--
And Nobody Never was there -- Nomore.
%%
Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,

But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
-- Core Dumped Blues
%%
Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.
%%
So much time, so little to do. Wait. Reverse that.
-- Willie Wonka
%%
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
-- Willie Wonka
%%
Q: How many members of the Impossible Missions Force does it take to screw in
a light bulb?
A: Five. While Cinnamon creates a diversion by wearing a skimpy dress, I use

a tiny narcotic dart to knock out the fascist dictator and remove his body.
Rollin, wearing a plastic mask, masquerades as the dictator long enough for
Barney to sneak up to the next floor, drill a hole down into the light
fixture, remove the burned-out bulb, and replace it with a new super-high-
wattage model of his own design. Meanwhile, Willie has driven up to the
door in a laundry truck. Just before Rollin's real identity is revealed,
we escape to the laundry truck, drive to the airfield, and return to the
United States.
%%
So tell the world that I'm not me I'm someone else and he's gone with me too.
%%
"Makes you go where you can't go
Makes you want what you can't have
Desire...."
%%
You're in a twisty maze of sendmail rules, all obscure.
%%
I disclaim anything in Mixolydian mode.
%%
Never string ethernet in the presence of a kitten.
%%
"Awww, there's a *good* guru..."
-- John Lennon to Maharishi, related by Donovan
%%
If you're not making mistakes, you're not doing anything.
%%
It takes love over gold, and mind over matter,
To do what you do that you must--
When the things that you hold can fall and be shattered
Or run through your fingers like dust. . .
%%
I have a very firm grasp on reality; I can reach out and strangle it any
time I want....
-- Carl Greenberg
%%
I always have fun because I'm out of my mind.
-- Zippy
%%
The United States Army;
194 years of proud service,
unhampered by progress.
%%
"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no
wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred."
--The Mahabharata.
%%
The problem with political jokes is that they get elected.
%%
What is vice today may be virtue tomorrow.
%%
Let me play with it first and I'll tell you what it is later.
- Miles Davis
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
- Cheech Marin
%%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
- Joey Ramone
%%
Life is wasted on the living.
- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
%%
Youth is wasted on the young.
- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
You will soon meet a tall dark handsome stranger.
%%
!xob XINEX siht edisni kcuts m'I ,pleH
%%
I like the future, I'm in it.
%%
If you don't watch it, you're going to catch something.
%%
To be, or what?
- Sylvester Stallone
%%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll
invite himself over for dinner.
%%
I waited and waited, and when nobody called, I knew it was from you.
%%
A stitch in time saves nine.
%%
There's a bug somewhere in your code.
%%
Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee.
[A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.]
- Dutch Proverb
%%
Faire de la bonne cuisine demande un certain temps. Si on vous fait attendre,
c'est pour mieux vous servir, et vous plaire.
[Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better,
and to please you.]
Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans
[Also, what we're going to be telling our customers]
%%
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
- OVID
%%
He'll sit here and he'll say, "Do this! Do that!" And nothing will happen.
- Harry S. Truman, on presidential power
%%
Practice is the best of all instructors.
- Publilius
%%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
- Poor Richard's Almanac
%%
The author should gaze at Noah, and ... learn, as they did in the Ark, to crowd
a great deal of matter into a very small compass.
- Sydney, Smith, Edinburgh Review
%%
The hypothesis:
Amid a wash of paper, a small number of documents become the critical pivots
around which every project's management revolves. These are the manager's
chief personal tools.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
- Swift
%%
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly
and try another. But above all, try something.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%%
Things are always at their best in the beginning.
- Pascal
%%
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are
built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong.
Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then
it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems
to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.
- C. S. Lewis
%%
A good workman is known by his tools.
%%
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
- Shakespeare, king Henry IV, Part I
%%
None love the bearer of bad news.
- Sophocles
%%
How does a project get to be a year late? ... One day at a time.
- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
- Goethe
%%
The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time
to come. One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just
within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most
intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex
craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best
adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common
sense, and ... humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
%%
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
%%
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
%%
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% of a project
takes 90% of the time.
%%
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the
creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue
in practice. disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it.
- G. L. Glegg, The Design of Design
%%
"GOTO statement considered harmful"
- E. W. Dijkstra, title to a letter in CACM 11, 3 (March, 1968)
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
The emperor has no clothes.
%%
Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian.
%%
The clothes have no emperor.
- C. A. Hoare, about Ada.
%%
There will always be survivors.
- Robert Heinlen
%%
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-
stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the
imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and
rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
%%
Mind your own business, Mr. Spock. I'm sick of your halfbreed interference.
%%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone somewhere is having fun.
%%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Samuel Johnson
%%
A gift of flowers will soon be made to you.
%%
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist and too rich to be a communist.
%%
A man forgives only when he is in the wrong.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
University: A modern school where football is taught.
%%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
%%
We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did.
- Rufus T. Firefly, in "Duck Soup"
%%
It's not often that you get so much class entertainment outside your bedroom
window or outside your bedroom, period.
- Groucho Marx
%%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Been Transferred Lately?
%%
Beware of a tall dark man with a spoon up his nose.
%%
Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
%%
Angular momentum makes the world go round.
%%
Charity: a thing that begins at home and usually stays there.
%%
Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!
%%
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
%%
Don't eat yellow snow. - Frank Zappa
%%
Don't force it, use a bigger hammer.
%%
Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
%%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%%
Everything you know is wrong. - The Firesign Theater
%%
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
%%
Finagle's Law: The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.
%%
Flee at once, all is discovered.
%%
Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.
%%
God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
%%
Hackers of the world, unite!
%%
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
%%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%%
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
%%
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
%%
I will never lie to you.
%%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%%
If God had wanted man to go around nude, He would have given him bigger hands.
%%
If God had wanted man to fly, He would have given him airline tickets.
%%
Ignore previous fortune.
%%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%%
Laugh, and the world ignores you. Crying doesn't help either.
%%
Long life is in store for you.
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love is in the offing. Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%%
Many are called, few are chosen. Fewer still get to do the choosing.
%%
Many are called, few volunteer.
%%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of
Casablanca.
%%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world really isn't out to get you.
%%
Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%%
Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.
%%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%%
Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crud.
%%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
%%
The Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%%
The decision doesn't have to be logical, it is unanimous.
%%
The time is right to make new friends.
%%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
%%
To think is human, to compute, divine.
%%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%%
Try the Moo Shu Pork. It is especially good today.
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
%%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
%%
You'll be called to a post requiring ability in handling groups of people.
%%
Your boss is thinking about you.
%%
If something's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.
%%
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more months
of work to do.
- C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
%%
We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the
wisdom to make the right choice.
- Woody Allen
%%
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their children.
I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
- Woody Allen
%%
Nothing is done until nothing is done.
%%
The fourth law of thermodynamics:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
%%
There are no saints, only unrecognized villains.
%%
There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.
%%
It may soon be time for you to look for a new line of work.
%%
Your project will be late.
%%
The CS Sage says: Seek new employment prior to the imposition of performance
penalties on your project.
%%
You will see the light at the end of the tunnel; unfortunately, it will be
the light of an oncoming freight train.
%%
What is virtue today may be vice tomorrow.
%%
"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold,
persistent experimentation."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
%%
Money talks...but all mine keeps saying is "goodbye"
%%
"No, it's 'Blessed are the meek.' I think that's nice, 'cause really they have
a hell of a time." - someone in the crowd in "The Life of Brian"
%%
"I think he said 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'" "Nonsense, he was obviously
referring to all manufacturers of dairy products."
- two people in the crowd in "The Life of Brian"
%%
How do you make a small fortune in Texas oil?
Start with a big one.

%%
What can a pigeon do that a west Texas oil man can't do anymore?
A pigeon can still make a deposit on a new Mercedes.
%%
How many lesbians does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and another to reflect on how much more gratifying
it was than a man.
%%
How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and one to mix the drinks.
%%
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but it takes a really long time and the light bulb has to want
to change.
%%
How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb?
Four. One to change the bulb and three to share the experience.
%%
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. It's a hardware problem.
%%
To program anything that is programmable is obsession.
%%
Ill play with it first and tell you what it is later.
- Miles Davis
%%
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 (Philip Glass: Einstein On The Beach)
%%
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
- Hassan I Sabbah
Bullshit.
- Karl
%%
Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
- Bo Diddley
%%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr
%%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
- Southern California Oracle
%%
The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to
correlate all its contents.
- H. P. Lovecraft
%%
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
- Ken Kesey
%%
Its not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves.
- Little Richard
%%
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
- Mae West
%%
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
- Sigmund Freud
%%
When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried
before.
- Mae West
%%
Her life was saved by rock and roll.
- Lou Reed
%%
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital
intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
"Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeopardy I would never had lit
one." - Maxim of the Hells Angels
%%
It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
- Willie Sutton
%%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
- Billy Rose
%%
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
- Karl Marx
If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of

it ... it would have been much better.
- Karl Marx's Mother
(Sysop's note: I think this is a joke. Can anyone verify it?)

%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the
largest shopping center in the world?
- Richard M. Nixon
%%
When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
- Al Capone
%%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
- Emmett Grogan
%%
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.
- Spiro Agnew
%%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
- Ronald Reagan
%%
If you've seen one Grand Canyon, you've seen them all.
- a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang
%%
He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
- South African Saying
%%
You can't underestimate the power of fear.
- Tricia Nixon
%%
The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
- Wavy Gravy
%%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
- Buckminster Fuller
%%
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
- Hellen Keller
%%
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
- Allen Ginsberg
%%
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat
somebody.
- Richard M. Nixon
%%
Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
- Groucho Marx
%%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
- Abbie Hoffman
%%
Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old.
- Pink Floyd
%%
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
- Peter Drucker
%%
How can you be two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
- Firesign Theater
%%
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
We are what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut, JR
%%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -
but that's the way to bet.
- Damon Runyon
%%
I could prove God statistically.
- George Gallup
%%
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
- Albert Einstein
%%
Real wealth can only increase.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
Anyone can hate. It costs to love.
- John Williamson
%%
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
or becomes true.
- John Lilly
%%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
- Graffiti
%%
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
- Albert Einstein
%%
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
- Tallulah Bankhead
%%
A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms.
- George Wald
%%
Don't lose
Your head
To gain a minute
You need your head
Your brains are in it.
- Burma Shave
%%
It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been
always thus.
- Dean Lattimer
%%
Burnt Sienna. That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
- Ken Weaver
%%
We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish.
- John Culkin
%%
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from
you.
%%
Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the
truth.
%%
Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.
%%
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%%
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
%%
Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the
wrong direction.
%%
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm me.
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the
target.
%%
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
- Alan Coult
%%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
- Stanley Garn
%%
The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
- Father Robert F. Capon
%%
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
men in national government too.
- Richard M. Nixon
%%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy
%%
"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
- Lewis Carroll
%%
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
- Edward Dahlberg
%%
To know the world one must construct it.
- Cesare Pavese
%%
Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak.
- Bullwinkle Moose
%%
The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
- Tenessee Williams
%%
An object never serves the same function as its image- or its name.
- Rene Magritte
%%
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
- Kingfish
%%
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
- M. C. Escher
%%
Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences:
If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.
%%
Laws of Computer Programming
(1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
(2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.
(3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
(4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
(5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
(6) The value of a program is proportional to the
weight of its output.
(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
programmer who must maintain it.
(8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in
English, and you will find that programmers cannot write
in English.
- SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2
%%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
- Calvin Coolidge
%%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
- Paul Erlich
%%
If A equals success, then the formula is:
A= X + Y + Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
- Albert Einstein
%%
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either.
- Joseph Fischer
%%
Fourth Law of Thermodymanics:
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.
- David Ellis
%%
Frouds Law:
A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing
first.
%%
Fullers Law of Cosmic Irreversibility:
1 Pot T == 1 Pot P
1 Pot P != 1 Pot T
- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
- J. Paul Getty
%%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs
pounding.
- Abraham Kaplan
%%
The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems.
- Roger Levian
%%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance
under which you can be booked.
- Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp)
%%
Thoreau's Law:
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good,
you should run for your life.
%%
Vique's Law:
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%%
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
- Gerald Weinberg (sysop's note: bull)
%%
Zimmerman's Law of Complaints:
Nobody notices when things go right.
%%
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
- Confucius
%%
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
Book of Proverbs
%%
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
- Mark Twain
%%
The unnatural, that too is natural.
- Goethe
%%
I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure.
- Graffiti
%%
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
He hasn't one redeeming vice.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
- Graffiti
%%
(To Walter Cronkite):
"Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number
of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running
up and down a street"
- Neil Armstrong
%%
"You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], "But I forgave
you that doubt. You doubted your own self and failed to believe
in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also. But
you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities
of Human Nature. THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for
you to enter the Promised Land."
- The Midrash
%%
" 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability."
- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty
without any proof."
- Ashley Montague
%%
Birth, copulation and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks;
Birth, copulation and death.
- T. S. Elliot, Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
%%
"Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood."
- D. B. Hudson
%%
"Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take
all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover."
- Bill Gates, Pres., Microsoft, Inc.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee...
that will do them in.
%%
Civilization Law #1:
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
one can do without thinking about them.
%%
Ketterling's Law:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
%%
"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B',
'A' is most likely a scoundrel."
- H. L. Mencken
%%
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded
on the Christian Religion."
- George Washington
%%
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has
been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride
and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
- James Madison
%%
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations."
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately."
- Benjamin Franklin
%%
"Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried."
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained
control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles."
- Pat Paulsen
%%
"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself."
- Albert Camus
%%
"Six years for possession of a cigarette? I got six months for
possession of a deadly weapon!"
- cartoon by S. Harris
%%
The Swartzberg Test:
The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
%%
"There is no choice before us. Either we must succeed in providing
the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries
civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements.
We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward
striving of the human race."
- Alfred North Whitehead
%%
"My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of
human systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly
vulnerable.... We should be reluctant to turn back upon the
frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we
do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether
or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to
space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought
us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and
understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny
our history, our capabilities."
- James A. Michener
%%
"What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go
to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to
build railroads across a continent? In independent thought
about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it
takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view,
the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American
life. First, a base of technology must exist from which to do
the thing to be done. Second, a period of national uneasiness
about America's place in the scheme of human activities must
exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally,
an articulate and wise leader must sense these first three
conditions and put forth with words and action the great thing
to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans to do what
needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions....
The Thomas Jeffersons, the Teddy Roosevelts, the John Kennedys
appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which
they, and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us
onward and upward."
- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt, Sen., New Mexico
%%
"What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick!"
- Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian -
%%
"To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but not its programmer."
- Morris Kingston
%%
"I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more
of them who were paralyzed in the head."
- George Wallace
%%
"You don't have to explain something you never said."
- Calvin Coolidge
%%
"A little caution outflanks a large cavalry."
- Bismarck
%%
"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money."
- Everett Dirksen
%%
"The personal computer market is about the same size as the
total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the
size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total
worldwide sales of pantyhose."
- James Finke, Pres., Commodore Int'l Ltd.(1982)
%%
"I like a man who grins when he fights."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"There are a lot of lies going around... and half of them are true."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick
himself up and carry on...."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday."
- William Bragg
%%
"Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die."
- John W. Campbell
%%
"That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest."
- Thoreau
%%
Life is not one thing after another... it's the same damn thing over and over!
%%
The meek will inherit the Earth... the rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.
%%
Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone.
%%
There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
%%
Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.
%%
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe
you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it
to be sure.
%%
Sex is like snow... you never know how many inches you're going to get or how
long it will last.
%%
What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
%%
Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics.
%%
"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no
one else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Gyorgi
%%
"Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals."
- "Oh, Lucky Man"
%%
I really hate this damn machine,
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does just what I want,
But only what I tell it.
%%
"Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters;
united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels."
- Goya
%%
"Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon
the wall instead of using it."
- Gordon R. Dickson
%%
"Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor."
- Toynbee
%%
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
- Walt Kelly (in POGO)
%%
"You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are
now extinct."
- M. Somerset Maugham
%%
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
- Bert Lantz
%%
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a necessity."
- Oscar Wilde
%%
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire
%%
"IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique'
to destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the
ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT
OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all
this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor
approaches the pot, he falls into the pit."
- John C. Dvorak
%%
"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them."
- Heisenberg
%%
"It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
to my kind of fooling."
- R. Frost
%%
"Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!"
- Ben Jonson
%%
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
cometh out of man, in their sight.... Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread
therewith.
[Ezek. 4:12-15 (KJV)]
%%
I have stripped off my dress; must I put it on again? I have washed my feet;
must I soil them again?
When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred
within me [my bowels were moved for him (KJV)].
When I arose to open for my beloved, my hands dripped with myrrh; the liquid
myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt. With my own hands I
opened to my love, but my love had turned away and gone by; my heart sank when
he turned his back. I sought him but I did not find him, I called him but he
did not answer.
The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me; they struck me and
wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took away my cloak.
[Song of Solomon 5:3-7 (NEB)]
%%
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy
thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel
is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap
of wheat set about with lilies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
[Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
%%
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)]
%%
Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
than any flame.
[Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]
%%
But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to
thee, to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the
wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
[2 Kings 18:27 (KJV)]
%%
When Yahweh your god has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and
driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate
them. You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.
[Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
%%
I just thought of something funny... your mother.
- Cheech Marin
%%
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
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
%%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%%
Wherever you go... there you are.
- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
- Joey Ramone
%%
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 capable 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
%%
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
- Seneca
%%
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
%%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
%%
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
- Nicklaus Wirth
%%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
- Calvin Keegan
%%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
- Niels Bohr
%%
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact
mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
- Frank Zappa
%%
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
- Edward Thorp
%%
The main thing is the play itself. I swear that greed for money has nothing
to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
- Feodor Dostoevsky
%%
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
- Robert Bly
%%
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
- Alan Turing
%%
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
- Blaise Pascal
%%
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
- Freeman Dyson
%%
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 missile defense
systems. The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities. An unreliable
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
- C. A. R. Hoare
%%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did. In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%%
"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool --
programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
describe.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
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.
%%
...computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike. If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed. In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
They have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard. Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
- 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.
%%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
- Ellyn Mustard
%%
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
- Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
%%
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
- Brian Kernighan
%%
Perfection is achieved only on the point of collapse.
- C. N. Parkinson
%%
There you go man,
Keep as cool as you can.
It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
Keep on being free!
%%
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you'll be Gary, Indiana. - Jessie in the movie "Greaser's Palace"
%%
Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound. - Peanuts
%%
Police up your spare rounds and frags. Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
%%
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific."
-- Jane Wagner
%%
"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
%%
"Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives?"
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%%
"The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace."
-- Holly Near
%%
"No matter where you go, there you are..."
-- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.
%%
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN!
%%
"I'm growing older, but not up."
-- Jimmy Buffett
%%
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
%%
"I hate the itching. But I don't mind the swelling."
-- new buzz phrase, like "Where's the Beef?" that David Letterman's trying
to get everyone to start saying
%%
Your own mileage may vary.
%%
"Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again."
-- Marvin The Paranoid Android
%%
"Send lawyers, guns and money..."
-- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
%%
"I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
- H. L. Mencken
%%
"Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best." -- Frank Zappa
%%
I can't drive 55.
%%
"And they told us, what they wanted...
Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance." -- Kate Bush
%%
"In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not
there if you want to keep writing good code." - Karl
%%
Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.
%%
I can't drive 55.
I'm looking forward to not being able to drive 65, either.
%%
Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas. -Karl
%%
Sit on a happy face.
%%
"Can you program?" "Well, I'm literate, if that's what you mean!"
%%
No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer to qualified service personnel.
%%
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
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.)
%%
Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way
to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."
%%
The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of
pseudoscience. Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort
contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory. Because
of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
scientists must employ in their work.
-- Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
%%
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we
don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly
serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up
for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
Don't have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
%%
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%%
Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece. Their
work will be set back by having that test bed change under them. Of course it
must. But the changes need to be quantized. Then each user has periods of
productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change. This seems
to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
%%
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
%%
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it
is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize
the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of
architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were
threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.
The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write
the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more
than the schedule allowed.
The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare
the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be
well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Futhermore, if
the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs
for ten months.
To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program
team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would
also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He
was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
added a year to debugging time.
%%
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemporary
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
%%
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
-- Charles Galton Darwin
%%
Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as conscious
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
%%
"Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin."
-- Michael O'Donohugh
%%
...though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from
beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%%
"It's like deja vu all over again." -- Yogi Berra
%%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
%%
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked. "Begin at the beginning,"
the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
%%
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
To be awake is to be alive. -- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden"
%%
A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
never sure. Proverb
%%
You see but you do not observe.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
%%
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two. -- Seneca
%%
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb
to you till your life has illustrated it. -- John Keats
%%
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order
of space and time. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%%
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. -- Edmund Burke
%%
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
-- James J. Ling
%%
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
%%
Remember thee
Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
Hamlet, I : v : 95 William Shakespeare
%%
Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he
has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted
and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda
and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and
make him something less than a man.
-- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
%%
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance. -- James Bryant Conant
%%
You can observe a lot just by watching. -- Yogi Berra
%%
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit, I
see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by
electricity. -- Samuel F. B. Morse
%%
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." -- Alexander Graham Bell
%%
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
-- J. C. R. Licklider
%%
It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
-- B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal System",
Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980, pp. 7-20
%%
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
%%
Small is beautiful.
%%
...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
-- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
%%
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau
%%
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more efficient
would the current models be? If you have not already heard the analogy, the
answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75,
it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough
power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you were interested in
miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead.
-- Christopher Evans
%%
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
-- Robert Lucky
%%
Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
%%
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote
to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system. -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating
Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
%%
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
such machinery impracticable...
And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that

exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
%%
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?
"Well, the diagnostics say it's fine, buddy, so it's a software problem."
%%
"Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal."
- Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Uncompensated overtime? Just Say No.
%%
Decaffeinated coffee? Just Say No.
%%
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid."
- Martin Mull
%%
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
- David Letterman
%%
"Morality is one thing. Ratings are everything."
- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
%%
Live free or die.
%%
"...if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
this would be a better world." - Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%%
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read.
%%
"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977
%%
"All these black people are screwing up my democracy." - Ian Smith
%%
Use the Force, Luke.
%%
I've got a bad feeling about this.
%%
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
the Force.
- Darth Vader
%%
When I left you, I was but the pupil. Now, I am the master.
- Darth Vader
%%
"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"
%%
186,000 Miles per Second. It's not just a good idea. IT'S THE LAW.
%%
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
%%
Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
%%
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely,
if ever, do they forgive them.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
Single tasking: Just Say No.
%%
"Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world."
- The Beach Boys
%%
"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
seemed to come from Texas."
- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
%%
"I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
lifetime."
- Johnny Legend
%%
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
%%
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
- Hajime Karatsu
%%
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
%%
Memories of you remind me of you.
- Karl
%%
Life. Don't talk to me about life.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%%
The world is coming to an end--save your buffers!
%%
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
%%
It is your destiny.
- Darth Vader
%%
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
your side.
- Han Solo
%%
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
%%
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
"That's a known problem... don't worry about it."

%%
To be is to program.
%%
To program is to be.
%%
I program, therefore I am.
%%
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange
surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and
Fortran programs, for example.
- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
%%
"I am your density."
-- George McFly in "Back to the Future"
%%
"So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here."
-- Biff in "Back to the Future"
%%
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint."
-- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
%%
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
%%
"I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously."
- Doctor Graper
%%
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
%%
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
%%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
ears. I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
-- Steven Wright
%%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
-- Steven Wright
%%
You can't have everything... where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%%
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and
4 people died.
-- Steven Wright
%%
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
over? Well, that's how I feel all the time.
-- Steven Wright
%%
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and
the building started up. So I took it out for a drive. A cop pulled me over
for speeding. He asked me where I live... "Right here".
-- Steven Wright
%%
"Live or die, I'll make a million."
-- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth, Firesign Theater
%%
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
%%
There are bugs and then there are bugs. And then there are bugs.
- karl
%%
My computer can beat up your computer.
- karl
%%
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures
- karl
%%
Kill Ugly Radio
- Frank Zappa
%%
"Just Say No." - Nancy Reagan
"No." - Ronald Reagan

%%
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a
very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind
of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
good. And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful. Every newspaper
in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly
astronomy column? And I believe it is also the fault of the educational
system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that
may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
future.
%%
"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.
%%
I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial
intelligence?" I give the standard arguments--there are a lot of
places out there, and use the word *billions*, and so on. And then I
say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial
intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for
it. And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you really think?" I say,
"I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but what's your gut
feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to
reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
%%
Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
%%
If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
%%
It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
%%
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
preparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
new Consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
nature and all of creation.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman
%%
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
dangers that must not be underestimated. Practitioners must take into
account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being. The history
of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
%%
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability
more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction
with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
child.
%%
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
prepared.
- Louis Pasteur
%%
core error - bus dumped
%%
If imprinted foil seal under cap is broken or missing when purchased, do not
use.
%%
"Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you."
- A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution, Firesign Theater
%%
"Ahead warp factor 1"
- Captain Kirk
%%
Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.
"Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report. "A barrier of water

vapor! A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
A civilized race could not have stooped so low! A civilized race would not
have..."
It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.
- Startide Rising, by David Brin

%%
Harrison's Postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.
%%
Felson's Law:
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
many is research.
%%
...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it.
There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46
%%
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
- Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
%%
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
Unix: Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
-karl
%%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
- Joe Crowe
%%
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
%%
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
- Thomas Paine
%%
"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
%%
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
"...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect."
- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
"Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
"Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared
adventure and achievement to the society at large."
- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon
represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race. Even
if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this
task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the
goal. In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human
arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by
those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the
development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.
- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and
landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination
and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition,
and will that I do not see in any other undertaking. I think if we are
honest with ourselves, we must admit that we needed that impetus extremely
strongly. I sincerely believe that the space program, with its manned
landing on the moon, if wisely executed, will become the spearhead for a
broad front of courageous and energetic activities in all the fields of
endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out
except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead
can give.
- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of
productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly
appreciated goals. A lethargic world serves no cause well; a spirited world
working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and
the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied...to unparalleled
social accomplishment.
- Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while. Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself
to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon...
- Lyndon B. Johnson
%%
Life's the same, except for the shoes.
- The Cars
%%
Purple hum
Assorted cars
Laser lights, you bring
All to prove
You're on the move
and vanishing
- The Cars
%%
Could be you're crossing the fine line
A silly driver kind of...off the wall
You keep it cool when it's t-t-tight

...eyes wide open when you start to fall.
- The Cars
%%
Adapt. Enjoy. Survive.
%%
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
- Anonymous
%%
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
- Isaac Asimov
%%
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"
%%
"Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
Silly Putty."
- Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
%%
To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated
by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our
national security;
2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air
Force that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED represent
technological developments or principles beyond the range of
present-day scientific knowledge; and
3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized
as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.
- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from 1950
to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
%%
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only
in the God idea, not God Himself.
- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
%%
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
- Kahlil Gibran
%%
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
%%
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
- Voltaire
%%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss Bank.
- Woody Allen
%%
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both.
Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity
is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is
a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
- Norman Cousins
%%
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
- C. K. Chesterton
%%
...difference of opinion is advantagious 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"
%%
Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to
be solved.
- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??)
%%
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
our doubts serve to reassure us.
- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
%%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
%%
And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve? The judgement of God
upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of
criminal at the bar of justice.
- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
%%
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
become better people as a result of practicing it.
- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
%%
Imitation is the sincerest form of plagarism.
%%
"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"
- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11
%%
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.

%%
How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?
It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.

%%
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.
- Thomas Paine
%%
God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
- Roger Williams
%%
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
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 countenance 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 divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity.
- John Adams
%%
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could
never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
- Abraham Lincoln
%%
As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
- Benjamin Franklin
%%
I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the
missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
- Oliver North
%%
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute --
where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom
to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
people who might elect him.
- from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
September 12, 1960.
%%
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken
%%
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%%
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
%%
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
- Clarence Darrow
%%
We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
%%
...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
- George Jacob Holyoake
%%
"If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."
- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston
July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
%%
The meek are contesting the will.
%%
I'm sick of being trodden on! The Elder Gods say they can make me a man!
All it costs is my soul! I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!
- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
%%
On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins.
From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.
"...stupid creatures unworthy of the name `sophonts.' Foolish, pre-sentient
upspring of errant masters. We slip away from all your armed might, laughing
at your clumsiness! We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures.
And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us! What better
proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us! What better proof..."
The taunt went on. Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring
the artistry of it. These men are better than I'd thought. Their insults
are wordy and overblown, but they have talent. They deserve honorable, slow
deaths.
- David Brin, Startide Rising
%%
"I'm a mean green mother from outer space"
-- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
%%
Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer.
It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who
watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide
people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and
cruelty for that. On the other hand, I respect and envy the people
who get inspiration from their religions.
- Benjamin Spock
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
- Andy Finkel, computer guy
%%
Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.
%%
NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again.
- The Firesign Theater
%%
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical
vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.
%%
...this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
%%
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
- Ann Marion
%%
I know engineers. They love to change things.
- Dr. McCoy
%%
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
- John Lions (U. of Toronto (?))
%%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
%%
"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
States? Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
Here, there is no such mobility. If you have the slightest bit of intellectual
integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer
minds belong to the opposition."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
%%
"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is
bend a disk."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
%%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- Mark Twain
%%
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
- Ed Bluestone
%%
He's dead, Jim.
%%
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
- David Letterman
%%
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
- Al Capone
%%
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

%%
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
- Frank Zappa
%%
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm
sick and tired of being told that I am.
- Monty Python
%%
"There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."
-- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
%%
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
- T. K. Lawson
%%
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
- William Cowper
%%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
%%
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
%%
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
- John Keats
%%
Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.
%%
"Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.
In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket,

achieving an altitude of 41 feet. In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth.
In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
in Apollo 11."
-- Michael Collins
Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum
%%
Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the
peasantry." Don't lose what you've got. Don't change. Don't take a chance,
because you might end up starving to death. Play it safe. Buy just as much
as you need. Don't waste time.
When we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their
heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive. But when it comes down
to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in
something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
the game as it must be played.
- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988

%%
"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting"
--Stanley Sutton
%%
Weekends were made for programming.
- Karl
%%
"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.
%%
...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer,
Vol XII No. 2
%%
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
%%
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires
us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
contrary to habit...
- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
%%
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
%%
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
the person making the claim, not the critic. It is not the responsibility
of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
or colored lights never healed anyone. The skeptic's role is to point out
claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidence and to
provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...
- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
%%
"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."
- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
%%
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of
outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings that
contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have
argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic consciousness,"
and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.
Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only
atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
%%
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
%%
...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
%%
... The book is worth attention for only two reasons: (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
%%
e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data
you're seeing is genuine rather than somebody's made-up crap.
- karl
%%
Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
Shit Happens.
%%
My mother is a fish.
- William Faulkner
%%
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
%%
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives

of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which
is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is,
give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
powers in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
- Albert Einstein
%%
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
%%
Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
- Our Sunday Visitor, an American-Catholic newspaper, circa 1949
%%
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
%%
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries...
- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
%%
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
%%
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 infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
his ignorance. And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
- Voltaire
%%
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly --
that is the first law of nature.
- Voltaire
%%
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
- Voltaire
%%
I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us --
a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole
normal evolution of society.
- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
%%
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be.... The
natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience
only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
- Adam Smith
%%
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think
you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a
very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
crudeness.
- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
%%
However, on religious issues 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
%%
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's
suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's
nomination to the Supreme Court
%%
...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as
it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive.
As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the
same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword. My own belief in
God, then, is just that--a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians
are frustrated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
- Steve Allen, comedian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
%%
...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
- Sidney Hook
%%
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
- Winston Churchill
%%
We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...
we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.
- Jerry Falwell
%%
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
- George Orwell
%%
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and
has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The
problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
irrational -- the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer's mind.
- Steve Allen, comedian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
%%
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
- Fyodor Dostoevski
%%
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
prophet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual
concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.
But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
resources. If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
%%
The Messiah will come. There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
- Rabbi Meir Kahane
%%
The world is no nursery.
- Sigmund Freud
%%
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
%%
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known;
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
where the method of free inquiry has made its way. The "religious"
would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%%
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality... Whether this
educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-
democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance
not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
interests and activities of a society that is committed to the democratic
way of life.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
%%
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts
them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing
grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another...
Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every
moult is a step gained.
- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
%%
...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our
family, the Hominidae.
- Richard Leakey
%%
It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us
as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.
- Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species",
Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
%%
"Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature. It's a piss-poor
reptile and not very much of a bird."
- Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
studied the archeopteryz and found it "very much like people"
%%
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectual heritage--good teaching--than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
%%
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
%%
"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."
-- presumable misprint from the 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
%%
"Your attitude determines your attitude."
-- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
%%
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...
This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of

"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes. As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it? As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
%%
Thufir's a Harkonnen now.
%%
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
-- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language"
%%
"If you want to eat hippopotamus, you've got to pay the freight."
-- some IBM guy
%%
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time allotted it.
%%
Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time allotted it.
%%
It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and
failed.
- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
%%
"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension."
-- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited",
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
%%
"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products,
if they are built at all, are dogs!"
-- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
%%
"All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by
prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power. The swastika is
only one example of many in recent history."
-- American Bar Association task force on flag burning
%%
"The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to
sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
-- Anatole France
%%
"...as long as there is a Legion of super-Heroes, all else can surely
be made right."
-- Sensor Girl
%%
Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to Man.
%%
"I sat through it. Why shouldn't you?"
-- David Letterman, it a spot promoting one of his shows
%%
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense."
-- E. W. Dijkstra (1982)
%%
"Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be hackers."
-- Willie Nelson, with a little help from Bill Mathews
%%
"It's easier to get forgiveness than permission."
-- Walker Mangum (walker@ficc.uu.net)
%%
"It's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble, it's what we know that
ain't so."
-- Will Rogers
%%
"Escaping through the lily fields, I came across an empty space
It trembled and exploded, left a bus stop in its place..."
-- unknown
%%
"Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does
not know everyone else."
-- Julian Jaynes
%%
We should all remember when Burroughs was using virtual memory it was said to
be some kind of technical joke. But later, hah, it was said to be ok.
And it was because the word had come down from the mountain.
IBM had spoken and the world listened.
The world as it used to be.
Amen.
-- Fred Rump (fr@icdi10.UUCP)

%%
"Genuinely skillful use of obscenities is uniformly absent on the Internet."
-- Karl Kleinpaste
%%
"...skill such as yours is evidence of a misspent youth."
-- Herbert Spencer
%%
"One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a
stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier."
-- Gustave Flaubert (letter to Madame Louise Colet, August 12, 1846)
%%
"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original
in your work."
-- Gustave Flaubert
%%
"If one is going to steal, it is considered somewhat sporting to inform the
victims beforehand; for examples see any episodes of the BATMAN TV series."
-- Robert J Woodhead (trebor@biar.UUCP)
%%
"I HATE arbitrary limits, especially when they're small."
-- Stephen Savitzky
%%
"With friends like these, who need hallucinations?"
-- Buddy, "Night Court"
%%
0001 Have you ever used a computer?
0002 ... for more than 4 hours continuously?
0003 ... more than 8 hours?
-- from The Hacker Test, Version 1.0, by Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas
%%
"It just goes to show what you can do if you're a total psychotic."
-- Woody Allen
%%
"Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids."
-- Erma Brombeck
%%
"My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Flextime: Starting a 10+ hour day up to an hour early (on a regular,
scheduled basis with the approval of an immediate supervisor)."
-- A Controls "Volunteer"
%%
"Friends don't let friends run Xenix."
-- Stephen J. Friedl
%%
"Let me control a planet's oxygen supply, and I don't care who makes the laws."
-- Great Cthuhlu's Starry Wisdom Band (via Roger Leroux)
%%
"We have ways to make you scream."
-- Intel advertisement, in the June 1989 Doctor Dobbs Journal
%%
"I will contend that conceptual integrity is *the* most important consideration
in system design."
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%%
So where the sheer incompetence of politicians and generals used to
start wars, the sheer incompetence of us computer people has now put an
end to it. No mean feat. For centuries humanity has been looking for
the Weapon That Would End War Forever. We have found it. War has
ended, not with the bang of a bomb, but with the gentle whisper of
crashing software.
-- Gerard Stafleu (gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca)
%%
"Let's give discredit where discredit is due."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Look ma! Three arms!"
-- J. Eric Townsend (erict@flatline.UUCP)
%%
"If the bulk of American SF can be said to be written by robots, about
robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written
by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits."
-- Michael Moorcock
%%
"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is
writing a book."
-- Cicero
%%
"I guess you just have to design carefully when you get near the edge."
-- Hugh LaMaster (lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov)
%%
"Lab rats seem to have been bred for cancer hypersensitivity by the medical
establishment and the FDA. We are the kings and the rats taste our food."
-- James Salsman (jps@cat.cmu.edu)
%%
This is a serious lapse of taste and judgement but does not imply that they
are stupid, lazy, or incompetent. Indeed, their intelligence, diligence,
and competence in service to the x86 are all too depressingly obvious.
-- Henry Spencer (henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
%%
"I asked you not to have a spaz attack in tx.general, BUT NOOOOO!!!!"
-- Karl, via John Belushi
%%
I think most expert systems should be referred to as "that-guy-in-the-
corner-who-everyone-hates-but-can-answer-the-weirdest-questions systems".
Or more succinctly, "nerd systems".
-- Peter da Silva, peter@ficc.uu.net
%%
"He who flames improperly risks making an ash of himself!"
-- Jeff Klumpp (jdk@ficc.uu.net)
%%
"Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood. Blood debts
must be repaid in kind. The longer the delay, the greater the interest."
-- Chinese author Lu Xun, 1926
%%
"The United States has entered an anti-intellectual phase in its history,
perhaps most clearly seen in our virtually thought-free political life."
-- David Baltimore
%%
"Do not speak of what men deserve. For we each of us deserve everything,
every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead Kings, and we each
of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten
while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for
the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man
earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of *deserving*, of *earning*, and
you will begin to be able to think."
-- Odo, The Prison Letters (Ursula LeGuin, _The Dispossessed_)
---
"It has nothing to do with the size of Mr. Alnwick's company. We go after
companies large and small."
-- Rita Black, spokesperson for IBM, "Unix Today!", 5/29/89, page 51
%%
"The Book says BURN and DESTROY repent and redeem and revenge and deploy and
rumble thee forth to the land of the unbelieving scum 'cause they don't go
for what's in the Book and that makes 'em BAD."
-- Frank Zappa
%%
"some people get pissed
when you play with your mind
in a different way
than they play with theirs
these people are called ASSHOLES"
-- the jambi's
%%
"Big Brother is hallucinating."
-- Elizabeth D Zwicky (zwicky@cis.ohio-state.edu), title of a comp.risks article
%%
"When you're a child, you pledge allegiance to the flag. When you grow up,
you swear to uphold the Constitution. Compare and contrast to the
President's current actions."
-- Larry Wake (lkw@csun.edu)
%%
"L'extension des privileges des femmes est le principe general de tous progres
sociaux."
-- Charles Fourier, 1808
%%
Q. What do you call three lawyers up to their necks in quicksand?
A. Not enough quicksand.

%%
READ UNHAPPY - MAKNAM
-- LISP 1.5
%%
"There can be no offense where none is taken"
-- Japanese proverb
%%
Q. What's all wrinkled and hangs out your underwear?
A. Your mother.
%%
"To steal from one person is theft. To steal from many is taxation."
-- Daiell's Law (a take-off on Felson's Law)
%%
"Reliable software must kill people reliably."
-- Andy Mickel
%%
"And now that the legislators and the do-gooders have
so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society,
may they end up where they should have begun: may they
reject all systems, and try liberty..."
-- Frederic Bastiat
%%
"To steal from a thief is not theft. It is merely irony."
-- Zorro, while retrieving money taxed from Californians
%%
"That government is best which governs least."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"That government is best which governs not at all."
-- Henry David Thoreau
%%
"Liberty is the mother not the daughter of order."
-- Proudhon
%%
"Care to expound, or are you just going to leave us all with the
impression that you're merely an inarticulate asshole?"
-- Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard (jay@splut.conmicro.com)
"Lest I leave the wrong impression, I'm not inarticulate."

-- Walker Mangum (walker@ficc.uu.net)
%%
"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your
aim."
-- Santayana
%%
"Life is full of surprises when you're up th' stream of consciousness
without a paddle..."
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%%
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs, or Unix for everyone, but they work for me."
Jim Thompson (jthomp@central.sun.com), paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson
%%
"This one's got a lot more, uh, 640K that it can memorize."
-- CVN cable TV shopping channel
%%
"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they
should live next door and just visit now and then."
-- Katherine Hepburn
%%
"We're the weirdest monkeys ever."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Uh-oh. Atarians can't hold a candle to the insecurity of Mac owners. You
rankled Mac owners who feel the need defend yourself, please do so by flaming
in private. And don't start something you can't finish. I'm sure Apple's OS
for the 68000-based Macintoshs will support multitasking just as soon as Jean
Louis-Gasse invents it. In the meantime, do whatever you need to do to make
sure other systems that have advanced the state of personal computers don't
enter your peripheral vision. You'll be a lot happier, we'll be a lot happier.
--Chuck McManis (cmcmanis@sun.com)
%%
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
%%
"It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine some
of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very sharp,
probably not someone here on campus."
-- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, quoted in "The Technique,"
Georgia Tech's newspaper, after the computer worm hit the Internet
%%
Personally, should I ever form a globe spanning conglomerate,
I intend to do it fairly and without malice or dirty politics.
I hope you fellows don't make that too difficult a task;

I would have to have to have you all killed.
-- David Neal (abbadon@nuchat.uucp)
%%
The notion of ideas as infectious diseases is one to which most
authoritarian religions and governments subscribe, and they hold
massive "hygienic" burnings of the "viral DNA" behind the ideas.
Promulgators of these "diseased" ideas are called "carriers of
spiritual impurity" (to use one phrase now popular in China) and
attempts are made to prevent the spread of these diseases. This is a
naive and dangerous view of how ideas work and it is disturbing to see
it rationalized into Western pop psychology.
-- Tim Maroney (tim@toad.com)
%%
"Every institution I've ever been associated with has tried to screw me."
-- Stephen Wolfram
%%
"Fraternities have no SLACK, no matter how slack-jawed they may appear.
I taught elementary calculus here at the University of SLACK for several
years, and have observed these folks carefully.
Although some of them looked like they had SLACK, it's clear to me that
this was just the result of not getting enough sleep after the puking contest.
I mean, those guys don't watch enough television to have real SLACK."
-- William K Glunt (bud@ms.uky.edu)
%%
"I'll put an end to the idea that a woman's body belongs to her . . . the
practice of abortion shall be exterminated with a strong hand."
-- Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_
%%
When asked, "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United
States, then why do you live here?" Mencken replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"
%%
"Is it just me, or does there seem to be an inordinate number of lurkers
whose heads are imploding lately? Maybe all these alternative viewpoints
are too much for them to handle."
-- Trent Wohlschlaeger (jtw@wuee1.wustl.edu)
%%
"If projectile vomiting ever becomes an Olympic event, you'll do yourself
proud."
-- Hobson, "Arthur II"
%%
"Oh honey, this is just the beginning. Stick with me and we'll claw our way
to the top."
-- John Water's "Hairspray"
%%
"The script had been written by this legendary dead guy that we know and there
were about fifty-eleven-hundred pages of it. Of this eight words were
completely readable. These were "oranges" in the title and "Close the
curtains, Geoffrey, I'm amphibious", which was right at the end. To be
perfectly frank man, I wasn't even 100% sure about amphibious."
-- Waldo "D.R." Dobbs, "D.R. and Quinch go to Hollywood".
%%
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on
your computer."
-- stolen from Brian Gollum
%%
"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; yeah, right. To paraphrase, the net
finds its own uses for garbage."
-- Eric Hughes (hughes@math.berkeley.edu)
%%
"[Leslie Stahl was] a pussy compared to Rather."
-- George Bush
%%
"Failing to get them to do it your way might mean they're stupid, but it also
means you failed to get them to do it your way."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest."
-- Jimmy Swaggart, TV preacher, self-described pornography addict who paid
prostitutes to commit "pornographic acts"; hypocrite
%%
"I think contraception is disgusting -- people using each other for pleasure."
-- Joseph Scheidler, Director, Pro-Life Action League
%%
"We are ... opposed to all forms of birth control with the exception of natural
family planning [the rhythm method.]"
-- Judie Brown, President, American Life Lobby
%%
"I don't think Christians should use birth control. You consummate your
marriage as often as you like and if you have babies, you have babies."
-- Randall Terry, one of the people behind the current campaign to blockade
health clinics and publicly harass and humiliate women
%%
"We are starting a movement in the state legislatures...to forbid the
installation of clinics that dispense contraceptives."
-- Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
%%
"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals -- most of them are failures.
They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some
Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women
just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists
need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And
they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist.
They hate men -- that's their problem."
-- Reverend Jerry Falwell, sexist-to-the-max
%%
"Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way
we're made you've got to take it up with God."
-- Phyllis Schlafly, hypocrite who has had a business career and run for
public office, and who apparently wishes to deny those opportunities
to other women
%%
"Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions."
-- Phyllis Schlafly
%%
"Incest is a voluntary act on the woman's part."
-- Charles Rice, Professor of Law, Notre Dame University, dweeb; in a pamphlet
published by the American Life League
%%
"It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear
of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility,
or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage [sic] baby
even ten years later when she may be happily married."
-- Phyllis Schlafly
%%
"Shake hands with your mother again."
-- from an old hymn
%%
"Justice, like lightning, should ever appear
To some men hope, to other men fear."
-- Jefferson Pierce
%%
"No! We will not die like dogs. We will fight like lions!"
-- The Three Amigos
%%
"'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
%%
"My head is bloodied, but unbowed."
-- From the poem "Invictus"
%%
"(Humanity) is the measure of all things."
-- Protagoras
%%
"Many are the wonders of the Universe,
and none so wonderful as Mankind!"
-- Sophocles
%%
Q. How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Three - one to do it and two to argue whether it's principled to change it.
-- Bill Ware (?)
%%
Q. How many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None - the market will take care of it.

-- Bill Ware (?)
%%
"Oh yeah, laugh now! But when the millions start pouring in, I'll be the one
at Burger King, sucking down Whoppers at my own private table!"
-- Al Bundy
%%
"Everything to excess. Moderation is for monks."
-- Lazarus Long
%%
"No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot soldier in a party
or movement. He will always find himself out of step."
-- Sidney Hook
%%
"Socialism is power, power, and more power."
-- Oswald Spengler, Hitler's intellectual forebear
%%
"The police are not there to create disorder. The police are there to
preserve disorder."
-- The late Richard J. Daly, Mayor of the city of Chicago
%%
"Government sucks."
-- Ben Olson
%%
"Yea, I am a Capitalist,
the most dangerous radical of all,
the most fearsome threat to Mankind's foes,
for I am Man Himself."
-- Jeff Daiell, in "The Most Dangerous Radical"
%%
"...for the Orchestra which is Business
reflects the Symphony of the Mind,
the Crown which makes Man King."
-- Jeff Daiell, in "The Most Dangerous Radical"
%%
"Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies."
-- D'Hericault
%%
"It had to be said: the world is perishing from an orgy
of self-sacrifice."
-- Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_
%%
"Why can one call the time component of the preceding 4-vector by the name
energy? For two reasons: First, because this time component has the correct
units -- the units of mass..."
-- From "Spacetime Physics" by Taylor and Wheeler
%%
1776 - 1984
There Is No Middle Ground
-- a button from the Libertarian Party
%%
Sing and Dance the New Deal Away
-- A button from Our People's Underworld
%%
Deliver Us From Taxation
-- button, source forgotten
%%
"Life in a free society is friendly, prosperous, pleasant, cultured, and
ever-longer."
-- Jeff Daiell, 1989, in contrapoint to Hobbes
%%
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the
sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
-- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
Objects in your terminal are closer than they appear.
%%
"The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is
evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for the sake
of something else."
-- Aristotle
%%
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind -- or not to have a mind at all.
How true that is." -- V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro College
Fund slogan in an address to the group (from Newsweek, May 22nd, 1989)
%%
"Why do schools let anyone post? Why not just leave it to us professionals?"
-- S. M. Ryan (smryan@garth.UUCP)
"Because there is no necessary relation between having a degree and the

attribute of optical rectosis, as your posting demonstrates."
-- Bill Wells (twwells!bill)
%%
"Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!"
-- Dylan Thomas
%%
"Umm, square root of two? Ouch!"
-- The guy who blew a hole in the Pythagoreans' assertion that all numbers can
be represented as a ratio of two integers, so they killed him
%%
Proclaim liberty throughout the land until all the inhabitants thereof.
-- Leviticus 25:10
%%
"Where is it written in the Constitution that you may take children from their
parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles
of any war in which the folly or wickedness of government may engage it?"
-- Daniel Webster, 1814
%%
"... they [the Indians] are not running but are coming on."
--- note sent from Lt. Col Custer to other officers
of the 7th Regiment at the Little Bighorn
%%
"Hello to married men I've known.
I'll soon have a wife and leave yours alone."
-- Charlie, singing "Go Home With Bonnie Jean", in
Lerner's and Lowe's "Brigadoon"
%%
"A poet only writes about the things he cannot do."
-- A canard, sung by Meg in "The One Love of My Life",
in Lerner's and Lowe's "Brigadoon"
%%
Do standards inevitably cause industries to calcify into obsolete technology?
Suppose we journey to the plains of Shinar and build a tower of bricks reaching
to heaven. (That's the Tower of Babel, for those without a reading familiarity
with the Book of Genesis.) Look, God Himself knows what standards can do, he
even said something like "The Sons of Men are all of one tongue and one
purpose, and now nothing shall be impossible for them." So the Ancient of Days
had to step in and give us the wonderful gift of cultural diversity, to add
such a whopping translation overhead on every information transaction that we
bogged down forever into chaos and warfare.
-- Dan Mocsny (dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu)

%%
Vertical fragmentation is an inescapable part of technological
progress. If we compare the 8085 to the 80386 or a MIPS RISC CPU, we
can hardly expect to transparently preserve our entire intellectual
investment in the 8085 when we move up to new hardware with vastly
greater underlying capability. The bloodshed involved in upgrading is
highly variable. Since computers are in theory general-purpose
information processors, with the appropriate software tools the user
can "mine" old information and use it on new hardware. Nonetheless,
when hardware advances become revolutionary enough we eventually have
to throw out some of our old standards. In this case we face a clear
trade between the cost of junking our investment in our earlier ways
of doing things vs. foregoing the potential benefits of new and better
hardware. The bigger the previous investment, the bigger the benefits
of upgrading have to be before vertical fragmentation is justifiable.
%%
Horizontal fragmentation results from market manipulation, the whim
of vendors, sheer incompetence, contempt for users, or the inability
of rival vendors to communicate. I'm talking about nonsense like
having 50 MS-DOS programs that each somehow find a different function
key to provide on-line help. I'm talking about differences between
products that make them incompatible and inconsistent while providing
no clear-cut technical advantage. Horizontal fragmentation vastly
increases the intellectual burden separating computer users from
solving their problems. Since it decreases the value of the computer
to the user while providing no offsetting benefit, it makes the
computer market smaller. This must eventually translate on average
into smaller paychecks for everyone who has tied their fortune to that
market.
%%
Once at a dinner party when he was a young man, Winston Churchill, who
at the time had a moustache, was seated next to an older woman. She
said to him, "Young man, I care neither for your politics nor for
your moustache."
He reassured her, "You are as unlikely to come into contact with the
one as with the other."
%%
After winning the pennant one year, Casey Stengel commented,
"I couldn'ta done it without my players."
%%
The Mets drafted a catcher as their first-ever pick. Asked why,
Casey Stengel replied, "Well, without a catcher, we'd have a lot
of passed balls, don'tcha think?"
%%
One time as manager, Casey Stengel was sitting next to Mickey Mantle.
He mentioned playing in Yankee Stadium, and Mantle expressed
surprise. Stengel asked, "You think I was *born* sixty years old?"
%%
"[In the U. S. Army] An officer does not take an oath of loyalty to the
Commander-in-Chief. He takes an oath of loyalty to the Constitution."
-- Sam Donaldson
%%
"Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged
about forever."
-- button at the Boston Computer Museum
%%
"I don't believe that the answer to white racism is black racism."
-- Spiro T. Agnew, then Governor of Maryland
%%
"When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results."
-- Calvin Coolidge
%%
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy."
-- Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_
%%
"On the market, there can be no such thing as exploitation."
-- Murray Rothbard
%%
>This is a duplicate article, and old as hell...now, who could be doing this???
"Somebody along the line fucked up."

-- Spenser Aden
%%
Why would you WANT to port C news to your PC? Wouldn't it be smarter
and about as cost-effective to port your PC over to the trashcan and buy
a real computer that runs a real operating system like Unix?
-- Brian Kantor (brian@ucsd.edu)
%%
"I'll tell you what kind of guy I was. If you ordered a boxcar full of
sons-of-bitches and opened the door and only found me inside, you could
consider the order filled."
-- Robert Mitchum
%%
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop
(seen on a wall in Down by law)
%%
"Anyone who wants to be paid for writing software is a fascist asshole."
-- Richard M. Stallman
%%
"There is no idea so sacred that it cannot be questioned, analyzed...
and ridiculed."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
Parking fees that Universal Studios collected from picketers of _The Last
Temptation of Christ_: $4,500
-- Harper's Index Nov. 1988
%%
"Unemployment is an inconvenience."
-- John F. Haugh II
%%
"Why do trans-atlantic transfers take so long?"
"Electrons don't swim very fast." -john@minster.york.ac.uk and whh@PacBell.COM
%%
"In general, it is best to assume that the network is filled with malevolent
entities that will send in packets designed to have the worst possible effect"
-- the draft "Requirements for Internet Hosts" RFC
%%
"SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!"
-- Ken Thompson
%%
"A pacifist who calls the police isn't one; hired violence is still violence."
-- Clayton E. Cramer optilink!cramer
%%
"I am astounded ... at the wonderful power you have developed - and terrified
at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever."
-- Arthur Sullivan, on seeing a demonstration of Edison's new talking machine
in 1888
%%
"England's monarchy is how old? 1000 years? Jesus, you guys must have a hell
of a lot of laws!"
-- an anonymous sysadmin
%%
"... users of a tool are willing to meet you halfway; if you do ninety percent
of the job, they will be ecstatic."
-- Software Tools, p.136.
%%
"Don't worry about things that you have no control over, because you
have no control over them. Don't worry about things that you have
control over, because you have control over them."
-- Mickey Rivers
%%
"Master, why is the letter 'i' the symbol for current?" "Because there is
no letter 'i' in the word 'current'." "Master, why do we use the letter
'j' for sqrt(-1)?" "Because we use the letter 'i' for current." Whereupon
the Master struck the Disciple, and the Disciple became enlightened.
%%
"The hand that rocks the cradle can also cradle a rock."
--- Feminist saying, circa 1968-1972
%%
"VMS isn't an operating system, it's a playpen for DEC system programmers."
-- Herb Blashtfalt
%%
Quoting court decisions is not a very useful activity when arguing with
someone who is engaging in their constitutionally protected right to
disagree with those decisions and attempting to change the environment
in which they are made. You might believe that any legal decision by the
courts is ipso facto correct and moral, but that's not the way most folks
in this country operate. Look at Roe v. Wade... I happen to agree with
the goals of that decision, but there are a hell of a lot of people who
don't, and they have managed to get it changed, to some extent. Jeff is
in the same position, and can quite reasonably argue that these statistics
are irrelevant to his position.
-- Peter da Silva (peter@sugar.hackercorp.com)
%%
"Optimization is not some mystical state of grace, it is an intricate act
of human labor which carries real costs and real risks."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"Peace is our profession."
-- Motto of Strategic Air Command
"Peace in our profession. War is just a hobby."

-- Stationery available in PX, Barksdale SAC AFB
%%
Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned -- I
support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you
exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to
share your dogma, rapture or necrodestination.
-- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
In the future, etiquette will become more and more important. That doesn't
mean knowing which fork to pick up -- I mean basic consideration for the
rights of other animals (human beings included) and the willingness,
whenever practical, to tolerate the other guy's idiosyncracies.
%%
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your
mother, your Dad, your priest, to some guy on television, to any of the
people telling you how to do your shit, then you *deserve* it. If you
want to be a schmuck, be a schmuck -- but don't wait around for respect
from other people -- a schmuck is a schmuck.
%%
"How's YOUR Endless Project coming?"
-- Mark Diekhans
%%
listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door;
let's go.
-- ee cummings
%%
"Do not stop to ask what is it;
Let us go and make our visit."
-- T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
%%
"Unless you are very rich and very eccentric, you will not enjoy the luxury of
a computer in your own home."
-- Edward Yourdon, 1975.
%%
"Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that isn't immune to bullets."
-- The Brigadier, Dr Who.
%%
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though
checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither
enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows
not victory or defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
%%
"Cache is, by definition, a compromise."
-- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
"Yes, Cache is a compromise. Mainly to your wallet and the speed of light."
-- Jim Hutchison (ucsd!celerity!hutch)
%%
"If it doesn't come from you, shouldn't it come from Gerber?"
-- Bristol Meyers baby formula ad
%%
"If you substitute other kinds of intellectual property into the GNU
manifesto, it quickly becomes absurd."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
Instead of whining to the net about it, why don't you talk to the news admins
at Berkeley? If they won't trash sci.skeptic there, pass around a petition.
Threaten to set their dog on fire. Whatever. If nothing works, you can, as a
last resort, unsubscribe.
-- Dave Mack, mack@inco.UUCP, responds to a flame in news.groups
%%
"Writing programs needs genius to save the last order or the last millisecond.
It is great fun, but it is a young man's game. You start it with great
enthusiasm when you first start programming, but after ten years you get a
bit bored with it, and then you turn to automatic-programming languages and
use them because they enable you to get to the heart of the problem that you
want to do, instead of having to concentrate on the mechanics of getting the
program going as fast as you possibly can, which is really nothing more than
doing a sort of crossword puzzle."
-- Christopher Strachey, 1962
%%
"And the Lord God said unto Moses -- and correctly, I believe ..."
-- Field Marshal Montgomery, opening a chapel service
%%
"No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in
his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables."
-- Archie Goodwin
%%
"36 percent of the American Public believes that boiling radioactive milk
makes it safe to drink."
-- results of a survey by Jon Miller at Northern Illinois University
%%
Annex Canada now! We need the room, and who's going to stop us?
-- A Tom Neff .signature
%%
"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
%%
"Of course, someone who knows more about this will correct me if I'm wrong,
and someone who knows less will correct me if I'm right."
-- David Palmer (palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu)
%%
"War is the health of the State."
-- Proudhon (?)
%%
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the Legislature is in
session."
-- Lysander Spooner
%%
"I was brought up in the other service; but I knew from the first that the
Devil was my natural master and captain and friend. I saw that he was in
the right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only from fear."
-- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
%%
/*
* this atrocity is necessary on sparc because registers modified
* by the child get propagated back to the parent via the window
* save/restore mechanism.
*/
-- SunOS 4.0 vfork.h
%%
"Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press, and that cannot be
limited without being lost."
-- Thomas Jefferson (1786)
%%
Commenting on the advantages of bisexuality, Woody Allen once remarked
"It doubles your chances of getting a date on Saturday night."
%%
Definition of a hermaphrodite: a bisexual built for two.
-- Jeff Daiell
%%
AN EXPOSTULATION (Against too many writers of science fiction)
Why did you lure us on like this,

Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,
Building (as though we cared for size!)
Empires that cover galaxies,
If at journey's end we find
The same old stuff we left behind,
Well-worn Tellurian stories of
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,
Whose setting might as well have been
The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bethnel Green?
Why should I leave this green floored cell,

Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,
Unless, outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits,
Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart
That finger tip at which we start
As if some thought too swift and shy
For some reason's grasp had just gone by?
-- C. S. Lewis
%%
"Your reality is lies and balderdash, and I'm glad to say that I have no grasp
of it."
-- Baron Munchausen
%%
"Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey
wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost."
-- Ivan Chtcheglov
%%
"I've brought Gatsby to life. I've accounted for his money. I've fixed up
the two weak chapters (VI and VII). I've improved his first party. I've
broken up his long narrative in Chapter VIII."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, on revising his galley proofs
%%
The Law of Software Envelopment
Every program at MIT attempts to expand until it can read mail.

Those programs which cannot expand are replaced by ones which can.
%%
"The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"Slime is the agony of water."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
%%
"I have discovered the heart of bushido: to die!"
-- Yamamoto Tsunetomo
%%
"...an animal loses not only its life but also its third dimension."
-- Roger M. Knutson, in _Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of
Roads, Streets,and Highways_
%%
"... and I realized, we did not live in a scientific society."
-- R. P. Feynman, "Cargo cult science"
%%
I think the problem isn't the amount of knowledge we have to assimilate
in our world, but the rate at which we can assimilate it. Science,
engineering, and technology do not yield the "whys" of truth,
only the "hows." In fact, they are not truths, but opinions from
the current reigning theories of how we think the physical world works.
-- eugene miya, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
%%
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how
hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
-- Calvin
%%
"These patriots don't mince words... Okay, sure, they *are* dangerous,
hopelessly ignorant, inbred, retarded borderline lunatics with an
insatiable lust for the blood of sinners -- but at least they're *honest*
about it."
-- Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the Subgenius, about
a group known as Free Love Ministries, in his book _High Weirdness By Mail_
%%
"My past is my own."
-- The Shadow (DC Comics)
%%
"The Heinlein Woman to me is this woman who goes out and rules the galaxy,
smokes a cigar, uses a machine gun and all, but what she really wants is to
bring her husband his slippers."
-- paraphrase, based on peter@sugar's memory of a quote by Joan D. Vinge
%%
The coming thing, Cowboy thinks. Live forever in a bodily incarnation of
the eye-face, not limited to the speed of artificially enhanced
neurotransmitters but approaching the speed of light, extending the limits
of the interface, the universe. Brain contained in a perfect liquid-
crystal analog. Nerves like the strings of a steel guitar. Heart a
spinning turbopump. The Steel Cowboy, his body a screaming monochrome
flicker, dispensing justice and righting wrongs. Who was that masked AI?
Dunno, pardner, but he left this silver casting of a crystal circuit.
To Cowboy, it sounded pretty good.
-- Walter Jon Williams, "Hardwired"

%%
"What's the date?"
"May the fourth."
"Then May the fourth be with you."
-- Count Duckula
%%
"Once you've had real champagne, you can never go back to Asti Spumanti."
-- Georgette Lundberg
%%
"Life is a pinball machine. You bounce around for a while, and then you drain."
-- Joe Bak
%%
"The wife you save may be your own."
-- Unofficial slogan of supporters of one of FDR's sons,
a notorious womanizer, during the son's first congressional race
%%
"One more drink and I would have been under the host."
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
"If this country is worth saving, it's worth saving at a profit."
-- H. L. Hunt
%%
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
%%
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
-- Abe Lincoln
%%
"If we can't fix it -- we'll fix it so nobody can."
-- B. Gibbons
%%
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves
on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
-- D. P. Barron
%%
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two
great outrages upon its naive self-love. The first was when it realized that
our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system
of a magnitude hardly conceivable... The second was when biological research
robbed man of his particular privilege of having been specially created, and
relegated him to a descent from the animal world.
-- Sigmund Freud
%%
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect."
-- Keats
%%
"You killed Ted, you medieval dickweed!"
-- Bill (_Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure_)
%%
"If you took all the sincerity in Hollywood and put it in the navel of a fruit
fly, you'd still have room for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart."
-- Fred Allen
%%
"Now, more than ever, it is evident that `good taste' only refers to that
which reinforces the status quo."
-- Andre Peret
%%
"Computers are useless; they can only give answers."
-- Picasso
%%
"Until hard evidence is obtained and corroborated, the American people should
not be frightened into believing that babies are being bred and eaten, that
50,000 missing children are being murdered in human sacrifices, or that
satanists are taking over America's day care centers... An unjustified
crusade against those perceived as satanists could result in wasted resources,
unwarranted damage to reputations, and disruption of civil liberties."
-- Kenneth Lanning, head of the FBI's special unit in charge of
investigating claims about satanic-cult crimes, in a report
of his findings, June, 1989
%%
"What's the definition of a good flame? One you agree with..."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
-- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (around 1948)
%%
"I do not fear computers.. I fear the lack of them."
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
"Rebellion is like witchcraft. That's what it is, it's like witchcraft."
-- Missouri State Rep. Jean Dixon, on labeling "offensive music".
USA Today, March 20, 1990
%%
"I am made from the dust of the stars, the oceans flow in my veins."
-- Rush, "Presto"
%%
"Reading legal mush can turn your brain to guacamole!"
-- Amiga ROM Kernel Manual
%%
"I think their experience with us may have helped their contemptuousness;
the ignorance they come by naturally."
--Chuck McManis (personal communication)
%%
Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous drenchings
of the earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans
toward the Carthaginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre
of those brave people. Also we saw Caesar invade Britain -- "not that
those barbarians had done him any harm, but because he wanted their
land, and desired to confer the blessings of civilization upon their
widows and orphans," as Satan explained.
Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe passed in review

before us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand
through those ages, "leaving famine and death and desolation in their
wake, and other signs of the progress of the human race," as Satan
observed.
And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars -- all
over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest
of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but
never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose -- there is
no such war in the history of the race."
"Now," said Satan, "you have seen your progress down to the present,
and you must confess that it is wonderful -- in its way. We must now
exhibit the future."
He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life,

more devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.
"You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual progress. Cain
did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with
javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and
the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian
has added guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so
greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter
that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must
have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time."
-- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_

%%
"Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had
no more desire to throw a stone than you had."
"Satan!"
"Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is

governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses
its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the
most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong;
but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race,
whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink
from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and
pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it!
One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he
loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an
expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were
strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was
first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I
know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly
teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the
harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and
wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side
and make the most noise -- perhaps even a single daring man with a big
voice and a determined front will do it -- and in a week all the sheep
will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden
end."
%%
"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect
in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for
safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These
institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you,
affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of
minorities. There was never a country where the majority of people were in
their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
%%
Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane -- like
all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet
preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them
happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their
bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal
happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who
gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with
biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and
invented hell -- mouths mercy and invented hell -- mouths Golden
Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented
hell; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man
without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's
acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon
himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this
poor, abused slave to worship him!

%%
You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of
you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand
low-grade and trivial things -- broad incongruities, mainly;
grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten
thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed
from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the
funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and by laughing
at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has
unquestionably one really effective weapon -- laughter. Power, money,
persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal
humbug -- push it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century;
but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against
the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and
fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you
leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No;
you lack sense and the courage."

%%
"If you do everything, you'll win."
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson
%%
Catch a fly. Put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for
5 to 10 minutes. This slows him down considerably, so he's easier to
handle. While he's in there, make a miniature paper airplane with a
wing-span about double that of the fly. Take the cool dude out of the
ice-box and super glue his tiny feet onto the upper surface of the paper
airplane. As he warms up and revives, he will begin doing that most
natural of all fly activities: he will try to fly. If you have not made
your little airplane too heavy, the fly's wing beats will be adequate
for lift off. However, carrying the added weight quickly tires the fly,
so in mid-air, he will stop beating his wings, and the airplane will
soar downward. Seeing his plight causes the fly to once again attempt to
fly, with the same result. Little bursts of energy as the plane gains
altitude, alternated with slow downward glides. A thread super glued to
the plane will keep your aerial circus in the same room, or you can take
your new pet fly out for a walk, er, fly.
-- Gary Benson (inc@fluke.tc.com)
%%
"Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulder,
Computer Scientists stand on each other's toes."
-- someone on the net (please email attribution), about look&feel lawsuits
%%
"I am thankful for one leg. To limp is no disgrace --
I may not be number one, but I can still run the race."
-- B.C.
%%
"God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be
seen."
- S. Hawking
%%
"Those who worked the hardest are the last to surrender."
-- Gary Ward
%%
"They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true
freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born."
-- K. Dunn, _Geek Love_
%%
"The raytracer of justice recurses slowly, but it renders exceedingly fine."
-- Larry Phillips (lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca)
%%
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of
government!"
-- M. Python
%%
(####)
(#######)
(#########)
(#########)
(#########)
(#########)
__&__ (#########)
/ \ (#########) |\/\/\/| /\ /\ /\ /\
| | (#########) | | | V \/ \---. .----/ \----.
| (o)(o) (o)(o)(##) | | \_ / \ /
C .---_) ,_C (##) | (o)(o) (o)(o) <__. .--\ (o)(o) /__.
| |.___| /____, (##) C _) _C / \ () /
| \__/ \ (#) | ,___| /____, ) \ > (C_) <
/_____\ | | | / \ /----' /___\____/___\
/_____/ \ OOOOOO /____\ ooooo /| |\
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \
Homer Marge Bart Lisa Baby Maggie
THE SIMPSONS
%%
"Jesus saves sinners... and redeems them for valuable cash prizes!"
-- John Wichers (wichers@husc4.harvard.edu)
%%
"Perestroika: could it happen here?"
-- Tom Neff
%%
"We walked on the moon -- you be polite."
-- Joni Mitchell
%%
"My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch? Next April?"
-- L. Mulloy
%%
"UNIX should be used as an adjective."
-- AT&T
%%
"The real problem with SDI is that it doesn't kill anybody."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT blow the hatch!"
"Roger....hatch blown!"
-- MAROONED
%%
"We have luck only with women -- not spacecraft!"
-- R. Kremnev, builder of failed Soviet FOBOS probes
%%
"The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television?"
-- Philip K. Dick
%%
"NASA Announces New Deck Chair Arrangement For Space Station Titanic."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"Knowing when to optimize is as important as knowing how."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you will -- that will uncover a
lot of things. You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things...
This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have
nothing to do with ourselves."
-- Richard Milhouse Nixon, 6/23/72
%%
"Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat."
-- Thiokol management, 1/27/86
"The filter has discreting sources."

-- KSC FIDO, 1/28/86
%%
"When I was [in Canada] I found their jokes like their roads -- not very
long and not very good, leading to a little tin point of a spire which
has been remorselessly obvious for miles without seeming to get any
nearer."
-- Samuel Butler
%%
"Nature loves a vacuum. Digital doesn't."
-- DEC sales letter
%%
"I'm a Leo. Leos don't believe in this astrology stuff."
-- Tom Neff
%%
1955-1975: 36 Elvis movies.
1975-1989: nothing.
-- Tom Neff
%%
"A man came into the the office one day and said he was a sailor. We
cured him of that."
-- Mark Twain, on his days as a doctor's apprentice in California
%%
"We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost... the right of
free speech will be extinguished throughout the world."
-- Richard Milhouse Nixon, 10/27/65
%%
"The country couldn't run without Prohibition. That is the industrial fact."
-- Henry Ford, 1929
%%
"We plan absentee ownership. I'll stick to building ships."
-- George Steinbrenner, 1973
%%
Canada: a few acres of snow.
-- Voltaire
%%
"There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level
wouldn't cure. "
-- Ross MacDonald
%%
"Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure."
-- Karl Kraus
%%
"To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois."
-- Jules Renard
%%
"War is like love; it always finds a way."
-- Bertold Brecht
%%
"The genius of you Americans is that you never make any clear-cut stupid
moves, only complicated stupid moves that leave us scratching our heads
wondering if we might possibly have missed something."
-- Gamel Abdel Nasser
%%
"Stalinism begins at home."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"If the human mind were simple enough to understand,
we'd be too simple to understand it."
-- Pat Bahn
%%
"NASA Awards Acronym Generation System (AGS) Contract For Space
Station Freedom"
-- Tom Neff
%%
"US out of North America, NOW!!"
-- Richard O'Rourke
%%
"Why don't the Japanese live in the mountains? Certainly, they could;
apparently they just don't want to."
-- elturner@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
%%
You are sunlight and I, moon
Joined by the gods of fortune
Midnight and high noon
Sharing the sky
We have been blessed, you and I
-- MISS SAIGON
%%
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses."
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Chown up. Chow down.
%%
"I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake."
-- _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_ by Robert Bolt
%%
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence the act of the
whole American people which declared that their legislature
should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a
wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association in 1802
%%
"The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
-- John Philpot Curran
%%
"Home is is the place where your computer lives and runs your life."
-- Chrome Cowboy, sobiloff@thor.acc.stolaf.edu
%%
"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years
of maturity."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"Don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see."
-- Will Rogers
%%
"Do what you wanna, do what you will;
Just don't mess up your neighbor's thrill.
And when you pay the bill, kindly leave a little tip
To help the next poor sucker on his one-way trip."
- Frank Zappa, "You Are What You Is"
%%
"Like the ski resort full of girls looking for husbands
and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as
symmetrical as it might seem."
-- Alan McKay
%%
"If all men were brothers, would you want one to marry your sister?"
--title of a Theodore Sturgeon short story.
%%
"Not problem is too big it can't be run away from"
-- Linus
%%
"Oh beautiful, for smoggy skies, o'er insecticide waves of grain, and
strip-mined mountain's majesty, above the asphalt plains! America,
America, man sheds his waste on thee! And hides the pines, with
billboard signs, from sea to oily sea!"
-- George Carlin (?)
%%
"You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of Fortran."
-- Alan Perlis
%%
"We fall into error if we attribute to strategy a power
independent of tactical results."
-- Karl von Clausewitz, On War
%%
Without a thorough understanding of tactics, there can be no effective
strategy; therefore, any general must have a good foundation in the
tactical aspects of warfare. However, it is not necessary for a general
to be an excellent swordsman, musketeer, or tank gunner. It is sufficient
to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and proper use of the forces
available, and to know the strengths and weaknesses of your enemy.
-- Phillip Harbison (alvitar@xavax.com)
%%
In article <REYNOLDS.90Jul17202859@cochlea.bu.edu> reynolds@cochlea.bu.edu
(John Reynolds) writes:
>Robert Tilton Ministries
>Box 819000 Dallas, TX 75381
>* Complete Instructions on How to Receive your Miracle (That is, send
>in "more money than you can afford", three times in 21 days)
It really works! We prayed for OpenWindows V2 to ship on schedule and it

happened! We didn't send him any money and a disk blew up on our server!
Praise ``Bob''!
-- david@eng.sun.com
%%
The following appeared in my MCI bill this month:
MCI> President Bush is proclaiming July 22 as Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

MCI> Family Appreciation Day, in honor of the 100th birthday of one of
MCI> America's most beloved and respected citizens. Throughout her life,
MCI> family has been of utmost importance to Mrs. Kennedy. Family
MCI> Appreciation Day calls upon Americans to rededicate themselves to family
MCI> values and relationships...
[ they then go on to encourage people to use the telephone a lot. ]
This Sunday, I encourage the following activities:
o Fornicate
o Get a divorce
o Shoot suction-cup darts at photos of JFK
o Fornicate
o Call up your long-distance operator and emit an ear-piercing shriek
o Tell your parents how they've screwed you up for life
o Assist a gay couple in adopting or conceiving
o Use the word "Chappaquiddick" (sic?) in a sentence
o Buy your pre-adolescent children a copy of Blue Boy
o Fornicate
o Spit on a rich person
o Fornicate
Thank you.
- Erb (cooper@cs)
Church of the Four-day Workweek
%%
"Poor dead, there's nothing between his ears."
-- Margaret Thatcher, about Ronald Regan,
in the 6/2/88 issue of The New York Times
%%
"Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by
a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly."
-- Orson Scott Card, Science Fiction author, Mormon, weenie
%%
"C is the assembly language of Tcl."
-- Karl Lehenbauer (karl@hackercorp.com)
"Assembly language is also available."

-- Jordan Henderson (jordan@hackercorp.com)
%%
"All modern American literature comes from one book
by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
-- Ernest Hemingway
%%
The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their
own, resembling the affection of authors for their poems, or of parents for
their children ... and hence they are very bad company, for they talk of
nothing but the praises of wealth.
-- Plato
%%
"I have been poor and I have been rich. Rich is better."
-- Sophie Tucker
%%
Mature software: code old enough that for every bug fixed, one or more new
bugs are created.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead."
-- W. Shakespeare, HAMLET
%%
"Now bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible -
yea, and get the better of them."
-- W. Shakespeare, JULIUS CAESAR
%%
"People these days are reluctant to read the canonical texts, but they
love fiction. Not all fiction, mind you, for they are sick of exemplary themes
and far prefer the obscene and fantastic. How low contemporary morals have
sunk! Anyone concerned about public morality will want to retrieve the
situation."
-- Li Yu, in "The Carnal Prayer Mat" c. 1657 A.D.
%%
_
/ \
|\_/|
|---|
| |
| |
_ |=-=| _
_ / \| |/ \
/ \| | | ||\
| | | | | \>
| | | | | \
| - - - - |) )
| /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
| |
| |
| |
-- Michael Westlund (d90-mwd@sigma.sm.luth.se)

%%
> The Independent quotes this from The Progressive, Sept. 1990:
>
> "Louisiana State Rep. Carl Gunter, explaining why abortion should
> not be permitted even when the pregnancy results from incest:
> 'The way we get thoroughbred horses is through inbreeding. With
> incest, you could get super-smart kids.'"
This undoubtedly explains State Representative Gunter's visibly high

intelligence...
-- Lefty (lefty@twg.com)
%%
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in
the process he does not become a monster."
-- Nietsche
%%
"Memory serves wise commanders."
-- Tz'u-hsi, 638 AD
%%
It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
-- Freeman Dyson
%%
"But then a new problem came up: the Jupiter probe, Galileo, was going to
use a power supply that runs on heat generated by radioactivity. If the
shuttle carrying Galileo failed, radioactivity could be spread over a
large area."
-- Richard P. Feynmann, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
%%
"If a guy tells me the probability of failure is
1 in 10E5, I know he's full of crap."
-- Richard P. Feynmann, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
%%
Congresswoman: Well, Mr. Dallas... we've heard your smut masquerading as
songs... and we've heard how teen prostitution pregnancy, drug use, cults,
runaways, suicide and poor hygiene are sweeping this nation. We thought you
might like to share with the committee any particular causes you might see
for those latter problems...
Steve Dallas: I dunno. Maybe the proliferation of narrow, suffocating

zealotry masquerading as parenting in this country.
-- Bloom County
%%
"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
%%
"You can't get snot off of a suede jacket."
-- Lenny Bruce
%%
"A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
He follows a lifestyle we don't endorse,
He drinks the blood of a sheep, by force,
The vampire horse, Count Ed!"
-- Ron (lev0@midway.uchicago.edu)
%%
[Pornography] causes premarital intercourse, perversion, masturbation in
boys, wantonness in girls... Attention is given to sensationalists such
as Kinsey and Eberhard... who, finding fellow travelers in erstwhile
respectable media, manage to disseminate, directly and indirectly,
their absurd and dirty bleatings and pagan ideas. It seems strange to
me that we credit -- I should say that our mass media credit -- the
unestablished generalities of a few so-called experts, but ignore the
overwhelming testimony of the true experts like J. Edgar Hoover.
-- Charles H. Keating, Jr., former anti-porn activist, the financier
behind the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal (his anti-porn organization
got in trouble in 1962 (!) for spending over 90% of the funds they
raised)
%%
"If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected
within you is destroyed."
-- Kahlil Gibran, 1923
%%
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that
they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what
they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."
-- Robert F. Kennedy
%%
In truth, there never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people
who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would
not have been accepted by the people; for there are many good laws, the
importance of which is known to be the sagacious lawgiver, but the
reasons for which are not sufficiently evident to enable him to persuade
others to submit to them; and therefore do wise men, for the purpose
of removing this difficulty, resort to divine authority.
-- Machiavelli
%%
All religions have in common the periodical childlike surrender to a
Provider or providers who dispense earthly fortune as well as
spiritual health; some demonstrations of man's smallness by means of
reduced posture and humble gesture, the admission in prayer and song
of misdeeds, of misthoughts, and of evil intentions; fervent appeal
for inner unification by divine guidance; and finally, the insight
that individual trust must become part of the ritual practice of man,
and must become a sign of trustworthiness in the community.
-- psychologist Erik Erikson
%%
When one studies the biographies of the founders and leaders of the various
religions, one cannot help but be struck by the psychotic -- or at least
extremely abnormal -- behavior that has characterized so many of them.
Luther, Wesley, and Loyola had hallucinations ("visions"). St. Theresa
almost certainly was a hysteric. The book _The Psychotic Personality_,
by Leon J. Saul and Silas L. Warner, devotes considerable space to the
psychotic personalities of Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science),
Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Mohammed, and the Rev. Jim Jones...
It seems significant that the founder of Christianity itself, St. Paul,
also suffered from epilepsy.
-- Frank Zindler, "Religiosity as a Mental Disorder," American Atheist
magazine, April 1988, p. 27
%%
"For the church to say that abortion is not acceptable for a Catholic
is fine. To say directly or indirectly that on something that is a
church teaching that you must also vote according to that -- that's
not acceptable in a country based on the First Amendment."
-- Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy
%%
"Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process."
-- Barry Goldwater
%%
"If we are to begin packaging ourselves as boxes of cereal, Democracy will
die... for you could not win the presidency without proving unworthy of
the job."
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
"Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking
the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe,
from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man."
-- George Gaylord Simpson
%%
"We must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend
that we have nothing to express."
-- George Santayana, _Soliloquies In England_
%%
Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by
or rather, things that are!
-- Plutarch
%%
"Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, I am free at last."
-- Martin Luther King
%%
"The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if
any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents
as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false."
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas
%%
"Ignorance transcends architecture."
-- James Gaskin
%%
"The C committee took something that wasn't broken, and tidied it up without
breaking it."
-- Dennis Ritchie (dmr@alice.UUCP), about ANSI C standard X3J11
%%
"Committees do harm merely by existing."
-- Freeman Dyson
%%
I think the best way I've heard this put is "Pascal gives you a water pistol
filled with distilled water. C not only gives you a loaded .357, it points
it at your head as a default. Why do you think Pascal is taught in school?
And which would you rather have when there was a hungry bear in the area?"
-- Jim Harkins (jharkins@sagpd1.UUCP)
%%
"So far from God, so close to the United States"
-- Old Mexican proverb
%%
In science, right conduct consists of evaluating evidence honestly and
according to the canons of scientific reasoning. To misrepresent the
evidence and the criteria of judgement is not merely to provide
misinformation; it is to set an example of dishonesty. Telling lies
to naive and trusting young persons is bad. Doing so for the purpose
of proselytizing is worse.
-- biologist Michael T. Ghiselin
%%
Our educational systems may very well be on the threshold of a new and
even gloomier Dark Age of the 20th and 21st centuries, unless the anti-
intellectualism and confused thinking creationists produce is overcome."
-- Reverend James Skehan
%%
In article <10796@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
>I'm not going to be as kind to FICC in general as you have been.
>Something is wrong there. These three semiliterate fanboys send dozens
>of messages a day, fewer than half of which are about anything in
>particular. I haven't had a kill file since Weiner left, but I've been
>sorely tempted to use one to avoid seeing anything from ficc.
However, in article <10767@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes:

>Kill files are an expression of resentment by the unmemorable or
>untalented against the memorable and talented. Your appearance in kill
>files merely marks the fact that you have more than once tried to make
>people think, when they really would rather not. It is an honor.
Will the real Tim Maroney please stand up?
-- Mike Van Pelt (mvp@v7fs1.UUCP)

%%
"'To the Workers of the world, I am sorry.' -- Karl Marx"
-- Seen on the side of an East German factory
%%
"Faith" can be defined as "any man's hope that the human spirit is capable
of understanding"; that anything actually matters in the larger
universe; and that understanding anything could be important outside
of our own selfish whims and desire to survive. ...and somehow, because
it is important, understanding can go on without us, waiting only
to be rediscovered by the future, or at worst, pissed away, in spite
of all our prayers, and work, and suffering.
Every expression of the human spirit is an act of faith.

-- Ellyn Mustard (mustard@ficc.ferranti.com)
%%
"We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased,
frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion."
-- Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing
%%
"I don't see the problem. Satan is a Christian God. Satanists are a
kind of off-beat christians. They don't need a group of their own --
they belong in some christian group, or talk.religion.misc at most."
-- Thomas Gramstad (bfu@ifi.uio.no)
%%
"'Truth' never set anyone free. It is only *doubt* which will bring mental
emancipation."
--Anton LaVey
%%
"I don't even know what street Canada is on."
-- Al Capone
%%
"This will be dynamically handled, possibly correctly, in 4.1."
-- Dan Davison on streams configuration in SunOS 4.0
%%
Resolved, that the 67th General Convention affirm the glorious ability of
God to create in any manner, whether men understand it or not, and in this
affirmation reject the limited insight and rigid dogmatism of the
"Creationist" movement...
-- from a 1982 resolution of the Episcopal Church
%%
"The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as
rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better."
--Edsger Dijkstra
%%
"Last night I watched the news and the end of the broadcast showed numerous
changes favorable for the people (e.g., Rumania, Berlin Wall, etc.). My
fiancee and I turned to each other and said ``No images from the US.''"
-- Mike Shaff (shaff@elements.rpal.com)
%%
Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night,
I can see paradise by the dashboard light.
-- Meatloaf
%%
"The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle: they're on
TV!"
-- Homer Simpson
%%
"What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they get all these hypocrites
assembled there!"
-- Mark Twain
%%
"The bonds that links your true family is not one of blood, but of
respect and joy in each others life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
-- Richard Bach
%%
Gort, klaatu birada nikto.
%%
"If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find
something in them to hang him."
-- Cardinal de Richelieu
%%
A host is a host from coast to coast
And no one will talk to a host that's close
Unless the host (that isn't close)
is busy, hung or dead.
-- David Lesher (wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu)
%%
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."
-- G. K. Chesterton
%%
"Lobbyists threatening to withhold campaign contributions from
lawmakers who don't support their special-interest causes could
be violating bribery laws, Colorado House Speaker Bev Bledsoe
warned yesterday."
-- The Denver Post, 3 May 1990, p. 1B
%%
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
-- Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein's _Time Enough For Love_
%%
"The difference between the right word and a similar word is the difference
between lightning and a lightning bug."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"If we do not succeed, then we face the risk of failure."
-- Dan Quayle, Vice-President of the United States
%%
"Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children."
-- Miriam Robbins
%%
"Hawaii is a part of the United States that is an island and is right here."
-- Dan Quayle, while in Hawaii
%%
"A killer stalks the halls of my high school. Innocent cheerleaders die
by knife. Teachers lock the classroom doors. I must find him, or I'll
flunk."
-- From a poem by Peggy Nadramia
%%
"We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written."
-- Robert Gould Shaw, abolitionist
%%
"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal."
-- Igor Stravinsky
%%
"Well, Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable,
And Lightness has a call that's hard to hear."
-- Indigo Girls
%%
"Once I was a tadpole, in the beginning of the begin;
Then I was a toadfrog with my tail tucked in.
Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree;
Now I'm a professor with a Ph.D."
--Anonymous creationist's view of evolution
%%
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything."
-- F. Jeff Stiles, Southern Baptist preacher
%%
"We all say so, so it must be true."
-- the Bandar-log (monkey tribe), in Rudyard Kipling's _Jungle Book_
%%
"Credo, quia absurdum est." [I believe, because it is absurd.]
-- Tertullian, Roman lawyer, theologian and misogynist; man of questionable
judgement
%%
JESUS SAVES, but Clones 'R' Us makes backups!
-- William Lewis (wiml@blake.acs.washington.edu)
%%
"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
-- Joseph Campbell
%%
In article <2267@speedy.mcnc.org> spl@duck.ncsc.org (Steve Lamont) writes:
>I hate "me too" postings
Me too.
-- Charleen Stoner, charleen@ADS.COM

%%
"As a rule software systems do not work well until they have been
used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications."
-- Dave Parnas, Communications of the ACM (33, 6 June 1990 p.636)
%%
"The alternative to mutual trust, which is indeed a risky gamble, is the
security of the police state."
-- Alan Watts
%%
"And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the bible
were used to beat plowshares into swords..."
-- Alan Watts
%%
"Excuse me, Worker, I'll just be a nanosecond."
-- a computer, from Firesign Theater's "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus"
%%
"No wife of *mine* is doing any dishes. That's what we had the kid for."
-- from Deathlok comics #1
%%
"The biggest growth industry in UNIX is promoting standards."
-- Rikki Kirzner, Dataquest.
%%
"The world is coming to an end. Please log off."
-- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com)
%%
"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; I'm
beginning to believe it."
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
"Even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!"
-- from Fiddler On The Roof
%%
As we anarchists say: "There's no government like no government."
-- D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid)
%%
"I woke up this morning, and I realized that somebody had broken into my
apartment, stolen all my things and replaced them with exact duplicates.
I asked my roommate if he noticed anything, and he said, 'Who are you?'"
"The other day I.... No, that wasn't me."
"My friend Bob is a radio DJ, and when he walks under a bridge, you can't hear
him talk."
"My father built a quicksand box in our back yard. I was an only child,
eventually."
-- comedian Steven Wright

%%
"Just think, IBM and DEC in the same room, and we did it."
-- Ken Thompson, quoted by Dennis Ritchie
%%
In article <649.2686213d@desire.wright.edu> nyoung@desire.wright.edu (Nils R.
Bull Young) writes:
| I consider this to be a form of censorship of my access to the
| free exchange of information and thus a First Amendment question.
...
In common terms you can write a book, and no one can stop you or tell
you what to write, but no one else is required to publish the book, or
to read it. You can raise specious issues in net postings, but no one
is required to agree, to carry your postings, or even read them. If
everyone on the net adds you to their KILL file, you have no recourse.
If every site checks incoming postings and blows your stuff away,
that's their right.
Don't worry, a few individuals may ignore you, but the bulk of the net
will read every word, if only to disagree.
-- Bill Davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM)

%%
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
-- anon
%%
"A lecture is where the notes of the professor become the notes
of the student without passing through the mind of either one."
-- anon
%%
"Aging is bad, but consider the alternative."
-- anon
%%
"Before engaging in a battle of wits, make sure your opponent
is armed."
-- East Texas Proverb
%%
"Bidet? Try washing your whole body."
-- anon
%%
Baby carriage bumper sticker: ``POO-POO HAPPENS!''
%%
"Don't get married. Find a woman you hate and buy her a house."
-- anon
%%
"Football combines the worst elements of America: Mass violence
punctuated by committee meetings."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
%%
"Good literature is about Love and War. Trash fiction is about Sex and
Violence."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Gun control: Hitting what you aim at."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Happiness is not a destination. It's the trip."
-- anon
%%
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
"I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle it's
much too confining."
-- Lilly Tomlin
%%
"I just couldn't convince Texans that Dukakis was Greek for Bubba."
-- Lloyd Benson
%%
"I will defend to your death my right to my opinion."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?"
-- Author Unknown
%%
"If life had a vomit meter, we'd be off the scale."
-- Joe Bob Briggs
%%
"Indecision is the key to flexibility."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Inferiority complex: a conviction by a jury of your fears."
-- anon
%%
"Is this bullshit or fertilizer?"
-- Author Unknown
%%
"It isn't easy being a fat narcissist."
-- Jackie Gleason
%%
"It's better to be silent and thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt."
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
-- Andre Guide
%%
"Love is always having to say I'm sorry."
%%
"Managing senior programmers is like herding cats."
-- Dave Platt
%%
"Never try to catch two frogs with one hand."
-- Chinese Proverb
%%
"Neurotic: Self-taut person."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"No problem is so big that you can't run away from it."
-- Snoopy
%%
"Only a mediocre man is always at his best."
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%%
"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"People don't form relationships, they take hostages."
-- anon
%%
"Rage is a wind that blows out the candle of reason."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Roses are red, violets are blue; I'm schizophrenic and so am I."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Sarcasm: barbed ire."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Ships don't come in, they're built."
-- anon
%%
"Some would sooner die than think. In fact, they often do."
-- Bertrand Russell
%%
"State run lotteries: think of them as tax breaks for the intelligent."
-- Evan Leibovitch
%%
"They communicated by tap-dancing and farting."
-- _Breakfast_of_Champions_
%%
"The only corporate defense against rationality is bureaucracy."
-- anon
%%
"The shortest distance between two points is under construction."
-- Noelie Altito
%%
They don't make nostalgia like they used to.
%%
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
%%
"Waiter, there's no fly in my soup!"
-- Kermit the frog
%%
What you see is rarely what you get.
%%
When you stay on the tracks, ignoring the facts, you can't blame
the wreck on the train.
-- from the song, "You Can't Blame . . "
%%
"You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well, MINE
are even WORSE!"
-- Calvin
%%
"Oh boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a REALLY BIG ram disk!"
-- lennox@shire.hw.stratus.com
%%
"Decaffeinated coffee? Kinda like kissing your sister."
%%
"The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a
soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with
an idea."
-- _The Wizardry Compiled_ by Rick Cook
%%
Lord FINCHLEY tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
-- H. Belloc
%%
"I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. ... If a
plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man."
-- Henry David Thoreau
%%
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"From an operating system research point of view, Unix is -- if not dead --
certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix, Usenix keynote speech from Summer 1990
[and no, that doesn't mean to VMS or MS-DOS -cookie ed.]
%%
"Standards committees are not the best ways to create a standard. Standards
meetings and standards themselves are horribly political things. One
thing that people forget is that many standards are made by rather small
groups of people. A few good people can really save the day, and a few
idiots can really make it miserable for years to come."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix
%%
In his '90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie reminded the audience that
Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that
X-windows was brain-dead and would soon die. "He was half-right. Sometimes
when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix, from an article in Unix Today
%%
This passage was written by a London reporter on the eve of the England-West
Germany Soccer World Cup final of 1966...
"If, on the morrow, the Germans defeat us at our national sport, be not
dismayed. For twice in this century, we've defeated them at theirs."
-- From the San Jose Mercury News, 7 July 1990

%%
"Poetry, like chastity, can be carried too far."
-- Mark Twain
%%
I REALLY like Bugs Bunny. I think I just found out why. A local weekly
(Metro) had an article on the wascally wabbit's 50th birthday party this
year, and they had the following quote about the animation studio where Bugs
Bunny cartoons were created...
"It's not every workplace that allows you to have an autographed picture of
Christ on the wall."
-- Scott Lieberman
%%
"All Marxists, basically, are reactionaries, yearning for the Oriental
despotisms of pre-Hellenic times, the neolithic culture that preceded
the rise of self-consciousness and egoism."
-- Robert Anton Wilson, writing as "Justin Case".
%%
"Never put off until run time what you can do at compile time."
-- David Gries, in "Compiler Construction for Digital Computers", circa 1969.
%%
"...cops and reporters are much alike. Both are absolutely dedicated to
doing the job at hand, regardless of obstacles. And both, deep down, really
believe the rules don't apply to them".
-- Jim Barlow, Houston Chronicle
%%
"...the American dream, in recent years the object of much
denigration even within our own borders, turns out to have been
the world's dream, as well."
-- Louis Rukeyser on events in Eastern Europe
%%
Sometimes you get the elevator and sometimes you get the shaft.
%%
"Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better than what
we have now."
-- Eric Sheppard (ce1zzes@prism.gatech.EDU)
%%
"If you get somebody to give you a dollar, they'll vote for you for the rest
of their lives."
-- Hugh Parmer, Democratic candidate for the 1990 U.S. Senate, from Texas
%%
Ranger is very!
%%
Crystals are the subject of international fascination. From crystal balls to
lasers, they have been prized in healing and science throughout the centuries.
Now Randall and Vicki Baer explore completely new horizons of crystal-based
knowledge.
Building on the foundation of their popularly acclaimed book, _Windows of

Light_, the Baers explore techniques, tools, and technologies for personal
and planetary transformation. They detail advanced techniques for using
crystals in such areas as healing, stress management, mind-center activation,
and telethought communication, and they demonstrate the unification of the
spiritual and the scientific in a light-based sacred science.
The Baers explore visions of a new age based on higher planes of reality
and ultra-advanced crystal technologies. An essential reference, _The
Crystal Connection_ is a landmark achievement in the field of crystal-based
sacred science.
Randall and Vicki Baer are internationally known authorities in the areas
of crystals, sacred science, and spiritual teachings. Widely sought as
speakers, they are codirectors of the Starcrest Academy of Interdimensional
Law and Science, a project dedicated to worldwide seminars and advanced
educational programs in the sacred sciences. They are the authors of
_Windows of Light: Quartz Crystals and Self-Transformation_, considered
the best work on the subject to date.
-- from the back cover of _The Crystal Connection_, Harper and Row,
ISBN 0-06-250033-3
%%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art.
-- H. L. Mencken
[Having the facts is hard. --ed]

%%
>Optimisation is not free. Gratuitous optimisation can be translated directly
>into missing features or later release dates.
-- Peter da Silva (peter@ficc.ferranti.com)
...and more bugs.
...and performance optimization without thoughtful performance testing

is usually misdirected and, as above, at best does nothing and at worse
delays/worsens the product and drives up life-cycle costs.
-- your humble cookie editor
%%
The hotel [in Kiev] checked us in very quickly. Unlike the one in Moscow,
the door guard smiled, did not check our passes and did not wear a gun.
The hotel serves excellent country food for lunch, including dumpling
soup, pork and homemade ice cream. The waitress is friendly. Going from
Moscow to Kiev is like going from New York to Texas.
-- T. J. Rodgers, "High tech in the Ukraine", E. E. Times, 8/13/90, p. 16
%%
"Do you know that doing your best is not good enough? First you must know
what to do."
-- manufacturing-quality theorist W. Edwards Deming
%%
"I ... reject the argument put forth by many fundamentalists that science has
nothing to do with religion because God is not among the things making up the
universe in which we live. Surely if a necessity for a god-concept in the
universe ever turns up, that necessity will become evident to the scientist."
-- physicist Ralph Alpher, "Theology of the Big Bang," Religious Humanism,
Vol. XVII, No. 1 (Winter 1983), pg. 12
%%
Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000,
illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies
of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?
-- William A. Turnbow
%%
First learn computer science and all the theory.
Next develop a programming style. Then forget all
that and just hack.
-- George Carrette [1990]
%%
"How do I explain to clients that society believes buying a rock (of
cocaine) is three or four times as bad as raping a woman?"
-- Robert Jakovitch, Broward [FL] Assistant Public Defender
[from AP story 12 July 1990]
%%
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could
only do a little."
-- Edmund Burke
%%
"No matter what temptation there is after an accident to be economical with
the truth when rationalising it with hindsight, please remember it would be
unforgivable if, by not revealing the facts or the complete truth, a similar
incident became an unavoidable accident."
-- Captain Colin Seaman, British Aerospace's head of safety
%%
"The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals.
It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets....The press in its
historical connotation comprehends every sort of publication which
affords a vehicle of information and opinion."
-- Lowell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452 (1938), quoted by Mike
Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk
%%
Moreover, freedom of the press includes "the right of the lonely
pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph as much as of the
large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition
methods." Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 704 (1972).
-- Supreme Court decision quoted by Mike Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk
%%
...Tucker v. Texas, 326 U.S. 517 (1946), in which a statute punishing
door-to-door distribution of literature was held invalid as an
abridgement of freedom of the press.
-- Supreme Court decision quoted by Mike Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk
%%
"We need a new cosmology. New Gods. New Sacraments. Another drink."
-- Patti Smith
%%
Collins's Law:
If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.
Corollaries ("Rabinovitch's Rules of Sane Dialogue"):

1. Everybody who matters is stupid now and then.
2. If I'm being stupid, that's my problem.
3. If my being stupid makes you stupid, that's your problem.
4. If you think you're never stupid, boy are you stupid!
%%
"Occupational regulation has served to limit consumer choice, raise
consumer costs, increase practitioner income, limit practitioner
mobility, deprive the poor of adequate service, and restrict job
opportunities for minorities -- all without a demonstrated improvement
in quality or safety." ...
"Critics of this hypothesis believe to the contrary, however, that

regulators' and professional groups' self-interest has been and still
is the primary motivator of regulatory legislation. And indeed the
evidence shows that consumers rarely engage in campaigns to license
occupations. If the purpose of licensing were to improve the quality
of service, one would expect consumers, who might be the prime beneficiaries,
to promote licensure, but licensing is systematically promoted by
practitioners ..."
The Rule of Experts - Occupational Licensing in America. By S. David

Young. Cato Institute, 1987. ISBN 0-932790-62-3 (paper). 99 pages.
(Quoted by Tony Harminc <TONY@vm1.mcgill.ca> in comp.risks)
%%
...henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) wrote:
>The trouble is that getdate() is relatively
>costly and Geoff is reluctant to run it on every single article
...and then all sorts of people started coming up with rube goldberg
schemes to avoid parsing dates. However, it turns out that even using
C news's getdate (which is 10% slower than the B news version), parsing
the dates in every article in a full Usenet feed takes about five Sun 3
CPU seconds per day. And if you were to use the lex-based date parser
included in the MH distribution, you could get it down below a second
per day, although it hardly seems worth the (minimal) effort.
-- Jef Poskanzer (jef@well.sf.ca.us)

%%
"Theater, art, literature, cinema... must be cleansed of all manifestations of
our rotting world..."
-- Adolf Hitler
%%
Better to kill time than have it kill you.
-- karl
%%
"Your development gets rotten if you take too long to market it."
--- Hitoshi Aoike, JVC Ltd., Tokyo
%%
"Every opportunity we have to run our R&D scientists and engineers against
our customers, we do it."
-- George Heilmeier, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas
%%
"R&D is not something that can be useful alone... R&D is part of a product-
making process."
-- Ralph E. Gomory, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York City
%%
"The better technology does not always sell better, even if it is first."
-- William J. Spencer, Xerox Corporation
%%
"You look at your needs, at your competitors, at what you can afford,
and you cut your cloth accordingly."
-- Ian Ross, AT&T Bell Laboratories
%%
"Every year a few research results pay the freight for all the rest."
-- Robert A. Frosch, General Motors
%%
The meek will inherit the earth ... in pine boxes six feet long by ...
%%
The big difference between UNIX and VMS:
To do anything on UNIX, you need to know an obscure command.
To do anything on VMS, you need to know an obscure option to SET.
-- peter@sugar.hackercorp.com
%%
VICE PRESIDENT DAN QUAYLE'S ADVENTURES IN...
Hawaii, Sept. 1989:
"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is IN
the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that
is right here."
%%
Prince William Sound, Alaska, May 1989
[Remarks to oil spill clean-up workers]:
"It's a very valuable function and requirement that you're performing,

so have a great day and keep a stiff upper lip."
"The President is going to benefit from me reporting directly to him

when I arrive."
%%
Pago Pago, April 1989:
[Pronounced "Pango Pango" by the natives and "Pogo Pogo" by Mr. Quayle.]
%%
El Salvador, Feb. & June 1989:
"We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the elimination

of human rights."
"El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that there are many
voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with the Salvadorans...
I have heard a single voice..."
%%
God is real unless declared integer.
- Allen W. Sherzer (aws@vax3.UUCP)
%%
what urge will save us now that sex won't
- Jenny Holzer, word artist
%%
File names are infinite in length where infinity is set to 255 characters.
- Peter Collinson, "The Unix File System"
%%
Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons",
speaking on fans of "The Simpsons":
"I have this comic strip called 'Life In Hell',

which runs in 200 newspapers, and I get a lot of
fan mail from generally articulate, literate people.
And now I walk down the street and I see people
wearing Simpsons T shirts who I'm afraid might
beat me up, so the quality of fans has broadened.
The people who are my fans now frighten me."
- from "Newsweek" magazine, June 18, 1990, page 13

%%
"This is a one line proof...if we start sufficiently far to the left."
- peter@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com
%%
"I don't practice what I preach, because I'm not the kind of person
I'm preaching to."
- Bob Dobbs.
%%
"The documentation for this program is obvious, therefore it is left as an
exercise for the grader."
- joel@cs.odu.edu
%%
"COBOL is not dead, it just smells that way."
- major@pta.oz.au
%%
"Hmmm... Equality is bad for the country? Well, at least we know where
you stand now. I also remember a lot of your ilk saying things about how
the ERA was going to require unisex bathrooms. Equality is not the same
as identical. If you can't get that straight, you're going to have a lot of
trouble programming in C."
- nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu
%%
In Communism's central planning, citizens are told "you will make widgets".
In Capitalism's advertising, citizens are told "you will buy widgets".
- nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu
%%
Unix: it's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there.
-someone on usenet.
%%
A project can not be considered complete until the total height of the
viewgraphs produced exceeds the height of the shortest PI.
- Robert Metzger, scientist and author.
%%
It's not that simple, no matter how you wish it so. You made public
statements from a position of false authority; now you're having them shoved
down your throat. Welcome to netnews.
- Thomas Maddox
%%
It is unworthy of great men to lose hours
like slaves in the labor of calculation.
- Pascal
%%
Invalid null command.
%%
Calm down. It's just ones and zeros.
- cbmvax!carolyn
%%
"Here's one for you. What's an 8 letter word for 'Love?'"
"Moisture"
- From the ABC series "Doctor Doctor"
%%
"Never knock on Death's door. Ring the bell and run away. Death really
hates that."
- From the ABC series "Doctor Doctor"
%%
Courage is the willingness of a person to stand up for his beliefs in the face
of great odds. Chutzpah is doing the same thing wearing a Mickey Mouse hat.
%%
A comment from the Space Shuttle (!) computer IPL code, power
failure handling:
"OK! LET'S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT. I'M IN CHARGE OF THE CPU FOR THE
NEXT 40 MILLISECONDS!"
%%
- Real programmers are a figment of the imagination.
%%
- Real programmers detest candy-ass architects. Candy-ass architects won't
allow Execute instructions to address another Execute. Real programmers
despise petty restrictions.
%%
- Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured programming
is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet trained. They
wear neckties and carefully line up sharp pencils on an otherwise clean desk.
%%
- Real programmers don't believe in schedules. Planners make up schedules.
Managers firm up schedules. Frightened coders strive to meet schedules.
Real programmers ignore schedules.
%%
- Real programmers don't bring paper bag lunches. If the vending machine
sells it, they eat it. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't
eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche.
%%
- Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it
should be hard to understand.
%%
- Real programmers don't document. Documentation is for simps who can't read
the listings of the object deck.
%%
- Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Cavemen drew flowcharts, and look
how much good it did them.
%%
- Real programmers don't drive cars, or any other complicated mechanical
contrivance. Walking or bicycling are okay. If a real programmer's bicycle
breaks down he has a technician fix it.
%%
- Real programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport which requires you
to change clothes. Mountain climbing is okay, and real programmers wear
their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in
the middle of the machine room.
%%
- Real programmers don't write applications programs, they program right down
to the BARE METAL. Applications programming is for feebs who can't do
systems programming.
%%
- Real programmers don't write in APL, unless the whole program can be written
in one line.
%%
- Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually no programmers write in
BASIC after the age of twelve.
%%
- Real programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy applications
programmers.
%%
- Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks
and crystallography weenies.
%%
- Real programmers don't write in LISP. Only dweeb programs contain more
parentheses than actual code.
%%
- Real programmers don't write in PASCAL, or BLISS, or ADA, or any of those
pinko computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak
memories.
%%
- Real programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for gutless people who can't
decide whether they want COBOL or FORTRAN.
%%
- Real programmers don't write specs - users should consider themselves lucky
to get any programs at all, and take what they get.
%%
- Real programmers have no use for managers. Managers are a necessary evil.
They exist only to deal with personnel bozos, bean counters, senior
planners, and other mental defectives.
%%
- Real programmers like vending machine popcorn. Coders pop it in the
microwave oven. Real programmers use the heat from the CPU. They can tell
which jobs are running from the rate of popping.
%%
- Real programmers never grow old. They suffer from burnouts, monumental
crashes, or bugs in their DNA.
%%
- Real programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at
9 am, it's because they were up all night.
%%
- Real programmers scorn floating point arithmetic. The decimal point was
invented for pansy bed-wetters who are unable to think big.
%%
The Algol compiler used at Case Institute of Technology, after finding
25 errors in the source (e.g., like you spelled BEGIN as BEGNI), would
print
"At this point, we suggest you try re-reading the manual."
%%
Programming by Monte Carlo methods is frowned upon.
%%
Installing Unix fixes the [VMS] bug.
- Barry Shein
%%
vmunix: kbd: Too many keys down!
%%
"Code so clean...you can eat off it."
%%
"If we can't fix it, it isn't broken."
%%
"Never test for a bug you don't know how to fix."
%%
"Don't break it if you can't fix it."
%%
Final message received from the Titanic: "Fatal crash due to icebug."
%%
"Bugs bugs everywhere, and not a fix in sight."
%%
"A feature is a bug with seniority."
%%
He who fears he will suffer, suffers already from his fear.
- Marcus Aurelius
%%
Nothing is enough for the man for whom enough is too little.
- Epicurus
%%
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
%%
I have been informed repeatedly, by persons who considered
themselves hard-headed realists, that men in business normally desire to
grow rich. Observation has convinced me that the persons who gave me
this assurance, so far from being realists, were sentimental idealists,
totally blind to the most patent facts of the world in which they live.
If business men really wished to grow rich more ardently than they wish
to keep others poor, the world would quickly become a paradise.
Bertrand Russell
%%
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism
is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express
sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
Rebecca West
%%
A hallmark of crank manuscripts is that they solve
everything... A second hallmark of cranks is that they are humorless.
A third hallmark of the crank is that he is sure everyone is out to
steal his ideas. A fourth hallmark of the crank is that he is
determined to bring the newspapers in somehow. A fifth hallmark of
cranks is that they use a lot of capital letters. Jeremy Bernstein
%%
While the tabloids appeal to our craving for the mysterious, the
real world offers every bit as much drama--actually more, because editors
have limited imaginations, but nature has no such constraints. Howard
A. Smith
%%
The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition
wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a
reversed order. Francis Bacon
%%
You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You
might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you have them.
George Bernard Shaw
%%
There is only one road to progress, in education as in other human
affairs, and that is: Science wielded by love. Without science, love is
powerless; without love, science is destructive. Bertrand Russell
%%
Great spirits often encounter violent opposition from mediocre
minds. Albert Einstein
%%
Our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the
animals don't understand us. Chazal
%%
To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in
avoiding them. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
%%
Whistling to keep up courage is good practice for whistling.
Henry Haskins
%%
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a
crime to examine the laws of heat. John Morley
%%
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are
consequences. Robert Ingersoll
%%
Those who know the least obey the best. George Farquhar
%%
The three rudenesses of this world: youth mocking at age, health
mocking at sickness, a wise man mocking a fool.
%%
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking
others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde
%%
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to
make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell. Walter Bagehot
%%
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the
real with the ideal never goes unpunished. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%%
It is questionable whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel,
we aren't lapsing into precisely the mistake of the child who hits the
chair he bumps into. Georg Christoph Licthenberg
%%
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
Bernard de Fontenelle
%%
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw
%%
When you say that you agree to a thing on principle, you mean that
you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
Otto von Bismarck
%%
Truth does less good in the world than its appearances do harm.
La Rochefoucauld
%%
There is a related "Theorem" about progress in AI: once some
mental function is programmed, people soon cease to consider it as an
essential ingredient of "real thinking". The ineluctable core of
intelligence is always in that next thing which hasn't yet been
programmed. This "Theorem" was first proposed to me by Larry Tesler, so
I call it Tessler's Theorem: "AI is whatever hasn't been done yet."
Douglas R. Hofstadter
%%
Natural man has only two primal passions: to get and to beget.
Osler
%%
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only
animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what
they might have been. Nietzsche
%%
Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.
Halifax
%%
Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem
so. La Rochefoucauld
%%
How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound!
Joubert
%%
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
Montaigne
%%
Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we
resort to to hide them. La Rochefoucauld
%%
Many would be cowards if they had courage enough. Thomas Fuller
%%
He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he
will do very few things. Halifax
%%
Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes. Oscar Wilde
%%
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually
fearing you will make one. E. Hubbard
%%
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the
neighbors will say. Connoly
%%
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.
Their tastes may not be the same. George Bernard Shaw
%%
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is
to fill the world with fools. Herbert Spencer
%%
It's always been and always will be the same in the world: the
horse does the work and the coachman is tipped.
%%
The great tragedy of science--the slaying of a beautiful
hypothesis by an ugly fact. T.H. Huxley
%%
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute
rejection of authority. T. H. Huxley
%%
Nothing hath an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not of
our side. Halifax
%%
What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.
Bertrand Russell
%%
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true. Francis Bacon
%%
A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes to be sure of
finding nothing still more disgusting before the day is over. Chamfort
%%
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde
%%
A very popular error--having the courage of one's convictions;
rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one's
convictions. Nietzsche
%%
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire
%%
The girl who can't dance says the band can't play. Yiddish Proverb
%%
He who lies for you will lie against you. Bosnian Proverb
%%
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight
acquaintance and without any visible reason. Halifax
%%
Most men who rail against women are railing at one woman only.
Gourmont
%%
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking
together in the same direction. Saint-Exupery
%%
Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable
sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled.
The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog. T.H.
Huxley
%%
Every great scientific truth goes through three states: First,
people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been
discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.
Attirbuted to Louis Agassiz
%%
What will people say--in these words lies the tyranny of the world,
the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of
our minds. These four words hold sway everywhere. Berthold Auerbach
%%
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.
Norman Douglas
%%
Death hangs over thee. While thou still live, while thou may, do
good. Marcus Aurelius Antonius
%%
Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be so sure he shall never
hit the mark, yet as sure as he is, he shall shoot higher than he who
aims at a bush. Sir Phillip Sidney
%%
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock
strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to
instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and
unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one
starts lawsuits over their wills. Voltaire
%%
A vixen sneered at a lioness because she never bore more than one
cub. 'Only one,' she replied, 'but a lion.' Aesop
%%
A dog, lying in a manger, would neither eat the barley herself nor
allow the horse, which could eat it, to come near it. Aesop
%%
Breathe deep the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day's useless, another year 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 gray and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion
-Moody Blues
%%
It is I, Captain Vegetable
With my carrots and my celery
Eating vegetables cause they're good for me,
And they're good for you so eat them too
For teeth so strong your whole life long
Eat celery and carrots by the bunch
Three cheers for me, Captain Vegetable,
Crunch Crunch Crunch!
- Captain Vegetable
%%
But that's okay, there's treasures children always seem to find
And just like us, you must have had a once upon a time.
- Bernie Taupin (Elton John)
%-
While Titian was mixing rose madder
His model ascended the ladder
Her position to Titian
Suggested coition
So he mounted the ladder and had her.
%%
There was a young girl from New York
Who plugged up her quim with a cork
A woodpecker or two
Made the grade, it is true,
But it totally baffled the stork.
%%
A broken-down harlot named Tupps
Was heard to confess in her cups:
"The height of my folly
Was diddling a collie--
But I got a nice price for the pups."
%%
There's an oversexed lady named Whyte
Who insists on a dozen a night.
A fellow named Cheddar
Had the brashness to wed her--
His chance of survival is slight.
%%
A scandal involving an oyster
Sent the Countess of Clews to a cloister
She preferred it, in bed,
To the count (so she said)
'Cause it's longer and stronger and moister.
%%
On the breasts of a harlot from Yale
Was tatooed the price of her tail
And on her behind,
For the sake of the blind,
Was the same information in Braille.
%%
Said the nun as the bishop withdrew,
"This must be our final adieu,
For the vicar is slicker,
And slower, and thicker,
And two inches longer than you."
%%
There was a young man named Laplace
Whose balls were made out of spun glass.
When they banged together
They played "Stormy Weather"
And lightning shot out of his ass.
%%
There was a young man named Knute
Who had warts all over his root.
He put acid on these
And now when he pees,
He fingers the thing like a flute.
%%
A sweetheart named Teresa Arden
Went down on her beau in the garden.
He said, "Good lord, Tess,
Don't swallow that mess!"
And she replied, "Ulp, beg your pardon?"
%%
An amazon giantess named Dunne
Let a midget screw her for fun.
But the poor little runt
Was engulfed in her cunt
And re-born as the twin of his son.
%%
A frustrated lady named Alice
Used a dynamite stick for a phallus.
They found her vagina
In North Carolina
And bits of her tits were in Dallas.
%%
There was a young lady from Wheeling
Who had a peculiar feeling.
She laid on her back
And tickled her crack
And pissed all over the ceiling.
%%
A clever young man named Eugene
Invented a jack-off machine.
On the twenty-third stroke
The goddam thing broke
And beat both his balls to a cream.
%%
There was a young man from Racine
Who invented a fucking machine.
Concave or convex,
It served either sex,
But oh what a bitch to keep clean.
%%
There was a young man from Rangoon
Who used to lament 'neath the moon
That he had the luck
To be born of a fuck
That was scraped off the sheets with a spoon.
%%
The acrobats --Tom and Louise--
Do an act in the nude on their knees.
They crawl down the aisle
While screwing dog-style,
As the orchestra plays Kilmer's "Trees."
%%
"Well, I took your advice, Doc", said Knopp,
"And told my wife to try it on top.
She bounced for an hour,
Till she ran out of power,
And the kids, who'd grown bored, made us stop."
%%
A greedy young lady from Sidney
Liked it in up to her kidney,
Till a man from Quebec
Shoved it up to her neck--
He really diddled her, didn' he?
%%
For the sores on his prick he used Dial.
That failed; he gave Lava a trial.
But the one remedy
For contagious V.D.
Is the wonder drug sulfa-denial.
%%
A cute little twerp from Samoa
Had a cock of one inch and no moa.
It was good for keyholes
And debutantes' peeholes
But not worth a damn on a whoa.
%%
A lusty young maid from Seattle
Got pleasure by sleeping with cattle;
Till she found a bull
Who filled her so full
It made both her ovaries rattle.
%%
In the garden of Eden lay Adam,
Complacently stroking his madam
And loud was his mirth
For on all of the earth
There were only two balls and he had 'em.
%%
There once was a horny old bitch
With a motorized self-frigger which
She would use with delight
All day long and all night--
Twenty bucks: Abercrombie & Fitch.
%%
The new cinematic emporium
Is not just a super-sensorium,
But a highly effectual
Heterosexual
Mutual masturbatorium.
%%
There was a young man of Devizes,
Whose balls were of different sizes.
One was so small,
It was nothing at all;
The other took numerous prizes.
%%
A talented girl from Detroit
Could fuck you in ways quite adroit.
She could squeeze her vagina
To a pin-point or finer
Or open it out like a quoit.
%%
There was a young royal marine,
Who tried to fart "God Save the Queen".
When he reached the soprano
Out came only guano
And his britches weren't fit to be seen.
%%
There was a young girl of Spitzbergen,
Whose people all thought her a virgin,
Till they found her in bed
With her twat very red,
And the head of a kid just emergin'.
%%
There was a young girl from Samoa
Who pledged that no man would know her.
One young fellow tried,
But she wriggled aside,
And he spilled all his spermatozoa.
%%
There was a young lady named Wylde
Who kept herself quite undefiled
By thinking of Jesus;
Contagious diseases;
And the bother of having a child.
%%
That naughty old Sappho of Greece
Said: "What I prefer to a piece
Is to have my pudenda
Rubbed hard by the enda
The little pink nose of my niece."
%%
There was a young lady from Norway
Who hung by her heels in a doorway.
She told her young man,
"Get off the divan,
I think I've discovered one more way "
%%
There was a young girl who begat
Three babies named Nat, Pat and Tat.
T'was fun in the breeding
But hell in the feeding
When she found there's no tit for Tat.
%%
A busy young lady named Gloria
Was had by Sir Gerald du Maurier
And then by six men,
Sir Gerald again,
And the band at the Waldorf-Astoria.
%%
Oh pity the prince, Montezuma
He tried to make love to a puma.
Seems the puma, in play,
Tore his testes away--
An example of animal huma.
%%
A cautious young fellow named Lodge
Had seatbelts installed in his Dodge.
When his date was strapped in,
He committed a sin,
Without even leaving his garage.
%%
To his bride, said the sharp eyed detective,
"Can it be that my eyesight's defective?
Is your east tit the least bit
The best of your west tit,
Or is it a trick of perspective?"
%%
There once was a lady named Myrtle
Who had an affair with a turtle.
She had crabs, so they say,
In a year and a day
Which proved that that turtle was fertile.
%%
There once was a fellow named Brewster
Who said to his wife, as he goosed her,
"It used to be grand
But look at my hand
You're not wiping as clean as ya uster."
%%
A petulant man once said, "Pish
Your cunt is as big as a dish."
She replied, "Why you fool,
With your limp little tool,
It's like driving a pin with a fish."
%%
There was an old man from Bengal
Who liked to do tricks in the hall.
His favorite trick
Was to stand on his dick
While he rolled around on one ball.
%%
There once was a fellow named Sweeney
Who spilled gin all over his weenie.
Not being uncouth,
He added vermouth
And slipped his amour a martini.
%%
On a cannibal isle near Malaysia
Lives a lady they call Anastasia.
Not Russian elite--
She's eager to eat
Whatever or whoever lays her.
%%
There once was a maid from Mobile
Whose cunt was made of blue steel.
She only got thrills
From pneumatic drills
And an off-centered emery wheel.
%%
There was a young fellow named Feeney
Whose girl was a terrible meany.
The hatch of her snatch
Had a catch that would latch
- She could only be screwed by Houdini.
%%
There was a young lady from Wheeling
Who claimed to lack sexual feeling.
But a cynic named Boris
Just touched her clitoris
And she had to be scraped off the ceiling.
%%
A marine being sent to Hong Kong
Got a doctor to alter his dong.
He sailed off with a tool
Flat and thin as a rule -
When he got there he found he was wrong.
%%
There was a young girl from East Lynn
Whose mother (to save her from sin)
Had filled up her crack
With hard-setting shellac,
But the boys picked it out with a pin.
%%
There was a young girl named Sapphire
Who succumbed to her lover's desire.
She said, "It's a sin,
But now that it's in,
Could you shove it a few inches higher?"
%%
There was a young lady named Nelly
Whose tits would jiggle like jelly.
They could tickle her twat
Or be tied in a knot,
And could even swat flies on her belly.
%%
There once was a girl named Priscilla
Whose vagina was flavored vanilla.
The taste was so fine
Man and beast stood in line
(Including a stud armadilla).
%%
There was an old man from Duluth
Whose cock was shot off in his youth.
He fucked with his nose
Or his fingers and toes
And he came thru a hole in his tooth.
%%
There was a young lady from Rheims
Who amazingly pissed in four streams.
A friend poked around
And a fly-button found
Lodged tight in her hole so it seems.
%%
There was a young sailor from Brighton
Who said to his bird, "You're a tight'un."
She replied, "'Pon my soul,
You're in the wrong hole
There's plenty of room in the right'un."
%%
There was a gay countess of Bray,
And you may think it odd when I say,
That in spite of high station,
Rank and education,
She always spelled cunt with a 'k'.
%%
There was an old man of Connaught
Whose prick was remarkably short.
When he got into bed,
The old woman said,
"This isn't a prick, it's a wart!"
%%
There was a young lass from Surat.
The cheeks of her ass were so fat
That they had to be parted
Whenever she farted,
And also whenever she shat.
%%
There was a young lady of Gaza
Who shaved her cunt bare with a razor.
The crabs, in a lump,
Made tracks to her rump--
This passing parade did amaze her.
%%
A doctoral student from Buckingham
Wrote his thesis on cunts and on fucking'em.
But a dropout from paree
Taught him Gamahuchee--
So he added a footnote on sucking 'em.
%%
There was a young woman of Cheadle,
Who once gave the clap to a beadle.
Said she, "Does it itch?"
"It does, you damned bitch,
And it burns like hell-fire when I peedle."
%%
There was a poor parson from Goring,
Who made a small hole in his flooring,
Fur-lined it all round,
Then laid on the ground,
And declared it was cheaper than whoring.
%%
A potter who lived in Bombay
Once fashioned a cunt out of clay;
But the heat of his prick
Kilned the damn thing to brick
And chafed all his foreskin away.
%%
On the porch of a dude named Horatio,
His girl got a yen for fellatio.
As she sucked on his dingus
He tried cunnilingus
But the cops ran 'em off of that patio.
%%
There was a young man of Calcutta,
Who tried to write "cunt" on a shutter.
When he got to c-u,
A pious Hindoo
Knocked him ass-over-head in the gutter.
%%
There was a young man of Bombay
Who buggered his dad once a day.
He said, "I like, rather,
Fucking my father--
He's clean, and there's nothing to pay."
%%
There once was a fellow named Bob
Who in sexual ways was a snob.
One day he was swimmin'
With twelve naked women
And deserted them all for a gob.
%%
An exotic young lady named Suki
Once danced in a troupe of kabuki
When asked for a fuck
She said, "Solly, no luck--
See here: looky looky, no nuki."
%%
One evening a guru had coitus
With an actress, a whore and a poetess.
When asked what position
He used for coition,
He answered serenely, "the lotus."
%%
A pious young lady of Chichester
Made all of the saints in their niches stir
And each morning at matin
Her breast in pink satin
Made the bishop of Chichester's breeches stir.
%%
There was a young lady at sea
Who complained that it hurt her to pee.
Said the brawny old mate,
"That accounts for the state
Of the cook and the captain and me."
%%
Said a pornographistic young poet
"Although I perhaps do not show it,
My interest in sin
Is wearing quite thin,
And I'll soon tell those fuckers to stow it."
%%
There was a young fellow named Grant
Who was made like the sensitive plant.
When they asked "Do you fuck?"
He replied, "No such luck.
I would if I could, but I can't."
%%
There was a young monk of Dundee
Who complained that it hurt him to pee,
He said, "Pax vobiscum,
Now why won't the piss come?
I'm afraid I've the c-l-a-p."
%%
A pathetic old maid of Bordeaux
Fell in love with a dashing young beau.
To arrest his regard
She would squat in his yard
And longingly pee in the sneaux.
%%
There was a young woman, quite handsome,
Who got stuck in a sleeping room transom.
When she offered much gold
For release, she was told
That the view was worth more than the ransom.
%%
There was a young man from Bengal
Who claimed he had only one ball,
But two little bitches
Pulled down this man's breeches
And proved he had nothing at all.
%%
Have you heard of those trollops of Birmingham
And the scandal that's currently concerning'em?
How they lift the frock
And tickle the cock
Of the bishop while he was confirming 'em?
%%
There was a young lady from Wooster
Who complained that too many men gooster.
So she traded her scanties
For sandpaper panties,
Now they goose her much less than they used 'ter.
%%
A weary old lecher named Blott
Took a luscious young blond to his yacht.
Too lazy to rape her,
He made darts out of paper,
Which he leisurely tossed at her twat.
%%
An arrogant wench from Salt Lake
Liked to tease all the boys on the make.
She was finally the prize
Of a man twice her size
And all she recalls is the ache.
%%
A gifted young fellow from Sparta
Was widely renowned as a farta'.
He could fart anything
From "Of Thee I Sing,"
To Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."
%%
A deep-throated virgin named Netty
Was sucking a cock on the jetty.
She said, "It tastes nice,
Much better than rice,
Though not quite as good as spaghetti."
%%
There was a young man of Lake Placid
Whose prick was lethargic and flaccid.
When he wanted to sport
He would have to resort
To injections of sulphuric acid.
%%
A certain young sheik of Algiers
Said to his harem, "My dears,
Though you may think it odd of me,
I'm tired of just sodomy
Let's try straight fucking." (loud cheers)
%%
An ambitious lady named Harriet
Once dreamed she was raped in a chariot
By seventeen sailors
A monk and three tailors,
Mohammed and Judas Iscariot.
%%
The old archeologist, Throstle,
Discovered a marvelous fossil.
He knew from its bend
And the knot on the end,
T'was the penis of Paul the Apostle.
%%
"Well, madam," the bishop declared,
While the vicar just mumbled and stared,
"'Twere better, perhaps,
In the crypt or the apse,
Because sex in the nave must be shared."
%%
The kings of Peru were the Incas,
Who were known far and wide as great drincas.
They worshipped the sun
And had lots of fun,
But the peasants all thought they were stincas.
%%
There was a young lady named Cager
Who, as the result of a wager,
Consented to fart
The entire oboe part
Of Mozart's quartet in F major.
%%
A whimsical fellow named Bloch
Could beat the base drum with his cock.
With a special erection
He could play a selection
From Johann Sebastian Bach.
%%
There was an old man of Hong Kong
Who never did anything wrong.
He would lie on his back
With his head in a sack
And secretly finger his dong.
%%
Well buggered was a boy named Delpasse
By all of the lads in his class
He said, with a yawn,
"Now the novelty's gone
And it's only a pain in the ass."
%%
A lad, at his first copulation,
Cried, "What a sensation! Inflation,
Gyration, elation
Throughout the duration,
I guess I'll give up masturbation."
%%
A charmer from old Amarillo,
Sick of finding strange heads on her pillow,
Decided one day
That to keep men away
She would stuff up her crevice with Brillo.
%%
A dentist, young doctor Malone,
Got a charming girl patient alone,
And, in his depravity,
Filled the wrong cavity.
God, how his practice has grown.
%%
There was a young lady named Alice
Who was known to have peed in a chalice.
'Twas the common belief
It was done for relief,
And not out of protestant malice.
%%
A distinguished professor from Swarthmore
Got along with a sexy young sophomore.
As quick as a glance
He stripped off his pants,
But he found that the sophomore'd got off more.
%%
A lady from Old Little Rock
In fidelity took little stock,
And deserted her man
In the streets of Japan
For a boy with a prehensile cock.
%%
There was a young lady from Munich
Who had an affair with a eunuch.
At the height of their passion
He dealt her a ration
From a squirt gun concealed in his tunic.
%%
An impish young fellow named James
Had a passion for idiot games.
He lighted the hair
Of his lady's affair
And laughed as she pissed through the flames.
%%
A cabin boy on an old clipper
Grew steadily flipper and flipper.
He plugged up his ass
With fragments of glass
And thus circumcised his old skipper.
%%
THE SEX LIFE OF THE CAMEL
The sexual life of the camel

Is stranger than anyone thinks
For at the height of the mating season
It tries to bugger the Sphinx.
But the Sphinx's posterior sphincter
Is clogged by the sands of the Nile
Which accounts for the hump of the Camel
And the Sphinx's inscrutable smile.
%%
Opinions are like assholes -- everyone's got one, but nobody wants to
look at the other guy's.
-- Hal Hickman
%%
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
-- Woody Allen
%%
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
-- Swami X
%%
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
They usually have virgins,
And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
%%
A crusader's wife slipped from the garrison
And had an affair with a Saracen.
She was not oversexed,
Or jealous or vexed,
She just wanted to make a comparison.
%%
I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?
%%
This is the story of the bee
Whose sex is very hard to see
You cannot tell the he from the she

But she can tell, and so can he
The little bee is never still

She has no time to take the pill
And that is why, in times like these

There are so many sons of bees.
%%
Do something big -- fuck a giant.
%%
Draft beer, not people.
%%
God isn't dead, He's just trying to avoid the draft.
%%
God is an atheist.
%%
Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the earth.
%%
In the Garden of Eden sat Adam,
Massaging the bust of his madam,
He chuckled with mirth,
For he knew that on earth,
There were only two boobs and he had 'em.
%%
Chaste makes waste.
%%
Cunnilingus is next to godliness.
%%
Coito ergo sum.
%%
God isn't dead -- he's been busted.
%%
The difference between this school and a cactus plant is that the
cactus has the pricks on the outside.
%%
Hugh Hefner is a virgin.
%%
I came; I saw; I fucked up.
%%
Large cats can be dangerous, but a little pussy never hurt anyone.
%%
Getting an education at the University of California is like
having $50.00 shoved up your ass, a nickel at a time.
%%
Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely
inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not
inconsistent with a life of sin.
%%
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for
man -- who has no gills.
%%
Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes -- and with the brassiere,
Yankee Ingenuity did exactly that. But their true stroke of genius was
the new bait. The old fashioned mousetrap was loaded with cheese;
nobody cares much about cheese, except mice. But when American
Know-How reloaded the brassiere with tits, every heterosexual male in
the country was hopelessly trapped.
-- Alan Sherman, "The Rape of the A*P*E*"
%%
"God built a compelling sex drive into every creature, no matter what
style of fucking it practiced. He made sex irresistibly pleasurable,
wildly joyous, free from fears. He made it innocent merriment.
"Needless to say, fucking was an immediate smash hit. Everyone agreed,

from aardvarks to zebras. All the jolly animals -- lions and lambs,
rhinoceroses and gazelles, skylarks and lobsters, even insects, though
most of them fuck only once in a lifetime -- fucked along innocently and
merrily for hundreds of millions of years. Maybe they were dumb
animals, but they knew a good thing when they had one."
-- Alan Sherman, "The Rape of the A*P*E*"

%%
Occident: The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient.
It is largely inhabited by Christians, powerful sub-tribe of the
Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which
they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the
principal industries of the Orient.
%%
"I've had one child. My husband wants to have another. I'd like to
watch him have another."
%%
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion --
i.e., none to speak of.
-- Lazarus Long
%%
... the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the
Devil out of Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for
bridge.
-- Letter in NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES #19
%%
Them Toad Suckers
How 'bout them toad suckers, ain't they clods?

Sittin' there suckin' them green toady frogs!
Suckin' them hop toads, suckin' them chunkers,

Suckin' them a leapy type, suckin' them flunkers.
Look at them toad suckers, ain't they snappy?

Suckin' them bog frogs sure make's 'em happy!
Them hugger mugger toad suckers, way down south,

Stickin' them sucky toads in they mouth!
How to be a toad sucker, no way to duck it,

Get yourself a toad, rear back, and suck it!
-- Mason Williams
%%
There was an old pirate named Bates
Who was learning to rhumba on skates.
He fell on his cutlass
Which rendered him nutless
And practically useless on dates.
%%
There was a young man from Bel-Aire
Who was screwing his girl on the stair,
But the banister broke
So he doubled his stroke
And finished her off in mid-air.
%%
A pretty young lady named Vogel
Once sat herself down on a molehill.
A curious mole
Nosed into her hole --
Ms. Vogel's ok, but the mole's ill.
%%
A mathematician named Hall
Has a hexahedronical ball,
And the cube of its weight
Times his pecker's, plus eight
Is his phone number -- give him a call.
%%
Said Einstein, "I have an equation
Which to some may seem rabelaisian:
Let _#V be virginity
Approaching infinity;
Let _#P be a constant persuasion;
"Let _#V over _#P be inverted

With the square root of _#M_#u inserted
_#N times into _#V ...
The result, Q.E.D.,
Is a relative!" Einstein asserted.
%%
A team playing baseball in Dallas
Called the umpire blind out of malice.
While this worthy had fits
The team made eight hits
And a girl in the bleachers named Alice.
%%
A bather whose clothing was strewed
By breezes that left her quite nude,
Saw a man come along
And, unless I'm quite wrong,
You expected this line to be lewd.
%%
There was a young lad name of Durcan
Who was always jerkin' his gherkin.
His father said, "Durcan!
Stop jerkin' your gherkin!
Your gherkin's for ferkin', not jerkin'.
%%
A beat schizophrenic said, "Me?
I am not I, I'm a tree."
But another, more sane,
Shouted, "I'm a Great Dane!"
And covered his pants leg with pee.
%%
There once was a hacker named Ken
Who inherited truckloads of Yen
So he built him some chicks
Of silicon chips
And hasn't been heard from since then.
%%
There once was a plumber from Leigh,
Who was plumbing his maid by the sea,
Said she, "Please stop plumbing,
I think someone's coming!"
Said he, "Yes, I know, love, it's me."
%%
There once was a freshman named Lin,
Whose tool was as thin as a pin,
A virgin named Joan
From a bible belt home,
Said "This won't be much of a sin."
%%
Fie for shame, you lascivious, lewd, lecherous, libidinous, lustful,
licentious, dirty bum!!
%%
There once was a couple named Kelly,
Who lived their life belly to belly.
Because in their haste
They used Library Paste,
Instead of Petroleum Jelly.
%%
CLONE OF MY OWN (to Home on the Range)
Oh, give me a clone

Of my own flesh and bone
With the Y chromosome changed to X.
And when she is grown,
My very own clone,
We'll be of the opposite sex.
Chorus:
Clone, clone of my own,
With the Y chromosome changed to X.
And when we're alone,
Since her mind is my own,
She'll be thinking of nothing but sex.
-- Randall Garrett
%%
Living in Hollywood is like living in a bowl of granola. What ain't
fruits and nuts is flakes.
%%
There once was a man named Eugene
Who invented a screwing machine
Concave and convex
It served either sex
And it played with itself in between.
%%
Sex is like a bridge game --
If you have a good hand no partner is needed.
%%
"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought you
didn't believe in God."
"I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the
God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's
not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be."

%%
A pretty young maiden from France
Decided she'd "just take a chance."
She let herself go
For an hour or so
And now all her sisters are aunts.
%%
Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if each acts like a vulture,
all will end as doves.
%%
"A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do what a
good many other people are restrained from doing by conscientious
scruples and the police."
-- Mr. Dooley
%%
Grain grows best in shit.
-- U. K. LeGuin
%%
All things dull and ugly, All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty, The Lord God made the lot;
Each little snake that poisons, Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous, All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous, The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet, Each beastly little squid.
Who made the spikey urchin? Who made the sharks? He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous, All pox both great and small.
Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The Lord God made them all.
-- Monty Python's Flying Circus

%%
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed!
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,

On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!
-- Monty Python's Flying Circus

%%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
%%
Hackers do it with all sorts of characters.
%%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%%
All a hacker needs is a tight PUSHJ, a loose pair of UUOs, and a warm
place to shift.
%%
Hackers know all the right MOVs.
%%
Hackers do it with fewer instructions.
%%
Hackers do it with bugs.
%%
AI hackers do it with robots.
%%
Mathematicians take it to the limit.
%%
Mathematicians do it in theory.
%%
Statisticians probably do it.
%%
Statisticians do it with 95% confidence.
%%
Physicists do it with charm.
%%
Doctors take two aspirin and do it in the morning.
%%
Bankers do it with interest (penalty for early withdrawal).
%%
Politicians do it to everyone.
%%
Procrastinators do it tomorrow.
%%
Communists do it without class.
%%
Evangelists do it with Him watching.
%%
God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends.
%%
The world is an 8000 mile in diameter spherical pile of shit.
%%
There was a young lady named Hall,
Wore a newspaper dress to a ball.
The dress caught on fire
And burned her entire
Front page, sporting section, and all.
%%
Missionary position: The missionary on top.
%%
O'Riordan's Theorem:
Brains x Beauty = Constant.
Purmal's Corollary:
As the limit of (Brains x Beauty) goes to infinity,
availability goes to zero.
%%
This limerick is **SO**FILTHY** that it would offend you. So I'll put
"di-dah" for the filthy words:
Di-dah, di-dah, di-dah di-dah,

Di-dah di-dah di-dah, di-dah;
di-dah di-dah di-dah?
Di-dah di-dah di-dah.
Di-dah di-dah, di-dah di-fuck.
%%
There was a young whore from Kaloo
Who filled her vagina with glue.
She said with a grin,
"If they pay to get in,
They can pay to get out again too!"
%%
Prostitution is the only business where you can go into the hole and
still come out ahead.
%%
Once upon a time, there was a non-conforming sparrow who decided not to
fly south for the winter. However, soon after the weather turned cold,
the sparrow changed his mind and reluctantly started to fly south.
After a short time, ice began to form his on his wings and he fell to
earth in a barnyard almost frozen. A cow passed by and crapped on this
little bird and the sparrow thought it was the end, but the manure
warmed him and defrosted his wings. Warm and happy the little sparrow
began to sing. Just then, a large Tom cat came by and hearing the
chirping investigated the sounds. As Old Tom cleared away the manure,
he found the chirping bird and promptly ate him.
There are three morals to this story:

1) Everyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2) Everyone who gets you out of shit is not necessarily your friend.
3) If you are warm and happy in a pile of shit, keep your mouth shut.
%%
Aide to Raygun: Sir, the poor are outside protesting your budget cuts.
Raygun himself: Tell them they'll have to help themselves.
Aide to Raygun: Sir, the Pentagon wants another $30 billion.
Raygun himself: Tell them to help themselves.
%%
... And then there's the guy who bought 20,000 bras, cut them in half,
and sold 40,000 yarmulkes with chin straps ...
%%
One day President Reagan, Chairman Andropov, the Pope, and a boy scout
were flying together in an airplane. Right out in the middle of
nowhere the plane developed engine trouble and started to go down.
Unfortunately, only three parachutes could be found for the four
passengers! Andropov grabbed one of the parachutes and declared
"Comrades, as leader of the socialist workers revolution, my life must
be spared," and he jumped out of the plane. Then Reagan exclaimed "As
leader of the greatest nation on earth, I must keep the world safe for
democracy," and with that he too jumped to safety. Now if you are
following all this (or counting on your fingers) you must see that
there is only one parachute left for the two remaining passengers. The
Pope looked kindly upon the boy scout and said "I have had a long and
productive life, my son. You take the parachute and leave me in God's
hands." "That's very kind of you," the observant scout replied, "but
there is no need. Reagan just jumped out with my knapsack."
%%
Did you hear about the new German microwave oven?
... Seats 500.

%%
Q: How do you tell if an Elephant has been making love in your
backyard?
A: If all your trashcan liners are missing ...

%%
If Helen Keller is alone in a forest and falls, does she make a sound?
%%
I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it
once was ... an arctic wilderness.
-- Steve Martin
%%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere,
is having fun.
%%
Dear Lord, observe this bended knee
This visage meek and humble,
And hear this confidential plea
Voiced in reverent mumble:
Give me Shylock, give me Fagin
But O God spare me Ronald Reagan!
-- Ansel Adams
%%
The Split-Atom Blues
Gimme Twinkies, gimme wine,

Gimme jeans by Calvin Kline ...
But if you split those atoms fine,
Mama keep 'em off those genes of mine!
Gimme zits, take my dough,

Gimme arsenic in my jelly roll ...
Call the devil and sell my soul,
But Mama keep dem atoms whole!
-- Milo Bloom, "Bloom County"

%%
Said a horny young girl from Milpitas,
"My favorite sport is coitus."
But a fullback from State
Made her period late,
And now she has athlete's fetus.
%%
There was an old man of the port
Whose prick was remarkably short.
When he got into bed,
The old woman said,
"This isn't a prick; it's a wart!"
%%
A worried young man from Stamboul
Founds lots of red spots on his tool.
Said the doctor, a cynic,
"Get out of my clinic;
Just wipe off the lipstick, you fool!"
%%
He hated to mend, so young Ned
Called in a cute neighbor instead.
Her husband said, "Vi,
When you stitched up his torn fly,
Did you have to bite off the thread?"
%%
There was a young man named Crockett
Whose balls got caught in a socket.
His wife was a bitch,
And she threw the switch,
As Crockett went off like a rocket.
%%
Said a swinging young chick named Lyth
Whose virtue was largely a myth,
"Try as hard as I can,
I can't find a man
That it's fun to be virtuous with."
%%
A wanton young lady from Wimley
Reproached for not acting quite primly
Said, "Heavens above!
I know sex isn't love,
But it's such an entrancing facsimile."
%%
I once met a lassie named Ruth
In a long distance telephone booth.
Now I know the perfection
Of an ideal connection
Even if somewhat uncouth.
%%
There was a young lady from Maine
Who claimed she had men on her brain.
But you knew from the view,
As her abdomen grew,
It was not on her brain that he'd lain.
%%
A remarkable race are the Persians;
They have such peculiar diversions.
They make love the whole day
In the usual way
And save up the nights for perversions.
%%
A widow who fancied a man some
Was diddled three times in a hansome.
When she clamored for more
Her young man became sore
And exclaimed "My name's Simson not Samson."
%%
There once was a Scot named McAmeter
With a tool of prodigious diameter.
It was not the size
That cause such surprise;
'Twas his rhythm -- iambic pentameter.
%%
The Gray-haired Woman's Complaint
My back aches, my pussy is sore;

I simply can't fuck any more;
I'm covered with sweat,
And you haven't come yet,
And my God, it's a quarter to four!
%%
I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Nothing is better than Sex.
Masturbation is better than nothing.
Therefore, Masturbation is better than Sex.
%%
God must love assholes -- She made so many of them.
%%
Once a young gay from Khartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room.
They argued all night
Over who had the right
To do what, and with which, and to whom.
%%
He who sneezes without a handkerchief takes matters into his own hands.
%%
I have a funny daddy
Who goes in and out with me
And everything that baby does
Daddy's sure to see,
And everything that baby says,
My daddy's sure to tell.
You _#m_#u_#s_#t have read my daddy's verse.
I hope he fries in Hell.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
He who findeth sensuous pleasures in the bodies of lush, hot, pink
damsels is not righteous, but he can have a lot more fun.
%%
An Army travels on her stomach.
%%
"If you're a real good kid, I'll give you a piggy-back ride on a
buzz-saw."
-- W. C. Fields
%%
The computer is the ultimate polluter: Its shit is indistinguishable
from the food it produces.
%%
There's more than one way to skin a cat:
Way number 27 -- Use an electric sander.
%%
Way number 32 -- Wrap it around a lonely frat man's pecker.
%%
Way number 15 -- Krazy Glue and a toothbrush.
%%
We call our dog Egypt, because in every room he leaves a pyramid.
%%
The other night I was having sex, but the girl hung up on me.
%%
Q: How do you tell if you're making love to a nurse, a schoolteacher,
or an airline stewardess?
A: A nurse says: "This won't hurt a bit." A schoolteacher says: "We're

going to have to do this over and over again until we get it
right." An airline stewardess says: "Just hold this over your mouth
and nose, and breath normally."
%%
Q: Where can you buy black lace crotchless panties for sheep?
A: Fredricks of Ithaca, New York.

%%
Support the right of unborn males to bear arms!
-- A public service announcement from Phyllis Schlafly,
the Catholic Church, and the National Rifle
Association
%%
Kill a commie for Christ!
%%
Q: If Tarzan was Jewish, and Jane was a princess, what would Cheetah
be?
A: A fur coat.
%%
My brother-in-law has found a way to make ends meet. He goes around
with his head stuck up his ass.
%%
NEW ADDITION TO THE LIBRARY:
"Sally", the department's new inflatable doll, is available on a
short-term removal basis only -- please sign her out and return her
promptly to avoid extended waits. (We are still awaiting shipment of
our "Big John" doll.)
%%
Having discovered the possibility that other creatures could be used
for sexual intercourse, early man was likely to have made many such
attempts ... though it is doubtful that he was so sexually carnivorous
as the Christian and Jewish Adam, who, rabbinical interpreters of the
Old Testament tell us, had intercourse with every creature before God
finally hit upon the idea of woman and created Eve.
-- R. E. Masters
%%
I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse than anything else
that has ever happened, and vice versa.
-- Frank Zappa
%%
A hard man is good to find.
%%
Vidi, vici, veni.
(I saw, I conquered, I came.)
%%
Q: What's Jewish foreplay?
A: Two hours of begging.

%%
Randel, n.: A nonsensical poem recited by Irish schoolboys as an
apology for farting at a friend.
-- Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure &
Preposterous Words
%%
Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is
to mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal
difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the
former breeds sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed)
facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the
historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their
ankles in bullshit.
-- Tom Robbins
%%
"Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash."
-- Bo Diddley
%%
"The whole world is about three drinks behind."
-- Humphrey Bogart
%%
College is like a woman -- you work so hard to get in, and nine months
later you wish you'd never come.
%%
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
%%
"A woman is like a dresser ... some man always goin' through her
drawers."
--- Blind Lemon Pledge
%%
Motto of the Electrical Engineer:
Working computer hardware is a lot like an erect penis: it
stays up as long as you don't fuck with it.
%%
You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't
pick your friend's nose.
%%
"We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand."
-- James Watt
%%
Definition: Virgin -- an ugly third grader.
%%
What can you use used tampons for? Tea bags for vampires.
%%
There's nothing wrong with America that a good erection wouldn't cure.
-- David Mairowitz
%%
You come out of a woman and you spend the rest of your life trying to
get back inside.
-- Heathcote Williams
%%
Did you know that there are 71.9 acres of nipple tissue in the U.S.?
%%
Life is like a penis: when it's soft you can't beat it, and when it's
hard you get fucked.
%%
Why is it that there are so many more horses' asses than there are
horses?
-- G. Gordon Liddy
%%
If you can believe ten impossible things before breakfast, then you
should join
THE CHURCH OF COUNTERFACTUAL BELIEF
The Church of Counterfactual Belief has been set up to cater to all who
do not allow demonstrable truth to get in the way of their beliefs. In
addition to the flatness of the earth, the following beliefs have been
certified by Pope Duane as Church dogma:
-- That there is a hole in the Earth at the North Pole from which
UFOs come.
-- That pi equals precisely 3.000.
-- That sex can be enjoyed only by blacks and homosexuals.
-- That Billy Joe Wilson (Hoopla, Miss.) has successfully squared
the circle.
-- That Harry Truman is still president, and doing a fine job.
-- That pi equals precisely 22/7.
Several other important counterfactual beliefs are presently being

studied, including Reaganomics, A.I., and that the moon landings were
done in a Hollywood special effects studio. These will be the subject
of a forthcoming Papal Bull ...
%%
Howard Cosell's biggest protrusion is his asshole.
-- John Valby
%%
Nancy Reagan wants to divorce old Ron ... seems he's making it hard for
everyone but her.
%%
Overheard in a bar:
Man: "Hey, Baby, I'd sure like to get in your pants!"
Woman: "No, thanks, I've already got one asshole in there now."
%%
"Tom Hayden is the kind of politician who gives opportunism a bad
name."
-- Gore Vidal
%%
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it's just the
opposite."
%%
This is a test of the emergency cunnilingus system. If this had been an
actual emergency, you would have known it!
%%
Kasha: Kasha is always defined as "buckwheat groats". There's only one
problem with this definition: what the fuck are "buckwheat groats"? _#I
know what they are -- they're kasha. But that doesn't help _#y_#o_#u much.
%%
There once was a lady from Exeter,
So pretty that men craned their necks at her.
One was even so brave
As to take out and wave
The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.
%%
Sex is the poor man's opera.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Clarke's Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
G's Third Law:

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, the entire universe
is composed of only two basic substances: magic and bullshit.
H's Dictum:
There is no magic ...
%%
Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination.
-- Graffito in a women's restroom
%%
Women Unite! Make _#h_#i_#m sleep in the wet spot tonight!
%%
"I own my own body, but I share."
%%
If you think sex is a pain in the ass, try a different position.
%%
When God created man, She was only testing.
%%
A friend with weed is a friend indeed.
%%
A non-vegetarian anti-abortionist is a contradiction in terms.
--Phyllis Schlafly
%%
A nymph hits you and steals your virginity.
%%
Anxiety, n: The first time you can't do it a second time.
Panic, n: The second time you can't do it the first time.

%%
Achilles' Biological Findings:
(1) If a child looks like his father, that's heredity. If he
looks like a neighbor, that's environment.
(2) A lot of time has been wasted arguing over what came first
-- the chicken or the egg. It was undoubtedly the rooster.
%%
Back in the good ole days in Texas, when stagecoaches and the like was
popular, there were three people in a stagecoach one day: a true
red-blooded born-and-raised Texas gentleman, a tenderfoot city-slicker
from back East, and a beautiful and well-endowed Texas lady. The
city-slicker kept eyeing the lady, and finally he leaned forward and
said, "Lady, I'll give you $10 for a blow job." The Texas gentleman
looked appalled, pulled out his pistol, and killed the city-slicker on
the spot. The lady gasped and said, "Thank you, suh, for defendin' mah
honor!" Whereupon the Texan holstered his gun and said, "Your honor,
hell!! No tenderfoot is gonna raise the price of tail in Texas!!"
%%
Beneath this stone a virgin lies,
For her life held no terrors.
A virgin born, a virgin died:
No hits, no runs, no errors.
%%
"Do you cheat on your wife?" asked the psychiatrist.
"Who else?" answered the patient.
%%
Eleven reasons a cucumber is better than a man:
1) Cucumbers can stay up all night, and you won't have to
sleep in the wet spot.
2) Cucumbers don't play the guitar and try to find themselves.
3) You won't find out later that your cucumber
... is married
... is on penicillin
... likes you -- but loves your brother!
4) A cucumber won't care what time of the month it is.
5) A cucumber never wants to get it on when your nails are wet.
6) Cucumbers don't say "Let's keep trying until we have a boy".
7) Cucumbers won't tell you size doesn't count.
8) A cucumber won't leave you for a cheerleader or an ex-nun.
9) Cucumbers don't fall asleep on your chest or drool on the pillow.
10) Cucumbers don't care if you make more money than they do.
11) With a cucumber, the toilet seat is always the way you left it.
%%
Fornication, n: Term used by people who don't have anybody to screw
with.
%%
Floppy now, hard later.
%%
Her kisses left something to be desired -- the rest of her.
%%
I'm going to Iowa for an award. Then I'm appearing at Carnegie Hall,
it's sold out. Then I'm sailing to France to be honored by the French
government -- I'd give it all up for one erection.
--Groucho Marx
%%
It is a sad commentary on today's society that this fortune has to be
classified as "offensive" simply because it contains the word "fuck".
%%
Jesus was killed by a Moral Majority.
%%
Q: What do you do with an elephant with three balls?
A: Walk him and pitch to the rhino.

%%
The defense attorney was hammering away at the plaintiff: "You
claim," he jeered, "that my client came at you with a broken bottle in
his hand. But is it not true, that you had something in YOUR hand?"
"Yes," he admitted, "his wife. Very charming, of course, but

not much good in a fight."
%%
The problem with being best man at a wedding is that you never get a
chance to prove it.
%%
To a Real Woman, every ejaculation is premature.
%%
Two little kids, aged six and eight, decide it's time to learn
how to swear. So, the eight-year-old says to the six-year-old, "Okay,
you say àss' and I'll say `hell'".
All excited about their plan, they troop downstairs, where
their mother asks them what they'd like for breakfast.
"Aw, hell," says the eight-year-old, "gimme some Cheerios." His
mother backhands him off the stool, sending him bawling out of the
room, and turns to the younger brother. "What'll you have?"
"I dunno," quavers the six-year-old, "but you can bet your ass
it ain't gonna be Cheerios."
%%
She hates testicles, thus limiting the men she can admire to Democratic
candidates for president.
-- John Greenway
["The American Tradition", on feminist Elizabeth
Gould Davis]
%%
Most legislators are so dumb that they couldn't pour piss out of a boot
if the instructions were printed on the heel.
%%
Well, there was this tiger, who woke up one morning, and just
felt great (yes, just like Tony the Tiger: GREAAAAAAT). Anyway, he
just felt so good, he went out and cornered a small monkey and roared
at him: "WHO IS THE MIGHTIEST OF ALL THE JUNGLE ANIMALS?" And this
poor quaking little monkey replied: "You are of course, no one is
mightier than you." A little while later this tiger confronts a deer,
and just bellows out: "WHO IS THE GREATEST AND STRONGEST OF ALL THE
JUNGLE ANIMALS?" The deer is shaking so hard it can barely speak, but
manages to stammer: "Oh great tiger, you are by far the mightiest
animal in the jungle." The tiger, being on a roll, swaggered, up to an
elephant that was quietly munching on some weeds, and roared at the top
of his voice: "WHO IS THE MIGHTIEST OF ALL THE ANIMALS IN THE JUNGLE?"
Well, this elephant grabs the tiger with his trunk, picks him up, slams
him down; picks him up again, and shakes him until the tiger is just a
blur of orange and black; and finally throws him violently into a
nearby tree. The tiger staggers to his feet and looks at the elephant
and says: "Man, just because you don't know the answer, you don't have
to get so pissed."
%%
"Yes, that was Richard Nixon. He used to be President. When he left
the White House, the Secret Service would count the silverware."
-- Woody Allen, "Sleeper"
%%
An architect fellow named Yoric
Could, when feeling euphoric,
Display for selection
Three kinds of erection --
Corinthian, ionic, and doric.
%%
Q: How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
%%
This test has been designed to evaluate reactions of management
personal to various situations.
You are making a sales presentation to a group of corporate executives

in the plushest office you've ever seen. The enchillada casserole and
egg salad sandwich you had for lunch react, creating severe pressure.
Your sphincter loses control and you break wind, causing the glass
bookcase doors to shatter and a secretary to pass out.
YOU SHOULD:
(A) Offer to come back next week when the smell has gone away.
(B) Point to the Chief Executive and accuse him of the offense.
(C) Challenge anyone in the room to do better.
%%
Q: How do you play religious roulette?
A: You stand around in a circle and blaspheme and see who gets struck
by lightning first.
%%
When the surgeon came to see her on the morning after her operation, the
young woman asked her somewhat hesitantly how long it would be before
she could resume her sex life. "I really haven't thought about it,"
gulped the stunned surgeon. "You're the first patient who's asked me
that after a tonsillectomy!"
%%
I love this fucking University, and this University loves fucking me.
%%
Lisp hackers have to be bound (to-do 'it) ...
%%
You have prepared a proposal for your supervisor. The success of this
proposal will mean increasing your salary 20%. In the middle of your
proposal your supervisor leans over to look at your report and spits
into your coffee. You:
(a) Tell him you take your coffee black.
(b) Ask him if he has any communicable diseases.
(c) Show him who's in command; promptly take a leak in his "In"
basket.
%%
You are at a business lunch when you are suddenly overcome with an
uncontrollable desire to pick your nose. Since this is definitely a
no-no, you:
(a) Pretend to wave to someone across the room and with one fluid
motion, bury your forefinger in your nostril right up to the 4th
joint.
(b) Get everyone drunk and organize a nose picking contest with a
prize to the one who makes his nose bleed first.
(c) Drop your napkin on the floor and when you bend over to pick it
up, blow your nose on your sock.
%%
You have just returned from a trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin in January
and tell your boss that nobody but whores and football players live
there. He mentions that his wife is from Green Bay. You:
(a) Pretend you are suffering from amnesia and don't remember your
name.
(b) Ask what position she played.
(c) Ask if she is still working the streets.

%%
Q: What is "SMOORPLAY"?
A: It's what SMURFS do before they SMUCK, of course!
%%
Q: How many right-to-lifers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to say that light started when the
screwing began.
%%
"And Bezel saideth unto Sham: `Sham,' he saideth, `Thou shalt goest
unto the town of Begorrah, and there thou shalt fetcheth unto thine
bosom 35 talents, and also shalt thou fetcheth a like number of cubits,
provideth that they are nice and fresh.'"
-- Dave Barry, "Getting Religion"
%%
I realize that today you have a number of top female athletes such as
Martina Navratilova who can run like deer and bench-press Chevrolet
trucks. But to be brutally frank, women as a group have a long way to
go before they reach the level of intensity and dedication to sports
that enables men to be such incredible jerks about it.
%%
Our team usually puts the other woman at second base, where the maximum
possible number of males can get there on short notice to help out in
case of emergency. As far as I can tell, our second basewoman is a
petty good baseball player, better than I am, anyway, but there's no
way to know for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male
comes barging over from, say, right field, to deal with it. She's been
on the team for three seasons now, but the males still don't trust
her. They know, deep in their souls, that if she had to choose between
catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she probably would
elect to save the infant's life, without ever considering whether there
were men on base.
%%
I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
-- Barry Goldwater
%%
There were the Scots
Who kept the Sabbath
And everything else they could lay their hands on.
Then there were the Welsh
Who prayed on their knees and their neighbors.
Thirdly there were the Irish
Who never knew what they wanted
But were willing to fight for it anyway.
Lastly there were the English
Who considered themselves a self-made nation
Thus relieving the Almighty of a dreadful responsibility.
%%
There once was a lady from Nace
Whose corset got too tight to lace
Her mother said, "Nellie,
There's things in your belly
That didn't get in through your face."
%%
There once was a fellow named Dave
Who dug up a whore from the grave
She was mouldy as shit
And missing a tit
But think of the money he saved!
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
-- Voltaire
%%
There was a young lady from Troy
Had a moustache, just like a young boy
Though it tickled to kiss
'Twas a source of much bliss
When she used it to brush a man's toy.
%%
There was a young lady from Hoosick
Who was terribly fond of rock music
So she said to her friend
(Who'd a cock up her end)
"Crank it up, just the tunes, not the cue stick!"
%%
A prostitute's motto : The best things in life aren't free.
%%
She wasn't what one would call pretty,
And other girls offered her pity.
So nobody guessed
That her Wasserman test
Involved one half of New York City.
%
A handsome young fellow named Morris,
While licking his girlfriend's clitoris,
Said to the lass, ``Honey,
You sure do taste funny.''
Said she, `Ì've just douched with Lavoris.''
%%
There once was a man from Peru,
Who fell asleep in his canoe.
While dreaming of Venus
And stroking his penis,
He awoke with a handful of goo.
%%
There once was a lawyer named Rex,
With a minuscule organ of sex.
When arraigned for exposure
He maintained with composure,
"De minimis non curat lex."
%%
There once was a man named Kent,
Whose cock was so long that it bent.
And so, to save trouble,
He put it in double;
Instead of coming, he went.
%%
Meanwhile, back at the outhouse, things were piling up....
%%
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Grandma was beating the Indians off but
they just kept on coming....
%%
He was giving the girl her first lesson,
Hoping head would become her obsession.
But he pushed her away,
Saying, ``That's not the way!
I mean, `blow me' is just an expression!''
%%
Twisted Christmas
Chipmunks roasting on an open fire

Jack Frost ripping up your nose
Yuletide carolers being thrown in the fire
And folks dressed up like buffaloes
Everybody knows a turkey slaughtered in the snow
Helps to make the season right
Tiny tots with their eyes all gouged out
Will find it hard to see tonight
They know that Santa's on his way
He's loaded lots of guns and bullets on his sleigh
And every mother's child is sure to spy
To see if reindeer really scream when they die
And so I'm offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety two
Although it's been said many times, many ways
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Fuck you!!
%%
illegitimus non carborundum - Don't let the bastards grind you down.
%%

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"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the

Then Justice came. His Honor cried:

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.

The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so

The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"

Wow! wow! wow!

I speak severely to my boy,

Wow! wow! wow!

-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"

And now the fancy passes by,

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

The Course of Progress:

The Path of Progress:

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:

Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem

1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:

"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,

What's in that pipe that he's smoking?

1. They all had moderate appetites.

Here in my soul I am Sappho;

I'm all of the glamorous ladies

Say my love is easy had,

Say I'm neither brave nor young,

But say my verses do not scan,

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

Four be the things I'd been better without:

Three be the things I shall never attain:

Three be the things I shall have till I die:

But to our modern married fair,

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the

That no one ever reads these things?

------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme

Nine in the second place means:

Six in the third place means:

"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"

"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"

"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached

"How?" demanded Fafhrd.

Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."

-- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"

Oh, dear, where can the matter be

Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.

100 blocks of crud on the disk,

"Beware the software rot, my son!

This person must be fired.

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?

Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers

-- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box

To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before

It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!

Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL

-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Kinkler's Second Law: