7030 lines
278 KiB
Forth
7030 lines
278 KiB
Forth
%%
|
||
Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
|
||
it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
|
||
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
|
||
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...
|
||
[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important
|
||
world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the
|
||
next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]
|
||
... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
|
||
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
|
||
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even
|
||
more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a
|
||
fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the
|
||
older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and
|
||
obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the
|
||
window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger
|
||
hotshot cells moving up from below.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
|
||
%%
|
||
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 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 Second Law of The Average American:
|
||
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Menu, n.:
|
||
A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
|
||
%%
|
||
Meskimen's Law:
|
||
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
|
||
do it over.
|
||
%%
|
||
MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
|
||
%%
|
||
Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
|
||
%%
|
||
methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylluecylphenyialanylalanylglutamin-
|
||
ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
|
||
phenylalanylyalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
|
||
taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
|
||
glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolyphenylalanyl-
|
||
serylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylglutaminyl-
|
||
asparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylglycylva-
|
||
lythreonylprolyalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionylleucyala-
|
||
nylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolythreonylisoleucylprolyli-
|
||
soleucylglyclleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylvalylphenylala-
|
||
nylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanylglu-
|
||
taminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylala-
|
||
nylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolyphenylalanylargi-
|
||
nylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylalanylprolyiso-
|
||
leucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylaspartylaspartyl-
|
||
aspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosylglycylarginyl-
|
||
glycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycylvalylthreonyl-
|
||
gylcylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginyalanylalanylleucylprolylleucylaspartagi-
|
||
nylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucylysylglutamyltyrosylasparaginylalanylala-
|
||
nylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylserylalanylpro-
|
||
lyaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanylglycylalanyla-
|
||
lanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalyllysylisoleucyli-
|
||
soleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylprolyglutamylly-
|
||
sylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyglutaminylproly-
|
||
methionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
|
||
The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protien, a
|
||
1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
|
||
-- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
|
||
Preposterous Words
|
||
%%
|
||
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
|
||
%%
|
||
Micro Credo:
|
||
Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
|
||
watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks."
|
||
%%
|
||
"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
|
||
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
|
||
%%
|
||
Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
|
||
Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
|
||
inconsiderate."
|
||
-- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
|
||
%%
|
||
Miksch's Law:
|
||
If a string has one end, then it has another end.
|
||
%%
|
||
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
|
||
-- Groucho Marx
|
||
%%
|
||
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
|
||
-- Groucho Marx
|
||
%%
|
||
Millihelen, adj:
|
||
The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
|
||
%%
|
||
Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
|
||
pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
|
||
%%
|
||
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
|
||
%%
|
||
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
|
||
-- Russell Baker
|
||
%%
|
||
Misfortune, n.:
|
||
The kind of fortune that never misses.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Miss, n.:
|
||
A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
|
||
they are in the market.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
|
||
%%
|
||
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
|
||
Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
|
||
held to discuss it.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
|
||
%%
|
||
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked
|
||
him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just
|
||
last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew
|
||
better.
|
||
%%
|
||
Molecule, n.:
|
||
The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished
|
||
from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
|
||
matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate,
|
||
indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the
|
||
molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion ...
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
|
||
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
|
||
it wasn't worth doing.
|
||
%%
|
||
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
|
||
%%
|
||
Monday, n.:
|
||
In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
|
||
%%
|
||
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots
|
||
%%
|
||
Money is the root of all wealth.
|
||
%%
|
||
Moon, n.:
|
||
1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
|
||
hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
|
||
%%
|
||
Mophobia, n.:
|
||
Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
|
||
%%
|
||
MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
|
||
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
|
||
Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while
|
||
the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
|
||
Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
|
||
paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
|
||
took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
|
||
their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player
|
||
said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a
|
||
fight and the match was called by officials.
|
||
%%
|
||
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One
|
||
path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
|
||
extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
|
||
-- Woody Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
|
||
because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
|
||
and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
|
||
eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
|
||
and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
|
||
female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
|
||
dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven
|
||
by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the
|
||
truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
|
||
them that it doesn't make any difference.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
|
||
Teen Should Know"
|
||
%%
|
||
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
|
||
than they do.
|
||
-- Turgenev
|
||
%%
|
||
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
|
||
-- Frank Zappa
|
||
%%
|
||
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
|
||
-- Arnold Bennett
|
||
%%
|
||
Mother is the invention of necessity.
|
||
%%
|
||
Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
|
||
%%
|
||
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
|
||
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
|
||
population is growing.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams)
|
||
"365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old
|
||
Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his
|
||
pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
|
||
in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
|
||
in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
|
||
133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,255!" An electronic
|
||
computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
|
||
fun to watch.
|
||
-- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
|
||
%%
|
||
Murphy's Discovery:
|
||
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
|
||
later, you're in trouble!
|
||
%%
|
||
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
|
||
work.
|
||
%%
|
||
Murphy's Law of Research:
|
||
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ..."
|
||
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
|
||
%%
|
||
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."
|
||
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
|
||
%%
|
||
Mustgo, n.:
|
||
Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
|
||
long it has become a science project.
|
||
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
|
||
%%
|
||
"My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on
|
||
it."
|
||
-- "Grendel", by John Gardner
|
||
%%
|
||
My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
|
||
threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.
|
||
First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
|
||
frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
|
||
the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed
|
||
forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
|
||
perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
|
||
the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
|
||
crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a
|
||
symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
|
||
in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
|
||
really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
|
||
OK.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
|
||
%%
|
||
"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
|
||
there are three other people."
|
||
-- Orson Welles
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
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 mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been
|
||
one.
|
||
-- Groucho Marx
|
||
%%
|
||
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
|
||
Alley!!
|
||
%%
|
||
"My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
|
||
Alley!!"
|
||
-- Zippy the Pinhead
|
||
%%
|
||
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
|
||
Which, being finished, here the story ends;
|
||
'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
|
||
But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
|
||
-- Byron
|
||
%%
|
||
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not
|
||
signed.
|
||
-- Christopher Morley
|
||
%%
|
||
"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
|
||
%%
|
||
Mythology, n.:
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Naeser's Law:
|
||
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
|
||
damnfoolproof.
|
||
%%
|
||
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"
|
||
%%
|
||
Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant
|
||
said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
|
||
time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone
|
||
might steal it."
|
||
%%
|
||
Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
|
||
villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time,"
|
||
said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the
|
||
villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The
|
||
remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he
|
||
said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of
|
||
my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually
|
||
spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
|
||
serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk
|
||
into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?"
|
||
"Never." "Then how do you know it was me?"
|
||
%%
|
||
Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
|
||
than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the
|
||
light more."
|
||
%%
|
||
Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver
|
||
pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of
|
||
meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it,
|
||
"Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without
|
||
the recipe?"
|
||
%%
|
||
Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
|
||
conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the
|
||
fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
|
||
is most likely to be creamed?
|
||
-- Solomon Short
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
|
||
cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
|
||
-- Fran Leibowitz
|
||
%%
|
||
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
|
||
character, give him power.
|
||
-- Abraham Lincoln
|
||
%%
|
||
Necessity is a mother.
|
||
%%
|
||
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
|
||
-- Lin Yutang
|
||
%%
|
||
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
|
||
%%
|
||
Never drink coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled
|
||
with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to
|
||
change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
|
||
fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
|
||
have windows.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never eat more than you can lift.
|
||
-- Miss Piggy
|
||
%%
|
||
Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
|
||
-- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
|
||
%%
|
||
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
|
||
make it complex and wonderful.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
|
||
substance.
|
||
-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
|
||
%%
|
||
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a
|
||
law against it by that time.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
|
||
%%
|
||
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
|
||
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
|
||
%%
|
||
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
|
||
-- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
|
||
%%
|
||
"Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon."
|
||
%%
|
||
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
|
||
supposed to do.
|
||
-- R. A. Heinlein
|
||
%%
|
||
New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
|
||
%%
|
||
New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
|
||
any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
|
||
%%
|
||
New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
|
||
Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
|
||
%%
|
||
New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
|
||
-- Monty Python's Big Red Book
|
||
%%
|
||
New systems generate new problems.
|
||
%%
|
||
New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
|
||
his wife most often reminds him to act it.
|
||
-- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
|
||
%%
|
||
New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.
|
||
%%
|
||
New York's got the ways and means;
|
||
Just won't let you be.
|
||
-- The Grateful Dead
|
||
%%
|
||
Newlan's Truism:
|
||
An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
|
||
economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
|
||
%%
|
||
NEWS FLASH!!
|
||
Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
|
||
German pole-vault champion.
|
||
%%
|
||
*** NEWSFLASH ***
|
||
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!
|
||
%%
|
||
Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
|
||
%%
|
||
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
|
||
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
|
||
%%
|
||
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
|
||
have a lucky day this year.
|
||
%%
|
||
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
|
||
as an income tax refund.
|
||
-- F. J. Raymond
|
||
%%
|
||
"Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice."
|
||
-- Foghorn Leghorn
|
||
%%
|
||
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
|
||
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
|
||
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
|
||
Three megs for system source;
|
||
|
||
One disk to rule them all,
|
||
One disk to bind them,
|
||
One disk to hold the files
|
||
And in the darkness grind 'em.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
|
||
And tapes without any tracks;
|
||
Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
|
||
And tapes mixed up on the racks --
|
||
Take hold of the tape
|
||
And pull off the strip,
|
||
And then you'll be sure
|
||
Your tape drive will skip.
|
||
|
||
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
|
||
%%
|
||
"Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
|
||
would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
|
||
that much."
|
||
-- Augustine
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends
|
||
hang out.
|
||
-- Zonker Harris
|
||
%%
|
||
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
|
||
absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
|
||
-- Fran Lebowitz
|
||
%%
|
||
No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
|
||
camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
|
||
effectively under such difficult conditions.
|
||
-- Laurence J. Peter
|
||
%%
|
||
No good deed goes unpunished.
|
||
-- Clare Boothe Luce
|
||
%%
|
||
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
|
||
eating one peanut.
|
||
-- Channing Pollock
|
||
%%
|
||
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
|
||
%%
|
||
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will
|
||
seriously cramp his style.
|
||
%%
|
||
No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
|
||
immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
|
||
%%
|
||
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
|
||
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
|
||
%%
|
||
"No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid."
|
||
%%
|
||
No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
|
||
system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
|
||
the author.
|
||
-- Chris Shaw
|
||
%%
|
||
No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
|
||
He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
|
||
Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
|
||
And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
|
||
CHORUS:
|
||
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
|
||
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
|
||
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
|
||
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
|
||
Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
|
||
And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
|
||
All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
|
||
But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
|
||
(chorus)
|
||
Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
|
||
The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
|
||
A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
|
||
But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
|
||
(chorus)
|
||
%%
|
||
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
|
||
%%
|
||
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
|
||
%%
|
||
"No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
|
||
occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
|
||
indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
|
||
occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
|
||
an indication-applied occurrence."
|
||
-- ALGOL 68 Report
|
||
%%
|
||
"No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of
|
||
paper."
|
||
-- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
|
||
taken over by Rupert Murdoch
|
||
%%
|
||
"No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'"
|
||
-- Dr. Who
|
||
%%
|
||
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
|
||
%%
|
||
Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with
|
||
constructive praise.
|
||
%%
|
||
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
|
||
Negative expectations yield negative results.
|
||
Positive expectations yield negative results.
|
||
%%
|
||
Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
|
||
%%
|
||
Noncombatant, n.:
|
||
A dead Quaker.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce
|
||
%%
|
||
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
|
||
%%
|
||
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
|
||
%%
|
||
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
|
||
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
|
||
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
|
||
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
|
||
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
|
||
respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
|
||
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
|
||
then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
|
||
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
|
||
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
|
||
-- Shakespeare
|
||
%%
|
||
"Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
|
||
is from the wrong kind of tree."
|
||
--Professor W.
|
||
%%
|
||
Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
|
||
of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
|
||
is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
|
||
unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is
|
||
careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
|
||
-- Woody Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
|
||
|
||
To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
|
||
light comes on.
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
|
||
-- Andrew Young
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
|
||
tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
|
||
-- Nero Wolfe
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
|
||
Conscience makes egotists of us all.
|
||
-- Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing recedes like success.
|
||
-- Walter Winchell
|
||
%%
|
||
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited
|
||
love.
|
||
-- Charlie Brown
|
||
%%
|
||
November, n.:
|
||
The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
|
||
%%
|
||
Now I lay me down to sleep
|
||
I pray the double lock will keep;
|
||
May no brick through the window break,
|
||
And, no one rob me till I awake.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
|
||
-- Walt Kelly
|
||
%%
|
||
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
|
||
time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
|
||
to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
|
||
eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
|
||
the following questions:
|
||
|
||
(1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
|
||
food?
|
||
(2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
|
||
exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
|
||
(3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
|
||
prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
|
||
double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living
|
||
right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
|
||
longer.)
|
||
|
||
That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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"
|
||
%%
|
||
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
|
||
get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
|
||
the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
|
||
on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
|
||
children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
|
||
snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
|
||
to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
|
||
a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
|
||
outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
|
||
he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
|
||
Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
|
||
Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
|
||
kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
|
||
children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
|
||
quickly.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
|
||
%%
|
||
Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
|
||
tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
|
||
Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
|
||
plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
|
||
they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
|
||
Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
|
||
administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
|
||
you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
|
||
described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
|
||
interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
|
||
that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
|
||
This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
|
||
inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
|
||
so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
|
||
if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
|
||
direct sunlight.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Nuclear war would really set back cable."
|
||
-- Ted Turner
|
||
%%
|
||
[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
|
||
-- Edwin Meese III
|
||
%%
|
||
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
|
||
%%
|
||
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're
|
||
guessing.
|
||
%%
|
||
O give me a home,
|
||
Where the buffalo roam,
|
||
Where the deer and the antelope play,
|
||
Where seldom is heard
|
||
A discouraging word,
|
||
'Cause what can an antelope say?
|
||
%%
|
||
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
|
||
Murphy was an optimist.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Of ______course it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
|
||
fake?"
|
||
%%
|
||
Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
|
||
reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
|
||
amount of hot air.
|
||
-- Thomas L. Martin
|
||
%%
|
||
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
|
||
-- Plato
|
||
%%
|
||
Of all the words of witch's doom
|
||
There's none so bad as which and whom.
|
||
The man who kills both which and whom
|
||
Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
|
||
-- Fletcher Knebel
|
||
%%
|
||
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
|
||
%%
|
||
Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%.
|
||
And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
|
||
blazer.
|
||
%%
|
||
Office Automation, n.:
|
||
The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
|
||
you would want to talk with over coffee.
|
||
%%
|
||
Ogden's Law:
|
||
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
|
||
up.
|
||
%%
|
||
Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
|
||
%%
|
||
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!
|
||
%%
|
||
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
|
||
I muck with indices and structs all day
|
||
And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
|
||
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
|
||
%%
|
||
Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
|
||
be irresponsible, too.
|
||
-- Lichty & Wagner
|
||
%%
|
||
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
|
||
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
|
||
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
|
||
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
|
||
You have not dreamed of --
|
||
Wheeled and soared and swung
|
||
High in the sunlit silence.
|
||
Hovering there
|
||
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
|
||
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
|
||
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
|
||
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
|
||
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
|
||
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
|
||
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
|
||
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
|
||
-- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
|
||
%%
|
||
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
|
||
%%
|
||
"OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
|
||
-- Dr. Joy
|
||
%%
|
||
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
|
||
-- Trotsky
|
||
%%
|
||
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
|
||
%%
|
||
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
|
||
%%
|
||
Oliver's Law:
|
||
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
|
||
it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Omnibiblious, adj.:
|
||
Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything.
|
||
I'm omnibiblious."
|
||
%%
|
||
OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need 4 GALLONS of JELL-O
|
||
and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O as if
|
||
it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... ... or ... I ... um ... WHERE'S
|
||
the WASHING MACHINES?
|
||
%%
|
||
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
|
||
|
||
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
|
||
-- Wolfgang Pauli
|
||
%%
|
||
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
|
||
nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
|
||
what it does.
|
||
-- Will Rogers
|
||
%%
|
||
On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
|
||
receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
|
||
income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
|
||
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
|
||
"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
|
||
route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
|
||
"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
|
||
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
|
||
worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
|
||
%%
|
||
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
|
||
created jerks.
|
||
-- Avery
|
||
%%
|
||
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
|
||
created jerks.
|
||
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
|
||
%%
|
||
On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a
|
||
POINT ...
|
||
%%
|
||
On-line, adj.:
|
||
The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
|
||
computer.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 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"
|
||
%%
|
||
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
|
||
Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
|
||
Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
|
||
principals or your mistress".
|
||
%%
|
||
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!"
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
|
||
beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
|
||
side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
|
||
which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
|
||
sky.
|
||
-- Rainer Rilke
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
|
||
with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
|
||
shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
|
||
advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
|
||
shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
|
||
them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
|
||
%%
|
||
Once, adv.:
|
||
Enough.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
|
||
somebody's listening.
|
||
-- Franklin P. Jones
|
||
%%
|
||
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
|
||
%%
|
||
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
|
||
how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
|
||
-- Professor Charles P. Issawi
|
||
%%
|
||
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell
|
||
the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald
|
||
announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to
|
||
a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The
|
||
captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth
|
||
-- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin,
|
||
"to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if
|
||
I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!"
|
||
"Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
|
||
%%
|
||
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
|
||
when well oiled.
|
||
%%
|
||
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
|
||
never have to stop and answer the phone.
|
||
%%
|
||
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
|
||
-- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
|
||
%%
|
||
One learns to itch where one can scratch.
|
||
-- Ernest Bramah
|
||
%%
|
||
One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
|
||
one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
|
||
produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
|
||
represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
|
||
many ...
|
||
-- Anthony Chevins
|
||
%%
|
||
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
|
||
%%
|
||
One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
|
||
will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
|
||
I'll tell you."
|
||
%%
|
||
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
|
||
do and always a clever thing to say.
|
||
-- Will Durant
|
||
%%
|
||
One 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."
|
||
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
|
||
%%
|
||
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
|
||
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
|
||
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
|
||
years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
|
||
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
|
||
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
|
||
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
|
||
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
|
||
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
|
||
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
|
||
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
|
||
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
|
||
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
|
||
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
|
||
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
|
||
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
|
||
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
|
||
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
|
||
is that it's all there.
|
||
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
|
||
%%
|
||
One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
|
||
seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best
|
||
way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
|
||
fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
|
||
disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
|
||
%%
|
||
One of the Ten Commandments for Technicians
|
||
(7) Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
|
||
fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and
|
||
console her in other ways.
|
||
%%
|
||
One of the Ten Commandments for Technicians:
|
||
(1) Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
|
||
capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks
|
||
in a most untechnician-like manner.
|
||
%%
|
||
One Page Principle:
|
||
A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
|
||
paper cannot be understood.
|
||
-- Mark Ardis
|
||
%%
|
||
"One planet is all you get."
|
||
%%
|
||
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
|
||
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
|
||
they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's
|
||
say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
|
||
study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
|
||
sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
|
||
strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
|
||
rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also
|
||
be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.
|
||
Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
|
||
Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
|
||
millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
|
||
support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that
|
||
your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
|
||
of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
|
||
already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
|
||
%%
|
||
One reason why George Washington
|
||
Is held in such veneration:
|
||
He never blamed his problems
|
||
On the former Administration.
|
||
-- George O. Ludcke
|
||
%%
|
||
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
|
||
%%
|
||
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh
|
||
paint.
|
||
%%
|
||
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
|
||
new model.
|
||
%%
|
||
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
|
||
%%
|
||
One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
|
||
at the stake while the votes were being counted.
|
||
-- Thomas B. Reed
|
||
%%
|
||
One-Shot Case Study, n.:
|
||
The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
|
||
it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes
|
||
green.
|
||
%%
|
||
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
|
||
%%
|
||
Only God can make random selections.
|
||
%%
|
||
Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to
|
||
use the editorial "we."
|
||
%%
|
||
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
|
||
%%
|
||
Optimization hinders evolution.
|
||
%%
|
||
Optimization hinders evolution.
|
||
%%
|
||
Oregano, n.:
|
||
The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
|
||
%%
|
||
Oregon, n.:
|
||
Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
|
||
night.
|
||
%%
|
||
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry
|
||
is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
|
||
-- Mike Adams
|
||
%%
|
||
Osborn's Law:
|
||
Variables won't; constants aren't.
|
||
%%
|
||
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your
|
||
nails.
|
||
%%
|
||
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
|
||
they charge fifteen cents for them.
|
||
%%
|
||
Our documentation manager was showing her 2 year old son around the
|
||
office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
|
||
were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of
|
||
juice. But only *__he* had a lollipop.
|
||
|
||
He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"
|
||
|
||
Her reply:
|
||
|
||
"He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it
|
||
means to be a programmer."
|
||
%%
|
||
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
|
||
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
|
||
In kernel as it is in user!
|
||
%%
|
||
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
|
||
-- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
|
||
%%
|
||
... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
|
||
Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
|
||
thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
|
||
somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
|
||
on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
|
||
a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it."
|
||
-- Alex Schure
|
||
%%
|
||
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
|
||
-- General Omar N. Bradley
|
||
%%
|
||
OUTCONERR
|
||
Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
|
||
Did logzerneg the ifthen block
|
||
All kludgy were the function flows
|
||
And subroutines adhoc.
|
||
|
||
Beware the runtime-bug my friend
|
||
squrooneg, the false goto
|
||
Beware the infiniteloop
|
||
And shun the inprectoo.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
|
||
it's too dark to read."
|
||
-- Groucho Marx
|
||
%%
|
||
Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
|
||
I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
|
||
%%
|
||
Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Painting, n.:
|
||
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
|
||
exposing them to the critic.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce
|
||
%%
|
||
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much
|
||
better.
|
||
-- Laurie Anderson
|
||
%%
|
||
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
|
||
%%
|
||
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
|
||
%%
|
||
Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Pardo's First Postulate:
|
||
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
|
||
fattening.
|
||
|
||
Arnold's Addendum:
|
||
Everything else causes cancer in rats.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
|
||
%%
|
||
Parker's Law:
|
||
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
|
||
%%
|
||
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
|
||
If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
|
||
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
|
||
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
|
||
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
|
||
%%
|
||
Parsley
|
||
is gharsley.
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Pascal is not a high-level language."
|
||
-- Steven Feiner
|
||
%%
|
||
Pascal Users:
|
||
To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
|
||
death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half
|
||
speed.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pascal, n.:
|
||
A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
|
||
his grave if he knew about it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
|
||
-- Eric Hoffer
|
||
%%
|
||
Patageometry, n.:
|
||
The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
|
||
under brain transplants.
|
||
%%
|
||
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale
|
||
%%
|
||
Paul's Law:
|
||
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
|
||
save.
|
||
%%
|
||
Paul's Law:
|
||
You can't fall off the floor.
|
||
%%
|
||
Peace, n.:
|
||
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
|
||
periods of fighting.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Peanut Blossoms
|
||
|
||
4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
|
||
4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
|
||
4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
|
||
8 eggs 4 tsp. soda
|
||
4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
|
||
|
||
Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
|
||
sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
|
||
Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
|
||
hell of a lot.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
|
||
Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
|
||
it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pedaeration, n.:
|
||
The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
|
||
sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
Penguin Trivia #46:
|
||
Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
|
||
-- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
|
||
%%
|
||
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
|
||
the future.
|
||
%%
|
||
"People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense."
|
||
-- Ken Kesey
|
||
%%
|
||
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
|
||
%%
|
||
People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better
|
||
press than people who are just funny and smart.
|
||
-- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
|
||
%%
|
||
People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
|
||
slept in a room with a single mosquito.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
|
||
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
|
||
%%
|
||
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
|
||
%%
|
||
People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they
|
||
did yesterday.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
|
||
"Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
|
||
-- Aelius Donatus
|
||
%%
|
||
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
|
||
%%
|
||
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
|
||
when there is no longer anything to take away.
|
||
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
|
||
%%
|
||
Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
|
||
%%
|
||
Peter's Law of Substitution:
|
||
Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
|
||
themselves.
|
||
%%
|
||
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
|
||
exciting Camden, New Jersey.
|
||
%%
|
||
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
|
||
%%
|
||
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
|
||
-- John Keats
|
||
%%
|
||
Pick another fortune cookie.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pig, n.:
|
||
An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
|
||
by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however,
|
||
is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
|
||
Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
|
||
American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today,
|
||
as nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed.
|
||
You will probably get run over by a bus.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
|
||
-- Don Marquis
|
||
%%
|
||
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
|
||
solution set.
|
||
-- E. W. Dijkstra
|
||
%%
|
||
"Plaese porrf raed."
|
||
-- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
|
||
%%
|
||
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
|
||
because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
|
||
couldn't compete successfully with poets.
|
||
-- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
|
||
Shell"
|
||
%%
|
||
Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill
|
||
them.
|
||
%%
|
||
Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic
|
||
table.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
|
||
%%
|
||
Please ignore previous fortune.
|
||
%%
|
||
Please take note:
|
||
%%
|
||
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?
|
||
%%
|
||
Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
|
||
requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
|
||
into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
|
||
problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
|
||
radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
|
||
plumbing works.
|
||
A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
|
||
except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
|
||
it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
|
||
and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
|
||
all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
|
||
kill you.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pohl's law:
|
||
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
|
||
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
|
||
%%
|
||
Politician, n.:
|
||
An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
|
||
organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the
|
||
agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared
|
||
with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Politician, n.:
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
|
||
where there is no river.
|
||
-- Nikita Khrushchev
|
||
%%
|
||
Politics is like coaching a football team. you have to be smart enough
|
||
to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
|
||
%%
|
||
Polymer physicists are into chains.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
Portable, adj.:
|
||
Survives system reboot.
|
||
%%
|
||
Positive, adj.:
|
||
Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat"
|
||
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
|
||
%%
|
||
Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
|
||
%%
|
||
Power, n:
|
||
The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
|
||
%%
|
||
Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
|
||
more time for dreaming.
|
||
-- J. P. McEvoy
|
||
%%
|
||
Predestination was doomed from the start.
|
||
%%
|
||
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
|
||
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
|
||
%%
|
||
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
|
||
It's on the other side.
|
||
%%
|
||
[Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
|
||
to see him work.
|
||
-- Winston Churchill
|
||
%%
|
||
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have
|
||
orgasms? The answer is yes, the have orgasms almost constantly, which
|
||
is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
|
||
Teen Should Know"
|
||
%%
|
||
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
|
||
Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received 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%
|
||
%%
|
||
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
|
||
|
||
This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction
|
||
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
|
||
|
||
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
|
||
|
||
We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
|
||
for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
|
||
as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
|
||
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We
|
||
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
|
||
about _n.
|
||
QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
|
||
%%
|
||
Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
|
||
SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
|
||
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
|
||
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
|
||
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
|
||
legs for a horse.
|
||
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
|
||
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.
|
||
|
||
Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by:
|
||
Intimidation
|
||
Gesticulation (handwaving)
|
||
"Try it; it works"
|
||
Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
|
||
Blatant assertion
|
||
Changing all the 2's to _n's
|
||
Mutual consent
|
||
Lack of a counterexample, and
|
||
"It stands to reason"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
|
||
than the both put together."
|
||
%%
|
||
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
|
||
three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves
|
||
to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way
|
||
to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the
|
||
cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in
|
||
fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a
|
||
lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of
|
||
the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
|
||
%%
|
||
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off of the TV screen.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
|
||
%%
|
||
Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
|
||
%%
|
||
Put no trust in cryptic comments.
|
||
%%
|
||
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
|
||
-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
|
||
A: One per person.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
|
||
A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
|
||
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
|
||
|
||
Q: How long does it take?
|
||
A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've
|
||
brought with them.
|
||
|
||
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
|
||
A: They replace your generator.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a 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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb
|
||
in San Francisco?
|
||
A: Both of them.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
|
||
A: One and a half.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
|
||
A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
|
||
to the earlier joke.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
|
||
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
|
||
Californians trying to share the experience.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
|
||
A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
|
||
with brightly colored machine tools.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
|
||
A: None. The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
|
||
of the way.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: What's a light-year?
|
||
A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
|
||
A: Because it was on the other side.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
|
||
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Question:
|
||
Man Invented Alcohol,
|
||
God Invented Grass.
|
||
Who do you trust?
|
||
%%
|
||
Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
|
||
%%
|
||
Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
|
||
%%
|
||
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
|
||
|
||
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
|
||
%%
|
||
Quigley's Law:
|
||
Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
|
||
atttempt to use it.
|
||
%%
|
||
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
|
||
|
||
`
|
||
|
||
%%
|
||
"Qvid me anxivs svm?"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
_
|
||
_ / \ o
|
||
/ \ | | o o o
|
||
| | | | _ o o o o
|
||
| \_| | / \ o o o
|
||
\__ | | | o o
|
||
| | | | ______ ~~~~ _____
|
||
| |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__
|
||
| ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\
|
||
| | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " )
|
||
| | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
|
||
| | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\
|
||
| | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\
|
||
// | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\
|
||
// ( ) / / \` \__ \\
|
||
//-------------------------------------------------------------\\
|
||
|
||
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
|
||
start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
|
||
then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
|
||
music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
|
||
-- H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
|
||
%%
|
||
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
|
||
%%
|
||
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
|
||
I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
|
||
computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
|
||
store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
|
||
all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all
|
||
the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are
|
||
they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current
|
||
rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
|
||
Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be
|
||
impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying
|
||
goes, giving away the store?
|
||
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
|
||
%%
|
||
Ray's Rule of Precision:
|
||
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
|
||
the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
|
||
with pictures.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
|
||
Congress. But I repeat myself.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic
|
||
value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is
|
||
much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice
|
||
this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware
|
||
has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing
|
||
machines are so poor at I/O.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are
|
||
so long they can't afford the disk space.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
|
||
in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker
|
||
with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they
|
||
hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for
|
||
applications.)
|
||
%%
|
||
Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
|
||
on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
|
||
sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured
|
||
programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-
|
||
trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
|
||
clear desks.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. 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. It was hard to write, it
|
||
should be hard to understand.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the
|
||
illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how
|
||
much good it did them.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write
|
||
in BASIC after reaching puberty.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress
|
||
freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who
|
||
wear white socks.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who
|
||
can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
|
||
functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
|
||
%%
|
||
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
|
||
This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
|
||
computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
|
||
greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
|
||
moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
|
||
systems could be virtual at *___all* levels. They would like personal
|
||
computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
|
||
DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
|
||
Correctness Verification Aid packages.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the
|
||
job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like
|
||
using an undocumented external procedure.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Time, adj.:
|
||
Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
|
||
and then.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
|
||
afraid to break your face.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
|
||
down the system for days.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Users hate Real Programmers.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Users know your home telephone number.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
|
||
program doesn't deliver it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real Users never use the Help key.
|
||
%%
|
||
Real World, The n.:
|
||
1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may
|
||
be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
|
||
programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
|
||
to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
|
||
tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4.
|
||
The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
|
||
"Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
|
||
pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
|
||
of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
|
||
deceased person.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reality is for people who lack imagination.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
|
||
-- Alvy Ray Smith
|
||
%%
|
||
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
|
||
away".
|
||
-- Philip K. Dick
|
||
%%
|
||
"Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
|
||
%%
|
||
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
|
||
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
|
||
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
|
||
%%
|
||
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
|
||
lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
|
||
but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
|
||
Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3
|
||
recessions.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
|
||
Candy
|
||
Is dandy
|
||
But liquor
|
||
Is quicker.
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe
|
||
again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
|
||
which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
|
||
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
|
||
starfield surrounding the ship.
|
||
|
||
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC
|
||
announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they
|
||
are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been
|
||
intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and
|
||
transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
|
||
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
|
||
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
|
||
%%
|
||
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
|
||
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
|
||
-- Anatole France
|
||
%%
|
||
"Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is when he never used
|
||
it."
|
||
-- Dave Barry
|
||
%%
|
||
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
|
||
worse in Cleveland.
|
||
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
|
||
%%
|
||
Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good
|
||
offense!
|
||
%%
|
||
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
|
||
%%
|
||
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
|
||
%%
|
||
Renning's Maxim:
|
||
Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
|
||
Civilization?
|
||
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
|
||
%%
|
||
Reporter, n.:
|
||
A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
|
||
tempest of words.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
|
||
|
||
SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
|
||
the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
|
||
carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
|
||
I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
|
||
of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
|
||
do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
|
||
ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
|
||
need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
|
||
career be being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
|
||
that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
|
||
can't help it.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
|
||
%%
|
||
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
|
||
-- Wernher von Braun
|
||
%%
|
||
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
|
||
another chance later on.
|
||
%%
|
||
Review Questions
|
||
|
||
(1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
|
||
and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
|
||
he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
|
||
Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
|
||
|
||
(2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
|
||
twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
|
||
every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
|
||
his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
|
||
|
||
(3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
|
||
the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
|
||
pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
|
||
Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
|
||
%%
|
||
Rhode's Law:
|
||
When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
|
||
circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
|
||
empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied,
|
||
inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically
|
||
guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience,
|
||
expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal
|
||
comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above,
|
||
be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and
|
||
adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally,
|
||
immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes
|
||
advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time."
|
||
-- Steven Wright
|
||
%%
|
||
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
|
||
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
|
||
reject the proposal.
|
||
%%
|
||
Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
|
||
-- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With
|
||
Pogo"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Rudin's Law:
|
||
If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it
|
||
every time.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Rule of Defactualization:
|
||
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Rule of the Great:
|
||
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
|
||
thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
|
||
%%
|
||
Rules for Academic Deans:
|
||
(1) HIDE!!!!
|
||
(2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
|
||
-- Father Damian C. Fandal
|
||
%%
|
||
Rules for driving in New York:
|
||
(1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
|
||
(2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers
|
||
on.
|
||
(3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
|
||
intersection.
|
||
%%
|
||
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
|
||
(1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
|
||
(2) Never leave the table hungry.
|
||
(3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
|
||
(4) Enjoy your food.
|
||
(5) Enjoy your companion's food.
|
||
(6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
|
||
accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
|
||
(7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
|
||
for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
|
||
brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
|
||
(8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
|
||
(9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
|
||
can always eat it later.
|
||
(10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
|
||
(11) Avoid blue food.
|
||
-- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet"
|
||
%%
|
||
Rules:
|
||
(1) The boss is always right.
|
||
(2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
|
||
%%
|
||
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
|
||
Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.
|
||
|
||
(1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs,
|
||
ants.
|
||
(2) Something is missing in your personal relationships.
|
||
(3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
|
||
(4) You have a hard time getting a waiter.
|
||
(5) Exotic birds flock around you.
|
||
(6) People ignore you at parties.
|
||
(7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
|
||
(8) You no longer get off on cocaine.
|
||
%%
|
||
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
|
||
(1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
|
||
bomb; use the stairs.
|
||
(2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
|
||
the ground.
|
||
(3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
|
||
(4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
|
||
psychological problems.
|
||
(5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to
|
||
recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed
|
||
potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
|
||
(6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs
|
||
will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
|
||
(7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
|
||
(8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
|
||
staggering illegally.
|
||
(9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
|
||
sanitary due to limited circulation.
|
||
(10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
|
||
D-Day.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
|
||
-- Herb Caen
|
||
%%
|
||
San Francisco, n.:
|
||
Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
|
||
%%
|
||
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
|
||
-- Mark Harrold
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Satellite Safety Tip #14:
|
||
If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
|
||
%%
|
||
Sattinger's Law:
|
||
It works better if you plug it in.
|
||
%%
|
||
Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
|
||
Is like being nowhere at all,
|
||
All through the day how the hours rush by,
|
||
You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
|
||
-- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
|
||
%%
|
||
Sauron is alive in Argentina!
|
||
%%
|
||
Save energy: be apathetic.
|
||
%%
|
||
Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
|
||
%%
|
||
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
|
||
%%
|
||
SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
|
||
-- Ken Thompson
|
||
%%
|
||
Schapiro's Explanation:
|
||
The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's
|
||
because they use more manure.
|
||
%%
|
||
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
|
||
%%
|
||
Schlattwhapper, n.:
|
||
The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
|
||
hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
Schnuffel, n.:
|
||
A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in
|
||
mixed company.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
Schwiggle, n.:
|
||
The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a
|
||
pencil.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
|
||
of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
|
||
is not necessarily science.
|
||
-- Henri Poincair'e
|
||
%%
|
||
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
|
||
Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
|
||
Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
|
||
Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
|
||
Spock: Affirmative.
|
||
Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
|
||
Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
|
||
%%
|
||
Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
|
||
%%
|
||
Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
|
||
Presidency.
|
||
-- Richard Nixon
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
|
||
In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
|
||
multiline message byte.
|
||
In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
|
||
must be sent passive true.
|
||
The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
|
||
(1) The ANRS if DAV is false
|
||
(2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
|
||
(a) The LADS is active
|
||
(b) Nor LACS is active"
|
||
|
||
-- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
|
||
Programmable Instrumentation
|
||
%%
|
||
Security check: INTRUDER ALERT!
|
||
%%
|
||
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
|
||
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
|
||
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
|
||
Silently scheming,
|
||
Sightlessly seeking
|
||
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
|
||
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
|
||
%%
|
||
Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
|
||
Ice Cream cures all ills.
|
||
%%
|
||
Self Test for Paranoia:
|
||
You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
|
||
your own fault.
|
||
%%
|
||
Seminars, n.:
|
||
From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
|
||
%%
|
||
Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
|
||
notify you if the record has pornographics material or
|
||
material glorifying violence?"
|
||
Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
|
||
Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
|
||
legs on the album cover is good indication that it's
|
||
not for little Johnny."
|
||
|
||
-- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock
|
||
lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985
|
||
%%
|
||
Senate, n.:
|
||
A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
|
||
misdemeanors.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce
|
||
%%
|
||
Serenity through viciousness.
|
||
%%
|
||
Serocki's Stricture:
|
||
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
|
||
%%
|
||
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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
|
||
%%
|
||
Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
|
||
big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
|
||
reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's
|
||
build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up
|
||
like crabgrass all over the United States.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke.
|
||
%%
|
||
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
|
||
-- Swami X
|
||
%%
|
||
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
|
||
-- M. C. Reed.
|
||
%%
|
||
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
|
||
it's one of the best.
|
||
-- Woody Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
|
||
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!"
|
||
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
|
||
%%
|
||
Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
|
||
during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
|
||
Teen Should Know"
|
||
%%
|
||
Shaw's Principle:
|
||
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
|
||
want to use it.
|
||
%%
|
||
"She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
|
||
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
|
||
%%
|
||
She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them
|
||
were bad.
|
||
%%
|
||
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
|
||
have poured on a waffle ...
|
||
%%
|
||
"She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
|
||
you should hear me play piano.'"
|
||
-- Morrisey
|
||
%%
|
||
She's genuinely bogus.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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
|
||
%%
|
||
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
|
||
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
|
||
%%
|
||
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
|
||
playing golf with his boss.
|
||
%%
|
||
Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
|
||
%%
|
||
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
|
||
-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
|
||
%%
|
||
Silverman's Law:
|
||
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
|
||
%%
|
||
Simon's Law:
|
||
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
|
||
%%
|
||
Since I hurt my pendulum
|
||
My life is all erratic.
|
||
My parrot, who was cordial,
|
||
Is now transmitting static.
|
||
The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
|
||
The cat keeps doing poo.
|
||
The only thing that keeps me sane
|
||
Is talking to my shoe.
|
||
-- My Shoe
|
||
%%
|
||
Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
|
||
alive.
|
||
-- John Sloan
|
||
%%
|
||
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
|
||
-- Bob "Mountain" Beck
|
||
%%
|
||
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
|
||
vices I admire.
|
||
-- Winston Churchill
|
||
%%
|
||
Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
|
||
Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
|
||
excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
|
||
This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally
|
||
examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published
|
||
Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
|
||
printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry
|
||
comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
|
||
no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
|
||
to work.
|
||
%%
|
||
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
|
||
when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
|
||
apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I
|
||
neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
|
||
tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they
|
||
were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
|
||
souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a
|
||
testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
|
||
chains.
|
||
-- Frederick Douglass
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Slurm, n.:
|
||
The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
|
||
it sits in the dish too long.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
|
||
-- Fletcher Knebel
|
||
%%
|
||
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
|
||
-- Fletcher Knebel
|
||
%%
|
||
Snacktrek, n.:
|
||
The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
|
||
returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will
|
||
have materialized.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
|
||
your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
|
||
hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
|
||
array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
|
||
|
||
... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
|
||
were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
|
||
that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
|
||
toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
|
||
made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
|
||
format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
|
||
Revolution"
|
||
%%
|
||
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
|
||
praise of intelligence.
|
||
-- Bertrand Russell
|
||
%%
|
||
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
|
||
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
|
||
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
|
||
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
|
||
-- Voltarine de Cleyre
|
||
%%
|
||
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
|
||
With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
|
||
maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
|
||
corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
|
||
flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
|
||
it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
|
||
I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
|
||
the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
|
||
Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
|
||
I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
|
||
heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
|
||
unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
|
||
up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
|
||
opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
|
||
our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
|
||
the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
|
||
cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
|
||
these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
|
||
into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
|
||
%%
|
||
"So 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
|
||
%%
|
||
... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
|
||
procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
|
||
to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
|
||
sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
|
||
documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
|
||
listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
|
||
documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
|
||
under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
|
||
effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
|
||
scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
|
||
in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
|
||
thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
|
||
then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
|
||
dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all
|
||
along.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
|
||
%%
|
||
So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever
|
||
remember his Bible?
|
||
%%
|
||
Sodd's Second Law:
|
||
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
|
||
bound to occur.
|
||
%%
|
||
Software, n.:
|
||
Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
|
||
%%
|
||
Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
|
||
%%
|
||
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
|
||
-- Ed Howe
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
|
||
%%
|
||
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
|
||
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
|
||
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
|
||
%%
|
||
Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only
|
||
one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
|
||
%%
|
||
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
|
||
them on the head.
|
||
%%
|
||
Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic.
|
||
%%
|
||
Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
|
||
you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
|
||
worse.
|
||
-- Avery
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
Some primal termite knocked on wood.
|
||
And tasted it, and found it good.
|
||
And that is why your Cousin May
|
||
Fell through the parlor floor today.
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand
|
||
progress.
|
||
%%
|
||
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
|
||
progress.
|
||
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
|
||
%%
|
||
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
|
||
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
|
||
%%
|
||
Someone will try to honk your nose today.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
|
||
the only ashtray."
|
||
%%
|
||
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
|
||
-- Lily Tomlin
|
||
%%
|
||
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
|
||
Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
|
||
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
|
||
and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
|
||
best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
|
||
we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
|
||
|
||
"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
|
||
-- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
|
||
%%
|
||
Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
|
||
%%
|
||
Song Title of the Week:
|
||
"They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
|
||
in me."
|
||
%%
|
||
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already
|
||
paid may disregard this fortune).
|
||
%%
|
||
Sorry, no fortune this time.
|
||
%%
|
||
Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
|
||
%%
|
||
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"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Spare no expense to save money on this one."
|
||
-- Samuel Goldwyn
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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!
|
||
-- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
|
||
%%
|
||
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!
|
||
%%
|
||
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
|
||
%%
|
||
Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
|
||
-- Dave Millman
|
||
%%
|
||
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
|
||
sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
|
||
cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free
|
||
the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a
|
||
bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
|
||
controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
|
||
passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same
|
||
memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well,
|
||
no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously
|
||
designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
|
||
%%
|
||
Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
|
||
|
||
With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
|
||
He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
|
||
And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
|
||
As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
|
||
Helpless users with projects due
|
||
Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
|
||
|
||
Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
|
||
Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
|
||
|
||
* VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
|
||
* DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
|
||
-- Curtis Jackson
|
||
%%
|
||
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
|
||
these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
|
||
to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
|
||
communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
|
||
on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
|
||
life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
|
||
communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____least
|
||
he can do is to Shut Up!
|
||
-- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
|
||
%%
|
||
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
|
||
The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
|
||
number of times you have looked at it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Spelling is a lossed art.
|
||
%%
|
||
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
|
||
%%
|
||
Spirtle, n.:
|
||
The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
|
||
your eye.
|
||
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
|
||
%%
|
||
Spouse, n.:
|
||
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
|
||
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
|
||
drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'ee of bat guano; and the
|
||
greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
|
||
take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
|
||
-- Harlan Ellison
|
||
%%
|
||
Stay away from flying saucers today.
|
||
%%
|
||
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
|
||
%%
|
||
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
|
||
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
|
||
another drink.
|
||
%%
|
||
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
|
||
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
|
||
handle.
|
||
%%
|
||
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
|
||
%%
|
||
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
|
||
take a bath ...
|
||
%%
|
||
Stult's Report:
|
||
Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
|
||
fight the solutions.
|
||
%%
|
||
Stupid, n.:
|
||
Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
|
||
%%
|
||
Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
|
||
%%
|
||
Sturgeon's Law:
|
||
90% of everything is crud.
|
||
%%
|
||
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
|
||
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
|
||
before it is understood.
|
||
%%
|
||
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
|
||
%%
|
||
Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
|
||
without his duck ...
|
||
%%
|
||
(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!
|
||
%%
|
||
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
|
||
%%
|
||
Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
|
||
%%
|
||
Support your local police force -- steal!!
|
||
%%
|
||
Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
|
||
%%
|
||
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
|
||
%%
|
||
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 #
|
||
%%
|
||
Swahili, n.:
|
||
The language used by the National Enquirer to print their
|
||
retractions.
|
||
-- Johnny Hart
|
||
%%
|
||
Sweater, n.:
|
||
A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
|
||
%%
|
||
Swipple's Rule of Order:
|
||
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
|
||
%%
|
||
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
|
||
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
|
||
%%
|
||
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!
|
||
%%
|
||
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
|
||
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
|
||
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
|
||
%%
|
||
T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
|
||
He don't rock, and he don't roll;
|
||
Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
|
||
He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
|
||
-- The Roguelet's ABC
|
||
%%
|
||
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
|
||
hole in his head.
|
||
%%
|
||
Tact, n.:
|
||
The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
|
||
%%
|
||
Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
|
||
%%
|
||
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
|
||
enough cheese
|
||
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
|
||
%%
|
||
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
|
||
%%
|
||
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
|
||
needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
|
||
-- Kipling
|
||
%%
|
||
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit
|
||
back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
|
||
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
|
||
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
|
||
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
|
||
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
|
||
Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
|
||
no need to improve ...
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
|
||
%%
|
||
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"
|
||
%%
|
||
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
|
||
-- Euripides
|
||
%%
|
||
Talkers are no good doers.
|
||
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
|
||
%%
|
||
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
|
||
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
|
||
the tree."
|
||
-- Russell Long
|
||
%%
|
||
Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
|
||
out of the market.
|
||
%%
|
||
Taxes, n.:
|
||
Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
|
||
an extension.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
|
||
%%
|
||
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
|
||
for going backwards.
|
||
-- Aldous Huxley
|
||
%%
|
||
Telephone, n.:
|
||
An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
|
||
advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce
|
||
%%
|
||
Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
|
||
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
|
||
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
|
||
If I were thou, I'd call me us.
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
|
||
writing.
|
||
-- R. Geis
|
||
%%
|
||
"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
|
||
%%
|
||
"Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
|
||
surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
|
||
hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
|
||
hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother."
|
||
-- Len Cool, "American Pie"
|
||
%%
|
||
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).
|
||
%%
|
||
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
|
||
%%
|
||
Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
|
||
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
|
||
-- J. Finnegan, USC.
|
||
%%
|
||
"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver"
|
||
-- Foghorn Leghorn
|
||
%%
|
||
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
|
||
%%
|
||
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
|
||
%%
|
||
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
|
||
-- Dorothy Parker
|
||
%%
|
||
The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
|
||
%%
|
||
The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
|
||
people who want some.
|
||
-- Dwight MacDonald
|
||
%%
|
||
The Abrams' Principle:
|
||
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
|
||
%%
|
||
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
|
||
-- Thomas Jefferson
|
||
%%
|
||
The Advertising Agency Song:
|
||
|
||
When your client's hopping mad,
|
||
Put his picture in the ad.
|
||
If he still should prove refractory,
|
||
Add a picture of his factory.
|
||
%%
|
||
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
|
||
consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
|
||
of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
|
||
listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas
|
||
River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little
|
||
Rock.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
|
||
in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
|
||
Declaration not for that, but for future use.
|
||
-- Abraham Lincoln
|
||
%%
|
||
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
|
||
average man can see better than he can think.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
|
||
%%
|
||
The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit
|
||
called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in
|
||
writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would
|
||
be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices
|
||
immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a
|
||
bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special
|
||
Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of
|
||
paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty
|
||
would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.
|
||
The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to
|
||
emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood
|
||
Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
|
||
-- W. C. Fields
|
||
%%
|
||
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
|
||
%%
|
||
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
|
||
%%
|
||
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
|
||
blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
|
||
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
|
||
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
|
||
love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
|
||
know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only
|
||
one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what
|
||
wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
|
||
never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
|
||
dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a
|
||
lot of things there are to learn."
|
||
-- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
|
||
%%
|
||
The 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 bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch."
|
||
%%
|
||
The bogosity meter just pegged.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
|
||
To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
|
||
program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
|
||
one, and convert to the next higher units.
|
||
%%
|
||
The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be.
|
||
Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in
|
||
automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
|
||
-- Art Buchwald
|
||
%%
|
||
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
|
||
bureaucracy.
|
||
%%
|
||
"The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
|
||
flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."
|
||
%%
|
||
The camel has a single hump;
|
||
The dromedary two;
|
||
Or else the other way around.
|
||
I'm never sure. Are you?
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
|
||
greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
|
||
inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
|
||
party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
|
||
-- H. L. Mencken
|
||
%%
|
||
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
|
||
at the steam fitters' picnic.
|
||
%%
|
||
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
|
||
%%
|
||
The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
|
||
-- Alfred Adler
|
||
%%
|
||
The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will
|
||
walk carefully.
|
||
-- Russian Proverb
|
||
%%
|
||
"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
|
||
elsewhere."
|
||
%%
|
||
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
|
||
-- Alan Perlis
|
||
%%
|
||
The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his
|
||
memos.
|
||
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
|
||
%%
|
||
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
|
||
%%
|
||
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
|
||
down.
|
||
%%
|
||
The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to
|
||
eat.
|
||
-- John McNulty
|
||
%%
|
||
The Crown is full of it!
|
||
-- Nate Harris, 1775
|
||
%%
|
||
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should
|
||
therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could
|
||
hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to
|
||
declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war,
|
||
then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press.
|
||
Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
|
||
-- William Ellery Channing
|
||
%%
|
||
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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
|
||
%%
|
||
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
|
||
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require
|
||
scholarship.
|
||
-- Robert Heinlein
|
||
%%
|
||
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 ..."
|
||
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
|
||
%%
|
||
The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
|
||
a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
|
||
%%
|
||
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
|
||
really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
|
||
-- Gilbert K. Chesterson
|
||
%%
|
||
The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show
|
||
off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
|
||
next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
|
||
duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
|
||
duck and returned it to his master.
|
||
"Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
|
||
"Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't
|
||
swim."
|
||
%%
|
||
The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
|
||
and owns the worm farm.
|
||
-- Travis McGee
|
||
%%
|
||
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
|
||
%%
|
||
The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
|
||
add ten percent.
|
||
%%
|
||
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
|
||
weather forecasters.
|
||
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
|
||
%%
|
||
"The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
|
||
Compute' -- I forget which."
|
||
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
|
||
%%
|
||
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
|
||
civilization.
|
||
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
||
%%
|
||
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
|
||
symposium to follow.
|
||
%%
|
||
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
|
||
their children to speak it.
|
||
-- G. B. Shaw
|
||
%%
|
||
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a
|
||
remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce
|
||
%%
|
||
The fact that it works is immaterial.
|
||
-- L. Ogborn
|
||
%%
|
||
The Fifth Rule:
|
||
You have taken yourself too seriously.
|
||
%%
|
||
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
|
||
-- Abbie Hoffman
|
||
%%
|
||
The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
|
||
Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
|
||
tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
|
||
forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
|
||
fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
|
||
threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked
|
||
suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
|
||
foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
|
||
one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with
|
||
dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found
|
||
drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
|
||
and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have
|
||
thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
|
||
of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left
|
||
in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
|
||
crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave
|
||
Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
|
||
a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
|
||
throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
|
||
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
|
||
%%
|
||
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
|
||
management is that success equals skill.
|
||
-- Robert Heller
|
||
%%
|
||
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"
|
||
%%
|
||
"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
|
||
hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."
|
||
-- McCloctnik the Lucid
|
||
%%
|
||
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
|
||
Don't do it.
|
||
|
||
The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
|
||
Don't do it yet.
|
||
-- Michael Jackson
|
||
%%
|
||
The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
|
||
The second, a trick.
|
||
Later, it's a well-established technique!
|
||
-- Mike Broido, Intermetrics
|
||
%%
|
||
The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
|
||
Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
|
||
|
||
As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
|
||
logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
|
||
appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
|
||
four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
|
||
. . .
|
||
Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
|
||
blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
|
||
parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
|
||
of the hyper-cube.
|
||
%%
|
||
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
|
||
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
|
||
%%
|
||
"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and
|
||
vinyl."
|
||
-- Dave Barry
|
||
%%
|
||
The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
|
||
number of your kids by 32 teeth.
|
||
%%
|
||
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
|
||
chance.
|
||
%%
|
||
The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
|
||
%%
|
||
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
|
||
center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
|
||
Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
|
||
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
|
||
%%
|
||
The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled
|
||
today.
|
||
%%
|
||
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
|
||
least until we've finished building it.
|
||
%%
|
||
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature
|
||
is to build better mice.
|
||
%%
|
||
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him
|
||
love and he invented marriage.
|
||
%%
|
||
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
|
||
The one who has the gold makes the rules.
|
||
%%
|
||
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
|
||
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
|
||
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
|
||
man in the bonds of Hell."
|
||
-- St. Augustine
|
||
%%
|
||
The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
|
||
to be good.
|
||
%%
|
||
The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
|
||
statistics. These are raised to the _nth degree, the cube roots are
|
||
extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
|
||
displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
|
||
case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
|
||
down anything he damn well pleases.
|
||
-- Sir Josiah Stamp
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
|
||
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
|
||
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
|
||
%%
|
||
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
|
||
-- Albert Einstein
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
|
||
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
|
||
%%
|
||
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
|
||
thinkers.
|
||
%%
|
||
The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
|
||
which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
|
||
least 5000 years old."
|
||
%%
|
||
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
|
||
lists of "Ten Best".
|
||
-- H. Allen Smith
|
||
%%
|
||
"The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
|
||
has gills through which it can see."
|
||
-- Monty Python
|
||
%%
|
||
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
|
||
-- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
|
||
%%
|
||
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
|
||
protein -- it rejects it.
|
||
-- P. Medawar
|
||
%%
|
||
The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can
|
||
remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider
|
||
struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in
|
||
spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and
|
||
wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head
|
||
off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
|
||
%%
|
||
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
|
||
-- Ashley Montagu
|
||
%%
|
||
The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
|
||
devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
|
||
where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with
|
||
sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,
|
||
consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than
|
||
have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones
|
||
repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist
|
||
of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic
|
||
devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
|
||
%%
|
||
"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
|
||
-- Franco Spisani
|
||
%%
|
||
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
|
||
longer."
|
||
-- Henry Kissinger
|
||
%%
|
||
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
|
||
has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
|
||
when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
|
||
-- Will Rogers
|
||
%%
|
||
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
|
||
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
|
||
important thing to people.
|
||
-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
|
||
%%
|
||
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
|
||
number of participants.
|
||
-- Adam Walinsky
|
||
%%
|
||
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
|
||
by the number of people in the group.
|
||
%%
|
||
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...
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
|
||
%%
|
||
The Kennedy Constant:
|
||
Don't get mad -- get even.
|
||
%%
|
||
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
|
||
%%
|
||
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
|
||
Would shudder at a wicked word.
|
||
Their candle gives a single light;
|
||
They'd rather stay at home at night.
|
||
They do not keep awake till three,
|
||
Nor read erotic poetry.
|
||
They never sanction the impure,
|
||
Nor recognize an overture.
|
||
They shrink from powders and from paints ...
|
||
So far, I've had no complaints.
|
||
-- Dorothy Parker
|
||
%%
|
||
"The last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a
|
||
word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about
|
||
drugs.'
|
||
-- Roy Blount, Jr.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
|
||
|
||
SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
|
||
Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
|
||
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
|
||
with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
|
||
END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
|
||
a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
|
||
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
|
||
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
|
||
%%
|
||
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
|
||
|
||
This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
|
||
an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
|
||
to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
|
||
%%
|
||
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL
|
||
|
||
SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
|
||
Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
|
||
compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
|
||
coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
|
||
sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
|
||
compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
|
||
infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
|
||
%%
|
||
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE
|
||
|
||
Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
|
||
unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
|
||
are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
|
||
SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
|
||
parties.
|
||
%%
|
||
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C-
|
||
|
||
This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he
|
||
submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is
|
||
best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the
|
||
language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code
|
||
statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very
|
||
similar to COBOL.
|
||
%%
|
||
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: FIFTH
|
||
|
||
FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
|
||
refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and
|
||
JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and
|
||
BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY,
|
||
CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
|
||
|
||
The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
|
||
financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include
|
||
VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH
|
||
and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers
|
||
who end up using this language.
|
||
%%
|
||
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
|
||
train.
|
||
%%
|
||
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
|
||
%%
|
||
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
|
||
much sleep.
|
||
-- Woody Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
|
||
-- Henry Kissinger
|
||
%%
|
||
"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"
|
||
%%
|
||
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 man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
|
||
will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
|
||
-- Mark Twain.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
"... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..."
|
||
-- Dave Barry
|
||
%%
|
||
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
|
||
%%
|
||
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?"
|
||
%%
|
||
The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
|
||
devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
|
||
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.
|
||
%%
|
||
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might
|
||
be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the
|
||
law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was
|
||
guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples
|
||
Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking
|
||
Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality
|
||
of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive
|
||
power.
|
||
-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
|
||
Thinking."
|
||
%%
|
||
The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
|
||
-- Laurence J. Peter
|
||
%%
|
||
The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
|
||
-- Nicol Williamson
|
||
%%
|
||
The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
|
||
-- Andy Warhol
|
||
%%
|
||
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 moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
|
||
%%
|
||
... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!!
|
||
%%
|
||
"... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
|
||
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
|
||
feel interested.
|
||
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
|
||
vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
|
||
Aged Man.'"
|
||
"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
|
||
Alice corrected herself.
|
||
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
|
||
called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
|
||
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time
|
||
completely bewildered.
|
||
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
|
||
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
|
||
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
|
||
%%
|
||
"The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
|
||
1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert."
|
||
-- D. Letterman
|
||
%%
|
||
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
|
||
Support your right to bare arms!
|
||
%%
|
||
The net of law is spread so wide,
|
||
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
|
||
Its meshes are so fine and strong,
|
||
They take in every child of wrong.
|
||
O wondrous web of mystery!
|
||
Big fish alone escape from thee!
|
||
-- James Jeffrey Roche
|
||
%%
|
||
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
|
||
hope I don't get run over again.
|
||
%%
|
||
The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
|
||
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
|
||
|
||
But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
|
||
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
|
||
-- Matthew 5:37
|
||
%%
|
||
The 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 notion that the church, the press, and the universities should
|
||
serve the state is essentially a Communist notion ... In a free society
|
||
these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their
|
||
function is to serve as checks upon the state.
|
||
-- Alan Barth
|
||
%%
|
||
The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are
|
||
correct.
|
||
-- Ralph Hartley
|
||
%%
|
||
The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly
|
||
analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their
|
||
occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve
|
||
these problems when called upon.
|
||
|
||
However, When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
|
||
remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
|
||
%%
|
||
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
|
||
brings wisdom.
|
||
-- H. L. Mencken
|
||
%%
|
||
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader
|
||
catch his own breath.
|
||
-- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
|
||
%%
|
||
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
|
||
to cringe.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon."
|
||
-- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
|
||
Over and Over"
|
||
%%
|
||
The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it.
|
||
%%
|
||
The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber
|
||
has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,
|
||
finished, and put inside boxes.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any
|
||
use to oneself.
|
||
-- Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
"The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from
|
||
history."
|
||
-- Hegel
|
||
|
||
"I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
|
||
long view."
|
||
-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
|
||
%%
|
||
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
|
||
-- Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
|
||
until 5 or 6 p.m.
|
||
%%
|
||
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
|
||
-- Bohr
|
||
%%
|
||
The optimum committee has no members.
|
||
-- Norman Augustine
|
||
%%
|
||
The optimum committee has no members.
|
||
-- Norman Augustine
|
||
%%
|
||
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
|
||
it isn't here.
|
||
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
|
||
%%
|
||
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
|
||
were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
|
||
-- H. L. Mencken
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
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 plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
|
||
-- David Lardner
|
||
%%
|
||
The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish
|
||
to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it
|
||
is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of
|
||
courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own
|
||
preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper
|
||
social function of expressing true distaste.
|
||
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to
|
||
Excruciatingly Correct Behavior"
|
||
%%
|
||
"The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more
|
||
often."
|
||
%%
|
||
The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
|
||
Were each of them once a kiddie.
|
||
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
|
||
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his
|
||
brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is
|
||
Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
|
||
-- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
|
||
%%
|
||
The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
|
||
they might force their beliefs on us.
|
||
-- Mario Cuomo
|
||
%%
|
||
The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
|
||
warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by
|
||
changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped
|
||
marker.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
The 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 primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
|
||
voters to win the next election.
|
||
%%
|
||
The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO"
|
||
represents the secondary theme:
|
||
|
||
Law Enforcement Officials
|
||
|
||
The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
|
||
|
||
Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
|
||
%%
|
||
... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
|
||
other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
|
||
charity we can only call "inhuman."
|
||
-- R. A. Lafferty
|
||
%%
|
||
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
|
||
stupidity of your action.
|
||
%%
|
||
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
|
||
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
|
||
using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
|
||
Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
|
||
etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
|
||
bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
|
||
of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
|
||
developed cancer.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
|
||
%%
|
||
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
|
||
to erase it.
|
||
-- Glaser and Way
|
||
%%
|
||
The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get
|
||
results.
|
||
|
||
The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
|
||
problems in order to get results.
|
||
|
||
The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy
|
||
problems in order to get results.
|
||
%%
|
||
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
|
||
pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
|
||
-- Elizabeth Taylor
|
||
%%
|
||
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
"The pyramid is opening!"
|
||
"Which one?"
|
||
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
|
||
-- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
|
||
Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
|
||
%%
|
||
The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
|
||
"My brain is paged out to my liver"
|
||
%%
|
||
The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is
|
||
it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
|
||
that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of
|
||
industrial waste?
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
|
||
%%
|
||
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 reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
|
||
cursed.
|
||
%%
|
||
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
|
||
%%
|
||
The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",
|
||
which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape
|
||
Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil
|
||
Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
|
||
%%
|
||
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 rhino is a homely beast,
|
||
For human eyes he's not a feast.
|
||
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
|
||
I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
"The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
|
||
and to his imagination for his facts."
|
||
-- Sheridan
|
||
%%
|
||
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
|
||
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
|
||
%%
|
||
"The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
|
||
House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
|
||
you have and what rights you have not got."
|
||
-- J. Parnell Thomas
|
||
%%
|
||
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
|
||
sloppy analysis!
|
||
%%
|
||
The Roman Rule
|
||
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
|
||
one who is doing 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.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or
|
||
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
|
||
-- Jane Bryant Quinn
|
||
%%
|
||
"The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
|
||
respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones
|
||
from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
|
||
milestones are lifted.
|
||
-- George Bernard Shaw
|
||
%%
|
||
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 Lankhmar'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"
|
||
%%
|
||
The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land.
|
||
%%
|
||
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
|
||
-- Noelie Alito
|
||
%%
|
||
The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:
|
||
The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going
|
||
in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long
|
||
way.)
|
||
-- Dan Roddick
|
||
%%
|
||
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
|
||
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
|
||
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
|
||
neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
|
||
%%
|
||
"The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
|
||
money."
|
||
-- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon"
|
||
%%
|
||
"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
|
||
%%
|
||
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
|
||
%%
|
||
The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
|
||
readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
|
||
some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
|
||
reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
|
||
the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
|
||
known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
|
||
Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
|
||
of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
|
||
psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
|
||
Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
|
||
these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
|
||
further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
|
||
something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
|
||
the Russians.
|
||
-- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
|
||
%%
|
||
The STAR WARS Song
|
||
Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
|
||
|
||
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
|
||
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
|
||
S-O-D-A soda
|
||
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
|
||
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
|
||
Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
|
||
|
||
Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
|
||
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
|
||
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
|
||
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
|
||
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
|
||
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
|
||
%%
|
||
The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
|
||
%%
|
||
The steady state of disks is full.
|
||
--Ken Thompson
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
"The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
|
||
is an emerging underachiever."
|
||
%%
|
||
The sum of the Universe is zero.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
|
||
%%
|
||
The superfluous is very necessary.
|
||
-- Voltaire
|
||
%%
|
||
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
|
||
authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
|
||
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
|
||
the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
|
||
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
|
||
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
|
||
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
|
||
Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
|
||
heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
|
||
the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
|
||
heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
|
||
radiation, (_H/_E)^4 = 50, where _E is the absolute temperature of the
|
||
earth (-300K), gives _H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
|
||
cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
|
||
fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
|
||
burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
|
||
that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
|
||
have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
|
||
-- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
The Three Major Kind of Tools
|
||
|
||
* Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
|
||
jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
|
||
manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
|
||
bludgeons, and truncheons.)
|
||
|
||
* Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
|
||
|
||
* Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
|
||
greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
|
||
(Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tools that
|
||
uses any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
The trouble with a kitten is that
|
||
When it grows up, it's always a cat
|
||
-- Ogden Nash.
|
||
%%
|
||
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
|
||
%%
|
||
The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
|
||
it.
|
||
-- Franklin P. Jones
|
||
%%
|
||
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
|
||
more important to do.
|
||
%%
|
||
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
|
||
appreciates how difficult it was.
|
||
%%
|
||
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
|
||
vice versa.
|
||
%%
|
||
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
|
||
Which practically conceal its sex.
|
||
I think it clever of the turtle
|
||
In such a fix to be so fertile.
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
"The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and
|
||
stupidity."
|
||
%%
|
||
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
|
||
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
|
||
-- Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
|
||
"100 percent American"...
|
||
-- U. S. Army (1945)
|
||
%%
|
||
The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
|
||
everybody and still nobody likes him.
|
||
-- Jim Samuels
|
||
%%
|
||
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be
|
||
broken.
|
||
%%
|
||
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
|
||
combination is locked up in the safe.
|
||
-- Peter DeVries
|
||
%%
|
||
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."
|
||
%%
|
||
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 gobbledygook than the rest of the
|
||
world put together.
|
||
-- Sir Peter Medawar
|
||
%%
|
||
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
|
||
regarded as a criminal offense.
|
||
-- E. W. Dijkstra
|
||
%%
|
||
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
|
||
prejudice.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
|
||
Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
|
||
to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
|
||
be one of the facts that needs altering.
|
||
-- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
|
||
%%
|
||
"The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."
|
||
%%
|
||
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
|
||
that would be clearly understood."
|
||
-- Alexander Haig
|
||
%%
|
||
"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
|
||
with a large fortune."
|
||
%%
|
||
The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
|
||
Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
|
||
It must have blown through someone's feet,
|
||
Like those of Caspar Weinberger.
|
||
-- P. Opus
|
||
%%
|
||
THE WOMBAT
|
||
|
||
The wombat lives across the seas,
|
||
Among the far Antipodes.
|
||
He may exist on nuts and berries,
|
||
Or then again, on missionaries;
|
||
His distant habitat precludes
|
||
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
|
||
But I would not engage the wombat
|
||
In any form of mortal combat.
|
||
%%
|
||
The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
|
||
%%
|
||
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
|
||
%%
|
||
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
|
||
%%
|
||
The world's as ugly as sin,
|
||
And almost as delightful
|
||
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
|
||
then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
|
||
market.
|
||
|
||
If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
|
||
not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
|
||
|
||
Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
|
||
Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
|
||
Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
|
||
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
|
||
%%
|
||
Then here's to the City of Boston,
|
||
The town of the cries and the groans.
|
||
Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
|
||
And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
|
||
-- Franklin Pierce Adams
|
||
%%
|
||
THEORY
|
||
Into love and out again,
|
||
Thus I went and thus I go.
|
||
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
|
||
Well and bitterly I know
|
||
All the songs were ever sung,
|
||
All the words were ever said;
|
||
Could it be, when I was young,
|
||
Someone dropped me on my head?
|
||
-- Dorothy Parker
|
||
%%
|
||
There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
|
||
%%
|
||
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
|
||
and praiseworthy ...
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own
|
||
cats.
|
||
%%
|
||
There are no games on this system.
|
||
%%
|
||
There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
|
||
existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
|
||
marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
|
||
engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
|
||
obviously impossible.
|
||
-- Richard Davisson
|
||
%%
|
||
There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the
|
||
truth without lying.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
|
||
%%
|
||
"There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
|
||
plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
|
||
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
|
||
don't we all?"
|
||
%%
|
||
"There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
|
||
and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated
|
||
pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving
|
||
them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you
|
||
stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your
|
||
intelligence."
|
||
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
|
||
%%
|
||
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
|
||
-- Disraeli
|
||
%%
|
||
"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."
|
||
%%
|
||
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 Behavior
|
||
%%
|
||
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
|
||
the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many
|
||
facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next
|
||
fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent
|
||
Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
|
||
Factor; that's engineering.
|
||
%%
|
||
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I
|
||
can't remember.
|
||
-- Italo Svevo
|
||
%%
|
||
There are three ways to get something done:
|
||
(1) Do it yourself.
|
||
(2) Hire someone to do it for you.
|
||
(3) Forbid your kids to do it.
|
||
%%
|
||
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
|
||
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
|
||
%%
|
||
There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
|
||
sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
|
||
-- Woody Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
|
||
make is so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
|
||
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
|
||
deficiencies."
|
||
-- C. A. R. Hoare
|
||
%%
|
||
"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
|
||
other is to read Pope."
|
||
-- Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
|
||
works.
|
||
%%
|
||
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
|
||
suitable application of high explosives.
|
||
%%
|
||
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
|
||
-- Henry Kissinger
|
||
%%
|
||
There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
|
||
than 100.
|
||
-- Steele's Law
|
||
%%
|
||
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
|
||
nothing about.
|
||
%%
|
||
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an
|
||
opinion.
|
||
-- Anatole France
|
||
%%
|
||
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
|
||
paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
|
||
%%
|
||
There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
|
||
%%
|
||
There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
|
||
tied during the month of April.
|
||
%%
|
||
"There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,
|
||
Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and
|
||
love of the Fatherland."
|
||
-- Adolf Hitler
|
||
%%
|
||
There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the universe
|
||
is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bazaarly
|
||
inexplicable."
|
||
|
||
There is another theory that states: "This has already happened ...."
|
||
-- Donald Adams, "Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Donald Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
|
||
%%
|
||
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a
|
||
vacuum."
|
||
--Arthur C. Clarke
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
|
||
tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
|
||
abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
|
||
war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
|
||
of course.
|
||
-- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
|
||
%%
|
||
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their
|
||
home."
|
||
-- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society
|
||
Convention, 1977
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
|
||
-- G. B. Shaw
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast
|
||
reflexes.
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no time like the pleasant.
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
|
||
doing.
|
||
%%
|
||
There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY.
|
||
There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS I'm very probably wrong.
|
||
%%
|
||
"There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
|
||
said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat. "And yet just
|
||
a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable
|
||
question," said Nasrudin. "I could have answered it if I had been
|
||
there." "Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
|
||
the middle of the night?'"
|
||
%%
|
||
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
|
||
that is not being talked about.
|
||
-- Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
|
||
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
There once was a member of Mensa
|
||
Who was a most excellent fencer.
|
||
The sword that he used
|
||
Was his -- (line is refused,
|
||
And has now been removed by the censor).
|
||
%%
|
||
There once was an old man from Esser,
|
||
Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
|
||
It at last grew so small,
|
||
He knew nothing at all,
|
||
And now he's a College Professor.
|
||
%%
|
||
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
|
||
it."
|
||
-- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
|
||
%%
|
||
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 lady from Hyde
|
||
Who ate a green apple and died.
|
||
While her lover lamented
|
||
The apple fermented
|
||
And made cider inside her inside.
|
||
%%
|
||
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."
|
||
%%
|
||
There was a young poet named Dan,
|
||
Whose poetry never would scan.
|
||
When told this was so,
|
||
He said, "Yes, I know.
|
||
%%
|
||
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."
|
||
%%
|
||
"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
|
||
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
|
||
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
|
||
during the trial."
|
||
-- David Letterman
|
||
%%
|
||
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's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad its not a
|
||
fence.
|
||
%%
|
||
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
There's no future in time travel
|
||
%%
|
||
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
|
||
-- Dr. Who
|
||
%%
|
||
There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
|
||
any worse.
|
||
%%
|
||
There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
|
||
%%
|
||
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
|
||
working for you.
|
||
-- Will Rodgers
|
||
%%
|
||
"There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't
|
||
aggravate."
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
|
||
becoming an endangered synthetic.
|
||
-- Lily Tomlin
|
||
%%
|
||
"These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
|
||
"These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
|
||
"These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
|
||
out of MEGATON MAN!"
|
||
%%
|
||
These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
|
||
used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
|
||
%%
|
||
They also surf who only stand on waves.
|
||
%%
|
||
"They make a desert and call it peace."
|
||
-- Tacitus (55?-120?)
|
||
%%
|
||
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
|
||
always spell better than they pronounce.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
"They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
|
||
%%
|
||
"They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult
|
||
to like."
|
||
-- Avon
|
||
%%
|
||
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
|
||
%%
|
||
Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
|
||
%%
|
||
Think big. Pollute the Mississippi.
|
||
%%
|
||
Think honk if you're a telepath.
|
||
%%
|
||
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
|
||
%%
|
||
Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer
|
||
crashes.
|
||
%%
|
||
Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
|
||
%%
|
||
"Thirty days hath Septober,
|
||
April, June, and no wonder.
|
||
all the rest have peanut butter
|
||
except my father who wears red suspenders."
|
||
%%
|
||
This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
This fortune is false.
|
||
%%
|
||
This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
|
||
%%
|
||
"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
|
||
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
|
||
keys ..."
|
||
%%
|
||
"This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT
|
||
DOG."
|
||
-- Bob Violence
|
||
%%
|
||
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
|
||
actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?"
|
||
%%
|
||
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
|
||
because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
|
||
which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has
|
||
"deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the
|
||
consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any
|
||
rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for
|
||
oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill
|
||
Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers
|
||
over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These
|
||
innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been
|
||
passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
|
||
amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do
|
||
apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,
|
||
and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
|
||
%%
|
||
This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
"This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
|
||
to one."
|
||
-- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
|
||
%%
|
||
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 ....
|
||
%%
|
||
This is the ____LAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
|
||
%%
|
||
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
|
||
power of computers:
|
||
|
||
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
|
||
the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
|
||
minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
|
||
results are that one should eat each day:
|
||
|
||
1/2 chicken
|
||
1 egg
|
||
1 glass of skim milk
|
||
27 heads of lettuce.
|
||
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
|
||
%%
|
||
This is 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.
|
||
%%
|
||
This is your fortune.
|
||
%%
|
||
This land is full of trousers!
|
||
this land is full of mausers!
|
||
And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
|
||
-- Firesign Theater
|
||
%%
|
||
This land is made of mountains,
|
||
This land is made of mud,
|
||
This land has lots of everything,
|
||
For me and Elmer Fudd.
|
||
|
||
This land has lots of trousers,
|
||
This land has lots of mousers,
|
||
And pussycats to eat them
|
||
When the sun goes down.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
|
||
%%
|
||
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
|
||
great force.
|
||
-- Dorothy Parker
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
|
||
student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
|
||
|
||
One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
|
||
Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
|
||
computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
|
||
which identifies errors in the original program.
|
||
%%
|
||
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
|
||
-- Hofstadter
|
||
%%
|
||
... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives
|
||
as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as
|
||
determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people
|
||
buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s
|
||
couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three
|
||
weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available,
|
||
they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent
|
||
restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of
|
||
excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going
|
||
off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have
|
||
a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
|
||
%%
|
||
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget
|
||
it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
|
||
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
|
||
than he does.
|
||
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
|
||
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
|
||
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
|
||
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
|
||
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
|
||
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
|
||
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
|
||
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
|
||
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
|
||
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
|
||
Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
|
||
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
|
||
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
|
||
from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
|
||
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
|
||
%%
|
||
Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those
|
||
of us who do.
|
||
%%
|
||
Those who can't write, write manuals.
|
||
%%
|
||
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 express random thoughts to legislative committees are often
|
||
surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
|
||
-- Mark B. Cohen
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are
|
||
men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
|
||
without the roar of its many waters.
|
||
-- Frederick Douglass
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Time flies like an arrow
|
||
Fruit flies like a banana
|
||
%%
|
||
Time is an Illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
|
||
%%
|
||
Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so.
|
||
-- Ford Prefect
|
||
%%
|
||
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
|
||
once.
|
||
%%
|
||
'Tis the dream of each programmer,
|
||
Before his life is done,
|
||
To write three lines of APL,
|
||
And make the damn things run.
|
||
%%
|
||
(to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
|
||
Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
|
||
Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
|
||
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
|
||
Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
|
||
Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
|
||
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
|
||
And we've also found Just flip one switch
|
||
When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
|
||
You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
|
||
in a flash.
|
||
Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
|
||
Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
|
||
And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
|
||
%%
|
||
To A Quick Young Fox:
|
||
Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
|
||
Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
|
||
Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
|
||
Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
|
||
-- Lazy Dog
|
||
%%
|
||
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
|
||
%%
|
||
To be is to do.
|
||
-- I. Kant
|
||
To do is to be.
|
||
-- A. Sartre
|
||
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
|
||
-- F. Flinstone
|
||
%%
|
||
"To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
|
||
this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
|
||
offer in response is based on information available to make no such
|
||
statement."
|
||
%%
|
||
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
|
||
call it the target.
|
||
%%
|
||
To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
|
||
%%
|
||
"To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System"
|
||
%%
|
||
To generalize is to be an idiot.
|
||
-- William Blake
|
||
%%
|
||
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
|
||
men, two of them absent.
|
||
%%
|
||
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
|
||
-- Thomas Edison
|
||
%%
|
||
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
|
||
%%
|
||
To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
|
||
%%
|
||
To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
|
||
system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
|
||
inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
|
||
precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel,
|
||
uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
|
||
well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
|
||
of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
|
||
secure ecological niche.
|
||
-- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
|
||
%%
|
||
To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
|
||
telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
|
||
computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
|
||
in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
|
||
lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
|
||
|
||
Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
|
||
suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
|
||
computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
|
||
one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
|
||
break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
|
||
incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
|
||
an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
|
||
pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
|
||
loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
|
||
and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
|
||
Phones?"
|
||
%%
|
||
"To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?"
|
||
%%
|
||
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
|
||
-- Woody Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
|
||
%%
|
||
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
|
||
%%
|
||
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess
|
||
%%
|
||
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
|
||
%%
|
||
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?"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
|
||
except in major motion pictures."
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
|
||
%%
|
||
Toilet Toup'ee, n.:
|
||
Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
|
||
creating endless annoyance to male users.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
|
||
%%
|
||
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
|
||
%%
|
||
Too clever is dumb.
|
||
-- Ogden Nash
|
||
%%
|
||
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
|
||
-- Mae West
|
||
%%
|
||
Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
|
||
briefcases.
|
||
-- Governor Jerry Brown
|
||
%%
|
||
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
|
||
%%
|
||
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live
|
||
in eucalyptus trees.
|
||
%%
|
||
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant
|
||
intelligence.
|
||
-- Henrik Tikkanen
|
||
%%
|
||
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
|
||
%%
|
||
Truthful, adj.:
|
||
Dumb and illiterate.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
|
||
-- Charles Schulz
|
||
%%
|
||
Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no
|
||
good.
|
||
%%
|
||
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
|
||
is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written
|
||
in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and
|
||
pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer),
|
||
defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the
|
||
absolutely perfect future.
|
||
-- Amrom Katz
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____yell into keyboard.
|
||
%%
|
||
Turnaucka's Law:
|
||
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
|
||
electrical cord.
|
||
%%
|
||
Tussman's Law:
|
||
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
|
||
%%
|
||
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
|
||
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
|
||
%%
|
||
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
|
||
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
|
||
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
|
||
And Cory raths outgrabe.
|
||
|
||
"Beware the software rot, my son!
|
||
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
|
||
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
|
||
The frumious system crash!"
|
||
%%
|
||
'Twas the Night before Crisis
|
||
|
||
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
|
||
Not a program was working not even a browse.
|
||
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
|
||
Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
|
||
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
|
||
While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
|
||
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
|
||
I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
|
||
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
|
||
But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
|
||
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
|
||
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
|
||
On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
|
||
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
|
||
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
|
||
From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
|
||
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
|
||
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
|
||
%%
|
||
'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
|
||
preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
|
||
throughout our place of residence,
|
||
Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
|
||
possessors of this potential, including that
|
||
species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
|
||
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
|
||
edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
|
||
Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
|
||
imminent visitation from an eccentric
|
||
philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
|
||
is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
|
||
%%
|
||
Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
|
||
-- Walt Kelly
|
||
%%
|
||
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
|
||
-- Howard Kandel
|
||
%%
|
||
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man
|
||
said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The
|
||
second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his
|
||
chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded
|
||
only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the
|
||
courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.
|
||
If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is
|
||
dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and
|
||
must pay three silver pieces."
|
||
%%
|
||
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
|
||
I forget the second."
|
||
%%
|
||
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
|
||
%%
|
||
U: There's a U -- a Unicorn!
|
||
Run right up and rub its horn.
|
||
Look at all those points you're losing!
|
||
UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
|
||
-- The Roguelet's ABC
|
||
%%
|
||
"Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."
|
||
|
||
(Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
|
||
-- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
|
||
%%
|
||
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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"
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
|
||
Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
|
||
hammmer or get a splinter in it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
|
||
just man is also a prison.
|
||
-- Henry David Thoreau
|
||
%%
|
||
Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
|
||
can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
|
||
%%
|
||
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
|
||
Superiority is recessive.
|
||
%%
|
||
Unfair animal names:
|
||
|
||
-- tsetse fly -- bullhead
|
||
-- booby -- duck-billed platypus
|
||
-- sapsucker -- Clarence
|
||
-- Gary Larson
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Universe, n.:
|
||
The problem.
|
||
%%
|
||
University, n.:
|
||
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 ...
|
||
%%
|
||
unix soit qui mal y pense
|
||
%%
|
||
UNIX will be half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
|
||
Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
|
||
-- Andy Tannenbaum
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
User n.:
|
||
A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
|
||
%%
|
||
Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
|
||
-- S. C. Johnson
|
||
%%
|
||
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
|
||
opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
|
||
-- Doug Larson
|
||
%%
|
||
Vail's Second Axiom:
|
||
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
|
||
amount of work already completed.
|
||
%%
|
||
Van Roy's Law:
|
||
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
|
||
%%
|
||
Vanilla, adj.:
|
||
Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food,
|
||
very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
|
||
extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply
|
||
"vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot
|
||
and sour won ton soup.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Veni, Vidi, Visa.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
|
||
Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
|
||
waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
|
||
%%
|
||
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
|
||
-- Salvor Hardin
|
||
%%
|
||
Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the
|
||
yard.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
|
||
%%
|
||
Virtue is its own punishment.
|
||
%%
|
||
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
|
||
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
|
||
%%
|
||
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
|
||
%%
|
||
VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M.
|
||
%%
|
||
Vote anarchist
|
||
%%
|
||
Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
|
||
TAX-DEFERRED!
|
||
%%
|
||
VYARZERZOMANIMORORSEZASSEZANSERAREORSES?
|
||
%%
|
||
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
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?"
|
||
%%
|
||
Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
|
||
%%
|
||
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
|
||
-- Charles Edward Montague
|
||
%%
|
||
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
|
||
%%
|
||
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
|
||
|
||
Firings will continue until morale improves.
|
||
%%
|
||
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
|
||
|
||
Firings will continue until morale improves.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
|
||
those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking
|
||
up.
|
||
-- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
|
||
%%
|
||
Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.
|
||
%%
|
||
Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
|
||
-- John F. Kennedy
|
||
%%
|
||
Wasting time is an important part of living.
|
||
%%
|
||
Watson's Law:
|
||
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
|
||
number and significance of any persons watching it.
|
||
%%
|
||
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
|
||
divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being
|
||
correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
|
||
-- Niels Bohr
|
||
%%
|
||
We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
|
||
-- Winston Churchill
|
||
%%
|
||
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 are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
|
||
socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The
|
||
bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say
|
||
socialism?
|
||
-- Fidel Castro
|
||
%%
|
||
"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last
|
||
theorem."
|
||
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
|
||
%%
|
||
"We are upping our standards ... so up yours."
|
||
-- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988.
|
||
%%
|
||
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
|
||
%%
|
||
We can predict everything, except the future.
|
||
%%
|
||
We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
|
||
deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
|
||
-- James E. Day, Postmaster General
|
||
%%
|
||
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
|
||
-- Vroomfondel
|
||
%%
|
||
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
|
||
%%
|
||
We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a
|
||
fish.
|
||
%%
|
||
We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
|
||
hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights!
|
||
%%
|
||
"We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
|
||
hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
|
||
mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
|
||
our grave singing Haleleuia ..."
|
||
-- Monty Python
|
||
%%
|
||
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
|
||
-- Walt Kelly
|
||
%%
|
||
We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back
|
||
to normal, and that they already have.
|
||
%%
|
||
"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
|
||
hands for masturbation."
|
||
-- Lily Tomlin
|
||
%%
|
||
We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
|
||
official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death
|
||
Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish
|
||
you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that
|
||
said "ELECTROCUTION".
|
||
|
||
Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your
|
||
teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
|
||
process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a
|
||
couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways
|
||
out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste
|
||
stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom
|
||
floor, which is how the police would find you.
|
||
|
||
You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
|
||
%%
|
||
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all
|
||
purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start
|
||
with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the
|
||
playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is
|
||
best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can
|
||
buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.
|
||
-- Alan M. Turing
|
||
%%
|
||
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
|
||
respect their good judgement.
|
||
%%
|
||
We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
|
||
no matter how self-seeking.
|
||
-- F. G. Withington
|
||
%%
|
||
We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago
|
||
people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.
|
||
For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had
|
||
to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare
|
||
fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with
|
||
primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how
|
||
ugly paneling is to begin with.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
|
||
friends are trying to kill us.
|
||
%%
|
||
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.
|
||
But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle
|
||
Haggard song at a French restaurant. ...
|
||
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
|
||
her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I
|
||
had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone
|
||
told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was
|
||
lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he
|
||
fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing
|
||
what men must do. ...
|
||
"Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible
|
||
sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew
|
||
not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a
|
||
quiet and peace I will never forget.
|
||
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
|
||
tollway belle's for thee."
|
||
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was
|
||
a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I
|
||
poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
|
||
-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
|
||
Competition
|
||
%%
|
||
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
|
||
technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 gentile
|
||
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
|
||
in the end a summer with wild winds &
|
||
new friends will be.
|
||
%%
|
||
We wish you a Hare Krishna
|
||
We wish you a Hare Krishna
|
||
We wish you a Hare Krishna
|
||
And a Sun Myung Moon!
|
||
-- Maxwell Smart
|
||
%%
|
||
"We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
|
||
%%
|
||
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"
|
||
%%
|
||
We're only in it for the volume.
|
||
-- Black Sabbath
|
||
%%
|
||
We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
|
||
of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
|
||
but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
|
||
-- Andy Rooney
|
||
%%
|
||
Weiler's Law:
|
||
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
|
||
himself.
|
||
%%
|
||
Weinberg's First Law:
|
||
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
|
||
%%
|
||
Weinberg's Principle:
|
||
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
|
||
sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
|
||
%%
|
||
Weinberg's Second Law:
|
||
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
|
||
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
|
||
civilization.
|
||
%%
|
||
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
|
||
There are no answers, only cross references.
|
||
%%
|
||
Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if
|
||
you run out of food.
|
||
-- Dean McLaughlin.
|
||
%%
|
||
Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
|
||
lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
|
||
governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the
|
||
reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top
|
||
contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men
|
||
will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the
|
||
most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and
|
||
appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday
|
||
morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit
|
||
interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a
|
||
guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through
|
||
the entire show without answering a single question ...
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
|
||
%%
|
||
Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
|
||
back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
|
||
or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
|
||
they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
|
||
-- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
|
||
%%
|
||
"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can*
|
||
you believe?!"
|
||
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
|
||
|
||
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,
|
||
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
|
||
-- Core Dumped Blues
|
||
%%
|
||
"Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
|
||
|
||
"Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
|
||
coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
|
||
-- Dr. Who
|
||
%%
|
||
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 are we going to do?"
|
||
|
||
"Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking for
|
||
something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
|
||
short initiation period."
|
||
%%
|
||
"What are you doing?"
|
||
|
||
"Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something
|
||
that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short
|
||
initiation period."
|
||
%%
|
||
What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
|
||
%%
|
||
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
|
||
teenager asked her mother.
|
||
"Encouragement, dear," she replied.
|
||
%%
|
||
What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
|
||
%%
|
||
What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
|
||
%%
|
||
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
|
||
%%
|
||
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
|
||
%%
|
||
What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
|
||
entrance?
|
||
%%
|
||
What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
|
||
in his footsteps?
|
||
%%
|
||
What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower
|
||
stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed
|
||
barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character
|
||
from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of
|
||
while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our
|
||
dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up
|
||
powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the
|
||
bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any
|
||
one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact
|
||
lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where
|
||
you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",
|
||
if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with
|
||
that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;
|
||
they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to
|
||
flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
|
||
%%
|
||
What I tell you three times is true.
|
||
%%
|
||
"What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
|
||
sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
|
||
with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
|
||
came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
|
||
parties.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
|
||
%%
|
||
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
|
||
%%
|
||
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
|
||
definitely overpaid for my carpet.
|
||
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
|
||
%%
|
||
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's
|
||
worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
|
||
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
|
||
%%
|
||
What is a magician but a practising theorist?
|
||
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
|
||
%%
|
||
What is mind? No matter.
|
||
What is matter? Never mind.
|
||
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
|
||
%%
|
||
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
|
||
computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
|
||
and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
|
||
%%
|
||
"What is the Nature of God?"
|
||
|
||
CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
|
||
1 QT. SOUR CREAM
|
||
1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT
|
||
1/2 CUT CHIVES.
|
||
STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.
|
||
|
||
"I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
|
||
-- Bloom County
|
||
%%
|
||
"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
|
||
-- Bertold Brecht
|
||
%%
|
||
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
|
||
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
|
||
%%
|
||
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
|
||
%%
|
||
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
|
||
%%
|
||
What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
|
||
%%
|
||
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent
|
||
bagel.
|
||
%%
|
||
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
|
||
%%
|
||
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
|
||
%%
|
||
What this country needs is a good five cent nickel.
|
||
%%
|
||
What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
|
||
%%
|
||
What this world needs is a good five-dollar plasma weapon.
|
||
%%
|
||
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
|
||
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
|
||
%%
|
||
What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which
|
||
nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday
|
||
Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-
|
||
launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just
|
||
remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual
|
||
process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still
|
||
be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
|
||
%%
|
||
What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
|
||
%%
|
||
"What's another word for Thesaurus?"
|
||
-- Steven Wright
|
||
%%
|
||
"What's that thing?"
|
||
"Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
|
||
computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
|
||
it does. We call it a two-by-four."
|
||
-- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
|
||
%%
|
||
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
|
||
-- The Doctor
|
||
%%
|
||
Whatever became of eternal truth?
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
|
||
nailed down.
|
||
-- Collis P. Huntingdon
|
||
%%
|
||
"Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not
|
||
cockroaches!"
|
||
-- Mom
|
||
%%
|
||
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
|
||
money is.
|
||
-- Robespierre
|
||
%%
|
||
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
|
||
thing," it's the money.
|
||
-- Kim Hubbard
|
||
%%
|
||
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
|
||
loop?
|
||
%%
|
||
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 are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
|
||
tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?"
|
||
-- Reuben Flagg
|
||
%%
|
||
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
|
||
the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
|
||
-- Vine Deloria, Jr.
|
||
%%
|
||
When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I
|
||
think it was a Tuesday.
|
||
%%
|
||
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
|
||
guarantee them.
|
||
%%
|
||
"When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
|
||
parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if
|
||
I'm leaving."
|
||
-- Steven Wright
|
||
%%
|
||
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
|
||
year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire
|
||
winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
|
||
%%
|
||
When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
|
||
ladies, and, of course, the goat.
|
||
%%
|
||
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
|
||
I'm beginning to believe it.
|
||
-- Clarence Darrow
|
||
%%
|
||
When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you
|
||
take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come
|
||
and get you."
|
||
-- Jerry Lewis
|
||
%%
|
||
"When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
|
||
firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'"
|
||
-- Steven Wright
|
||
%%
|
||
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
|
||
the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
|
||
-- Woody Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an
|
||
act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A
|
||
group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a
|
||
six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things
|
||
together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ...
|
||
Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective
|
||
responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military
|
||
establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have
|
||
been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
|
||
together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
|
||
-- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
|
||
%%
|
||
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
|
||
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
|
||
cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
|
||
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
|
||
%%
|
||
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
When in doubt, use brute force.
|
||
-- Ken Thompson
|
||
%%
|
||
When in panic, fear and doubt,
|
||
Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
|
||
%%
|
||
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 Marriage is Outlawed,
|
||
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
|
||
%%
|
||
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
|
||
results.
|
||
-- Calvin Coolidge
|
||
%%
|
||
When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony
|
||
concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years --
|
||
and I find I mind it less and less."
|
||
-- Louise Andrews Kent
|
||
%%
|
||
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
|
||
for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
|
||
your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
|
||
-- Daniel B. Luten
|
||
%%
|
||
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
|
||
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
|
||
%%
|
||
"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical"
|
||
-- Jon Carroll
|
||
%%
|
||
When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
|
||
modify the problem, not the remedy.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
||
%%
|
||
When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is
|
||
metaphysics.
|
||
-- Voltaire
|
||
%%
|
||
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 ...
|
||
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
|
||
%%
|
||
When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
|
||
plane will fly.
|
||
-- Donald Douglas
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
|
||
not hereditary.
|
||
-- Thomas Paine
|
||
%%
|
||
When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
|
||
except our fingertips will have been singed.
|
||
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
|
||
%%
|
||
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
|
||
investigation of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand,
|
||
so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
|
||
swayed, directly to the goal.
|
||
-- Amrom Katz
|
||
%%
|
||
"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
|
||
%%
|
||
When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
"When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
|
||
-- Winston Curchill, On formal declarations of war
|
||
%%
|
||
When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
|
||
asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
|
||
know the answer either.
|
||
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
|
||
%%
|
||
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
|
||
-- The Wall Street Journal
|
||
%%
|
||
When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the
|
||
impression you will make.
|
||
%%
|
||
When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
|
||
Wretched, bored, dejected; only
|
||
Here's the rub, my darling dear
|
||
I feel the same when you are near.
|
||
-- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"
|
||
%%
|
||
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
|
||
%%
|
||
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
|
||
-- Dave Parnas
|
||
%%
|
||
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
|
||
see it tried on him personally.
|
||
-- A. Lincoln
|
||
%%
|
||
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
|
||
--Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
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"
|
||
%%
|
||
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
|
||
to reform.
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
|
||
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
|
||
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
|
||
%%
|
||
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
|
||
%%
|
||
Whether you can hear it or not
|
||
The Universe is laughing behind your back
|
||
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
|
||
%%
|
||
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
|
||
admission to someone else.
|
||
%%
|
||
While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
|
||
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
|
||
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
|
||
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
|
||
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
|
||
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
|
||
-- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
|
||
November 26, 1792
|
||
%%
|
||
While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
|
||
%%
|
||
While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
|
||
keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
|
||
-- Edward Stevenson
|
||
%%
|
||
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
|
||
form of misery.
|
||
%%
|
||
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining
|
||
position.
|
||
%%
|
||
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
|
||
correctness never does.
|
||
%%
|
||
While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very
|
||
reassuring to know that it's still there.
|
||
%%
|
||
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
|
||
safe, for you can watch both of his.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Whistler's Law:
|
||
You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
|
||
charge.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
|
||
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?
|
||
%%
|
||
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
|
||
%%
|
||
Who's on first?
|
||
%%
|
||
"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
|
||
-- George Ade
|
||
%%
|
||
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
|
||
%%
|
||
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
|
||
have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."
|
||
-- Ian Shoales
|
||
%%
|
||
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
|
||
-- Bertold Brecht
|
||
%%
|
||
Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we
|
||
have?
|
||
%%
|
||
Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
|
||
%%
|
||
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
|
||
avoid responsibility with?
|
||
%%
|
||
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
|
||
automation?
|
||
%%
|
||
Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
|
||
%%
|
||
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
|
||
there must be a beverage.
|
||
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
|
||
%%
|
||
Why don't elephants eat penguins ?
|
||
|
||
Because they can't get the wrappers off ...
|
||
%%
|
||
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
|
||
|
||
I'd LOVE to, but ...
|
||
-- I have to floss my cat.
|
||
-- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
|
||
-- I need to spend more time with my blender.
|
||
-- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
|
||
-- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
|
||
-- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
|
||
-- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
|
||
-- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
|
||
-- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
|
||
-- I have some really hard words to look up.
|
||
-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
|
||
-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
|
||
because we are not the person involved"
|
||
-- Mark Twain
|
||
%%
|
||
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
|
||
%%
|
||
"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
|
||
-- Lily Tomlin
|
||
%%
|
||
"Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
|
||
you knowing nothing?"
|
||
-- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
|
||
%%
|
||
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
|
||
Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
|
||
children open their old-fashioned presents.
|
||
|
||
Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
|
||
|
||
You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
|
||
falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
|
||
|
||
Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
|
||
with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
|
||
and I get this cretin TOP?"
|
||
|
||
Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
|
||
|
||
You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
|
||
|
||
Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
|
||
%%
|
||
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
|
||
-- Oscar Wilde
|
||
%%
|
||
Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
|
||
No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
|
||
when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
|
||
direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
|
||
-- John L. Shelton
|
||
%%
|
||
Wiker's Law:
|
||
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Williams and Holland's Law:
|
||
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
|
||
statistical methods.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
Wit, n.:
|
||
The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
|
||
... by leaving it out.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
|
||
try to be a fraud and a half.
|
||
-- Otto von Bismark
|
||
%%
|
||
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
|
||
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
|
||
%%
|
||
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
|
||
build a nuclear balm?
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
|
||
%%
|
||
Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
|
||
(1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
|
||
(2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
|
||
(3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
|
||
(4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
|
||
VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
|
||
(5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
|
||
-- Rich Kulawiec
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
|
||
%%
|
||
Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
|
||
We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage
|
||
any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you
|
||
should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are,
|
||
and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
|
||
bargained for.
|
||
%%
|
||
Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your
|
||
chairs.
|
||
%%
|
||
World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
|
||
dress code!
|
||
%%
|
||
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
|
||
August. The lines are the shortest, though.
|
||
-- Steve Rubenstein
|
||
%%
|
||
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 Response To A Crisis, 1985:
|
||
From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
|
||
in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from
|
||
exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"
|
||
%%
|
||
Worst Vegetable of the Year:
|
||
The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next
|
||
year.
|
||
-- Steve Rubenstein
|
||
%%
|
||
"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 Carrol
|
||
%%
|
||
"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
|
||
and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer
|
||
if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
|
||
and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
|
||
and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"
|
||
%%
|
||
Write-Protect Tab, n.:
|
||
A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
|
||
left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an
|
||
error message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far
|
||
outweighs the momentary inconvenience.
|
||
-- Robb Russon
|
||
%%
|
||
"Wrong," said Renner.
|
||
|
||
"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
|
||
the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
|
||
%%
|
||
X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the
|
||
imagination is the plot.
|
||
%%
|
||
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
|
||
%%
|
||
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
|
||
%%
|
||
XIIdigitation, n.:
|
||
The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made
|
||
by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
"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"
|
||
%%
|
||
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
|
||
fear no evil, for I can string 6 primitive monadic and dyadic operators
|
||
together.
|
||
-- Steve Higgins
|
||
%%
|
||
"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."
|
||
%%
|
||
Year, n.:
|
||
A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
|
||
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
||
%%
|
||
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
|
||
%%
|
||
Yes, but which self do you want to be?
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
Yesterday upon the stair
|
||
I met a man who wasn't there.
|
||
He wasn't there again today --
|
||
I think he's from the CIA.
|
||
%%
|
||
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
|
||
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
|
||
%%
|
||
Yinkel, n.:
|
||
A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
|
||
will notice.
|
||
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
|
||
%%
|
||
You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
|
||
%%
|
||
You are here:
|
||
***
|
||
***
|
||
*********
|
||
*******
|
||
*****
|
||
***
|
||
*
|
||
|
||
But you're not all there.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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, 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 Carrol
|
||
%%
|
||
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
|
||
That your lectures bore people to death.
|
||
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
|
||
Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
|
||
|
||
"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
|
||
Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
|
||
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
|
||
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
|
||
%%
|
||
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
|
||
For anything tougher than suet;
|
||
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
|
||
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
|
||
|
||
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
|
||
And argued each case with my wife;
|
||
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
|
||
Has lasted the rest of my life."
|
||
-- Lewis Carrol
|
||
%%
|
||
"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, "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 Carrol
|
||
%%
|
||
"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, "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 Carrol
|
||
%%
|
||
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
|
||
%%
|
||
You are the only person to ever get this message.
|
||
%%
|
||
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
|
||
this sort of trash.
|
||
%%
|
||
You buttered your bread, now lie in it.
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
|
||
%%
|
||
You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior
|
||
executive.
|
||
%%
|
||
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
|
||
can with just a kind word.
|
||
-- Bumper Sticker
|
||
%%
|
||
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have,
|
||
for instance.
|
||
-- Franklin P. Jones
|
||
%%
|
||
You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
|
||
%%
|
||
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
|
||
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
|
||
-- Alan Perlis
|
||
%%
|
||
You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
|
||
%%
|
||
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
|
||
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
|
||
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
|
||
-- F. Allen
|
||
%%
|
||
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
|
||
supercomputers.
|
||
-- Steven Feiner
|
||
%%
|
||
You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
|
||
%%
|
||
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
|
||
%%
|
||
"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
|
||
-- Steven Wright
|
||
%%
|
||
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
|
||
-- Booker T. Washington
|
||
%%
|
||
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
|
||
%%
|
||
"You can't make a program without broken egos."
|
||
%%
|
||
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
|
||
enough worrying about what's happening now.
|
||
-- Lauren Bacall
|
||
%%
|
||
"You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten."
|
||
-- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
|
||
Over and Over"
|
||
%%
|
||
"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they
|
||
don't."
|
||
-- Dagwood Bumstead
|
||
%%
|
||
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
|
||
%%
|
||
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
|
||
%%
|
||
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
|
||
%%
|
||
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
|
||
and last month in advance.
|
||
%%
|
||
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
|
||
doubt.
|
||
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
|
||
%%
|
||
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
|
||
-- J. D. Salinger
|
||
%%
|
||
You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting
|
||
needles.
|
||
-- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
|
||
%%
|
||
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
|
||
The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
|
||
which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
|
||
tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
|
||
names. Here's the complete text:
|
||
|
||
"(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
|
||
"(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
|
||
"(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
|
||
send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
|
||
THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
|
||
household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
|
||
you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
|
||
NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
|
||
|
||
The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
|
||
money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
|
||
form.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
|
||
%%
|
||
You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
|
||
|
||
This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
|
||
|
||
You are permanently confused.
|
||
-- Dave Decot
|
||
%%
|
||
You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
|
||
metal objects which are not fastened down.
|
||
%%
|
||
You have junk mail.
|
||
%%
|
||
You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
|
||
wrinkled.
|
||
%%
|
||
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot
|
||
today.
|
||
%%
|
||
You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
|
||
you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
|
||
%%
|
||
You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
|
||
anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
|
||
you can always change the channel.
|
||
-- Jim Ignatowski
|
||
%%
|
||
You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
|
||
-- S. Rickly Christian
|
||
%%
|
||
You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
|
||
-- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
%%
|
||
You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
|
||
%%
|
||
"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"
|
||
%%
|
||
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
|
||
%%
|
||
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
|
||
%%
|
||
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
|
||
is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
|
||
-- Sydney Harris
|
||
%%
|
||
You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with
|
||
him.
|
||
-- Ed Howe
|
||
%%
|
||
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
|
||
-- Alfred Kahn
|
||
%%
|
||
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"
|
||
%%
|
||
You might have mail
|
||
%%
|
||
"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."
|
||
%%
|
||
You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll
|
||
be dead.
|
||
%%
|
||
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
|
||
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
|
||
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
|
||
independence.
|
||
-- Charles A. Beard
|
||
%%
|
||
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
|
||
beach.
|
||
%%
|
||
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
|
||
%%
|
||
You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
|
||
%%
|
||
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
|
||
know how seldom they do.
|
||
-- Olin Miller.
|
||
%%
|
||
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
|
||
if they are dead.
|
||
%%
|
||
You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
|
||
about 10^12 to 1.
|
||
-- Ernest Rutherford
|
||
%%
|
||
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
|
||
freedom and liberty.
|
||
-- Henrick Ibson
|
||
%%
|
||
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.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
|
||
%%
|
||
You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name,
|
||
another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and
|
||
another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
|
||
such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
|
||
many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
|
||
If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
|
||
should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
|
||
for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
|
||
because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
|
||
chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
|
||
|
||
In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his
|
||
hemorrhoids.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
|
||
%%
|
||
"You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
|
||
plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture"
|
||
-- Business Professor, University of Georgia
|
||
%%
|
||
You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
|
||
%%
|
||
YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF
|
||
PAPER SHUFFLING!
|
||
|
||
Mr. TAA of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be
|
||
a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel
|
||
really important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."
|
||
|
||
Mr. MARC had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
|
||
to was a dead-end job as a engineer. Now I have a promising future and
|
||
make really big Zorkmids."
|
||
|
||
MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
|
||
you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.
|
||
|
||
SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
|
||
%%
|
||
You too can wear a nose mitten.
|
||
%%
|
||
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
|
||
%%
|
||
You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
|
||
a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
|
||
%%
|
||
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
|
||
%%
|
||
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
|
||
%%
|
||
You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door
|
||
mayonnaise salesman.
|
||
%%
|
||
You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
|
||
%%
|
||
You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to
|
||
worry.
|
||
%%
|
||
You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
|
||
taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
|
||
minute and a huff.
|
||
-- Groucho Marx
|
||
%%
|
||
"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
|
||
%%
|
||
You're at the end of the road again.
|
||
%%
|
||
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
|
||
%%
|
||
You're never too old to become younger.
|
||
-- Mae West
|
||
%%
|
||
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
|
||
-- Dean Martin
|
||
%%
|
||
You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
|
||
%%
|
||
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
|
||
%%
|
||
"You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."
|
||
-- Gary Giddens
|
||
%%
|
||
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
|
||
thing he tells you.
|
||
%%
|
||
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
|
||
from enjoying it.
|
||
%%
|
||
Your fault: core dumped
|
||
%%
|
||
Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that
|
||
bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a
|
||
chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home
|
||
electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit
|
||
breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires
|
||
until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can
|
||
damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change
|
||
your fuses regularly.
|
||
Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This
|
||
sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more
|
||
often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case
|
||
you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not
|
||
sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a
|
||
fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed
|
||
electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession,
|
||
such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette
|
||
table, etc.
|
||
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
||
%%
|
||
Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
|
||
%%
|
||
Your lucky color has faded.
|
||
%%
|
||
Your lucky number has been disconnected.
|
||
%%
|
||
Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
|
||
%%
|
||
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
|
||
%%
|
||
"Yow! Am I having fun yet?"
|
||
-- Zippy the Pinhead
|
||
%%
|
||
YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!"
|
||
%%
|
||
Zero Defects, n.:
|
||
The result of shutting down a production line.
|
||
%%
|
||
Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
|
||
since I first called my brother's father dad.
|
||
-- William Shakespeare, "King John"
|