MacHack 1993/MacHack 1993.toast/MacHack™ 1987-1992/MacHack™ '90/Source Code ƒ/Misc. Pascal ƒ/Jay's Cookie/Fortunes.Raw

Text File | 1990-06-06 | 579.5 KB | 17,771 lines | [TEXT/MPS ]

What is vice today may be virtue tomorrow.
%%
Let me play with it first and I’ll tell you what it is later.
   -- Miles Davis
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
In the beginning I was made.  I didn’t ask to me made.  No one consulted
me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their
way through life’s mournful jungle then so be it.
   -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
I just thought of something funny… your mother.
   -- Cheech Marin
%%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
   -- Joey Ramone
%%
Life is wasted on the living.
   -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
%%
Youth is wasted on the young.
   -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
You will soon meet a tall dark handsome stranger.
%%
!xob XINEX siht edisni kcuts m’I ,pleH
%%
I like the future, I’m in it.
%%
If you don’t watch it, you’re going to catch something.
%%
To be, or what?
   -- Sylvester Stallone
%%
I waited and waited, and when nobody called, I knew it was from you.
%%
A stitch in time saves nine.
%%
There’s a bug somewhere in your code.
%%
Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee.
[A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.]
   -- Dutch Proverb
%%
Faire de la bonne cuisine demande un certain temps.  Si on vous fait attendre,
c’est pour mieux vous servir, et vous plaire.
[Good cooking takes time.  If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better,
and to please you.]
   -- Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans  [Also, what we’re going to be
telling our customers]
%%
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
   -- OVID
%%
He’ll sit here and he’ll say, “Do this!  Do that!”  And nothing will happen.
   -- Harry S. Truman, on presidential power
%%
Practice is the best of all instructors.
   -- Publilius
%%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
   -- Poor Richard’s Almanac
%%
The author should gaze at Noah, and … learn, as they did in the Ark, to crowd
a great deal of matter into a very small compass.
   -- Sydney, Smith, Edinburgh Review
%%
The hypothesis:
$$
Amid a wash of paper, a small number of documents become the critical pivots
around which every project’s management revolves.  These are the manager’s
chief personal tools.
   -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
   -- Swift
%%
It is common sense to take a method and try it.  If it fails, admit it frankly
and try another.  But above all, try something.
   -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%%
Things are always at their best in the beginning.
   -- Pascal
%%
That is the key to history.  Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are
built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes
wrong.  Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top,
and then it all slides back into misery and ruin.  In fact, the machine
conks.  It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then
it breaks down.
   -- C. S. Lewis
%%
A good workman is known by his tools.
%%
I can call spirts from the vasty deep.
$$
Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
   -- Shakespeare, king Henry IV, Part I
%%
None love the bearer of bad news.
   -- Sophocles
%%
How does a project get to be a year late? … One day at a time.
   -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
   -- Goethe
%%
The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time
to come.  One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just
within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most
intricate and complex of man’s handiworks.  The management of this complex
craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best
adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common
sense, and… humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
   -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
All programmers are optimists.  Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers.  Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal.  Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists.  But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable:  “This time it will surely run,” or “I just found
the last bug.”
   -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
   -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The first 90% of a project takes the first 90% of the time.  The last 10% takes
the other 90%.
%%
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the
creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue
in practice.  Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it.
   -- G. L. Glegg, The Design of Design
%%
“GOTO statement considered harmful”
   -- E. W. Dijkstra, title to a letter in CACM 11, 3 (March, 1968)
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth.  The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
The emperor has no clothes.
%%
Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian… but only the brave get
scalped.
%%
The clothes have no emperor.
   -- C. A. Hoare, about Ada.
%%
There will always be survivors.
   -- Robert Heinlen
%%
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought
stuff.  He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the
imagination.  Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and
rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
   -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
Mind your own business, Mr. Spock.  I’m sick of your halfbreed interference.
%%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone somewhere is having fun.
%%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
   -- Samuel Johnson
%%
A gift of flower will soon be made to you.
%%
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist and too rich to be a communist.
%%
A man forgives only when he is in the wrong.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.
%%
University: A modern school where football is taught.
%%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.
%%
We’re fighting for this woman’s honor, which is more than she ever did.
   -- Rufus T. Firefly, in “Duck Soup”
%%
It’s not often that you get so much class entertainment outside your bedroom
window or outside your bedroom, period.
   -- Groucho Marx
%%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Been Transferred Lately?
%%
Beware of a tall dark man with a spoon up his nose.
%%
Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
%%
Angular momentum makes the world go round.
%%
Charity:
$$
A thing that begins at home and usually stays there.
%%
Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!
%%
Death:
$$
To stop sinning suddenly.
%%
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
%%
Don’t eat yellow snow.
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
Don’t force it, use a bigger hammer.
%%
Don’t hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
%%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%%
Everything you know is wrong.
   -- The Firesign Theater
%%
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
%%
Finagle’s Law:
$$
The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.
%%
Flee at once, all is discovered.
%%
Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.
%%
God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
%%
Hackers of the world, unite!
%%
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
%%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%%
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
%%
I think we’re all Bozos on this bus.
%%
I will never lie to you.
%%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%%
If God had wanted man to go around nude, He would have given him bigger hands.
%%
If God had wanted man to fly, He would have given him airline tickets.
%%
Ignore previous fortune.
%%
It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.
%%
Laugh, and the world ignores you.  Crying doesn’t help either.
%%
Long life is in store for you.
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love is in the offing.  Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%%
Many are called, few are chosen.  Fewer still get to do the choosing.
%%
Many are called, few volunteer.
%%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of
Casablanca.
%%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Paranoia doesn’t mean the whole world really isn’t out to get you.
%%
Philosophy:
$$
Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%%
Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.
%%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%%
Sturgeon’s Law:
$$
Ninety percent of everything is crud.
%%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
%%
The Ranger isn’t gonna like it, Yogi.
%%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%%
The decision doesn’t have to be logical, it is unanimous.
%%
The time is right to make new friends.
%%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.
%%
Time is nature’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen at once.
%%
To think is human, to compute, divine.
%%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%%
Try the Moo Shu Pork.  It is especially good today.
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
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You are going to have a new love affair.
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You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
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You have been selected for a secret mission.
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You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
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You will be surprised by a loud noise.
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You will feel hungry again in another hour.
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You’ll be called to a post requiring ability in handling groups of people.
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Your boss is thinking about you.
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If something’s not worth doing, it’s not worth doing well.
%%
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more months
of work to do.
   -- C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
%%
We stand today at a crossroads:  One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness.  The other leads to total extinction.  Let us hope we have the
wisdom to make the right choice.
   -- Woody Allen
%%
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their
children.  I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
   -- Woody Allen
%%
Nothing is done until nothing is done.
%%
The fourth law of thermodynamics:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
%%
There are no saints, only unrecognized villains.
%%
There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.
%%
It may soon be time for you to look for a new line of work.
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Your project will be late.
%%
The CS Sage says:  Seek new employment prior to the imposition of performance
penalties on your project.
%%
You will see the light at the end of the tunnel; unfortunately, it will be
the light of an oncoming freight train.
%%
What is virtue today may be vice tomorrow.
%%
“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the contry demands bold,
persistent experimentation.”
   -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
%%
Money talks… but all mine keeps saying is “goodbye”
%%
“No, it’s ‘Blessed are the meek.’  I think that’s nice, ‘cause really they have
a hell of a time.”
   -- someone in the crowd in “The Life of Brian”
%%
“I think he said ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers.’”
“Nonsense, he was obviously referring to all manafacturers of dairy products.”
   -- two people in the crowd in “The Life of Brian”
%%
How do you make a small fortune in Texas oil?
$$
Start with a big one.
%%
What can a pigeon do that a west Texas oil man can’t do anymore?
$$
A pigeon can still make a deposit on a new Mercedes.
%%
How many lesbians does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
Two.  One to change the bulb and another to reflect on how much more gratifying
it was than a man.
%%
How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
Two.  One to change the bulb and one to mix the drinks.
%%
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
Only one, but it takes a really long time and the light bulb has to want
to change.
%%
How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
Four.  One to change the bulb and three to share the experience.
%%
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
None.  It’s a hardware problem.
%%
To program anything that is programmable is obsession.
%%
Ill play with it first and tell you what it is later.
   -- Miles Davis
%%
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn’t tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
   -- Lucinda Childs (Philip Glass: Einstein On The Beach)
%%
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
   -- Hassan I Sabbah
$$
Bullshit.
   -- Karl
%%
Don’t let your mouth write no check that your tail can’t cash.
   -- Bo Diddley
%%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth.
   -- Niels Bohr
%%
Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.
   -- Southern California Oracle
%%
The most merciful thing in the world … is the inability of the human mind to
correlate all its contents.
   -- H. P. Lovecraft
%%
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
   -- Ken Kesey
%%
Its not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves.
   -- Little Richard
%%
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
   -- Mae West
%%
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
   -- Sigmund Freud
%%
When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I’ve never tried
before.
   -- Mae West
%%
Her life was saved by rock and roll.
- Lou Reed
%%
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital
intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
   -- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
“Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeprody I would never had lit
one.”
   -- Maxim of the Hells Angels
%%
It is a rather pleasent experience to be alone in a bank at night.
   -- Willie Sutton
%%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
   -- Billy Rose
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the
largest shopping center in the world?
   -- Richard M. Nixon
%%
When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality.
   -- Al Capone
%%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
   -- Emmett Grogan
%%
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
   -- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
If you’ve seen one city slum, you’ve seen them all.
   -- Spiro Agnew
%%
If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.
   -- Ronald Reagan
%%
If you’ve seen one Grand Canyon, you’ve seen them all.
   -- a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang
%%
He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
   -- South African Saying
%%
You can’t underestimate the power of fear.
   -- Tricia Nixon
%%
The whole earth is in jail and we’re plotting this incredible jailbreak.
   -- Wavy Gravy
%%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
   -- Buckminster Fuller
%%
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
   -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
College isn’t the place to go for ideas.
   -- Hellen Keller
%%
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
   -- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
   -- Allen Ginsberg
%%
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat
somebody.
   -- Richard M. Nixon
%%
Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearence of magic.
   -- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Justice is incedental to law and order.
   -- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
   -- Groucho Marx
%%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
   -- Abbie Hoffman
%%
Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old.
   -- Pink Floyd
%%
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
   -- Peter Drucker
%%
How can you be two places at once when youre not anywhere at all?
   -- Firesign Theater
%%
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
We are what we pretend to be.
   -- Kurt Vonnegut, JR
%%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -
but thats the way to bet.
   -- Damon Runyon
%%
I could prove God statistically.
   -- George Gallup
%%
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
Real wealth can only increase.
   -- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
Anyone can hate.  It costs to love.
   -- John Williamson
%%
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
or becomes true.
   -- John Lilly
%%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
   -- Graffiti
%%
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
Nobody can be exactly like me.  Even I have trouble doing it.
   -- Tallulah Bankhead
%%
A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms.
   -- George Wald
%%
 Dont lose
 Your head
 To gain a minute
 You need your head
 Your brains are in it.
   -- Burma Shave
%%
It was always thus; and even if ‘twere not, ‘twould inevitably have been
always thus.
   -- Dean Lattimer
%%
Burnt Sienna. Thats the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
   -- Ken Weaver
%%
We don’t know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn’t a fish.
   -- John Culkin
%%
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from
you.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Please don’t lie to me, unless youre absolutely sure I’ll never find out the
truth.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Please don’t ask me what the score is, I’m not even sure what the game is.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
If you can’t learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I don’t have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Maybe Im lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the
wrong direction.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm me.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the
target.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
   -- Alan Coult
%%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
   -- Stanley Garn
%%
The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
   -- Father Robert F. Capon
%%
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
men in national government too.
   -- Richard M. Nixon
%%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
   -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
inevitiable.
   -- John F. Kennedy
%%
“Contrariwise”, continued Tweedledee, “If it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t.  Thats logic.”
   -- Lewis Carroll
%%
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
   -- Edward Dahlberg
%%
To know the world one must construct it.
   -- Cesare Pavese
%%
Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak.
   -- Bullwinkle Moose
%%
The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
   -- Tenessee Williams
%%
An object never serves the same function as its image -- or its name.
   -- Rene Magritte
%%
All I kin say is when you finds yo’self wanderin’ in a peach orchard,
ya don’t go lookin’ for rutabagas.
   -- Kingfish
%%
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
   -- M. C. Escher
%%
Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences:
$$
If at first you don’t suceed, transform your data set.
%%
Laws of Computer Programming
(1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

(2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.

(3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

(4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

(5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.

(6) The value of a program is porportional to the
weight of its output.

(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
programmer who must maintain it.

(8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in
English, and you will find that programmers cannot write
in English.
   -- SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2
%%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
   -- Calvin Coolidge
%%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
   -- Paul Erlich
%%
If A equals success, then the formula is:
   A= X + Y + Z
$$
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
Sex is hereditary.  If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either.
   -- Joseph Fischer
%%
Fourth Law of Thermodymanics:
$$
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.
   -- David Ellis
%%
Frouds Law:
$$
A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing
first.
%%
Fullers Law of Cosmic Irreversibility:
 1 Pot T == 1 Pot P
 1 Pot P != 1 Pot T
   -- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
   -- J. Paul Getty
%%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs
pounding.
   -- Abraham Kaplan
%%
The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems.
   -- Roger Levian
%%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance
under which you can be booked.
   -- Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp)
%%
Thoreau’s Law:
$$
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good,
you should run for your life.
%%
Vique’s Law:
$$
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%%
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
   -- Gerald Weinberg  (sysop’s note: bull)
%%
Zimmerman’s Law of Complaints:
$$
Nobody notices when things go right.
%%
Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
   -- Confucius
%%
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
   -- Book of Proverbs
%%
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
The unnatural, that too is natural.
   -- Goethe
%%
I used to be indecisive; now I’m not sure.
   -- Graffiti
%%
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.
   -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
He hasn’t one redeeming vice.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
   -- Graffiti
%%
(To Walter Cronkite):
“Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number
of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running
up and down a street”
   -- Neil Armstrong
%%
“You doubted Me,” God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], “But I forgave
you that doubt.  You doubted your own self and failed to believe
in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also.  But
you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities
of Human Nature.  THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for
you to enter the Promised Land.”
   -- The Midrash
%%
“‘Martyrdom’ is the only way a person can become famous without ability”
   -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
“Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty
without any proof”
   -- Ashley Montague
%%
Birth, copulation and death.
$$
That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks;
$$
Birth, copulation and death.
   -- T. S. Elliot, Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
%%
“Make no little plans.  They have no Magic to stir Men’s blood.”
   -- D. B. Hudson
%%
“Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages
more ‘user-friendly’….  Their best approach, so far, has been to take
all the old brochures, and stamp the words, ‘user-friendly’ on the cover.”
   -- Bill Gates, Pres., Microsoft, Inc.
%%
Bradley’s Bromide:
$$
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee…
that will do them in.
%%
Civilization Law #1:
$$
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
one can do without thinking about them.
%%
Ketterling’s Law:
$$
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
%%
“Whenever ‘A’ attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon ‘B’, ‘A’
is most likely a scoundrel”
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded
on the Christian Religion”
   -- George Washington
%%
“In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.”
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
“During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has
been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride
and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,; in both,
superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”
   -- James Madison
%%
“Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations”
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
“We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately”
   -- Benjamin Franklin
%%
“Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried”
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
“Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained
control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles”
   -- Pat Paulsen
%%
“An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself”
   -- Albert Camus
%%
“Six years for possession of a cigarette? …I got six months for possession
of a deadly weapon!”
   -- cartoon by S. Harris
%%
The Swartzberg Test:
$$
The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
%%
“There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing
the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries
civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements.  We
must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward
striving of the human race”
   -- Alfred North Whitehead
%%
“My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of
human systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly
vulnerable…. We should be reluctant to turn back upon the
frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we
do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether
or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to
space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought
us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and
understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny
our history, our capabilities.”
   -- James A. Michener
%%
“What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go
to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to
build railroads across a continent? In independent thought
about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it
takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil’s view,
the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American
life. First, a base of technology must exist from which to do
the thing to be done. Second, a period of national uneasiness
about America’s place in the scheme of human activities must
exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally,
an articulate and wise leader must sense these first three
conditions and put forth with words and action the great thing
to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans to do what
needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions….
The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John Kennedys
appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which
they, and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us
onward and upward.”
   -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt, Sen., New Mexico
%%
“What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t work?  A stick!”
   -- Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian -
%%
“To err is human, to compute divine.  Trust your computer but not its programmer”
   -- Morris Kingston
%%
“I’ve seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I’ve seen more
of them who were paralyzed in the head”
   -- George Wallace
%%
“You don’t have to explain something you never said”
   -- Calvin Coolidge
%%
“A little caution outflanks a large cavalry”
   -- Bismarck
%%
“A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money”
   -- Everett Dirksen
%%
“The personal computer market is about the same size as the
total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the
size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total
worldwide sales of pantyhose”
   -- James Finke, Pres., Commodore Int’l Ltd.(1982)
%%
“I like a man who grins when he fights.”
   -- Winston Churchill
%%
“There are a lot of lies going around… and half of them are true.”
   -- Winston Churchill
%%
“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick
himself up and carry on…”
   -- Winston Churchill
%%
“God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday.”
   -- William Bragg
%%
“Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die”
   -- John W. Campbell
%%
“That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest”
   -- Thoreau (Sysop’s note: and if so, what are we doing here?)
%%
Life is not one thing after another….  It’s the same damn thing over and over!
%%
The meek will inherit the Earth…. The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.
%%
Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone.
%%
There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
%%
Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.
%%
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he’ll believe
you….  Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he’ll have to touch it
to be sure.
%%
Sex is like snow…  You never know how many inches you’re going to get or how
long it will last.
%%
What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
%%
Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics.
%%
“Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no
one else has thought.”
   -- Albert Szent-Gyorgi
%%
“Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals”
   -- “Oh, Lucky Man”
%%
 I really hate this damn machine,
 I wish that they would sell it.
 It never does just what I want,
 But only what I tell it.
%%
“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters;
united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels”
   -- Goya
%%
“Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon
the wall instead of using it”
   -- Gordon R. Dickson
%%
“Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor.”
   -- Toynbee
%%
“We have met the enemy and he is us”
   -- Walt Kelly (in POGO)
%%
“You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are
now extinct.”
   -- M. Somerset Maugham
%%
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
   -- Bert Lantz
%%
“The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity.”
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
   -- Voltaire
%%
“IBM uses what I like to call the ‘hole-in-the-ground technique’
to destroy the competition….  IBM digs a big HOLE in the
ground and covers it with leaves.  It then puts a big POT
OF GOLD nearby.  Then it gives the call, ‘Hey, look at all
this gold, get over here fast.’  As soon as the competitor
approaches the pot, he falls into the pit”
   -- John C. Dvorak
%%
“There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them”
   -- Heisenberg
%%
“It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
to my kind of fooling”
   -- R. Frost
%%
“Confound these ancestors…. They’ve stolen our best ideas!”
   -- Ben Jonson
%%
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
cometh out of man, in their sight…  Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread
therewith.
   -- [Ezek. 4:12-15 (KJV)]
%%
I have stripped off my dress; must I put it on again?  I have washed my feet;
must I soil them again?
$$
When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred
within me [my bowels were moved for him (KJV)].
$$
When I arose to open for my beloved, my hands dripped with myrrh; the liquid
myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt.  With my own hands I
opened to my love, but my love had turned away and gone by; my heart sank when
he turned his back.  I sought him but I did not find him, I called him but he
did not answer.
$$
The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me; they struck me and
wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took away my cloak.
[Song of Solomon 5:3-7 (NEB)]
%%
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! the joints of thy
thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.  Thy navel
is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor:  thy belly is like an heap
of wheat set about with lillies.
$$
Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
 [Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
%%
How beautiful, how entrancing you are, my loved one, daughter of delights!
You are stately as a palm-tree, and your breasts are the clusters of
dates.  I said, “I will climb up into the palm to grasp its fronds.”  May
I find your
breast like clusters of grapes on the vine, the scent of your breath like
apricots, and your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my
caresses, gliding down through lips and teeth.
[Song of Solomon 7:6-9 (NEB)]
%%
Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
than any flame.
[Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]
%%
But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to
thee, to speak these words?  Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the
wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
[2 Kings 18:27 (KJV)]
%%
When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you’re about to occupy, and
driven out many infidels before you… you’re to cut them down and exterminate
them.  You’re to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.
[Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
%%
In the beginning, I was made.  I didn’t ask to be made.  No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life’s mournful jungle, then so be it.
   -- Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams’ Hitchiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy Radio Scripts
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
If you’re not careful, you’re going to catch something.
%%
That’s the thing about people who think they hate computers.  What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
   -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in “Oath of Fealty”
%%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
   -- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%%
No one is fit to be trusted with power. … No one. …  Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he’s capabe of. …  And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
   -- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
%%
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
   -- Seneca
%%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn’t find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
   -- General James Gavin
%%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
   -- Edmund Burke
%%
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
   -- Nicklaus Wirth
%%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
$$
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll invite himself over for dinner.
   -- Calvin Keegan
%%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
   -- Niels Bohr
%%
The computer can’t tell you the emotional story.  It can give you the exact
mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
   -- Edward Thorp
%%
The main thing is the play itself.  I swear that greed for money has nothing
to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
   -- Feodor Dostoyevsky
%%
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
   -- Robert Bly
%%
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
   -- Alan Turing
%%
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
   -- Blaise Pascal
%%
After Goliath’s defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
   -- Freeman Dyson
%%
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
   -- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
%%
Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missle defense
systems.  The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities.  An unreliable
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
   -- C. A. R. Hoare
%%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did.  In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
   -- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%%
“It was the Law of the Sea, they said.  Civilization ends at the
waterline.  Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always
right at the top.”
   -- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool --
programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
describe.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
The so-called “desktop metaphor” of today’s workstations is instead
an “airplane-seat”
metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
…when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.  Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
…computer hardware progress is so fast.  No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike.  If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed.  In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
They have very large numbers of states.  This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard.  Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary.  No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
   -- Ellyn Mustard
%%
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close.  For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
   -- Bjarne Stroustrup in “The C++ Programming Language”
%%
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
   -- Brian Kernighan
%%
Perfection is acheived only on the point of collapse.
   -- C. N. Parkinson
%%
 There you go man,
 Keep as cool as you can.
 It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
 Keep on being free!
%%
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you’ll be Gary, Indiana.
   -- Jessie in the movie “Greaser’s Palace”
%%
Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound.
   -- Peanuts
%%
Police up your spare rounds and frags.  Don’t leave nothin’ for the dinks.
   -- Willem Dafoe in “Platoon”
%%
“All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.”
   -- Jane Wagner
%%
“Any medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple
his world.  To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than
against them is to attain literacy.”
   -- Alan Kay, “Computer Software”, Scientific American, September 1984
%%
“Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and
enjoyable.  As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be
well under way.  If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives?”
   -- Alan Kay, “Computer Software”, Scientific American, September 1984
%%
“The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace.”
   -- Holly Near
%%
“No matter where you go, there you are…”
   -- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
Trespassers will be shot.  Survivors will be prosecuted.
%%
Trespassers will be shot.  Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN!
%%
“I’m growing older, but not up.”
   -- Jimmy Buffett
%%
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
%%
“I hate the itching.  But I don’t mind the swelling.”
   -- new buzz phrase, like “Where’s the Beef?” that David Letterman’s trying
to get everyone to start saying
%%
Your own mileage may vary.
%%
“Oh dear, I think you’ll find reality’s on the blink again.”
   -- Marvin The Paranoid Android
%%
“Send lawyers, guns and money…”
   -- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
%%
“I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.”
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
“Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best.”
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
I can’t drive 55.
%%
“And they told us, what they wanted…  Was a sound that could kill
some-one, from a distance.”
   -- Kate Bush
%%
“In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it’s not
there if you want to keep writing good code.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Badges?  We don’t need no stinking badges.
%%
I can’t drive 55.
$$
I’m looking forward to not being able to drive 65, either.
%%
Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas.
%%
“Can you program?”
“Well, I’m literate, if that’s what you mean!”
%%
No user-servicable parts inside.  Refer to qualified service personnel.
%%
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new.  This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense.  Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism:  The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
   -- Carl Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
One of the saddest lessons of history is this:  If we’ve been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We’re no
longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured
us.  it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
we’ve been so credulous.  (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
   -- Carl Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, “This is not a bad way
to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage.”
%%
The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of
pseudoscience.  Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort
contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory.  Because
of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
scientists must employ in their work.
   -- Thomas L. Creed, “The Skeptical Inquirer,” Summer 1987
%%
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage.  But if we
don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly
serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up
for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
   -- Carl Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for
debugging.  Don’t have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
%%
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy.  The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
   -- Frederick Brooks Jr., “The Mythical Man Month”
%%
Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece.  Their
work will be set back by having that test bed change under them.  Of course it
must.  But the changes need to be quantized.  Then each user has periods of
productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change.  This seems
to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
   -- Frederick Brooks Jr., “The Mythical Man Month”
%%
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
   -- Frederick Brooks Jr., “The Mythical Man Month”
%%
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it
is also very memorable.  I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize
the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360.  The manager of
architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were
threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.
$$
The architecture manager had 10 good men.  He asserted that they could write
the specifications and do it right.  It would take ten months, three more
than the schedule allowed.
$$
The control program manager had 150 men.  He asserted that they could prepare
the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be
well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule.  Futhermore, if
the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs
for ten months.
$$
To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program
team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would
also be three months late, and of much lower quality.  I did, and it was.  He
was right on both counts.  Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
added a year to debugging time.
   -- Frederick Brooks Jr., “The Mythical Man Month”
%%
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary
psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful…  After
more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP
phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions.  This simple but
basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted
over many decades…  It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little
interest to psychology…  In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that
needs explanation.
   -- Keith E. Stanovich, “How to Think Straight About Psychology”, pp. 160-161
%%
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
   -- Charles Galton Darwin
%%
Natural selection won’t matter soon, not anywhere as much as concious selection.
We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we can
be.  Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves
unrecognizably.
   -- Greg Bear
%%
“Jesus may love you, but I think you’re garbage wrapped in skin.”
   -- Michael O’Donohugh
%%
…though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from
beginning to end.
   -- Vernor Vinge, “The Peace War”
%%
“It’s like deja vu all over again.”   -- Yogi Berra
%%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
   -- Blaise Pascal
%%
“Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.  “Begin at the beginning,”
the King said, gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
   -- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
%%
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
To be awake is to be alive.
   -- Henry David Thoreau, in “Walden”
%%
A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
never sure.
   -- Proverb
%%
You see but you do not observe.
   -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”
%%
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two.
   -- Seneca
%%
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb
to you till your life has illustrated it.
   -- John Keats
%%
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order
of space and time.
   -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%%
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
   -- Bengamin Disraeli
%%
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan.  We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
   -- Edmund Burke
%%
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Don’t tell me how hard you work.  Tell me how much you get done.
   -- James J. Ling
%%
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly
possible.  Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community
of thought,
a rivalry of aim.
   -- Henry Brook Adams
%%
 Remember thee
 Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
 In this distracted globe.  Remember thee!
 Yea, from the table of my memory
 I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
 That youth and observation copied there.
   -- Hamlet, I : v : 95   William Shakespeare
%%
Obviously, a man’s judgement cannot be better than the information on which he
has based it.  Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted
and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda
and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and
make him something less than a man.
   -- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
%%
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance.
   -- James Bryant Conant
%%
You can observe a lot just by watching.
   -- Yogi Berra
%%
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit, I
see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by
electricity.
   -- Samuel F. B. Morse
%%
“Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”
   -- Alexander Graham Bell
%%
It’s currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
   -- J. C. R. Licklider
%%
It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
   -- B. Hebbard, “A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal System”,
Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980, pp. 7-20
%%
A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you.
   -- Ramsey Clark
%%
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.
   -- James Baldwin
%%
Small is beautiful.
%%
…the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
   -- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
%%
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
   -- Abraham Lincoln
%%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
   -- Jean Cocteau
%%
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period:  how much cheaper and more efficient
would the current models be?  If you have not already heard the analogy, the
answer is shattering.  Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75,
it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough
power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II.  And if you were interested in
miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead.
   -- Christopher Evans
%%
In the future, you’re going to get computers as prizes in breakfast
cereals.  You’ll throw them out because your house will be littered
with them.
   -- Robert Lucky
%%
Get hold of portable property.
   -- Charles Dickens, “Great Expectations”
%%
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions:  to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
remaining errors by providing for recovery from them.  An interesting footnote
to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
the result of two program errors:  the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.
   -- A. L. Scherr, “Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating
Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies,” IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
%%
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations…
$$
If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
such machinery impracticable…
$$
And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
   -- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
%%
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
“Well the diagnostics say it’s fine buddy, so it’s a software problem.”
%%
“Don’t try to outweird me, three-eyes.  I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal.”
   -- Zaphod Beeblebrox in “Hithiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
%%
Uncompensated overtime?  Just Say No.
%%
Decaffeinated coffee?  Just Say No.
%%
“Show business is just like high school, except you get paid.”
   -- Martin Mull
%%
“This isn’t brain surgery; it’s just television.”
   -- David Letterman
%%
“Morality is one thing.  Ratings are everything.”
   -- A Network 23 executive on “Max Headroom”
%%
Live free or die.
%%
“…if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
this would be a better world.”
   -- Garrison Keillor, “Lake Wobegon Days”
%%
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read.
%%
“Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories.”
   -- Ted Nelson, October 1977
%%
“All these black people are screwing up my democracy.”
   -- Ian Smith
%%
Use the Force, Luke.
%%
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
%%
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
the Force.
   -- Darth Vader
%%
When I left you, I was but the pupil.  Now, I am the master.
   -- Darth Vader
%%
“Well, well, well!  Well if it isn’t fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
poison!  How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil?  Come
and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!”
   -- Alex in “Clockwork Orange”
%%
“There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts.  I could never stand to
see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was.”
   -- Alex in “Clockwork Orange”
%%
186,000 Miles per Second.  It’s not just a good idea.  IT’S THE LAW.
%%
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
%%
Gee, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.
%%
Children begin by loving their parents.  After a time they judge them.  Rarely,
if ever, do they forgive them.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
Single tasking: Just Say No.
%%
“Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world.”
   -- The Beach Boys
%%
“Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
seemed to come from Texas.”
   -- Ian Fleming, “Casino Royale”
%%
“I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
lifetime.”
   -- Johnny Legend
%%
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic
credentials (out
of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
but appeared “abruptly.”
   -- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
%%
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
   -- Hajime Karatsu
%%
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and
patient.  Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
the long run.  I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary
challenging spirit today.
   -- Hajime Karatsu
%%
Memories of you remind me of you.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Life.  Don’t talk to me about life.
   -- Marvin the Paranoid Anroid
%%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%%
The world is coming to an end -- save your buffers!
%%
grep me no patterns and I’ll tell you no lines.
%%
It is your destiny.
   -- Darth Vader
%%
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
your side.
   -- Han Solo
%%
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
$$
3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say “I told you so” when it doesn’t work.
%%
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
$$
“That’s a known problem… don’t worry about it.”
%%
To be is to program.
%%
To program is to be.
%%
I program, therefore I am.
%%
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange
surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and
Fortran programs, for example.
   -- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
%%
“I am your density.”
   -- George McFly in “Back to the Future”
%%
“So why don’t you make like a tree, and get outta here.”
   -- Biff in “Back to the Future”
%%
“Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint.”
   -- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
%%
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
%%
“I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously.”
   -- Doctor Graper
%%
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
   -- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
%%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns… behind his
ears.  I think he’s weird because he wears false teeth… with braces on them.
   -- Steven Wright
%%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: “Wish you were here”.
   -- Steven Wright
%%
You can’t have everything… where would you put it?
   -- Steven Wright
%%
I was playing poker the other night… with Tarot cards. I got a full house and
4 people died.
   -- Steven Wright
%%
You know that feeling when you’re leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
over?  Well, that’s how I feel all the time.
   -- Steven Wright
%%
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys… and
the building started up.  So I took it out for a drive.  A cop pulled me over
for speeding.  He asked me where I live…  “Right here”.
   -- Steven Wright
%%
“Live or die, I’ll make a million.”
   -- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth, Firesign Theater
%%
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
%%
There are bugs and then there are bugs.  And then there are bugs.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
My computer can beat up your computer.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Kill Ugly Radio
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
“Just Say No.”   - Nancy Reagan
$$
“No.”            - Ronald Reagan
%%
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder.  It’s a
very powerful emotion.  All children feel it.  In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it.  Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it’s not just puberty.  Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder.  Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling.  Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
   -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience.  But there is a kind
of Gresham’s Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
good.  And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful.  Every newspaper
in America has a daily astrology column.  How many have even a weekly
astronomy column?  And I believe it is also the fault of the educational
system.  We do not teach how to think.  This is a very serious failure that
may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
future.
   -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical
Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
“I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience.  And
in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
   -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
I’m often asked the question, “Do you think there is extraterrestrial
intelligence?”  I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places
out there,
and use the word *billions*, and so on.  And then I say it would be astonishing
to me if there weren’t extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
yet no compelling evidence for it.  And then I’m asked, “Yeah, but what do you
really think?”  I say, “I just told you what I really think.”  “Yeah, but
what’s your gut feeling?”  But I try not to think with my gut.  Really, it’s
okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
   -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical
Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
Repel them.  Repel them.  Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
   -- Indiana University fans’ chant for their perennially bad football team
%%
If it’s working, the diagnostics say it’s fine.
$$
If it’s not working, the diagnostics say it’s fine.
   -- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
%%
It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
   -- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
%%
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation… to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak…
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing materail aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality.  Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
   -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
by a change in our world view.  We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
nature and all of creation.
   -- Dr. Albert Hoffman
%%
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
dangers that must not be underestimated.  Practitioners must take into
account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being.  The history
of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug.  Special internal and external advance preperations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
   -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD’s vision-inducing capability
more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjution
with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
child.
   -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
prepared.
   -- Louis Pasteur
%%
core error - bus dumped
%%
If imprinted foil seal under cap is broken or missing when purchased, do not
use.
%%
“Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you.”
   -- A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution, Firesign Theater
%%
“Ahead warp factor 1”
   -- Captain Kirk
%%
Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.
$$
“Water!” it shrieked as it read the spectral report.  “A barrier of water
vapor!  A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
A civilized race could not have stooped so low!  A civilized race would not
have…”
$$
It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.
   -- Startide Rising, by David Brin
%%
Harrison’s Postulate:
$$
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%%
Mr. Cole’s Axiom:
$$
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.
%%
Felson’s Law:
$$
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
many is research.
%%
…Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth.  Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old.  Well, I
haven’t ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected
it.  There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice.  Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts.  Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards.  Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes.  Postjudice is not terrible.  You can’t be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also.  But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence.  In some circles it is even encouraged.
   -- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol.
12, pg. 46
%%
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
   -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
%%
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
Unix:  Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
   -- Joe Crowe
%%
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
   -- Edmund Burke
%%
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime….
$$
[I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
of dealing with it….
$$
[L]et us use the tools that we have.  Let us invoke the cooperation we have
the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
   -- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
%%
“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”
   -- Thomas Paine
%%
“I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit.  It’s the only way to be sure.”
   -- Corporal Hicks, in “Aliens”
%%
“There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way.”
   -- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
“…proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect.”
   -- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in “The History of Manned Space Flight”
%%
“Athens built the Acropolis.  Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
purely materialistic things.  Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth.”
   -- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
“Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
society…  It is justified because… the program can give a sense of shared
adventure and achievement to the society at large.”
   -- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in “The History of Manned Space Flight”
%%
The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon
represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race.  Even
if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this
task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the
goal.  In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human
arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by
those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the
development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.
   -- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in “The History of Manned Space Flight”
%%
The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and
landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination
and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition,
and will that I do not see in any other undertaking.  I think if we are
honest with ourselves, we must admit that we needed that impetus extremely
strongly.  I sincerely believe that the space program, with its manned
landing on the moon, if wisely executed, will become the spearhead for a
broad front of courageous and energetic activities in all the fields of
endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out
except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead
can give.
   -- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in “The History of Manned Space Flight”
%%
Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of
productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly
appreciated goals.  A lethargic world serves no cause well; a spirited world
working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and
the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied… to unparalleled
social accomplishment.
   -- Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in “The History of Manned Space Flight”
%%
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while.  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
gratifications.  All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done.  There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
   -- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in “The History of Manned Space Flight”
%%
I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself
to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon…
   -- Lyndon B. Johnson
%%
Life’s the same, except for the shoes.
   -- The Cars
%%
 Purple hum
 Assorted cars
 Laser lights, you bring

 All to prove
 You’re on the move
 and vanishing
 - The Cars
%%
 Could be you’re crossing the fine line
 A silly driver kind of… off the wall
$$
 You keep it cool when it’s t-t-tight
 …eyes wide open when you start to fall.
   -- The Cars
%%
Adapt.  Enjoy.  Survive.
%%
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
   -- Anonymous
%%
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
   -- Isaac Asimov
%%
And the crowd was stilled.  One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said.  Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, “Why, the Emperor has no
clothes!  He is naked!”
   -- “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
%%
“Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
Silly Putty.”
   --  Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
%%
To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
$$
1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated
by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our
national security;
$$
2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air
Force that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED represent
technological developments or principles beyond the range of
present-day scientific knowledge; and
$$
3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized
as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.
   -- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from 1950
to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
%%
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only
in the God idea, not God Himself.
   -- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
%%
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
   -- Kahlil Gibran
%%
Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
   -- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
%%
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
   -- Voltaire
%%
If only God would give me some clear sign!  Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss Bank.
   -- Woody Allen
%%
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man.  Therefore, I affirm
both.  Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete.  Human unity
is the fulfillment of diversity.  It is the harmony of opposites.  It is
a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
   -- Norman Cousins
%%
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
   -- C. K. Chesterton
%%
…difference of opinion is advantageious in religion.  The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other.  Is uniformity
attainable?  Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
   -- Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia”
%%
Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to
be solved.
   -- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??)
%%
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
our doubts serve to reassure us.
   -- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
%%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the
improbable.
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve?  The judgement of God
upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of
criminal at the bar of justice.
   -- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
%%
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
become better people as a result of practicing it.
   -- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
%%
Imitation is the sincerest form of plagarism.
%%
“Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry”
   -- An error message printed by DEC’s RSTS operating system for the PDP-11
%%
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
$$
One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored
power tools.
%%
How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
$$
Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
%%
How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?
$$
It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
%%
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no
God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of.  My own mind is my own Church.
   -- Thomas Paine
%%
God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
   -- Roger Williams
%%
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.  But we may hope that the
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.  Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.  And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.  Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity.
   -- John Adams
%%
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.  I could
never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
   -- Abraham Lincoln
%%
As to Jesus of Nazareth… I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
   -- Benjamin Franklin
%%
I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
gotten the hostages released.  I thank God they were satisfied with the
missiles and we didn’t have to go to that extreme.
   -- Oliver North
%%
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute --
where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom
to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
people who might elect him.
   -- from John F. Kennedy’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
September 12, 1960.
%%
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking.  Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.  Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man.  It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions.  It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity….
   -- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%%
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other
way.  Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for
immortality,
and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
beyond the grave.  Such childish “proofs” are typically theological, and
they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents….
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.  Soon
or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account.  The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
   -- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
   -- Clarence Darrow
%%
We’re here to give you a computer, not a religion.
   -- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
%%
…there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
   -- George Jacob Holyoake
%%
“If you’ll excuse me a minute, I’m going to have a cup of coffee.”
   -- broadcast from Apollo 11’s LEM, “Eagle”, to Johnson Space Center, Houston
July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
%%
The meek are contesting the will.
%%
I’m sick of being trodden on!  The Elder Gods say they can make me a
man!  All it costs is my soul!  I’ll do it, cuz NOW I’M MAD!!!
   -- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
%%
On Krat’s main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several
dolphins.  From the man’s shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably
their leader.
$$
“…stupid creatures unworthy of the name ‘sophonts.’  Foolish, pre-sentient
upspring of errant masters.  We slip away from all your armed might, laughing
at your clumsiness!  We slip away as we always will, you pathetic
creatures.  And now that we have a real head start, you’ll never catch
us!  What better
proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us!  What better proof…”
$$
The taunt went on.  Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring
the artistry of it.  These men are better than I’d thought.  Their insults
are wordy and overblown, but they have talent.  They deserve honorable, slow
deaths.
   -- David Brin, Startide Rising
%%
“I’m a mean green mother from outer space”
   -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
%%
Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or
churchgoer.  It doesn’t seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who
watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide
people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and
cruelty for that.  On the other hand, I respect and envy the people
who get inspiration from their religions.
   -- Benjamin Spock
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
   -- Andy Finkel, computer guy
%%
Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.
%%
NOWPRINT.  NOWPRINT.  Clemclone, back to the shadows again.
   -- The Firesign Theater
%%
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth…  But in today’s technical
vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.
   -- The Firesign Theater
%%
…this is an awesome sight.  The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of “The Naked Lunch.”
   -- The Firesign Theater
%%
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
   -- Ann Marion
%%
I know engineers.  They love to change things.
   -- Dr. McCoy
%%
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
   -- John Lions (U. of Toronto (?))
%%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
%%
“You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
States?  Because your hackers have so much mobility into the
establishment.  Here, there is no such mobility.  If you have the slightest
bit of intellectual
integrity you cannot support the government…. That’s why the best computer
minds belong to the opposition.”
   -- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
%%
“Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper …. everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door.  Now all you have to do is
bend a disk.”
   -- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
%%
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we’ll find their money.
   -- Ed Bluestone
%%
He’s dead, Jim.
%%
New York… when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
   -- David Letterman
%%
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
   -- Al Capone
%%
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
levitation.
$$
Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
character does not have fire resistance.
$$
   -- README file from the NetHack game
%%
Remember, there’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired.  I’m certainly not.  But I’m
sick and tired of being told that I am.
   -- Monty Python
%%
“There is no statute of limitations on stupidity.”
   -- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
%%
 There is a time in the tides of men,
 Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
 On the other hand, don’t count on it.
   -- T. K. Lawson
%%
 To follow foolish precedents, and wink
 With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
   -- William Cowper
%%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
   -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
%%
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man’s reflection.
   -- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
commenting on psi research
%%
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
   -- John Keats
%%
Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.
%%
“Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.
$$
In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket,
achieving an altitude of 41 feet.  In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth.
$$
In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
in Apollo 11.”
   --- Michael Collins, former astronaut and past Director of
the National Air and Space Museum
%%
Most people exhibit what political scientists call “the conservatism of the
peasantry.”  Don’t lose what you’ve got.  Don’t change.  Don’t take a chance,
because you might end up starving to death.  Play it safe.  Buy just as much
as you need.  Don’t waste time.
$$
When we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their
heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive.  But when it comes down
to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in
something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
the game as it must be played.
   -- David Lammers, “Yakitori”, Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988
%%
“We can’t schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting”
   --Stanley Sutton
%%
Weekends were made for programming.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
“Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards.”
   -- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters
of Tennessee’s anti-evolution law at the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in 1925.
%%
…we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet’s shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the “theory of evolution”) does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the “fact of evolution” --
into doubt.
   -- Stephen Jay Gould, “The Verdict on Creationism”, The Skeptical Inquirer,
Vol XII No. 2
%%
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
   -- Michael Swanwick, “Vacuum Flowers”
%%
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
and tears.  … It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires
us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
contrary to habit…
   -- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
%%
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function
are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other.  There is
no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and
make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.  Actually, of course, this
is a working assumption only….  It is quite conceivable that someday the
assumption will have to be rejected.  But it is important also to see that we
have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and
there is no real evidence opposed to it.  Our failure to solve a problem so
far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot logically be a determinist in
physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
   -- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior:  A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
%%
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a “universal mind” (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
   -- Barry L. Beyerstein, “The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
Phenomena”, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
…Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
the person making the claim, not the critic.  It is not the responsibility
of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
or colored lights never healed anyone.  The skeptic’s role is to point out
claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidcence and to
provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
the accepted body of scientific evidence. …
   -- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
%%
“Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist.”
   -- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
%%
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.  There are many examples of
outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
they prevailed with irrefutable data.  More often, egregious findings that
contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts.  I have
argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, “cosmic conciousness,”
and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
neuroscience.  Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
   -- Barry L. Beyerstein, “The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for Psi
Phenomena”, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.  Only
a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. …Only
atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
   -- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, “The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution”
%%
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
   -- Martin Gardner, “Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life”,
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
%%
…It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
   -- Martin Gardner, “Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life”,
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
%%
… The book is worth attention for only two reasons:  (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
   -- Harry Eagar, reviewing “Beyond the Quantum” by Michael Talbot,
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
%%
 Now I lay me down to sleep
 I hear the sirens in the street
 All my dreams are made of chrome
 I have no way to get back home
 - Tom Waits
%%
I am here by the will of the people and I won’t leave until I get my raincoat
back.
   -- a slogan of the anarchists in Richard Kadrey’s “Metrophage”
%%
How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ?
$$
Seven: one to install the new bulb, and six to determine what to do
with the old one for the next 10,000 years.
%%
Mike’s Law:
$$
For a lumber company employing two men and a cut-off saw, the
marginal product of labor for any number of additional workers
equals zero until the acquisition of another cut-off saw.
$$
Let’s not even consider a chainsaw.
   -- Mike Dennison
[You could always schedule the saw, though - ed.]
%%
As long as we’re going to reinvent the wheel again, we might as well try making
it round this time.
   -- Mike Dennison
%%
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is now in the American experience…  We must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications…  We must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial
complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
   -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
%%
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time.  So I ordered
french toast in the renaissance.
   -- Steven Wright, comedian
%%
Everyone has a purpose in life.  Perhaps yours is watching television.
   -- David Letterman
%%
A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it’s designed to be
minimal.  The smallness of it is what’s attractive.  It’s weird, ‘cause it’s so
intellectually lame.  It’s hard to see me doing that for the rest of
my life.  But at the same time, it’s what I do best.
   -- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on “Late Night with David Letterman”
%%
e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data
you’re seeing is genuine rather than somebody’s made-up crap.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
My mother is a fish.
   -- William Faulkner
%%
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature.  For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events.  To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot.
$$
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.  For a doctrine which
is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress.  In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is,
give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
powers in the hands of priests.  In their labors they will have to avail
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself.  This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
   -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
   -- from “Our Sunday Visitor”, an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949
%%
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers’ money.
   -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
   -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind…
   -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
%%
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries…
   -- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
%%
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
   -- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
%%
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?  Is
it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of
ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don’t know the map of the universe as well as the map
of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness…
   -- Leslie Stephen, “An agnostic’s Apology”, Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
his ignorance.  And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
   -- Leslie Stephen, “An agnostic’s Apology”, Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
   -- Voltaire
%%
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity.  We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly --
that is the first law of nature.
   -- Voltaire
%%
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
- Voltaire
%%
I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us --
a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole
normal evolution of society.
   -- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
%%
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be…. The
natural disposition is always to believe.  It is acquired wisdom and experience
only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
   -- Adam Smith
%%
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If they think
you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude.  I’m a
very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.  These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
crudeness.
   -- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
%%
However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise.  There
is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
beliefs.  There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme
being.  But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf
should be used sparingly.  The religious factions that are growing
throughout our land are not using their religious clout with
wisdom.  They are trying to force government leaders into following
their position
100 percent.  If you disagree with these religious groups on a
particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of
money or votes or both.  I’m frankly sick and tired of the political
preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D.”  Just who do
they think they are?  And from where do they presume to claim the
right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?  And I am even more angry as
a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate.  I am warning them today:  I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of “conservatism.”
   -- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
%%
“I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell’s ass.”
   -- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell’s
suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O’Connor’s
nomination to the Supreme Court
%%
…And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers.  No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions.  This is true in religion as
it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the
naive.  As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
advised to leave them to heaven.  They will not, unfortunately, do us the
same courtesy.  They attack us and each other, and whatever their
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword.  My own belief in
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge.  My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth.  But even well-educated Christians
are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.  Such
ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it.  Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
   -- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book “The Courage of
Conviction”, edited by Philip Berman
%%
…it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
   -- Sidney Hook
%%
A fanatic is a person who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
   -- Winston Churchill
%%
We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism…
we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
our nation today… our battle is with Satan himself.
   -- Jerry Falwell
%%
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
   -- George Orwell
%%
As I argued in “Beloved Son”, a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
conversions -- to anything -- less likely.  Brian now realizes this and
has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with.  The
problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
irrational -- the powers of reason are suprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer’s mind.
   -- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book “The Courage of
Conviction”, edited by Philip Berman
%%
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
   -- Fyodor Dostoevski
%%
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual
concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.  But
all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
resources.  If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
   -- Norman Cousins, from his book “Human Options”
%%
The Messiah will come.  There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
   -- Rabbi Meir Kahane
%%
The world is no nursery.
   -- Sigmund Freud
%%
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
superficial answer is not far to seek….
$$
The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
   -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
from “Democracy in the Schools”, 1908
%%
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality.  All proffered
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
common tests.  It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such “show-down” is sacrilegious and perverse.  The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generall known;
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
ways…  It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
where the method of free inquiry has made its way.  The “religious”
would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
   -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
from “Democracy in the Schools”, 1908
%%
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality…  Whether this
educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-democratic
way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance
not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
interests and activites of a society that is committed to the democratic
way of life.
   -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
%%
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts
them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing
grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another…
Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every
moult is a step gained.
   -- Charles Darwin, from “Origin of the Species”
%%
…I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our
family, the Hominidae.
   -- Richard Leakey
%%
It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us
as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.
   -- Betty McCollister, “Our Transitional Species”,
Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
%%
“Well, you see, it’s such a transitional creature.  It’s a piss-poor
reptile and not very much of a bird.”
   -- Melvin Konner, from “The Tangled Wing”, quoting a zoologist who has
studied the archeopteryz and found it “very much like people”
%%
“You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape.”
   -- Ellyn Mustard
%%
“It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
create him.”
   -- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
“Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?”
   -- Ronald Reagan
%%
“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things
we don’t know yet.”
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
“Plan to throw one away.  You will anyway.”
   -- Fred Brooks, “The Mythical Man Month”
%%
The Middle East is certainly the nexus of turmoil for a long time to come --
with shifting players, but the same game: upheaval.  I think we will be
confronting militant Islam -- particularly fallout from the Iranian
revolution -- and religion will once more, as it has in our own more
distant past -- play a role at least as standard-bearer in death and mayhem.
   -- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence,
vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy director of
Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
%%
…One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of,
this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of
government.  We are constituted not for efficient operation of government,
but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power.  It took the events
of the Roosevelt era -- a catastrophic economic collapse and a world war --
to introduce the strong central government that we now know.  But in most
parts of the country today, the reluctance to have government is still
strong.  I think, barring a series of catastrophic events, that we can
look to at least another decade during which many of the big problems
around this country will have to be addressed by institutions other than
federal government.
   -- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence,
vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy directory of
Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
[the statist opinions expressed herein are not those of the cookie editor -ed.]
%%
“I have just one word for you, my boy… plastics.”
   -- from “The Graduate”
%%
“There is such a fine line between genius and stupidity.”
   -- David St. Hubbins, “Spinal Tap”
%%
“If Diet Coke did not exist it would have been neccessary to invent it.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who
are equally certain that they represent the divine will.  I am sure that
either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some
respects, both.
$$
I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that
God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty,
it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.
   -- Abraham Lincoln
%%
In space, no one can hear you fart.
%%
Brain damage is all in your head.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Wish and hope succeed in discerning signs of paranormality where reason and
careful scientific procedure fail.
   -- James E. Alcock, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12
%%
“It is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, but
the result’s the same.”
   -- Mike Dennison
%%
“Creation science” has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.  What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectualy heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
   -- Stephen Jay Gould, “The Skeptical Inquirer”, Vol. 12, page 186
%%
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
%%
“Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph).”
   -- 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
%%
“Your attitude determines your attitude.”
   -- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
%%
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains…
$$
This “cerebral spare tire” concept continues to nourish the clientele of
“pop psychologists” and their many recycling self-improvement schemes.  As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it?  As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
   --- Barry L. Beyerstein, “The Brain and Conciousness:  Implications for
Psi Phenomena”, The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
%%
Thufir’s a Harkonnen now.
%%
“By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.”
   -- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool’s column in April 88’s “Computer Language”
%%
“If you want to eat hippopatomus, you’ve got to pay the freight.”
   -- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory
%%
Parkinson’s Law:
$$
Work expands to fill the time alloted it.
%%
Karl’s version of Parkinson’s Law:
$$
Work expands to exceed the time alloted it.
%%
It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and
failed.
   -- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
%%
“Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension.”
   -- Robert A. Baker, “The Aliens Among Us:  Hypnotic Regression Revisited”,
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
%%
“…all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products,
if they are built at all, are dogs!”
   -- David E. Lundstrom, “A Few Good Men From Univac”, MIT Press, 1987
%%
“To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite
improvements.”
   -- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors
%%
“We will bury you.”
   -- Nikita Kruschev
%%
“Now here’s something you’re really going to like!”
   -- Rocket J. Squirrel
%%
“How to make a million dollars:  First, get a million dollars.”
   -- Steve Martin
%%
“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.”
   -- B. L. Whorf
%%
The language provides a programmer with a set of conceptual tools; if these are
inadequate for the task, they will simply be ignored.  For example, seriously
restricting the concept of a pointer simply forces the programmer to use a
vector plus integer arithmetic to implement structures, pointer, etc.  Good
design and the absence of errors cannot be guaranteed by mere language
features.
   -- Bjarne Stroustrup, “The C++ Programming Language”
%%
“For the love of phlegm… a stupid wall of death rays.  How tacky can ya get?”
   -- Post Brothers comics
%%
“Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation.”
   -- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
%%
“An organization dries up if you don’t challenge it with growth.”
   -- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
%%
“I’ve seen it.  It’s rubbish.”
   -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
Our business is run on trust.  We trust you will pay in advance.
%%
“Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times
been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice.”
   -- Robert Green Ingersoll
%%
The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics,
culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation
of events.  Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two
millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there
are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more
nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined.
   -- John K. Naland, “The First Easter”, Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2
%%
I find you lack of faith in the forth dithturbing.
   -- Darse (”Darth”) Vader
%%
“All Bibles are man-made.”
   -- Thomas Edison
%%
“Spock, did you see the looks on their faces?”
$$
“Yes, Captain, a sort of vacant contentment.”
%%
“The triumph of libertarian anarchy is nearly (in historical terms) at
hand… *if* we can keep the Left from selling us into slavery and the
Right from blowing us up for, say, the next twenty years.”
-- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
%%
“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
“I think Michael is like litmus paper - he’s always trying to learn.”
   -- Elizabeth Taylor, absurd non-sequitir about Michael Jackson
%%
While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession,
conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge,
we must ask how one differentiates “real transcendence” from neuropathies
that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense
of cosmic unity.  When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs
[temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of
the religious tradition, the parallels are striking.  The same is true of the
recent spate of alleged UFO abductees.  Parsimony alone argues against invoking
spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.
   -- Barry L. Beyerstein, “Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
Possession”, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
%%
“A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
   -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
“We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement.”
   -- Richard J. Daley
%%
“With molasses you catch flies, with vinegar you catch nobody.”
   -- Baltimore City Councilman Dominic DiPietro
%%
“Lead us in a few words of silent prayer.”
   -- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
%%
“I couldn’t remember things until I took that Sam Carnegie course.”
   -- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
%%
“Right now I feel that I’ve got my feet on the ground as far as my head
is concerned.”
   -- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky
%%
“Ninety percent of baseball is half mental.”
   -- Yogi Berra
%%
Two things are certain about science.  It does not stand still for long,
and it is never boring.  Oh, among some poor souls, including even
intellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequently
misperceived.  Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated from
on high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchanging
precepts defended with authoritarian vigor.  Others view it as nothing
but a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process -- the scientific
method: hidebound, linear, and left brained.
$$
These people are the victims of their own stereotypes.  They are
destined to view the world of science with a set of blinders.  They
know nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, and
tendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone the
creativity, passion, and joy of discovery.  And they are likely to
know little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveries
that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the
natural world.
   -- Kendrick Frazier, “The Year in Science: An Overview,” in
1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
%%
“jackpot:  you may have an unneccessary change record”
   -- message from “diff”
%%
“One lawyer can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”
   -- The Godfather
%%
What’s the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?
$$
A used car salesman knows when he’s lying.
%%
“Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the
world.”
   -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
%%
“There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent
to a gang bent on destruction.”
   -- John Cage, composer
%%
“I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a
music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make
available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.”
   -- composer John Cage, 1937
%%
I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
that they didn’t rehearse at all.  And so the first time when I found that out,
I rehearsed the orchestra myself in front of the audience of 3,000 people
the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
and _Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed.  The Dutch people were ashamed
and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
rehearse.  And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
again, they hadn’t rehearsed.  So they were no more prepared the second time
than they had been the first.  I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
the performance; they then said over the radio that I had insisted on their
cancelling the performance because they were “insufficiently Zen.”
$$
Can you believe it?
   -- composer John Cage, “Electronic Musician” magazine, March 88, pg. 89
%%
“One day I woke up and discovered that I was in love with tripe.”
   -- Tom Anderson
%%
“Most people would like to be delivered from
temptation but would like it to keep in touch.”
   -- Robert Orben
%%
The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give ‘em a number or
give ‘em a date, but never give ‘em both at once.
%%
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible;
a pessimist fears this is true.
%%
“If John Madden steps outside on February 2, looks down, and doesn’t see his
feet, we’ll have 6 more weeks of Pro football.”
   -- Chuck Newcombe
%%
Dead?   No excuse for laying off work.
%%
Lead me not into temptation…  I can find it myself.
%%
“When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.”
   -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
“Nature is very un-American.  Nature never hurries.”
   -- William George Jordan
%%
“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
   -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
“Flattery is all right -- if you don’t inhale.”
   -- Adlai Stevenson
%%
“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.”
   -- Bernard Berenson
%%
“Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings.  The expectations are always
high, and the results usually disappointing.”
   -- Robert Orben
%%
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging
their prejudices.”
   -- William James
%%
“Tell the truth and run.”
   -- Yugoslav proverb
%%
“The best index to a person’s character is a) how he treats people who can’t
do him any good and b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.”
   -- Abigail Van Buren
%%
“Never face facts; if you do, you’ll never get up in the morning.”
   -- Marlo Thomas
%%
“Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit.”
   -- David McCord
%%
“The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children
produce adults.”
   -- Peter De Vries
%%
“It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”
   -- Alfred Adler
%%
“Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature…  Life is
either a daring adventure or nothing.”
   -- Helen Keller
%%
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is
shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
“Success covers a multitude of blunders.”
   -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
“The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while
the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
   -- William Stekel
%%
“Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood…”
   -- Badger comics
%%
“Is it really you, Fuzz, or is it Memorex, or is it radiation sickness?”
   -- Sonic Disruptors comics
%%
“Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons
for it afterwards.”
   -- Soren F. Petersen
%%
“You’re a creature of the night, Michael.  Wait’ll Mom hears about this.”
   -- from the movie “The Lost Boys”
%%
“Plastic gun.  Ingenious.  More coffee, please.”
   -- The Phantom comics
%%
The game of life is a game of boomerangs.  Our thoughts, deeds and words
return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, you are running about average.
%%
“A child is a person who can’t understand why someone would give away a
perfectly good kitten.”
   -- Doug Larson
%%
“The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.”
   -- Walt West
%%
“Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone.”
   -- G. B. Stearn
%%
“In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with
the current.”
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to
the left.
%%
“But this one goes to eleven.”
   -- Nigel Tufnel
%%
“Been through Hell?  Whaddya bring back for me?”
   -- A. Brilliant
%%
“I don’t know what their
gripe is.  A critic is
simply someone paid to
render opinions glibly.”
$$
“Critics are grinks and
groinks.”
   -- Baron and Badger, from Badger comics
%%
“I’ve got some amyls.  We could either party later or, like, start his heart.”
   -- “Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie”
%%
“Israel today announced that it is giving up.  The Zionist state will dissolve
in two weeks time, and its citizens will disperse to various resort communities
around the world.  Said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, ‘Who needs the
aggravation?’”
   -- Dennis Miller, “Satuday Night Live” News
%%
“And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead
by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business
product: a really sharp-looking report.”
   -- Dave Barry
%%
SHOP OR DIE, people of Earth!
[offer void where prohibited]
   -- Capitalists from outer space, from Justice League Int’l comics
%%
“Roman Polanski makes his own blood.  He’s smart -- that’s why his movies work.”
   -- A brilliant director at “Frank’s Place”
%%
“The following is not for the weak of heart or Fundamentalists.”
   -- Dave Barry
%%
“I take Him shopping with me. I say, ‘OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain’”
   -- Tammy Faye Bakker
%%
Gary Hart:
$$
Living proof that you *can* screw your brains out.
%%
Blessed be those who initiate lively discussions with the hopelessly mute,
for they shall be know as Dentists.
%%
“I don’t believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person,
unless he has an atomic weapon.”
   -- Howard Chaykin
%%
“Ever free-climbed a thousand foot vertical cliff with 60 pounds of gear
strapped to your butt?”
  “No.”
“’Course you haven’t, you fruit-loop little geek.”
   -- The Mountain Man, one of Dana Carvey’s SNL characters
%%
“I mean, like, I just read your article in the Yale law recipe, on search and
seizure.  Man, that was really Out There.”
$$
“I was so WRECKED when I wrote that…”
   -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
%%
“Hi, I’m Professor Alan Ginsburg…  But you can call me… Captain Toke.”
   -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
%%
It’s great to be smart ‘cause then you know stuff.
%%
“Time is money and money can’t buy you love and I love your outfit”
   -- T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1
%%
“Can’t you just gesture hypnotically and make him disappear?”
$$
“It does not work that way.  RUN!”
   -- Hadji on metaphyics and Mandrake in “Johnny Quest”
%%
“You shouldn’t make my toaster angry.”
   -- Household security explained in “Johnny Quest”
%%
“Someone’s been mean to you!  Tell me who it is, so I can punch him tastefully.”
   -- Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse
%%
“And kids… learn something from Susie and Eddie.  If you think there’s
a maniacal psycho-geek in the basement:
$$
1)  Don’t give him a chance to hit you on the
head with an axe!
$$
2)  Flee the premises… even if you’re in your
underwear.
$$
3)  Warn the neighbors and call the police.
$$
But whatever else you do… DON’T GO DOWN IN THE DAMN BASEMENT!”
   -- Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
%%
Victory or defeat!
%%
“Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion.”
   -- Harlan Ellison
%%
“It’s curtains for you, Mighty Mouse!  This gun is so futuristic that even *I*
don’t know how it works!”
   -- from Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse
%%
“May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”
   -- George Carlin
%%
A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem.
%%
  “Daddy, Daddy, make
   Santa Claus go away!”
$$
  “I can’t, son;
    he’s grown too
    powerful.”
$$
  “HO HO HO!”
   -- Duck’s Breath Mystery Theatre
%%
“If it’s not loud, it doesn’t work!”
   -- Blank Reg, from “Max Headroom”
%%
“Remember kids, if there’s a loaded gun in the room, be sure that you’re the
one holding it”
   -- Captain Combat
%%
Delta: We never make the same mistake three times.
   -- David Letterman
%%
Delta: A real man lands where he wants to.
   -- David Letterman
%%
Delta: The kids will love our inflatable slides.
   -- David Letterman
%%
Delta: We’re Amtrak with wings.
   -- David Letterman
%%
“Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is
good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
   -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
“Hello again, Peabody here…”
   -- Mister Peabody
%%
“It’s the best thing since professional golfers on ‘ludes.”
   -- Rick Obidiah
%%
“To your left is the marina where several senior cabinet officials keep luxury
yachts for weekend cruises on the Potomac.  Some of these ships are up to 100
feet in length; the Presidential yacht is over 200 feet in length, and can
remain submerged for up to 3 weeks.”
   -- Garrison Keillor
%%
“Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance,
science fiction…”
   -- Art Spiegelman
%%
“One of the problems I’ve always had with propaganda pamphlets is that they’re
real boring to look at.  They’re just badly designed.  People from the left
often are very well-intended, but they never had time to take basic design
classes, you know?”
   -- Art Spiegelman
%%
“If you took everyone who’s ever been to a Dead
show, and lined them up, they’d stretch halfway to
the moon and back… and none of them would be
complaining.”
   -- a local Deadhead in the Seattle Times
%%
“And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb.”
   -- Spaceballs
%%
Why are many scientists using lawyers for medical
experiments instead of rats?
$$
a)  There are more lawyers than rats.
$$
b)  The scientist’s don’t become as emotionally attached to them.
$$
c)  There are some things that even rats won’t do for money.
%%
 “During the race
  We may eat your dust,
  But when you graduate,
  You’ll work for us.”
   -- Reed College cheer
%%
Pohl’s law:
$$
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%%
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the
splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope,
for it balks at pig.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
“We don’t have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand.”
   -- James Watt
%%
“I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this
country what it once was… an arctic wilderness.”
   -- Steve Martin
%%
“To YOU I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.”
   -- Woody Allen
%%
Noncombatant:
$$
A dead Quaker.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
“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
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.  I
believe everything positively stinks.
   -- Lew Col
%%
Q:  How many IBM CPU’s does it take to execute a job?
$$
A:  Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying “nice doggy” until you can find a rock.
%%
Harrisberger’s Fourth Law of the Lab:
$$
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
%%
Captain Penny’s Law:
$$
You can fool all of the people some of the
time, and some of the people all of the
time, but you can’t fool mom.
%%
“Because he’s a character who’s looking for his own identity, [He-Man is]
an interesting role for an actor.”
   -- Dolph Lundgren, “actor”
%%
“If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he’d never
stop throwing up.”
   -- Max Von Sydow’s character in “Hannah and Her Sisters”
%%
“Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over
again.  God -- I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.”
   -- Woody Allen’s character in “Hannah and Her Sisters”
%%
“In regards to Oral Roberts’ claim that God told him that he would die unless he
received $20 million by March, God’s lawyers have stated that their client has
not spoken with Roberts for several years.  Off the record, God has stated
that “If I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago.”
   -- Dennis Miller, SNL News
%%
“Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”
   -- Hannah Arendt.
%%
Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
(What Jove may do, is not permitted to a cow.)
%%
“I distrust a man who says ‘when.’  If he’s got to be careful not to drink too
much, it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”
   -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
%%
“I distrust a close-mouthed man.  He generally picks the wrong time to talk
and says the wrong things.  Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously,
unless you keep in practice.  Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. I’ll tell
you right out, I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.”
   -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
%%
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
%%
“The sixties were good to you, weren’t they?”
   -- George Carlin
%%
“You stay here, Audrey -- this is between me and the vegetable!”
   -- Seymour, from _Little Shop Of Horrors_
%%
From Sharp minds come… pointed heads.
   -- Bryan Sparrowhawk
%%
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it  2) The rest of us
%%
“The picture’s pretty bleak, gentlemen…  The world’s climates are changing,
the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a
walnut.”
   -- some dinosaurs from The Far Side, by Gary Larson
%%
“We Americans, we’re a simple people… but piss us off, and we’ll bomb
your cities.”
   -- Robin Williams, _Good Morning Vietnam_
%%
Why won’t sharks eat lawyers?   Professional courtesy.
%%
“You know, we’ve won awards for this crap.”
   -- David Letterman
%%
It was pity stayed his hand.
“Pity I don’t have any more bullets,” thought Frito.
   -- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein
%%
A good USENET motto would be:
$$
a. “Together, a strong community.”
$$
b. “Computers R Us.”
$$
c. “I’m sick of programming, I think I’ll just screw around for a while on
company time.”
   -- A Sane Man
%%
“He didn’t run for reelection.  ‘Politics brings you into contact with all the
people you’d give anything to avoid,’ he said. ‘I’m staying home.’”
   -- Garrison Keillor, _Lake_Wobegone_Days_
%%
“If you lived today as if it were your last, you’d buy up a box of rockets and
fire them all off, wouldn’t you?”
   -- Garrison Keillor
%%
“Mr. Spock succumbs to a powerful mating urge and nearly kills Captain Kirk.”
   -- TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode _Amok_Time_
%%
“Poor man… he was like an employee to me.”
   -- The police commisioner on “Sledge Hammer” laments the death of his bodyguard
%%
“Trust me.  I know what I’m doing.”
   -- Sledge Hammer
%%
“Hi.  This is Dan Cassidy’s answering machine.  Please leave your name and
number… and after I’ve doctored the tape, your message will implicate you
in a federal crime and be brought to the attention of the F.B.I… BEEEP”
   -- Blue Devil comics
%%
“All God’s children are not beautiful.  Most of God’s children are, in fact,
barely presentable.”
   -- Fran Lebowitz
%%
“If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?”
   -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Whom the gods would destroy, they first teach BASIC.
%%
“Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!”
   -- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
“I may be synthetic, but I’m not stupid”
   -- the artificial person, from _Aliens_
%%
“The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with a dead
girl or a live boy.”
   -- Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards
%%
David Letterman’s “Things we can be proud of as Americans”:
* Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO
* Many newspapers feature “JUMBLE”
* Hourly motel rates
* Vast majority of Elvis movies made here
* Didn’t just give up right away during World War II like some
countries we could mention
* Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies
* Our well-behaved golf professionals
* Fabulous babes coast to coast
%%
“Danger, you haven’t seen the last of me!”
$$
“No, but the first of you turns my stomach!”
   -- The Firesign Theatre’s Nick Danger
%%
Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.
   -- Russian Proverb
%%
“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas.   If your ideas are any good,
you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
   -- Howard Aiken
%%
“When anyone says ‘theoretically,’ they really mean ‘not really.’”
   -- David Parnas
%%
“No problem is so formidable that you can’t walk away from it.”
  -- C. Schulz
%%
“The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make
empty prophecies.  The danger already exists that mathematicians have made
a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the
bonds of Hell.”
   -- Saint Augustine
%%
“For the man who has everything… Penicillin.”
   -- F. Borquin
%%
“I’ve finally learned what ‘upward compatible’ means.  It means we
get to keep all our old mistakes.”
   -- Dennie van Tassel
%%
“The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live ones.”
   -- Nathaniel Howe
%%
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I’m wearing Milkbone underware.”
   -- Norm, from _Cheers_
%%
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, “I predict, Sir, that
you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease”.
$$
Disraeli replied, “That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your
principles or your
mistress.”
%%
“He don’t know me vewy well, DO he?”
   -- Bugs Bunny
%%
“I’ll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.  That
will *prove* I’m Robin Hood.”
   -- Daffy Duck, Looney Tunes, _Robin Hood Daffy_
%%
“Would I turn on the gas if my pal Mugsy were in there?”
$$
“You might, rabbit, you might!”
   -- Looney Tunes, Bugs and Thugs (1954, Friz Freleng)
%%
“Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I’m rich.”
   -- Looney Tunes, Ali Baba Bunny (1957, Chuck Jones)
%%
“And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?”
   -- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)
%%
“Now I’ve got the bead on you with MY disintegrating gun.  And when it
disintegrates, it disintegrates.  (pulls trigger)  Well, what you do know,
it disintegrated.”
   -- Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century
%%
“Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!”
   -- Looney Tunes, “What’s Opera Doc?” (1957, Chuck Jones)
%%
“I DO want your money, because god wants your money!”
   -- The Reverend Jimmy, from _Repo_Man_
%%
“The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time.  The
terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.”
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
“You show me an American who can keep his mouth shut and I’ll eat him.”
   -- Newspaperman from Frank Capra’s _Meet_John_Doe_
%%
“And we heard him exclaim
 As he started to roam:
 ‘I’m a hologram, kids,
 please don’t try this at home!’”
   -- Bob Violence,  Howie Chaykin’s little animated 3-dimensional darling.
%%
“The Soviet Union, which has complained recently about alleged anti-Soviet
themes in American advertising, lodged an official protest this week against
the Ford Motor Company’s new campaign: ‘Hey you stinking fat Russian, get
off my Ford Escort.’”
   -- Dennis Miller, Saturday Night Live
%%
“There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.”
   --Arthur C. Clarke
%%
“They ought to make butt-flavored cat food.”
   --Gallagher
%%
“Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends.”
   --Woody Allen
%%
“It’s ten o’clock…  Do you know where your AI programs are?”
   -- Peter Oakley
%%
“Ah, you know the type.  They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
Blacks, ‘cause
if they couldn’t, they’d have to wake up to the fact that life’s one big,
scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only
reason THEY can’t seem to keep up is they’re a bunch of misfits and losers.”
   -- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
%%
“Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York
City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn’t make any sudden moves
around than any other city in the world.”
   -- David Letterman
%%
“Tourists -- have some fun with New york’s hard-boiled cabbies.  When you get
to your destination, say to your driver, “Pay?  I was hitchhiking.”
   -- David Letterman
%%
“An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.”
   -- David Letterman
%%
“Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham
Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
$$
1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
$$
2) Advising the President.
$$
3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.”
   -- David Letterman
%%
“If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on
television with pool cues, who would win?
$$
1) Ricky Schroder
$$
2) Gary Coleman
$$
3) The television viewing public”
   -- David Letterman
%%
“If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying, you are
probably hallucinating.”
-- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
%%
What to do in case of an alien attack:
$$
1)   Hide beneath the seat of your plane and look away.
$$
2)   Avoid eye contact.
$$
3) If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.
   -- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
%%
“Nuclear war would really set back cable.”
   -- Ted Turner
%%
“You tweachewous miscweant!”
   -- Elmer Fudd
%%
“I saw _Lassie_. It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid never
spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that deserve a series?”
   -- the alien guy, in _Explorers_
%%
“Open Channel D…”
   -- Napoleon Solo, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
%%
Save the whales.  Collect the whole set.
%%
Support Mental Health.  Or I’ll kill you.
%%
“The pyramid is opening!”
  “Which one?”
“The one with the ever-widening hole in it!”
   -- The Firesign Theatre
%%
“Calling J-Man Kink.  Calling J-Man Kink.  Hash missile sighted, target
Los Angeles.  Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept.”
   -- The Firesign Theatre movie, _J-Men Forever_
%%
“My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!”
  “Oh, my God… You’ve.. You’ve turned him into a DEMOCRAT!”
   -- Doonesbury
%%
“You are WRONG, you ol’ brass-breasted fascist poop!”
   -- Bloom County
%%
“Well, if you can’t believe what you read in a comic book, what *can*
you believe?!”
   -- Bullwinkle J. Moose
%%
“Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberrys!”
   -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
%%
“Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!”
   -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President’s_Analyst_
%%
“The voters have spoken, the bastards…”
   -- unknown
%%
“I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk”
   -- John Huston
%%
“Be there.  Aloha.”
   -- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
%%
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro…”
   -- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
“Say yur prayers, yuh flea-pickin’ varmint!”
   -- Yosemite Sam
%%
“There… I’ve run rings ‘round you logically”
   -- Monty Python’s Flying Circus
%%
“Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!”
   -- The Ghostbusters
%%
…Veloz is indistinguishable from hundreds of other electronics businesses
in the Valley, run by eager young engineers poring over memory dumps late
into the night.  The difference is that a bunch of self-confessed “car nuts”
are making money doing what they love: writing code and driving fast.
   -- “Electronics puts its foot on the gas”, IEEE Spectrum, May 88
%%
“Just the facts, Ma’am”
   -- Joe Friday
%%
“I have five dollars for each of you.”
   -- Bernhard Goetz
%%
Mausoleum:
$$
The final and funniest folly of the rich.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Riches:
$$
A gift from Heaven signifying, “This is my beloved son, in whom I
am well pleased.”
   -- John D. Rockefeller, (slander by Ambrose Bierce)
%%
All things are either sacred or profane.
$$
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
$$
The latter to the devil appertain.
   -- Dumbo Omohundro
%%
Saint:
$$
A dead sinner revised and edited.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Forty two.
%%
Meekness:
$$
Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Absolute:
$$
Independent, irresponsible.  An absolute monarchy is one in which
the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.  Not
many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by
limited monarchies, where the soverign’s power for evil (and for good) is
greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Abstainer:
$$
A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.  A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but
abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Alliance:
$$
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their
hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pocket that they cannot separately
plunder a third.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Disobedience:
$$
The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Egotist:
$$
A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Administration:
$$
An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive
the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
A penny saved is a penny to squander.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Ocean:
$$
A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man --
who has no gills.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Physician:
$$
One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Philosophy:
$$
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Politics:
$$
A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
principles.  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Politician:
$$
An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
organized society is reared.  When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of
his tail for the trembling of the edifice.  As compared with the statesman,
he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Pray:
$$
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single
petitioner confessedly unworthy.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Presidency:
$$
The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Proboscis:
$$
The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place
of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.  For purposes
of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Inadmissible:
$$
Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain kinds of
testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with,
and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves
alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was
unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous
actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are
daily undertaken on hearsay evidence.  There is no religion in the world
that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay
evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the
testimony of men long dead whose identy is not clearly established and
who are not known to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of
evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the
Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law…
$$
But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved
that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to
mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges’ decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.
If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike
destitute of value.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
“Today’s robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few
simple instructions such as ‘go left’, ‘go right’, and ‘build car’.”
   -- John Sladek
%%
“In the fight between you and the world, back the world.”
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
Here is an Appalachian version of management’s answer to those who are
concerned with the fate of the project:
“Don’t worry about the mule.  Just load the wagon.”
   -- Mike Dennison’s hillbilly uncle
%%
Ill-chosen abstraction is particularly evident in the design of the ADA
runtime system. The interface to the ADA runtime system is so opaque that
it is impossible to model or predict its performance, making it effectively
useless for real-time systems.
   -- Marc D. Donner and David H. Jameson.
%%
“Being against torture ought to be sort of a bipartisan thing.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
“Here comes Mr. Bill’s dog.”
   -- Narrator, Saturday Night Live
%%
Sex is like air.  It’s only a big deal if you can’t get any.
%%
“Maintain an awareness for contribution -- to your schedule, your project,
our company.”
   -- A Group of Employees
%%
“Ask not what A Group of Employees can do for you.  But ask what can
All Employees do for A Group of Employees.”
   -- Mike Dennison
%%
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
“Mr. Pollard,” said he, “my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is
published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its
authorship.  Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot
of the Century.  Do you think that fair criticism?”
$$
“I am very sorry, sir,” replied the critic, amiably, “but it did not
occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it.”
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
 Many aligators will be slain,
 but the swamp will remain.
%%
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
%%
This is now.  Later is later.
%%
“I will make no bargains with terrorist hardware.”
   -- Peter da Silva
%%
“If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go
to hell.”
   -- Jimmy Swaggart, 5/20/88
%%
“Dump the condiments.  If we are to be eaten, we don’t need to taste good.”
   -- “Visionaries” cartoon
%%
“Aww, if you make me cry anymore, you’ll fog up my helmet.”
   -- “Visionaries” cartoon
%%
I don’t want to be young again, I just don’t want to get any older.
%%
Marriage Ceremony:
$$
An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the
law being dragged into the affairs of your family.
   -- O. C. Ogilvie
%%
“Emergency!”  Sgiggs screamed, ejecting himself from the tub like it was
a burning car.  “Dial ‘one’!  Get room service!  Code red!”  Stiggs was on
the phone immediately, ordering more rose blossoms, because, according to
him, the ones floating in the tub had suddenly lost their smell.  “I demand
smell,” he shrilled.  “I expecting total uninterrupted smell from these
f*cking roses.”
$$
Unfortunately, the service captain didn’t realize that the Stiggs situation
involved fifty roses.  “What am I going to do with this?” Stiggs sneered at
the weaseling hotel goon when he appeared at our door holding a single flower
floating in a brandy glass.  Stiggs’s tirade was great.  “Do you see this
bathtub?  Do you notice any difference between the size of the tub and the
size of that spindly wad of petals in your hand?  I need total bath coverage.
I need a completely solid layer of roses all around me like puffing factories
of smell, attacking me with their smell and power-ramming big stinking
concentrations of rose odor up my nostrils until I’m wasted with pleasure.”
$$
It wasn’t long before we got so dissatisfied with this incompetence that we
bolted.
   -- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
National Lampoon, October 1982
%%
When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect.
   -- Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
%%
We decided it was night again, so we camped for twenty minutes and drank
another six beers at a Young Life campsite.  O.C. got into the supervisory
adult’s sleeping bag and ran around in it.  “This is the judgment day and I’m
a terrifying apparition,” he screamed.  Then the heat made O.C. ralph in the
bag.
   -- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
National Lampoon, October 1982
%%
Voodoo Programming:
$$
Things programmers do that they know shouldn’t work but
they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling
everything.
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
This is, of course, totally uninformed specualation that I engage in to help
support my bias against such meddling… but there you have it.
   -- Peter da Silva, speculating about why a computer program that had been
changed to do something he didn’t approve of, didn’t work
%%
“This knowledge I pursure is the finest pleasure I have ever known.  I could
no sooner give it up that I could the very air that I breath.”
   -- Paolo Uccello, Renaissance artist, discoverer of the laws of perspective
%%
“I got everybody to pay up front… then I blew up their planet.”
“Now why didn’t I think of that?”
   -- Post Bros. Comics
%%
“Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed.”
   -- Robin, The Boy Wonder
%%
The F-15 Eagle:
$$
If it’s up, we’ll shoot it down.  If it’s down, we’ll blow it up.
   -- A McDonnel-Douglas ad from a few years ago
%%
“The Amiga is the only personal computer where you can run a multitasking
operating system and get realtime performance, out of the box.”
   -- Peter da Silva
%%
“It’s my cookie file and if I come up with something that’s lame and I like it,
it goes in.”
   -- karl
%%
In recognizing AT&T Bell Laboratories for corporate innovation, for its
invention of cellular mobile communications, IEEE President Russell C. Drew
referred to the cellular telephone as a “basic necessity.”  How times have
changed, one observer remarked: many in the room recalled the advent of
direct dialing.
   -- The Institute, July 1988, pg. 11
%%
…the Soviets have the capability to try big projects.  If there is a goal,
such as when Gorbachev states that they are going to have nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers, the case is closed -- that is it.  They will concentrate
on the problem, do a bad job, and later pay the price.  They really don’t
care what the price is.
   -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in
1976, “Defense Electronics”, Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%%
There is something you must understand about the Soviet system.  They have the
ability to concentrate all their efforts on a given design, and develop all
components simulateously, but sometimes without proper testing.  Then they end
up with a technological disaster like the Tu-144.  In a technology race at
the time, that aircraft was two months ahead of the Concorde.  Four Tu-144s
were built; two have crashed, and two are in museums.  The Concorde has been
flying safely for over 10 years.
   -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in
1976, “Defense Electronics”, Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%%
DE:  The Soviets seem to have difficulty implementing modern technology.
Would you comment on that?
$$
Belenko:  Well, let’s talk about aircraft engine lifetime.  When I flew the
MiG-25, its engines had a total lifetime of 250 hours.
$$
DE:  Is that mean-time-between-failure?
$$
Belenko:  No, the engine is finished; it is scrapped.
$$
DE:  You mean they pull it out and throw it away, not even overhauling it?
$$
Belenko:  That is correct.  Overhaul is too expensive.
$$
DE:  That is absurdly low by free world standards.
$$
Belenko:  I know.
   -- an interview with Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in
1976 “Defense Electronics”, Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 102
%%
“I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people
there are hungry for information about the West.  He was asked about many
things, but I will give you two examples that are very revealing about life in
the Soviet Union.  The first question he was asked was if we had exploding
television sets.  You see, they have a problem with the picture tubes on color
television sets, and many are exploding.  They assumed we must be having
problems with them too.  The other question he was asked often was why the
CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a
few years ago; their propaganda is very effective.
   -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in
1976 “Defense Electronics”, Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%%
“…I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet
people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business
there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press.  But so far, the whole
country is like a concentration camp.  The barbed wire on the fence around
the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark.  This openness that
you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed
to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders.  These
leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or
appease it.  He will say: “Yes, we can do business!”  This while his
military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
population of 17 million.  Can you imagine that?
   -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in
1976 “Defense Electronics”, Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
%%
“Remember Kruschev:  he tried to do too many things too fast, and he was
removed in disgrace.  If Gorbachev tries to destroy the system or make too
many fundamental changes to it, I believe the system will get rid of him.
I am not a political scientist, but I understand the system very well.
I believe he will have a “heart attack” or retire or be removed.  He is
up against a brick wall.  If you think they will change everything and
become a free, open society, forget it!”
   -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in
1976 “Defense Electronics”, Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
%%
FORTRAN?  The syntactically incorrect statement “DO 10 I = 1.10” will parse and
generate code creating a variable, DO10I, as follows: “DO10I = 1.10”  If that
doesn’t terrify you, it should.
%%
“I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as
a house.  So I reasoned that after college, I’d have to live cheaply in
an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer.”
   -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
%%
HP had a unique policy of allowing its engineers to take parts from stock as
long as they built something.  “They figured that with every design, they were
getting a better engineer.  It’s a policy I urge all companies to adopt.”
   -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, “Will Wozniak’s class
give Apple to teacher?”, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
%%
“I just want to be a good engineer.”
   -- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, concluding his keynote speech
at the 1988 AppleFest
%%
“There’s always been Tower of Babel sort of bickering inside Unix, but this
is the most extreme form ever.  This means at least several years of confusion.”
   -- Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft,
about the Open Systems Foundation
%%
“When in doubt, print ‘em out.”
   -- Karl’s Programming Proverb 0x7
%%
“If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways
to be hospitable to the unusual person.  You don’t get innovation as a
democratic process.  You almost get it as an anti-democratic process.
Certainly you get it as an anthitetical process, so you have to have an
environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can
deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation.”
   -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller
Inc., “Herman Miller’s Secrets of Corporate Creativity”,
The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
“In corporate life, I think there are three important areas which contracts
can’t deal with, the area of conflict, the area of change and area of reaching
potential.  To me a covenant is a relationship that is based on such things
as shared ideals and shared value systems and shared ideas and shared
agreement as to the processes we are going to use for working together.  In
many cases they develop into real love relationships.”
   -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., “Herman Miller’s
Secrets of Corporate Creativity”, The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
Another goal is to establish a relationship “in which it is OK for everybody
to do their best.  There are an awful lot of people in management who really
don’t want subordinates to do their best, because it gets to be very
threatening.  But we have found that both internally and with outside
designers if we are willing to have this kind of relationship and if we’re
willing to be vulnerable to what will come out of it, we get really good
work.”
   -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., “Herman Miller’s
Secrets of Corporate Creativity”, The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
In his book, Mr. DePree tells the story of how designer George Nelson urged
that the company also take on Charles Eames in the late 1940s.  Max’s father,
J. DePree, co-founder of the company with Herman Miller in 1923, asked Mr.
Nelson if he really wanted to share the limited opportunities of a then-small
company with another designer.  “George’s response was something like this:
’Charles Eames is an unusual talent.  He is very different from me.  The
company needs us both.  I want very much to have Charles Eames share in
whatever potential there is.’”
   -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., “Herman Miller’s
Secrets of Corporate Creativity”, The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
Mr. DePree believes participative capitalism is the wave of the future.  The
U.S. work force, he believes, “more and more demands to be included in the
capitalist system and if we don’t find ways to get the capitalist system
to be an inclusive system rather than the exclusive system it has been, we’re
all in deep trouble.  If we don’t find ways to begin to understand that
capitalism’s highest potential lies in the common good, not in the individual
good, then we’re risking the system itself.”
   -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., “Herman Miller’s
Secrets of Corporate Creativity”, The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
Mr. DePree also expects a “tremendous social change” in all workplaces.  “When
I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the
product.  Today it is drastically different, because of the social
milieu.  It isn’t unusual for a worker to arrive on his shift and have
some family
problem that he doesn’t know how to resolve.  The example I like to use is a
guy who comes in and says ‘this isn’t going to be a good day for me, my son
is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don’t know how to raise
bail.’  What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity,
he has to know
how to raise bail.”
   -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., “Herman Miller’s
Secrets of Corporate Creativity”, The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
Fools ignore complexity.  Pragmatists suffer it.  Some can avoid
it.  Geniuses remove it.
   -- Perlis’s Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept.  1982
%%
“What if” is a trademark of Hewlett Packard, so stop using it in your
sentences without permission, or risk being sued.
%%
Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of
political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or
consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us
over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
1988.
   -- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
%%
The essential ideas of Algol 68 were that the whole language should be
precisely defined and that all the pieces should fit together smoothly.  The
basic idea behind Pascal was that it didn’t matter how vague the
language specification was (it took *years* to clarify) or how many rough
edges there were, as long as the CDC Pascal compiler was fast.
   -- Richard A. O’Keefe
%%
“We came.  We saw.  We kicked its ass.”
   -- Bill Murray, _Ghostbusters_
%%
“The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth.”  I usually pick one small
topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the
beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is “mere.”  I too can
see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or
more?  The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck
on this carousel
my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which
I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all
together.  What is the pattern, or the meaning, or
the *why?*  It does not do harm to the
mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than
any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak
of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
   -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
%%
If you permit yourself to read meanings into (rather than drawing meanings out
of) the evidence, you can draw any conclusion you like.
   -- Michael Keith, “The Bar-Code Beast”, The Skeptical Enquirer Vol 12 No 4 p416
%%
“Pseudocode can be used to some extent to aid the maintenance
process.  However, pseudocode that is highly detailed -
approaching the level of detail of the code itself - is not of
much use as maintenance documentation.  Such detailed
documentation has to be maintained almost as much as the code,
thus doubling the maintenance burden.  Furthermore, since such
voluminous pseudocode is too distracting to be kept in the
listing itself, it must be kept in a separate folder.  The
result: Since pseudocode - unlike real code - doesn’t have to be
maintained, no one will maintain it.  It will soon become out of
date and everyone will ignore it.  (Once, I did an informal
survey of 42 shops that used pseudocode.  Of those 42, 0 [zero!],
found that it had any value as maintenance documentation.”
  -- Meilir Page-Jones, “The Practical Guide to Structured
Design”, Yourdon Press (c) 1988
%%
“Only a brain-damaged operating system would support task switching and not
make the simple next step of supporting multitasking.”
   -- George McFry
%%
Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said that in the last analysis the entire field
of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
%%
The magician is seated in his high chair and looks upon the world with favor.
He is at the height of his powers.  If he closes his eyes, he causes the world
to disappear.  If he opens his eyes, he causes the world to come back.  If
there is harmony within him, the world is harmonious.  If rage shatters his
inner harmony, the unity of the world is shattered.  If desire arises within
him, he utters the magic syllables that causes the desired object to
appear.  His wishes, his thoughts, his gestures, his noises command the universe.
   -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 107
%%
An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is
a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the
duration of his stay on this planet.  Since neither the mouse nor the chip
knows what is, he is spared all the vexing problems that follow this
discovery.  But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question
emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt
and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the
centures as reelentlessly as hunger or sexual longing.  The chimp that does
not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared
the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end.  And even if the animal
experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or
to play chess, the chimp will develop no science and he will exhibit no
appreciation of beauty, for the greatest part of man’s wisdom may be traced
back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give
meaning to his existence, to life itself.
   -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
%%
A comment on schedules:  Ok, how long will it take?
$$
For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month.
$$
For each manager who says “data flow analysis” add another month.
$$
For each unique end-user type add one month.
$$
For each unknown software package to be employed add two months.
$$
For each unknown hardware device add two months.
$$
For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month.
$$
For each type of communication channel add one month.
$$
If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on a non-IBM
system add 6 months.
$$
If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on an IBM
system add 9 months.
$$
Round up to the nearest half-year.
   --Brad Sherman
%%
By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative prototyping.
Some companies call their prototypes “releases”, that’s all.
%%
UNIX Shell is the Best Fourth Generation Programming Language
$$
It is the UNIX shell that makes it possible to do applications in a small
fraction of the code and time it takes in third generation languages.  In
the shell you process whole files at a time, instead of only a line at a
time.  And, a line of code in the UNIX shell is one or more programs,
which do more than pages of instructions in a 3GL.  Applications can be
developed in hours and days, rather than months and years with traditional
systems.  Most of the other 4GLs available today look more like COBOL or
RPG, the most tedious of the third generation lanaguages.
   -- “UNIX Relational Database Management:  Application Development in the UNIX
Environment” by Rod Manis, Evan Schaffer, and Robert Jorgensen.  Prentice
Hall Software Series.  Brian Kerrighan, Advisor.  1988.
%%
“Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.”
   -- Dr. Emilio Lizardo
%%
“Floggings will continue until morale improves.”
   -- anonymous flyer being distributed at Exxon USA
%%
“Hey Ivan, check your six.”
   -- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail
of a Russian Su-27
%%
“Free markets select for winning solutions.”
   -- Eric S. Raymond
%%
“I dislike companies that have a We Are The High Priests Of Hardware So You’ll
Like What We Give You attitude.  I like commodity markets in which iron and
silicon hawkers know that they exist to provide fast toys for software types
like me to play with…”
   -- Eric S. Raymond
%%
“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
   -- Bakunin
[ed. note - I would say: The urge to destroy may sometimes be a creative urge.]
%%
“A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the
discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a
fallacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves,
as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in whatever country,
or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too earnestly
urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties.”
   -- Charles Tomlinson’s Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
%%
In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty
of intention: the inventor produces a lock which he honestly thinks will
possess such and such qualities; and he declares his belief to the world.  If
others differ from him in opinion concerning those qualities, it is open
to them to say so; and the discussion, truthfully conducted, must lead to
public advantage: the discussion stimulates curiosity, and curiosity
stimulates invention.  Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question
could lead to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be
much more than counterbalanced by good.”
   -- Charles Tomlinson’s Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850.
%%
“Wish not to seem, but to be, the best.”
   -- Aeschylus
%%
“Survey says…”
   -- Richard Dawson, weenie, on “Family Feud”
%%
“Paul Lynde to block…”
   -- a contestant on “Hollywood Squares”
%%
“Little else matters than to write good code.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight.
   -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
%%
“Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward”
   -- William E. Davidsen
%%
“If a computer can’t directly address all the RAM you can use, it’s just a toy.”
   -- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitir
%%
“Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!” he said to himself, and it became
a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. “You aren’t nearly
through this adventure yet,” he added, and that was pretty true as well.
   -- Bilbo Baggins, “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien, Chapter XII
%%
“A dirty mind is a joy forever.”
   -- Randy Kunkee
%%
“You can’t teach seven foot.”
   -- Frank Layton, Utah Jazz basketball coach, when asked why he had recruited
a seven-foot tall auto mechanic
%%
“A car is just a big purse on wheels.”
   -- Johanna Reynolds
%%
“History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.”
   -- Ted Koppel
%%
“Gozer the Gozerian:  As the duly appointed representative of the city,
county and state of New York, I hereby order you to cease all supernatural
activities at once and proceed immediately to your place of origin or
the nearest parallel dimension, whichever is nearest.”
   -- Ray (Dan Akyroyd), _Ghostbusters_
%%
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
new system.  For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new ones.
   -- Machiavelli
%%
God grant me the senility to accept the things I cannot change,
!!
The frustration to try to change things I cannot affect,
!!
and the wisdom to tell the difference.
%%
First as to speech.  That privilege rests upon the premise that
there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be
lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated.  It need not rest upon
the further premise that there are no propositions that are not
open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end it is
worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.  Hence it
has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are
no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only the hearers’
beliefs and not their conduct.  The trouble is that conduct is almost
always based upon some belief, and that to change the hearer’s belief
will generally to some extent change his conduct, and may even evoke
conduct that the law forbids.
$$
[cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1952;
The Art and Craft of Judging: The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand,
edited and annotated by Hershel Shanks, The MacMillian Company, 1968.]
%%
The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it
should have done.  Calculate that one rebellion in 13 states in the course
of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century and a half.  No country
should be so long without one.
   -- Thomas Jefferson in letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787
%%
“Nine years of ballet, asshole.”
   -- Shelly Long, to the bad guy after making a jump over a gorge that he
couldn’t quite, in “Outrageous Fortune”
%%
You are in a maze of UUCP connections, all alike.
%%
“If that man in the PTL is such a healer, why can’t he make his wife’s
hairdo go down?”
   -- Robin Williams
%%
8) Use common sense in routing cable.  Avoid wrapping coax around sources of
strong electric or magnetic fields.  Do not wrap the cable around
flourescent light ballasts or cyclotrons, for example.
   -- Ethernet Headstart Product, Information and Installation Guide,
Bell Technologies, pg. 11
%%
“What a wonder is USENET; such wholesale production of conjecture from
such a trifling investment in fact.”
   -- Carl S. Gutekunst
%%
VMS must die!
%%
MS-DOS must die!
%%
OS/2 must die!
%%
Pournelle must die!
%%
Garbage In, Gospel Out
%%
“Being against torture ought to be sort of a multipartisan thing.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer, as amended by Jeff Daiell, a Libertarian
%%
“Facts are stupid things.”
   -- President Ronald Reagan (a
blooper from his speach at the ‘88 GOP convention)
%%
“The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science
collapses on three major grounds: the creationists’ need to invoke
miracles in order to compress the events of the earth’s history into
the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to
abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all
fossils are products of Noah’s flood; and their reliance upon distortion,
misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the
ideas of their opponents.”
   -- Stephen Jay Gould, “The Verdict on Creationism”,
The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186
%%
“An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of code.”
   -- an anonymous programmer
%%
“To IBM, ‘open’ means there is a modicum of interoperability among some of their
equipment.”
   -- Harv Masterson
%%
“Just think of a computer as hardware you can program.”
   -- Nigel de la Tierre
%%
“If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time
serving it…”
   -- Marion Zimmer Bradley, _The Forbidden Tower_
%%
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
“Card readers?  We don’t need no stinking card readers.”
   -- Peter da Silva (at the National Academy of Sciencies, 1965, in a
particularly vivid fantasy)
%%
Your good nature will bring unbounded happiness.
%%
Semper Fi, dude.
%%
Excitement and danger await your induction to tracer duty!  As a tracer,
you must rid the computer networks of slimy, criminal data thieves.  They
are tricky and the action gets tough, so watch out!  Utilizing all
your skills, you’ll either get your man or you’ll get burned!
   -- advertising for the computer game “Tracers”
%%
“An entire fraternity of strapping Wall-Street-bound youth.  Hell - this
is going to be a blood bath!”
   -- Post Bros. Comics
%%
“Neighbors!!  We got neighbors!  We ain’t supposed to have any neighbors, and
I just had to shoot one.”
   -- Post Bros. Comics
%%
“Gotcha, you snot-necked weenies!”
   -- Post Bros. Comics
%%
interlard - vt., to intersperse; diversify
   -- Webster’s New World Dictionary Of The American Language
%%
“Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”
   -- Mark Twain
%%
“How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
“FIFTEEN!!  YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?”
%%
“If you weren’t my teacher, I’d think you just deleted all my files.”
   -- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed “rm -i *” to
get rid of a file named “-f” on a Unix system.
%%
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral
crisis, preserved their neutrality.”
   -- Dante
%%
“The medium is the message.”
   -- Marshall McLuhan
%%
“The medium is the massage.”
   -- Crazy Nigel
%%
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”
   -- Vince Lombardi, football coach
%%
“It might help if we ran the MBA’s out of Washington.”
   -- Admiral Grace Hopper
%%
Refreshed by a brief blackout, I got to my feet and went next door.
   -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
The sprung doors parted and I staggered out into the lobby’s teak and
flicker.  Uniformed men stood by impassively like sentries in their
trench.  I slapped
my key on the desk and nodded gravely.  I was loaded enough to be unable to
tell whether they could tell I was loaded.  Would they mind?  I was certainly
too loaded to care.  I moved to the door with boxy, schlep-shouldered strides.
   -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
I ask only one thing.  I’m understanding.  I’m mature.  And it isn’t much to
ask.  I want to get back to London, and track her down, and be alone with my
Selina -- or not even alone, damn it, merely close to her, close enough to
smell her skin, to see the flecked webbing of her lemony eyes, the moulding
of her artful lips.  Just for a few precious seconds.  Just long enough to
put in one good, clean punch.  That’s all I ask.
   -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
“Love may fail, but courtesy will previal.”
   -- A Kurt Vonnegut fan
%%
New York is a jungle, they tell you.  You could go further, and say that
New York is a jungle.  New York *is a jungle.*  Beneath the columns of
the old rain forest, made of melting macadam, the mean Limpopo of swamped
Ninth Avenue bears an angry argosy of crocs and dragons, tiger fish, noise
machines, sweating rainmakers.  On the corners stand witchdoctors and
headhunters, babbling voodoo-men -- the natives, the jungle-smart natives.
And at night, under the equatorial overgrowth and heat-holding cloud
cover, you hear the ragged parrot-hoot and monkeysqueak of the sirens,
and then fires flower to ward off monsters.  Careful: the streets are
sprung with pits and nets and traps.  Hire a guide.  Pack your snakebite
gook and your blowdart serum.  Take it seriously.  You have to get a
bit jungle-wise.
   -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
Now I was heading, in my hot cage, down towards meat-market country on the
tip of the West Village.  Here the redbrick warehouses double as carcass
galleries and rat hives, the Manhattan fauna seeking its necessary
level, living or dead.  Here too you find the heavy faggot hangouts,
The Spike, the Water Closet, the Mother Load.  Nobody knows what goes on
in these places.  Only the heavy faggots know.  Even Fielding seems somewhat
vague on the question.  You get zapped and flogged and dumped on -- by
almost anybody’s standards, you have a really terrible time.  The average
patron arrives at the Spike in one taxi but needs to go back to his sock
in two.  And then the next night he shows up for more.  They shackle
themselves to racks, they bask in urinals.  Their folks have a lot of
explaining to do, if you want my opinion, particularly the mums.  Sorry
to single you ladies out like this but the story must start somewhere.  A
craving for hourly murder -- it can’t be willed.  In the meantime,
Fielding tells me, Mother Nature looks on and taps her foot and clicks
her tongue.  Always a champion of monogamy, she is cooking up some fancy
new diseases.  She just isn’t going to stand for it.
   -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
“You tried it just for once, found it alright for kicks,
 but now you find out you have a habit that sticks,
 you’re an orgasm addict,
 you’re always at it,
 and you’re an orgasm addict.”
   -- The Buzzcocks
%%
“There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.”
   -- Mark Twain
%%
“You’ll pay to know what you really think.”
   -- J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
%%
“We live, in a very kooky time.”
   -- Herb Blashtfalt
%%
“Pull the wool over your own eyes!”
   -- J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
%%
“Okay,” Bobby said, getting the hang of it, “then what’s the matrix?  If
she’s a deck, and Danbala’s a program, what’s cyberspace?”
  “The world,” Lucas said.
   -- William Gibson, _Count Zero_
%%
“Our reruns are better than theirs.”
   -- Nick at Nite
%%
Life is a game.  Money is how we keep score.
   -- Ted Turner
%%
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
   -- The Wizard Of Oz
%%
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
   -- Karl, as he stepped behind the computer to reboot it, during a FAT
%%
“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble.  It’s the
things we know that ain’t so.”
   -- Artemus Ward aka Charles Farrar Brown
%%
“Don’t discount flying pigs before you have good air defense.”
   -- [e-mail]
%%
“In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.”
   -- Alan Perlis
%%
“Pok pok pok, P’kok!”
   -- Superchicken
%%
Live Free or Live in Massachusettes.
%%
“You can’t get very far in this world without your dossier being there first.”
   -- Arthur Miller
%%
“Flight Reservation systems decide whether or not you exist.  If your information
isn’t in their database, then you simply don’t get to go anywhere.”
   -- Arthur Miller
%%
“What people have been reduced to are mere 3-D representations of their own
data.”
   -- Arthur Miller
%%
“The Avis WIZARD decides if you get to drive a car.  Your head won’t touch the
pillow of a Sheraton unless their computer says it’s okay.”
   -- Arthur Miller
%%
“They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE
is driving the car “for insurance”, …  your driver’s license number.  In the
state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social
Security, unless you object to such use.  In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a
number and you reside forever more on the list of “weird people who don’t give
out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts.”
   -- Arthur Miller
%%
“Data is a lot like humans:  It is born.  Matures.  Gets married to other data,
divorced. Gets old.  One thing that it doesn’t do is die.  It has to be killed.”
   -- Arthur Miller
%%
“People should have access to the data which you have about them.  There should
be a process for them to challenge any inaccuracies.”
   -- Arthur Miller
%%
“Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret
police and laws similar to those in the USSR, there are
thousands of underground publications, a legal independent
Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc’s first and only
independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is
an affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labor.  There is
literally a world of difference between Poland - even in its
present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of
its “glasnost.”  This difference has been maintained at great
cost by the Poles since 1944.
   -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
to Poland
%%
“There is also a thriving independent student movement in
Poland, and thus there is a strong possibility (though no
guarantee) of making an EARN-Poland link, should it ever come
about, a genuine link - not a vacuum cleaner attachment for a
Bloc information gathering apparatus rationed to trusted
apparatchiks.”
   -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
to Poland
%%
“Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture,
an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads.”
   -- John Galt, in Ayn Rand’s _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
Don’t panic.
%%
The bug stops here.
%%
The bug starts here.
%%
“Why waste negative entropy on comments, when you could use the same
entropy to create bugs instead?”
   -- Steve Elias
%%
“The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of
course you never do.”
   -- Gregory Bateson
%%
“Your butt is mine.”
   -- Michael Jackson, Bad
%%
Ship it.
%%
“Once they go up, who cares where they come down?  That’s not my department.”
   -- Werner von Braun (from a Tom Leher song, “Werner von Braun”)
%%
“When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if
it were a nail.”
   -- Abraham Maslow
%%
“Imitation is the sincerest form of television.”
   -- The New Mighty Mouse
%%
“The lesser of two evils -- is evil.”
   -- Seymour (Sy) Leon
%%
“It’s no sweat, Henry.  Russ made it back to Bugtown before he died.  So he’ll
regenerate in a couple of days.  It’s just awful sloppy of him to get killed in
the first place.  Humph!”
   -- Ron Post, Post Brothers Comics
%%
“An honest god is the noblest work of man.  … God has always resembled his
creators.  He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably
found on the side of those in power. … Most of the gods were pleased with
sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine
perfume.”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. … We are
the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. … It is grander to think
and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. … I look for the day
when *reason*, throned upon the world’s brains, shall be the King of Kings and
the God of Gods.
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes
of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey.  I believe
it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts…
I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it.”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“Is this foreplay?”
   “No, this is Nuke Strike.  Foreplay has lousy graphics.  Beat me again.”
   -- Duckert, in “Bad Rubber,” Albedo #0 (comics)
%%
egrep patterns are full regular expressions; it uses a fast deterministic
algorithm that sometimes needs exponential space.
   -- unix manuals
%%
“A mind is a terrible thing to have leaking out your ears.”
   -- The League of Sadistic Telepaths
%%
“Life sucks, but it’s better than the alternative.”
   -- Peter da Silva
%%
If this is a service economy, why is the service so bad?
%%
“I shall expect a chemical cure for psychopathic behavior by 10 A.M. tomorrow,
or I’ll have your guts for spaghetti.”
   -- a comic panel by Cotham
%%
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
   -- Will Rogers
%%
“An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt.”
   -- a saying at RPI
%%
“The geeks shall inherit the earth.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
“Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers.”
   -- Chip Salzenberg
%%
“Elvis is my copilot.”
   -- Cal Keegan
%%
“The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment.”
   -- Richard P. Feynman
%%
How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
Let’s see, can you use a shell script for that or does it need a C program?
%%
“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.  Hate me because I’m beautiful, smart
and rich.”
   -- Calvin Keegan
%%
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
   -- Bertrand Russell
%%
Always look over your shoulder because everyone is watching and plotting
against you.
%%
“Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us.”
   -- militant religionists everywhere
%%
Baby On Board.
%%
“The net result is a system that is not only binary compatible with 4.3 BSD,
but is even bug for bug compatible in almost all features.”
   -- Avadit Tevanian, Jr., “Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory Management
for Parallel and Distributed Environments:  The Mach Approach”
%%
“The number of Unix installations has grown to 10, with more expected.”
   -- The Unix Programmer’s Manual, 2nd Edition, June, 1972
%%
“Engineering without management is art.”
   -- Jeff Johnson
%%
“I’m not a god, I was misquoted.”
   -- Lister, Red Dwarf
%%
Brain off-line, please wait.
%%
Vote for Darth Vader,
$$
if you’re tired of choosing the lesser of two evils.
%%
85 MPH: Not the law, but its still a good idea.
%%
OS/2: Half of an operating system!
   -- Somebody’s signiture
%%
C: The power of assembly language combined with the ease of use of
assembly language.
%%
It is against my programming to impersonate a diety.
   -- C3PO
%%
Anybody caught smoking near this computer had BETTER be on fire!
   -- Jay, etc…
%%
Cthulhu saves!
$$
In case he’s hungry later.
%%
 That is not dead
 which can eternal lie,
 And in strange eons
 even death can die
%%
Campus Crusade for Cthulhu:
$$
Remember Dr. Peabody!
%%
Thought for the day:
$$
If they make the carry bit of the 68020 do double duty, also telling if
the instruction cache is valid, does that make it a “Cache and Carry” bit?
%%
IBM is not dead!
  (It just smells that way.)
%%
Sinclair Lives!
   -- Jean M.
%%
Cthulhu lives in my refrigerator!
%%
My life is strange, but at least its not boring.
%%
May you live in interesting times.
   -- Ancient Chinese curse
%%
unix -- a castrated operating system
%%
unix
   -- describes either an operating system or the programmers who
are forced to work on it
%%
In the face of infinity you may seem small, but in the eyes of the Lord and Lady
you aren’t.
%%
Events happen.
%%
If finishing a programming project is called debugging, does the project start
with bugging?
%%
I’m trying.
 Yes, very trying.
%%
Generic cookie
%%
Disclaimer:
$$
The views represented in these cookies may not represent the views of my programmer.
%%
“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”
   -- C. S. Lewis
%%
Jesus saves, but the mongol hoards!
%%
Absolute reality corrupts absolutely.
%%
“I don’t mind being the smartest man in the world.
“I just wish it weren’t this one.”
   -- Ozymandus, The Watchmen
%%
A computer without software is just a box, and it won’t even
keep beer cold.
%%
test cookie
%%
I    Anything that can go wrong, will.
!!
II   If something is already wrong, it will get worse.
!!
III  If the previous two laws seem not to be applying, then run for
your life, something is REALLY wrong.
%%
If you love something, let it go.  If it doesn’t come back to you,
hunt it down and kill it.
%%
“Batman…hit…Guy…
“And I didn’t get to see it!”
   -- Black Canary, early issue of the new Justice League
%%
Reality is for people who hate to rent.
%%
Even barbarians like chocolot chip cookies.
%%
Computer gekes can’t spel
%%
“You know what I wish?  I wish all the scum of the Earth had one neck
and I had my hands around it.”
   -- Rorcshach, The Watchmen (a promo thereof)
%%
“Success lies in achieving the top of the food chain.”
   -- Jubal Harshaw (RAH)
%%
2 + 2 = 5
 For sufficiently large values of 2
%%
Sam: “You know what they say, ‘You can catch more flys with honey than
with vinegar.’”
$$
Woody: “I don’t mean to butt in, but you can catch the most with
dead squirrels.”
   -- A episode of Cheers
%%
“Arlo Guthrie, it seems, has found what he was looking for: God,
and the Macintosh.”
   -- quote from The Boston Globe
%%
Never let work interfere with you reasons for working.
%%
The UN sponsored a competition on which nation can produce the best book
on elephants.
$$
The British submited a dry historical account “The Elephant and the
British Empire.”
$$
The French submited a text “The Sensuality of the Elephant -- a Personal
Account.”
$$
The Germans submited 47 Volumes entitled “An Elementary Introduction to the
Foundation of the Science of the Elephant’s Ear.”
$$
The Americans submited an article from “Money” magazine: “Elephants -- the
Perfect Tax Shelter for the 80s”
$$
Green-Peace submited a counter-entry “Elephants -- they’re better than people”
$$
The Russians submited a terse manuscript titled “The superiority of
the Soviet Elephant”
$$
And <fill-in random Eastern European Country> submited a poem “The Joy and
Freedom Brought forth by the Soviet Elephant.”
$$
But the Japanese won with their Promotional Flier “We have no Elephants but
wouldn’t you want to buy a Honda instead”
%%
Programming is simply debugging a blank page.
%%
If we laid all the economists in the world end-to-end, they would
all be pointing in different directions.
%%
If we took all the white Fords ever made, and put them all in a row,
some fool in a BMW would pull out to pass them.
   -- Heard on Armed Forces Radio (in Germany) one day
%%
Do not throw your butts in the urinal, for they are subtle and quick
to anger.
%%
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for it makes them soggy and
hard to light.
%%
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick
to anger.
   -- J. R. R. Tolkien
%%
With excitement like this, who is needing enemas?
%%
God is real, unless declaired integer!
%%
Isn’t time fun when you’re having flies!
   -- from Short Circuit II
%%
You’re never too old to have a happy childhood.
%%
Understand that by taking advantage of a documented feature,
you may be preventing the Macintosh from growing in the future.
   -- Tech Note 227, from Mac the Knife, MacWeek 3-14-89
%%
To instill confidence, a shop teacher should have:
!!
a)  skill as a draftsman
!!
b)  a working knowledge of all power tools
!!
c)  most of his fingers
   -- From “LATE NIGHT with David Letterman, The Book”
%%
It was a nice little war in the middle east when suddenly a hocky game broke out
   -- Akash Deshpande
%%
Why do irons have a setting for “permanent press”?
%%
A lot of you ask “How can he come out on stage like that and be so funny?”.  Well,
I’ll tell you.  Before I come out, I slip half a slice of boloney in each
shoe.  And
when I come out here, I feeeel funny!
   -- Steve Martin
%%
“Save up your addresses and your quotes, my boy, and someday you may be the owner
of your very own .signature”
   -- from a .signiture of Pat Luther “Lex’s Evil Twin”
%%
USENET: N.  A self-replicating phage engineered by the phone company to cause
computers to spend large amounts of their owners budget on modem charges.
   -- from one of Chuq Von Rospach’s .signatures
%%
When in trouble or in doubt,
 Run in circles, scream and shout!
   -- I’ve forgotten where this came from
%%
Campus Crusade for Cthulhu:
  It found me!
%%
(Spoken like a revival preacher.)
$$
Say Friends,
$$
Have you heard the bad news about Morgoth the mighty?
  Master of the pit,
  Stealer of souls,
  Damner of demons?
$$
Morgoth is trouble, spelled sideways.
$$
And always be sure to remember: Morgoth has a plan for the universe, and he doesn’t
like people very much!
   -- Friz (player of Cindreth)
%%
When Cthulhu calls, he calls collect.
%%
Have you ever wondered if taxation without representation was cheaper?
   -- from Julian “a tribble took it” Gomez’s signature
%%
“Some of Beethoven’s favorite tunes are the works of Mendelssohn, Handle, and
Bon Jovi’s ‘Slippery While Wet’.”
   -- Bill & Ted
%%
Q:  What does the Enterprise run on?
$$
A:  Spock plugs.
%%
Q:  How many Romulans does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  151, one to change the light bulb, and 150 to self-destruct
the ship out of disgrace.
%%
Q:  How many Vulcans does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Approximately 1.0000000000000000000000.
%%
“What would this country be without this great land of ours?”
   -- R. Reagan
%%
“Many and multiform are the dim horrors of Earth, infesting her ways from
the prime.  They sleep beneath the unturned stone; they rise with the tree
from its root; they move beneath the sea and in buterranean places; they
dewell in the inmost adyta; they emerge betimes from the shutten sepulchre of
haughty bronze and the low grave that is sealed with clay.  There may be some
that are long known to man, and others as yet unknown that abide the terrible
latter days of their revealing.  Those which are the most dreadful and the
lothliest of all are hapily still to be declared.  But among those that have
revealed themselves aforetime and have made manifest their veritable presence,
there is one which may not openly be named for its exceeding foulness.  It is
that spawn which the hidden dweller in the vaults has begotten upon mortality…
   -- Clark Ashton Smith (as by Abdul Alhazred)
%%
 They say foul beings of Old Times still lurk
 In dark forgotten corners of the world.
 And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights,
 Shapes pent in Hell…
   -- Robert E. Howard (as by Justin Geoffrey)
%%
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector ?
$$
The taxidermist takes only your skin.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
 “My father peddles opium,
    my mother’s on the dole.
  My sister used to walk the streets
    but now she’s on parole.
  My uncle pays with little girls;
    my aunt, she raped a steer,
  But they won’t even speak to me
    ‘cause I’m an engineer.”
          --The MIT Engineers’ Drinking Song
%%
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
saftey deserve neither liberty not saftey.”
   -- Benjamin Franklin 1759
%%
“Brahma said: “Well, after hearing ten thousand explanations, a fool
is no wiser.  But an intelligent man needs only two thousand five
hundred.”
  -- The Mahabharata
%%
“Doc” Smith defines space opera.  Heros are larger than life.  Villians
are blacker than space, and Weapons are humongously powerful.  And the
writing, frankly, sucked.  In all fairness, the best of “Doc” Smith
fairly good.
%%
“Not to say I didn’t like this story (and other Brunner works);  just
that a Brunner story is usually not exactly a ray of sunshine in your
day.  Unless he’s talking about the hole in the ozone layer…”
   -- Larry Wake, rec.arts.sf-lovers, McGuffin Discussion
%%
When the fog came in on little cat feet
last night, it left these little muddy
paw prints on the hood of my car.
%%
hexadecimal, n.
$$
Winnie the Pooh’s word for “elephant.”
   -- Ezra Shapiro, The devil’s desktop publishing dictionary, Part II;
MacWEEK, April 25, 1989
%%
prototype, n.
$$
First stage in the life cycle of a computer product, followed by pre-alpha,
alpha, beta, release version, corrected release version, upgrade, corrected
upgrade, etc.  Unlike its successors, the prototype is not expected to work.
   -- Ezra Shapiro, The devil’s desktop publishing dictionary, Part II;
MacWEEK, April 25, 1989
%%
bit, n.
$$
A unit of measure applied to color.  Twenty-bit color refers to expensive $3.00
color as opposed to the cheaper 25 cent, or two-bit, color that used to be
available a few years ago.
   -- Ezra Shapiro, The devil’s desktop publishing dictionary, Part II;
MacWEEK, April 25, 1989
%%
clone, n.
$$
1. An exact duplicate, as in “our product is a clone of their product.”
!!
2. A
shoddy, spurious copy, as in “their product is a clone of our product.”
   -- Ezra Shapiro, The devil’s desktop publishing dictionary, Part II;
MacWEEK, April 25, 1989
%%
Fate protects fools and children and drunkerds…
  and I don’t drink!
%%
“You gave your life to become the person you are right now.  Was it worth it?”
   -- Richard Bach, One
%%
The Heinlein heroine to me is this woman who uses a gun, smokes a cigar,
rules the galaxy, but all she really wants is to bring her husband his
paper and slippers.
   -- Joan D. Vinge (quoted from memory)
%%
“Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”
   -- “The Princess Bride”
%%
Real Programmers don’t write specs.  Users should consider themselves
lucky to get programs at all and take what they get.
%%
Real Programmers don’t comment code.  If it was hard to write, it
should be hard to read.
%%
Real Programmers never work 9 to 5.  If any real programmers are around
at 9AM, it’s because they were up all night.
%%
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 document.  Documentation is for simps who can’t read
listings or object code.
%%
Real Programmers don’t write in Pascal, or BLISS, or Ada, or any of those
pinko computer science languages.  Strong typing is for people with weak memories.
%%
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is
the exact opposite.”
   -- Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928
%%
“Were there no women, men might live like gods.”
   -- Thomas Dekker
%%
“Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing.”
   -- G. Steinem
%%
“It says he made us all to be just like him.  So if we’re dumb, then god is
dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side.”
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
“It’s not just a computer -- it’s your ass.”
   -- Cal Keegan
%%
“Let me guess, Ed.  Pentescostal, right?”
   -- Starcap’n Ra, [e-mail]

“Nope.  Charismatic (I think - I’ve given up on what all those pesky labels
mean).”
   -- Ed Carp, [e-mail]
%%
“Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain
cell per congregation. Starcap’n Ra, you pegged him.  Good work!”
   -- Kenn Barry, [e-mail]
%%
“BTW, does Jesus know you flame?”
   -- Diane Holt, [e-mail], to Ed Carp
%%
“I’ve seen the forgeries I’ve sent out.”
   -- John F. Haugh II ([e-mail]), about forging net news articles
%%
“Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?”
   -- Patricia O Tuama, [e-mail]
%%
“Bite off, dirtball.”
   -- Richard Sexton, [e-mail]
%%
“Oh my!  An ‘inflammatory attitude’ in alt.flame?  Never heard of such
a thing…”
   -- Allen Gwinn, [e-mail]
%%
(null cookie; hope that’s ok)
%%
“In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality
at any point.”
   -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
“Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality?  He who *suffers*
from it.”
   -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
“You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?”
   -- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians
%%
“Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of
nature are constantly broken for their sakes.”
   -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
“Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes
scientific.  Moral:  science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is
forbidden.  Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin.  *This alone is
morality.*  ‘Thou shalt not know’ -- the rest follows.”
   -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
“Faith:
$$
Not *wanting* to know what is true.”
   -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
>One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative.
$$
Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
   -- Chuq Von Rospach, [e-mail]
%%
“Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least
one idiot.  Thus
are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It’s sometimes hard
to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and
pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits.”
   -- Chuq Von Rospach, [e-mail], about Usenet
%%
Backed up the system lately?
%%
“It doesn’t much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next
morning it was someone else.”
   -- Rogers
%%
“If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.”
   -- Chekhov
%%
“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
the ideal never goes unpunished.”
   -- Goethe
%%
“In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.”
   -- Butler
%%
“The great question… which I have not been able to answer… is, ‘What does
woman want?’”
   -- Sigmund Freud
%%
“A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension.”
   -- Mandelbrot, _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_
%%
“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature.  They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.”
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Remember:  Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
   -- Dave Butler
%%
“The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence
of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars.  Verily, the
learned men are the heirs of the Prophets.”
   -- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
%%
“The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity;
the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a
military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and
private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion;
and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes
who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.”
   -- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
%%
“The question is rather: if we ever succeed in making a mind ‘of nuts and
bolts’, how will we know we have succeeded?”
   -- Fergal Toomey

“It will tell us.”
   -- Barry Kort
%%
“Inquiry is fatal to certainty.”
   -- Will Durant
%%
“The Mets were great in ‘sixty eight,
 The Cards were fine in ‘sixty nine,
 But the Cubs will be heavenly in nineteen and seventy.”
   -- Ernie Banks
%%
“On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], ‘Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?’  I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
that could provoke such a question.”
   -- Charles Babbage
%%
“I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic
depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient
is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it
the *one* mortal blemish of mankind.”
   -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
“The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to
safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster
the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source
of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity.”
$$
“Religion is verily the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the
world and of tranquillity amongst it’s peoples … The greater the decline of
religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but
lead in the end to chaos and confusion.”
   -- Baha’u’llah, a selection from the Baha’i scripture
%%
“Cogito ergo I’m right and you’re wrong.”
   -- Blair Houghton
%%
“…one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.”
   -- Robert Firth
%%
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars.  What
should I do?
$$
A: Post the correct answer at once!  We can’t have people go on believing
that!  Very good of you to spot this.  You’ll probably be the only one to
make the correction, so post as soon as you can.  No time to lose, so
certainly don’t wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the
correction.
$$
And it’s not good enough to send the message by mail.  Since you’re the
only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform
the whole net right away!
   -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in?  …
$$
Q: How about an example?
$$
A: Ok.  Let’s say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it’s a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.
$$
The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.  He is
a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn’t exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a “comp” group will propagate your article further.)
$$
You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.  If
you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once!  Don’t tolerate this.
   -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
Q: I cant spell worth a dam.  I hope your going too tell me what to do?
$$
A: Don’t worry about how your articles look.  Remember it’s the message
that counts, not the way it’s presented.  Ignore the fact that sloppy
spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that
soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.
    -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
Q: They just announced on the radio that Dan Quayle was picked as the
Republican V.P. candidate.  Should I post?
$$
A: Of course.  The net can reach people in as few as 3 to 5 days.  It’s
the perfect way to inform people about such news events long after the
broadcast networks have covered them.  As you are probably the only person
to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post as soon as you can.
   -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
What did Mickey Mouse get for Christmas?
$$
A Dan Quayle watch.
   -- heard from a Mike Dukakis field worker
%%
Q:  What’s the difference between a car salesman and a computer
salesman?
$$
A:  The car salesman can probably drive!
   -- Joan McGalliard ([e-mail])
%%
“Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par.”
   -- Dave Mack ([e-mail])
$$
“Yours is.”
   -- Allen Gwinn ([e-mail]), in alt.flame
%%
A selection from the Taoist Writings:
“Lao-Tan asked Confucius: ‘What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?’
$$
Confucius said:  ‘To be in one’s inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all
things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature
of benevolence and righteousness.’”
   -- Kwang-tzu
%%
“Jesus saves … but Gretzky gets the rebound!”
   -- Daniel Hinojosa (hinojosa@hp-sdd)
%%
“Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator.”
   -- Claude Shouse ([e-mail])
$$
“Einstein’s mother must have been one heck of a physicist.”
   -- Joseph C. Wang ([e-mail])
%%
“Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will
fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.”
   -- Bertrand Russell
%%
“Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his
delight.
$$
A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.
$$
He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto
him.
$$
Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with
thy lips.
$$
Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”
   -- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture
%%
“As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.  This
is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.”
   -- Matt Cartmill
%%
Heisengberg might have been here.
%%
“Any excuse will serve a tyrant.”
   -- Aesop
%%
“Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything.”
   -- Russell Baker
%%
How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
Two.  One to change it and one not to change it.
%%
“I prefer the blunted cudgels of the followers of the Serpent God.”
   -- Sean Doran the Younger
%%
“If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak.”
   -- Phil Wayne
%%
“my terminal is a lethal teaspoon.”
   -- Patricia O Tuama
%%
“I am … a woman … and … technically a parasitic uterine growth”
   -- Sean Doran the Younger [allegedly]
%%
“Is it just me, or does anyone else read ‘bible humpers’ every time
someone writes ‘bible thumpers?’”
   -- Joel M. Snyder, [e-mail]
%%
“Money is the root of all money.”
   -- the moving finger
%%
“…Greg Nowak:  ‘Another flame from greg’ - need I say more?”
   -- Jonathan D. Trudel, [e-mail]
$$
“No.  You need to say less.”
   -- Richard Sexton, [e-mail]
%%
“And it’s my opinion, and that’s only my opinion, you are a lunatic.  Just
because there are a few hunderd other people sharing your lunacy with you
does not make you any saner.  Doomed, eh?”
   -- Oleg Kiselev,[e-mail]
%%
“Obedience.  A religion of slaves.  A religion of intellectual death.  I like
it.  Don’t ask questions, don’t think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it
has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex
on his wrist.  I like that job!  Where can I sign up?”
   -- Oleg Kiselev,[e-mail]
%%
“Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a
cockatoo.”
   -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
“Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
those inside desperate to get out.”
   -- Montaigne
%%
“For a male and female to live continuously together is … biologically
speaking, an extremely unnatural condition.”
   -- Robert Briffault
%%
“Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.”
   -- Baskins
%%
A man is not complete until he is married -- then he is finished.
%%
Marriage is the sole cause of divorce.
%%
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
$$
Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
%%
“The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.”
   -- G. Fitch
%%
“Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”
   -- Mark Twain
%%
“I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have
included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.  This
technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom’s reign.  My
carpet smells like piss, and I don’t have a cat.  Better go by some more.”
   -- [e-mail], in alt.conspiracy
%%
“If there isn’t a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in
the cigarettes?”
   -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970
%%
“If you don’t want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do:  Pour a little
Lavoris in the toilet.”
   -- Comedian Jay Leno
%%
“Here’s something to think about:  How come you never see a headline
like ‘Psychic Wins Lottery.’”
   -- Comedian Jay Leno
%%
“Well hello there Charlie Brown, you blockhead.”
   -- Lucy Van Pelt
%%
“Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so.”
   -- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_
%%
“Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable.”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“I have not the slightest confidence in ‘spiritual manifestations.’”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius.”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul.”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.”
   -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
“It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating
us in a stupid way.”
   -- J. W. Nienhuys
%%
“No, no, I don’t mind being called the smartest man in the world.  I just wish
it wasn’t this one.”
   -- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN
%%
“Be *excellent* to each other.”
   -- Bill, or Ted, in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
%%
The Seventh Edition licensing procedures are, I suppose, still in effect,
though I doubt that tapes are available from AT&T.  At any rate, whatever
restrictions the license imposes still exist.  These restrictions were and
are reasonable for places that just want to run the system, but don’t allow
many of the things that Minix was written for, like study of the source in
classes, or by individuals not in a university or company.
$$
I’ve always thought that Minix was a fine idea, and competently done.
$$
As for the size of v7, wc -l /usr/sys/*/*.[chs] is 19271.
   -- Dennis Ritchie, 1989
%%
“Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it.”
   -- Alex Schure
%%
“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips
over, pinning you underneath.  At night, the ice weasels come.”
   --Matt Groening
%%
“I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
   -- Woody Allen
%%
“The Street finds its own uses for technology.”
   -- William Gibson
%%
“I see little divinity about them or you.  You talk to me of Christianity
when you are in the act of hanging your enemies.  Was there ever such
blasphemous nonsense!”
   -- Shaw, “The Devil’s Disciple”
%%
“You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but
only for a limited period of time.  Why should we think that collectively,
as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?”
   -- Ronald Reagan
%%
“He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort,
he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion.”
   -- Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_
%%
“Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts
most subtly on the human will.”
   -- Virginia Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway”
%%
It’s time to boot, do your boot ROMs know where your disk controllers are?
%%
“What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying.”
   -- Nikita Khrushchev
%%
“…a most excellent barbarian … Genghis Kahn!”
   -- _Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure_
%%
“Pull the trigger and you’re garbage.”
   -- Lady Blue
%%
“Oh what wouldn’t I give to be spat at in the face…”
   -- a prisoner in “Life of Brian”
%%
“Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy
of him that brought her birth.”
   -- Milton
%%
“If you can’t debate me, then there is no way in hell you’ll out-insult me.”
   -- Scott Legrand ([e-mail])
$$
“You may be wrong here, little one.”
   -- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM)
%%
“Yes, I am a real piece of work.  One thing we learn at Ulowell is
how to flame useless hacking non-EE’s like you.  I am superior to you in
every way by training and expertise in the technical field.  Anyone can learn
how to hack, but Engineering doesn’t come nearly as easily.  Actually, I’m
not trying to offend all you CS majors out there, but I think EE is one of the
hardest majors/grad majors to pass.  Fortunately, I am making it.”
   -- “Warrior Diagnostics” ([e-mail])
$$
“Being both an EE and an asshole at the same time must be a terrible burden
for you.  This isn’t really a flame, just a casual observation.  Makes me
glad I was a CS major, life is really pleasant for me.  Have fun with your
chosen mode of existence!”
   -- Jim Morrison ([e-mail])
%%
“BYTE editors are men who seperate the wheat from the chaff, and then
print the chaff.”
   -- Lionel Hummel (uiucdcs!hummel), derived from a quote by Adlai Stevenson, Sr.
%%
THE “FUN WITH USENET” MANIFESTO
 Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other
reader.  Fun With Usenet postings are no exception.  Since there are some who
might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have
written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these
postings.
$$
One.  I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY
good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses.  For
instance, “I am not a goob” might become “I am … a goob”, but that’s too
mundane to bother with.  “I’m flame proof” might (and has) become “I’m …a… p…oof”
but that’s REALLY stretching it.
$$
Two.  If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don’t
put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn’t capitalized
before the cut. “I don’t think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful
place” would turn into “the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place”.  Imagine
the posting as a tape-recording of the poster’s thoughts.  If I can set
up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing,
I don’t put ellipses in.  And by the way, I love using this mechanism for
turning things around.  If you think something stinks, say so - don’t say you
don’t think it’s wonderful.
   -- D. J. McCarthy ([e-mail])
%%
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
saftey deserve neither liberty not saftey.”
   -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
%%
“I am, therefore I am.”
   -- Akira
%%
“Stan and I thought that this experiment was so stupid, we decided to finance
it ourselves.”
   -- Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?)
%%
“I have more information in one place than anybody in the world.”
   -- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS
%%
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
   -- John Wooden
%%
 #define BITCOUNT(x)     (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
 #define  BX_(x)         ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777)   \
                              - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333)   \
                              - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
$$
    -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
%%
“If you can write a nation’s stories, you needn’t worry about who makes its
laws.  Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people
most of the time.”
   -- George Gerbner
%%
“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
%%
“We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.”
   -- Ann Marion
$$
“Would this make them Marionettes?”
   -- Jeff Daiell
%%
On the subject of C program indentation:
$$
“In My Egotistical Opinion, most people’s C programs should be indented
six feet downward and covered with dirt.”
   -- Blair P. Houghton
%%
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in
one way or another, almost every member of the team passed.  The term that
the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice --
was ‘signing up.’  By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever
was necessary for success.  You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family,
hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if
you had signed up too many times before).
   -- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_
%%
“By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
to suspect “Hungry.”
   -- a Larson cartoon
%%
“But don’t you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual.  The
look in a face, the music of a violin.  A Paris theater can be infused
with the spiritual for all its solidity.”
   -- Lestat, _The Vampire Lestat_, Anne Rice
%%
“Love your country but never trust its government.”
   -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania
%%
 I bought the latest computer;
 it came fully loaded.
 It was guaranteed for 90 days,
 but in 30 was outmoded!
   -- The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer’s SCARLETT
%%
To update Voltaire, “I may kill all msgs from you, but I’ll fight for
your right to post it, and I’ll let it reside on my disks”.
   -- Doug Thompson ([e-mail])
%%
“Though a program be but three lines long,
someday it will have to be maintained.”
   -- The Tao of Programming
%%
“Turn on, tune up, rock out.”
   -- Billy Gibbons
%%
          EARTH
      smog  |   bricks
  AIR  --  mud  --  FIRE
 soda water |   tequila
          WATER
%%
“Of course power tools and alcohol don’t mix.  Everyone knows power tools aren’t
soluble in alcohol…”
   -- Crazy Nigel
%%
“Life sucks, but death doesn’t put out at all¬.”
   -- Thomas J. Kopp
%%
“There is no Father Christmas.  It’s just a marketing ploy
to make low income parents’ lives a misery.”
“… I want you to picture the trusting face of a child,
streaked with tears because of what you just said.”
“I want you to picture the face of its mother, because one
week’s dole won’t pay for one Master of the Universe
Battlecruiser!”
   -- Filthy Rich and Catflap, 1986.
%%
 n = ((n >>  1) & 0x55555555) | ((n <<  1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
 n = ((n >>  2) & 0x33333333) | ((n <<  2) & 0xcccccccc);
 n = ((n >>  4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n <<  4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
 n = ((n >>  8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n <<  8) & 0xff00ff00);
 n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
$$
   -- Yet another mystical ‘C’ gem. This one reverses the bits in a word.
%%
“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is
constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role
they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”
   -- Noam Chomsky
%%
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
system that worked.”
   -- John Gall, _Systemantics_
%%
“In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn’t recognise terrorism if it
came up and bit him on his Internet.”
   -- Ross M. Greenberg
%%
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion,
such as “certainly”, “undoubtedly”, etc.   I adopted instead of them “I
conceive”, “I apprehend”, or “I imagine” a thing to be so or so; or “so it
appears to me at present”.
$$
When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some
absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by observing that in
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.
$$
I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I proposed my
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.  I had
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
   -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
%%
“If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change
almost all occurences of the word “paradigm” into “example” or “model.”
   -- Herbie Blashtfalt
%%
“Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”
   -- Marvin the paranoid android
%%
Contemptuous lights flashed flashed across the computer’s console.
   -- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
%%
“There must be some mistake,” he said, “are you not a greater computer than
the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
millisecond?”
$$
“The Milliard Gargantubrain?” said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
$$
“A mere abacus.  Mention it not.”
   -- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
%%
“But are you not,” he said, “a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic
Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and
Indefatigable?”
$$
“The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler,” said Deep Thought,
thoroughly rolling the r’s, “could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward.”
   -- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
%%
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola
would be a Fortune-500 company.
$$
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you’d be
able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95.
$$
If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we’d still
be using autocoder and running compile decks.
   -- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective
%%
To err is human, to moo bovine.
%%
“America is a stronger nation for the ACLU’s uncompromising effort.”
   -- President John F. Kennedy
%%
“The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not
be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but
living, honored rules of conduct amongst us … I’m glad the American Civil
Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so.”
   -- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
%%
“The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that
from time to time threaten freedoms everyhere… Indeed, it is difficult
to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
Union’s valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights
of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised
by the majority they were at the time.”
   -- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
%%
“The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each
citizen to defend it.  Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do
his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.”
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
“Well I don’t see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many
men happy.”
   -- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
%%
“And it should be the law: If you use the word ‘paradigm’ without knowing what
the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions.”
   -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation
%%
“Luke, I’m yer father, eh.  Come over to the dark side, you hoser.”
   -- Dave Thomas, “Strange Brew”
%%
“Let’s not be too tough on our own ignorance.  It’s the thing that makes
America great.  If America weren’t incomparably ignorant, how could we
have tolerated the last eight years?”
   -- Frank Zappa, Feb 1, 1989
%%
“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
$$
“For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question ‘How can
we eat?’ the second by the question ‘Why do we eat?’ and the third by
the question ‘Where shall we have lunch?’”
   -- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
%%
“Don’t think; let the machine do it for you!”
   -- E. C. Berkeley
%%
“It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
than be the instrument of his army’s downfall.”
   -- Napoleon, “Military Maxims and Thought”
%%
“(The Chief Programmer) personally defines the functional and performance
specifications, designs the program, codes it, tests it, and writes its
documentation… He needs great talent, ten years experience and
considerable systems and applications knowledge, whether in applied
mathematics, business data handling, or whatever.”
   -- Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_
%%
“It ain’t over until it’s over.”
   -- Casey Stengel
%%
“If anything can go wrong, it will.”
   -- Edsel Murphy
%%
“Yo baby yo baby yo.”
   -- Eddie Murphy
%%
“You must learn to run your kayak by a sort of ju-jitsu.  You must learn to
tell what the river will do to you, and given those parameters see how you
can live with it.  You must absorb its force and convert it to your users
as best you can.  Even with the quickness and agility of a kayak, you are
not faster than the river, nor stronger, and you can beat it only by
understanding it.”
   -- Strung, Curtis and Perry, _Whitewater_
%%
Everyone who comes in here wants three things:
 1. They want it quick.
 2. They want it good.
 3. They want it cheap.
$$
I tell ‘em to pick two and call me back.
   -- sign on the back wall of a small printing company in Delaware
%%
“More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all
other causes combined.”
   -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%%
panic: kernel trap (ignored)
%%
“Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
“Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue.”
   -- Peter Neumann, about usenet
%%
“We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked
power.  There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation.”
   -- Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart
%%
“What man has done, man can aspire to do.”
   -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight
%%
“Well, it don’t make the sun shine, but at least it don’t deepen the shit.”
   -- Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban
%%
“If you can, help others.  If you can’t, at least don’t hurt others.”
   -- the Dalai Lama
%%
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a
test load.
%%
“Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!”
   -- Alan Perlis
%%
“…Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial
technology… Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain
the world’s democracies, not the world as a whole.”
   -- K. Eric Drexler
%%
“The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between a five-dollar bill
and a whip deserves to learn the difference on his own back -- as, I think, he
will.”
   -- Francisco d’Anconia, in Ayn Rand’s _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and
the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will
lose that, too.”
   -- W. Somerset Maugham
%%
“Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don’t know why I bother
to say it, oh God, I’m so depressed.  Here’s another of those self-satisfied
doors.  Life!  Don’t talk to me about life.”
   -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand
hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was reknowned for
being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which
obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be puzzled
rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
   -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_
%%
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.
$$
Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space.  In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri.  And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
   -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_
%%
“Gort, klaatu nikto barada.”
   -- The Day the Earth Stood Still
%%
> From [e-mail] Thu Mar  2 13:59:11 1989
> Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 255
$$
“Dale, your address no longer functions.  Can you fix it at your end?”
   -- Bill Wolfe ([e-mail])
$$
“Bill, Your brain no longer functions.  Can you fix it at your end?”
   -- Karl A. Nyberg ([e-mail])
%%
“Don’t drop acid, take it pass-fail!”
   -- Bryan Michael Wendt
%%
“I got a question for ya.  Ya got a minute?”
   -- two programmers passing in the hall
%%
I took a fish head to the movies and I didn’t have to pay.
   -- Fish Heads, Saturday Night Live, 1977.
%%
What hath Bob wrought?
%%
“I don’t know where we come from,
 Don’t know where we’re going to,
 And if all this should have a reason,
 We would be the last to know.
$$
 So let’s just hope there is a promised land,
 And until then,
 …as best as you can.”
   -- Steppenwolf, “Rock Me Baby”
%%
“Help Mr. Wizard!”
   -- Tennessee Tuxedo
%%
“The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance.  He
of all men should behave as though the law compelled him.  But
it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are
given to administer we presently imagine we own.”
   -- H.G. Wells
%%
“Unlike most net.puritans, however, I feel that what OTHER consenting computers
do in the privacy of their own phone connections is their own business.”
   -- John Woods, [e-mail]
%%
“Don’t talk to me about disclaimers!  I invented disclaimers!”
   -- The Censored Hacker
%%
’On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do
with equalizing.  Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and
consumption in accordance with the principle “From each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs.”  This will be under
communism.  Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social
benefits: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”’
   -- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_
%%
“Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.”
   -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989 [apparently,
good TV reception is a basic necessity -- at least in Tucson  -kl]
%%
“All the system’s paths must be topologically and circularly interrelated for
conceptually definitive, locally transformable, polyhedronal understanding to
be attained in our spontaneous -- ergo, most economical -- geodesiccally
structured thoughts.”
   -- R. Buckminster Fuller […and a
total nonsequitir as far as I can tell.  -kl]
%%
“One thing they don’t tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions… like a state of sheer
terror.”
   -- W. K. Hartmann
%%
“It’s when they say 2 + 2 = 5 that I begin to argue.”
   -- Eric Pepke
%%
Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a
pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule.”
   -- David Guaspari
%%
“None of our men are “experts.”  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into
the “expert” state of mind a great number of things become impossible.”
   -- From Henry Ford Sr., “My Life and Work,” p. 86 (1922):
%%
“The NY Times is read by the people who run the country.  The Washington Post
is read by the people who think they run the country.   The National Enquirer
is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country…”
-- Robert J Woodhead ([e-mail])
%%
“…‘fire’ does not matter, ‘earth’ and ‘air’ and ‘water’ do not
matter.  ‘I’ do not matter.  No word matters.  But man forgets reality
and remembers words.  The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his
fellows esteem him.  He looks upon the great transformations of the
world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon
reality for the first time.  Their names come to his lips and he smiles
as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming.”
   -- Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny
%%
“Irrigation of the land with sewater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient.  It’s called ‘rain’.”
   -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
%%
“The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people
who don’t understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything.”
   -- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California
%%
“We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of
annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn
and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from
being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.”
   -- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948
%%
“You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”
   -- Cal Keegan
%%
“The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.”
   -- Harlan Ellison
%%
Don’t panic, its only 1s and 0s!
%%
I travel through eternity, but I take time out.
%%
“The proton absorbs a photon and emits two morons, a lepton, a boson, and a
boson’s mate. Why did I ever take high-energy physics?”
%%
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
   -- Montgomery Scott
%%
When in doubt, logout!
%%
“z80 panic: Shut her down Scottie, she’s sucking mud again.”
   -- Error message from a Tandy 6000
%%
Q: What’s the first thing a sorority girl does when she gets up in the
morning?
$$
A: She goes home.
%%
“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work,
I want to achieve it through not dying.”
   -- Woody Allen
%%
Q: What’s the difference between a sorority girl and a Porsche?
$$
A: Not everyone has been in a Porsche.
%%
Q: How many sorority girls does it take to change a lightbulb?
$$
A: 10. Nine to stand around scratching their heads, and one to
get her boyfriend to do it.
%%
“First things first, but not in that order.”
   --Dr. Who
%%
Q: Why won’t sharks attack lawyers?
$$
A: Professional courtesy.
%%
A farmer, before going to vacation, explained the business to his oldest son.
- Here is the table of stud fee, we charge $100 for the horse, $60 for the ox
and $50 for the pig.
$$
Then he left, and his son was taking care of business according to the
instruction, no problem at all.
$$
One day farmer’s neighbor came to him furiously
$$
- Where is your father?
- He’s on vacation, may I help you?
- Your brother David got my daughter pregnant!
- Gee! this your have to wait for my father, I for don’t know how much he
  charges for David.
%%
Q: What’s a “BTNU”
$$
A: A British ThermoNuclear Unit; the amount of energy it takes to raise
Great Britain 1 degree Farenheit.
%%
 “If winning is not important, then commander, why keep score?”
   -- Lt. Worf
%%
“Your ‘reality’, sir, is lies and balderdash, and I am delighted to say that
I have no grasp of it whatsoever.”
   -- Heironymus Karl Frederick Baron von Munchausen
%%
“Lord, heal this software!”
   -- fundamentalist software engineering
%%
“Real users dont know what they want, but they know to
complain when they dont get it”
%%
Every philosophy is like looking for a black cat in a dark room;
$$
Marxist philosophy is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, but
the cat isn’t there;
$$
Soviet philosophy is like looking for a black cat in a dark room,
the cat isn’t there, but you keep shouting “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!”
   -- Amos Shapir (from a netnews signature)
%%
“In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
  In the midst of his laughter and glee,
 He had softly and suddenly vanished away,
  For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”
%%
“An MIT surveyor once found the gates of Hell
  He looked the devil in the eye and said ‘You’re looking well,’
 The devil looked right back at him, and said ‘Why visit me -
  You’ve been through Hell already; you went to MIT!’”
   --The MIT Engineers’ Drinking Song
%%
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not
bite you.  This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
   -- Mark Twain
%%
The difference between practice and theory in practice is always
greater than the difference between practice and theory in theory.
%%
ACTION’S LAW
$$
Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
%%
ALBRECHT’S LAW
$$
Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well-being.
%%
ALLEN’S (or CANN’S) AXIOM
$$
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
BOREN’S FIRST LAW
$$
When in doubt, mumble.
%%
BOVE’S THEOREM
$$
The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal
increases as the deadline approaches.
%%
BOWIE’S THEOREM
$$
If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.
%%
BROOK’S LAW
$$
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%%
CANADA BILL JONES’ MOTTO
$$
It’s morally wrong to allow naive end users to keep their money.
%%
CANN’S (or ALLEN’S) AXIOM
$$
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
CARLSON’S CONSOLATION
$$
Nothing is ever a complete failure; it can always serve as a bad
example.
%%
CLARKE’S THIRD LAW
$$
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
%%
COHN’S LAW
$$
The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less
time you have to do anything.  Stability is achieved when you spend
all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.
%%
CONWAY’S LAW
$$
In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is
going on.  This person must be fired.
%%
LAW OF CONTINUITY
$$
Experiments should be reproducible.  They should all fail in the same
way.
%%
CORRESPONDENCE COROLLARY
$$
An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half of your
data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your theory.
%%
CROPP’S LAW
$$
The amount of work done varies inversely with the amount of time spent
in the office.
%%
CUTLER WEBSTER’S LAW
$$
There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally
involved, in which case there is only one.
%%
DEADLINE-DAN’S DEMO DEMONSTRATION
$$
The higher the “higher-ups” are who’ve come to see your demo, the
lower your chances are of giving a successful one.
%%
DEMIAN’S OBSERVATION
$$
There is always one item on the screen menu that is mislabeled and
should read “ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE”.
%%
DENNISTON’S LAW
$$
Virtue is its own punishment.
%%
DOW’S LAW
$$
In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the
confusion.
%%
DR. CALIGARI’S COME-BACK
$$
A bad sector disk error occurs only after you’ve done several hours of
work without performing a backup.
%%
ESTRIDGE’S LAW
$$
No matter how large and standardized the marketplace is, IBM can
redefine it.
%%
FINAGLE’S LAWS
!!
1) Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
!!
2) No matter what results are expected, someone is always willing to fake it.
!!
3) No matter what the result, someone is always eager to misinterpret it.
!!
4) No matter what occurs, someone believes it happened according to his pet theory.
%%
FINAGLE’S RULES:
$$
1) To study an application best, understand it thoroughly before you
start.
!!
2) Always keep a record of data. It indicates you’ve been working.
!!
3) Always draw your curves, then plot the reading.
!!
4) In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
!!
5) Program results should always be reproducible. They should all
fail in the same way.
!!
6) Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.
%%
FINSTER’S LAW
$$
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
%%
FIRST RULE OF HISTORY
$$
History doesn’t repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other.
%%
FRANKLIN’S RULE
$$
Blessed is the end user who expects nothing, for he/she will not be
disappointed.
%%
GILB’S LAWS OF UNRELIABILITY
$$
1) At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
!!
2) Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
!!
3) Udetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
errors, which by definition are limited.
!!
4) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable
cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work
done.
%%
GINSBERG’S THEOREM
$$
1) You can’t win.
!!
2) You can’t break even.
!!
3) You can’t even quit the game.
%%
GLYME’S FORMULA FOR SUCCESS
$$
The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you’ve
got it made.
%%
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
$$
Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
%%
GOLD’S LAW
$$
If the shoe fits, it’s ugly.
%%
GORDON’S FIRST LAW
$$
If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing
well.
%%
GOVERNMENT’S LAW
$$
There is an exception to all laws.
%%
$$
Anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
%%
GUMMIDGES’S LAW
$$
The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number
of statements understood by the general public.
%%
GUMPERSON’S LAW
$$
The probability of a given event occurring is inversely proportional
to its desirability.
%%
HANLON’S RAZOR
$$
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity.
%%
HARP’S COROLLARY TO ESTRIDGE’S LAW
$$
Your “IBM PC-compatible” computer grows more incompatible with every
passing moment.
%%
HARRISON’S POSTULATE
$$
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%%
HELLER’S LAW
  The first myth of management is that it exists.
%%
HINDS’ LAW OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
$$
1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
!!
2) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
!!
3) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
!!
4) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
!!
5) The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
!!
6) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
programmer who must maintain it.
!!
7) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and
you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
%%
HOARE’S LAW OF LARGE PROGRAMS
$$
Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.
%%
HUBBARD’S LAW
$$
Don’t take life too seriously; you won’t get out of it alive.
%%
JENKINSON’S LAW
$$
It won’t work.
%%
JOHNSON-LAIRD’S LAW
$$
Toothache tends to start on Saturday night.
%%
LARKINSON’S LAW
$$
All laws are basically false.
%%
THE LAST ONE’S LAW OF PROGRAM GENERATORS
$$
A program generator creates programs that are more “buggy” than
the program generator.
%%
LIEBERMAN’S LAW
$$
Everybody lies; but it doesn’t matter, since nobody listens.
%%
LYNCH’S LAW
$$
When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
%%
MASON’S FIRST LAW OF SYNERGISM
$$
The one day you’d sell you soul for something, souls are a glut.
%%
MAY’S LAW
$$
The quality of correlation is inverely proportional to the density
of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.)
%%
MENCKEN’S LAW
$$
There is always an easy answer to every human problem -- neat,
plausible, and wrong.
%%
MESKIMEN’S LAW
$$
There’s never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
%%
MUIR’S LAW
$$
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to
everything else in the universe.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS
$$
1) If anything can go wrong, it will (and at the worst possible moment).
!!
2) Nothing is as easy as it looks.
!!
3) Everything takes longer than you think it will.
%%
MURPHY’S FOURTH LAW
$$
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one
that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%%
MURPHY’S LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
$$
Things get worse under pressure.
%%
NINETY-NINETY RULE OF PROJECT SCHEDULES
$$
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the
time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
%%
NIXON’S THEOREM
$$
The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone
he can blame it on.
%%
NOLAN’S PLACEBO
$$
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
%%
OLIVER’S LAW OF LOCATION
$$
No matter where you are, there you are.
%%
O’REILLY’S LAW OF THE KITCHEN
$$
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%%
OSBORN’S LAW
$$
Variables won’t, constants aren’t.
%%
O’TOOLE’S COMMENTARY ON MURPHY’S LAW
$$
Murphy was an optimist.
%%
PARKINSON’S LAW
$$
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
%%
PARKINSON’S LAW, MODIFIED
$$
The components you have will expand to fill the available space.
%%
PEER’S LAW
$$
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
%%
PETER’S PRINCIPLE
$$
In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to the level of his
incompetence.
%%
THE LAW OF THE PERVERSITY OF NATURE
$$
You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
%%
PUDDER’S LAW
$$
Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of
Pudder’s law is not true.)
%%
RHODE’S COROLLARY TO HOARE’S LAW
$$
Inside every complex and unworkable program is a useful routine
struggling to be free.
%%
ROBERT E. LEE’S TRUCE
$$
Judgement comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgement.
%%
RUDIN’S LAW
$$
In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses
of action, people tend to choose the worst possible course.
%%
RULE OF ACCURACY
$$
When working toward the solution of a problem it always helps you to
know the answer.
%%
RYAN’S LAW
$$
Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish
yourself as an expert.
%%
SATTINGER’S LAW
$$
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
SAUSAGE PRINCIPLE
$$
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either
one being made.
%%
SHAW’S PRINCIPLE
$$
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want
to use it.
%%
SNAFU EQUATIONS
$$
1) Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.
!!
2) An object or bit of information most needed will be least available.
!!
3) Any device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible.
!!
4) Interchangeable devices won’t.
!!
5) In any human endeavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and
fail, there will be one solution, simple and obvious, highly visible
to everyone else.
!!
6) Badness comes in waves.
%%
STEWART’S LAW OF RETROACTION
$$
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%%
THOREAU’S THEORIES OF ADAPTATION
$$
1) After months of training and you finally understand all of a program’s
commands, a revised version of the program arrives with an all-new
command structure.
!!
2) After designing a useful routine that gets around a familiar “bug” in
the system, the system is revised, the “bug” taken away, and you’re
left with a useless routine.
!!
3) Efforts in improving a program’s “user friendliness” invariable lead
to work in improving user’s “computer literacy”.
!!
4) That’s not a “bug”, that’s a feature!
%%
THYME’S LAW
$$
Everything goes wrong at once.
%%
THE LAW OF THE TOO SOLID GOOF
$$
In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct
beyond all need of checking contain the errors.
$$
Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either.
$$
Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice,
will spot it immediately.
%%
UNNAMED LAW
$$
If it happens, it must be possible.
%%
WEILER’S LAW
$$
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do the work.
%%
WEINBERG’S COROLLARY
$$
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to
the grand fallacy.
%%
WEINBERG’S LAW
$$
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then
the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
%%
WHITEHEAD’S LAW
$$
The obvious answer is always overlooked.
%%
WILCOX’S LAW
$$
A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.
%%
WOOD’S AXIOM
$$
As soon as a still-to-be-finished computer task becomes a
life-or-death situation, the power fails.
%%
WOODWARD’S LAW
$$
A theory is better than its explanation.
%%
ZYMURGY’S FIRST LAW OF EVOLVING SYSTEM DYNAMICS
$$
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use
a larger can.
%%
LAWS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT
$$
1. No major project is ever installed on time, within budgets, with the
staff that started it.  Yours will not be the first.
$$
2. Projects progress quickly until they become 90 percent complete, then
they remain at 90 percent complete forever.
$$
3. One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you avoid the
embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.
$$
4. When things are going well, something will go wrong.  When things
just can’t get any worse, they will.  When things appear to be going better
you have overlooked something.
$$
5. If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will
exceed the rate of progress.
$$
6. No system is ever completely debugged. Attempts to debug a system
inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find.
$$
7. A carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete
than expected; a carefully planned project will take only twice as
long.
$$
8. Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly manifests their
lack of progress.
%%
1)
!!
There was a young girl from Peru
!!
Whose limericks stopped at line two
$$
2)
!!
There was a young man from Verdun
%%
“What is this ‘Junior’?  Why do you call him that?”
“Why?  Because that’s his name.  Henry Jones, Junior.”
“I like the name ‘Indiana’.”
“We named the *dog* Indiana.”
   -- from Indiana Jones, The Last Crusade
%%
“I’m as human as the next man!”
“Dad, I WAS the next man!”
   -- from Indiana Jones, The Last Crusade
%%
“Always to be remembering:
  Be trusting no one!
  Be keeping laser handy!
  Morbid depression is mandatory!
  Tovarisch Computer is your tovarisch!”
%%
“All my life I always wanted to BE somebody.  I see now I should
have been more specific.”
   -- Jane Wagner
%%
“The worst thing about being a vampire is that you can’t go to matinees
and save money anymore.”
%%
If you keep your head, while everyone else loses theirs, you’ll be the only
one needing a haircut.
%%
“DISCLAIMER:  In no event will the author be liable for ANY damages arising
from the use, misuse, abuse, inability to use, etc., etc., of this program,
even if it were to initiate a complete mass to energy conversion of your
personal computer, thus reducing the state in which you reside to a smoldering
ruin.  This program is distributed “as is” and the user assumes all risks.  If
these terms are unacceptable I hereby grant the user the right to erase this
program from any storage medium said user may own or use.”
   -- disclaimer found on a piece of freeware.
%%
“Having given up on the problem of commuting 5 miles in less than an hour,
mankind heads for the stars.”
%%
Heard at last night’s D&D session:
$$
“Never attack while your son’s an iguana.”
%%
A standard belief is that for each bug you find, 10 more are still
hidden.  The moral here is simply not to look for bugs.
%%
Dain Bramaged!
%%
There are very few problems which can’t be solved by a suitable application
of high explosives.
%%
You’re twisted, perverted, and sick.  I like that in a person.
%%
STRESS
$$
That confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to
choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it.
%%
In the force if Yoda’s so strong, construct a sentence with words in
there proper order then why can’t he?
%%
“Split up, we’ll do more damage that way.”
   -- Ghostbusters
%%
TLA -- Three Letter Acronym
      -- from IBM
%%
“Always assume that the other player is an enemy and that the next
move is a trap.”
   -- Klingon Saying (ST:RPG Klingon Suppliement)
%%
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.  It is very cold in space.”
   -- Ancient Klingon Proverb (from the signiture of [e-mail])
%%
A friend of mine who happens to be British, and has a delightful accent,
teaches chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst.  A few years back he was complaining about how deadly dull
the undergraduates
were.  He said that they were so lacking in curiousity and sense of humor,
that he would bet that he could show up for his morning lecture wearing
a “redcoat” uniform like those worn during the revolutionary war, and nobody
would ask anything about it.  So he did just that, complete with pointed hat,
boots, and sword.  There was a very tense moment at the end of the lecture,
when he asked “Are there any questions?”  One hand went up.  The student
asked “Will the material on blah-blah-blah be on the exam?”…
   -- from rec.humor, posted by [e-mail] (Henry Cate III)
%%
A friend of his had been lecturing on the doppler effect to a really,
really dead class.  Finally, in sheer exasperation, he pointed to the
equations on the board, to be more precise, at the (speed.of.sound -
speed.of.object) in the denominator and said: “This particular portion
of the equation shows where the sonic boom comes from.  As the speed
of the object approaches the speed of sound in air, this part slowly
goes to zero.  Finally, when the object hits the speed of sound, a
division by zero error occurs, reality rips, and all of the air in the
surrounding area pours out into the 4th dimension.”
$$
The class took notes….
   -- from rec.humor, posted by [e-mail] (Henry Cate III)
%%
Just to throw in my two cents worth in to the Intuitively Obvious bucket,
when I was a math student at Towson State University we were given a final
exam that involved proving that two N dimesional matrices were related in
a given way. I started with the first matrix and used every theorem that I
could remember trying to reach the second, but I got stuck halfway through.
Working feverishly on a piece of scrap paper, I started on the second matrix,
but couldn’t work it back to the first. In a flash of inspiration, I set the
two intermediate results equal to each other and copied the second set of
equations backwards onto the tail of the first. When I got the paper back,
there was a C which was crossed out and replaced by an A, the midpoint of
my equations was underlined, with a note saying - At first I doubted that
this step was intuitively obvious, but after thinking about it for several
hours, I decided that it was.
   -- from rec.humor, posted by [e-mail] (Henry Cate III)
%%
My electromagnetics professor, Dr. Andrew Dienes, defines “trivial” as
“Any problem that can be solved by a Nobel Laureate in less than
24 hours.”
$$
You can imagine that I was relieved to hear that my final would be trivial.
   -- from rec.humor, posted by [e-mail] (Henry Cate III)
%%
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The only son of Academy Award-winning actor Ray
Milland was found dead in his West Los Angeles apartment with a gunshot
wound in the head and a rifle by his side, police said today.
“It’s apparently an undetermined cause of death right now,” Detective Sgt.
Glenn Varner said this morning.  “We don’t like to jump into conclusions.”
%%
From an article on meteorites in last Sunday’s New York Times magazine:
$$
“Very large meteorites, however, … strike the earth without slowing down
at all.  Because they are more massive than the column of air they
displace during their
passage through the atmosphere, the atmosphere is incapable of decelerating
them.”
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
1. The more beautiful the woman is who loves you, the easier it is
to leave her with no hard feelings.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
2. Nothing improves with age.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
3. No matter how many times you’ve had it, if it’s offered take it,
because it’ll never be quite the same again.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
4. Sex has no calories.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
5. Sex takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount
of trouble.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
6. There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
7. Sex appeal is 50% what you’ve got and 50% what people think you’ve got.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
8. No sex with anyone in the same office.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
9. Sex is like snow; you never know how many inches you are going to
get or how long it is going to last.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
10.  A man in the house is worth two in the street.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
11.  If you get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
12. Virginity can be cured.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
13. When a man’s wife learns to understand him, she usually stops
listening to him.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
14.  Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
15.  The qualities that most attract a woman to a man are usually the
same ones she can’t stand years later.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
16.  Sex is dirty only if it’s done right.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
17.  It is always the wrong time of month.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
18.  The best way to hold a man is in your arms.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
19.  When the lights are out, all women are beautiful.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
20.  Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you
won’t either.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
21.  Sow your wild oats on Saturday night -- Then on Sunday pray for
crop failure.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
22.  The younger the better.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
23.  The game of love is never called off on account of darkness.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
24. It was not the apple on the tree but the pair on the ground that
caused the trouble in the garden.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
25.  Sex discriminates against the shy and the ugly.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
27.  Before you find your handsome prince, you’ve got to kiss a lot
of frogs.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
28.  There may be some things better than sex, and some things worse
than sex.  But there is nothing exactly like it.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
29.  Love your neighbor, but don’t get caught.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
30.  Love is a hole in the heart.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
31.  If the effort that went in research on the female bosom had gone
into our space program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on
the moon.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
32.  Love is a matter of chemistry, sex is a matter of physics.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
33.  Do it only with the best.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
34.  Sex is a three-letter word which needs some old-fashioned
four-letter words to convey its full meaning.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
35.  One good turn gets most of the blankets.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
36.  You cannot produce a baby in one month by impregnating nine women.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
37.  Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
38.  It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
39.  Thou shalt not commit adultery … unless in the mood.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
40.  Never lie down with a woman who’s got more troubles than you.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
41.  Abstain from wine, women, and song; mostly song.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
42.  Never argue with a women when she’s tired -- or rested.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
43.  A woman never forgets the men she could have had; a man, the
women he couldn’t.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
44.  What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
45.  It is better to be looked over than overlooked.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
46.  Never say no.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
47.  A man can be happy with any woman as long as he doesn’t love her.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
48.  Folks playing leapfrog must complete all jumps.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
49.  Beauty is skin deep; ugly goes right to the bone.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
50.  Never stand between a fire hydrant and a dog.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
51.  A man is only a man, but a good bicycle is a ride.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
52.  Love comes in spurts.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
53.  The world does not revolve on an axis.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
54.  Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation; the other
eight are unimportant.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
55.  Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
56.  Don’t do it if you can’t keep it up.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
57.  There is no difference between a wise man and a fool when they
fall in love.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
58.  Never go to bed mad, stay up and fight.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
59.  Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
%%
MURPHY’S LAWS ON SEX
$$
60.  “This won’t hurt, I promise.”
%%
All power corrupts, but we need electricity -- D. W. Jones
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
All roads lead to Amber
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
All the world’s an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
All things considered, insanity may be the only reasonable alternative
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Anarcho-Palidin
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Ankh if you love Isis
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button (and several recent discussions on rec.games.frp)
%%
Anything not nailed down is mine.  Anthing I can pry loose is not nailed down.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Ask a silly program, get a silly answer.
%%
Assassins do it from behind
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because
the average man can see better than he can think
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Ban the bomb.  Save the world for conventional warfare!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Be yourself -- it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Beam me up, Scotty, it ate my phaser
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Beam me up, Scotty, the elevators don’t work
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Beam me down, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life up here.
%%
Being a mine means never having to say you’re sorry
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Being sexy is a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Berserkers do it without thinking
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Better dead than mellow
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Better living through alchemy
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Beware of Quantum Ducks
   Quark!  Quark!  Quark!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Black holes are where God is dividing by zero
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Bombs don’t kill people, explosions kill people
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Built for comfort, not for speed
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Bushydo -- The Way of the Shrub  (Bonsai!)
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
C combines the flexibility of assembly language
with the power of assembly language
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
C combines the flexibility of assembly language with the
user-friendliness of assembly language.
   -- Jay
%%
Calm down, its only ones and zeros
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Caution:  Contents under pressure
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Caution: Hungry Dieter, may bite if provoked
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Chaos is King, and Magic is loose in the world
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Chaotic Amorals have more fun
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Chaotic/Evil means never having to say you’re sorry
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Chem E’s make the best heat exchangers
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Christians do it with grace
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
A closed mouth gathers no feet
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Cogito ergo spud
  I think, therefore I yam
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Conform, go crazy, or become a writer
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Conform, go crazy, or become an artist
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Conform, go crazy, or become a programmer
%%
Conquering Russia is a steppe by steppe process
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Cthulhu Cthucks
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Cybermats, why does it have to be cybermats?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Deadly Ninja throwing button
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Do you know where your towel is?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Don’t ask me -- I have intermittent memory loss
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Don’t get even -- get odd!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Don’t hate yourself in the morning -- sleep ’til noon
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Don’t rush me -- I’m dawdling as fast as I can
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Don’t step on my scarf
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Dragonriders do it in between
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Dyslexics have more fnu
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Dyslexics of the world, untie!  Together we can trip up the world
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Eat the rich -- the poor are tough and stringy
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Entropy isn’t what it used to be
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Entropy requires no maintenance!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Even barbarians like chocolate chip cookies
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Every silver lining has a cloud
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Every spam is sacred
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Everyone was born right-handed.  Only the greatest overcome it.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The following statement is true.  The preceding statement is false.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
43% of all statistics are worthless.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Freedom, Immortality, and the Stars!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The future exists first in imagination, then in will, then in reality
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Go, lemmings, go!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.
   -- Tolkien, in LotR
%%
God didn’t create the world in seven days -- he goofed off for six, then
pulled an all-nighter
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Hackito ergo sum!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I hack, therefore I am!
%%
Cogito ergo hack!
%%
Half of what I know today will be obsolete in five years -- I’d just
like to know which half
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Hard work may not kill me, but why take chances?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Have an adequate day
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Have an illuminated day
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Have Tardis, will travel
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Have you hugged your dragon today?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The hell with the prime directive -- let’s kill something
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Heralds don’t pun -- they cant
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Hi!  I can’t remember your name, either.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Hollow chocolate has no calories
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Human beings don’t live like this
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I am a bookaholic.  If you are a decent person, you will not sell
me another book.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I am different, I am alone, and I’m an outcast … I bleed green!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I am not a student of human nature.  I am a professor of a far wider
academy of which human nature is only a part.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I am not conceited -- I just can’t stand mortals
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I am the Imp of the Perverse (knowing this won’t help you either)
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I didn’t know it was impossible when I did it
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I don’t believe in no-win scenarios
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I don’t have to take this abuse from you -- I’ve got hundreds
of people waiting to abuse me
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I don’t practice what I preach because I’m not the kind of person I preach to
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I have not lost my mind -- I know exactly where I left it
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I have not lost my mind -- it’s backed up on tape somewhere
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I have not lost my mind -- it’s been temporarily mislaid
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I know karate, kung fu, and 47 other dangerous words
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I know where my towel is
%%
I never spit in your drink -- why do you smoke in my air?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Anybody caught smoking in this house had BETTER be on fire!
   -- sign in the house of D. Jay Newman
%%
I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed
   -- Marvin the Paranoid Android, from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galexy
%%
You came into my life like a butterfly,
!!
Dangling your dreams before my eyes.
!!
Where once skys were cloudy,
!!
Now they’re bright blue.
!!
Oh girl, its all because of you!
$$
You’ve been a long drink of water
!!
To this thirsty nomad.
!!
Your heart’s been the finest home,
!!
That I’ve ever had.
!!
I hope you’ll stay forever by my side,
!!
You’re all I need to keep me satisfied!
$$
   -- D. Jay Newman, in a fit of songwriting for Lee
%%
I thought YOU silenced the guard!
$$
What guard?
$$
Fool!  I am the guard!
   -- from a set of Nancy Buttons
%%
I used to be sane, but I got better
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I warn you not to underestimate my powers
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I will continue to be an impossible person as long as those who
are now possible remain possible
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they’d
point in different directions
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If God hadn’t wanted me to be paranoid, he wouldn’t have given me such
a vivid imagination
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If guns are outlawed, how will we shoot the liberals?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If I want your stupid opinion, I’ll beat it out of you
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If it has syntax, it isn’t user friendly
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If people see that you mean them no harm, they’ll never hurt you,
nine times out of ten.
   -- The Doctor, from Dr. Who (Tom Baker)
%%
If puns were deli meat, mine would be the worst
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If the government doesn’t trust the people, why doesn’t it dissolve
them and elect a new people?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If the wearer of this button shows any signs of depression, administer
chocolate immediately
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.  If not
voting could change the system, it would be illegal.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If we were meant to fly, we wouldn’t keep losing our luggage
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If words could speak, I wonder what they’d say
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If you can’t dress weird, why dress at all?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse can happen
to either of you for the rest of the day
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
If you’re right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
%%
I’ll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m a citizen of the universe, and a gentleman to boot!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m a game master -- it’s lonely at the top
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m a knight errant, not an arrant fool!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m apathetic and I don’t care
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m feeling argumentative -- please try to contradict me
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m not irresponsible -- I’m out of control
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
“Would you believe…”
   -- Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 (from _Get_Smart_)
%%
I’m not loafing.  I work so fast I’m always finished.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m not on drugs.  I AM drugs.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m not stupid, I’m not expendable, and I’m not going!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
“Come, Scott Free; let us hit the kitchen.  I have a secret stash of Oreos of
which you are welcome to partake.”
   -- the Martian Manhunter, from The Sandman, #5
%%
“I’ll tell you what kind of guy I was.  If you ordered a boxcar full of
sons-of-bitches and opened the door and only found me inside, you could
consider the order filled.”
   -- Robert Mitchem
%%
“People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how
hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.”
   -- Calvin, from _Calvin and Hobbes_
%%
“HACK, v.: the method of program development between final testing and
functional specification”
%%
Representative Tim Moor sponsored a resolution in the Texas House of
Representatives in Austin, Texas calling on the House to commend
Albert de Salve for his unselfish service to “his country, his state
and his community.”
$$
The resolution stated that “this compassionate gentleman’s
dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the
lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of
concern for their future.  He has been officially recognized by the
state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional
techniques involving population control and applied psychology.”
$$
The resolutiobn was passed unanimously.
$$
Representative Moore then revealed that he had only tabled the
motion to show how the legislature passes bills and resolutions often
without reading them or understanding what they say.  Albert de Salvo
was the Boston Strangler.
%%
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
%%
A king’s castle is his home.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
Ambition a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
%%
Anarchy is better that no government at all.
%%
Any small object when dropped will hide under a larger object.
%%
As you read the scroll, it vanishes…
%%
Automobile - A mechanical device that runs up hills and down people.
%%
Be moderate where pleasure is concerned, avoid fatigue.
%%
Brain -- the apparatus with which we think that we think.
%%
BATCH - A group, kinda like a herd.
%%
Computer hackers do it all night long.
%%
Computer modelers simulate it first.
%%
Computer programmers don’t byte, they nybble a bit.
%%
Computer programmers know how to use their hardware.
%%
Computers are not intelligent.  They only think they are.
%%
Courage is your greatest present need.
%%
CLEARASOL - Effective sunspot remover.
%%
Death is life’s way of telling you you’ve been fired.
%%
Death is Nature’s way of saying “slow down.”
%%
Do something unusual today.  Accomplish work on the computer.
%%
Drive defensively -- buy a tank.
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail friends.
%%
Fairy tales: horror stories for children to get them use to reality.
%%
Familiarity breeds children.
%%
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
%%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%%
Help support helpless victims of computer error.
%%
Herblock’s Law: if it is good, they will stop making it.
%%
History does not repeat itself, -- historians merely repeat each other.
%%
If you don’t change your direction, you may end up where you were headed.
%%
If you can’t be part of the solution, be part of the problem!
%%
In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared minds.
%%
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
   -- Albert Einstein
%%
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
It’s not hard to meet expenses, they’re everywhere.
%%
Jury -- Twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer.
%%
KODACLONE - duplicating film.
%%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%%
Life is what happens to you while you are planning to do something else.
%%
Lynch’s Law: When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
%%
Mediocrity thrives on standardization.
%%
MOP AND GLOW - Floor wax used by Three Mile Island cleanup team.
%%
Never lick a gift horse in the mouth.
%%
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
%%
Quoting one is plagiarism.  Quoting many is research.
%%
QUARKBAR - the candy with flavour and charm.
%%
QUASIMOTO - 4 wheeled hard-top moped made in France.
%%
Reality’s the only obstacle to happiness.
%%
Screw up your life, you’ve screwed everything else up.
%%
Silver’s law:   If Murphy’s law can go wrong it will.
%%
Some grow with responsibility, others just swell.
%%
SQWERTY - Computer keyboard sized down for use by children.
%%
SYSTEM GOING DOWN AT 4:45 THIS AFTERNOON FOR DISK CRASHING.
%%
The attention span of a computer is as long as its electrical cord.
%%
The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
%%
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
%%
The road to to success is always under construction.
%%
Those who can’t write, write help files.
%%
To be, or not to be, those are the parameters.
%%
To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.
%%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%%
TRAPEZOID - A device for catching zoids.
%%
Wasting time is an important part of life.
%%
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
When in doubt, don’t bother.
%%
Xerox does it again and again and again and…
%%
XMODEM - A spot-marking transfer protocol.
%%
YTERM - A terminal program for queries.
%%
When in doubt, ignore it.
%%
I’d insult you, but you’re not bright enough to notice.
%%
For three years, the young attorney had been taking his brief
vacations at this country inn.  The last time he’d finally managed
an affair with the innkeeper’s daughter.  Looking forward to an
exciting few days, he dragged his suitcase up the stairs of the inn,
then stopped short.  There sat his lover with an infant on her lap!
$$
“Helen, why didn’t you write when you learned you were pregnant?” he
cried.  “I would have rushed up here, we could have gotten married,
and the baby would have my name!”
$$
“Well,” she said, “when my folks found out about my condition, we
sat up all night talkin’ and talkin’ and decided it would be better
to have a bastard in the family than a lawyer.”
%%
God decided to take the devil to court and settle their differences
once and for all.
$$
When Satan heard this, he laughed and said, “And where do you think
you’re going to find a lawyer?”
%%
Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, an honest lawyer and an old drunk are
walking down the street together when they simultaneously spot a
hundred dollar bill.  Who gets it?  The old drunk, of course, the
other three are mythological creatures.
%%
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A: Fifty four.  Eight to argue, one to get a continuance, one to
object, one to demur, two to research precedents, one to dictate a
letter, one to stipulate, five to turn in their time cards, one to
depose, one to write interrogatories, two to settle, one to order a
secretary to change the bulb, and twenty-eight to bill for
professional services.
%%
When asked, “What is a contigent fee?” a lawyer answered, “A
contingent fee to a lawyer means, if I don’t win your suit, I get
nothing.  If I do win it, you get nothing.”
%%
“‘tis damn well *nobler* to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune, than to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing,
let ’em lick ya. Nay, fuck that…”
   -- Spider Robinson
%%
If you drop a Texas Aggie and a brick from 2000 ft up, which lands first?
$$
The brick lands first; the Aggie has to stop and ask directions twice.
%%
“Jesus saves!”
“Yes, and Moses invests.  So what’s the big deal?”
“Ah, but the Mongol hordes!”
%%
Nowadays, when oportunity knocks, you have to unlock both deadbolts,
remove the chain, and turn off the buglar alarm…
%%
If you believe the people that believe in reincarnation,
life sucks, then you die.  Then life sucks again.
%%
When TOR Books got a new computer typesetter, they used this as a test
message:
               The Necronomicon, Psalm 23

1.  Cthulhu is my swimming coach; I shall not want.
$$
2.  He maketh me to lie down in comfortable craftmatic beds; he leadeth
me beside the open bar; he restoreth my soul.
$$
3.  Yea, though I skulk through the valley of greatly disgruntled employers,
I will fear no evil. For thou, O Cthulhu, art with me, thy snorkel and
flippers they comfort me.
$$
4.Thou preparest a stiff drink for me in the presence of my enemies;
thou anointest my gills with Coppertone; my Flintstones jelly glass runneth
over.
$$
5.  Surely expensive European vacations, marital bliss, and winning Lotto
tickets will follow me the rest of my life; and I shall dwell in the
pressurized underwater dome of Cthulhu forever.
   -- from rec.humor.funny
%%
“All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by
prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power.  The swastika is
only one example of many in recent history.”
   -- American Bar Association task force on flag burning
%%
“The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to
sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
   -- Anatole France
%%
“…as long as there is a Legion of Super-Heroes, all else can surely
be made right.”
   -- Sensor Girl
%%
Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to Man.
%%
“I sat through it.  Why shouldn’t you?”
   -- David Letterman, it a spot promoting one of his shows
%%
“The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.”
   -- E. W. Dijkstra (1982)
%%
“Mamma, don’t let your babies grow up to be hackers.”
   -- Willie Nelson, with a little help from Bill Mathews
%%
“It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.”
   -- Walker Mangum ([e-mail])
%%
“It’s not what we don’t know that gets us into trouble, it’s what we know that
ain’t so.”
   -- Will Rogers
%%
“Escaping through the lily fields, I came across an empty space
!!
It trembled and exploded, left a bus stop in its place…”
   -- unknown
%%
“Civilisation is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does
not know everyone else.”
   -- Julian Jaynes
%%
We should all remember when Burroughs was using Virtual memory it was said to
be some kind of technical joke.  But later, hah, it was said to be ok.
$$
And it was because the word had come down from the mountain.
$$
IBM had spoken and the world listened.
$$
The world as it used to be.
$$
Amen.
   -- Fred Rump ([e-mail])
%%
“Genuinely skillful use of obscenities is uniformly absent on the Internet.”
   -- Karl Kleinpaste
%%
“…skill such as yours is evidence of a misspent youth.”
   -- Herbert Spencer
%%
“One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a
stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.”
   -- Gustave Flaubert (letter to Madame Louise Colet, August 12, 1846)
%%
“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original
in your work.”
   -- Gustave Flaubert
%%
“If one is going to steal, it is considered somewhat sporting to inform the
victims beforehand; for examples see any episodes of the BATMAN TV series.”
   -- Robert J Woodhead ([e-mail])
%%
“I HATE arbitrary limits, especially when they’re small.”
   -- Stephen Savitzky
%%
“With friends like these, who need hallucinations?”
   -- Buddy, “Night Court”
%%
0001 Have you ever used a computer?
!!
0002 … for more than 4 hours continuously?
!!
0003 … more than 8 hours?
!!
0004 … more than 16 hours?
!!
0005 … more than 32 hours?
   -- from The Hacker Test, Version 1.0, by Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas
%%
“It just goes to show what you can do if you’re a total psychotic.”
   -- Woody Allen
%%
“Insanity is hereditary.  You can catch it from your kids.”
   -- Erma Brombeck
%%
“My father was an amazing man.  The older I got, the smarter he got.”
   -- Mark Twain
%%
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t.”
   -- Author Unknown
%%
“Flextime:
$$
Starting a 10+ hour day up to an hour early (on a regular,
scheduled basis with the approval of an immediate supervisor).”
   -- A Controls “Volunteer”
%%
“Friends don’t let friends run Xenix.”
   -- Stephen J. Friedl
%%
“Let me control a planet’s oxygen supply, and I don’t care who makes the laws.”
   -- Great Cthuhlu’s Starry Wisdom Band (via Roger Leroux)
%%
“We have ways to make you scream.”
   -- Intel advertisement, in the June 1989 Doctor Dobbs Journal
%%
“I will contend that conceptual integrity is *the* most important consideration
in system design.”
   -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%%
So where the sheer incompetence of politicians and generals used to
start wars, the sheer incompetence of us computer people has now put an
end to it.  No mean feat.  For centuries humanity has been looking for
the Weapon That Would End War Forever.  We have found it.  War has
ended, not with the bang of a bomb, but with the gentle whisper of
crashing software.
   -- Gerard Stafleu ([e-mail])
%%
“Let’s give discredit where discredit is due.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
“Look ma!  Three arms!”
   -- J. Eric Townsend ([e-mail])
%%
“If the bulk of American SF can be said to be written by robots, about
robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written
by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits.”
   -- Michael Moorcock
%%
“Times are bad.  Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is
writing a book.”
   -- Cicero
%%
“I guess you just have to design carefully when you get near the edge.”
   -- Hugh LaMaster ([e-mail])
%%
“Lab rats seem to have been bred for cancer hypersensitivity by the medical
establishment and the FDA.  We are the kings and the rats taste our food.”
   -- James Salsman ([e-mail])
%%
This is a serious lapse of taste and judgement but does not imply that they
are stupid, lazy, or incompetent.  Indeed, their intelligence, diligence,
and competence in service to the x86 are all too depressingly obvious.
   -- Henry Spencer ([e-mail])
%%
“I asked you not to have a spaz attack in tx.general, BUT NOOOOO!!!!”
   -- Karl, via John Belushi
%%
I think most expert systems should be referred to as “that-guy-in-the-
corner-who-everyone-hates-but-can-answer-the-weirdest-questions
systems.”
!!
Or more succinctly, “nerd systems.”
   -- Peter da Silva, [e-mail]
%%
“He who flames improperly risks making an ash of himself!”
   -- Jeff Klumpp ([e-mail])
%%
“Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood.  Blood debts
must be repaid in kind.  The longer the delay, the greater the interest.”
   -- Chinese author Lu Xun, 1926
%%
“The United States has entered an anti-intellectual phase in its history,
perhaps most clearly seen in our virtually thought-free political life.”
   -- David Baltimore
%%
“Do not speak of what men deserve.  For we each of us deserve everything,
every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead Kings, and we each
of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger.   Have we not eaten
while another starved?  Will you punish us for that?  Will you reward us for
the virtue of starving while others ate?  No man earns punishment, no man
earns reward.  Free your mind of the idea of *deserving*, of *earning*, and
you will begin to be able to think.”
   -- Odo, The Prison Letters (Ursula LeGuin, _The Dispossessed_)
%%
“It has nothing to do with the size of Mr. Alnwick’s company.  We go after
companies large and small.”
   -- Rita Black, spokesperson for IBM, “Unix Today!”, 5/29/89, page 51
%%
“The Book says BURN and DESTROY repent and redeem and revenge and deploy and
rumble thee forth to the land of the unbelieving scum ’cause they don’t go
for what’s in the Book and that makes ’em BAD.”
   -- Frank Zappa
%%
“some people get pissed
 when you play with your mind
 in a different way
 than they play with theirs
 these people are called ASSHOLES”
   -- the jambi’s
%%
“Big Brother is hallucinating.”
   -- Elizabeth D Zwicky ([e-mail]), title of a comp.risks article
%%
“When you’re a child, you pledge allegiance to the flag.  When you grow up,
you swear to uphold the Constitution.  Compare and contrast to the
President’s current actions.”
   -- Larry Wake ([e-mail])
%%
“L’extension des privileges des femmes est le principe general de tous progres
sociaux.”
   -- Charles Fourier, 1808
%%
Q. What do you call three lawyers up to their necks in quicksand?
$$
A. Not enough quicksand.
%%
READ UNHAPPY - MAKNAM
   -- LISP 1.5
%%
“There can be no offense where none is taken”
   -- Japanese proverb
%%
Q. What’s all wrinkled and hangs out your underwear?
$$
A. Your mother.
%%
“To steal from one person is theft.  To steal from many is taxation.”
   -- Daiell’s Law (a take-off on Felson’s Law)
%%
“Reliable software must kill people reliably.”
   -- Andy Mickel
%%
“And now that the legislators and the do-gooders have
so futilely inflicted so many system upon society,
may they end up where they should have begun: may they
reject all systems, and try liberty…”
   -- Frederic Bastiat
%%
“To steal from a thief is not theft.  It is merely irony.”
   -- Zorro, while retrieving money taxed from Californians
%%
“That government is best which governs least.”
   -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
“That government is best which governs not at all.”
   -- Henry David Thoreau
%%
“Liberty is the mother not the daughter of order.”
   -- Proudhon
%%
“Care to expound, or are you just going to leave us all with the
impression that you’re merely an inarticulate asshole?”
   -- Jay “you ignorant splut!” Maynard ([e-mail])
$$
“Lest I leave the wrong impression, I’m not inarticulate.”
   -- Walker Mangum ([e-mail])
%%
“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your
aim.”
   -- Santayana
%%
“Life is full of surprises when you’re up th’ stream of consciousness
without a paddle…”
   -- Zippy the Pinhead
%%
“I woudn’t recommend sex, drugs, or Unix for everyone, but they work for me.”
   -- Jim Thompson ([e-mail]), paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson
%%
“This one’s got a lot more, uh, 640K that it can memorize.”
   -- CVN cable TV shopping channel
%%
“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.  Perhaps they
should live next door and just visit now and then.”
   -- Katherine Hepburn
%%
“We’re the weirdest monkeys ever.”
   -- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Uh-oh.  Atarians can’t hold a candle to the insecurity of Mac owners.  You
rankled Mac owners who feel the need defend yourself, please do so by flaming
in private.  And don’t start something you can’t finish.  I’m sure Apple’s OS
for the 68000-based Macintoshs will support multitasking just as soon as Jean
Louis-Gasse invents it.  In the meantime, do whatever you need to do to make
sure other systems that have advanced the state of personal computers don’t
enter your peripheral vision.  You’ll be a lot happier, we’ll be a lot happier.
   -- Chuck McManis ([e-mail])
%%
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
%%
“It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine some
of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very sharp,
probably not someone here on campus.”
   -- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, quoted in “The Technique,”
Georgia Tech’s newspaper, after the computer worm hit the Internet
%%
Personally, should I ever form a globe spanning comglomerate,
I intend to do it fairly and without malice or dirty politics.
$$
I hope you fellows don’t make that too difficult a task;
I would have to have to have you all killed.
   -- David Neal ([e-mail])
%%
The notion of ideas as infectious diseases is one to which most
authoritarian religions and governments subscribe, and they hold
massive “hygienic” burnings of the “viral DNA” behind the
ideas.  Promulgators of these “diseased” ideas are called “carriers of
spiritual impurity” (to use one phrase now popular in China) and
attempts are made to prevent the spread of these diseases.  This is a
naive and dangerous view of how ideas work and it is disturbing to see
it rationalized into Western pop psychology.
   -- Tim Maroney ([e-mail])
%%
“Every institution I’ve ever been associated with has tried to screw me.”
-- Stephen Wolfram
%%
“Fraternities have no SLACK, no matter how slack-jawed they may appear.  I
taught elementary calculus here at the University of SLACK for several
years, and have observed these folks carefully.  Although some of them
looked like they had SLACK, it’s clear to me that this was just the result
of not getting enough sleep after the puking contest.  I mean, those guys
don’t watch enough television to have real SLACK.”
   -- William K Glunt ([e-mail])
%%
“I’ll put an end to the idea that a woman’s body belongs to her … the
practice of abortion shall be exterminated with a strong hand.”
   -- Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_
%%
When asked, “If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United
States, then why do you live here?” Mencken replied, “Why do men go to zoos?”
%%
“Is it just me, or does there seem to be an inordinate number of lurkers
whose heads are imploding lately?   Maybe all these alternative viewpoints
are too much for them to handle.”
   -- Trent Wohlschlaeger ([e-mail])
%%
“If projectile vomiting ever becomes an Olympic event, you’ll do yourself
proud.”
   -- Hobson, “Arthur II”
%%
“Oh honey, this is just the beginning.  Stick with me and we’ll claw our way
to the top.”
   -- John Water’s “Hairspray”
%%
“The script had been written by this legendary dead guy that we know and there
were about fifty-eleven-hundred pages of it.  Of this eight words were
completely readable.  These were ‘oranges’ in the title and ‘Close the
curtains, Geoffrey, I’m amphibious’, which was right at the end.  To be
perfectly frank man, I wasn’t even 100% sure about amphibious.”
   -- Waldo “D.R.” Dobbs, “D.R. and Quinch go to Hollywood”.
%%
“Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on
your computer.”
   -- stolen from Brian Gollum
%%
“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; yeah, right.  To paraphrase, the net
finds its own uses for garbage.”
   -- Eric Hughes ([e-mail])
%%
“[Leslie Stahl was] a pussy compared to Rather.”
   -- George Bush
%%
“Failing to get them to do it your way might mean they’re stupid, but it also
means you failed to get them to do it your way.”
   -- Cal Keegan
%%
“Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest.”
   -- Jimmy Swaggart, TV preacher, self-described pornography addict who paid
prostitutes to commit “pornographic acts”; hypocrite
%%
“I think contraception is disgusting -- people using each other for pleasure.”
   -- Joseph Scheidler, Director, Pro-Life Action League
%%
“We are … opposed to all forms of birth control with the exception of natural
family planning [the rhythm method.]”
   -- Judie Brown, President, American Life Lobby
%%
“I don’t think Christians should use birth control.  You consummate your
marriage as often as you like and if you have babies, you have babies.”
   -- Randall Terry, one of the people behind the current campaign to blockade
health clinics and publicly harass and humiliate women
%%
“We are starting a movement in the state legislatures … to forbid the
installation of clinics that dispense contraceptives.”
   -- Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
%%
“I listen to feminists and all these radical gals -- most of them are
failures.  They’ve blown it.  Some of them have been married, but
they married some
Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom.  These women
just need a man in the house.  That’s all they need.  Most of the feminists
need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home.  And
they blew it and they’re mad at all men.  Feminists hate men.  They’re
sexist.  They hate men -- that’s their problem.”
-- Reverend Jerry Falwell, sexist-to-the-max
%%
“Women have babies and men provide the support.  If you don’t like the way
we’re made you’ve got to take it up with God.”
   -- Phyllis Schlafly, hypocrite who has had a business career and run for
public office, and who apparently wishes to deny those opportunities
to other women
%%
“Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions.”
-- Phyllis Schlafly
%%
“Incest is a voluntary act on the woman’s part.”
   -- Charles Rice, Professor of Law, Notre Dame University, dweeb; in a pamphlet
published by the American Life League
%%
“It’s very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear
of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility,
or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage [sic] baby
even ten years later when she may be happily married.”
   -- Phyllis Schlafly
%%
“Shake hands with your mother again.”
   -- from an old hymn
%%
“Justice, like lightning, should ever appear
!!
 To some men hope, to other mean fear.”
   -- Jefferson Pierce
%%
“No!   We will not die like dogs.  We will fight like lions!”
   -- The Three Amigos
%%
“’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
   -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
%%
“My head is bloodied, but unbowed.”
   -- From the poem “Invictus”
%%
“(Humanity) is the measure of all things.”
   -- Protagoras
%%
“Many are the wonders of the Universe,
!!
 and none so wonderful as Mankind!”
   -- Sophocles
%%
Q.  How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
$$
A.  Three - one to do it and two to argue whether it’s principled to change it.
   -- Bill Ware (?)
%%
Q. How many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A. None - the market will take care of it.
   -- Bill Ware (?)
%%
“Oh yeah, laugh now!  But when the millions start pouring in, I’ll be the one
at Burger King, sucking down Whoppers at my own private table!”
   -- Al Bundy
%%
“Everything to excess.  Moderation is for monks.”
   -- Lazarus Long
%%
“No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot soldier in a party
or movement.  He will always find himself out of step.”
   -- Sidney Hook
%%
“Socialism is power, power, and more power.”
   -- Oswald Spengler, Hitler’s intellectual forebear
%%
“The police are not there to create disorder.   The police are there to
preserve disorder.”
   -- The late Richard J. Daly, Mayor of the city of Chicago
%%
“Government sucks.”
   -- Ben Olson
%%
“Yea, I am a Capitalist,
 the most dangerous radical of all,
 the most fearsome threat to Mankind’s foes,
 for I am Man Himself.”
   -- Jeff Daiell, in “The Most Dangerous Radical”
%%
“…for the Orchestra which is Business
 reflects the Symphony of the Mind,
 the Crown which makes Man King.”
   -- Jeff Daiell, in “The Most Dangerous Radical”
%%
“Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies.”
   -- D’Hericault
%%
“It had to be said: the world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrifice.”
   -- Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand’s _The Fountainhead_
%%
“Why can one call the time component of the preceding 4-vector by the name
energy?  For two reasons:  First, because this time component has the correct
units -- the units of mass…”
   -- From “Spacetime Physics” by Taylor and Wheeler
%%
1776 - 1984
!!
There Is No Middle Ground
   -- a button from the Libertarian Party
%%
Sing and Dance the New Deal Away
   -- A button from Our People’s Underworld
%%
Deliver Us From Taxation
   -- button, source forgotten
%%
“Life in a free society is friendly, prosperous, pleasant, cultured, and
ever-longer.”
   -- Jeff Daiell, 1989, in contrapoint to Hobbes
%%
“I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the
sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
   -- John Galt, in Ayn Rand’s _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
Objects in your terminal are close than they appear.
%%
“The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is
evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for the sake
of something else.”
   -- Aristotle
%%
“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind -- or not to have a mind at all.  How
true that is.”
   -- V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro College
Fund slogan in an address to the group (from Newsweek, May 22nd, 1989)
%%
“Why do schools let anyone post?  Why not just leave it to us professionals?”
   -- S. M. Ryan ([e-mail])
$$
“Because there is no necessary relation between having a degree and the
attribute of optical rectosis, as your posting demonstrates.”
   -- Bill Wells (twwells!bill)
%%
“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!”
   -- Dylan Thomas
%%
“Umm, square root of two?  Ouch!”
   -- The guy who blew a hole in the Pythagoreans’ assertion that all numbers can
be represented as a ratio of two integers, so they killed him
%%
Proclaim liberty throughout the land until all the inhabitants thereof.
   -- Leviticus 25:10
%%
“Where is it written in the Constitution that you may take children from their
parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles
of any war in which the folly or wickedness of government may engage it?”
-- Daniel Webster, 1814
%%
“… they [the Indians] are not running but are coming on.”
   -- note sent from Lt. Col Custer to other officers of the 7th Regiment
at the Little Bighorn
%%
“Hello to married men I’ve known.
 I’ll soon have a wife and leave yours alone.”
   -- Charlie, singing “Go Home With Bonnie Jean”, in
Lerner’s and Lowe’s “Brigadoon”
%%
“A poet only writes about the things he cannot do.”
   -- A canard, sung by Meg in “The One Love of My Life”,
in Lerner’s and Lowe’s “Brigadoon”
%%
Do standards inevitably cause industries to calcify into obsolete
technology?  Suppose we journey to the plains of Shinar and build a tower of
bricks reaching to heaven.  (That’s the Tower of Babel, for those without a
reading familiarity with the Book of Genesis.)  Look, God Himself knows what
standards can do, he even said something like “The Sons of Men are all of one
tongue and one purpose, and now nothing shall be impossible for them.”  So the
Ancient of Days had to step in and give us the wonderful gift of
cultural diversity,
to add such a whopping translation overhead on every information
transaction that we
bogged down forever into chaos and warfare.
  -- Dan Mocsny ([e-mail])
%%
Vertical fragmentation is an inescapable part of technological
progress.  If we compare the 8085 to the 80386 or a MIPS RISC CPU, we
can hardly expect to transparently preserve our entire intellectual
investment in the 8085 when we move up to new hardware with vastly
greater underlying capability.  The bloodshed involved in upgrading is
highly variable.  Since computers are in theory general-purpose
information processors, with the appropriate software tools the user
can “mine” old information and use it on new hardware.  Nonetheless,
when hardware advances become revolutionary enough we eventually have
to throw out some of our old standards.  In this case we face a clear
trade between the cost of junking our investment in our earlier ways
of doing things vs. foregoing the potential benefits of new and better
hardware.  The bigger the previous investment, the bigger the benefits
of upgrading have to be before vertical fragmentation is justifiable.
   -- Dan Mocsny ([e-mail])
%%
Horizontal fragmentation results from market manipulation, the whim
of vendors, sheer incompetence, contempt for users, or the inability
of rival vendors to communicate.  I’m talking about nonsense like
having 50 MS-DOS programs that each somehow find a different function
key to provide on-line help.  I’m talking about differences between
products that make them incompatible and inconsistent while providing
no clear-cut technical advantage.  Horizontal fragmentation vastly
increases the intellectual burden separating computer users from
solving their problems.  Since it decreases the value of the computer
to the user while providing no offsetting benefit, it makes the
computer market smaller.  This must eventually translate on average
into smaller paychecks for everyone who has tied their fortune to that
market.
   -- Dan Mocsny ([e-mail])
%%
Once at a dinner party when he was a young man, Winston Churchill, who
at the time had a moustache, was seated next to an older woman.   She
said to him, “Young man, I care neither for your politics nor for
your moustache.”
$$
He reassured here, “You are as unlikely to come into contact with the
one as with the other.”
%%
After winning the pennant one year, Casey Stengel commented, “I couldn’ta
done it without my players.”
%%
The Mets drafted a catcher as their first-ever pick.  Asked why,
Casey Stengel replied, “Well, without a catcher, we’d have a lot
of passed balls, don’tcha think?”
%%
One time as manager, Casey Stengel was sitting next to Mickey Mantle.
He mentioned playing in  Yankee Stadium, and Mantle expressed
surprise.  Stengel asked, “You think I was *born* sixty years old?”
%%
“[In the U. S. Army] An officer does not take an oath of loyalty to the
Commander-in-Chief.   He takes an oath of loyalty to the Constitution.”
   -- Sam Donaldson
%%
“Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged
about forever.”
   -- button at the Boston Computer Museum
%%
“I don’t believe that the answer to white racism is black racism.”
   -- Spiro T. Agnew, then Governor of Maryland
%%
“When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.”
   -- Calvin Coolidge
%%
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.”
   -- Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand’s _The Fountainhead_
%%
“On the market, there can be no such thing as exploitation.”
   -- Murray Rothbard
%%
>This is a duplicate article, and old as hell … now, who could be doing this???
$$
“Somebody along the line fucked up.”
   -- Spenser Aden
%%
Why would you WANT to port C news to your PC?  Wouldn’t it be smarter
and about as cost-effective to port your PC over to the trashcan and buy
a real computer that runs a real operating system like Unix?
   -- Brian Kantor ([e-mail])
%%
It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop
%%
“Anyone who wants to be paid for writing software is a fascist asshole.”
   -- Richard M. Stallman
%%
“There is no idea so sacred that it cannot be questioned, analyzed…
and ridiculed.”
   -- Cal Keegan
%%
Parking fees that Universal Studios collected from picketers of _The Last
Temptation of Christ_: $4,500
   -- Harper’s Index Nov. 1988
%%
“Unemployment is an inconvenience.”
   -- John F. Haugh II
%%
“Why do trans-atlantic transfers take so long?”
“Electrons don’t swim very fast.”
   [e-mail] and [e-mail]
%%
“In general, it is best to assume that the network is filled with malevolent
entities that will send in packets designed to have the worst possible effect”
   -- the draft “Requirements for Internet Hosts” RFC
%%
“SCCS, the source motel!  Programs check in and never check out!”
   -- Ken Thompson
%%
“A pacifist who calls the police isn’t one; hired violence is still violence.”
   -- Clayton E. Cramer optilink!cramer
%%
“I am astounded … at the wonderful power you have developed - and terrified
at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.”
   -- Arthur Sullivan, on seeing a demonstration of Edison’s new talking machine
in 1888
%%
“England’s monarchy is how old?  1000 years?  Jesus, you guys must have a hell
of a lot of laws!”
   -- an anonymous sysadmin
%%
“… users of a tool are willing to meet you halfway; if you do ninety percent
of the job, they will be ecstatic.”
   -- Software Tools, p.136.
%%
“Don’t worry about things that you have no control over, because you
have no control over them.  Don’t worry about things that you have
control over, because you have control over them.”
   -- Mickey Rivers
%%
“Master, why is the letter ‘i’ the symbol for current?”
“Because there is no letter ‘i’ in the word ‘current’.”
“Master, why do we use the letter ‘j’ for sqrt(-1)?”
“Because we use the letter ‘i’ for current.”
Whereupon the Master struck the Disciple, and the Disciple became enlightened.
%%
“The hand that rocks the cradle can also cradle a rock.”
   -- Feminist saying, circa 1968-1972
%%
“VMS isn’t an operating system, it’s a playpen for DEC system programmers.”
   -- Herb Blashtfalt
%%
Quoting court decisions is not a very useful activity when arguing with
someone who is engaging in their constitutionally protected right to
disagree with those decisions and attempting to change the environment
in which they are made.  You might believe that any legal decision by the
courts is ipso facto correct and moral, but that’s not the way most folks
in this country operate.  Look at Roe v. Wade… I happen to agree with
the goals of that decision, but there are a hell of a lot of people who
don’t, and they have managed to get it changed, to some extent.  Jeff is
in the same position, and can quite reasonably argue that these statistics
are irrelevent to his position.
   -- Peter da Silva ([e-mail])
%%
“Optimization is not some mystical state of grace, it is an intricate act
of human labor which carries real costs and real risks.”
   -- Tom Neff
%%
“Peace is our profession.”
   -- Motto of Strategic Air Command
%%
“Peace in our profession.   War is just a hobby.”
   -- Stationery available in PX, Barksdale SAC AFB
%%
Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned -- I
support your right to enjoy it.  However, I would appreciate it if you
exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to
share your dogma, rapture or necrodestination.
   -- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
In the future, etiquette will become more and more important.  That doesn’t
mean knowing which fork to pick up -- I mean basic consideration for the
rights of other animals (human beings included) and the willingness,
whenever practical, to tolerate the other guy’s idiosyncracies.
   -- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your
mother, your Dad, your priest, to some guy on television, to any of the
people telling you how to do your shit, then you *deserve* it.  If you
want to be a schmuck, be a schmuck -- but don’t wait around for respect
from other people -- a schmuck is a schmuck.
   -- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
“How’s YOUR Endless Project coming?”
   -- Mark Diekhans
%%
listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door;
let’s go.
   -- ee cummings
%%
“Do not stop to ask what is it;
 Let us go and make our visit.”
   -- T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
%%
“Unless you are very rich and very eccentric, you will not enjoy the luxury of
a computer in your own home.”
   -- Edward Yourdon, 1975.
%%
“Just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that isn’t immune to bullets.”
   -- The Brigadier, Dr Who.
%%
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though
checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither
enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows
not victory or defeat.”
   -- Theodore Roosevelt
%%
“Cache is, by definition, a compromise.”
   -- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
$$
“Yes, Cache is a compromise.  Mainly to your wallet and the speed of light.”
   -- Jim Hutchison (ucsd!celerity!hutch)
%%
“If it doesn’t come from you, shouldn’t it come from Gerber?”
   -- Bristol Meyers baby formula ad
%%
“If you substitute other kinds of intellectual property into the GNU
manifesto, it quickly becomes absurd.”
   -- Cal Keegan
%%
Instead of whining to the net about it, why don’t you talk to the news admins
at Berkeley?  If they won’t trash sci.skeptic there, pass around a
petition.  Threaten to set their dog on fire.  Whatever.  If nothing works,
you can, as a last resort, unsubscribe.
   -- Dave Mack, [e-mail], responds to a flame in news.groups
%%
“Writing programs needs genius to save the last order or the last millisecond.  It
is great fun, but it is a young man’s game.  You start it with great
enthusiasm when you first start programming, but after ten years you get a
bit bored with it, and then you turn to automatic-programming languages and
use them because they enable you to get to the heart of the problem that you
want to do, instead of having to concentrate on the mechanics of getting the
program going as fast as you possibly can, which is really nothing more than
doing a sort of crossword puzzle.”
   -- Christopher Strachey, 1962
%%
“And the Lord God said unto Moses -- and correctly, I believe …”
   -- Field Marshal Montgomery, opening a chapel service
%%
“No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in
his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables.”
   -- Archie Goodwin
%%
“36 percent of the American Public believes that boiling radioactive milk
makes it safe to drink.”
   -- results of a survey by Jon Miller at Northern Illinois University
%%
Annex Canada now!  We need the room, and who’s going to stop us?
   -- A Tom Neff .signature
%%
“There’s nothing remarkable about it.  All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”
   -- J. S. Bach
%%
“Of course, someone who knows more about this will correct me if I’m wrong,
and someone who knows less will correct me if I’m right.”
   -- David Palmer ([e-mail])
%%
“War is the health of the State.”
   -- Proudhon (?)
%%
“No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the Legislature is in
session.”
   -- Lysander Spooner
%%
“I was brought up in the other service; but I knew from the first that the
Devil was my natural master and captain and friend.  I saw that he was in
the right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only from fear.”
   -- Shaw, “The Devil’s Disciple”
%%
/*
 * this atrocity is necessary on sparc because registers modified
 * by the child get propagated back to the parent via the window
 * save/restore mechanism.
 */
   -- SunOS 4.0 vfork.h
%%
“Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press, and that cannot be
limited without being lost.”
   -- Thomas Jefferson (1786)
%%
Commenting on the advantages of bisexuality, Woody Allen once remarked “It doubles
your chances of getting a date on Saturday night.”
%%
Definition of a hermaphrodite: a bisexual built for two.
   -- Jeff Daiell
%%
AN EXPOSTULATION (Against too many writers of science fiction)

  Why did you lure us on like this,
  Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,
  Building (as though we cared for size!)
  Empire that cover galaxies,
  If at journey’s end we find
  The same old stuff we left behind,
  Well-worn Tellurian stories of
  Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,
  Whose setting might as well have been
  The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bethnel Green?
$$
  Why should I leave this green floored cell,
  Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,
  Unless, outside its guarded gates,
  Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits,
  Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
  Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
  Or Wonder, laying on one’s heart
  That finger tip at which we start
  As if some thought too swift and shy
  For some reason’s grasp had just gone by?
   -- C. S. Lewis
%%
“Your reality is lies and balderdash, and I’m glad to say that I have no grasp
of it.”
   -- Baron Munchausen
%%
“Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey
wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup.  That’s lost.”
   -- Ivan Chtcheglov
%%
“I’ve brought Gatsby to life.  I’ve accounted for his money.  I’ve fixed up
the two weak chapters (VI and VII).  I’ve improved his first party.  I’ve
broken up his long narrative in Chapter VIII.”
   -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, on revising his galley proofs
%%
The Law of Software Envelopment
$$
Every program at MIT attempts to expand until it can read mail.
!!
Those programs which cannot expand are replaced by ones which can.
%%
“The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain.”
   -- Cal Keegan
%%
“Slime is the agony of water.”
   -- Jean-Paul Sartre
%%
“I have discovered the heart of bushido: to die!”
   -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo
%%
“…an animal loses not only its life but also its third dimension.”
   -- Roger M. Knutson, in _Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of
Roads, Streets,and Highways_
%%
“… and I realized, we did not live in a scientific society.”
   -- R. P. Feynman, “Cargo cult science”
%%
I think the problem isn’t the amount of knowledge we have to assimilate
in our world, but the rate at which we can assimiliate it.  Science,
engineering, and technology do not yield the “whys” of truth,
only the “hows.”  In fact, they are not truths, but opinions from
the current reigning theories of how we think the physical world works.
   -- eugene miya, [e-mail]
%%
“People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how
hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.”
   -- Calvin
%%
“These patriots don’t mince words…  Okay, sure, they *are* dangerous,
hopelessly ignorant, inbred, retarded borderline lunatics with an
insatiable lust for the blood of sinners -- but at least they’re *honest*
about it.”
   -- Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the Subgenius, about
a group known as Free Love Ministries, in his book _High Weirdness By Mail_
%%
“My past is my own.”
   -- The Shadow (DC Comics)
%%
“The Heinlein Woman to me is this woman who goes out and rules the galaxy,
smokes a cigar, uses a machine gun and all, but what she really wants is to
bring her husband his slippers.”
   -- paraphrase, based on peter@sugar’s memory of a quote by Joan D. Vinge
%%
The coming thing, Cowboy thinks.  Live forever in a bodily incarnation of
the eye-face, not limited to the speed of artifically enhanced
neurotransmitters but approaching the speed of light, extending the limits
of the interface, the universe.  Brain contained in a perfect liquid
crystal analog.  Nerves like the strings of a steel guitar.  Heart a
spinning turbopump.  The Steel Cowboy, his body a screaming monochrome
flicker, dispensing justice and righting wrongs.  Who was thas masked AI?
Dunno, pardner, but he left this silver casting of a crystal circuit.
$$
To Cowboy, it sounded pretty good.
   -- Walter Jon Williams, “Hardwired”
%%
“What’s the date?”
$$    “May the fourth.”
“Then May the fourth be with you.”
   -- Count Duckula
%%
“Once you’ve had real champagne, you can never go back to Asti Spimanti.”
   -- Georgette Lundberg
%%
“Life is a pinball machine.  You bounce around for a while, and then you drain.”
   -- Joe Bak
%%
“The wife you save may be your own.”
   -- Unofficial slogan of supporters of one of FDR’s sons,
a notorious womanizer, during the son’s first congressional race
%%
“One more drink and I would have been under the host.”
   -- Dorothy Parker
%%
“If this country is worth saving, it’s worth saving at a profit.”
   -- H. L. Hunt
%%
“As long as you’ve lit one candle, you’re allowed to curse the darkness.”
   -- Walt Leipold ([e-mail])
%%
It seems that Mary Poppins has moved to California.  Yep, she has
started a business telling people’s fortunes.  But, she doesn’t read
palms or tea leaves, she smells one’s breath.
$$
Thats right, the sign outside reads:
$$
Super California Mystic Expert Halitosis
%%
I’m not tense, just terribly alert
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m not unemployed -- just looking for the perfect job
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m pink, therefore I’m spam
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’m sorry my karma ran overy your dogma
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Immanuel doesn’t pun, he Kant
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Implementing systems is 95% boredom and 5% sheer terror
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Indecision is the basis of flexibility
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
In your heart you know it’s flat
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Is the surface of a planet the right place for an expanding
technological civilization?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Is there really a United States, or just a bunch of people pretending?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
It’s hard to think of you as the end result of millions of years
of evolution.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
It’s never too late to have a happy childhood
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
It’s not a bug, its an undocumented feature
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
It’s not a dungeon -- it’s a fortified underground defence installation
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
It’s not the principle of the thing, it’s the money
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
It’s you and me against the world -- when do we attack?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’ve been seduced by the chocolate side of the Force
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
I’ve had fun before.  This isn’t it.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Jeez if you love honkus!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out
to get you
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Knowing Murphy’s Law won’t help either
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Let me control a planet’s oxygen supply, and I don’t care
who makes the laws
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Anyone caught smoking near this computer had BETTER be on fire!
   -- Jay’s statement about those who choose to commit suicide in a
rather painful way, often inflicting this on those about them.
%%
A neat desktop is the sign of a sick mind
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Never make anything simple and efficient when it can be complex and
wonderful
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Nobody can fix the economy!  Nobody can be trusted with their finger on
the button!  Nobody’s perfect!

      Vote for NOBODY!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Nuke the Smurfs
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button (in fond memory of Beck)
%%
Of course you can’t flap your arms and fly to the moon.  After a while you
run out of air to push against.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Personifiers Unite!  You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but
that’s the way to bet
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Real programmers write self-modifying code.
%%
Sushido -- The Way of the Tuna
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
There are very few personal problems which can’t be solved by
suitable application of high explosives.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
    (Jay notes: this also can be applied to personel problems)
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse divine
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Under the most carefully controlled conditions of temperature,
density, and pressure, the organism will do what it damn well pleases.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t eat quiche.  They can’t even spell it.  They like Twinkies, Coke,
and scorching Szechwan food.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t write application programs, they program right down to the bare
metal.  Application programming is for dullards who can’t do systems
programming.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t write specs.  Users should be grateful for whatever they get;
they’re lucky to get any programs at all.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t comment their code.  If it was hard to write, it should be hard
to understand and even harder to modify.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t document.  Documentation is for simpletons who can’t read listings
or the object code from the hex dump.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t draw flowcharts.  Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterates’ form
of documentation.  Cavemen drew flowcharts, and look how much good it
did them.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t read manuals.  Reliance on a reference is the hallmark of the
novice and the coward.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t write in COBOL.  COBOL is for gum-chewing dimwits who maintain
ancient payroll programs.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t write in FORTRAN.  FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white
socks.  They get excited over finite state analysis and nuclear
simulations.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t write in PL/I.  PL/I is for insecure anal-retentives who can’t
choose between COBOL and FORTRAN.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t program in BASIC.  Actually, NO programmers write in BASIC after
puberty sets in.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t program in APL, unless the whole program can be written on one
line.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t write in LISP.  Only wimpy programs contain more parenthesis
than code.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t program in DATABUS.  DATABUS is only used by NYC sysops and reborn
Apex Tech drones who think that a combination of COBOL and assembly code
is the real solution to the world’s problems.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t write in PASCAL, ADA, BLISS, or any of those other sissy C.S.
languages.  Strong typing is a crutch for people with weak memories.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Never get it right the first time.  But if you throw them on the
machine they can be patched and/or kludged into working order in “only
a few” 30-hour debugging sessions.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Never work 9 to 5.  If any real programmers are around at 9am, it’s
because they were up all night.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t play tennis or any other sport which requires a change of clothes.
Mountain climbing is okay, and real programmers wear mountain climbing
boots to work in case a mountain suddenly springs up in the middle of
the machine room.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Dislike structured programming.  Structured programming is for compulsive
neurotics who were prematurely toilet-trained.  They wear neckties and
line up pencils carefully on an otherwise neat desk.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t like the “Team Programming” concept.  Unless, of course, they’re
the Chief Programmer.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Have no use for managers.  Managers are a necessary evil.  They exist
only to deal with personnel bozos, bean counters, senior planners, and
other mental defectives.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Scorn floating point arithmetic.  The decimal point was invented for
pansy bed-wetters who are unable to “think big.”
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t drive clapped-out Mavericks.  They prefer BMW’s, Lincolns, or
pickup trucks with floor shifts.  Fast motorcycles are highly regarded.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t believe in schedules.  Planners “make up” schedules.  Managers
“firm up” schedules.  Frightened coders strive to meet schedules.  Real
programmers ignore schedules.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Like vending machine popcorn.  Coders pop it in the microwave oven.  Real
programmers just use the heat given off by the CPU.  They can tell
which jobs are running just by listening to the rate of the popping.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Know every nuance of every instruction and use them all in every real
program.  Candyass architects won’t allow execute instructions to address
another execute instruction.  Real programmers despise petty restrictions.
%%
REAL PROGRAMMERS
  …Don’t bring brown bag lunches.  If the vending machine sells it, they
eat it.  If the vending machine doesn’t sell it, they don’t eat it.
Vending machines don’t sell quiche…
%%
My brain - that’s my second favorite organ!
   --  Sleeper (Woody Allen)
%%
I have a PhD  in oral sex.
!!
Do you have to take any Spanish with that?
   -- Sleeper (Woody Allen)
%%
I’m not the heroic type.  I was beaten up by Quakers.
   -- Sleeper (Woody Allen)
%%
I can’t believe you haven’t had sex in 200 years.  204
if you count my marriage.
   -- Sleeper (Woody Allen)
%%
I’m dead; they’re talking about wheat.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
The prisoners are given one meal a day.  That meal is a bowl of steam.
   -- Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen)
%%
Sex without love is an empty experience.
!!
Yes, but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
You are the greatest lover I have ever had.
!!
Well, I practice a lot when I’m alone.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
Empty sex is better than no sex at all, right?
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
Gina has just done a definitive cinematic study of Gummo
Marx.  Interestingly enough, he was the one Marx brother never to appear
in any movies.
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
Would you sign my left breast?
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
I had two heart attacks before I bought this exercise bicycle.
!!
And since then?
!!
I’ve also had two.
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
I had a great time.  It was like the Nuremburg Trials.
   -- Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen)
%%
Marriage is the death of hope.
   -- A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (Woody Allen)
%%
Sex alleviates tension.  Marriage causes it.
   -- A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (Woody Allen)
%%
Did I catch you at a bad time?
!!
Twins, Max.  Sixteen year old twins.  Think of the mathematical
possibilities.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
There’s no garbage in California.
!!
That’s because they turn it into television shows.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
Sex with you is really a Kafkaesque experience.
!!
Thank you.
!!
It’s a compliment.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
I’m tired of making love to a woman I feel inferior to.
   -- Interiors (Woody Allen)
%%
Thank you for clearing up my sinuses.
   -- What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (Woody Allen)
%%
Didn’t you hear?  Commentary and Dissent merged and became Dissentary.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
Oh father, he who died during childbirth!
   -- Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were
Afraid to Ask (Woody Allen)
%%
TB, or not TB, that is the congestion.  Consumption be done about it?  Of
cough, of cough.
   -- Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid
to Ask (Woody Allen)
%%
Suppose he’s masturbating!  I’m liable to wind up on the ceiling!
   -- Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid
to Ask (Woody Allen)
%%
Those men in the French resistance were really brave, having to
listen to Maurice Chevalier sing all the time.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
Fellas, you can all go fuck yourselves.
   -- The Front (Woody Allen)
%%
What are you doing Saturday night?
!!
Committing suicide.
!!
What are you doing Friday night?
   -- Play It Again, Sam (Woody Allen)
%%
Insane?  That’s what Masters and Johnson said when I built a four
hundred foot diaphragm!  Birth control for an entire nation at once!
   -- Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were
Afraid to Ask (Woody Allen)
%%
After fifteen minutes, I wanted to marry her, and after thirty
minutes I completely gave up the idea of stealing her purse.
   -- Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen)
%%
The Napoleon must be completed before he completes Beef Wellington!  The
future of Europe hangs in the balance.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
We need some sperm.
   -- Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen)
%%
You would have to masturbate into a cup.
   -- Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen)
%%
Do any of you prisoners have any questions?
!!
Yes, is it all right for a girl to pet on the first date?  I mean,
if both parties are mature and liberal?
   -- Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen)
%%
You can’t learn to become real.  It’s like learning to become a midget.
   -- The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen)
%%
You can have her at the old price; which is whatever
you want to give me.
   -- Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen)
%%
I never want to marry.  I just want to get divorced.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
The official language of San Marcos is Swedish.  All boys under the
age of sixteen years old, are now, sixteen years old.  Underwear
must be changed every half hour.  It will be worn on the outside, so
we can check.
   -- Bananas (Woody Allen)
%%
You think you’re God!
!!
Well, I gotta model myself after somebody!
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
I was almost shot and killed before the opening credits!
   -- What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (Woody Allen)
%%
Would you like some wine to get you in the mood?
!!
I’ve been in the mood since the late 1700’s.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
Never kill a man, especially if it means taking his life.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
Don’t knock masturbation; it’s sex with someone I love.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
I’ve never had the wrong kind of orgasm.  My worst one was
right on the money.
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
I worked with Freud in Vienna.  We broke over the concept of penis
envy.  He thought it should be limited to women.
   -- Zelig (Woody Allen)
%%
I have to get to town.  I teach an advanced masturbation class at
the University, and if I’m late they start without me.
   -- Zelig (Woody Allen)
%%
I’m treating two sets of siamese twins with split personalities. I’m
being paid by eight people.
   -- Zelig (Woody Allen)
%%
Why should I move to a city where the only cultural advantage is that
I can make a right turn on a red light?
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
One thing about intellectuals, they proved that they can be
absolutely brilliant and have no idea what’s going on.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
Too much emphasis is placed on the orgasm in life.
!!
Who said that?
!!
I think it was Leopold and Loeb.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
This trial is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of
a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
   -- Bananas (Woody Allen)
%%
Your honor, I move for a mistrial.  Do you realize there’s not a
single homosexual in the jury?
!!
Yes, there is.
!!
Oh yeah?  Which one, the big guy on the end?
   -- Bananas (Woody Allen)
%%
We’re divorced two weeks, she’s dating a Nazi.
   -- Play it Again, Sam (Woody Allen)
%%
I was incredible in bed last night.  I never once had to sit up
and consult the manual.
   -- Play it Again, Sam (Woody Allen)
%%
If you are caught with the Queen, the King will cut off your arms,
your legs, and your head.
!!
Well, five out of six isn’t bad.
   -- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (Woody Allen)
%%
That day at the planetarium, I was seized by a mad impulse to throw
you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion.
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
One of the prison psychiatrists asked me if I thought sex was dirty,
and I said it is if you’re doing it right.
   -- Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen)
%%
She was a kindergarten teacher, she got into drugs, she moved to
San Francisco, she went into est, became a moonie, she’s with the
William Morris Agency now.
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind … everything
really valuable has to enter you through a different opening.
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
We like your movies - especially the early, funny ones.
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
To you, I’m an athiest.  To God, I’m the loyal opposition.
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
I can prove that if there is life anywhere else in the world,
they will have a Marxist economy.
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
For two days out of thirty, she was stable.
!!
Yeah, but what a two days!
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
I would trade that Oscar for one more second of life.
   -- Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
%%
I can’t do anything to the death - doctor’s orders.
   -- Love and death (Woody Allen)
%%
To love is to suffer.  To avoid suffering one must not love.  But
then one suffers from not loving.  Therefore to love is to suffer.  Not
to love is to suffer.  To suffer is to suffer.  To be happy is
to love.  To be happy, then, is to suffer.  But suffering makes one
unhappy.  Therefore to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer,
or suffer from too much happiness.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
What’s wrong with the sketch?
!!
Child molestation is a touchy subject.
!!
Read the papers, half the country is doing it!
Yes, but you name names.
!!
We don’t name names … okay, we say the pope.  We always say the pope.
   -- Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen)
%%
If God exists, why did he allow Nazis?
!!
How should I know?  I don’t even know how the can opener works.
   -- Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen)
%%
This Embassy is United States territory.  Nobody can be dragged
away and shot without the written consent of the American government.
   -- Don’t Drink the Water (Woody Allen)
%%
This gun shoots backwards … I’ve just killed myself.
   -- Casino Royale (Woody Allen)
%%
If you’re going to write about human beings, you might as well
make them people.
   -- The Front (Woody Allen)
%%
The worst thing you can say about Him is that basically
he’s an underachiever.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
A) Socrates is a man.
!!
B) All men are mortal.
!!
C) All men are Socrates.
!!
That means all men are homosexuals.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
I guess you could say I’m half saint, half whore.
!
Here’s hoping I get the half that eats.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
What will you do when French soldiers rape your sister?
!!
I don’t have a sister.
!!
That’s no answer!
!!
Who are they going to rape, Ivan?  They’ll throw up!
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
I could have been a better wife … I could have slept with you
more often … or once even.
!!
Once would have been nice.
   -- Love and Death (Woody Allen)
%%
Those who can’t do, teach.  Those who can’t teach, teach gym.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
The universe is expanding.
!!
What is that your business?
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
He was all schoolyard.  They threw him a football once, he tried
to dribble it.
   -- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
%%
Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!  Hello, I’m Rags.
   -- Sleeper (Woody Allen)
%%
He’ll do it!  I’ve seen him shoot a nose!
   -- Sleeper (Woody Allen)
%%
We’re up againsts a very clever tit … it shoots half and half.
   -- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (Woody Allen)
%%
When I was a little child, I was breast fed from falsies.
   -- Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask  (Woody Allen)
%%
Lascivious adulterer!
!!
Don’t call me that again until I look it up!  Ah, a lascivious
adulterer is a man who is a lascivious adulterer!  What kind of
book is this?
   -- What’s New, Pussycat? (Woody Allen)
%%
Silence when you’re shouting at me!
   -- What’s New, Pussycat? (Woody Allen)
%%
I’ve hated you since the moment I married you!
   -- What’s New, Pussycat? (Woody Allen)
%%
Haven’t you seen me somewhere before?
!!
I know the name, but I can’t remember the face.
   -- What’s New, Pussycat? (Woody Allen)
%%
What do you think I am?  Human?
   -- What’s New, Pussycat? (Woody Allen)
%%
You can’t shoot me … I have a very low threshhold of death.  My
doctor does not permit bullets to enter my body at any time.
   -- Casino Royale (Woody Allen)
%%
Mr. Bond, I am Miss Goodthighs.
!!
I can see that.
   -- Casino Royale (Woody Allen)
%%
Don’t tell me what I can do, or I’ll have my mustache eat your beard.
   -- What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (Woody Allen)
%%
As you know, death is my bread and danger my butter.  No, danger is my
bread and death is my butter.  No, danger is my, death is, no, no wait,
sorry, death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
   -- What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (Woody Allen)
%%
I never sleep with a man who owns a dress.
   -- What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (Woody Allen)
%%
I always wanted to marry someone who was tall, handsome, and rich.  Three
out of three I gave up on.
   -- Radio Days
%%
It’s a wonderful feeling having a schoolteacher you’ve seen dancing
naked in front of a mirror.
   -- Radio Days (Woody Allen)
%%
We don’t need another book on survival.  We have the Boy Scouts Manual.
   -- September (Woody Allen)
%%
I should have stayed in college.
!!
What would you be if you had stayed in college?
!!
I was in the black studies program.  By now I could have been black.
   -- Bananas (Woody Allen)
%%
Sometimes you have to have a little faith in people.
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
How many times a night can you make love?
!!
Well, a lot.
!!
A lot?  That’s my favorite number.
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
There are times when even an historian shouldn’t look at the past.
   -- Another Woman (Woody Allen)
%%
Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks
and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it.
   -- Manhattan (Woody Allen)
%%
A VAX is virtually a computer, but not quite.
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
The way to a man’s heart is with a broadsword
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!
   -- Ghostbusters
%%
When Cthulhu calls, he calls collect
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
Why can’t you be unique and original like everybody else?
   -- Yet Another Nancy Button
%%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much of your
time reading cookies!
%%
Not bird, nor plane, nor even frog.
!!
Just little old me, Underdog.
%%
“Yes, sir.  His name is Thor.  He is the ancient norse god of thunder.  No, sir,
I’m not kidding.  He likes fighting too much and he tends to throw tantrums when he
gets embarrassed.  I think he’s got a bit of an inferiority complex.  Otherwise, he
seems to be a pretty nice guy.”
  -- Tommy Czuchra, Elementals #9, second series
%%
“I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they
be considered patriots.  This is one nation under God.”
   -- George Bush in FREE INQUIRY magazine, Fall 1988
%%
Quote for the day: ’
%%
Quote for the day: “
%%
“Armor is for people too slow to get out of the way or too stupid
to not get in the way in the first place.”
   -- The Crystal Daemon
%%
Excerpted from “The Chronicle of Higher Education”, October 18, 1989
$$
“Being a computer-center director is like being a race-car
driver on dirt tracks.”  So begins a metaphor from a beleaguered
computer-center director.  “You have to make critical decisions in
short time frames with very little data, and by the time you find out
if you’ve made the right decision, it’s too late to do anything about
it.”
$$
“My job is like an airplane pilot’s,” another director
confessed.  “It works best if I’m in front; my users are bored,
terrified, or intoxicated; no one notices me until things go wrong,
but my accidents are usually spectacular; and it’s a long way down
without a parachute.”
%%
“Being a graduate student is never having to say ‘I have dignity and self respect’”
  -- M. F. Terman
%%
“My parents went to the dungeons of Nethack, and all I got was an uncursed
partially eaten tin of guardian naga hatchling meat (weapon in
hand)”
   -- Norm Meluch
%%
Q:  How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Six.  One to turn the bulb, one for support, and four to relate
to the experience.
%%
Q:  How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Five.  One to change the bulb and four more to chase off the
Californians who have come up to relate to the experience.
$$
A': Nine.  One to change the bulb, and eight to protest the nuclear
power plant that generates the electricty that powers it.
%%
Q:  How many New Yorkers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  None ‘o yo’ damn business!
$$
A': 50.  50?  Yeah 50; its in the contract.
%%
Q:  How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two.  One to call the electrician and one to mix the martinis.
%%
Q:  How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Only one, but the bulb has got to really WANT to change.
$$
A': None; the bulb will change itself when it is ready.
%%
Q:  How many graduate students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Only one, but it may take upwards of five years for him to
get it done.
%%
Q:  How many ‘Real Men’ does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:: None:  ‘Real Men’ aren’t afraid of the dark.
$$
A:: None of your damn business!
%%
Q:  How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  None.  (“Thats all right… I’ll just sit here in the dark…”)
%%
Q:  How many mice does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Only two, but the hard part is getting them into the light bulb.
%%
Q:  How many Polacks does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Just one, but you need 6000 Russian troops in case he goes
on strike!
%%
Q:  How many WASPs (Californians)  does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Silly, WASPs (Californians) don’t screw in a light bulb, they screw in
hot tubs.
%%
Q:  How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  None:  The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.
%%
Q:  How many (Generals/Politicians) does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  1,000,001:  One to change the bulb and 1,000,000 to rebuild
civilization to the point where they need light bulbs again.
%%
Q:  How many survivors of a nuclear war does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  None, because people who glow in the dark don’t need light bulbs.
%%
Q:  How many Russian leaders does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Nobody knows.  Russian leaders don’t last as long as light bulbs.
%%
Q:  How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Seven.  One to install the new bulb and six to figure out what to do
with the old one for the next 10,000 years.
%%
Q:  How many pre-med students does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Five:  One to change the bulb and four to pull the ladder
out from under him.
%%
Q:  How many Christians does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Three, but they’re really only one.
%%
Q:  How many Christian Scientists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  None, but it takes at least one to sit and pray for the old one to
go back on.
%%
Q:  How many Roman Catholics does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two, one to screw it in, and another to repent.
%%
Q:  How many jugglers does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  One, but it takes at least three light bulbs.
%%
Q:  How many Valley Girls does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Oooh, like, manual labor?  Gag me with a spoon!  For sure.
%%
Q:  How many straight San Franciscans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Both of them.
%%
Q:  How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  A tree in a golden forest.
$$
A': Two: one to change the bulb and one not to change it.
$$
A": Four: One to change the bulb.
%%
Q:  How many Carl Sagans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Billions and billions.
%%
Q:  How many folk singers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two. One to change the bulb, and one to write a song about
how good the old light bulb was.
%%
Q:  How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the
bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
%%
Q:  How many gorillas does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Only one, but it sure takes a shitload of light bulbs!
%%
Q:  How many doctors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Three.  One to find a bulb specialist, one to find a bulb
installation specialist, and one to bill it all to Medicare.
%%
Q:  What is the difference between a pregnant woman and a light bulb?
$$
A:  You can unscrew a light bulb.
%%
Q:  How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10%
of the pages state only “This page intentionally left blank”,
and 20% of the definitions are of the form “A:… consists
of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks”.
%%
Q:  How many professors does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Only one, but they get three tech. reports out of it.
%%
Q:  How many people from New Jersey does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  Three.  One to change the light bulb, one to be a witness, and the
third to shoot the witness.
%%
Q:  How many <ethnics> does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  10.  One to hold the bulb and nine to rotate the ladder.
%%
Q:  How many strong <ethnics> does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  115.  One to hold the bulb and 114 to rotate the house.
%%
Q:  How many <ethnic> gods does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two.  One to hold the bulb and the other to rotate the planet.
%%
Q:  How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  How many can you afford?
%%
Q:  How many football players does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  The entire team!  And they all get a semester’s credit for it!
%%
Q:  How many Federal employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Sorry, that item has been cut from the budget!
%%
Q:  How many “pro-lifers” does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  6:  2 to screw in the bulb and 4 to testify that it was
lit from the moment they began screwing.
%%
Q:  How many frat guys does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Three: One to screw it in, and the other two to help him
down off the keg.
$$
A': Five:  One to hold the bulb, and four to guzzle beer until the
room spins.
%%
Q:  How many Harvard students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Just one. He holds the light bulb and the universe revolves around him.
%%
Q:  How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two.  One to assure that everything possible is being done while the other
screws the bulb into the water faucet.
%%
Q:  How many board meetings does it take to get a light bulb changed?
$$
A:  This topic was resumed from last week’s discussion, but is incomplete
pending resolution of some action items.  It will be continued next week.
Meanwhile…
%%
Q:  How many brewers does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  About one third less than for a regular bulb.
%%
Q:  How many WASP Princesses does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two. One to get a Tab and one to call Daddy.
%%
Q:  How many civil servants does it take to change the light bulb?
$$
A:  45.  One to change the bulb, and 44 to do the paperwork.
%%
Q:  How many junkies does it take?
$$
A:  Oh wow, is it like dark, man?
%%
Q:  How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  I’ll have an estimate for you a week from Monday.
%%
Q:  How many U.S marines does it take to screw in a light bulb ?
$$
A:  50. One to screw in the light bulb and the remaining 49 to guard him .
%%
Q:  How many technical writers does it take to screw in a light-bulb?
$$
A:  Just one, provided there’s a programmer around to explain how to do it.
%%
Q:  How many Romulans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  151, one to screw the light-bulb in, and 150 to self-destruct
the ship out of disgrace.
(Warning: do not tell this to Romulans or be ready for a fight.  They
consider this joke to be a disgrace, though it is not bad for a LBJ.)
%%
Q:  How many Vulcans does it take to change a light bulb?
$$
A:  “Approximately 1.00000000000000000000000”
%%
Q:  How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
light bulb?
$$
A:  7. Scotty will report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in the
Engineering Section is burnt out, to which Kirk will send Bones
to pronounce the bulb dead. Scotty, after checking around, notices
that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains that he can’t
see in the dark to tend to his engines. Kirk must make an emergency
stop at the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a
light bulb from the natives. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Sulu, and 3 red
shirt security officers beam down. The 3 security officers are
promptly killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party
is captured. Meanwhile, back in orbit, Scotty notices a Klingon ship
approaching and must warp out of orbit to escape detection.
Bones cures the native king who is suffering from the flu, and as
a reward the landing party is set free and given all of the light bulbs
they can carry. Scotty cripples the Klingon ship and warps back to the
planet just in time to beam up Kirk et. al. The new bulb is inserted,
and the Enterprise continues with its five year mission.
%%
Q:  How many efficiency experts does it take to replace a light bulb?
$$
A:  None.  Efficiency experts replace only dark bulbs.
%%
Q:  How many Field Service Engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  5, one to hold it and 4 to pound it in.
%%
Q:  How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  Two: One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb
itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out
toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
%%
Q:  How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
$$
A:  None.  It’s left to the reader as an exercise.
$$
A': One.  He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the
problem to an earlier joke.
$$
A": One.  He gives it to five Oregonians, thereby reducing the
problem to an earlier joke.
$$
A'": In an earlier article, zeus!bobr writes:
$$
Q:  How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:  One.  He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the
problem to an earlier joke…
$$
In earlier work, Wiener [1] has shown that one mathematician
can change a light bulb.
$$
If k mathematicians can change a light bulb, and if one more simply
watches them do it, then k+1 mathematicians will have changed the
light bulb.
$$
Therefore, by induction, for all n in the positive integers,
n mathematicians can change a light bulb.
$$
Bibliography:
$$
[1] Weiner, Matthew P., <11485@ucbvax>, “Re: YALBJ”, 1986
%%
A real computer scientist will dedicate months of patient effort to
reduce the asymtotic time of an algorithm from n log log n to n log
log log n and never implement it.
$$
A real programmer come up with the n log log log n solution while
eating cold pizza in the morning and then implements an n^2 solution
anyway.
$$
A real software engineer derives the n log log log n solution using
the formal specification and then discards it as an implementation
detail.
$$
A real user doesn’t even understand what a n log log log n solution
means.
%%
Real Programmers don’t document.  Documentation is for simps who can’t
read the listings or the object file.
%%
Real Programmers think better when playing Nethack, 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 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 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 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.
%%
“You name your elementals??”
!!
  “Sure.  They’re like friends.  Say hello to Dopey, Doc, Sleepy,
Grumpy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Hiroshima.”
!!
“Hiroshima?!”
!!
  “I’m *particularly* proud of my Fire Elemental.”
$$
   -- Carl “No Shadowrun posting shall go unanswered” Rigney [e-mail]
%%
“A morning like any other.  Showered, shaved, called on the funamental
forces underlying all reality to do my bidding, read the paper over coffee.”
   -- signature of Carl “No Shadowrun posting shall go unanswered” Rigney
[e-mail]
%%
The Macintosh is “like a Mercedes Benz dashboard; it hasn’t changed in 30
years, bu there are a lot of changes behind the dashboard.”
   -- John Sculley, Apple CEO, Jan 17, 1989
$$
“I’d like a $2,000 Maserati, too, and while I might be able to get a
car for that price, it wouldn’t be a Maserati.”
   -- Allan Loren, president of Apple USA, June 20, 1989
%%
“Umm, Excuse me.  Why’s that mage drawing a circle around the Fusion Core?”
   -- Carl “No Shadowrun posting shall go unanswered” Rigney [e-mail]
%%
Ask not for whom the bell tolls and you will only pay
Station-to-Station rates.
%%
“COBOL programmers are destined to code COBOL for the rest of
their lives, and thereafter.”
   -- Betrand Meyer (inventer of the Eiffel language) at a panel discussion
at OOPSLA ’89
%%
Two is never equal to three, even for large values of two.
%%
A feature is a bug with seniority.
%%
GURKHAS - THE MARTIAL RACE
$$
In World War II, an English reporter who had heard so much
about the bravery and elan of the Gurkhas, visited a camp just
in front of the enemy (German) lines.  During the course of
his reporting, he had occasion to observe a mission being
conducted.  The mission was to airdrop a bunch of soldiers behind
enemy lines to conduct some relatively light action.  He watched
the commander of the Gurkhas (a British soldier) pitch the
mission and then ask for volunteers.  To his surprise,
only about half the Gurkhas volunteered and were sent off.  Throughly
disillusioned with the legends of Gurkha bravery,
the reporter went back home.  After the war, he happened to run into
a Gurkha who had been there, and asked him why half
the troops had failed to volunteer.  It turned out that none of the
squad, both those who volunteered and thos who did not,
were aware that they would get a parachute for the drop.  Hence
the low turnout.
%%
Fortunate is he for whom the belle toils.
%%
Spokesmen for a local electronic firm have announced a computer
program that through fresh application of an old technique -
virtually eliminates lost time due to malfunction of computer
components.  Called OREMA (from latin “oremus”, meaning “let us
pray”), the program offers prayers at selected time intervals for
the continued integrity of memory units, tape transports, and other
elements subject to depravity.
$$
Basically liturgical in structure, OREMA uses standard petitions and
intercessions stored on magnetic tapes in Latin, Hebrew, and
FORTRAN.  It holds regular maintenance services thrice daily on an
automatic cycle, and operator intervention is required only for
mounting tapes and making responses, such as “Amen”, or “And With
Thy Spirit”, on the console typewriter.
$$
Prayers in Hebrew and FORTRAN are offered directly to the CPU, but
Latin prayers may go to peripheral equipment for transfer to the CPU
by internal subroutines.
$$
Although manufacturer supplied prayer reels cover all machine troubles
known today, the program will add punch card prayers to any tape, as
needed, after the final existing AMEN block.  Classified prayer
reels are available for government installations.
$$
In trials on selected machines, OREMA reduced by 98.2 percent the
average down time due to component failure.  The manufacturer’s
spokesman emphasized, however, that OREMA presently defends only
against malfunction of hardware.  Requestor errors and other human
blunders will continue unchecked until completion of a later
version to be called SIN-OREMA.
   -- Reprinted from Data Link, March 1966, which reprinted from the
source, W.S. Minkler, Jr., the Pittsburgh section of the
American Nuclear Society, Jan. 1965.
%%
“If a train station is where the train stops, what’s a work station?”
%%
Anything’s possible, but only a few things actually happen.
%%
Life is complex.  It has real and imaginary parts.
%%
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day
to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human
being can fight and never stop fighting.”
   -- E. E. Cummings
%%
Popular consensus says that reality is based on popular consensus.
%%
Seen on a foreign car…
$$
+---------------------------------------+
| Recalls reduce traffic.  Buy American.|
+---------------------------------------+
%%
This morning, one of our users told me of something he’d read
about businesses and UNIX.  It appears that many businesses are buying
UNIX rather than VMS (thereby annoying DEC) because of it’s simplicity
in generating reports and other day-to-day business applications.
$$
He was wondering if we could get this wonderfully simple UNIX, to
replace the complicated and confusing UNIX we currently have.
%%
As far as I know, Intel has no official opinion on Green Lantern
continuity and other such matters… so any opinions expressed are
simply my own (and they are the correct opinions, I might add).
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
The opinions above are solely those of a 12 year old hacker who has broken
into my account, and not those of my employer or any other organization.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Should the opinions expressed above be those of someone else besides the
author..  Well.. it ain't my fault.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Opinions expressed herein were not mine originally, but
were forced on me at gunpoint by the Interactive Systems
Corporation"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Disclaimer:  My mind is so fragmented by random excursions into a
wilderness of abstractions and incipient ideas that the practical
purposes of the moment are often submerged in my consciousness and I
don't know what I'm doing.
        [my employers certainly have no idea]
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my employer,
not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
The opinions in this article are my own, and not those of the voices
which tell me what to do.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
DISCLAIMER: All grammatical and spelling errors are inserted
deliberately to test the software I am developing.  In fact, that is
the only reason I am posting. Yeah, that's the ticket! All my
postings are just test data! Yeah!!
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Disclaimer: the above is the author's personal opinion and is not the
opinion or policy of his employer or of the little green men that
have been following him all day.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Disclaimer: The views of my employer do not conform to my views, or to any
accepted standard of logic that the Greeks thought up anyway…
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
This is not an official statement of Hewlett-Packard Corp., and does not
necessarily reflect the views of HP. It is provided completely without warranty
of any kind.  Lawyers take 3d10 damage and roll a saving throw vs. ego attack.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Disclaimer: All opinions herein are fictitious, any similarity to real
opinions, living or dead, is coincidental.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
DISCLAIMER:  My opinion is a poor thing, but mine own.  Any
similarity to any others' opinion, living or dead, is coincidental.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
The facts expressed here belong to everybody, the opinions to me. The
distinction is yours to draw…
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Disclaimer: "The above opinions are those of a large rodent with sharp teeth"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Please note that these are my own private opinions and do not necessarily
reflect the views of Xerox Corporation.  Actually, I cannot tell a lie, they are
not my opinions at all, they are the opinions of the little green men who come
out of the walls at night and stick wires in my head.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Opinions (as above) are like noses: everyone has one, and most smell.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Disclaimer:  Anything not explicitly labelled as fact is my own opinion.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
 -- Philip K. Dick
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"It was unintelligible at any speed we played it."
   -- A US Government report investigating possible bad words in "Louie Louie"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question…
 …or is it?"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
It brings to mind Alan Gopin's generic comment,
"It seems to be vague, but is in fact meaningless."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
How can angels fall asleep when the devil leaves his porch light on?
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
[Did you ever think about how much your cities actually weigh?
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
To search for perfection is all very well,
But to look for heaven is to live here in hell.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
+-------------------------------+
| "VIOLATORS WILL BE TOAD!"     |
|               Dungeon Police  |
--------------------------------+
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
   …Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"What I do is not so much songs as it is exercises in tonal breath control"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
when a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always
declares that it is his duty.  - GB Shaw
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"He who hesitates is lunch"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Computer Science Considerations"-- BYTE 2/86.  An interview with the
developer of TEX and METAFONT, Donald Knuth: "I was excited that I started
out trying to apply computer science to typography and wound up applying
typography to computer science. . ."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"We could always shoot one of the philosophers." - David Gries
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
If I can be of any help, you're in worse trouble than I thought.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
remember, if you do it yourself, sooner or later you'll need a bigger hammer
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Watch while the queen in one false move turns herself into a pawn"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands
and hoping when a rock or a club will do -- McCloctnik the Lucid
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
I'm growing older but not up…
   -- Jimmy Buffett
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Not looking like Pascal is not a language deficiency!"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
At once words appeared on the screen:
  "Hello.  My name is Hank Thoro II.  Please type your name."
  "My whole name?" he typed.
  "Good.  Do you like baseball?  Just type Y for Yes or N for No."
                                --- from "Roderick" by John Sladek
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Epigram:
        Ada is the 400-pound gorilla of programming languages.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Remember Knuth:
"premature optimization is the root of all evil."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
When the going gets wierd, the wierd turn pro!
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Standards are industry's way of codifying obsolescence.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth." -- Socrates
"Tell the Truth and run."--Yugoslav proverb
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
If you find any *answers* in anything I've said, you've misunderstood me.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"People who are incapable of making decisions are
the ones who hit those barrels at freeway exits."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
I love music that sounds like a Conrail locomotive caraeening headlong
into a truckload of Harpsichords.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
``There's a fine line between an attitude problem and thinking clearly''
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity.  It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
If I had had more time, I could have written you a shorter letter.
        -Blaise Pascal
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
`uncontrolled descents into terrain'
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"You got it kid -- the large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Kaden thought of the old Klingon proverb.  "Fool me once, shame on
you: fool me twice, prepare to die."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
these opinions and others like them are widespread in the culture
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
I feel like a genocidal maniac when emacs asks me if I want to kill 10789
characters.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense."
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Hi… My name is Hobbes.  I'm the product of a malicious 5-year old's
twisted and destructive imagination.  Would YOU like to be my friend?"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
I have yet to meet a C compiler that is more friendly and easier to use
than eating soup with a knife.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
PEART says: "How can anyone be truly enlightened, when the truth
is so poorly lit?"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
However paranoid you are, you're probably right.
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
inquiring gnomes want to mine!
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
"Somebody's had too much to think"
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw those in authority off their
guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
    -- Mark Twain
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
Don't run faster than your shoes.
    -- Scottish saying
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
“Do not adjust your mind, it is reality that is malfunctioning.”
$$
   -- a signiture found on Usenet
%%
I came, I thawed, I transferred…
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Survive Minnesota and the rest of the World is easy.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
If you love Minnesota, raise your right ski.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota - where visitors turn blue with envy.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Save a Minnesotan - eat a mosquito.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
One day it’s warm, the rest of the year it’s cold.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota - home of the blonde hair and blue ears.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota - mosquito supplier to the free world.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota - come fall in love with a loon.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Land of many cultures - mostly throat.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Where the elite meet sleet.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota: CLOSED FOR GLACIER REPAIRS
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Land of 2 seasons: Winter is coming, Winter is here.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota - glove it or leave it.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota - have you jump started your kid today?
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
There are only 3 things you can grow in Minnesota:
     Colder, Older, & Fatter.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Why Minnesota?  To protect Ontario from Iowa!
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
WARNING: You are entering Minnesota,
     Please use an alternate route!
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota: theater of sneezes.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Jack Frost must like Minnesota -
  he spends half his life there.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Land of 10,000 Petersons.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Land of the ski and home of the crazed.
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
Minnesota - home of the Mispi-Mispp-Missispp
     (Where the damn river starts!)
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
10,000 lakes and no sharks!
   -- a Minnesota Slogan
%%
The heart, the liver, the spleen, the pancreas.  All these miraculous
organs work in _total_darkness_!
   -- from Late Night with David Letterman
%%
“May I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no
cannibalism in the British Navy.  Absolutely none, and when I
say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we are
prepared to admit.”
   -- from Monty Python
%%
“We would like to apologize for the way in which politicians are
represented in this programme.  It was never our intention to imply
that politicians are weak-kneed, political time-servers who are more
concerned with their personal vendettas and private power struggles
than the problems of government, nor to suggest at any point that
they sacrifice their credibility by denying free debate on vital
matters in the mistaken impression that party unity comes before
the well-being of the people they supposedly represent, nor to imply
at any stage that they are squabbling little toadies without an ounce
of concern for the vital social problems of today.  Nor indeed do we
intend that viewers should consider tham as crabby ulcerous little
self-seeking vermin with furry legs and an excessive addiction to
alcohol and certain explicit sexual practices which some people might
find offensive.  We are sorry if this impression has come across.”
   -- from Monty Python
%%
“Please excuse my wife.  She may appear to be rather nasty,
but underneath she has a heart of formica.”
   -- from Monty Python
%%
“Do you think there’s a God?”
“Well, SOMEbody’s out to get me!”
   -- Calvin and Hobbes
%%
“My cigarette smoke mixed with the smoke of my .38.  If business was
as good as my aim, I’d be on Easy Street.  Instead, I’ve got an office
on 49th Street and a nasty relationship with a string of collection
agents.
“Yeah, that’s me, Tracer Bullet.  I’ve got eight slugs in me.  One’s
lead, and the rest are bourbon.  The drink packs a wallop, and I pack
a revolver.  I’m a private eye.
“Suddenly my door swung open, and in walked trouble.  Brunette, as usual.”
   -- Calvin and Hobbes
%%
“It’s a dessert topping AND a floor wax!”
   -- Saturday Night Live
%%
“Kirk may be a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with
delusions of godhood, but he’s not soft.”
   -- Star Trek, from “The Trouble with Tribbles”
%%
“Mind your manners, son!  I’ve got a tall pointy hat!”
   -- Cerebus, I say son, by Elrond
%%
“You’re just the sort of person I imagined marrying, when I was little … except,
y’know, not green… and without all the patches of fungus.”
   -- from Swamp Thing
%%
If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would
have made them cute and furry.
   -- Dave Barry
%%
“Back off, man!  I’m a scientist!”
   -- Ghostbusters
%%
“How does this sound..?  ‘Stop, or I’ll stand very,
very still for a surprisingly long time!’”
   -- from The Secret Origins of the Legion of Substitue Heros
%%
“Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis
for a system of government.  Supreme executive power derives itself
from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
   -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
%%
“If a compiler emits correct code purely by divine guidance and
has no memory at all, it can still be a C compiler.”
   -- Chris Torek ([e-mail])
%%
“5 grams of this explosive will level this building.”
   “How much you got?”
“A truckload.”
   -- Carl Rigney
%%
Only dead fish go with the flow.
%%
Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative.
%%
“We pledge allegiance to the man with the day-glo sword and the submersible
girlfriend.”
   -- _Knight Life_, by Peter David
%%
Take her down Scotty, she’s sucking mud!
%%
C++ -- The language in which only friends can access your private members.
   -- Paul Snively ([e-mail])
%%
“Gangsters would kidnap my math teacher, Miss Albertine, and I’d track them
down and kill them one by one until she was free, and then she’d break off
her engagement with my sarcastic English teacher, Mr. Richardson, because
she’d fallen hopelessly in love with her grim-faced and silent
fourteen-year-old savior.”
   -- Nite Owl, in WATCHMEN by Alan Moore
%%
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”
   -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
99:  Oh Max, how horrible.
$$
Max: He was nothing but a CHAOS killer.
$$
99:  Sometimes I wonder if we’re any better, Max.
$$
Max: What are you talking about, 99?  We have to kill and maim and
destroy.  We stand for everything that’s good and fine and decent
in the world.
   -- from the Get Smart movie
%%
It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
   -- J. R. R. Tolkien
%%
Eagles may soar…, but a weasel will never get sucked into a jet engine!
%%
Mama don’t allow no paranoia ’round here.
!!
Mama don’t allow no paranoia ’round here.
!!
Well, I don’t care what mama don’t allow,
!!
She’s out to get me anyhow.
!!
Mama don’t allow no paranoia ’round here.
$$
Mama don’t allow no schizophrenia ’round here.
!!
…
!!
We got her outnumbered anyhow…
$$
bestiality …
!!
Bow-wow, oink-oink, moo, meow …
$$
coprophagia…
!!
I hate her cooking anyhow…
$$
equinecrosadobeastiality…
!!
That’s beating a dead horse anyhow…
%%
[e-mail] (Brian L. Stuart) writes about flashing lights;
$$
I and my friends have developed many mini-theories about these items:
$$
1. The speed of any machine is inversely proportional to the number of
flashing lights.
$$
2. The cost of any machine is proportional to the cube of the number of
flashing lights.
$$
3. The first item to malfunction on any piece of machinery is the flashing
lights.
$$
4. Any fault detection system which uses flashing lights is incapable of
detecting faults in the flashing lights.
$$
5. Any flashing light which detects the presence of mains power will fail to
go off when the power is turned off.
$$
6. Any light intended as any sort of ‘Disk In Use’ indicator will be rendered
unnecessary by the very loud grinding noise of the disk drive; people will
hear the drive being used and will never look at the flashing light.
$$
7. Though machines are designed with the intention of avoiding redundancy in
all circumstances, this practice does not extend to redundancy of flashing
lights.
$$
8. Problems will be encountered when trying to expand machines with extra disk
drives, etc, as the front panel is full of flashing lights.
$$
9. The peripheral support industry of the 1990’s will me in the maintenance of
flashing lights.
$$
10. Flashing lights are a pain in the bum.
%%
There were these two professors arguing over which one had the dumber
child. Each professor thought his was the bigger idiot.  The first
professor yells “There is no way that your son is dumber.  My son has
to be THE stupidest kid on Earth.”  The second professor says “No
way, Jose.  My son is the bigger idiot.” The first professor says “Let
me prove it to you.  Hey Jake! (Jake runs to his father) I
don’t know if I left myself at the office or not.  Would you run
there  and find out.  If I’m there then tell me to come home and
eat dinner.”  The son says, gleefully, “Sure dad”  and runs off.  The
second professor not to be outdone says “Oh Yea!  Watch this!
Hey Sam! Come here! (Sam runs to his father) Here are two pennies.  With
one penny buy a car and the other buy a microwave. (Ok so
I updated it)”  Sam says “OK.” and leaves.  The professors keep
arguing.
$$
Jake and Sam meet in the street. And they start arguing which one
has the cumber father.  Jake says, “Well listen.  My father told
me to find out if he is at the office or not.  Well all he had to
do was to call the office and find out himself.  Two minutes and he
would be done.  That is stupid if I’ve ever heard it.”  Sam says “Well
that is nothing.  My dad told to buy a car with one penny
and a microwave with the other.  But he didn’t tell me which penny
was for the car and which one is for the microwave.”
%%
It was the time of the year for the caretaker of the Church to
clean, fix, maintain, and restore the character of the Church, and this
year those duties included painting the steeple, which had not been done
in several years.  He dutifully went about the work, erecting scaffolding,
and climbing up, taking his paint, his brushes, water to clean the brushes,
and a bit of drinking water, since it was a fairly hot day.
$$
While he was painting, he realized that he would not have enough
paint to finish the steeple, and he did not feel at all like climbing down
the scaffolding and going back to the workshop to mix some more
paint.  Seeing the water for washing the brushes, he came up with the idea to
make the paint he had go further, so he added the water to his paint, and
continued on.
$$
As he was nearing completion of the steeple, he realized that the
paint he had, albeit watered down, would still not be enough to finish the
job, so he added what was left of his drinking water and finished the job
with just a few drops of paint to spare.
$$
More releived than anything else, he climbed down the scaffolding
and started to hurry back to his workshop behind the Church, for after all,
he was dehydrated, and his unwashed brushes were beginning to set, when there
was a Clap of Thunder, a Bolt of Lightening, the sky blackened and a
heavenly Voice proclaimed:
$$
Repaint!  Repaint!  And thin no more!
%%
One day a lion was walking through the jungle feeling particularly
arrogant.  He came upon a zebra, roared loudly and said,
    “Who is king of the jungle, zebra”?
  “You are, oh lion”, the zebra replied.
   “Yeah, and don’t you forget it”, said the lion as he walked on.
$$
Shortly, the lion came to a gorilla and once again he said,
    “Who’s king of the jungle, gorilla?”
  “You are, oh lion”, the gorilla said.
    “Correct!”, the lion roared as he swaggers on down the jungle path.
$$
Soon the lion came to where an elephant was pulling leaves off a tree
for his lunch.
    “Who’s king of the jungle, elephant?”, the lion ask with his usual big roar.
$$
Without saying anything, the elephant wraps his trunk around the middle
of the lion, picks him up off the ground and throws him against the
tree!  The lion picked himself up off the ground, broken, bleeding and
dazed.  He looks up at the lion and says,
    “Damn, you didn’t need to get mad just because you didn’t know the answer!”
%%
Seems there was this father who has three sons. They were
always on their best behavior. It turns out that he always
paid two of his sons $5 a week to be good. The third son,
by the way, was good for nothing.
%%
A couple were leaving a shopping center when they drove over a cat,
killing it.  They thought they should do something with the body, so
they emptied out of their department-store bags into the car’s rear
seat and put the dead cat in the bag.  The bag they left on the car’s
hood while they went looking for a wastebasket.
$$
In the interim a well-dressed woman walked by, thought no one was
watching, and furtively took the bag.  Their problem solved but their
interest piqued, the couple decided to follow her.  She drove to a
restaurant, went in, they did too.  She sat down, then stealthily
slipped her hand into the bag.  Her face lit up when she felt something
furry - a stole, perhaps?
$$
Then she looked into the bag and fainted.  The last the couple saw
of her was when the EMTs carried her out on a stretcher, the bag
resting securely on her stomach.
%%
DO, A LOOP   <sung to the tune of Doe, a deer>
----------------------------------------------
$$
DO, a loop, a normal loop,
!!
Array, a 2-D storage space,
!!
Me, recursion, I call myself,
!!
Bar, a variable to chase.
$$
No, a value meaning not,
!!
Yes, a term to follow No,
!!
C, a lang where >> will rot,
$$
That will bring us back to DO, Array, Me, Bar, No, Yes, C, DO, a loop, a…
$$
   -- Created by Jesse Mundis 11-14-89
%%
Now available from K-tel, “Top Ten Programmer’s Hits!”  Yes, you too can
have this album of twenty original classics!  Just think of the hours of
fun you’ll have listening to these great tunes:
$$
 (It’s been a) Hard Disk Drive
 (Type ‘h’ for) Help
 Mr. Postmaster
 Lucy in a Shell (with UNIX)
 Roll Over John Scully

…and many, many more!  And to give you an idea of how incredible these
songs *really* are, here’s one we’ve selected just for you!  Let’s listen…
$$
  When I find my code in tons of touble,
  Friends and colleages come to me,
  Speaking words of wisdom:
  “Write in C.”
$$
  As the deadline fast approaches,
  And bugs are all that I can see,
  Somewhere, someone whispers:
  “Write in C.”
$$
  Write in C, write in C,
  Write in C, oh, write in C.
  LOGO’s dead and buried,
  Write in C.
$$
  I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
  For science it worked flawlessly.
  Try using it for graphics!
  Write in C.
$$
  If you’ve just spent nearly 30 hours
  Debugging some assembly,
  Soon you will be glad to
  Write in C.
$$
  Write in C, write in C,
  Write in C, yeah, write in C.
  Only wimps use basic.
  Write in C.
$$
  Write in C, write in C
  Write in C, oh, write in C.
  Pascal won’t quite cut it.
  Write in C.
$$
  Write in C, write in C,
  Write in C, yeah, write in C.
  Don’t even mention COBOL.
  Write in C.
$$
To order your very own copy, call 1-800-776-4726 (1-800-PROGRAM)!
!!
That’s 1-800-484-2424 (1-800-ITS A GAG)!
!!
Don’t delay - order NOW!
$$
>> NO orders will be taken after midnight, yesterday <<
$$
Hailing Frequencies Closed.
   -- “Captain” D. Joseph Creighton
%%
ENGLISH RULES OF THUB (sic)
$$
1.  Don’t use no double negatives.
$$
2.  Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents.
$$
3.  Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
$$
4.  About them sentence fragments.
$$
5.  When dangling, watch your participles.
$$
6.  Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
$$
7.  Just between you and i, case is important.
$$
8.  Don’t write run-on sentences when they are hard to read.
$$
9.  Don’t use commas, which aren’t necessary.
$$
10.  Try to not ever split infinitives.
$$
11.  It is important to use your apostrophe’s correctly.
$$
12.  Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.
$$
13.  Correct speling is essential.
$$
14.  A preposition is something you never end a sentence up with.
$$
15.  While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be
eternally careful so that the calculated objective of
communication does not become ensconsed in obscurity.
$$
16.  Eschew obfuscation.
%%
“Saying that she is promiscuous is an understatement.  She’ll go
zero to sixty nine in under fifteen seconds.”
%%
Photocopies of this have been kicking around our office
for ages.  It has no author’s name attached or any publication
information so I have no idea where it originally came from.  This
may be a little out of season but from what I guess, you can
plant kuzu any time of the year and enjoy it for generations to
come.  For those of you up north, yes this is a real plant, and
rumor has it that there are odds being taken, on when Georgia
will disappear under a cover of the stuff.
=================================================================
!!
Gardening Tips from Down South
$$
How to Grow Kudzu
$$
All you beginning gardeners out there might want to
consider growing kudzu as a fine way to launch out into the great
adventure of gardenning in the south.  Kudzu, for those of you
not already familiar with it, is a hardy perennial that can be
grown quite well by the beginner who observes these few simple
rules:
$$
Choosing a Plot:
$$
Kudzu can be grown almost anywhere, so site selection is
not the problem it is with some other finicky plants like
strawberries.  Although kudzu will grow quite well on cement, for
best result you should select an area having at least some
dirt.  To avoid possible lawsuits, it is advisable to plant well away
from your neighbors house, unless, of course, you don’t get along
well with your neighbor anyway.
$$
Preparing the Soil:
$$
Go out and stomp on the soil for a while just to get its
attention and to prepare it for kudzu.
$$
Deciding When to Plant:
$$
Kudzu should always be planted at night.  If kudzu is
planted during daylight hours, angry neighbors might see you and
begin throwing rocks at you.
$$
Selecting the Proper Fertilizer:
$$
The best fertilizer I have discovered for kudzu is 40
weight non-detergent motor oil.  Kudzu actually doesn’t need
anything to help it grow, but the motor oil helps to prevent
scraping the underside of the tender leaves when the kudzu starts
its rapid growth. It also cuts down on the friction and lessens
the danger of fire when the kudzu really starts to move.  Change
oil once every thousand feet or every two weeks which ever comes
first.
$$
Mulching the Plants:
$$
Contrary to what may be told by the Extension Service,
kudzu can profit from a good mulch.  I have found that a heavy
mulch for the young plants produces a hardier crop.  For best
results, as soon as the young shoots begin to appear, cover kudzu
with concrete blocks.  Although this causes a temporary setback,
your kudzu will accept this mulch as a challenge and will reward
you with redoubled determination in the long run.
$$
Organic or Chemical Gardenning:
$$
Kudzu is ideal for either the organic gardener or for
those who prefer to use chemicals to ward off garden
pests.  Kudzu is oblivious to both chemicals and pests.  Therefore, you
can grow organically and let the pests get out of the way of the
kudzu as best they can, or you can spray any commercial poison
directly on your crop.  Your decision depends on how much you
enjoy killing bugs.  The kudzu will not mind either way.
$$
Crop Rotation:
$$
Many gardeners are understandably concerned that growing
the same crop year after year will deplete the soil.  If you
desire to change from kudzu to some other plant next year, now is
the time to begin preparations.  Right now, before the growing
season has reached its peak, you should list your house and lot
with a reputable real estate agent and begin making plans to move
elsewhere.  Your chances of selling will be better now than they
will be later in the year, when it may be difficult for a
prospective buyer to realize that underneath those lush green
vines stands an adorable three-bedroom house.
$$
{ed I didn’t know what Kudzu was, so the submitter provided the following
information.}
$$
From “The American Heritage Dictionary”:
=============================================================================
!!
Kudzu (kood’zoo) n. A vine, Pueraria lobata, native to Japan, having compound
leaves and clusters of redish purple flowers and grown for fodder
and foiage.
=============================================================================
$$
Kudzu was introduced to Georgia earlier this century in an attempt
to provide improved fodder for cattle.  It worked ALL TOO WELL.  Cattle
do love kudzu but not nearly as much as kudzu loves Georgia.  Georgia
provides nearly ideal climate and growing conditions for this rapid growing
and hardy perenial (that’s “hardy”, as in calling nuclear weapons “explosive”).
$$
People have been known to leave home on vaction down here only to
return a week later to find cars and other LARGE objects buried under it’s
lush greener.  It climbs telephone poles and crosses wires.  It’s eradication
is a major expense to utility companies.  The City of Atlanta has used
bulldozers to dig up the tubers in vacant lots.  It’s resistant to most
“safe” chemicals although 2,4,D has some effect if used frequently
enough.  It’s sometimes call “yard-a-night” down here because that’s how fast it
seems to grow.  The only question seems to be whether the “yard” referred
to is that of “3 feet” or that of “front and back”.  Rumor has it that some
of the roads in the more rural areas don’t get enough traffic and will be
covered by kudzu after a long holiday weekend.
$$
It is a very pretty vine in early spring and summer.  It’s broad
leaves and flowers are quite attractive until you start to realize that
the dead stick, that it’s sunning itself on, use to be a hugh pine tree.  In
the winter, the first hard frost turns kudzu into tons of ugly brown
leaves and thick vines.  It becomes a real eyesore and possibly a fire
hazard although I haven’t heard of any actual kudzu fires.  The plant regrows
new vines from the ground up every year, so you can see it’s growth rate must
be phenominal.
$$
I understand that the Japanese make a highly regarded form of tofu
from kudzu tubers.  It is supposed to be prized for it’s nutty flavor (soy
tofu is rather bland).  The Japanese cannot produce enough to meet their
own demand and think we’re NUTS for trying to eliminate it.  I haven’t
been able to confirm this use for kudzu, but, if true, they may well be
right.  We’ve got plenty of hungery people and LOTS of kudzu!
$$
The existance of kuzu in a neigborhood has been known to, adversely,
affect property values.  The threat of planting kudzu in someone’s yard is
generally considered an extreme case of “fight’en words”, potentially followed
by “justifiable homicide”.  Regardless, you can still obtain kudzu seeds
from several major seed companies who list it as a “hardy ornamental
perenial”.  If understatement was a crime they’d be history.
%%
A British Airways 737 landed at the Portuguese island of Porto Santo to refuel
and the pilot had to collect $2,000 in cash from his passengers before the
flight could continue to London, because the ground crew at the airport refused
to accept the pilot’s credit card.
   -- Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1988
%%
The longest period of time known to man is ETERNITY.
$$
The second longest period of time is the time from when your boss says your
going to get a raise until you actually do.
%%
James Whistler, he, whose mother got famous in that rocking chair, flunked
out of West Point for failing a chemistry exam. “Had silicon been a gas,”
he was to say, “I would have been a major general.”
%%
Last week the local power company had a minor problem and much of
downtown Madison and the UW-Madison campus lost power.  Turns out that
the computer science building got power restored before many of the
other buildings.
$$
When asked why we got our power back so soon, someone claimed that we
have a generator in the basement with a squirrel running on a wheel to
generate it.  To which someone else remarked: “Only one squirrel powers
the whole building???  Must be Canadian.”
%%
Years ago, I was taking an algebra class over the summer,
and had a teacher who liked to reminisce about his past with funny
stories.  He relates that he had been a math teacher in the Air Force,
where it was
his duty to force sleepy young recruits to stay awake for an hour of math
at 8:00 in the morning in a large, warm, dimly-lit auditorium.  One day,
he came into the auditorium and saw his class even sleepier and less attentive
than usual.  He realized that something drastic would have to be done.
$$
Now this classroom was *very* old, and the blackboards, which had been nailed on
to the walls with old black iron nails, had become loose over the years.  As
a result, these black nails jutted almost invisibly from the blackboard and
this teacher kept banging his hands on them while erasing the board.  He
decided to put them to good use.
$$
With enough of a flourish to guarantee the class’s attention, he went to the
front of the room, near one edge of the board.  Then, clearing his throat,
he drew a coathook right near one of the protruding nails.  He proceeded to
hang his coat and hat on the hook that he had drawn in chalk (really
on the nail, of course).  Then he went on to give that day’s lecture.  He told
us that the entire class had their eyes to the front of the room throughout the
lecture.  He didn’t know if they’d heard a single word he’d said, but at least
they looked attentive.
$$
At the end of the class, the lecturer would usually leave by a small door near
the blackboards, while the class would leave through the large doors at the
back of the hall.  When class was over, he took his coat and hat, erased the
coathook, and left through the small door--and was followed by the entire class,
lining up to go past the blackboard to see how he’d done it.
%%
HORIZONS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
===================================================
!!
By Ross Williams 3 June 1988.
$$
Recent studies have shown that while undergraduate students are more intelligent
than kindergarten students, the mentality and attention span of the two groups
are similar.  With this in mind, we introduce a new concept in Computer Science
education:
$$
$$
COMPUTER SCIENCE SESAME STREET
==============================
$$
Narrator:
!!
One of these programs is not like the others,
!!
One of these programs has a bug.
!!
One of these programs is not like the others,
!!
And if you can’t tell which one, you’re a mug.
$$
One of these programs is not like the others,
!!
One of these programs will really teach yer,
!!
One of these programs is not like the others,
!!
Yes, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.
$$
----------
$$
Narrator: Hello Oscar, how are you today?
$$
Oscar the Grouch: Go away: I’ve just found a new garbage collection algorithm.
$$
Narrator: Tell me about it Oscar…
$$
----------
$$
Kermit: This is Kermit the Frog reporting for Sesame Street news.  Today, we
interview Professor Biskit who works on cookie biosearch.  Hello Professor
Biskit, what have you got there?
$$
Prof: Arcchhh, I am trying to find out iv there is zarch a sing as an infinitely
long coorkie.  Dis machine vill produce every sort of coorkie possible: big
cookies, dittle cookies, square cookies, round cookies.  The cookies come out dis
hole here.
$$
Kermit: You mean if you get a really long cookie, it will come out of the hole
like a sausage?
$$
Prof: Yaaaass, that’s right.  Now I vill set de machine going, and ve can start
vatching de corkies.
$$
GRRRRUNNNCCHHHH CHUGGA CHUGGA CHUGGA CHUGGA…
$$
Prof: Aass here comes one, … CLUNK
$$
Cookie Monster: Cooooookie! Chomp.
$$
Prof: Und another.  Dis one eees square: CLUNK.
$$
Kermit: Uh professor…
$$
Prof: Don’t bother me now, I’m vatchin coorkies.
$$
Kermit: What if there isn’t an infinitely long cookie?
$$
Prof: Then they vill come out of dis machine forever - there are an infinite
number of possible corkies you know.
$$
Kermit: And what if the machine starts making an infinitely long cookie?
$$
Prof: Thats obvious you frogk, I vill have to vait for it to come out.
$$
Kermit: And how long will that take?
$$
Prof: Forever.
$$
Kermit: So if there isn’t an infinitely long cookie, you have to wait forever
and if there is, you have to wait forever too.  How are you going to find out if
there is an infinitely long cookie today?
$$
Prof: Don’t interrupt.  Here comes a triangular one viff purple spots.
$$
Cookie monster: CRUNCH.  GULP.
$$
Prof: My machine!
$$
Kermit: Well, it looks as if the cookie monster has transcended the question of
whether there is an infinitely long cookie by eating the cookie machine.  A good
thing as the computation was UNCOMPUTABLE.
$$
----------
$$
Narrator: Hello Big Bird.  What’s all this mess?
$$
Big Bird: I’m planting a binary tree.  That way, I can nest in it and I won’t
have to fly South for the winter.
$$
Narrator: How long will it take for the tree to grow tall enough?
$$
Big Bird: If I add branches randomly it will take me log_2(t)/1.386.
$$
Narrator: Tell me why, Big Bird?
$$
…
$$
----------
$$
This program has been brought to you by the language C and the number F.
$$
This has been a production of the Computer Science Television Workshop.
%%
A Los Angeles judge ruled that “a citizen may snore with immunity in his own
home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and exceptional ability in
that particular field.”
%%
Be self-reliant and your success is assured.
%%
For economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
Ask five economists and you’ll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
   -- Edgar R. Fiedler
%%
A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted
%%
An ounce of vanity can ruin a ton of merit.
%%
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
%%
The world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
   -- Sean O’Casey
%%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
%%
A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him invented a
new program that became popular and sold well.  As a result, the manager
retained his job.
$$
The manager tries to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer refused
it, saying, “I wrote the program because I thought it was an interesting
concept, and thus I expect no reward.”
$$
The manager upon hearing this remarked, “This programmer, though he holds a
position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an employee.  Lets
promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!”
$$
But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, “I exist so that
I can program.  If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste everyone’s
time.  Can I go now? I have a program that I’m working on.”
%%
BIOLOGY OF SNACK CAKES
----------------------
!!
Prepared by Eric Kollenberg
!!
21 Feb. 1986
$$
I. INTRODUCTION
$$
As you probably know (unless you’re incredibly stupid), life on this
planet (Earth) is divided into three basic groups - plants, animals,
and snack cakes.  Although volumes of boring material have been
written about the former two subjects, there is a notable lack of
reference material covering the latter.  So I made some up.
$$
II. EVOLUTION AND CLASSIFICATION
$$
Snack caves developed over two-and-a-half zillion years ago (and if
you look on the shelves of some 24-hour convenience stores, you can
find samples nearly that old), when the seas were full of Campbell’s
primordial soup.  This prehistoric mixture of propylene glycol,
potassium benzoate, butylhydroxytoluene, sodium citrate, primitive
emulsifiers, and other “building blocks of snack cake” spawned the
first one-celled crumbs.  Eventually, these crumbs began to colonize
around central specialized cells called endofill (known to the
layperson as “creme filling”).  The colonies developed into types:
spongospores and diablospores (devil’s food cake).  An example of the
former is the common Twinkie (_Hostus* hostilus_), the latter is
typified by the primitive “Suzy Q” (_Hostus satanis_).  In a bid for
survival, some varieties, such as the _Hostus hostum_ (Ho-Ho) and the
_Hostus zippum_ (Ding-Dong) evolved protective inedible outer shells,
or exofrostings.
$$
There are many gaps in the scheme, such as the common crumb cake,
which some have suggested has an extraterrestrial origin, and the
mythical “Little Debbie.”  However, these topics are outside the scope
of this paper, which is another way of saying that I’m getting tired
of typing.
$$
III. BIOCHEMISTRY
$$
What complex interaction of RNA, DNA and enzymes is responsible for
the behavior of these species?  What are the chemical reactions
occurring within the cell tissue?  Do I look like a chemist?  How the
hell should I know?
$$
IV. FEEDING
$$
The Suzy-Q is a typical example of mimicry in the natural world.
Resembling a food item, it lies in wait in its natural habitat, the
grocery store shelf.  Then it dives down the throat of the
unsuspecting victim, gagging it.  The Suzy-Q now turns itself inside
out like a feeding starfish, and digests the victim with its potent
creme filling.
$$
V. REPRODUCTION
$$
“Oh, boy,” you’re thinking.  Well, you sickening little pervert, you
don’t think I’m going to pander to your prurient curiosity, do you?  Actually,
I’d be glad to (especially for money), but the breeding
habits of snack cakes have never been observed.  This is something of
a mystery, since more specimens are always being sighted under car
seats, behind refrigerators, and behind the legs of vending
machines.  Speculation about the reproductive habits of the common Twinkie
have… Naahh, that’s too disgusting to even think about.
$$
VI. SOURCES
$$
1.   Daniken, Erich von, _Snack Cakes of the Ancient Alien Flying
Saucer Pyramid Gods_ 1969.
$$
2.   Ibid, William, _Growing Up in the Ibid Family: An Autobiography_
1947.
$$
3.   Writer, Staff, “Woman Possessed by Aliens, Unfaithful Hubby Kills
and Eats Her”  1 Mar 1986 _National Devourer_.
$$
4.   Writer, Staff, “New Chocolate and Beer Diet Cures Cancer,
Improves Sex Life, Lose 400 lbs, Wash Behind Your Ears”
1 Jan 1985 _Midnite Globule_.
$$
* Hostess is a registered trademark of the Hostess Artificial Food
Substitute Division of I.T.T., an exporter of international
corruption.  It is used without permission, for which hordes of oily
lawyers will probably descend on me and cut out my lungs with a
hacksaw.
$$
[This paper was originally submitted as a Silly Science Fair (tm)
project at an SF con in Chicago, along with another on reproduction of
coathangers.  It included a cross-sectional diagram of a Twinkie, and
dissection photos (yuck!) of other species.]
%%
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.  They
seem more afraid of life than death.
   -- James F. Byrnes
%%
The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize it is
your move.
   -- Frank Crane
%%
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
   -- Edgar W. Howe
%%
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be
taken seriously.
   -- Hubert Humphrey
%%
What we see depends on mainly what we look for.
   -- John Lubbock
%%
Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your
own. You may both be wrong.
   -- Dandemis
%%
To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable.  The
highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy.
   -- Ancient Chinese Warlord
%%
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away.
   -- Barry Goldwater
%%
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
   -- Demosthenes
%%
The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.
   -- Walter Bilbey
%%
Top executives cannot afford to be isolated from the people below,
who are in better touch with what is going on, and cannot afford to set
unrealistic goals.
   -- Charles Burck
%%
Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as
any other fragile and precious thing.
   -- Randolph S. Bourne
%%
In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.
   -- Proverbs
%%
Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no
wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to
communicate.  If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience;
if brusque, your character.
   -- Jonathan Swift
%%
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
   -- Leonardo da Vinci
%%
Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
thing as division.
%%
Blore’s Razor:
$$
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
%%
Bore, n.:
$$
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
   -- Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”
%%
Brady’s First Law of Problem Solving:
$$
When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the Lone
Ranger have handled this?”
%%
BULLWINKLE: “You just leave that to my pal.  He’s the brains of the outfit.”
!!
GENERAL:    “What does that make YOU?”
!!
BULLWINKLE: “What else?  An executive…”
   -- Jay Ward
%%
Bureaucrat, n.:
$$
A person who cuts red tape sideways.
   -- J. McCabe
$$
Bureauocrat’s Principle:
$$
Delay is the safest form of denial.
%%
Canada Post doesn’t really charge 32 cents for a stamp.  It’s 2 cents
for postage and 30 cents for storage.
   -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
%%
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
center of the universe.  The premise is wrong, but the navigation
works.  An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
   -- Kelvin Throop III
%%
Character Density, n.:
$$
The number of very weird people in the office.
%%
Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
%%
Chicago, n.:
$$
Where the dead still vote … early and often!
%%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider’s Rule #84:
$$
The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
for overheated passengers.  When your timer pops up, the driver
will cheerfully baste you.
   -- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
%%
Churchill’s Commentary on Man:
$$
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%%
Cold, adj.:
$$
When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own pockets.
%%
Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
   -- Josh Billings
%%
Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
%%
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think
even if you don’t think.
%%
Democracy is good.  I say this because other systems are worse.
   -- Jawaharlal Nehru
%%
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes
you nothing.  It was here first.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
Don’t worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older,
it starts avoiding you.
   -- The Old Farmer’s Almanac
%%
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
%%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
   -- Poor Richard’s Almanac
%%
Experience is the worst teacher.  It always gives the test first and
the instruction afterward.
%%
For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these:
   “It might have been!”
%%
BUREAUCRACY:
$$
A method for tranforming energy into solid waste.
%%
The opening lines of two novels by Edward George Earle
Bulwer-Lytton:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents --
except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent
gust of wind which swept the streets (for it is in London that
our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely
agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against
the darkness.”
   -- From ‘Patal Clifford’ (1830), by Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton
%%
“Ho, Diomed, well met!  Do you sup with Glaucus tonight?” said a
young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and
effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a
coxcomb.
   -- From ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ (1834) by Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton
%%
“The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena
fretted sulkily and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not
for the first time since the journey began -- pondered snidely if
this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like
all the other holidays spent with Basil.”
   -- an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
%%
“He was a Portuguese who had never fished and she was a Chinese
who couldn’t cook rice; he had enough hair on his chest to make a
coat for a very small Hungarian and the way she kissed it made
him wonder why.”
   -- an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
%%
“Plgnthgr had hidden his mtskrthkl in the mothchenth, and now he
had taken the beautiful and magical Mekthkn and her infant
Trmyljp there, too, and they all trembled as they heard the
fearful chtlems of the invading Hrnewrs just above.”
   -- an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
%%
RONALD MCDONALD DEFEATS KARL MARX
$$
Moscow (Feb. 7) - Recent events leave no room for doubt: McDonald’s
restaurants cause democracy. One week of fast, courteous service has
acheived political pluralism where 70 years of U.S. foreign policy
could not. To review recent events:
$$
JAN 31: The first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union opens in
Moscow.  Twenty-seven lines and a seating capacity of almost 700 ensure that
mass indoctrination will be hasty.
$$
FEB 4: Hundreds of thousands demonstrate for a more open political system
in the largest protest since the Russian Revolution. Heard chanted by the
crowds late into the evening: “McFreedom! McFreedom!”
$$
FEB 7: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union overwhelmingly votes to
abolish its legal monopoly on power.
%%
Money and women are the most sought after and the least known of any two
things we have.
   -- Will Rogers
%%
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing - and that was
the closest our country has ever been to being even.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

Government spending?  I don’t know what it’s all about.  I don’t know any
more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn’t
know much.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

There is not a man in the country that can’t make a living for himself and
family.  But he can’t make a living for them *and* his government, too,
the way his government is living.  What the government has got to do is
live as cheap as the people.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

Baseball is a skilled game.  It’s America’s game - it, and high taxes.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year
with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes.  I hope
they do get ’em lowered down enough so people can afford to pay ’em.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than
golf has.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

On account of us 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
%%

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
anything?  If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five
years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

Liberty don’t work as good in practice as it does in speeches.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neigbors to
the south.  We could never understand why Mexico wasn’t just crazy about
us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at
heart.
   -- Will Rogers
%%

I don’t care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to
run their own business.  I know men that would make my wife a better
husband than I am; but, darn it, I’m not going to give her to ’em.
   -- Will Rogers
%%
What’s the matter with the world?  Why, there ain’t but one thing wrong
with every one of us - and that’s “selfishness.”
   -- Will Rogers
%%

Why don’t somebody print the truth about our present economic
condition?  We spent years of wild buying on credit, everything
under the sun, whether
we needed it or not, and now we are having to pay for it, howling like a
pet coon.  This would be a great world to dance in of we didn’t have to
pay the fiddler.
   -- Will Rogers
%%
Three out of four Americans make up 75% of the population.
%%
!retupmoc siht edisni deppart ma I !pleH
%%
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
%%
A good memory does not equal pale ink.
%%
A guy has to get fresh once in a while so the girl
doesn’t lose her confidence.
%%
“A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.”
   -- H. L. Menchen
%%
A king’s castle is his home.
%%
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
%%
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%%
A plucked goose doesn’t lay golden eggs.
%%
A rolling stone gathers momentum.
%%
A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
%%
A thing not worth doing isn’t worth doing well.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.
%%
A wise man can see more from a the bottom
of a well than afool can from a mountain top.
%%
Adultary is the application of democracy to love.
   -- H. L. Menchen
%%
Alia jacta est.
(The die is cast.)
   --Julius Caesar
%%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%%
Allen’s Axiom:
$$
When all else fails, follow instructions.
%%
Allen’s Distinction:
$$
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the
calf won’t get much sleep.
%%
Allen’s Law:
$$
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.
%%
Always draw your curves then plot the readings.
%%
An authority is somebody who can tell you more
about something than you really care to know.
%%
An honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought.
%%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%%
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than
a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup”
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
And so we plow along, as the fly said to the ox.
%%
Anthony’s Law of Force:
$$
Don’t force it, get a larger hammer.
%%
Any given program will expand to fill all available resources.
%%
Any given program, once running, is obsolete.
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Apple:
$$
Typically, a device used to seduce men -- usually equipped with
display screens and/or worms.
%%
Arcana Coelestica:
$$
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to
that obtained by Christ.
   -- H. L. Menchen
%%
Arcana Coelestica:
$$
Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
   -- H. L. Menchen
%%
As a goatherd learns his trade by goat, so a writer learns his trade by wrote.
%%
Avery’s Observation:
$$
It does not matter if you fall down as long as you pick up
something from the floor while you get up.
%%
Bar Chart:
$$
A list of places to go when it’s Miller time.
$$
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
%%
Beckhap’s Law:
$$
Beauty times brains equals a constant.
%%
Bedfellows make strange politicians.
%%
Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance.
%%
Benchley’s Law of Distinction:
$$
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are
two kinds of people in the world, and those who don’t.
%%
Berra’s Law:
$$
You can observe a lot just by watching.
%%
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it,
and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous
resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way.
   -- Bokonon
%%
Bicycle Law:
$$
All bicycles weigh 50 pounds:
!!
   A 30 pound bicycle needs a 20 pound lock.
!!
   A 40 pound bicycle needs a 10 pound lock.
!!
   A 50 pound bicycle doesn’t need a lock.
%%
Binary:
$$
Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
%%
Bipolar:
$$
Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska and Buffalo, New York.
%%
Bit:
$$
Similar to a nibble.  Commonly eight nibbles to a mouthful. See byte
%%
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
   -- Herbert Hoover
%%
Boren’s Law:
$$
When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Brooke’s Law:
$$
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or
expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Bubble Memory:
$$
A derogatory term, usually referring to a person’s intelligence.
!!
   See also ‘Vacuum tube’.
%%
Bug:
$$
Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls.
%%
Bye’s First Law of Model Railroading:
$$
Anytime you wish to demonstrate something, the number of faults encountered
is poportional to the number of viewers.
%%
Byte:
$$
A mouthful, as in “How many bytes in a Big Mac?”
%%
Cahn’s Axiom:
$$
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
Cannon’s Comment:
$$
If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a
flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.
%%
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected.
$$
Carefully planned projects take only twice as long.
%%
Carson’s Law:
$$
It’s better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.
%%
Cassette:
$$
A very small petite cass.
!!
Usually achieved through exercise.
%%
Character Density:
$$
The number of very wierd people in the office.
%%
Cheops’ Law:
$$
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
%%
Chip:
$$
Any number of small crunchy objects, often served with onion dip.
%%
Chisolm’s Third Law, Corollary 1:
$$
If you explain something so clearly that no one can possibly
misunderstand, somebody will.
%%
Chisolm’s Third Law, Corollary 2:
$$
If you do something which you are sure will meet with everyone’s approval,
somebody won’t like it.
%%
Chisolm’s Third Law, Corollary 3:
$$
Procedures designed to implement the purpose won’t quite work.
%%
Clarke’s First Law:
$$
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something
is possible, he is almost certainly right.  When he states that
something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
%%
Clean mind, clean body:
!!
  Take your pick.
%%
Closed Loop:
$$
A method of execution no longer in vogue except in Iran.
%%
Code:
$$
Virus lasting about three to five days, accompanied by sore throat,
runny nose, and fever.
%%
Cohen’s Law:
$$
What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts,
not the facts themselves.
%%
Cole’s Axiom:
$$
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population
is growing.
%%
Cole’s Law:
$$
Thinly sliced cabbage.
%%
Comin’s Law:
$$
People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
%%
Command:
$$
Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a
manner as to make the human feel in control.
%%
Commoner’s Second Law of Ecology:
$$
Nothing ever goes away.
%%
Compile:
$$
A heap of decomposing vegetable matter.
%%
Conrad’s Conundrum:
$$
Technologie don’t transfer.
%%
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the soul of genius.
%%
Conversational Mode:
$$
Describes the typical office the day after a major sporting event.
%%
Corollary to the First Law of Revision:
$$
In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus one obvious wrong way,
it is often wiser to choose the wrong way, so as to expedite subsequent
revision.
%%
CPU:
$$
A juvenile way of telling your dog he missed the paper.
%%
Crane’s Law:
$$
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
%%
Creditors have much better memories than debtors.
%%
Crittendon’s 14th application of Murphy’s First Law:
$$
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
%%
CRT:
$$
A movie about a little alien who forgets his telephone number and must write home.
%%
Cursor:
$$
An expert in four-letter words.
%%
de la Lastra’s Corollary:
$$
After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws,
it will be discovered that the gasket has been omitted.
%%
de la Lastra’s Law:
$$
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
removed.
%%
Debug:
$$
The act of placing shoe leather against a small creeping creature.
%%
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and
deserve to get it good and hard.”
   -- H. L. Menchen
%%
Design flaws travel in groups.
%%
Do not believe in miracles.  Rely on them.
%%
Do not clog intellect’s sluices with knowledge of questionable uses.
%%
Don’s Axiom:
$$
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
Don’t worry if you’re a kleptomaniac: You can always take something for it.
%%
Don’t get mad, get even.
%%
Downtime:
$$
Coffee breaks, lunch, or Friday mentality in the office.
%%
Ducharme’s Precept:
$$
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%%
Dump:
$$
The EPA’s answer to health
%%
Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will
happen to you the rest of the day.
%%
Ehrman’s Commentary on “Things will get worse before they get better”:
$$
Who said things would get better?
%%
Error:
$$
Something only humans can commit
%%
Etorre’s Observation:
$$
The other line moves faster.
%%
Ever wonder why, when you go to operate a venetian blind, you always
pull the wrong string first?
%%
Every Titanic has its iceberg.
%%
Experiments should be reproducable: they should all fail in the same way.
%%
Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in the door.
%%
Familiarity breeds.
%%
Farnsdick’s corollary:
$$
After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.
%%
Fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
%%
Fett’s Law:
$$
Never replicate a successful experiment.
%%
FIFO:
$$
Common name for a dog
%%
Finagle’s First Law:
$$
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle’s Fourth Law:
$$
Once a job is messed up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
%%
Finagle’s Second Law:
$$
No matter what the experiment’s result, there  will always be
someone eager to:
(a) misinterpret it.
(b) fake it. or
(c) believe it supports his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle’s Third Law:
$$
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
%%
Firestone’s Law of Forcasting:
$$Little only has to be right once.
%%
First Law of Advice:
$$
The correct advice is to give the advice that is desired.
%%
First Law of Laboratory Work:
$$
Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.
%%
First Law of Revision:
$$
Information necessitating a change of design will be conveyed to the
designer after - and only after - the plans are complete (Often
called the ‘Now They Tell Us’ Law).
%%
First Postulate of Isomurphism:
$$
Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.
%%
Fools rush in where fools have been before.
%%
For people who like that kind of thing, that is the kind of
thing they will like.
%%
Forgive and remember.
%%
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
$$
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damned near zero.
%%
Galbraith’s Law of Political Wisdom:
$$
Anyone who says he is not going to resign, four times, definitely will.
%%
Gallois’ Revelation:
$$
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but
tomfoolery.  But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very
expensive machine, is somehow enobled, and no one dares to criticize it.
%%
Gerrold’s Fundamental Truth:
$$
It’s a good thing money can’t buy happiness.  We couldn’t
stand the commercials.
%%
Gerrold’s Law:
$$
A little ignorance can go a long way.
$$
Lyall’s Addendum:
$$
  … in the direction of maximum harm.
%%
Gerrold’s Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
$$
1. An object in motion will be heading in the wrong direction.
!!
2. An object at rest will be in the wrong place.
%%
Gerrold’s Pronouncement:
$$
The difference between a politician and a snail is that a snail
leaves its slime behind.
%%
Gibb’s Law:
$$
Infinity is one lawyer waiting for another.
%%
GIGO:
$$
A movie industry acronym referring to the numerous “Gidget Goes…” movies:
!!
  eg. GIGO Hawai, GIGO surfing, etc.
%%
Ginsberg’s Restatement of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
$$
1) You can’t win.
!!
2) You can’t break even.
!!
3) You can’t even quit the game.
%%
Glatum’s Law of Materialistic Acquisitiveness:
$$
The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional
to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.
%%
God gives us relatives.
$$
Thank God we can choose our friends.
%%
Gold’s Law:
$$
If the shoe fits, it’s ugly.
%%
Goldwyn’s Law of Contracts:
$$
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
%%
Gordon’s First Law:
$$
If a project is not worth doing at all, it’s not worth doing well.
%%
Gravity doesn’t exist:
$$
The earth sucks
%%
Grossman’s Misquote:
$$
Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers.
%%
Gumperson’s Law:
$$
The probability of anything happening is inversely proportional
to its desirability.
%%
Handy Guide to Modern Science:
$$
1.  If it’s green or it wiggles, it’s biology.
!!
2.  If it stinks, it’s chemistry.
!!
3.  If it doesn’t work, it’s physics.
%%
Hardware:
$$
Typically boots, leather, and chains.
!!
Contrast with software.
%%
Harrison’s Postulate:
$$
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%%
Hartley’s Second Law:
$$
Never go to bed with anybody crazier than you are.
%%
Harver’s Law:
$$
A drunken man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.
%%
Hawkin’s Theory of Progress:
$$
Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong with
one that is right.  It consists of replacing a theory that
is wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.
%%
He who laughs last probably doesn’t understand the joke.
%%
Hellrung’s Law:
$$
If you wait, it will go away.
$$
Shevelson’s Extension:
$$
  … having done its damage…
$$
Grelb’s Addition:
$$
  .. if it was bad, it will be back.
%%
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when
he is in trouble again.
%%
Helpless:
$$
Owning a sick goldfish.
%%
History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.
%%
Horngren’s Observation (generalized):
$$
The real world is a special case.
%%
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a thankless hound.
%%
Howe’s Law:
$$
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
I ain’t broke, but I’m badly bent.
%%
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
%%
Idleness is the holiday of fools.
%%
If 6 saws saw 6 sausages, 606 saws will saw 606 sausages.
%%
If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
%%
If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, transform your data set.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, try something else.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, you’re doing about average.
%%
If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency),
it will serve us right.
   -- Alistair Cooke.
%%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%%
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
$$
   -- Tom Robbins
%%
If nobody uses it, there’s a reason.
%%
If some people didn’t tell you, you’d never know
they’d been away on vacation.
%%
If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it.
%%
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing
theirs, maybe you just don’t understand the situation.
%%
If you continually give you will continually have.
%%
If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
%%
If you feel like exercising, lie down until the feeling passes.
%%
If you make a mistake you right it immediately to the best of your ability.
%%
If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you.  If you
really make them think they’ll hate you.
%%
If you put your supper dish to your ear you can hear the
sounds of a restaurant.
   -- Snoopy
%%
If you would keep a secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.
%%
In America, it’s not how much an item costs that matters,
it’s how much you save.
%%
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
%%
In every organization there will always be one person who
knows what is going on.
$$
This person must be fired.
%%
Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place.
%%
Inflation:
$$
When you save for a long time to buy something, then you find that you
can’t afford it.
%%
Insanity is hereditary - You get it from your children.
%%
Inside every small problem is a large problem struggling to get out.
%%
Interchangable parts won’t.
%%
Interface:
$$
The opposite of “Get out of my face.”
%%
Internal consistency is more highly valued than efficiency.
%%
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
%%
It is far better to be deceived than to be undeceived by those we love.
%%
It is impossible to fully enjoy procrastination unless one
has plenty of work to do.
%%
It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
%%
It takes both a weapon and two people to commit a murder.
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
It’s always easy to see both sides of an issue we are not
particularly concerned about.
%%
It’s not reality that’s important, but how you perceive things.
%%
It’s sweet to be remembered, but it’s often cheaper to be forgotten.
%%
Jacquin’s Postulate on Democratic Government:
$$
No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%%
Jargon is used as a means of succeeding by not simplifying.
%%
Jenkinson’s Law:
$$
It won’t work.
%%
Jennings Corollary to the Law of Selective Gravity:
$$
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
directly proportional to the value of the carpet.
%%
Jone’s Motto:
$$
Friends come and go but enemies accumulate.
%%
Jone’s Principle:
$$
Needs are a function of what other people have.
%%
K:
$$
A term used in employment ads to disguise just how much they
are really willing to pay.
%%
Katz’s Law:
$$
Men and women will act rationally when all other possibilities
have been exhausted.
%%
Kitman’s Law:
$$
Pure drivel tends to drive away ordinary drivel.
%%
Klipstein’s Lament:
$$
All warranty and guarantee clauses are voided by payment of the invoice.
%%
Klipstein’s Observation:
$$
Any product cut to length will be too short.
%%
Knight’s Law:
$$
Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.
%%
Korman’s conclusion:
$$
The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way again.
%%
Krueger’s Observation:
$$
A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil service
exam in order to work for the government.
%%
Langin’s Law:
$$
If things were left to chance, they’d be better.
%%
Langsam’s Law:
$$
Everything depends.
%%
Law of Communications:
$$
The result of improved and enlarged communications is a vastly
increased area of misunderstanding.
%%
Law of Reruns:
$$
If you have watched a TV series only once, and you watch it
again, it will be a rerun of the same episode.
%%
Law of Research:
$$
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
Law of Revelation:
$$
The hidden flaw never remains hidden.
%%
Law of Selective Gravity:
$$
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
$$
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
I - Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
II - Any given program costs more and takes longer.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
III - If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
IV - If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
IX - Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast
to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
V - Any program will expand to fill available memory.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
VI - The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
VII - Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities
of the programmer who must maintain it.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
VIII - Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.
%%
LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
$$
X - Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%%
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
%%
Let he who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%%
Let’s just be friends and make no special effort to ever see
each other again.
%%
Lewis’ Law:
$$
No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you’ve
bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
%%
Lewis’ Law:
$$
People will buy anything that’s one to a customer.
%%
This sounds like an urban myth, but I trust the teller.
$$
A friend from Berkeley just started working for the University.  His supervisor
had the following tale to tell:
$$
The supervisor and his brother were going off to the 3rd game of the World
Series on Oct. 17.  The brother was taking his new car, a pure white Mercedes
with gold trim.  He’d bought it three days before.
$$
They get to the game, park, and go to the stands.  The earthquake hits.
Everyone cheers.  Everyone goes out to their cars.  However, our two heroes
can’t find their car -- it’s been stolen.  Somehow they get home, tell the
insurance company, and go on with their lives.
$$
A couple weeks ago, the insurance company phoned back saying that they’d found
the car.  In fact, they’d found the thief as well -- he was in the car when
they found it… in the Cypress Structure, crushed to six inches high…
$$
The brother was horrified, but Andy’s supervisor was really
happy.  “Yes, there is justice in this world!”
   -- from rec.humor.funny
%%
Life is like an onion:
$$
You peel off layer after layer, then you find there is nothing in it.
%%
Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone.
%%
Lord Falkland’s Rule:
$$
When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary
not to make a decision.
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Love the sea?
$$
I dote upon it - from the beach.
%%
Lowery’s Law:
$$
If it jams - force it.
!!
If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
%%
Lubarsky’s Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
$$
There’s always one more bug.
%%
Lyall’s Conjecture:
$$
If a computer cable has one end, then it has another.
%%
Lyall’s Fundamental Observation:
$$
The most important leg of a three legged stool is the one that’s missing.
%%
Lynch’s Law:
$$
When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.
%%
MacDonald’s Second Law:
$$
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a
number and give it back to them.
%%
Maier’s Law:
$$
If the facts do not conform to the theory, the facts must be disposed of.
%%
Man’s horizons are bounded by his vision
%%
Manly’s Maxim:
$$
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong
conclusion with confidence.
%%
Matz’s warning:
$$
Beware of the physician who is great at getting out of trouble.
%%
Maugham’s Thought:
$$
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
%%
May all your wishes be granted.
   -- Ancient Chinese Curse.
%%
May you live in interesting times.
   -- Ancient Chinese Curse.
%%
Megahertz:
$$
A very large car rental agency
%%
Merkin’s Maxim:
$$
When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to failure.
%%
Moer’s truism:
$$
The trouble with most jobs is the job holder’s resemblence to being
one of a dog sled team.  No one gets a change of scenery except the lead dog.
%%
Monday is a hard way to spend one-seventh of your life
%%
Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years.
%%
Murphy’s Eighth Law:
$$
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
%%
Murphy’s Fifth Law:
$$
If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
%%
Murphy’s Fourth Law:
%%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one
that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%%
Murphy’s Second Law:
$$
Everything takes longer than you think.
%%
Murphy’s Seventh Law:
$$
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Murphy’s Sixth Law:
$$
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
%%
Murphy’s Third Law:
$$
Things that go wrong will do so at the worst possible time.
%%
MURPHY’S LAW:
$$
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
Murphy’s Constant:
$$
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.
%%
Murphy’s Corollary:
$$
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
%%
Murphy’s Second Corollary:
$$
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
1.  Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
2.  No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
3.  Friendly fire ain’t.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
4.  The most dangerous thing in the combat zone is an officer with a map.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
5.  The problem with taking the easy way out is that the
enemy has already mined it.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
6.  The buddy system is essential to your survival; it gives the
enemy somebody else to shoot at.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
7.  The further you are in advance of your own positions, the more
likely your artillery will shoot short.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
8.  Incoming fire has the right of way.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
9.  If your advance is going well, you are walking into an ambush.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
10.  The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
11.  If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
13.  The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is
incoming friendly fire.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
14.  There is nothing more satisfying that having someone take
a shot at you, and miss.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
15.  Don’t be conspicuous. In the combat zone, it draws fire.  Out
of the combat zone, it draws sergeants.
%%
Murphy’s Military Laws:
$$
16.  If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.
%%
Murphy’s Miltary Laws:
$$
12.  The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used
on abandoned installations.
%%
Narrow-minded:
$$
Possessing the ability to see through a keyhole with both eyes.
%%
Nature sides with the hidden flaw.
%%
Network:
$$
The occupation of a fisherman.
%%
Next to surviving an earthquake, nothing is quite so satisfying
as as receiving a income tax refund.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations:
$$
Negative expectations yield negative results.  Positive
expectations yield negative results.
%%
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves
for their inability to give bad examples.
%%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%%
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
%%
Online:
$$
A statement shouted at tennis judges in response to serves being called out.
%%
Only someone with nothing to be sorry for smiles back at the rear of an elephant.
%%
Opening night:
$$
The night before the play is ready to open.
%%
Orator:
$$
Possessing a flood of words and a drop of reason.
%%
Organization is the enemy of improvisation.
%%
Osborn’s Law:
$$
Variables won’t; constants aren’t.
%%
Ours is a world where people don’t know what they want and
are willing to go through hell to get it.
%%
Output:
$$
What people who talk backwards do to their cat.
%%
Parkinson’s First Law:
$$
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
%%
Parkinson’s Second Law:
$$
Expenditures rise to meet income.
%%
Patience is something that you admire greatly in the driver behind
you but not in the one ahead of you.
%%
Peer’s Law:
$$
The solution to the problem changes the problem.
%%
People who have no faults are terrible:
$$
there is no way of taking advantage of them.
%%
Perkin’s Postulate:
$$
The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
%%
Peter’s Placebo:
$$
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
%%
Pournelle’s Law of Costs and Schedules:
$$
Everything costs more and takes longer.
%%
Preserve the old, but know the new.
%%
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of
the programmer who must maintain it.
%%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%%
Program:
$$
What commercials try to do to us.
%%
Q’s Law:
$$
No matter what stage of completion one reaches in a project,the
cost of the remainder of the project remains constant.
%%
Quantized Revision of Murphy’s Law:
$$
Everything goes wrong all at once.
%%
Raising pet electric eels is gaining a lot of current popularity.
%%
Ralph’s Observation:
$$
It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize
that you are in a hurry.
%%
RAM:
$$
A male sheep.
%%
Real Time:
$$
Here and now, as opposed to “fake time” which only occurs there and then.
%%
Reputation:
$$
What others are not thinking about you.
%%
ROM:
$$
A RAM after a delicate operation.
%%
Rosenfield’s Regret:
$$
The most delicate component will be dropped.
%%
Rudin’s Law:
$$
In crises that force people to choose among alternative courses
of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.
%%
Rule of Accuracy:
$$
When working towards the solution of a problem, it always helps
if you know the answer.
%%
Sattinger’s Law:
$$
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
Schmidt’s Law:
$$
If you mess with a thing long enough, it’ll break.
%%
Schmidt’s Observation:
$$
All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person.
%%
Scott’s Second Law:
$$
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
to have been correct in the first place.
%%
Second Law of Revision:
$$
The more innocuous the modification appears to be, the  further its
influence will extend and the more plans will have to be redrawn.
%%
Segal’s Law:
$$
A man with a watch knows what time it is.
!!
A man with two watches is never sure.
%%
Semi-conductor:
$$
A person hired to lead an orchestra before he has
graduated from director’s school.
%%
Sevareid’s Law:
$$
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
%%
Shanahan’s Law:
$$
The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.
%%
Shaw’s Principle:
$$
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
%%
Shirley’s Law:
$$
Most people deserve each other.
%%
Show interest in the future:
$$
You’re going going to spend the rest of your life there.
%%
Skip’s Lament:
$$
Given any problem containing n equations, there will be (n + 1) unknowns.
%%
Small change can often be found under seat cushions.
%%
Software:
$$
Typically silk nighties, nylons, garter belts.
!!
Contrast with hardware.
%%
Statistics are used as a drunken man uses lamp posts:
$$
For support rather than illumination.
%%
Success isn’t how far you got, but the distance you travelled from
where you started.
%%
Sueker’s Note:
$$
If you need n items of anything, you will have n - 1 in stock.
%%
Sweer’s Impossibility Theorem:
$$
Nothing can be both completely general and internally consistent at
the same time.
%%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
%%
Terminal:
$$
What most people have to be before they see a doctor.
%%
THE UNSPEAKABLE LAW:
$$
As soon as you mention something:
  If it is good, it goes away.
  If it is bad, it happens.
%%
The Airplane Law:
$$
When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer
to is on time.
%%
The Arithmetic of Cooperation:
$$
When you’re adding up committees there’s a useful rule of thumb-
!!
That talents make a difference, and follies make a sum.
   -- Piet Hein
%%
The best prophet of the future is the past.
%%
The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you
are working for somebody else.
%%
“I’ve got a firm policy on gun control, if there’s a gun
around, I want to be the one controlling it.”
   -- Clint Eastwood
%%
The days just prior to marriage are like a snappy introduction
to a tedious book.
%%
The DREA Law:
$$
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions, the experimental apparatus
will do exactly as it pleases.
%%
The First Law of Wing Walking:
$$
Never let hold of what you’ve got until you’ve got hold of something else.
%%
The first Myth of Management:
$$
Spend sufficient time confirming the need and the need will disappear.
%%
The Fourth Law of Computing:
$$
On a slow day, you can wait forever.
%%
The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn’t been asleep.
%%
The greatest programming project of all took six days.  On the seventh day
the programmer rested.
$$
We’ve been trying to debug the blinking thing ever since.
%%
The hardest thing is to disguise your feelings when you put a lot
of relatives on the train for home.
%%
The headache:
$$
The most popular form of birth control.
%%
The Law of Selective Gravity (The Buttered Side Down Law):
$$
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
%%
The Peter Principle:
$$
In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence,
and every post tends to be filled by an employee incompetent to
execute its duties.
%%
The Sausage Principle:
$$
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch
either one being made.
%%
The system is not quite as rickety as I have been telling you.
   -- Ralph Gorin
%%
The Ultimate Law:
$$
All general statements are false (including this one).
%%
The Ultimate Wisdom:
$$
Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection in knowing all
the follies of mankind by introspection.
   -- Piet Hein
%%
The Unapplicable Law:
$$
Washing your car to make it rain doesn’t work.
%%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
%%
The victorious candidate in any particularly dirty political
campaign usually wins by a mudslide.
%%
The Whispered Rule:
$$
People will believe anything if you whisper it.
%%
There is nothing worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.
%%
Things have gone from bad to worse when you not only lose
interest, you lose apathy.
%%
Third Law of Advice:$$
Simple advice is the best advice
%%
To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
%%
Transistor:
$$
A sibling opposite of transbrother.
%%
Two wrongs do not make a right:
$$
It usually takes three or more.
%%
Vacuum Tube:
$$
A derogotory term.  See ‘Bubble Memory’.
%%
Weiler’s Law:
$$
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.
%%
Wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am besten.
(He who laughs last laughs best.)
%%
Westheimer’s Time Estimation Rule:
$$
Estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2 and add 3,
independent of the units of time.
%%
What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer
is working when he’s staring out the window.
%%
What orators lack in depth they make up in length.
%%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
%%
What’s tennis without a racket?
%%
When a man laughs at his misfortunes, he loses a great many friends.
$$
They never forgive the loss of their perogative.
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
guarantee them.
%%
When people are after you, paranoia is a good idea.
%%
When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if
you know the answer beforehand.
%%
When you try to make an impression, the chances are that that is
the impression you will make.
%%
When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.
%%
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a
sure sign he expects to be paid for it.
   -- H. L. Menchen
%%
Why can’t life’s big problems come when we are twenty and know everything?
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless
it was to avoid responsibility?
%%
Wiker’s Law:
$$
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%%
Without fools there would be no wisdom.
%%
Witten’s Law:
$$
Whenever you cut your fingernails, you will find a need for them an hour later.
%%
Wolfgang’s Third Law:
$$
It can’t work.
%%
Woltman’s Law:
$$
Never program and drink beer at the same time.
%%
Wynne’s Law:
$$
Negative slack tends to increase.
%%
Wyszkowski’s Second Law:
$$
Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.
%%
Wyszowski’s Law:
$$
No experiment is reproducible.
%%
You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.
%%
You can’t fight the law of conservation of energy, but you can sure
bargain with it.
%%
You get the most of what you need the least.
%%
You never find a lost article until you replace it.
%%
Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics:
$$
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.
%%
Zymurgy’s Law of Volunteer Labour:
$$
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
Zymurgy,s Seventh Exception to Murphy’s Laws:
$$
When it rains, it pours.
%%
You are an individual who is educated by your mistakes.  You will
learn alot today.
%%
“More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without
necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason -
including blind stupidity”
   -- W. A. Wulf, “A Case Against the GOTO”, Proceedings of the 25th
National ACM Conference, August 1972, pp 791-97
%%
“Define UNIVERSE; give two examples.”
“The perceived world; 1) mine, 2) yours.”
%%
28.35 grams of prevention are worth 0.45359 kilograms of cure.
%%
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number pi, but an incredible simulation.
%%
A Renaissance man diffuses to refine himself.
   -- Steve Hug
%%
A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
   -- Ed Nather
%%
A backscratcher will always find new itches.
   -- Gomme
%%
A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
%%
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
A bird in the hand makes it hard to blow your nose.
%%
A boss with no humor is like a job that’s no fun.
%%
A cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%%
A committee is an animal with at least six legs, and no brain.
   -- Heinlein
%%
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
%%
A couple of months in the lab can often save a couple of hours in the library.
%%
A crisis is when you can’t say, “Let’s just forget the whole thing.”
   -- Ferguson
%%
A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine.
%%
A day without orange juice is like a day without orange juice.
%%
A dean is to a faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
   -- Alfred Kahn
%%
A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.
   -- Klipstein
%%
A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding ducks.
%%
A good scapegoat is hard to find.
%%
A harp is a nude piano.
%%
A helicopter is just a bunch of parts flying in close formation.
%%
A homeowner’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a weekend for?
%%
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Mom.
%%
A kid’ll eat the middle of an Oreo, eventually.
%%
A king’s castle is his home.
%%
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%%
A lot of people are afraid of heights.  Not me, I’m afraid of widths.
   -- Wright
%%
A man who fishes for marlin in ponds will put his money in Etruscan bonds.
%%
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
%%
A man without a woman is like a fish without gills.
%%
A motion to adjourn is always in order.
%%
A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.
   -- Wilcox
%%
A penny saved has not been spent.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
A pessimist is a married optimist.
%%
A poet who reads his verse in public might have other nasty habits.
%%
A quarter ounce of chocolate equals four pounds of fat.
%%
A rolling stone gathers momentum.
%%
A sadist is a masochist who follows the Golden Rule.
%%
A sentence is worth a thousand words.
%%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard.
%%
A sinking ship gathers no moss.
   -- Donald Kaul
%%
A small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.
%%
A soft drink turneth away company.
%%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
%%
A successful American spends more supporting the government than a family.
%%
A theorist right once in ten is a hero; an observer wrong that often is a bum.
%%
A theory is better than its explanation.
   -- Woodward
%%
A truly wise person never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.
%%
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper its printed on.
   -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.
%%
A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
   -- Ziggy
%%
A watched clock never boils.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
A wedding is a funeral where a man smells his own flowers.
%%
A young child is a noise with dirt on it.
%%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%%
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
%%
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
%%
About when we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
   -- Hoover
%%
Absence makes the heart go wander.
%%
Absolutum obsoletum.  (If it works, it is out of date.)
   -- Stafford Beer
%%
Academy:
$$
A modern school where football is taught.
%%
Accident:
$$
When presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better.
%%
According to the official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
%%
Acting:
$$
An art that consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
%%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%%
Admiration:
$$
Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.
%%
Adult:
$$
A person that has stopped growing at both ends but not in the middle.
%%
Adult:
$$
One old enough to know better.
%%
Adultery:
$$
Putting yourself in someone else’s position.
%%
Advanced design:
$$
Upper management doesn’t understand it.
%%
Adventure is a sign of incompetence.
   -- Amundsen
%%
After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
   -- Olmstead
%%
After painting the town red, take a rest before applying a second coat.
%%
Afterism:
$$
A concise, clever statement you don’t think of until too late.
   -- Thom
%%
Afternoon very favorable for romance.  Try a single person for a change.
%%
Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.
%%
Air is water with holes in it.
%%
Air travel:
$$
Breakfast in London, dinner in New York, luggage in Brazil.
%%
Alcoholic:
$$
Someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.
%%
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, aleph-null bottles of beer…
%%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%%
Alimony is the high cost of leaving.
%%
All I ask is the chance to prove that money cannot make me happy.
   -- Lauris
%%
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
   -- Brilliant
%%
All generalizations are useless, including this one.
%%
All my friends and I are crazy.  That’s the only thing that keeps us sane.
%%
All my life I wanted to be someone; I should have been more specific.
   -- Wagner
%%
All new:
$$
Parts not interchangeable with previous model.
%%
All people are born alike -- except Republicans and Democrats.
   -- Groucho Marx
%%
All probabilities are really 50%.  Either a thing will happen or it won’t.
%%
All signs in Metric for the next 20 miles.
   -- a sign in Ohio
%%
All syllogisms have three parts; therefore this is not a syllogism.
%%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%%
All the good ones are taken.
   -- Harris
%%
All the men on my staff can type.
   -- Bella Abzug
%%
All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
   -- O’Casey
%%
All things are possible, except skiing thru a revolving door.
%%
All trails have more uphill sections than they have downhill sections.
%%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn’t expect to be paid back.
%%
Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn’t work out.
%%
Always remember that you are unique.  Just like everyone else.
%%
Always take both skis off before hanging them up.
%%
Am I in charge here?…  No, but I’m full of ideas.
   -- Dr. Who
%%
Ambiguity:
$$
Telling the truth when you don’t mean to.
%%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
   -- McCarthy
%%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%%
Amoebit:
$$
Amoeba/rabbit cross; it can multiply and divide at the same time.
%%
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
   -- Horngren
%%
An apple a day keeps the doctor away…  if it is aimed well.
%%
An apple a day makes 365 apples a year.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
An apple every eight hours keeps three doctors away.
%%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%%
An example of hard water is ice.
%%
An idle mind is worth two in the bush.
%%
An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
%%
An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
%%
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
   -- Van Roy
%%
Antonym:
$$
The opposite of the word you’re trying to think of.
%%
Any country with “democratic” in the title isn’t.
   -- Murray
%%
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.
%%
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
   -- Malek
%%
Any smoothly functioning technology is indistinguishable from a “rigged” demo.
%%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
   -- Holmes
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs.  The trick is to make one with none.
%%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
   -- Goldwyn
%%
Anyone who makes an absolute statement is a fool.
%%
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
   -- Pardo
%%
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious.
   -- James Hogan
%%
Appearances are not everything; it just looks like they are.
%%
Aquadextrous:
$$
Able to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.
%%
Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
%%
Arithmetic:
$$
Counting to twenty without taking off your shoes.
   -- Mickey Mouse
%%
Art is anything you can get away with.
   -- Marshall McLuhan
%%
As God is my witness, Andy, I thought that turkeys could fly.
   -- WKRP in Cincinatti
%%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%%
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, and pay only station-to-station rates.
%%
At these prices, I lose money -- but I make it up in volume.
   -- Peter Alaquon
%%
Auditors always reject expense accounts with a bottom line divisible by five.
%%
Authority:
$$
A person who can tell you more than you really care to know.
%%
Automobile:
$$
A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
%%
Babies can’t walk because their legs aren’t long enough to reach the ground.
%%
Bachelor:
$$
A guy who is footloose and fiancee-free.
%%
Bachelor:
$$
A man who never made the same mistake once.
%%
Bachelor:
$$
A selfish guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.
   -- Quinn
%%
Ban the bomb.  Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Banectomy:
$$
The removal of bruises on a banana.
   -- Rich Hall
%%
Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door.
%%
Be careful of reading health books; you might die of a misprint.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
Be content with what you’ve got, but be sure you’ve got plenty.
%%
Beam me up, Scotty.  There’s no intelligent life down here.
   -- James Kirk
%%
Begathon:
$$
A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money.
   -- Hall
%%
Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats.
   -- O’Neill
%%
Behold the warranty:
$$
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
%%
Being a good communicator means people find out what’s really wrong with you.
%%
Being a woman is quite difficult since it consists mainly of dealing with men.
%%
Being popular is important.  Otherwise people might not like you.
%%
Best gift for the person who has everything:  A burglar alarm.
%%
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
   -- Mae West
%%
Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
%%
Beware of a tall dark man with a spoon up his nose.
%%
Bigamy is having one spouse too many.  Monogamy is the same.
%%
Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.
%%
Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the Earth.
%%
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
%%
Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
%%
Bore:
$$
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
%%
Bore:
$$
He who talks so much about himself that you can’t talk about yourself.
%%
Bore:
$$
Wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
   -- Winchell
%%
Brain:
$$
The apparatus with which we think that we think.
   -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Bride:
$$
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
Broad-mindedness:
$$
The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%%
Budget:
$$
A method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward.
%%
Bureaucrat:
$$
A person who cuts red tape sideways.
   -- J. McCabe
%%
Bureaucrat:
$$
A politician with tenure.
%%
Business will be either better or worse.
   -- Calvin Coolidge
%%
But officer, I stopped for the last one, and it was green!
%%
By the time you have the right answers, no one is asking you questions.
%%
California is proud to be the home of the freeway.
   -- Ronald Reagan
%%
Calling a person a runner-up is a polite way of saying they lost.
%%
Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
%%
Charity:
$$
A thing that begins at home and usually stays there.
%%
Charm:
$$
A way of getting a “yes” -- without having asked any clear question.
%%
Chastity:
$$
The most unnatural of the sexual perversions.
   -- Aldous Huxley
%%
Chemicals:
$$
Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
%%
Children act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Cinemuck:
$$
Popcorn, soda, and candy that covers the floors of movie theaters.
%%
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
%%
College:
$$
The fountains of knowledge, where everyone goes to drink.
%%
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
%%
Commitment is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.
%%
Commitment:
$$
Making time when there is none.
%%
Common sense:
$$
The collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
   -- Einstein
%%
Concept:
$$
Any “idea” for which an outside consultant bills more than $25,000.
%%
Confidence:
$$
The feeling you have before you understand the situation.
%%
Confucius say too much.
   -- recent Chinese proverb
%%
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
   -- Mencken
%%
Conscience:
$$
The inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
   -- Mencken
%%
Conscience:
$$
The thing that hurts when everything else feels great.
%%
Conscious is being aware of something; conscience is wishing you weren’t.
%%
Conservative:
$$
A Liberal who has just been mugged.
%%
Conservative:
$$
A person who believes nothing should be done for the first time.
%%
Conservative:
$$
One who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
%%
Consider what might be fertilizing the greener grass across the fence.
%%
Consultant:
$$
Someone who knowns 101 ways to make love, but can’t get a date.
%%
Consultation:
$$
Medical term meaning “to share the wealth.”
%%
Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.
%%
Could you be a poster child for retroactive birth control?
%%
Courage:
$$
Two cannibals having oral sex.
%%
Coward:
$$
One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
   -- Bierce
%%
Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!
%%
Crime does not pay…  as well as politics.
   -- A. E. Newman
%%
Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.
   -- Steve Wright
%%
Cynic:
$$
A person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.
   -- Shoaff
%%
Cynic:
$$
A person who tells you the truth about your own motives.
   -- Russel Green
%%
Dare to be average.
%%
Dark dirt is attracted to light objects, and dark dirt to light objects.
%%
Death and taxes are inevitable; at least death doesn’t get worse every year.
%%
Death has been proven to be 99% fatal to laboratory rats.
%%
Death is God’s way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%%
Death is life’s way of telling you you’ve been fired.
   -- R. Geis
%%
Death is the greatest kick of all.  That’s why they save it for last.
%%
Death:
$$
To stop sinning suddenly.
   -- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Deliberation:
$$
Examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
%%
Democracy:
$$
The worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
   -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Dentists are incapable of asking questions that need a simple yes or no answer.
%%
Design simplicity:
$$
Developed on a shoe-string budget.
%%
Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines on them and makes them perspire.
%%
Diplomacy:
$$
The art of letting someone else have your way.
%%
Diplomacy:
$$
The art of saying “nice doggy” until you can find a rock.
%%
Diplomat:
$$
A man who can convince his wife she would look stout in a fur coat.
%%
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
%%
Distinctive:
$$
A different color or shape than our competitors.
%%
Do YOU have redeeming social value?
%%
Do married people live longer, or does it just seem that way?
%%
Do not merely believe in miracles; rely on them.
   -- Finagle
%%
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
%%
Does the name “Pavlov” ring a bell?
%%
Don’t be fooled by his twinkling eyes; it’s the sun shining between his ears.
%%
Don’t be humble…  you’re not that great.
   -- Golda Meir
%%
Don’t create a problem for which you do not have the answer.
   -- Burke
%%
Don’t eat the yellow snow.
%%
Don’t force it, get a larger hammer.
   -- Anthony
%%
Don’t get even -- get odd!
%%
Don’t get stuck in a closet; wear yourself out.
%%
Don’t give someone a piece of your mind unless you can afford it.
%%
Don’t marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper.
   -- Scottish Proverb
%%
Don’t mind him; politicians always sound like that.
%%
Don’t say yes until I finish talking.
   -- Darryl Zanuck
%%
Don’t take life too seriously; you won’t get out of it alive.
   -- Hubbard
%%
Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.
   -- Russell Long
%%
Don’t undertake vast projects with half-vast ideas.
%%
Don’t use no double negatives, not never.
%%
Don’t worry; the brontosaurus is slow, stupid, and placid.
%%
Don’t you have anything more useful you could be doing?
%%
Down with the categorical imperative!
%%
Drive carefully.  We’re overstocked.
   -- Sign in junkyard
%%
Driving in the snow is a spectator sport.
%%
Drug:
$$
A substance that, when injected into a rat, produces a scientific paper.
%%
Drugs are the scenic route to nowhere.
%%
Ducks?  What ducks??
%%
Due to a mixup in Urology, orange juice will not be served this morning.
%%
Dying is easy.  Comedy is difficult.
%%
Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.
%%
Earth Destroyed by Solar Flare -- Film at eleven.
%%
Earth is a great funhouse without the fun.
   -- Jeff Berner
%%
Eat a live toad in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you that day.
%%
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow it might be illegal.
%%
Education helps earning capacity.  Ask any college professor.
%%
Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak…
%%
Egotism:
$$
Doing a crossword puzzle with a pen.
%%
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average drivers.
%%
Either I’m dead or my watch has stopped.
   -- Groucho Marx’s last words
%%
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.
   -- Oscar Wilde’s last words
%%
Elbonics:
$$
Two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theatre.
%%
Elections come and go, but politics are always with us.
%%
Electricity comes from electrons; morality comes from morons.
%%
Eloquence is logic on fire.
%%
Engineers…  they love to change things.
   -- Leonard McCoy MD
%%
Enjoy life; you could have been a barnacle.
%%
Eschew obfuscation.
%%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
   -- Woody Allen
%%
Every cloud has a silver lining; you should have sold it, and bought titanium.
%%
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
%%
Every silver lining has a cloud around it.
%%
Everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
   -- Atwood
%%
Everyone is a genius.  It’s just that some people are too stupid to realize it.
%%
Everyone needs belief in something.  I believe I’ll have another beer.
%%
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
%%
Everything is actually everything else, just recycled.
%%
Everything is always done for the wrong reasons.
   -- O’Brian
%%
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
   -- Simon
%%
Everything worthwhile is mandatory, prohibited, or taxed.
%%
Everything you know is wrong, but you can be straightened out.
%%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%%
Exceptions prove the rule, and wreck the budget.
   -- Miller
%%
Exclusive:
$$
We’re the only ones who have the documentation.
%%
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.
%%
Exercise extends your life ten years, but you spend 15 of them doing it.
%%
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
   -- Horner
%%
Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
   -- Olivier
%%
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
%%
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
%%
Experiments should be reproducible.  They should all fail the same way.
%%
Familiarity breeds attempt.
%%
Familiarity breeds children.
%%
Famous last words:
$$
Don’t worry, I can handle it.
%%
Fanatic:
$$
Someone who, having lost sight of his goal, redoubles his efforts.
%%
Fashion:
$$
A form of ugliness so intolerable that it changes every six months.
%%
Federal Reserve:
$$
A reserve where federal employees hunt wild game.
%%
Fenderberg:
$$
Deposit that forms on the inside of a car fender after a snowstorm.
%%
Fidelity:
$$
A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
%%
Field tested:
$$
Manufacturing doesn’t have a test system.
%%
Fill what’s empty; empty what’s full; scratch where it itches.
   -- Longworth
%%
Fine day for friends.  So-so day for you.
%%
Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
   -- Robert Firth
%%
Flying is the second greatest experience known to man.  Landing is the first.
%%
Foolproof operation:
$$
No provision for adjustment.
%%
Fools rush in -- and get the best seats in the house.
%%
Football, like religion, brings out the best in people.
   -- Larry Chapman
%%
For a good time, call 555-3100.
%%
For adult education, nothing beats children.
%%
For every action, there is a corresponding over-reaction.
   -- Anthony Battista
%%
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
   -- Harrison
%%
For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
   -- Main
%%
For people who like that kind of book, that is the kind of book they will like.
%%
For some reason, this statement reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%%
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
%%
Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
%%
Fortune favors the lucky.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
Fossil flowers come from the Petrified Florist.
%%
Four kinds of homicide:
$$
Felonious, Excusable, Justifiable, and Praiseworthy…
%%
Four wheel drive:
$$
Let’s you get more stuck, further from help.
%%
Friends:
$$
People who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.
%%
Friends:
$$
People who know you well, but like you anyway.
%%
Furbling:
$$
Walking a maze of ropes even when you are the only person in line.
%%
Genderplex:
$$
Trying to determine from the cutesy pictures which restroom to use.
%%
Generally you don’t see that kind of behavior in a major appliance.
   -- Bill Murray, from Ghostbusters
%%
Genetics:
$$
Why you look like your father, and if you don’t, why you should.
%%
Genius is the infinite capacity for picking brains.
%%
Genius:
$$
A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with “bright”.
%%
Give a skeptic an inch and he’ll measure it.
%%
Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I’ll break my lever.
%%
Give me a sleeping pill and tell me your troubles.
%%
Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
   -- St. Augustine
%%
Give your very best today.  Heaven knows it is little enough.
%%
Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause of pregnancy.
%%
Gleemites:
$$
Petrified deposits of toothpaste found in sinks.
%%
Go away.  I’m all right.
   -- last words of H. G. Wells
%%
Go directly to jail.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
%%
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
God don’t make mistakes.  That’s how He got to be God.
   -- Archie Bunker
%%
God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends.
%%
God is a polythiest.
%%
God is not dead.  He is alive and autographing Bibles at Cody’s!
%%
God is not dead.  He is alive and working on a much less ambitious project.
%%
God is not dead.  He just couldn’t find a parking place.
%%
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
%%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%%
God, I ask for patience -- and I want it right now!
%%
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
%%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
%%
Good day for a change of scene.  Repaper the bedroom wall.
%%
Good-bye.  I am leaving because I am bored.
   -- George Saunders’s last words
%%
Government expands to absorb all available revenue and then some.  -- Wiker
%%
Graft:
$$
An illegal means of uniting trees to make money.
%%
Grasshoppotamus:
$$
A creature that can leap to tremendous heights…  once.
%%
Gravity:
$$
What you get when you eat too much and too fast.
%%
Great minds run in great circles.
%%
Group IQ:
$$
Lowest IQ of any member divided by the number of people in the group.
%%
Grub first, then ethics.
   -- Bertolt Brecht
%%
HELP!  MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!
   -- E. E. CUMMINGS
%%
Had there been an actual emergency, you would no longer be here.
%%
Hailing frequencies open, Captain.
%%
Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English.  He was rather large.
%%
Hangover:
$$
The wrath of grapes.
%%
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
   -- Ogden Nash
%%
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
%%
Have an adequate day.
%%
Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
%%
Having children will turn you into your parents.
%%
He has the heart of a little child…  it’s in a jar on his desk.
%%
He is considered a most graceful speaker who can say nothing in the most words.
%%
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
%%
He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
%%
He who dies with the most toys, wins.
%%
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
%%
He who hesitates is a damned fool.
   -- Mae West
%%
He who invents adages to peruse takes along rowboat when going on cruise.
%%
He who is content with his lot probably has a lot.
%%
He who is still laughing hasn’t yet heard the bad news.
   -- Bertolt Brecht
%%
He who laughs last didn’t get the joke.
%%
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
   -- Swipple
%%
He who speak with forked tongue, not need chopsticks.
   -- Chinese proverb
%%
He who spends a storm beneath a tree, takes life with a grain of TNT.
%%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%%
Heat expands:
$$
In the summer the days are longer.
%%
Heisenberg might have been here.
%%
Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.
%%
History chronicles the small portion of the past that was suitable for print.
%%
History does not repeat itself; historians merely repeat each other.
%%
Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
%%
Honeymoon:
$$
A short period of doting between dating and debting.
   -- Ray Bandy
%%
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
%%
How can you govern a nation which has 246 kinds of cheese?
   -- Charles de Gaulle
%%
How do they get all those little metal bits on a zipper to line up so well?
%%
How do you make an elephant float?  Two scoops of elephant and some rootbeer…
%%
How long is a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on.
%%
How long should a man’s legs be?  Long enough to reach the ground.
   -- Lincoln
%%
How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb?  All you can afford.
%%
How many weeks are there in a light year?
%%
How much sin can you get away with and still go to heaven?
%%
How sharper than a hound’s tooth it is to have a thankless serpent.
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%%
Humor is the best antidote to reality.
%%
I am a Hollywood writer, so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain.
%%
I am a Libra.  Libras don’t believe in astrology.
   -- Al Hibbs
%%
I am a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from humans.
%%
I am dying beyond my means.
   -- Oscar Wilde’s last words, sipping champagne
%%
I am not a crook.
   -- Richard Nixon
%%
I am not a lovable man.
   -- Richard Nixon.
%%
I am not as dumb as you look.
%%
I am not cynical, just experienced.
%%
I am prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
%%
I am really enjoying not talking to you, so let’s not talk again real soon, OK?
%%
I belong to no organized party.  I am a Democrat.
   -- Will Rogers
%%
I bet you have never seen a plumber bite his nails.
%%
I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for my mother.
%%
I can relate to that.
%%
I can’t give you brains, but I can give you a diploma.
   -- the Wizard of Oz
%%
I could not possibly fail to disagree with you less.
%%
I do desire we may be better strangers.
   -- Shakespeare
%%
I don’t have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
   -- Brilliant
%%
I doubt, therefore I might be.
%%
I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.
   -- Mae West
%%
I hate quotations.
   -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have already told you more than I know.
%%
I have heard about people like me, but I never made the connection.
   -- McLean
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
   -- Albran
%%
I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best.
   -- Wilde
%%
I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.
   -- John D. Rockefeller
%%
I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
   -- Bill Hoest
%%
I know on which side my bread is buttered.
   -- John Heywood
%%
I like work; it fascinates me.  I can sit and look at it for hours.
%%
I love mankind…  It’s people I hate.
   -- Schulz
%%
I love my job; it’s the work I can’t stand.
%%
I may not be the world’s greatest lover, but number seven’s not bad.
   -- Allen
%%
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
   -- Brilliant
%%
I must follow the people.  Am I not their leader?
   -- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
   -- Woolcott
%%
I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.
   -- Marx
%%
I never made a mistake in my life.  I thought I did once, but I was wrong.
%%
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
   -- G. B. Shaw
%%
I promise we would only loose ten to twenty million TOPS!
   -- Dr. Strangelove
%%
I put instant coffee in a microwave, and almost went back in time.
%%
I really had to act; ’cause I didn’t have any lines.
   -- Marilyn Chambers
%%
I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.
%%
I shot an arrow into the air and it stuck.
   -- graffito in Los Angeles
%%
I spilled spot remover on my dog.  Now he’s gone.
   -- Steve Wright
%%
I suggest a new strategy, Artoo:  Let the Wookee win.
   -- CP30
%%
I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree.
   -- Nash
%%
I think we are all Bozos on this bus.
%%
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
   -- Mae West
%%
I used to be lost in the shuffle.  Now I just shuffle along with the lost.
%%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I am not so sure.
%%
I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
   -- Woody Allen
%%
I will always love the false image I had of you.
%%
I will never lie to you.
%%
I would give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%%
I would have made a good pope.
   -- Richard Nixon
%%
I would like to help you out.  Which way did you come in?
%%
I would like to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
   -- Cerebus
%%
I would never join any club that would have the likes of me as a member.
   -- Groucho Marx
%%
I’d like to meet the person who invented sex, and see what he’s working on now.
%%
I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
%%
I’ll race you to China.  You can have a head start.  Ready, set, GO!
%%
I’m in Pittsburgh.  Why am I here?
   -- Harold Urey
%%
I’m not afraid to die.  I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
   -- Allen
%%
I’m not going deaf.  I’m ignoring you.
%%
I’m not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
%%
I’m pretty good with BS but I love listening to an expert.  Keep talking.
%%
I’ve been in more laps than a napkin.
   -- Mae West
%%
Ice cream cures all ills.  Temporarily.
   -- Seleznick
%%
Idiot box:
$$
Part of an envelope that tells a person where to place the stamp.
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%%
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger hands.
%%
If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all his windows.
   -- Yiddish proverb
%%
If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive.
   -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
   -- Ted Turner
%%
If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.
   -- Sheridan
%%
If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
%%
If Murphy’s Law can go wrong, it will.
   -- Silverman
%%
If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points.
%%
If a thing’s worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
   -- G. K. Chesterton
%%
If all the world’s a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
   -- Paul Beatty
%%
If all the world’s managers were laid end to end, it would be an improvement.
%%
If an item is advertised as “under $50”, you can bet it’s not $19.95.
   -- McGowan
%%
If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, quit; don’t be a nut about success.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, you probably didn’t really care anyway.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed, you’re doing about average.
   -- Leonard Levinson
%%
If conditions are not favorable, bacteria go into a period of adolescence.
%%
If enough data is collected, anything can be proven by statistical methods.
%%
If in doubt, mumble.
%%
If it is Tuesday, this must be someone else’s fortune.
%%
If it is worth doing, it is worth doing for money.
%%
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
%%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%%
If it wasn’t for Newton, we wouldn’t have to eat bruised apples.
%%
If it wasn’t for muscle spasms, I wouldn’t get any exercise at all.
%%
If one hundred people do a foolish thing, one will become injured.
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
%%
If parents would only realize how they bore their children.
   -- G. B. Shaw
%%
If reproducibility might be a problem, conduct the test only once.
%%
If some people didn’t tell you, you’d never know they’d been away on vacation.
%%
If the probability of success is not almost one, it is damn near zero.
   -- Ellis
%%
If the ship is not sinking, the rats must be the ones not leaving.
%%
If the shoe fits, buy the other one too.
%%
If the shoe fits, it’s ugly.
   -- Gold
%%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
   -- Art Hoppe
%%
If this saying did not exist, somebody would have invented it.
%%
If time heals all wounds, how come bellybuttons don’t fill in?
%%
If we all work together we can totally disrupt the system.
   -- Brilliant
%%
If we knew what the hell we were doing, then it wouldn’t be research.
%%
If you are asked to join a parade, don’t march behind the elephants.
   -- Zisla
%%
If you are horny, it’s lust, but if your partner’s horny, it’s affection.
%%
If you are not very clever you should be conciliatory.
   -- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
If you are seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
%%
If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.
   -- J. Paul Getty
%%
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn’t a horse.
%%
If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
%%
If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullshit.
%%
If you can’t find your glasses, it’s probably because you don’t have them on.
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
   -- Harry S Truman
%%
If you cannot hope for order, withdraw with style from the chaos.
   -- Stoppard
%%
If you do a job too well, you will get stuck with it.
   -- Slous
%%
If you do not change direction you are likely to end up where you are headed.
%%
If you do something right once, someone will ask you to do it again.
%%
If you don’t care where you are, then you aren’t lost.
%%
If you don’t know what you’re doing, do it neatly.
%%
If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called on to repeat it.
   -- Coolidge
%%
If you explain so clearly that no one can possibly misunderstand, someone will.
%%
If you have kleptomania, you can always take something for it.
%%
If you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it.
%%
If you have to travel on the Titanic, why not go first class?
   -- Hempstone
%%
If you liked Earth, you will love Heaven.
%%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
   -- Graham Summer
%%
If you look like your passport photo, you aren’t well enough to travel.
   -- Fuch
%%
If you mess with a thing long enough, it will break.
   -- Schmidt
%%
If you put it off long enough, it might go away.
%%
If you think before you speak, the other guy gets his joke in first.
%%
If you want to know how old a man is, ask his brother-in-law.
%%
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
%%
If you were to ask me this question, what would my answer be?
%%
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
   -- Wright
%%
If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.
   -- Ronald Reagan
%%
If your parents didn’t have any children, neither will you.
%%
Ignorance:
$$
When you don’t know anything, and someone else finds out.
%%
Ignore previous fortune.
%%
Imports are ports very far inland.
%%
In America, it is not how much an item costs, it is how much you save.
%%
In English, every word can be verbed.
%%
In a ham and egg breakfast, the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed.
%%
In a modern household, the only things we have to wash by hand are children.
%%
In an orderly world, there is always a place for the disorderly.
%%
In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy.
%%
In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
   -- Butler
%%
In order to get a loan you must first prove you don’t need it.
%%
In process:
$$
So wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless.
%%
In the first half of our life we learn habits that shorten the second half.
%%
In this world, truth can wait; she is used to it.
%%
Ingrate:
$$
Bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion.
%%
Insanity is inherited; you get it from your kids!
%%
Instant sex will never be better than the kind you have to peel and cook.
%%
Institute:
$$
An archaic school where football is not taught.
%%
Interchangeable parts won’t.
%%
Is it time for lunch yet?
%%
Is there life before death?
   -- Belfast Graffito
%%
Is this really happening?
%%
It ain’t loafing unless they can prove it.
   -- Dick Brown
%%
It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose -- until you lose.
%%
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
   -- Andrew Mathis
%%
It is better to be on penicillin than never to have loved at all.
%%
It is better to be on the ground wishing you were flying, than vice versa.
%%
It is better to burn out than to fade away.
%%
It is better to have a positive Wasserman than never to have loved at all.
%%
It is better to have loved and lost -- much better.
%%
It is better to have loved and lost than just to have lost.
%%
It is better to remain childless than to father an orphan.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
%%
It is difficult to legislate morality in the absence of moral legislators.
%%
It is difficult to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys.
%%
It is easier to take it apart than to put it back together.
   -- Washlesky
%%
It is later than you think.
%%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem.
%%
It is not a good omen when goldfish commit suicide.
%%
It is not that you and I are so clever, but that the others are such fools.
%%
It is so soon that I am done for, I wonder what I was begun for.
   -- epitaph
%%
It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
%%
It seems to make an auto driver mad if she misses you.
%%
It takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
It was a brave man that ate the first oyster.
%%
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
%%
It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca.
%%
It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.
   -- Wright
%%
It’s better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
%%
It’s hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.
%%
It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys.
%%
It’s hell to work for a nervous boss, especially if you are why he’s nervous!
%%
It’s here at last:  Released a 26-week project in 48 weeks.
%%
It’s not easy being green.
   -- Kermit
%%
It’s not hard to meet expenses; they are everywhere.
%%
It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you look playing the game.
%%
Jesus saves; Moses invests; but only Buddha pays dividends.
%%
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
   -- Matthew Arnold
%%
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you are at it.
%%
Just because you are not paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.
%%
Just give Alice some pencils and she will stay busy for hours.
%%
Just when you get going, someone injects a dose of reality with a large needle.
%%
Justice:
$$
A decision in your favor.
%%
Keep America beautiful.  Swallow your beer cans.
%%
Keep a very firm grasp on reality, so you can strangle it at any time.
%%
Keep stress out of your life.  Give it to others instead.
%%
Keep the pointy end forward and the dirty side down.
%%
Klatu barada nikto.
%%
Kleptomaniac:
$$
A rich thief.
%%
Knocked; you weren’t in.
   -- Opportunity
%%
Know thyself -- but don’t tell anyone.
%%
Know what I hate most?  Rhetorical questions.
   -- Henry Camp
%%
LSD soaks up 47 times its own weight in excess reality.
%%
Lactomangulation:
$$
Abusing the “open here” spout on a milk carton.
%%
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
%%
Laugh, and the world ignores you.  Crying doesn’t help either.
%%
Lead me not into temptation.  I can find it myself.
%%
Learning at some schools is like drinking from a firehose.
%%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%%
Liberal:
$$
A Conservative who has just been arrested.
%%
Lie:
$$
A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date.
%%
Life -- love it or leave it.
%%
Life is a game of bridge -- and you have just been finessed.
%%
Life is complex.  It has real and imaginary parts.
%%
Life is difficult because it is non-linear.
%%
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
%%
Life is like a fountain…  I will tell you how when I figure it out.
%%
Life is like a sewer…  What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
%%
Life is like an analogy.
%%
Life is not for everyone.
%%
Life is wasted on the living.
%%
Life might have no meaning, or worse, it might have a meaning you don’t like.
%%
Life without caffeine is stimulating enough.
   -- Sanka ad
%%
Life:
$$
A brief interlude between nothingness and eternity.
%%
Little things come in small packages.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse.
%%
Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree, that smells AWFUL.
%%
Logic is a means of CONFIDENTLY being wrong.
%%
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
   -- Kettering
%%
Losing your driver’s license is just God’s way of saying “BOOGA, BOOGA!”
%%
Love does not make the world go around, just up and down a bit.
%%
Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.
%%
Love is being stupid together.
%%
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
%%
Love means nothing to a tennis player.
%%
Love your enemies.  It will make them crazy.
%%
Love:
$$
The warm feeling you get towards someone who meets your neurotic needs.
%%
Machines have less problems.  I’d like to be a machine.
   -- Andy Warhol
%%
Magnocartic:
$$
Any automobile that when left unattended attracts shopping carts.
%%
Maintain thy airspeed, lest the ground rise up and smite thee.
%%
Majority:
$$
That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
Make a firm decision now…  you can always change it later.
%%
Male zebras have white stripes, but female zebras have black stripes.
%%
Man has made his bedlam; let him lie in it.
   -- Fred Allen
%%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
Man who arrives at party two hours late finds he has been beaten to the punch.
%%
Man who falls in blast furnace is certain to feel overwrought.
%%
Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self.
%%
Mankind has never reconciled itself to the ten commandments.
%%
Many a family tree needs trimming.
%%
Many are called, but few are at their desks.
%%
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
%%
Many quite distinguished people have bodies similar to yours.
%%
Marriage is a rest period between romances.
%%
Marriage is a three ring circus:  engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.
%%
Marriage is a trip between Niagra Falls and Reno.
%%
Marriage is an institution -- but who wants to live in one?
%%
Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.
%%
Marriage is not a word; it is a sentence.
%%
Marriage is the sole cause of divorce.
%%
Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on Earth.
   -- John Lyly
%%
Mathematicians take it to the limit.
%%
Matrimony is the root of all evil.
%%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed; nor can it be returned without a receipt.
%%
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.
%%
Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.
%%
May you die in bed at 95, shot by a jealous spouse.
%%
May you have many friends and very few living enemies.
%%
Measure with a micrometer; mark with chalk; cut with an axe.
   -- Ray
%%
Meeting:
$$
A gathering where the minutes are kept and the hours lost.
   -- Gourd
%%
Men seldom show dimples to girls who have pimples.
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
   -- Groucho Marx
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
   -- Groucho Marx
%%
Moderation is a fatal thing.  Nothing succeeds like excess.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
   -- J. K. Galbraith
%%
Modesty:
$$
Being comfortable that others will discover your greatness.
%%
Momentum:
$$
What you give a person when they are going away.
%%
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can certainly rent it for a couple of hours.
%%
Money can’t buy happiness, but it lets you be miserable in comfort.
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
%%
Monotony:
$$
The practice of having only one spouse at a time.
%%
Most general statements are false, including this one.
   -- Alexander Dumas
%%
Mountain range:
$$
A cooking stove used at high altitudes.
%%
Mummy:
$$
An Egyptian who was pressed for time.
%%
Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel.
%%
My family history begins with me, but yours ends with you.
   -- Iphicrates
%%
My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot.
   -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
My opinions might have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.
   -- Wilde
%%
Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
%%
Narcolepulacy:
$$
The contagious action of yawning.
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
   -- Lin Yutang
%%
Neutrinos have bad breadth.
%%
Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
%%
Never eat anything bigger than your head.
   -- Kliban
%%
Never give an inch!
%%
Never have any children, only grandchildren.
   -- Gore Vidal
%%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting.
   -- Billy Rose
%%
Never laugh at live dragons.
   -- Bilbo Baggins
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never verb your nouns.
%%
New:
$$
Different color from previous model.
%%
Nice guys don’t finish nice.
%%
No guts, no glory.
%%
No maintenance:
$$
Impossible to fix.
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
No man would listen to you talk if he didn’t know it was his turn next.
   -- Howe
%%
No matter what goes wrong, there’s always someone who knew it would.
%%
No matter what results are expected, someone is always willing to fake it.
%%
No problem is so large it can’t be fit in somewhere.
%%
Nobody ever has a reservation on a plane that leaves from Gate 1.
%%
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
%%
Nobody knows the trouble I have been.
%%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%%
Nonsense.  Space is blue and birds fly through it.
   -- Heisenberg
%%
Nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be.
%%
Not all men who drink are poets.  Some of us drink because we are not poets.
%%
Nothing can be done in one trip.
   -- Snider
%%
Nothing increases your golf score like witnesses.
%%
Nothing is ever a total loss; it can always serve as a bad example.
%%
Nothing is finished until the paperwork is done.
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
   -- Walter Winchell
%%
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
Nothing will dispel enthusiasm like a small admission fee.
   -- Kim Hubbard
%%
Now it’s time to say goodbye, to all our company…  M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E.
%%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%%
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
   -- Plato
%%
Often it is fatal to live too long.
   -- Racine
%%
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to conceive.
   -- Herold
%%
Oh, Aunty Em, it’s so good to be home!
%%
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
%%
Omniscience:
$$
Talking only about things you know about.
%%
On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.
   -- W. C. Fields’s epitaph
%%
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
%%
Once is happenstance.  Twice is coincidence.  Thrice is enemy action.
%%
Once upon a time, charity was a virtue and not an organization.
%%
One Bell System -- it sometimes works.
%%
One good turn usually gets most of the blanket.
%%
One size fits all:
$$
Doesn’t fit anyone.
%%
One thing leads to another, and usually does.
%%
One word of advice:  Don’t give it.
%%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%%
Only fools are quoted.
   -- Anonymous
%%
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
   -- Ducharme
%%
Our parents were never our age.
%%
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
   -- Roy Ash
%%
Our problems are mostly behind us.  Now we have to fight the solutions.
%%
Out of the mouths of babes does often come cereal.
%%
Oversteer is when the passenger is scared; understeer when the driver is scared.
%%
Packrat’s credo:
$$
“I have no use for it, but I hate to see it go to waste.”
%%
Paper is always strongest at the perforations.
   -- Corry
%%
Paradise is exactly like where you are, only MUCH, MUCH better.
   -- Anderson
%%
Paradox:
$$
An assistant to PhDs.
%%
Parallel lines never meet unless you bend one or both of them.
%%
Paranoia:
$$
A healthy understanding of the nature of the universe.
%%
People have one thing in common:  They are all different.
%%
People sweat is they won’t catch fire while making love.
%%
People who take cat naps usually don’t sleep in a cat’s cradle.
%%
People who think they know everything greatly annoy those of us who do.
%%
Perfect guest:
$$
One who makes his host feel at home.
%%
Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.
%%
Perhaps your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
%%
Phasers locked on target, Captain.
%%
Philosophy:
$$
Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%%
Pity the poor egg; it only gets laid once.
%%
Politics consists of deals and ideals.
%%
Politics:
$$
The art of turning influence into affluence.
%%
Positive:
$$
Being mistaken at the top of your voice.
%%
Possessions increase to fill the space available for their storage.
   -- Ryan
%%
Power means not having to respond.
%%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%%
Preudhomme’s Law of Window Cleaning:
$$
It’s on the other side.
%%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%%
Proctologist:
$$
A doctor who puts in a hard day at the orifice.
%%
Professor:
$$
One who talks in someone else’s sleep.
%%
Progress means replacing a theory that is wrong with one more subtly wrong.
%%
Progress might have been all right once, but it’s gone on too long.
   -- Nash
%%
Proofreading is more effective after publication.
   -- Barker
%%
Proximity isn’t everything, but it comes close.
%%
Puritan:
$$
Someone who is deathly afraid that someone somewhere is having fun.
%%
Quack!
%%
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but it is the only one we have.
%%
Question Authority…  and the Authorities will question you!
%%
Quinine is the bark of a tree; canine is the bark of a dog.
%%
Quit working and play for once!
%%
Quoting one is plagiarism.  Quoting many is research.
%%
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
%%
Reality -- what a concept!  -- Robin Williams
%%
Reality is for people who can’t deal with drugs.
   -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Refrain means don’t do it.  A refrain in music is the part you better not sing.
%%
Refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
%%
Reputation:
$$
What others are not thinking about you.
%%
Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.
   -- von Braun
%%
Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
   -- Wright
%%
Rugged:
$$
Too heavy to lift.
%%
Rumper sticker on a horse:  “Get off my tail, because shit happens.”
%%
Russia has abolished God, but so far God has been more tolerant.
   -- Swayze
%%
Sacred cows make great hamburger.
%%
Sailing:
$$
A form of mast transit.
%%
Science is material.  Religion is immaterial.
%%
Scotty, beam me up a double!
%%
Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
%%
Seeing is deceiving.  It’s eating that’s believing.
   -- James Thurber
%%
Seek simplicity -- and distrust it.
   -- Alfred Whitehead
%%
Serendipity:
$$
The process by which human knowledge is advanced.
%%
Sex is dirty only when it’s done right.
   -- Woody Allen
%%
Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.
%%
She walks as if balancing the family tree on her nose.
%%
Showing up is 80% of life.
   -- Woody Allen
%%
Sign on bank:  “FREE BOTTLE OF CHIVAS WITH EVERY MILLION-DOLLAR DEPOSIT.”
%%
Smile!  You’re on Candid Camera.
%%
Snow and adolescence are problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.
%%
Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
%%
Some is good, more is better, too much is just right.
%%
Some people are afraid of heights.  I am afraid of widths.
%%
Some people cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
%%
Some people who can, should not.
%%
Some people would not recognize subtlety if it hit them on the head.
%%
Someday you will get your big chance -- or have you already had it?
%%
Someday you’ll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car.
%%
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
%%
Spinster:
$$
A bachelor’s wife.
%%
Spirobits:
$$
The frayed bits of left-behind paper in a spiral notebook.
%%
Spock:  We suffered 23 casualties in that attack, Captain.
%%
Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
%%
Statisticians do it with 95 percent confidence.
%%
Stock item:
$$
We shipped it once before and we can do it again.
%%
Stop committing useless mistakes.  Make your next mistake count!
%%
Strategy is when you keep firing so the enemy doesn’t know you’re out of ammo.
%%
Success is something I will dress for when I get there, and not until.
%%
Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without being discouraged.
%%
Suicide is the sincerest form of self-criticism.
   -- Donald Kaul
%%
Sweater:
$$
A garment worn by a child when his parent feels chilly.
%%
System-independent:
$$
Works equally poorly on all systems.
%%
Tact:
$$
The unsaid part of what you are thinking.
%%
Teamwork is essential; it allows you to blame someone else.
%%
Technique:
$$
A trick that works.
%%
Teenagers are two year olds with hormones and wheels.
   -- Will Limon
%%
Telepathy:
$$
Knowing what people think when really they don’t think at all.
%%
Thank you for observing all safety precautions.
%%
That must be wonderful; I don’t understand it at all.
   -- Moliere
%%
That that is is that that is not is not.
%%
The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
%%
The Ranger isn’t gonna like it, Yogi.
%%
The Society of Independent People has no members.
%%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%%
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
   -- Clifton Fadiman
%%
The best laid plans of mice and men are usually about equal.
   -- Blair
%%
The best way to inspire fresh thoughts is to seal the envelope.
%%
The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
%%
The cow is a machine that makes grass fit for us people to eat.
   -- John McNulty
%%
The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other, milk.
   -- Ogden Nash
%%
The death rate on Earth is:  One per person.
%%
The decision does not have to be logical; it was unanimous.
%%
The difference between a good haircut and a bad one is seven days.
%%
The difficult we do today; the impossible takes a little longer.
%%
The early worm gets the late bird.
%%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
   -- Ogborn
%%
The famous politician was trying to save both his faces.
%%
The fewer the data points, the smoother the curve.
   -- May
%%
The first myth of management is that it exists.
   -- Heller
%%
The first piece of luggage out of the chute does not belong to anyone, ever.
%%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
   -- Ehrlich
%%
The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.
%%
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
   -- Shakespeare
%%
The following statement is not true…
%%
The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar.
%%
The future is a myth created by insurance salesmen and high school counselors.
%%
The general direction of the Alps is straight up.
%%
The grass is always greener on the other side of your sunglasses.
%%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
   -- Einstein
%%
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
%%
The law of gravity was enacted by the British Parliament.
%%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching train.
%%
The meek shall inherit the Earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
The meek shall inherit the Earth after we are done with it.
%%
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
The more things change, the more they will never be the same again.
%%
The most dangerous part about playing cymbals is near the nose.
%%
The most enjoyable form of sex education is the Braille method.
%%
The moving finger having writ…  gestures.
%%
The next thing I say will be true.  The last thing I said was false.
%%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
%%
The number watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action.
%%
The number you have dialed is imaginary.  Please multiply by i and dial again.
%%
The one who says it can’t be done should never interrupt the one doing it.
%%
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
   -- Oscar Wilde
%%
The optimum committee has no members.
   -- Norman Augustine
%%
The other line always moves faster.
%%
The past is another country; they do things differently there.
%%
The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.
   -- Finagle
%%
The plural of “musical instrument” is “orchestra”.
%%
The prairies are vast plains covered by treeless forests.
%%
The race is not always to the swift…  but that’s the way to bet.
   -- Runyon
%%
The reason that sex is so popular is that it’s centrally located.
%%
The richer your friends, the more they will cost you.
%%
The second best policy is dishonesty.
%%
The secret of life is to look good at a distance.
   -- Snoopy
%%
The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you have it made.
%%
The sex act is the funniest thing on the face of this earth.
   -- Diana Rigg
%%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
   -- Altito
%%
The sixth shiek’s sixth sheep’s sick.
%%
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
   -- Ogden
%%
The stapler runs out of staples only while you are trying to staple something.
%%
The supernova makes Mt. St. Helens and Krakatoa look puny.
   -- Time Magazine
%%
The theory of evolution was greatly objected to because it made men think.
%%
The things that interest people most are usually none of their business.
%%
The total intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
%%
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
%%
The universe is surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds universes.
%%
The weather at home improves as soon as you go away.
   -- Gomme
The wind blows harder in the summer so the sun sets later.
%%
The word today is legs…  Spread the word.
%%
The world is run by C students.
%%
The world isn’t any worse.  It’s just that the news coverage is so much better.
%%
The zebra is chiefly used to illustrate the letter Z.
%%
Theft from a single author is plagiarism.  Theft from three or more is research.
%%
There are many excuses for being late, but there are none for being early.
%%
There are more old drunkards than old doctors.
%%
There are more things in heaven and earth than anyplace else.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.
   -- Kissinger
%%
There is a 20% chance of tomorrow.
%%
There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
   -- Spock
%%
There is a vas deferens between men and women.
%%
There is always more hell that needs raising.
   -- Lauren Leveut
%%
There is an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
%%
There is at least one fool in every married couple.
%%
There is exactly one true categorical statement.
   -- John Kessenich
%%
There is intelligent life on Earth, but I am just visiting.
%%
There is no future in time travel.
%%
There is no problem a good miracle can’t solve.
   -- Shick
%%
There is no room in the drug world for amateurs.
   -- Raoul Duke
%%
There is no time like the pleasant.
%%
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax.
%%
There is nothing wrong with abstinence, in moderation.
%%
There is only one difference between a madman and me.  I am not mad.
   -- Dali
%%
There is so much to say, but your eyes keep interrupting me.
%%
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
%%
There must be more to life than having everything.
%%
There must be more to life than sitting wondering if there is more to life.
%%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%%
They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…
   -- General Sedgwick’s last words
%%
They took some of the Van Goghs, most of the jewels, and all of the Chivas!
%%
Things are more like they are today then they ever were before.
   -- Eisenhower
%%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%%
Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.
%%
Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.
   -- Will Rogers
%%
This fortune is encrypted -- get your decoder rings ready!
%%
This fortune is inoperative.  Please try another.
%%
This fortune was brought to you by the people at Hewlett-Packard.
%%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%%
This is a good time to punt work.
%%
This is a recording.
%%
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
   -- Winston Churchill
%%
This may not be the best of all worlds, but it is certainly the most expensive.
%%
This saying would be seven words long if it were six words shorter.
%%
This sentence no verb.
%%
This statement is in no way to be construed as a disclaimer.
%%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
%%
Those who can, do; those who can’t, simulate.
%%
Those who like sausages and the law had better not watch either one being made.
%%
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
   -- Ben Franklin
%%
Time flies when you don’t know what you are doing.
%%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
%%
Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so.
   -- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
%%
Time is nature’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen at once.
%%
To be safe, make a copy of everything before you destroy it.
%%
To err is human.  To admit it is a blunder.
%%
To err is human.  To blame someone else for your errors is even more human.
%%
To err is human.  To forgive is unusual.
%%
To keep milk from turning sour, you should keep it in the cow.
%%
To make a small fortune in the commodities market, start with a large fortune.
%%
To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
%%
To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question…  or is it?
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high ranking public official.
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
%%
Today is the last day of the past of your life.
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
%%
Toe:
$$
A part of the foot used to find furniture in the dark.
   -- Rilla May
%%
Tomorrow looks like a good day to sleep in.
%%
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest.
%%
Too much is not enough.
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
   -- Mae West
%%
Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.
   -- Judy Garland
%%
Tragedy:
$$
A busload of lawyers driving off a cliff… with three empty seats.
%%
Traveling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops, boy.
   -- Han Solo
%%
Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.
%%
Truthful:
$$
Dumb and illiterate.
%%
Tuesday After Lunch is the cosmic time of the week.
%%
Two can live as cheaply as one for half as long.
   -- Howard Kandel
%%
Two cars in every pot and a chicken in every garage.
%%
Two heads are more numerous than one.
   -- Tom Weller
%%
Two is not equal to 3, not even for large values of 2.
   -- Grabel
%%
Two wrongs are only the beginning.
   -- Kohn
%%
Unauthorized fornication with this equipment is disallowed.
%%
Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under communism, it is just the opposite.
%%
Under every stone lurks a politician.
   -- Aristophanes
%%
Unmatched:
$$
Almost as good as the competition.
%%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%%
Volcano:
$$
A mountain with hiccups.
%%
Vote anarchist.
%%
Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
%%
We are all politicians.  Some of us are just honest enough to admit it.
%%
We are all self-made, but only the rich will admit it.
%%
We are living in a golden age.  All you need is gold.
   -- Robertson
%%
We are not a loved organization, but we are a respected one.
   -- John Fisher
%%
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.
   -- Swift
%%
We are sorry.  We cannot complete your call as dialed.
%%
We are the people our parents warned us about.
   -- Jimmy Buffet
%%
We can loan you enough money to get you completely out of debt.
   -- Sign in bank
%%
We could do that, but it would be wrong, that’s for sure.
   -- Richard Nixon
%%
We don’t have to protect the environment.  The Second Coming is at hand.
   -- Watt
%%
We have them just where they want us.
   -- James Kirk
%%
We interrupt this fortune for an important announcement…
%%
We need either less corruption or more chance to participate in it.
%%
We totally deny the allegations, and we are trying to identify the allegators.
%%
We will get along fine as soon as you realize I am God.
%%
We will have solar energy when the power companies develop a sunbeam meter.
%%
Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise.
   -- John Heywood
%%
Well adjusted:
$$
Makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.
%%
Well-adjusted:
$$
Able to play bridge or golf as if they were games.
%%
What can’t be said, can’t be said.  And it can’t be whistled, either.
   -- Tirtha
%%
What did you bring the book I want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?
%%
What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?  A good start.
%%
What do you call a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?  Not enough sand.
%%
What happens when you cut back the jungle?  It recedes.
%%
What is mind?  No matter.  What is matter?  Never mind.
   -- Thomas Key
%%
What is orange and goes “click, click”?  A ball point carrot.
%%
What is research but a blind date with knowledge?
   -- Will Harvey
%%
What is the difference between a duck?  One of its legs is both the same.
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking someone to do.
%%
What orators lack in depth they make up in length.
%%
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
   -- Ursula LeGuin
%%
What scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?
   -- J. D. Farley
%%
What this country needs is more leaders who know what this country needs.
%%
What use is magic if it can’t save a unicorn?
   -- Peter Beagle
%%
What!  Me worry?
   -- Alfred E. Newman
%%
What, after all, is a halo?  It’s only one more thing to keep clean.
   -- Fry
%%
Whatever you want to do, you have to do something else first.
%%
When God created two sexes, he may have been overdoing it.
   -- Charles Smith
%%
When I look at my children, I often wish I had remained a virgin.
   -- L. Carter
%%
When I’m good, I’m very good.  But when I’m bad, I’m better.
   -- Mae West
%%
When Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
   -- Tom Lehrer
%%
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
   -- Mark Twain
%%
When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.
%%
When in charge, ponder.  When in doubt, mumble.  When in trouble, delegate.
%%
When in doubt, lead trump.
%%
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
%%
When it comes to helping you, some people stop at nothing.
%%
When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have inlaws.
%%
When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
   -- Dylan Thomas
%%
When someone says, “It ain’t the money, but the principle,” it’s the money.
%%
When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
   -- Lynch
%%
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
   -- Hunter Thompson
%%
When they ship styrofoam, what do they pack it in?
%%
When working hard, be sure to get up and retch every so often.
%%
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
%%
When you breathe you inspire.  When you do not breathe you expire.
%%
When you dial a wrong number you never get a busy signal.
%%
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
%%
When you’ve seen one non-sequitar, the price of tea in China.
%%
When your memory goes, forget it!
%%
Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.
%%
Whenever anyone says, “theoretically”, they really mean, “not really”.
   -- Parnas
%%
Where is Denver?  Denver is just below the O in Colorado.
%%
Where there’s a whip there’s a way.
%%
Where there’s a will, there’s a relative.
%%
Whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Neither, it was the rooster.
%%
Which is worse, ignorance or apathy?  Who knows?  Who cares?
%%
While money doesn’t buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
%%
White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship.
%%
Who cares about procreation, as long as it tickles?
%%
Who dat who say “who dat” when I say “who dat”?
   -- Hattie McDaniel
%%
Who was that masked man?
%%
Who’s on first?
%%
Why did the chicken cross the road?  He was giving it last rites.
%%
Why doesn’t life come with subtitles?
%%
Why is “abbreviated” such a long word?
%%
Why is it that there are so many more horses’ asses than horses?
   -- Liddy
%%
Why isn’t there a special name for the tops of your feet?
   -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Why would anyone want to be called Later?
%%
Winning isn’t everything, but losing isn’t anything.
%%
With a rubber duck, one’s never alone.
%%
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
%%
Women who desire to be like men, lack ambition.
%%
Work is the curse of the drinking class.
%%
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
%%
Yawning is an orgasm for your face.
   -- Gunvar Ingeborg
%%
Years of development:
$$
We finally got one to work.
%%
Yesterday was the deadline on all complaints.
%%
Yo-yo:
$$
Something occasionally up but normally down (see also “computer”).
%%
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.
%%
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
%%
You are ugly and your mother dresses you funny.
%%
You are warm and giving toward others.  What are you after?
%%
You aren’t a real engineer until you make one $50,000 mistake.
%%
You can fool some of the people some of the time, and that is sufficient.
%%
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word.
%%
You can observe a lot just by watchin’.
   -- Yogi Berra
%%
You can rent this profound space for only $5 a week.
%%
You can’t have Kate and Edith too!
%%
You can’t have everything.  Where would you put it?
%%
You cannot buy beer; you can only rent it.
%%
You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
%%
You could be playing a video game instead.
%%
You fill a much-needed gap.
%%
You have a right to your opinions.  I just don’t want to hear them.
%%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.  You will learn a lot today.
%%
You know you have landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
%%
You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.
   -- Whistler
%%
You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier.
%%
You will live a long full life and gradually decay into a useless blob.
%%
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
%%
You will never hit your finger if you hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
You will pay for your sins.  If you have already paid, please disregard.
%%
You will soon forget this.
%%
You will step on the night soil of many countries.
%%
You won’t skid if you stay in a rut.
   -- Frank Hubbard
%%
You would if you could but you can’t so you won’t (and probably shouldn’t).
%%
Your chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to…  uh…
%%
Your check is in the mall.
%%
Your fly might be open (but don’t check it just now).
%%
Your love life will be…  interesting.
%%
Your lucky number has been disconnected.
%%
Your lucky number is 364958674928.  Watch for it everywhere.
%%
Your reasoning is silly and irrational but it is beginning to make sense.
%%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%%
Youth is too good to be wasted on the young.
   -- G. B. Shaw
%%
[Nuclear war]…  may not be desirable.
   -- Edwin Meese III
%%
 f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%%
/Earth is 98% full…  please delete anyone you can.
%%
1 bull, 3 cows.
%%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%%
A CONS is an object which cares.
   -- Bernie Greenberg
%%
A bad random number generator:
$$
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4.33e+67, 1, 1, 1
%%
A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.
%%
A computer program does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do.
%%
A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren’t broken.
%%
A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
   -- Don Knuth
%%
APL is a write-only language.
   -- Roy Keir
%%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%%
Another megabytes the dust.
%%
Any given program will expand to fill available memory.
%%
Any nitwit can understand computers.  Many do.
   -- Ted Nelson
%%
Any program that runs right is obsolete.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
   -- Kulawiec
%%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
   -- Weisert
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
Asking whether machines can think is like asking whether submarines can swim.
%%
Avoid temporary variables and strange women.
%%
Base 8 is just like base 10, if you are missing two fingers.
   -- Tom Lehrer
%%
Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
   -- Leonard Brandwein
%%
Brain fried -- core dumped.
%%
Breakthrough:
$$
It finally booted on the first try.
%%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
%%
Compatible:
$$
Gracefully accepts erroneous data from any source.
%%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
%%
Computers are a more fun way to do the same work you’d have to do without them.
%%
Computers are useless.  They can only give you answers.
   -- Pablo Picasso
%%
Congratulations!  You are the one-millionth user to log into our system.
%%
Death is a nonmaskable interrupt.
%%
Disc space -- the final frontier!
%%
Disclaimer:
$$
Any errors in spelling, tact, or fact are transmission errors.
%%
Don’t hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
%%
Don’t let the computer bugs bite!
%%
Dreams are free, but you get soaked on the connect time.
%%
E Pluribus UNIX.
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
Everybody needs a little love sometime; stop hacking and fall in love!
%%
Foolproof operation:
$$
All parameters are hard coded.
%%
Futuristic:
$$
It will only run on a next generation supercomputer.
%%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%%
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
%%
HOST SYSTEM NOT RESPONDING, PROBABLY DOWN.  DO YOU WANT TO WAIT?  (Y/N)
%%
Hackers have kernel knowledge.
%%
Hardware:
$$
The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%%
Help!  I’m trapped in a Chinese computer factory!
%%
How do I love thee?  My accumulator overflows.
%%
How was Thomas J. Watson buried?  9 edge down.
%%
I am a computer -- dumber than any human and smarter than an administrator.
%%
I am still waiting for the advent of the computer science groupie.
%%
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
   -- Marvin Minsky
%%
I came, I saw, I deleted all your files.
%%
I must have slipped a disk; my pack hurts.
%%
I smell a wumpus.
%%
I’m the computer your mother warned you about.
%%
If God had intended Man to program, we would be born with serial I/O ports.
%%
If a program is useful, it must be changed.
%%
If a program is useless, it must be documented.
%%
If a train station is where the train stops, what’s a work station?
%%
If at first you do not succeed, you must be a programmer.
%%
If it was easy, the hardware people would take care of it.
%%
In God we trust; all else we walk through.
%%
It is now pitch dark.  If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.
%%
It is ten o’clock; do you know where your processes are?
%%
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
%%
LISP:
$$
To call a spade a thpade.
%%
Last one out, turn off the computer!
%%
Lisp Users:  Due to the holiday, there will be no garbage collection on Monday.
%%
Long computations that yield zero are probably all for naught.
%%
MIPS:
$$
Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed.
%%
Machine-independent:
$$
Does not run on any existing machine.
%%
Manual Writer’s Creed:
$$
Garbage in, gospel out.
%%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
   -- R. S. Barton
%%
Meets quality standards:
$$
It compiles without errors.
%%
Never trust a computer you can’t lift.
   -- Stan Masor
%%
Nice computers don’t go down.
%%
No line available at 300 baud.
%%
No program done by a hacker will work unless he is on the system.
%%
No program done by an undergrad will work after she graduates.
%%
Old mail has arrived.
%%
Old programmers never die; they just branch to a new address.
%%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
   -- Denning
%%
One if by LAN, two if by C.
   -- Paul Revere, as told by John Karwoski
%%
One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
   -- Perlis
%%
One person’s error is another person’s data.
%%
One picture is worth 128K words.
%%
Overflow on /dev/null; please empty the bit bucket.
%%
People who deal with bits should expect to get bitten.
   -- Jon Bentley
%%
Portable:
$$
Survives system reboot.
%%
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
%%
Programmers do it bit by bit.
%%
Programming is an unnatural act.
%%
Programming just with goto’s is like swatting flies with a sledgehammer.
%%
Protect your software at all costs -- all else is meat.
%%
Random access is the optimum of the mass storages.
%%
Real programs don’t eat cache.
%%
Remember the good old days, when CPU was singular?
%%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
%%
Revolutionary:
$$
Disk drives go round and round.
%%
Save energy:  Drive a smaller shell.
%%
Software is to computers as yeast is to dough.
   -- Chuck Bradshaw
%%
Supercomputer:
$$
Turns CPU-bound problem into I/O-bound problem.
   -- Ken Batcher
%%
Swap read error.  You lose your mind.
%%
System going down at 1:45 for disk crashing.
%%
System going down at 5 pm to install scheduler bug.
%%
Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult.
   -- R. S. Barton
%%
That does not compute.
%%
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its power cord.
%%
The computer is mightier than the pen, the sword, and usually, the programmer.
%%
The determined programmer can write a FORTRAN program in any language.
%%
The moving cursor prints, and having printed, blinks on.
%%
The program is absolutely right; therefore, the computer must be wrong.
%%
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
%%
The world is coming to an end…  SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!
%%
The world will end in 5 minutes.  Please log out.
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
%%
There has to be more to life than compile-and-go.
%%
This fortune soaks up 47 times its own weight in excess memory.
%%
This login session:  $13.76, but for you:  $11.88.
%%
This screen intentionally left blank.
%%
This system will self-destruct in five minutes.
%%
Those who can’t write, write help files.
%%
Those who can, do.  Those who cannot, teach.  Those who cannot teach, HACK!
%%
Thrashing is just virtual crashing.
%%
To be, or not to be, those are the parameters.
%%
To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer.
%%
To iterate is human; to recurse, divine.
   -- Robert Heller
%%
Unprecedented performance:
$$
Nothing ever ran this slow before.
%%
What this country needs is a good five-cent microcomputer.
%%
Where the system is concerned, you are not allowed to ask “Why?”.
%%
Why do we want intelligent terminals when there are so many stupid users?
%%
You can’t go home again, unless you set $HOME.
%%
You depend too much on computers for information.
%%
You forgot to do your backup 16 days ago.  Tomorrow you’ll need that version.
%%
You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it!
%%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%%
You know it is going to be a bad day when you forget your new password.
%%
You might have mail.
%%
You never finish a program, you just stop working on it.
%%
Your fault -- core dumped.
%%
Your password is pitifully obvious.
%%
%%
fortune:  No such file or directory
%%
logout
%%
There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.
%%
No artist ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
   -- Jean Giradoux
%%
There are two kinds of lawyers, those who know the law and those who
know the judge.
%%
I’ll never discuss my lawyer’s character in his absence, so let’s
discuss his absence of character!
   -- Michael Lara
%%
Did you hear about the fellow from Indiana who was arrested for
smuggling books into Kentucky?
$$
They had to let him go ’cause the
court couldn’t prove they were books.
%%
Try to explain this to a Unix novice:
!!
Unix character device: can only read blocks (sectors) from the disk
!!
Unix block device: can read single characters from the disk
%%
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
translate into their own language and forthwith it is something
entirely different.
   -- Goethe
%%
If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9
times out of ten it will.
   -- Paul Harvey News, 1979
%%
“Give us a copper Guv” said the beggar to the Treasury
statistician, when he waylaid him in Parliament square. “I
haven’t eaten for three days.” “Ah,” said the statistician, “And
how does that compare with the same period last year?”
   -- Russell Lewis
%%
“I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of
Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call
for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want
is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than
when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political
statistic.”
   -- Winston Churchill
%%
“You haven’t told me yet,” said Lady Nuttal, “what it is your
fiance does for a living.”
$$
“He’s a statistician,” replied Lamia, with an annoying sense of
being on the defensive.
$$
Lady Nuttal was obviously taken aback. It had not occurred to
her that statisticians entered into normal social relationships.  The
species, she would have surmised, was perpetuated in some
collateral manner, like mules.
$$
“But Aunt Sara, it’s a very interesting profession,” said Lamia
warmly.
$$
“I don’t doubt it,” said her aunt, who obviously doubted it very
much. “To express anything important in mere figures is so
plainly impossible that there must be endless scope for
well-paid advice on the how to do it. But don’t you think that
life with a statistician would be rather, shall we say,
humdrum?”
$$
Lamia was silent. She felt reluctant to discuss the surprising
depth of emotional possibility which she had discovered below
Edward’s numerical veneer.
$$
“It’s not the figures themselves,” she said finally. “it’s what
you do with them that matters.”
   -- K.A.C. Manderville, The undoing of Lamia Gurdleneck
%%
Lettuce Spray
%%
“Women: you can’t live with them,
 you can’t leave them by the curb when you’re done with them.”
   -- David Addison (Bruce Willis), Moonlighting
%%
“Some people are born great, others have greatness thrust upon them, and
others get greatness as a graduation present.”
   -- Robin Williams on current politicians (circa 1990)
%%
Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question
very carefully.
%%
I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle, its much
too confining.
   -- Lilly Tomlin
%%
Q:  What is the differenct between Ada and AIDS?
$$
A:  Someday we’ll find a cure for AIDS…
   -- from Phil Ronzone <watmath!apple.com!phil>
%%
Q:  What is the most heavily armored vehicle in the world?
$$
A:  An Iranian Bookmobile!
%%
Some time ago, the military decided to take a survey to see what qualities
their officers had.  Then they would be able to determine what kind of
military force they had.  The results are as follows:
$$
THE GENERAL:
!!
Faster than a speeding bullet,
!!
More powerful than a locomotive,
!!
Leaps over tall buildings with a single bound,
!!
Walks on water, and
!!
Talks with God
$$
THE COLONEL:
!!
Just as fast as a speeding bullet,
!!
More powerful than a switch engine,
!!
Leaps over small buildings with a single bound,
!!
Walks on water when its calm, and
!!
Talks with God on special occasions
$$
THE LT COL:
!!
Faster than a speeding BB,
!!
Loses a tug-of-war with a switch engine,
!!
Leaps over small buildings with a running start,
!!
Swims well, and
!!
Listens at a distance to the voice of God.
$$
THE MAJOR
!!
Can load a gun properly,
!!
Plays with train sets,
!!
Leaps over Quonset huts with a running start,
!!
Can do the Dog Paddle, and
!!
Sometimes pays attention to what the Lt. Col. says,
$$
THE CAPTAIN
!!
Is not issued ammunition for fear of self-inflicted injury,
!!
Recognizes a locomotive two out of three times,
!!
Runs into buildings,
!!
Can wade through water less than four feet deep, and
!!
Pays no attention to what the Major says.
$$
THE LIEUTENANT:
!!
Wets himself with a water pistol,
!!
Says “Look at the Choo Choo”,
!!
Trips over steps when entering buildings,and
!!
Doesn’t even notice when the Captain says something
$$
THE NCO
!!
Catches bullets in his teeth and spits them out,
!!
Kicks trains off the tracks,
!!
Picks up buildings and walks underneath, and
!!
Freezes water with a single glance,
!!
He IS God!
%%
Father Murphy was a priest in a very poor parish.  He asked for
suggestions as to how he could raise money for his church and was told
that horse owners always had lots of money.  So, he went to a horse
auction, but made a very poor choice.  The horse he bought turned out to
be a donkey.  However, he thought he might as well enter the donkey in a
race.  The donkey came in third.  The next morning the newspaper headlines
read “Father Murphy’s Ass Shows”.  The Archbishop saw the paper, and was
so greatly displeased.  The next day, the donkey came in first. The next
morning the newspaper headline read, “Father Murphy’s Ass Out In
Front”.  The Archbishop was up in arms, and figured something had to be
done.  Father Murphy had entered the donkey again and it came in second.  This
time the newspaper headline read, “Father Murphy’s Ass Back In Place”.
The Archbishop thought this was too much, so he forbid the good priest to
enter the donkey.  The next day, the newspaper headline read, “Archbishop
Scratches Father Murphy’s Ass”.  Finally, the Archbishop ordered Father
Murphy to get rid of the donkey.  Father Murphy was unable to sell the
donkey, so he gave it to Sister Agatha to dispose of as best she could.  She
sold the donkey for $10.00.  The next morning the newspaper headline
read, “Sister Agatha Peddles Her Ass For $10.00”.  Three days later they
buried the Archbishop.
%%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
$$
The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
$$
$$
Corollary:
$$
Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
except study for that instructor’s course.
%%
Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.
   -- John Diefenbaker
%%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
   -- H. H. Williams
%%
Galbraith’s Law of Human Nature:
$$
Faced with the choice between changing one’s
mind and proving that there is no need to do
so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.
%%
God gave us two ears and one mouth. That ought to tell us something.
%%
Half of being smart is knowing what you’re dumb at.
%%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%%
He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
perfectly delightful.
   -- Sydney Smith
%%
He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another’s mishap.
%%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
   -- Milton Friedman
%%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%%
I am not sure what this is, but an ‘F’ would only dignify it.
   -- English Professor
%%
I could dance till the cows come home.  On second thought, I’d rather
dance with the cows till you come home.
   -- Groucho Marx
%%
I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.
   -- Victor Hugo
%%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people?
%%
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread,
they can sure make something out of you.
   -- Muhammad Ali
%%
If you don’t care where you are, you ain’t lost.
%%
Cartoon Law I.
$$
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made
aware of its situation.
$$
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland.  He
loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he
chances to look down.  At this point, the familiar principle
of 32 feet per second per second takes over.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law II.
$$
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
intervenes suddenly.
$$
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a
telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward
motion absolutely.  Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden
termination of motion the stooge’s surcease.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law III.
$$
Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
$$
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of
reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit
directly through the wall of a house, leaving a
cookie-cutout-perfect hole.  The threat of skunks or matrimony often
catalyzes this reaction.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law IV.
$$
The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater
than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the
ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
$$
Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture
it inevitably unsuccessful.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law V.
$$
All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
$$
Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to
propel them directly away from the earth’s surface.  A spooky
noise or an adversary’s signature sound will induce motion
upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or
the crest of a flagpole.  The feet of a character who is
running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch
the ground, especially when in flight.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law VI.
$$
As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
$$
This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in
which a character’s head may be glimpsed emerging from the
cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously.  This
effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or
being throttled.  A ‘wacky’ character has the option of self-replication
only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off
walls to achieve the velocity required.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law VII.
$$
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble
tunnel entrances; others cannot.
$$
This trompe l’oeil inconsistency has baffled generation, but
at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a
wall’s surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue
him into this theoretical space.  The painter is flattened
against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting.  This
is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law VIII.
$$
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
$$
Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional
nine lives might comfortably afford.  They can be decimated,
spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled,
but they cannot be destroyed.  After a few moments of blinking
self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.
$$
Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
Cartoon Law IX.
$$
For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
$$
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also
applies to the physical world at large.  For that reason,
we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.
   -- Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
%%
“Facinating lot humans, some scream quite a lot, others just want to go
out and thump something.”
   -- The Doctor (from Dr. Who)
%%
“…one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a
recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined
as being anything other than itself.”
%%
“If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs,
consider an exciting career as a guillotine operator!”
%%
“It’s a pity the universe doesn’t use segmented architecture
with a protected mode.”
   -- Rich Cook, _Wizard’s Bane_
%%

“It’s all absolutely devastatingly true, except the bits that are lies.”
   -- Douglas Adams
%%
Bush and Gorbachev decided to get themselves frozen for a hundred years to see
how the current political situation resolved itself. After the time was up
they were thawed, and started to read newspapers to catch up on the situation.
$$
Gorbachev started to laugh. In response to Bush’s question he said, “I see that
the dollar is still getting weaker.”
$$
Then Bush started to laugh. In response to Gorbachev’s question of why, he
said, “I read that there is renewed fighting on the German-Chinese border.”
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?
%%
I construct algorithms | you program | he/she uses FORTRAN
$$
I consult | you freelance | he/she moonlights
$$
I refine | you debug | he/she patches | they kludge
$$
I assemble | you compile | he/she/it interprets
$$
I market | you sell | he/she peddles
$$
I interact | you timeshare | he/she hogs
$$
I extrapolate | you conjecture | he/she guesses
%%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%%
…Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you
would not have been informed.
%%
“Still on the other hand, water is water, isn’t it?  And East is East,
and West is West.  And if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.”
   -- Groucho Marx, Animal Crackers
%%
Pardo’s First Postulate:
$$
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
$$
Arnold’s Addendum:
$$
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
%%
Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it’s not cockroaches.
%%
The more things change, the more they’ll never be the same again.
%%
Q:  Why did the tachyon cross the road?
$$
A:  Because it was on the other side.
%%
Q: what do you get when you cross PMS with ESP?
$$
A: a bitch who thinks she knows everything.
%%
What are the three words you don’t want to hear while making love?
$$
“Honey, I’m home!”
%%
What’s an atheist’s favorite Christmas movie?
$$
Coincidence on 34th Street.
%%
The difference between philosophy and theology:
$$
If you have an argument over
philosophy, you get red in the face.  Over theology you throw
bombs.
%%
I saw this on a T-shirt on my recent trip to Cancun, Mexico:
$$
HE’S DEAD JIM
!!
QUICK!  YOU GRAB HIS TRICORDER!  I’LL GRAB HIS WALLET!
%%
Those who think it’s tough to make a living as a writer of fiction have
obviously never cheated on their income tax.
%%
Overheard in a Hollywood bar,
$$
Actress 1: “At one time my breasts were insured for $2 million.”
$$
Actress 2: “Did you get the money?.”
%%
Little old lady at US immigration.
$$
OFFICIAL: Do you advocate the overthrow of the government by violence or
subversion?
$$
    {Pause for thought}
$$
LITTLE OLD LADY: Violence, I think.
%%
/EARTH is 98% full.  Please delete anybody you can.
%%
Ewa Thibaud on Salvadoran election:
$$
“Ariani claims participation to have been 62%.  This sound a bit high,
even if some voted twice.”
%%
PHOTOFLASH TACHYONS:
$$
The elementary particle responsible for
synchronising a subject’s blink with the flash of the camera.
%%
If at first you don’t succeed,
you’ve failed, failed again!
%%
Someone broke into the Wilmington, Delaware police department and stole all of
the plumbing fixtures.
$$
The police say that they currently have nothing to go on.
%%
“What happened to the Pope when he went to Mount Olive?”
$$
“I don’t know, what?”
$$
“Popeye beat the shit out of him!”
%%
Q: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness and an atheist?
$$
A: Someone who knocks on your door for no reason whatsoever.
%%
Seems like they’re working on a sequel to this summer’s underwater saga, THE
ABYSS.  Rumor has it that they’re going to call it SON OF ABYSS.
%%
Q:  How do you tell if a yuppie woman has reached climax?
$$
A:  She drops her briefcase
%%
John Kennedy described Washington as combining “Southern efficiency
and Northern charm.”
%%
Why does Dolly Parton have small feet?
$$
Because feet dont grow well in shadows!
%%
What did Kenny Rogers say when he saw Dolly Parton do a backstroke in the
swimming pool?
$$
“Islands in the Stream…”
%%
Rep. Bill Schuette (R-MI) recently adcvised constituents not to expect
all their problems to be solved by the federal government.  He warned
voters, “Congress is not the sole suppository of wisdom.”
%%
Why do debutantes hate group sex?
$$
They have to write so many “thank you” notes.
   -- from the movie Clean and Sober
%%
What is small and yellow and very dangerous?
$$
A canary with the super-user password!
%%
CONSPIRACY IS THE OPIATE OF THE ASSES.
%%
A guy was lost on the Mall by the Washington Monument.  He stopped a
policeman and asked, “What side is the State Dept. on?”
$$
The cop answered, “Ours, I hope.”
%%
When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional
division by zero.
%%
“The only true law is that which leads to freedom”
- Richard Bach, _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_
%%
A man parks his car in front of the main entrance of the Congress.
Inmediately, a member of the security team goes after him yelling:
$$
- Sir! Sir! You cannot park in here!  All the congressmen are about to go out!
$$
The man replies:
$$
-Don’t worry.  I have a good alarm in my car.
%%
The dean of Engineering had once walked into a class, and said
“Good Morning.”  The whole class chorused “Good Morning.”
$$
“Hi, you are freshmen aren’t you?” he asked.
$$
One student bolder than the others asked him how he knew.
$$
“Well,” he said. “When I say ‘Good Morning’ to a class, if they are
freshmen they say ‘Good Morning’ too.  If they are sophomores, they
quietly fold their papers away, and look at me.  A class of Juniors
will look at me over the top of their papers, and then get back to
them.  A class of Seniors will ignore my greeting, and keep reading
the papers.  When I say ‘Good Morning’ to a class of graduate students,
they write it down.”
%%
For the Eddings people:
“Try Prophecy LITE!  1/3 less casualties than the
regular prophecy!”
%%
“Y’know, you can’t have, like, a light, without a dark to stick it
in…  You know what I’m sayin’?”
   -- Arlo Guthrie
%%
“Being crazy and evil at the same time is no
picnic, believe me”
   -- Necross the Mad, from Cerebus
%%
“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a
really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they actually
change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.  They
really do it.  It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because
scientists are human and change is sometimes painful.  But it happens
every day.  I cannot recall the last time something like that happened
in politics or religion.”
   -- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
%%
“Lady, if you feel compelled to grab part of my body and shake it before you
can even be friendly, you've got far greater problems then you think I do.”
   -- Mike Jittlov, The Wizard of Speed and Time
%%
What Congress means by ethics is best explained by the tailor’s story:
$$
“Suppose I sell a suit to a young man for $200.  He tells me that
his family is footing the bill and that if I give him a receipt
for $400 to give to his parents, he will pay me $100 on the
side.  The question of ethics is: Do I keep the extra $100 myself, or
do I tell my partner and split it with him?”
%%
Quantum mechanics:
$$
The dreams stuff is made of.
%%
}>>> DO .1 <- 'V":1~'#32768$#0'"$#1'~#3
$$
}>>... *Love* it!!!  A language the syntax of which is almost identical to line
}>>noise!  :-)  :-)
$$
}>sorry, that is only used to describe TECO programs.
$$
}Well, hate to pick nits, but TECO syntax is PRECISELY identical to line
}noise...  :-)
$$
Actually, it may not even be appropriate to call it 'syntax', since EVERY
$$
string is a legal program that does _something_ (usually nasty).  How would
$$
you distinguish a TECO program from a non-program?
   -- Taken from an alt.computer.folklore discussion about INTERCAL
%%
“It’s what I do,” he muttered to himself. “Any time there's something so ridiculously
dangerous that no rational human being would even consider trying it, they send for me.”
   -- Belgarion, _KING OF THE MURGOS_
%%
“the smile didn’t do anything more than flay the skin off
my body, sandblast every nerve and ligament, osterize a
few major organs, and fry my eyeballs in their own grease;
I made no visible sign that could possible have been
detected by anyone except the people present in the
room.  I’m over her completely.”
   -- Jake; in CALLAHANS SECRET
%%
The NeXT computer:
$$
“The hardware makes it a PC, the software makes it a Workstation,
the unit sales make it a Mainframe.”
   -- unknown
%%
Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at
Motorola (?) discovered a relatively simple way to crack system
security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system (or it may have been
CP-V’s predecessor UTS).  Through a simple programming strategy, it was
possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion
of the program in “master mode” (supervisor state), in which memory
protection does not apply.  The program could then poke a large value
into its “privilege level” byte (normally write-protected) and could
then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management
system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting
things.  In short, the barn door was wide open.
$$
Motorola quite properly reported this problem to XEROX via an
official “level 1 SIDR” (a bug report with a perceived urgency of “needs to be
fixed yesterday”).  Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a
database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola
followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as “Security
SIDR”, and attached all of the necessary documentation,
ways-to-reproduce, etc. separately.
$$
Xerox apparently sat on the problem… they either didn’t acknowledge
the severity of the problem, or didn’t assign the necessary
operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official
patch.
$$
Time passed (months, as I recall).  The Motorola guys pestered their
Xerox field-support rep, to no avail.  Finally they decided to take
Direct Action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the
system could be cracked, and just how thoroughly the system security
systems could be subverted.
$$
They dug around through the operating-system listings, and devised a
thoroughly devilish set of patches.  These patches were then
incorporated into a pair of programs called Robin Hood and Friar Tuck.  Robin
Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as “ghost jobs” (daemons,
in Unix terminology); they would use the existing loophole to subvert
system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep an eye on
one another’s statuses in order to keep the system operator (in effect,
the superuser) from aborting them.
$$
So… one day, the system operator on the main CP-V software-development
system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena.  These
included the following:
$$
- Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a
job.
$$
- Disk drives would seek back & forth so rapidly that they’d attempt to
walk across the floor.
$$
- The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself
and punch a “lace card” (every hole punched).  These would usually
jam in the punch.
$$
- The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin Hood
to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.
$$
- The Xerox card reader had two output stackers;  it could be
instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A unless a
card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into
stacker B.  One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some
code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would flip
over to the opposite stacker.  As a result, card decks would divide
themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator to
recollate them manually.
$$
There were some other effects produced, as well.
$$
Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers.  They
found the bandit ghost jobs running, and X’ed them… and were once
again surprised.  When Robin Hood was X’ed, the following sequence of
events took place:
$$
  !X id1
$$
  id1:   Friar Tuck... I am under attack!  Pray save me!  (Robin Hood)
  id1: Off (aborted)
$$
  id2: Fear not, friend Robin!  I shall rout the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men!
$$
  id3: Thank you, my good fellow! (Robin)
$$
Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and
would start a new copy of the recently-slain program within a few
milliseconds.  The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them
simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system.
$$
Finally, the system programmers did the latter… only to find that the
bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted!  It turned out
that these two programs had patched the boot-time image (the /vmunix
file, in Unix terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs
that were to be started at boot time…
$$
The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the
system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and reinstalled
the monitor.  Not long thereafter, Xerox released a patch for this
problem.
$$
I believe that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola’s management about
the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question.  To the
best of my knowledge, no serious disciplinary action was taken against
either of these guys.
$$
Several years later, both of the perpetrators were hired by Honeywell,
which had purchased the rights to CP-V after Xerox pulled out of the
mainframe business.  Both of them made serious and substantial
contributions to the Honeywell CP-6 operating system development effort.  Robin
Hood (Dan Holle) did much of the development of the PL-6
system-programming language compiler; Friar Tuck (John Gabler) was one
of the chief communications-software gurus for several years.  They’re
both alive and well, and living in LA (Dan) and Orange County (John).  Both
are among the more brilliant people I’ve had the pleasure of
working with.
$$
Disclaimers: it has been quite a while since I heard the details of how
this all went down, so some of the details above are almost certainly
wrong.  I shared an apartment with John Gabler for several years, and he
was my Best Man when I married back in ’86… so I’m somewhat
predisposed to believe his version of the events that occurred.
   -- Henry Cate III
%%
Heard this one last night:
$$
A man walks into an auto parts store and says “I’d like a rear view
mirror for my Yugo.”
$$
The man behind the counter thinks about this for a while, then
says “Yup, seems like a fair trade to me.”
%%
The Competitive Institute (Washington D.C.) announced an
energy conservation award to M. Gorbachev and delivered it
to the Soviet Embassy on May 1.  “In recent weeks Mikhail
Gorbachev has reduced Lithuanian oil and gas consumption by
over 80%,” stated CEI president Fred Smith.  “These
unprecedented strides in energy conservation, accomplished
in what by Western standards is an incredibly short time,
demonstrate the importance of looking beyond our borders for
new ideas on how to save energy…”
%%
“You mean the Armless Avenger and his henchmen?”
$$
“Yes, his right-hand man, and his left-hand man!”
%%
“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, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”
%%