BBS in a Box 7/BBS in a Box - Macintosh - Volume VII (BBS in a Box) (January 1993).iso/Files/Tele/Q/Quotes⁄Host2.cpt/Quotes

Text File | 1989-01-29 | 64KB | 3,099 lines

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A.A.A.A.A.- An organization for drunks who drive.

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Accuracy, n.  The vice of being right

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ADA, n.  Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
Computing.  Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
awareness."

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Antonym, n.  The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.

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Armadillo - To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle.

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Basic, n.  A programming language.  Related to certain social diseases in that
those who have it will not admit it in polite company.

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Bit, n.   The quantum of misinformation.

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Character Density, n.  The number of very weird people in the office.

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Cold, adj.  When the local flashers are handing out written  descriptions.

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Commitment, n.  Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.

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Corrupt, adj.  In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.

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Fairy Tale, n.  A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.

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Hardware, n.  The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.

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Information Center, n.  A room staffed by professional computer people whose
job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.

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Justice, n.  A decision in your favor.

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Meeting, n.  An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.

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Millihelen, adj.  The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.

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Omnibiblious, adj.  Indifferent to type of drink.  "Oh, you can get me
anything. I'm omnibiblious."

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On-line, adj.  The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.

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Oregon, n.  Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
night.

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Peace, n.  In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods
of fighting.

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Portable, adj.  Survives system reboot.

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Quality Control, n.  The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units
coming off a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 units
works.

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Senate, n.  A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
misdemeanors.

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A chubby man in a red suit and a white beard will approach you soon. Avoid
him. He's a commie.

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Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change.

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Be free and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better, so get used to it.

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Do not drink coffee in early AM.  It will keep you awake until noon.

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Don't get stuck in a closet -- wear yourself out.

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Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.

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Fine day to throw a party.  Throw him as far as you can.

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Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.

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Good day to let down old friends who need help.

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Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.

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He who speak with forked tongue, not need chopsticks.
    - Chinese Proverb

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Man who falls in blast furnace is certain to feel overwrought.

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Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self.

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Only the brave deserve the fair, but only rich, fat, cowardly merchants can
afford same.
    - Chinese Proverb

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Show respect for age. Drink a good scotch for a change.

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Spend extra time on hobby.  Get plenty of rolling papers.

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Surprise your boss.  Get to work on time.

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Take everything in stride.  Trample anyone who gets in your way.

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Think big.  Pollute the Mississippi.

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This will be a memorable month, no matter how hard you try to forget it.

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You attempt things that you do not even plan because of your extreme
stupidity.

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You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.

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You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.

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You look like a million dollars.  All green and wrinkled.

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You will be a winner today.  Pick a fight with a four-year-old.

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You will be recognized soon. Hide.

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You will be surprised by a loud noise.

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You analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a word he
says.

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Your lucky color has faded.

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You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.

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There are two kinds of lawyers, those that know the law and those that know
the judge.

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A drug is a substance which, when injected into a rat, will produce a
scientific report.

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"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem."
    - Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

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Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.

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Many are cold, but few are frozen.

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It is better to have loved and lost than just to have lost.

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We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history.

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A man who turns green has eschewed protein.

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Those who can, do; those who can't, simulate.

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In this world, truth can wait; she's used to it.

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A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.

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Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.

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What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.

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To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.

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You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

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A king's castle is his home.

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Many are called, few volunteer.

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Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?

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Today is the last day of your life so far.

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Do not clog intellect's sluices With bits of knowledge of questionable uses.

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Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

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The world is coming to an end...  SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!

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What happens when you cut back the jungle? It recedes.

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Let him who takes the Plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.

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Mistakes are oft the stepping stones to failure.

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All that glitters has a high refractive index.

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I am a computer. I am dumber than any human and smarter than an administrator.

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Long computations which yield 0 (zero) are probably all for naught.

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A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.

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Every silver lining has a cloud around it.

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After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.

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You can never trust a woman; she may be true to you.

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Laugh, and the world ignores you.  Crying doesn't help either.

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Sex, Drugs, and HyperCard!

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Waste not, get your budget cut next year.

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If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger hands.

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Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as
wheels.

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Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.

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The man who raises his voice first has lost the argument.

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You shouldn't try to teach a pig to sing. You waste your time and it annoys
the pig.

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He who hesitates is miles away from the next freeway exit.

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Quantity is no substitute for quality, but it's the only one we've got.

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The more things change, the more they'll never be the same again.

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Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach,
administrate.

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It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth
and remove all doubt.

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The proof is left to the student as a pudding. The student is in the pudding
as an exercise. The exercise is proof of the student.

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I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

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Girls don't give hugs if your code has bugs.

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Never argue with a fool. Others may not be able to tell the difference.

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If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

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Anything that isn't nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry loose isn't nailed
down.

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The probability of the bread falling jelly-side down is directly proportional
to the cost of the carpet.

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The person who can smile when something goes wrong has obviously thought of
someone to blame it on.

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The difference between capitalism and socialism is that in capitalism, man
exploits man, while in socialism it's the other way around.
    - Polish Proverb

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Subtlety is the art of saying what you think, and getting out of the way
before it is understood.

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To the systems programmers, the customers and users serve only as a test load.

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Before they made you they broke the mold.

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A whole hog is better than no hog at all.

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Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.

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Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.

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If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

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Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the land
He's trying to ignore.

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Everyone talks about apathy, but no one does anything about it.

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The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of
assembly language with the power of assembly language.

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Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

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BE ALERT!!!!  (The world needs more lerts ...)

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A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.

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Never commit yourself!  Let someone else commit you.

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Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.

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Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
without looking to see whether the seeds move.

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The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.

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Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.

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Documentation is the castor oil of programming.  Managers know it must be good
because the programmers hate it so much.

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It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

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Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

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For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a cat.

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Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.

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For perfect happiness, remember two things:
    (1) Be content with what you've got.
    (2) Be sure you've got plenty.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to anger.

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Entropy isn't what it used to be.

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The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.

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When all other means of communication fail, try words.

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Polymer physicists are into chains.

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Don't worry about avoiding temptation — as you grow older, it starts avoiding
you.
    - The Old Farmer's Almanac

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Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches.

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Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate and
captain of your soul.

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If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really
make them think they'll hate you.

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Your conscience never stops you from doing anything.  It just stops you from
enjoying it.

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A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary. Anyone
who has been putting off work until they got a round tuit now has no excuse
for further procrastination.

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Is your program running?  You'd better go catch it!

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Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.

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The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he
invented marriage.

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All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.

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Garbage In -- Gospel Out.

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Sauron is alive in Argentina!

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In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.

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Always remember that you are unique.  Just like everyone else.

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It is better never to have been born.  But who among us has such luck? One in
a million, perhaps.

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Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.

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All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.

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The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least
until we've finished building it.

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Life is like a simile.

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By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm you.

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A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.

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A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.

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Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off of the TV screen.

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Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to sell
it.

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You buttered your bread, now lie in it.

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... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you
would not have been informed.

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If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
yesterday?

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If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he
should see how bad it is with representation.

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Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
receipt.

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In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred syrup.

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"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.

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If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.

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A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of
marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

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Cleanliness is next to impossible.

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People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin
Franklin said it first.

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Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.

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Life is like an analogy.

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F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!

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F u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.

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Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it.

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How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

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I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that it took
seven others to beat him!

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If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.

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Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.

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Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances?

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Predestination was doomed from the start.

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Never hit a man with glasses.  Hit him with a baseball bat.

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Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take the
time to take the dirt out of them?

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Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.

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Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.

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It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the future.

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Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell you,
"There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time for play?

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Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.

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If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.

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What color is a chameleon on a mirror?

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God is real, unless declared integer.

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It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.

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One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.

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               AMAZING BUT TRUE ...

There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it would
completely cover the Sahara Desert.

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               AMAZING BUT TRUE ...

If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end across the
Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.

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We have only 2 things to worry about:  That things will never get back to
normal, and that they already have.

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Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.

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No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.

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The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.

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It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.

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Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing that way.

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As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."

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Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get another
chance later on.

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VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.

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Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.

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One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new
model.

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APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.  It is the language of the
future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of coding
bums.

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There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.

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If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.

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You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.

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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not
worth knowing.

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Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence.

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Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.

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Got Mole problems? Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23

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Politics is like coaching a football team.  you have to be smart enough to
understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.

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Save energy: be apathetic.

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If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?

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All extremists should be taken out and shot.

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An American is a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but is
always polite to traffic cops.

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As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs; a
process that traditionally requires some debugging.
    - USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
      computer system.

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Help fight continental drift.

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Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

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Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.

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Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around
the Sun.

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To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?

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If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?

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Pushing 40 is exercise enough.

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To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System.

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Re graphics:
    A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe the picture.
Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

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While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.

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Laetrile is the pits

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God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.

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A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is,
pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.

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Am I ranting?  I hope so.  My ranting gets raves.

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A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.

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Bell Labs UNIX -- Reach out and grep someone.

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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.

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Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.

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They also surf who only stand on waves.

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Every 4 seconds a woman has a baby.  Our problem is to find this woman and
stop her.

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It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.

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Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why you
should.

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Down with categorical imperative!

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Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the Station-to-Station
rate.

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)

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Error in operator: add beer

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The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to
cringe.

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Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.

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A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.

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Disk space -- the final frontier!

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Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.

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There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing.

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A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as
afterward.

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Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them.

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And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.

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It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to
others.

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Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.

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When Marriage is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.

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War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ketchup is a vegetable.

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You worry too much about your job.  Stop it.  You're not paid enough to worry.

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Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.

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Don't get even -- get odd!

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Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.

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Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

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Heisenberg may have slept here.

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Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.

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You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your friend
misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.

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Drink Canada Dry!  You might not succeed, but it is fun trying.

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Absence makes the heart go wander.

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Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can
be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.

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To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.

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Ask your boss to reconsider - it's so difficult to take "Go to hell" for an
answer.

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Real Programmers don't write in PL/I.  PL/I is for programmers who can't
decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.

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Real programmers disdain structured programming.  Structured programming is
for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-trained.  They wear
neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise clear desks.

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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.

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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.

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Real programmers don't comment their code.  It was hard to write, it should be
hard to understand.

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Real Users know your home telephone number.

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Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN.  FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks
and crystallography weenies.  FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white
socks.

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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.

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Real computer scientists don't comment their code.  The identifiers are so
long they can't afford the disk space.

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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.

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Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program
doesn't deliver it.

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One incompetent manager can negate the work of dozens of excellent engineers.

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This place is a hotbed of inertia.

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Just because something is scientifically true, doesn't mean it's not weird.

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The next system crash is just a 1/60 of a second away.

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To be is to do. -- Camus To do is to be. -- Sartre Do be do be do -- Sinatra

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To be is to do. -- I. Kant To do is to be. -- A. Sartre Yabba-Dabba-Doo! -- F.
Flintstone

*

May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a Thousand
Caramels.

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Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.

*

Where there's a will, there's an inheritance tax.

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Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.

*

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.

*

A day for firm decisions!!! -- Or is it?

*

UFO's are for real; the Air Force doesn't exist.

*

The way to make a small fortune in the stock market is to start with a large
fortune.

*

The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more
important to do.

*

There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing
about.

*

Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.

*

Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.

*

How come wrong numbers are never busy?

*

Murphy's law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.

*

How sharper than a hound's tooth it is to have a thankless serpent.

*

When you are in it up to your ears keep your mouth shut.

*

The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means
that only left-handed people are in their right mind.

*

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you
will look forward to the trip.

*

A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.

*

It has been proven impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.

*

What the hell, put all your eggs in one basket.

*

All wrong numbers are the same person.

*

How do they get Teflon to stick to the pan?

*

Bruce Willis' Physics Question:
    A Thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. How do it know?

*

Coito ergo sum.

*

An abstainer is a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself
pleasure.

*

The goal of Science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of Nature is to
build better mice.

*

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

*

If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?

*

Those who cannot write, write manuals.

*

Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.

*

The brain is a wonderful instrument; it starts working the moment you get up
and doesn't stop until you get to work.

*

According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally
worthless.

*

Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders has
been discontinued.

*

Dyslexics, Untie!

*

Separatists, Unite!

*

Personifiers, Unite!  You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!

*

Individualists, Unite!

*

Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.

*

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

*

Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.

*

The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.

*

   Airplane Law: When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to
transfer to is on time.

*

  Alden's Laws: (1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
  of pregnancy. (2) Always be backlit. (3) Sit down whenever possible.

*

  Allison's Precept: The best simple-minded test of expertise in a particular
area is the ability to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences in
that area.

*

  Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it, get a larger hammer.

*

  Anthony's Law of the Workshop:  Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the
least accessible corner of the workshop.

  Corollary to Anthony's Law: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will
first always strike your toes.

*

  Army Axiom: Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.

*

  Arnold's Law of Documentation: 1) If it should exist, it doesn't. 2) If it
doesn't exist, it's out of date. 3) Only documentation for useless programs
transcends the first two
    laws.

*

  Axiom of the Pipe:   (Trischmann's Paradox) A pipe gives a wise man time to
think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.

*

  Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company.  Nowadays it insists on it.

*

  Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry: A block grant is a solid mass of
money surrounded on all sides by governors.

*

  Barach's Rule: An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
physician.

*

  Barth's Distinction There are two types of people: those who divide people
into two types, and those who don't.

*

  Forthoffer's Cynical Summary of Barzun's Laws: That which has not yet been
taught directly can never be taught directly.

*

  Baxter's First Law: Government intervention in the free market always leads
to a lower national standard of living.

*

  Baxter's Third Law: In a free market good money always drives bad money out
of circulation.

*

  Becker's Law: It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.

*

  Blaauw's Law: Established technology tends to persist in spite of new
technology.

*

  Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress
reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.

*

  Booker's Law: An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

*

  Boren's Laws: 1)  When in doubt, mumble. 2)  When in trouble, delegate.
3) When in charge, ponder.

*

  Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into
a committee -- that will do them in.

*

  Brien's Law: At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization,
its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.

*

  The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will
take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by
two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.

*

  Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

*

  Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond
recognition.

*

  Brown's Law of Business Success: Our customer's paperwork is profit. Our own
paperwork is loss.

*

  Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

*

  Bye's First Law of Model Railroading: Anytime you wish to demonstrate
something, the number of faults is proportional to the number of viewers.

*

  Bye's Second Law of Model Railroading: The desire for modeling a prototype is
inversely proportional to the decline of the prototype.

*

  Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.

*

  Camp's Law: A coup that is known in advance is a coup that does not take
place.

*

  Canada Bill Jones' Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their
money.

*

  Canada Bill Jones' Supplement: A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.

*

  Cheop's Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

*

  Chisholm's Law of Human Interaction: Anytime things appear to be going better
you have overlooked something.

*

  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.

*

  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.

*

  Clarke's Second Law: The only way to discover the limits of the possible is
to go beyond them into the impossible.

*

  Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.

*

  Cohen's Law: What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the
facts -- not the facts themselves.

*

  Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

*

  Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50%.  Either a thing will
happen or it won't.

*

  Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology: 1)  No action is without side-effects. 2)
Nothing ever goes away. 3)  There is no free lunch.

*

  Cook's Law:  Much work — much food. Little work — little food. No work —
burial at sea.

*

  Cornuelle's Law: Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do
them.

*

  Crane's Law:   (Friedman's Reiteration) There ain't no such thing as a free
lunch.

*

  DeVries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't
want hits the paper.

*

  Diogenes' First Dictum: The more heavily a man is supposed to be taxed, the
more power he has to escape being taxed.

*

  Diogenes' Second Dictum: If a taxpayer thinks he can cheat safely, he
probably will.

*

  Dow's Law: In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater
the confusion.

*

  Ducharme's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.

*

  Dunne's Law The territory behind rhetoric is too often mined with
equivocation.

*

  Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or
more months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is an
optimist, the real number is more like 3 weeks.)

*

  Ehrman's Commentary: (1) Things will get worse before they get better. (2)
Who said things would get better?

*

  Epperson's law: When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
something his wife can beat him at.

*

  Ettorre's Observation: The other line moves faster.

*

  Evan's Law of Politics: When team members are finally in a position to help
the team, it turns out they have quit the team.

*

  Farber's First Law: Give him an inch and he'll screw you.

*

  Farber's Second Law: A hand in the bush is worth two anywhere else.

*

  Farber's Third Law: We're all going down the same road in different
directions.

*

  Farber's Fourth Law: Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.

*

  Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will
forget your book.

  Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
live.

*

  The Fifth Rule You have taken yourself too seriously.

*

  Finagle's First Law If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

*

  Finagle's Second Law: No matter what result is anticipated, there will always
be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it
happened to his own pet theory.

*

  Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously
correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

*

  Finagle's Fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it
only makes it worse.

*

  Fine's Corollary: Functionality breeds Contempt.

*

  First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride it's uphill and against
the wind.

*

  First Law of Bridge:  It's always the partner's fault.

*

  First Law of Canoeing: (Alfred Andrews' Canoeing Postulate) No matter which
direction you start it's always against the wind coming back.

*

  First Law of Debate: Never argue with a fool.  People might not know the
difference.

*

  First Law of Office Holders: Get re-elected.

*

  First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.

*

  First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself — historians merely
repeat each other.

*

  The First Rule of Program Optimization: Don't do it.

  The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!): Don't do it
yet.

    - Michael Jackson

*

  Fitz-Gibbon's Law: Creativity varies inversely with the number of cooks
involved with the broth.

*

  14th Corollary of Atwood's General Law of Dynamic Negatives: No books are
lost by loaning except those you particularly wanted to keep.

*

  Franklin's Rule Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall not be
disappointed.

*

  Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.

*

  Fudd's Law If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.

*

  Gilb's second Laws of Unreliability: The only difference between the fool and
the criminal who attacks a system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and
on a broader front.

*

  Gilb's third Laws of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase
until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on
getting some useful work done.

*

  Ginsberg's Theorem: 1)  You can't win. 2)  You can't break even. 3)  You
can't even quit the game.

*

  Golden Rules of Indulgence: Everything in excess!  To enjoy the full flavor
of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.  Yield to temptation; it may
never pass your way again.

*

  Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.

*

  Grandpa Charnock's Law: You never really learn to swear until you learn to
drive.

*

  Grosch's Law: Computing power increases as the square of the cost.  If you
want to do it twice as cheaply, you have to do it four times as fast.

*

  Gummidge'e 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 anything happening is in inverse ratio to
its desirability.

*

  Hacker's Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.

*

  Hacker's Law of Personnel: Anyone having supervisory responsibility for the
completion of a task will invariably protest that more resources are needed.

*

  Hafstater's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hafstater's law into account.

*

  Hagerty's Law: If you lose your temper at a newspaper columnist, he'll get
rich or famous or both.

*

  Haldane's Law: The Universe is not only queerer than we imagine; it is
queerer than we CAN imagine.

*

  Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
by stupidity.

*

  Harper's Magazine's Law: You never find an article until you replace it.

*

  Harris' Lament: All the good ones are taken.

*

  Hartley's First Law: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to
float on his back you've got something.

*

  Hartley's Second Law: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.

*

  Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it
damn well pleases.

*

  Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.

*

  Hendrickson's Law: If a problem causes many meetings, the meetings eventually
become more important than the problem.

*

  Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person — they
will find an easier way to do it.

*

  Hoare's Law of Large Programs: Inside every large program is a small program
struggling to get out.

*

  Horner's Five Thumb Postulate: Experience varies directly with equipment
ruined.

*

  Howard's First Law of Theater: Use it.

*

  Howe's Law: Every man has a scheme that will not work.

*

  Hull's Theorem: The combined pull of several patrons is the sum of their
separate pulls multiplied by the number of patrons.

*

  IBM Pollyanna Principle: Machines should work.  People should think.

*

  Imhoff's Law: The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic
tank  — the REALLY big chunks always rise to the top.

*

  Iron Law of Distribution: Them what has - gets.

*

  Italian Proverb: She who is silent consents.

*

  Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Governments: No man's life, liberty or
property are safe while the legislature is in session.

*

  Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.

*

  John Cameron's Law: No matter how many times you've had it, if it's offered,
take it, because it'll never be quite the same again.

*

  John's Axiom: When your opponent is down, kick him.

*

  John's Collateral Corollary: In order to get a loan you must first prove you
don't need it.

*

  Johnson's Corollary to Heller's Law: Nobody really knows what is going on
anywhere within your organization.

*

  Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at
the most inconvenient possible time.

*

  Johnson's First Law of Auto Repair: Any tool dropped while repairing an
automobile will roll under the car to the vehicle's exact geographic center.

*

  Johnson-Laird's Law: Toothache tends to start on Saturday night.

*

  Jones' Law: The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone
he can blame it on.

*

  Jones' Motto: Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

*

  Kamin's Second Law: Threat of capital controls accelerates marginal capital
outflows.

*

  Kamin's Third Law: Combined total taxation from all levels of government will
always increase (until the government is replaced by war or revolution).

*

  Kamin's Fourth Law: Government inflation is always worse than statistics
indicate; central bankers are biased toward inflation when the money unit is
non-convertible, and without gold or silver backing.

*

  Kamin's Fifth Law: Purchasing power of currency is always lost far more
rapidly than ever regained.  (Those who expect even fluctuations in both
directions play a losing game.)

*

  Kamin's Sixth Law: When attempting to predict and forecast macro-economic
moves or economic legislation by a politician, never be misled by what he
says; instead watch what he does.

*

  Kamin's Seventh Law: Politicians will always inflate when given the
opportunity.

*

  Katz's Law: Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities
have been exhausted.

*

  Kerr-Martin Law:

   1)  In dealing with their OWN problems, faculty members are the
       most extreme conservatives.
   2)  In dealing with OTHER people's problems, they are the world's
       most extreme liberals.

*

  Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority.

  Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved.

*

  Kirkland's Law: The usefulness of any meeting is in inverse proportion to the
attendance.

*

  Kitman's Law: Pure drivel tends to drive off the TV screen ordinary drivel.

*

  La Rochefoucauld's Law: It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to
be deceived by them.

*

  Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged
communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
area of misunderstanding.

*

  Law of Computability Applied to Social Science: If at first you don't
succeed, transform your data set.

*

  Law of Selective Gravity:   (The Buttered Side Down Law) An object will fall
so as to do the most damage.

*

  Law of the Perversity of Nature:   (Mrs. Murphy's Corollary) You cannot
successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

*

  Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be
evenly distributed.

*

  Law of Procrastination Procrastination: avoids boredom; one never has the
feeling that there is nothing important to do.

*

  Laws of Serendipity:

1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
    something.

2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already be
    engaged in making an inferior one.

*

  Law of Superiority: The first example of superior principle is always
inferior to the developed example of inferior principle.

*

  Laws of Gardening: 1)  Other people's tools work only in other people's
yards. 2)  Fancy gizmos don't work. 3)  If nobody uses it, there's a reason.
4)  You get the most of what you need the least.

*

  Le Chatelier's Law: If some stress is brought to bear on a system in
equilibrium, the equilibrium is displaced in the direction which tends to undo
the effect of the stress.

*

  Les Miserables Meta-Law: All laws, whether good, bad, or indifferent, must be
obeyed to the letter.

*

  Lockwood's Long Shot: The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main
Street aren't one in a million, but once would be enough.

*

  Lord Falkland's Rule: When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is
necessary not to make a decision.

*

  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.

*

  Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.

*

  Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

*

  Malinowski's Law: Looking from far above, from our high places of safety in
the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance
of magic.

*

  Dean Martin's Definition of Drunkenness: You're not drunk if you can lie on
the floor without holding on.

*

  Maintainer's Motto: If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.

*

  Martin-Berthelot Principle: Of all possible committee reactions to any given
agenda item, the reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the
greatest amount of hot air.

*

  Match's Maxim: A fool in a high station is like a man on the top of a high
mountain:  everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody.

*

  McClaughry's Codicil on Jone's Motto: To make an enemy, do someone a favor.

*

  McClaughry's Law of Zoning: Where zoning is not needed, it will work
perfectly; where it is desperately needed, it always breaks down.

*

  McGoon's Law: The probability of winning is inversely proportional to the
amount of the wager.

*

  McNaughton's Rule: Any argument worth making within the bureaucracy must be
capable of being expressed in a simple declarative sentence that is obviously
true once stated.

*

  H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who cannot -- teach. Those
who cannot teach -- administrate.  (Martin's extension)

*

  Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American: All the postmasters
in small towns read all the postcards.

*

  Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a
champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped.

*

  Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American: The worst
actress in the company is always the manager's wife.

*

  Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American: Milking a cow is
an operation demanding a special talent that is possessed only by yokels, and
no person born in a large city can never hope to acquire it.

*

  Merrill's First Corollary: There are no winners in life; only survivors.

*

  Merrill's Second Corollary: In the highway of life, the average happening is
of about as much true significance as a dead skunk in the middle of the road.

*

  Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it
over.

*

  Michehl's Theorem: Less is more.

*

  Pastore's Comment on Michehl's Theorem: Nothing is ultimate.

*

  Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.

*

  Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end.

*

  Miller's Law: You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it.

*

  Mobil's Maxim: Bad regulation begets worse regulation.

*

  Mosher's Law of Software Engineering: Don't worry if it doesn't work right;
if everything did, you'd be out of a job.

*

  Murphy's Discovery: Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men
talk to women?  They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
will be all right."  And what happens?  Nine months later, you're in trouble!

*

  Murphy's First Law: Nothing is as easy as it looks.

*

  Murphy's Second Law: Everything takes longer than you think.

*

  Murphy's Third Law: In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go
wrong will go wrong.

*

  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 Fifth Law: If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

*

  Murphy's Sixth Law: If you perceive that there are four possible ways in
which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way,
unprepared for, will promptly develop.

*

  Murphy's Seventh Law: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to
worse.

*

  Murphy's Eighth Law: If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously
overlooked something.

*

  Murphy's Ninth Law: Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

*

  Murphy's Tenth Law: Mother nature is a bitch.

*

  Murphy's Eleventh Law: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because
fools are so ingenious.

*

  Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure.

*

  Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.

*

  Newlan's Truism: An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the
government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

*

  Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.

*

  Newton's Little-known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one
overhead.

*

  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.

*

  O'Brien's Principle:   (The $357.73 Theory) Auditors always reject any
expense account with a bottom line divisible by 5 or 10.

*

  Oeser's Law: There is a tendency for the person in the most powerful position
in an organization to spend all his time serving on committees and signing
letters.

*

  Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you
need it.

*

  Ordering Principle: Those supplies necessary for yesterday's experiment must
be ordered no later than tomorrow noon.

*

  Osborn's Law: Variables won't, constants aren't.

*

  O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Laws: Murphy was an optimist.

*

  Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral,
or fattening.

  Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into the above categories causes
cancer in rats.

*

  Pareto's Law:   (The 20/80 Law) 20% of the customers account for 80% of the
turnover, 20% of components account for 80% of the cost, and so forth.

*

  Parker's Rule of Parliamentary Procedure: A motion to adjourn is always in
order.

*

  Parker's Law of Political Statements: The truth of a proposition has nothing
to do with its credibility and vice versa.

*

  Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its
completion; the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity
in a direct ratio with the time to be spent in its completion.

*

  Parkinson's Second Law: Expenditures rise to meet income.

*

  Parkinson's Third Law: If there is a way to delay an important decision the
good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

*

  Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to
increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

*

  Parkinson's Law of Delay: Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

*

  Pastore's Truths: 1)  Even paranoids have enemies. 2)  This job is marginally
better than daytime TV. 3)  On alcohol: four is one more than more than
enough.

*

  Peckham's Law: Beauty times brains equals a constant.

*

  Peer's Law: The solution to a problem changes the problem.

*

  The Peter Principle: In every hierarchy, whether it be government or
business, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; every post
tends to be filled by an employee incompetent to execute its duties.

*

  Peter's Inversion: Internal consistency is valued more highly than
efficiency.

*

  Peter's Paradox:  Employees in a hierarchy do not really object to
incompetence in their colleagues.

*

  Peter's Placebo: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

*

  Peter's Theorem: Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.

*

  Potter's Law: The amount of flak received on any subject is inversely
proportional to the subject's true value.

*

  Prudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side.

*

  Pudder's Law:  Anything that begins well ends badly. Anything that begins
badly ends worse.

*

  Puritan's Law: Evil is live spelled backwards.

*

  Puritan's Second Law: If it feels good, don't do it.

*

  Putt's Law:   Technology is dominated by two types of people:
        Those who understand what they do not manage.
        Those who manage what they do not understand.

*

  Q's Law: No matter what stage of completion one reaches in a North Sea (oil)
field, the cost of the remainder of the project remains the same.

*

  Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
atttempt to use it.

*

  Rayburn's Rule: If you want to get along, go along.

*

  Ray's Rule of Precision: Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut
with an axe.

*

  Renning's Maxim: Man is the highest animal.  Man does the classifying.

*

  Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention:  Unless the results are known in
advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal.

*

  Riddle's Constant:  There are coexisting elements in frustration phenomena
which separate expected results from achieved results.

*

  Ross' Law:  Never characterize the importance of a statement in advance.

*

  Rudin's Law: In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative
courses of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.

*

  Rule of Creative Research: (1) Never draw what you can copy. (2) Never copy
what you can trace. (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.

*

  Rules: (1)  The boss is always right.
         (2)  When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.

*

  Sam's Axiom: 1)  Any line, however short, is still too long. 2)  Work is the
crabgrass of life, but money is the water that keeps it green.

*

  Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.

*

  Scott's Second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected, it will
be found to have been wrong in the first place.

  Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.

*

  Segal's Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two
watches is never sure.

*

  Sevareid's Law: The chief cause of problems is solutions.

*

  Shalit's Law: The intensity of movie publicity is in inverse ratio to the
quality of the movie.

*

  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.

*

  Simon's Law: Everything put together sooner or later falls apart.

*

  Skinner's Constant:   (Flannegan's Finagling Factor) That quantity which,
when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you
get, gives you the answer you should have gotten.

*

  Sociology's Iron Law of Oligarchy: In every organized activity, no matter the
sphere, a small number will become the oligarchial leaders and the others will
follow.

*

  Spare Parts Principle: The accessibility, during recovery of small parts
which fall from the work bench, varies directly with the size of the part and
inversely with its importance to the completion of work underway.

*

  Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely
proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.

*

  Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:  Never test for an error
condition you don't know how to handle.

*

  Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy: Everyone should believe in
something -- I believe I'll have another drink.

*

  Sturgeon's Law: 90 per cent of everything is crap.

*

  Swipple Rule of Order: He who shouts loudest has the floor.

*

  Terman's Law: There is no direct relationship between the quality of an
educational program and its cost.

*

  Terman's Law of Innovation: If you want a track team to win the high jump you
find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one
foot.

*

  Theory of the International Society of Philosophic Engineering: In any
calculation, any error which can creep in will.

*

  The Third Law of Photography: If you did manage to get any good shots, they
will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
the dark leaks out.

*

  Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching with the obvious intent of doing
you good,  run for your life.

*

  The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:

  The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.

  The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even.

  The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.

*

The Three Rules of Video Ergonomics:
    1)    If you can see the pixels, it's too crude.
    2)    If you can see the edges, it's too small.
    3)    If you don't get a tan, it's too dim.

*

  Transcription Law: The number of errors made is equal to the number of
'squares' employed.

*

  Truman's Law: If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

*

  Tuccille's First Law of Reality: Industry always moves in to fill an economic
vacuum.

*

  Tussman's Law: Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

*

  Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb: Never use your thumb for a rule.  You'll either
hit it with a hammer or get a splinter in it.

*

  Vail's Axiom: In any human enterprise, work seeks the lowest hierarchial
level.

*

  Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.

*

  Velilind's Laws of Experimentation: (1) If reproducibility may be a problem,
conduct the test only once. (2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain
only two data points.

*

  Vique's Law: A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

*

  Vonnegut's Corollary: Beauty may be only skin deep, but ugliness goes right
to the core.

*

  Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
number and significance of any persons watching it.

*

  Weaver's Corollary:   (Doyle's Corollary) No matter how many reporters share
a cab, and no matter who pays, each puts the full fare on his own expense
account.

*

  Weber-Fechner Law: The least change in stimulus necessary to produce a
perceptible change in response is proportional to the stimulus already
existing.

*

  Weinberg's First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays.

*

  Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote
programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
civilization.

*

  Weinberg's Corollary: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

*

  Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross references.

*

  Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently
save a couple of hours in the library.

*

  Westheimer's Rule: To estimate the time it takes to do a task:  estimate the
time you think it should take, multiply by 2, and change the unit of measure
to the next highest unit.  Thus we allocate 2 days for a one hour task.

*

  Whistler's Law: You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
charge.

*

  White's Chappaquidick Theorem: The sooner and in more detail you announce bad
news, the better.

*

  White's Statement: Don't lose heart...

  Byrd's Addition to Owen's Comment on White's Statement: ...and they want to
avoid a lengthy search.

*

  Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

*

  Wolf's Law:   (An Optimistic View of a Pessimistic World) It isn't that
things will necessarily go wrong (Murphy's Law), but rather that they will
take so much more time and effort than you think if they are not to go wrong.

*

  Worker's Dilemma Law:   (or Management's Put-Down Law) 1)  No matter how much
you do, you'll never do enough. 2)  What you don't do is always more important
than what you do do.

*

  Wynne's Law: Negative slack tends to increase.

*

  Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: Once you open a can of
worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.  (Old worms never
die, they just worm their way into larger cans).

*

  Zymurgy's Law on the Availability of Volunteer Labor: People are always
available for work in the past tense.

*

  Zymurgy's Seventh Exception to Murphy's Laws: When it rains, it pours.

*


*

There was a young poet named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan.
    When told this was so,
    He said, "Yes, I know" It's because I try to put every possible syllable
into the last line that I can.

*

A limerick packs laughs anatomical Into a space that is quite economical.
    But the good ones I've seen
    So seldom are clean, And the clean ones are so seldom comical.

*

Flappity, floppity, flip The mouse on the möbius strip;
    The strip revolved,
    The mouse dissolved In a chronodimensional skip.

*

There once was a girl named Irene Who lived on distilled kerosene
    But she started absorbin'
    A new hydrocarbon
    And since then has never benzene.

*

Limericks are art forms complex, Their topics run chiefly to sex.
    They usually have virgins,
    And masculine urgin's, And other erotic effects.

*

There was a young lady from Hyde Who ate a green apple and died.
    While her lover lamented
    The apple fermented And made cider inside her inside.

*

A computer, to print out a fact, Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
    But this output can be
    No more than debris, If the input was short of exact.
    - Gigo

*

A very intelligent turtle Found programming UNIX a hurdle
    The system, you see,
    Ran as slow as did he, And that's not saying much for the turtle.

*

A crusader's wife slipped from the garrison And had an affair with a Saracen.
    She was not oversexed,
    Or jealous or vexed, She just wanted to make a comparison.

*

I love to eat them Smurfies
Smurfies what I love to eat
Bite they ugly heads off,
Nibble on they bluish feet.

*

If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker, It is slick to stick a lock
upon your stock.
    Or some joker who is slicker,
    Will trick you of your liquor, If you fail to lock your liquor with a
lock.

*

'Tis the dream of each programmer, Before his life is done, To write three
lines of APL, And make the damn things run.

*

If all be true that I do think, There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry, Or lest we should be by-and-by, Or any
other reason why.

*

'Tis the dream of each programmer, Before his life is done, To write three
lines of APL, And make the damn things run.

*

Reclaimer, spare that tree! Take not a single bit! It used to point to me, Now
I'm protecting it. It was the reader's CONS That made it, paired by dot; Now,
GC, for the nonce, Thou shalt reclaim it not.

*

Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-null bottles of beer,
        You take one down, and pass it around, Aleph-null bottles of beer on
the wall.

*

Q: Why don't sharks eat lawyers? A: Professional courtesy.

*

Q: How was Thomas J. Watson buried? A: Face down, 9-edge in.

*

Q:  Why did the tachyon cross the road? A:  Because it was on the other side.

*

Q: What's the difference between a rooster and a lawyer ? A: A rooster clucks
defiance, a lawyer .............

*

Q: What's purple and commutes? A: An abelian grape!

*

Q:  How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A:  Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.

*

Q: How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. It's a hardware problem.

*

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.

*

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.

*

Q: How many graduate students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but it may take upwards of five years for him to
    get it done.

*

Q: How many mice does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two.  (Hint:  They are small enough to fit inside).

*

Q: How many yuppies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Silly; yuppies don't screw in a lightbulb, they screw in a hot tub.

*

Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None: the lightbulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.

*

Q: How many supply-side economists does it take
    to screw in a light bulb?
A: None.  If the government would just leave it
    alone, it would screw itself in.

*

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 managers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Three.  One to get the bulb and two to get the phone number to
    dial one of their subordinates to actually change it.

*

Q:  How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:  How many can you afford?

*