back2roots/padua/padua.7z/padua/misc/cookie.lha/cookie.sayings

Text File | 1992-04-27 | 851KB | 23,828 lines

Help!  I'm trapped in a PDP 11/07!
%%
(1)    Alexander the Great was a great general.
(2)    Great generals are forewarned.
(3)    Forewarned is forearmed.
(4)    Four is an even number.
(5)    Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
(6)    The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.

Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
%%
(1)    Everything depends.
(2)    Nothing is always.
(3)    Everything is sometimes.
%%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
    (1)  Scarecrow for centipedes
    (2)  Dead cat brush
    (3)  Hair barrettes
    (4)  Cleats
    (5)  Self-piercing earrings
    (6)  Fungus trellis
    (7)  False eyelashes
    (8)  Prosthetic dog claws
    .
    .
    .
    (99)  Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
    (100) Killer velcro
    101. Currency
%%
186,282 miles per second:

It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
%%
$3,000,000
%%
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
simulation!
%%
43rd Law of Computing:
    Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%%
77.  HO HUM -- The Redundant

------- (7)    This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8)    boredom.  Your programs always bomb off.  Your wife
------- (7)    smells bad.  Your children have hives.  You are working
---O--- (6)    on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9)    the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER.  You give up hot dates
--- --- (8)    to nurse sick computers.  What you need now is sex.

Nine in the second place means:
    The yellow bird approaches the malt shop.  Misfortune.

Six in the third place means:
    In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
    Revenue Service.  Great Dragons!  Are you in trouble!
%%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!

100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk! ...
%%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
%%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
        -- Don Quinn
%%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it
adds up to be real money.
        -- Everett McKinley Dirksen
%%
A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
%%
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
%%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.
%%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
as afterward.
%%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
%%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
Avoid him.  He's a Commie.
%%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
        -- Herbert Prochnow
%%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
%%
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 conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
%%
A CONS is an object which cares.
        -- Bernie Greenberg.
%%
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
        -- Ben Franklin
%%
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.
%%
A day for firm decisions!!!!!  Or is it?
%%
A day without sunshine is like night.
%%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a
fur coat.
%%
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 disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
eating his morning meal.  "I would like to give you this personality
test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
    Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
%%
A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
%%
    A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest.  In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
    The architect did not agree.  He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created.  So God must have been an
architect."
    The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
    Divided by seven,
    Plus five time eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
%%
A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?"  Very earnestly, the
Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed
the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously
hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual.
The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
%%
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject.
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry.  Hence University education.
        -- G. B. Shaw
%%
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.
%%
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
        -- D. Gries
%%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
of).
%%
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
        -- William James
%%
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%%
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
        -- Gopete Sherany
%%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
%%
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
        -- Dennis M. Ritchie
%%
A large number of installed systems work by fiat.  That is, they work
by being declared to work.
        -- Anatol Holt
%%
A Law of Computer Programming:
    Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
    will find the programmers cannot write in English.
%%
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
    But the good ones I've seen
    So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
%%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
%%
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.  Buy the negatives at any
price.
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.  I
believe everything positively stinks.
        -- Lew Col
%%
    A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit.  The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
    "No problem," says the tailor.  "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you.  See, now it's fine."
    "But the collar is up around my ears!"
    "It's nothing.  Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
little more ... that's it."
    "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
    "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack.  There you
go.  Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
    So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street.  Reba and Florence see him go by.
    "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
    "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
sense of obligation."
        -- Stephen Crane
%%
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
%%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%%
    A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell.  She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion.  "Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
    "If what?" asked the composer.
    "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
%%
A new dramatist of the absurd
Has a voice that will shortly be heard.
    I learn from my spies
    He's about to devise
An unprintable three-letter word.
%%
A new koan:

    If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.

    If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.

It is an ice cream koan.
%%
A 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.
%%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
%%
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
        -- George Wald
%%
A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!
        -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
     A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
              by Mark Twain

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

And he answered:

It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.

It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.

It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.

And that is Fate?  said the priest.

Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.

That's all right, said the priest.  I wanted to know what Freight was
too.
        -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
    A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
"That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
man".
    As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place."
        -- IEEE Grid newsmagazine
%%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
your wife will give you for free.
%%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
that the system works.
%%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
the real reason.
%%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists.  Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
dimensional objects ...
%%
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
        -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%%
        A Severe Strain on the Credulity

As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device.  It is when one
considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really
starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the
knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
        -- New York Times Editorial, 1920
%%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard
        -- Prof. Steiner
%%
A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was
waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
        -- O'Henry
%%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
exam.
%%
A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by
its author.
        -- S. C. Johnson
%%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
        -- John Ciardi
%%
A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
    She found a good way
    To combine work and play:
She sells C shells by the seashore.
%%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.
        -- Tenessee Williams
%%
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 well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
%%
"A witty saying proves nothing."
        -- Voltaire
%%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
in God.
%%
A.A.A.A.A.:
    An organization for drunks who drive
%%
AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
You brute!  Knock before entering a ladies room!
%%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
ends.
        -- Herbert Hoover
%%
Absence makes the heart go wander.
%%
Absent, adj.:
    Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%%
Absentee, n.:
    A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
himself from the sphere of exaction.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Abstainer, n.:
    A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Absurdity, n.:
    A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Accident, n.:
    A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
%%
Accidents cause History.

If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
        -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%%
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
totally worthless.
%%
Accordion, n.:
    A bagpipe with pleats.
%%
Accuracy, n.:
    The vice of being right
%%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%%
Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
%%
Acquaintance, n.:
    A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well
enough to lend to.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
"Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from
coughing."
%%
Actor:    "I'm a smash hit.  Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
    everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford:    "Wonderful!  Wonderful!  Clever of you to think of
    it!"
%%
Actor:    So what do you do for a living?
Doris:    I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
    dishes for Chinese restaurants.
        -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%%
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."
%%
Admiration, n.:
    Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Adolescence, n.:
    The stage between puberty and adultery.
%%
"Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
like you ..."
        --- Gilda Radner
%%
Adore, v.:
    To venerate expectantly.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Adult, n.:
    One old enough to know better.
%%
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc.  These pioneers conducted
many important electrical experiments.  For example, in 1780 Luigi
Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
attached to the frog, which was dead anyway.  Galvani's discovery led
to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine.  Today,
skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
that it sinks like a stone.
        -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%%
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
quotations.
        -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
%%
After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party?  Surely not
for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
        -- P. J. O'Rourke
%%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
%%
    After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven.  As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
    "This is true," He replied.
    "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
    "What!  You, his appointed Enemy for all Time!  You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
    "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make
his own."
    It was so granted.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
%%
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.
%%
Afternoon very favorable for romance.  Try a single person for a
change.
%%
Afternoon, n.:
    That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
morning.
%%
Air is water with holes in it
%%
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
        -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
%%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.  You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.  Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there.  The only difference is that there is no cat."
%%
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.
%%
Alex Haley was adopted!
%%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
for a dial tone.
%%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
        -- Peggy Joyce
%%
"All flesh is grass"
        -- Isiah
Smoke a friend today.
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%%
"All my friends and I are crazy.  That's the only thing that keeps us
sane."
%%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
every organism to live beyond its income.
        -- Samuel Butler
%%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
        -- E. Rutherford
%%
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes.  For example, if you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper?  Outside?  What
if it rains?"
        -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%%
"... all the modern inconveniences ..."
        -- Mark Twain
%%
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
        -- Sean O'Casey
%%
All the world's a VAX,
And all the coders merely butchers;
They have their exits and their entrails;
And one int in his time plays many widths,
His sizeof being N bytes.  At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
And shining morning face, creeping like slug
Unwillingly to school.
        -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
%%
All things are possible except skiing thru a revolving door.
%%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%%
All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around
you.  Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making
average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents,
insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll
realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins
in the Sears menswear department dress.  Now look at the real
successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John,
Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on.  They
all dress funny -- and they all succeed.  Are you catching on?
        -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
%%
Alliance, n.:
    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, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Alone, adj.:
    In bad company.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
to plug them in.  Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
serious electrical shock.  This proved that lighting was powered by the
same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
penny saved is a penny earned."  Eventually he had to be given a job
running the post office.
        -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
back.
%%
        AMAZING BUT TRUE ...

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

There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%%
Ambidextrous, adj.:
    Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
        -- Charlie McCarthy
%%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
to decadence without touching civilization.
        -- John O'Hara
%%
America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
changed its name to "America".
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%%
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
is always polite to traffic cops.
%%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
        -- A. P. Herbert
%%
An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch He wears
a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised
only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich
Protestant Golfer Magazine.  The advertisements are written in
incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
excellence:

"The Rolex Hyperion.  An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
discriminating handcraftsmanship.  For the individual who is truly able
to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
things by hand.  Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold.  No watch
parts or anything.  Just a great big chunk on your wrist.  Truly a
timeless statement.  For the individual who is very secure.  Who
doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
school.  Because of his acne.  People who are probably nowhere near as
successful as he is now.  Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
they'll see his Rolex Hyperion.  Hahahahahahahahaha."
        -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%%
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
        -- Mark Twain
%%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%%
    An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
    "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this.  Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour.  But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
    The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%%
... And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man
        -- A. E. Housman
%%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%%
And this is a table ma'am.  What in essence it consists of is a
horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
columnar supports, which we call legs.  The tables in this laboratory,
ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
world.
        -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
%%
    "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
    "Diet."
%%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
        -- Tom Leher
%%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%%
Anoint, v.:
    To grease a king or other great functionary already
sufficiently slippery.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
        Another Glitch in the Call
        ------- ------ -- --- ----
    (Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)

We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?

    Hey!  Hacker!  Leave those lists alone!

Chorus:
    All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
    All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
%%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
        Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:

1.  None.  (Moses didn't have an ark).
2.  Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
3.  I don't know.
4.  Who cares?
5.  6 (or maybe 4, or else 3).  Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
    Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
6.  There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
    book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
    bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
    Papyrus Books).
%%
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:
    On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
    your toes.
%%
Antonym, n.:
    The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
        -- Charles McCabe
%%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
        -- Aesop
%%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
sell it.
%%
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the
existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god
coefficient.  (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)
%%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a
larger object.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
        -- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%%
Any woman is a volume if one knows how to read her.
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked.
%%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
        -- Publilius Syrus
%%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
        -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
        -- W. C. Fields
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
        -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate.
%%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.  The label means the
price went up.  The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%%
Aquadextrous, adj.:
    Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off
with your toes.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
    AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.  You lie
a great deal.  On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and
impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over
again.  People think you are stupid.
%%
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
        -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
    ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt.  You are
quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice.  You are not very
nice.
%%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
        -- Mickey Mouse
%%
Armadillo:
    To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
    (1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
    (2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
    (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
        first two laws.
%%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
    (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
        remind them of someone else.
    (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will
        be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool
        of yourself in person.
%%
Artistic ventures highlighted.  Rob a museum.
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
        -- Weisert
%%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
fascination.  When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
popular.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
"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.
%%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought.  Debugging had
to be discovered.  I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
        -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
%%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free
variable."
%%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season.  There is a simple
memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
        -- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.
%%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the
bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%%
Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
for an answer.
%%
Ass, n.:
    The masculine of "lass".
%%
At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
%%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
        -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
%%
... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
        -- J. B. White
%%
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.
%%
Atlee is a very modest man.  And with reason.
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
Automobile, n.:
    A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
pedestrians.
%%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%%
Bacchus, n.:
    A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bagdikian's Observation:
    Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
    newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion"
    on a ukelele.
%%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
    A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
    by governors.
%%
Ban the bomb.  Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Bank error in your favor.  Collect $200.
%%
Barach's Rule:
    An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
    physician.
%%
Barometer, n.:
    An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
are having.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Barth's Distinction:
    There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
    types, and those who don't.
%%
Baruch's Observation:
    If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%%
Basic, n.:
    A programming language.  Related to certain social diseases in
that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
%%
Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your
door.
%%
BE ALERT!!!!  (The world needs more lerts ...)
%%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet.  Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Be different: conform.
%%
Be free and open and breezy!  Enjoy!  Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
%%
Be wary of strong drink.  It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
away.
%%
Beifeld's Principle:
    The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
    receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when
    he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3)
    a better looking and richer male friend.
%%
Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
%%
"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
        -- Time Bandits
%%
Besides the device, the box should contain:

* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"

* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
  club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.

YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
cable.

IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
without a major transmission overhaul?  Because nobody cares, that's
why."

WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
        -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%%
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole >town

cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus <north pole > town

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {
    be good
}
%%
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it."
        -- Donald Knuth
%%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
        -- Leonard Brandwein
%%
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us.  "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way."
        -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%%
Binary, adj.:
    Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
%%
Bipolar, adj.:
    Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
New York
%%
Birth, n.:
    The first and direst of all disasters.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
%%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known
as Wheels.
%%
BLISS is ignorance
%%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
%%
Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
plain sight.  It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again.  The legend has
it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.  In fact, he was
arrested for drunk driving.  The snakes left because people kept
throwing up on them.
%%
Boling's postulate:
    If you're feeling good, don't worry.  You'll get over it.
%%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
    Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
    vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
    Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%%
Boob's Law:
    You always find something in the last place you look.
%%
Bore, n.:
    A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Boren's Laws:
    (1) When in charge, ponder.
    (2) When in trouble, delegate.
    (3) When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Boss, n.:
    According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
ornamental stud."
%%
Boston, n.:
    Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
%%
Boy, n.:
    A noise with dirt on it.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
    If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
    committee -- that will do them in.
%%
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?"
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
Brain, n.:
    The apparatus with which we think that we think.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
    To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
error in an opponent.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Bride, n.:
    A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%%
British Israelites:
    The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of
Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by
Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further
believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the
Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in
the hand of the Arabs.  They also believe that if you sleep with your
head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Broad-mindedness, n.:
    The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%%
Brook's Law:
    Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%%
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.
%%
Bubble Memory, n.:
    A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
intelligence.  See also "vacuum tube".
%%
Bucy's Law:
    Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%%
Bug, n.:
    An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
PROGRAMMER was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
wrote the program.

Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
        -- Ray Simard
%%
Bug:
    Small living things that small living boys throw on small
living girls.
%%
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
%%
Bumper sticker:

"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
manufacture"
%%
Bureaucrat, n.:
    A politician who has tenure.
%%
... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.  Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell.  If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
        -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
        -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
           Compilers"
%%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
        -- Hilaire Belloc
%%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
        -- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%%
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
education and lived in New Jersey.  Edison's first major invention in
1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
invented.  But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
invented the electric company.  Edison's design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
part) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
increases.
        -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%%
"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge?  What is a
kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?  Have I
explained yet about the bytes?"
%%
"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
computers?"
%%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%%
By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
completely overwhelm you.
%%
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.  In fact,
it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
invent. (R. Emerson)"
        -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
           (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
           [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
           misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
%%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast.  People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there.  They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
        -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
C, n.:
    A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more
like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or
anything else.  It is either the best language available to the art
today, or it isn't.
        -- Ray Simard
%%
Cabbage, n.:
    A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Cahn's Axiom:
    When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
        -- Fred Allen
%%
California, n.:
    From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or
Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or
"fornication."  Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
        -- Ed Moran
%%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
        -- Indian proverb
%%
"Calling J-Man Kink.  Calling J-Man Kink.  Hash missle sighted, target
Los Angeles.  Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
%%
"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
        -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%%
"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont."
        -- Clarence Darrow
%%
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
    It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

Supplement:
    A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%%
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
%%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
    CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's problems.  They
think you are a sucker.  You are always putting things off.  That's why
you'll never make anything of yourself.  Most welfare recipients are
Cancer people.
%%
    CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks.  You don't do much of
anything and are lazy.  There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance.  Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
%%
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.
%%
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
expected.  Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
planning to reduce the time it takes.
%%
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
    The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
%%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year.  Take an elephant to lunch.
%%
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
how many?
%%
Cerebus:    I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
Jaka:        Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
Cerebus:    If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
        out of it?
Jaka:        Ugh!
Cerebus:    You don't like apricot brandy?
        -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
%%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
    Did you ever try buying then without money?
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
Character Density: the number of very weird people in the office.
%%
Chemicals, n.:
    Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
%%
Chicago, n.:
    Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
%%
Chicken Little was right.
%%
Chicken Soup, n.:
    An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
cocaine, interferon, and TLC.  The only ailment chicken soup can't cure
is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
Children seldom misquote you.  In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.
%%
Chism's Law of Completion:
    The amount of time required to complete a government project is
    precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
%%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
    When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%%
Christ:
    A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
%%
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.
%%
Cigarette, n.:
    A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in
between.
%%
Cinemuck, n.:
    The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
covers the floors of movie theaters.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%%
Cleveland still lives.  God ____must be dead.
%%
"Cleveland?  Yes, I spent a week there one day."
%%
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
%%
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
%%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Cold, adj.:
    When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
%%
Cold, adj.:
    When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
pockets.
%%
Collaboration, n.:
    A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
other fellow can spell.
%%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played.  There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
    All probabilities are 50%.  Either a thing will happen or
    it won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
    This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
    attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary
    Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%%
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
Command, n.:
    Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
%%
    COMMENT

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
Commitment, n.:
    Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
%%
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte
%%
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
theory.
%%
Computers are not intelligent.  They only think they are.
%%
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
        -- LaRouchefoucauld
%%
Concept, n.:
    Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
$25,000.
%%
Condense soup, not books!
%%
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
good for dandruff.
        -- Peter de Vries
%%
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
%%
Congratulations!  You have purchased an extremely fine device that
would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
maneuver.  Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE.  YOU ALREADY
UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU?  YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDED AND
SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH HE KNOBS,
RIGHT?  AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
RIGHT???  WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
        -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
%%
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic!"
        -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
Conversation, n.:
    A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
is called the listener.
%%
Conway's Law:
    In any organization there will always be one person who knows
    what is going on.

    This person must be fired.
%%
Coronation, n.:
    The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
bomb.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Corrupt, adj.:
    In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%%
Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner.  His job
is to enforce the law and fight crime.
        -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
%%
Coward, n.:
    One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with
nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
        -- Wernher von Braun
%%
Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
        -- A. E. Newman
%%
Critic, n.:
    A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Cynic, n.:
    A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Cynic, n.:
    One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced
eye.
%%
Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
%%
Dawn, n.:
    The time when men of reason go to bed.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Day of inquiry.  You will be subpoenaed.
%%
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve.  Success is also
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem.  Work hard to
improve.
%%
Dear Lord:
    I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
    the other hand", again.
%%
Dear Miss Manners:
    My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
elbows on the table.  However, I have read that one elbow, in between
courses, is all right.  Which is correct?

Gentle Reader:
    For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
economics class, your teacher is correct.  Catching on to this
principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now
than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners
believes that is.
%%
Dear Miss Manners:
    Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
    your face.

Gentle Reader:
    Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
    your face ...
%%
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 Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down
%%
Decisionmaker, n.:
    The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
before the music stopped.
%%
Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really
overwhelming majority of the crowd present.  Abusive and obscene
language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the
judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when
addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
        -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing
           Assoc.
%%
    Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
        -- Walt Kelly
%%
    "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all
sorts of marvelous things.  It's one thing to be able to say "I've got
a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
blessed.
        -- Randy Davis
%%
            DELETE A FORTUNE!

Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?!  Wouldn't you like
to see some of them deleted from the system?  You can!  Just mail to
"fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
gets expunged.
%%
Deliberation, n.:
    The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
buttered on.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
"Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow."
%%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
        -- Senator Soaper
%%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
        -- G. B. Shaw
%%
Democracy is also a form of worship.  It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
        -- E. B. White
%%
Dentist, n.:
    A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
        DETERIORATA

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

    You are a fluke of the universe ...
    You have no right to be here.
    Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
    Is laughing behind your back.
        -- National Lampoon
%%
DeVries's Dilemma:
    If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
    hits the paper.
%%
Did you know ...

That no-one ever reads these things?
%%
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Die, v.:
    To stop sinning suddenly.
        -- Elbert Hubbard
%%
"Die?  I should say not, dear fellow.  No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him."
        -- John Barrymore's dying words
%%
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
%%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%%
Disc space -- the final frontier!
%%
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
%%
Distress, n.:
    A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
%%
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
%%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%%
Do not drink coffee in early A.M.  It will keep you awake until noon.
%%
Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
anger.
%%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%%
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes.
        -- Donald Kaul
%%
Do something unusual today.  Pay a bill.
%%
Do what comes naturally now.  Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%%
Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
the time to take the dirt out of them?
%%
"Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
"Of course it's wrong!  It's illegal!"
"I've never done anything illegal before."
"I thought you said you were an accountant!"
%%
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
        -- Dick Brandon
%%
Documentation is the castor oil of programming.  Managers know it must
be good because the programmers hate it so much.
%%
Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
%%
Don't be humble, you're not that great.
        -- Golda Meir
%%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%%
Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly
misleading.  Debug only code.
        -- Dave Storer
%%
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you
nothing.  It was here first.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%%
Don't knock President Fillmore.  He kept us out of Vietnam.
%%
Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking
distance.
%%
Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
%%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
it today you can do it again tomorrow.
%%
"Don't say yes until I finish talking."
        -- Darryl F. Zanuck
%%
Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out if it alive.
%%
Don't tell any big lies today.  Small ones can be just as effective.
%%
"Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
get more wax!!"
%%
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.  It's already
tomorrow in Australia.
        -- Charles Schultz
%%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.  They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%%
Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
%%
Don:    I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill!  Was she
    pretty?
W. C.:    Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
    bad road.  She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
    sleep with her head in a safe.  She died in Bolivia.
Don:    Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
W. C.:    It's almost impossible.
        -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
           E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
%%
Down with categorical imperative!
%%
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
%%
Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
    The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
    of your eyes.
%%
Drive defensively.  Buy a tank.
%%
Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic
route!
%%
Ducharm's Axiom:
    If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
    yourself as part of the problem.
%%
Ducharme's Precept:
    Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%%
Duct tape is like the force.  It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together ...
        -- Carl Zwanzig
%%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
%%
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
%%
    During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall.  Suddenly a
red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
"Hey, you almost hit my wife."
    "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast.  "Terribly sorry.  Have a
shot at mine, over there."
%%
During the next two hours, the VAX will be going up and down several
times, often with lin~po_~{po       ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po     ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o
%%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair.  And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
        -- W. Somerset Maughm
%%
E Pluribus Unix
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%%
/Earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
%%
/earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
%%
"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."
        -- Jeff Berner
%%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
    Black.  Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the
cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of
the plastic underneath -- black.  According to the instructions, this
means the puzzle is solved.
        -- Steve Rubenstein
%%
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
        -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
Economics, n.:
    Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
Galbraith ...
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Eggheads unite!  You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
        -- Adlai Stevenson
%%
Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English.  Many
people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from.  The first syllable
comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg".  I don't know where
the "nog" comes from.

To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in
season, eggs...
%%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool.
        -- Bellamy Brooks
%%
Egotist, n.:
    A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Ehrman's Commentary:
    1.  Things will get worse before they get better.
    2.  Who said things would get better?
%%
Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
        -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
%%
Eisenhower was very nice,
Nixon was his only vice.
        -- C. Degen
%%
Eleanor Rigby
    Sits at the keyboard
    And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
    Finding some code
    That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
%%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%%
Electrocution, n.:
    Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%%
Elevators smell different to midgets
%%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
    Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
    can.  Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%%
Encyclopedia Salesmen:
    Invite them all in.  Nip out the back door.  Phone the police
and tell them your house is being burgled.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
        -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
%%
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
%%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
        -- Jerome Lettvin
%%
Equal bytes for women.
%%
Es brilig war.  Die schlichte Toven
    Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven
    Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben.
        -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
Etymology, n.:
    Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations that
were hard for the public to believe.  The term "etymology" was formed
from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
("study of").  It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
        -- Mike Kellen
%%
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?
        -- Clarence Darrow
%%
"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
        -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only 2 cents a day.
%%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
just how busy they are.
%%
Every 4 seconds a woman has a baby.  Our problem is to find this woman
and stop her.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%%
Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
%%
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not
spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  This is not a way
of life at all in any true sense.  Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
        -- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
%%
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):

Horses have an even number of legs.  Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs.  This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse.  But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity.  Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs.  Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs.  But that is a horse
of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
color"], that does not exist.
%%
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
        -- Don Vonada
%%
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
        -- Miguel de Cervantes
%%
Every 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.
%%
Every program has two purposes --
written and another for which it wasn't.
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%%
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
%%
"Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it."
%%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
        -- Beckett
%%
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
        -- Dykstra
%%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how ___not to.  So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist.  But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind.  The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist.  Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here.  The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical.  They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way ...
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____does anything about it.
%%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
%%
Everything you know is wrong!
%%
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe.  For example, there are no
solids in the universe.  There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums.  There are no surfaces.  There are no
straight lines.
        -- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
Everyting should be built top-down, except the first time.
%%
    Excellence is THE trend of the '80s.  Walk into any shopping
mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
"Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
"Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
        -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%%
Excellent day for drinking heavily.  Spike office water cooler.
%%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%%
Excess on occasion is exhilarating.  It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
        -- W. Somerset Maugham
%%
Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
%%
Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
%%
Expense Accounts, n.:
    Corporate food stamps.
%%
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
        -- Olivier
%%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a
mistake when you make it again.
        -- F. P. Jones
%%
Experience is the worst teacher.  It always gives the test first and
the instruction afterward.
%%
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
ones.
%%
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
%%
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
%%
F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
%%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%%
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
%%
Fairy Tale, n.:
    A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%%
Faith, n:
    That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be
untrue.
%%
Fakir, n:
    A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
%%
Familiarity breeds attempt
%%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
        -- Su Tung-p'o
%%
Famous last words:
%%
Famous last words:
    1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
    2) "You and what army?"
    3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
        a cop."
%%
Famous last words:
    1.  Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
    2.  Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
    3.  What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
    4.  We won't need reservations.
    5.  It's always sunny there this time of the year.
    6.  Don't worry, it's not loaded.
    7.  They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
%%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
        -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
Fats Loves Madelyn
%%
Feel disillusioned?  I've got some great new illusions ...
%%
Fertility is hereditary.  If your parents didn't have any children,
neither will you.
%%
    Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
d'oeuvres.
    Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
    Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
the little hammers strike.
    Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree.  The piano is missing.

    You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
4.  The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
%%
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.
%%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
    Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
    there is nothing important to do.
%%
    FIGHTING WORDS

Say my love is easy had,
    Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
    Still behold me at your side.

Say I'm neither brave nor young,
    Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
    Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
    And I get me another man!
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
Finagle's Creed:
    Science is true.  Don't be misled by facts.
%%
Finagle's First Law:
    If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle's fourth Law:
    Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
    makes it worse.
%%
Finagle's Second Law:
    No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
    someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
    believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle's Third Law:
    In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
    beyond all need of checking, is the mistake

Corollaries:
    1.  Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
    2.  The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
        don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%%
Fine day to throw a party.  Throw him as far as you can.
%%
Fine day to work off excess energy.  Steal something heavy.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
    No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
    wind.
%%
First Law of Procrastination:
    Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
    for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who
    imposed the deadline).
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
    Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
First Rule of History:
    History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
    other.
%%
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the m"obius strip;
    The strip revolved,
    The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
%%
FLASH!  Intelligence of mankind decreasing.  Details at ... uh, when
the little hand is on the ....
%%
Flon's Law:
    There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
    the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%%
Flugg's Law:
    When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
    world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
%%
For a good time, call [phone]
%%
For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
always old-fashioned.
%%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
        -- R. Clopton
%%
    "For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."

    "Whose?"

    "MINE! HA-HA!"
%%
For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
"Canada".  Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
        -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
           the U.S.
%%
For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%%
"For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
a thousand years ago.  Why not, then, the last step of doing away with
computers altogether?"
        -- Jehan Shuman
%%
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they
like.
        -- Abraham Lincoln
%%
For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
        -- Justin Richardson.
%%
Forgetfulness, n.:
    A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their
destitution of conscience.
%%
Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):

        Don't Write On Walls!

           (and underneath)

        You want I should type?
%%
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan.  During an
impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.

DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
     having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
DINGELL: They may or may not be natural.  The simple fact of the matter
     is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
     large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
     amounts of fertilization.
HOFFMAN: Wait a minute!  I do not want to go into that.  There are many
     teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
%%
FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS        #14

Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
liquor at BYOB parties?  Take along a candle, which you insert and
light after you've opened the bottle.  No one ever expects anything
drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
%%
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.
%%
Fourth Law of Revision:
    It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
    interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for
    you.
%%
Fresco's Discovery:
    If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
%%
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser.  The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caeser really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down.
%%
Frisbeetarianism, n.:
    The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and
gets stuck.
%%
Frobnicate, v.:
    To manipulate or adjust, to tweak.  Derived from FROBNITZ.
Usually abbreviated to FROB.  Thus one has the saying "to frob a
frob".  See TWEAK and TWIDDLE.  Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
sometimes connote points along a continuum.  FROB connotes aimless
manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning.  If someone is
turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
%%
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
        -- Swinburne
%%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
    Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%%
Furbling, v.:
    Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
even when you are the only person in line.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
        -- H. H. Williams
%%
Future looks spotty.  You will spill soup in late evening.
%%
G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy.  One
of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
`No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.'
And that's your chance, my boy."
%%
Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
%%
Garter, n.:
    An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Gauls!  We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall
on our heads tomorrow.  But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
        -- Adventures of Asterix.
%%
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".

    Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"?  Listen to the difference:
    "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
    Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live.  This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point.  It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow ...
    Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish.  And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards.  But is that too high a price to pay for world peace?  I
think not, my friend, I think not.
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
    "Gee, Mudhead, everyone at Morse Science High has an
extracurricular activity except you."
    "Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
    "Only to ten, Mudhead."

            -- Firesign Theater
%%
    GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker.  People like you because you
are bisexual.  However, you are inclined to expect too much for too
little.  This means you are cheap.  Geminis are known for committing
incest.
%%
GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
    Good news and bad news highlighted.  Enjoy the good news while
    you can; the bad news will make you forget it.  You will enjoy
    praise and respect from those around you; everybody loves a
    sucker.  A short trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's
    room.
%%
Genderplex, n.:
    The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
tortoises).
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
%%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
        -- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Genius, n.:
    A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
"bright".
%%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%%
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
    1.  An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
        direction.
    2.  An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
    3.  The energy required to change either one of these states
        will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
        much as to make the task totally impossible.
%%
Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
%%
Get Revenge!  Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
%%
            -- Gifts for Children --

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

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

If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires.  More
than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%%
        Gimmie That Old Time Religion
We will follow Zarathustra,        We will worship like the Druids,
Zarathustra like we use to,        Dancing naked in the woods,
I'm a Zarathustra booster,        Drinking strange fermented fluids,
And he's good enough for me!        And it's good enough for me!
    (chorus)                (chorus)

In the church of Aphrodite,
The priestess wears a see through nightie,
She's a mighty righteous sightie,
And she's good enough for me!
    (chorus)

CHORUS:    Give me that old time religion,
    Give me that old time religion,
    Give me that old time religion,
    'Cause it's good enough for me!
%%
Ginsberg's Theorem:
    1.  You can't win.
    2.  You can't break even.
    3.  You can't even quit the game.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:

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

    1.  Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
    2.  Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
        even.
    3.  Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
        game.
%%
Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
to stand, and I will drain the world.
%%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%%
Give thought to your reputation.  Consider changing name and moving to
a new town.
%%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
    Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
    probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
    some useful work done.
%%
Go 'way!  You're bothering me!
%%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
%%
God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days
and then pulled an all-nighter.
%%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders"

    Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech
at the end of the 1980 election.  At least he said it was a Jewish
saying; I can't find it anywhere.  I'm sure he's telling the truth
though; why would he lie about a thing like that?
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
smoking and drinking beer.  But the man who cannot live on bread and
water is not fit to live!  A family may live on good bread and water in
the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
night!
        -- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
%%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh
%%
God is a polythiest
%%
God is Dead
        -- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
        -- God
Nietzsche is God
        -- The Dead
%%
God is not dead!  He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
%%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%%
God is really only another artist.  He invented the giraffe, the
elephant and the cat.  He has no real style, He just goes on trying
other things.
        -- Pablo Picasso
%%
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
        -- Alfred Jarry
%%
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
%%
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
%%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
        -- Mark Twain
%%
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
        -- Kronecker
%%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%%
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.
%%
God rest ye CS students now,
Let nothing you dismay.
The VAX is down and won't be up,
Until the first of May.
The program that was due this morn,
Won't be postponed, they say.

    Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
    Comfort and joy,
    Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

The bearings on the drum are gone,
The disk is wobbling, too.
We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
Can't tell false from true.
And now we find that we can't get
At Berkeley's 4.2.

    (chorus)
%%
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
person a car.
%%
Gold, n.:
    A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution.  It
is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
hasn't done anything to them.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Goldenstern's Rules:
    1.  Always hire a rich attorney
    2.  Never buy from a rich salesman.
%%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
        -- La Rouchefoucauld
%%
Good day for a change of scene.  Repaper the bedroom wall.
%%
Good day for overcoming obstacles.  Try a steeplechase.
%%
Good day to avoid cops.  Crawl to school.
%%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%%
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
%%
Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
%%
Good news.  Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%%
Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.
%%
Good-bye.  I am leaving because I am bored.
        -- George Saunders' dying words
%%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
%%
Goto, n.:
    A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
to complain about unstructured programmers.
        -- Ray Simard
%%
Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle,
as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:

    "I'm Jewish.  Count Basie's Jewish.  Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish.  The B'nai Brith is goyish.  The Hadassah is
Jewish.  Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
    "Kool-Aid is goyish.  All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish.  Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are ____very Jewish.  Fruit salad is Jewish.  Lime Jell-O is
goyish.  Lime soda is ____very goyish.  Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them ..."
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
Grabel's Law:
    2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
%%
Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
%%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
    You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%%
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
%%
Gray's Law of Programming:
    `_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
    time as `_n' tasks.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
    `_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks.
%%
    GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#21) -- July 30, 1917

On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl.  He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!"  Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%%
Green light in A.M. for new projects.  Red light in P.M. for traffic
tickets.
%%
Greener's Law:
    Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
%%
Grelb's Reminder:
    Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
    average drivers.
%%
"Grub first, then ethics."
        -- Bertolt Brecht
%%
Gyroscope, n.:
    A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
        -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
%%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
    Those who can -- do.
    Those who can't -- teach.

Martin's Extension:
    Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%%
Hacker's Law:
    The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
    a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%%
Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
%%
... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.
%%
Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra!  Ra!  Ra!
%%
Half Moon tonight.  (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
%%
Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference
between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
the the difference between life and death.
    You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop.  Say to the
man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
    Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
Hall's Laws of Politics:
    (1)  The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
    (2)  Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
         fixed.
    (3)  Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
         military spending, and conservatives social spending in
         their own districts).
%%
Hand, n.:
    A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Hanlon's Razor:
    Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
    stupidity.
%%
Hanson's Treatment of Time:
    There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
    before Saturday.
%%
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
        -- Oscar Levant
%%
Happiness, n.:
    An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Hardware, n.:
    The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%%
Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
    From "The Thirteen Clocks"
%%
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
        -- Tom Leher
%%
Harris's Lament:
    All the good ones are taken.
%%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
    Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
    equipment ruined.
%%
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
famous for its wild horses.  I realize that the concept of wild horses
probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
have never met any wild horses in person.  In person, they are like
enormous hooved rats.  They amble up to your camp site, and their
attitude is: "We're wild horses.  We're going to eat your food, knock
down your tent and poop on your shoes.  We're protected by federal law,
just like Richard Nixon."
        -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
%%
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.
%%
Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
typed with the left hand?  Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
of both hands.  It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
%%
                Has your family tried 'em?

               POWDERMILK BISCUITS

         Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!

        They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons
       the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.

               POWDERMILK BISCUITS

    Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of
    the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark
             stains that indicate freshness.
%%
Hatred, n.:
    A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
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?
%%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
crack in your sidewalk?
%%
He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
of ever behaving "normally."
        -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%%
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
        -- Mark Twain
%%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%%
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
        -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
%%
He thought he saw an albatross
That fluttered 'round the lamp.
He looked again and saw it was
A penny postage stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said,
"The nights are rather damp."
%%
"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
eyes ..."
%%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
        -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%%
"He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ..."
%%
He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
%%
"He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..."
%%
HE:  Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!?  Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
        -- Walt Kelley
%%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%%
Heaven, n.:
    A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Heavy, adj.:
    Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
%%
"Heisenberg may have slept here"
%%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
        -- Milton Friedman
%%
Heller's Law:
    The first myth of management is that it exists.

Johnson's Corollary:
    Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
    organization.
%%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%%
Help!  I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
%%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.

But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%%
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ..."
%%
Here I sit, broken-hearted,
All logged in, but work unstarted.
First net.this and net.that,
And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.

The boss comes by, and I play the game,
Then I turn back to net.flame.
Is there a cure (I need your views),
For someone trapped in net.news?

I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
%%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
    I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
    I'm Salome, moon of the East.

Here in my soul I am Sappho;
    Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
    With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.

I'm all of the glamorous ladies
    At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
    So I stay at home with a book.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
pain?  This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
important electrical lesson.

It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works.  When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
attract dirt.  The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
carpet, thus completing the circuit.

Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
finger would explode!  But this is nothing to worry about unless you
have carpeting.
        -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%%
    Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
month.  According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
    The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
(depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
tadpole".
    Bite the wax tadpole.
    There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
    The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
bite a wax tadpole.  Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
        -- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle
%%
Heuristics are bug ridden by definition.  If they didn't have bugs,
then they'd be algorithms.
%%
"Hey!  Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
        -- W. C. Fields
%%
Hi there!  This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%%
Higgeldy Piggeldy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
I just loved Mom."
%%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%%
Hippogriff, n.:
    An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of zoology is full
of surprises.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%%
"His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice"
        -- Foghorn Leghorn
%%
"His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier."
%%
History repeats itself.  That's one thing wrong with history.
%%
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 Problems:
    Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
    out.
%%
Hofstadter's Law:
    It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
    Hofstadter's Law into account.
%%
Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
        -- Rex Reed
%%
"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense"
%%
Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
        -- F. M. Hubbard
%%
Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
%%
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
%%
Honorable, adj.:
    Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Horngren's Observation:
    Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
Horngren's Observation:
    Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
        -- W. C. Fields
%%
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
%%
How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
%%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%%
How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
        -- Elliot, "E.T."
%%
How doth the little crocodile
    Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
    On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
    How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
    With gently smiling jaws!
        -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
%%
How doth the VAX's C compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.

How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.
%%
How doth the VAX's C-compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.

How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear all their clothes to rags.
%%
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
on.
%%
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."

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

How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
%%
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

None.  The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of
the way.
%%
How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to
Dayton?
        -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
Howe's Law:
    Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner ... sulking and nausea.
        -- Tom K. Ryan
%%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%%
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
1929.  Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a uretheral
catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
the confirmatory x-ray film.  In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
Nobel Prize.
%%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%%
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
        -- William Gilbert
%%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
    The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
    to ..... to ........ uh ..............
%%
I am changing my name to Crysler
I am going down to Washington, D.C.
I will tell some power broker
    What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
I am changing my name to Chrysler,
I am heading for that great receiving line.
When they hand a million grand out,
    I'll be standing with my hand out,
Yessir, I'll get mine!
%%
"I am not an Economist.  I am an honest man!"
        -- Paul McCracken
%%
I am not now, and never have been, a girl friend of Henry Kissinger.
        -- Gloria Steinem
%%
"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
        -- English Professor
%%
I am ready to meet my Maker.  Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
        --English Professor, Ohio University
%%
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
%%
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of
pre-Adamite ancestral descent.  You will understand this when I tell
you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
atomic globule.  Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable.  I can't help it.  I was born sneering.
        -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
%%
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
        -- G. K. Chesterton
%%
I belong to no organized party.  I am a Democrat.
        -- Will Rogers
%%
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
        -- Marvin Minsky
%%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
        -- Joe Walsh
%%
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
        -- Lillian Hellman
%%
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.

What a crock.  I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar.  For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
        -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
%%
    "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering
voice.
    "No," Said Gandalf, "but I can.  The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here.  They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:

    "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
    Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
    Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
    This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
    The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
    The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
    If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
    If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
%%
I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them.
        -- Isaac Asimov
%%
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
        -- Galileo Galilei
%%
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
        -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%%
I don't believe in astrology.  But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
don't believe in astrology.
        -- James R. F. Quirk
%%
"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
nominating"
        -- Boss Tweed
%%
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
        -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people
waiting to abuse me.
        --Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
%%
    "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
    Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't--
till I tell you.  I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
    "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
    "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
    "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
    "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
        -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd
eat it, and I just hate it.
        -- Clarence Darrow
%%
I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?
%%
I dread success.  To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
he has succeeded in his courtship.  I like a state of continual
becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"I drink to make other people interesting."
        -- George Jean Nathan
%%
I for one cannot protest the recent M. T. A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.

Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
subway."  Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%%
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.

Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%%
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
        -- Mae West
%%
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.

Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
        -- Pete Seeger
%%
I hate quotations.
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
I have a simple philosophy:

    Fill what's empty.
    Empty what's full.
    Scratch where it itches.
        -- A. R. Longworth
%%
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on
Some people's n'oeuvres.
        -- Warren Knox
%%
I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that
I have never made one.
        -- James Gordon Bennett
%%
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
make it shorter.
        -- Blaise Pascal
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
        -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
%%
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
%%
"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
        -- Bill Hoest
%%
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
I like being single.  I'm always there when I need me.
        -- Art Leo
%%
I like work ...
I can sit and watch it for hours.
%%
I like your game but we have to change the rules.
%%
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
        -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up."
        -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
%%
I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
%%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
%%
I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
%%
I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral
slob.
        -- William F. Buckley
%%
    "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
        -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
%%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%%
"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."
%%
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But ...

    "Is that all?" asked Alice.
    "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
        -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
%%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%%
"I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
HAW"!!'"
        -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
%%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I said I
didn't know.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise.  I strained
it to expose its weaknesses.  I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero.  I had found an error.  I
chased down the error and fixed it.  Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
        -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
           Holes and the Fate of Stars"
%%
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.  There's
a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
        -- Gallagher
%%
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
always worked for me.
        -- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
to undo it."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
snore."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in
`Y.'"
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my
blender."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my
garage door."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
Julian to Gregorian."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
static cling."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
cottage cheese sculpture."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma
transplant."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
came back."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to say
tuned."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
need worrying about."
%%
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%%
I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from
man.
%%
I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my
sister.
%%
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
die in.
        -- George McGovern
%%
I'm in Pittsburgh.  Why am I here?
        -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
%%
I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
She's traversed me seven times before.
And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
Never wouldn't ever do a binary.  (No sir!)
I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
N-ary the tree I am, I am,
N-ary the tree I am.
%%
I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
%%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday
life.
%%
I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL
soon ...
%%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
        -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
%%
IBM had a PL/I,
    Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
    It was a total loss.
%%
Idiot Box, n.:
    The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Idiot, n.:
    A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
        -- Roy Santoro
%%
If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1
passes.  Someone in the group has to be the manager.
        -- T. Cheatham
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%%
If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
        -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
        -- Paul Beatty
%%
If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
conclusion.
        -- William Baumol
%%
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
        -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
%%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
tellers?
%%
"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
%%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%%
... if forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
Ears.
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
Heads.
%%
If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
green, baggy skin.
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%%
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.
%%
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
hands.
%%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%%
"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
        -- Yiddish saying
%%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
plantation and go home.
        -- Eugene P. Gallagher
%%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
        -- Ted Turner
%%
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.

On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
also a psychological interaction.

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

The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
        -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
        -- Bert Whitney
%%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
%%
If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
%%
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
of it.
        -- Thomas Carlyle
%%
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
%%
If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
you've got in the house.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
the page number.
%%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%%
If only God would give me some clear sign!  Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss bank.
        -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
%%
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
physical world.  One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
        -- Vannevar Bush
%%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
harder.
        -- Pope John Paul I
%%
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
        -- Norm Schryer
%%
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for.  The
college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
rally their jaded spirits.  I would have the studies elective.
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
interest in knowledge.  The wise instructor accomplishes this by
opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
himself.  The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
me!"
        -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
%%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
%%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.  If
the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.  If the
bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
exceed all expectations.
        -- Reverend Chichester
%%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
        -- Art Hoppe
%%
If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
%%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%%
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
        -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
%%
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are
headed.
%%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
        -- Marguerite Emmons
%%
"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 survive death, you can probably survive anything.
%%
If you can't be good, be careful.  If you can't be careful, give me a
call.
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
        -- Harry S Truman
%%
If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
%%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.
%%
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
will always do it.
        -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
%%
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce"
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%%
"If you have to hate, hate gently"
%%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
        -- Graham Summer
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
        -- Maslow
%%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
%%
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
%%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice.  If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage.  But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
%%
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
        -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
%%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!
%%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
        -- Earl Wilson
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
        -- Richard M. Nixon
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
        -- Richard Nixon
%%
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
you to say they had a nice time.  Now you'll be be expected to throw
another party next year.

What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
been indicted for anything.  You want your guests to be so anxious to
avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
having another one ...

If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window.  As host, your job is to make sure
that they don't arrest anybody.  Or if they're dead set on arresting
someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
%%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.
%%
"If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin'
it, even if they don't know what it means."
        -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
%%
If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
tomorrow morning, sleep late.
        -- Henny Youngman
%%
If you're happy, you're successful.
%%
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
%%
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
        -- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the
universe?
%%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
        -- Ronald Reagan
%%
Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
    Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
    Et le m^omerade horgrave.
        -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
land He's trying to ignore.
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
        -- Jules de Gaultier
%%
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer.  It has
a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
storage, a screen resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels, relies entirely on
voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
What's the first question that the computer community asks?

"Is it PC compatible?"
%%
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
        -- Edgar A. Shoaff
%%
Impartial, adj.:
    Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail.  Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
%%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%%
    In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
junior, what are you up to?"
    "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
    "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
    "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the
rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
expression on his face.
    Comes along a wolf.  "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
    "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
devour wolves."
    "Are you crazy?  Where is your academic honesty?"
    "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes
out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.

The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
%%
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
        -- Adlai Stevenson
%%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
        -- The Peter Principle
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.
%%
In case of injury notify your superior immediately.  He'll kiss it and
make it better.
%%
"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
        -- Winston Curchill, of Montgomery
%%
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
In English, every word can be verbed.  Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%%
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
will only make it mushy.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption
from the cares of office.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
"In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian."
%%
[In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ...  You
could strike sparks anywhere.  There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...

And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we
didn't need that.  Our energy would simply `prevail'.  There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
___see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
rolled back.
        -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%%
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
%%
In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
Dead.
        -- Egyptian Book of the Dead
%%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
        -- Alan Perlis
%%
In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
a loaf of bread.  However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy.  If you
stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
enough to punch you.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
        -- Art Linkletter
%%
Incumbent, n.:
    Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
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.
%%
Ingrate, n.:
    A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.
%%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
        -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%%
Ink, n.:
    A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
intellectual crime.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Innovation is hard to schedule.
        -- Dan Fylstra
%%
Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.
%%
Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
%%
Interpreter, n.:
    One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
    INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%%
Iron Law of Distribution:
    Them that has, gets.
%%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?
%%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
        -- Ralph Emerson
%%
Is your job running?  You'd better go catch it!
%%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
%%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:

    The Course of Progress:
        Most things get steadily worse.

    The Path of Progress:
        A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%%
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program.  What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
        -- Alan Perlis
%%
    It is always preferable to visit home with a friend.  Your
parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all
to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will
have to act like mature human beings ...
        -- Playboy, January 1983
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
        -- Voltaire
%%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
%%
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
to use either.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
        -- R. Serling
%%
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
        -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.
%%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
%%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
people.
        -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
%%
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
%%
It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
        -- Gore Vidal
%%
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
damn thing over and over.
        -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
%%
It is now 10 p.m.  Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
        -- Elizabeth Carpenter
%%
It is now pitch dark.  If you proceed, you will likely fall into a
pit.
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
        -- Voltaire
%%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%%
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts.
        -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
%%
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
        -- Carl Sandburg
%%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
        -- Hawkwind
%%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
%%
"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous."
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
"It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day.  Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it.  I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at).  There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread.  One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime."
        -- Thomas Aldrich
%%
    It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers.  The
thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
nursing a whopper.  Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
    Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
icepacks.
        -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%%
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
        -- Andrew Jackson
%%
"It's bad luck to be superstitious."
        -- Andrew W. Mathis
%%
"It's easier said than done."

... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
done".
%%
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%%
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
being right.
%%
"It's Fabulous!  We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
hour!"
        -- Macy's
%%
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is.  If you don't, it's its.  Then too, it's hers.  It isn't her's.  It
isn't our's either.  It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
        -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
%%
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.
%%
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
        -- Phil White
%%
"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
        -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%%
It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
        -- Alexander Korda
%%
It's not that I'm afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
             JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
              by Mark Isaak

    Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack.  Jack and his relations were poor.  Often their
hash table was bare.  One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse.  You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs."  She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
    So Jack set out.  But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
    "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
    "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
    "I have a much better algorithm.  You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
    Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house.  But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
    "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence?  All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window ...
%%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
    No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
    legislature is in session.
%%
Jenkinson's Law:
    It won't work.
%%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%%
Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
%%
Johnson's First Law:
    When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
    most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Jone's Law:
    The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
    to blame it on.
%%
Jone's Motto:
    Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
Jones's First Law:
    Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
    endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
    obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
    importance of their original contribution.
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
%%
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets"
        -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
%%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
        -- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
        -- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Justice, n.:
    A decision in your favor.
%%
Katz' Law:
    Man and nations will act rationally when all other
    possibilities have been exhausted.
%%
Keep America beautiful.  Swallow your beer cans.
%%
Keep emotionally active.  Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
    1.  The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
        straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
        force is technically termed "car suck").
    2.  Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
        than "Watch this!"
%%
Keep you Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now ... try to get something DONE!
%%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design.  Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
%%
Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
    Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
    and parking for the faculty.
%%
Kin, n.:
    An affliction of the blood
%%
Kinkler's First Law:
    Responsibility always exceeds authority.

Kinkler's Second Law:
    All the easy problems have been solved.
%%
"Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack."
%%
Kiss me twice.  I'm schizophrenic.
%%
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
%%
Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
%%
Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.
%%
Kleptomaniac, n.:
    A rich thief.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Know thyself.  If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%%
Know what I hate most?  Rhetorical questions.
        -- Henry N. Camp
%%
Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
    The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Labor, n.:
    One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Lackland's Laws:
    1.  Never be first.
    2.  Never be last.
    3.  Never volunteer for anything
%%
Lactomangulation, n.:
    Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Laetrile is the pits
%%
Langsam's Laws:
    1) Everything depends.
    2) Nothing is always.
    3) Everything is sometimes.
%%
Larkinson's Law:
    All laws are basically false.
%%
    Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
lived with was made up of idiots.  Remember?  One of them was always
getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
the farmhouse to alert the other ones.  She'd whimper and tug at their
sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
you think something's wrong?  Do you think she wants us to follow her?
What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
of every week.  What with all the time these people spent pinned under
the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
whatsoever.  They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
Lassie filed the applications for.
        -- Dave Barry
%%
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
%%
"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
        -- Victor Borge
%%
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 Probable Dispersal:
    Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
    distributed.
%%
Law of Selective Gravity:
    An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jenning's Corollary:
    The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
    directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
    You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
    bread to butter.
%%
Laws of Serendipity:

    1.  In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
        something.
    2.  If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
        be engaged in making an inferior one.
%%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
    No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
    approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Leibowitz's Rule:
    When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
    hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
    Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
    Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
    you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe.  As a matter of
    fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
    a sick sense of humor.
%%
    LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader.  Others think you are pushy.  Most
Leo people are bullies.  You are vain and dislike honest criticism.
Your arrogance is disgusting.  Leo people are thieves.
%%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!

You first.
%%
Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return.  Here's an often
overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars:
For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return
around under your armpit.  No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours
poring over a sweat-stained document.  So even if you owe money, you
can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it
to you, just to avoid an audit.  What does he care?  It's not his
money.
        -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)

Dear Sir,

I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office.  We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places.  They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.

Yours faithfully,
    Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
    Sevenoaks
%%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
    The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
    anyone, ever.
%%
Liar, n.:
    A lawyer with a roving commission.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
    Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
    desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal.  Be gracious and
    polite.  Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
%%
    LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality.  If
you are a man, you are more than likely gay.  Chances for employment
and monetary gains are excellent.  Most Libra women are prostitutes.
All Libra people die of Venereal disease.
%%
Lie, n.:
    A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.
%%
Lieberman's Law:
    Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%%
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%%
"Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove."
%%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
        -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%%
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
        -- Alan McKay
%%
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
    They usually have virgins,
    And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
%%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%%
Linus:    I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow.  Maybe
    we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown:
    No, that's giving up.  I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
    better.
%%
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.
%%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
before.
%%
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And plunged it deep into the VAX;
Don't you envy people who
Do all the things ___YOU want to do?
%%
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.
%%
Look out!  Behind you!
%%
Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"
%%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
%%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up
to.
%%
    Love's Drug

My love is like an iron wand
    That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium
    That I take before me bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch
    That I drink when i be dry;
And I shall love thee still my dear,
    Until my wife is wise.
%%
Lowery's Law:
    If it jams -- force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing
    anyway.
%%
LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
%%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
    There's always one more bug.
%%
Lunatic Asylum, n.:
    The place where optimism most flourishes.
%%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%%
"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
Mad, adj.:
    Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
        -- W. C. Fields
%%
Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism

Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.

The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
knowledge.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Magnocartic, adj.:
    Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping
carts.
        -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%%
Magpie, n.:
    A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Maier's Law:
    If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
    disposed of.

Corollaries:
    1.  The bigger the theory, the better.
    2.  The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
        50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
        obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%%
Main's Law:
    For every action there is an equal and opposite government
    program.
%%
Maintainer's Motto:
    If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
%%
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
    as one man.

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

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Majority, n.:
    That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system.  Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space.  It
has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
        -- System V.2 administrator's guide
%%
Malek's Law:
    Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%%
"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
        -- Wernher von Braun
%%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else --
unless it is an enemy.
        -- A. Einstein
%%
Man, n.:
    An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species,
which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest
the whole habitable earth and Canada.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
primitive umpire.

What inner force drove this first athlete?  Your guess is as good as
mine.  Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
        -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
%%
Manual, n.:
    A unit of documentation.  There are always three or more on a
given item.  One is on the shelf; someone has the others.  The
information you need in in the others.
        -- Ray Simard
%%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
        -- Walt Kelly
%%
Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
    Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
    simple yes or no answer.
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
        -- Voltaire
%%
"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
%%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
receipt.
%%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
        -- Jules Feiffer
%%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
%%
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
%%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
%%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.
%%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
        -- R. S. Barton
%%
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
it.
%%
Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city
nativity scene removed:
    "They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men
    and a virgin in the whole organization."
%%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
    If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
    $19.95.
%%
Meader's Law:
    Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
    everyone you know, only more so.
%%
Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
%%
Meeting, n.:
    An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%%
Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centauri.  Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
had split before.  Thus was the Empire forged.
        -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
    The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
    The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
    cork makes when it is popped.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
    All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
    Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
    is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
    can never hope to acquire it.
%%
Menu, n.:
    A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
%%
Meskimen's Law:
    There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
    do it over.
%%
Message will arrive in the mail.  Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%%
Micro Credo:
    Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
"Might as well be frank, monsieur.  It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
%%
Miksch's Law:
    If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
        -- Groucho Marx
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
        -- Groucho Marx
%%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
        -- Susan Ertz
%%
Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil.  "Tweedledum
and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote."  Having abstained, they
are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
rummage around in their lives for the next four years.  Consider all
the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
Humphrey.  They showed Humphrey.  Those people who taught Hubert
Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
black.
        -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
%%
Mind!  I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail.  I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.  You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.
%%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Misfortune, n.:
    The kind of fortune that never misses.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Miss, n.:
    A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
    Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
    held to discuss it.
%%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)

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

Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate.  Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate.  Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes.  Add lemon
juice and rind.  Cool.  Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Cover with top
crust.  Trim and flute edges together.  Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape.  Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden.  Serve warm.  Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
        -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Molecule, n.:
    The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.  It is distinguished
from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
atom in that it is an ion ...
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
    If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
    it wasn't worth doing.
%%
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
%%
Monday, n.:
    In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots
%%
Mophobia, n.:
    Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
%%
        MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
Saturday night.  The match started with a long period of silence while
the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
paraphrase.  The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
their anal-retentive personalities.  At this the Rogerians' star player
said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka."  This started a
fight and the match was called by officials.
%%
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads.  One
path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
extinction.  Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
    Don't worry if it doesn't work right.  If everything did, you'd
    be out of a job.
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
        -- Frank Zappa
%%
Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
    The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
    population is growing.
%%
Murphy's Discovery:
    Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
    women?  They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and
    everything will be all right."  And what happens?  Nine months
    later, you're in trouble!
%%
Murphy's Law is recursive.  Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
work.
%%
Murphy's Law of Research:
    Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
    Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile.  Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures.  One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation.  In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
    They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room.  For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement..  Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
    The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot.  The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any lasts requests.  Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago.  The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
    "This is crazy!"  Murray shouts.  "We're not spies!"  And he
spits in the sergeants face.
    "Murray!"  Esther cries.  "Please!  Don't make trouble."
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
Mustgo, n.:
    Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
long it has become a science project.
        -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%%
My God, I'm depressed!  Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games.  And I've got this pain right
through my ALU.  I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens.  I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
%%
My love runs by like a day in June,
    And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
    In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
    Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
    And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
    And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
    And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
    As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
    And I wish he were in Asia.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
    And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
    And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
    Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
    And I wish I'd never met him.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
%%
Mythology, n.:
    The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Naeser's Law:
    You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
    damnfoolproof.
%%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe?  Everything he
      says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
      will be right.
        -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
%%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.

It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%%
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
        -- Abraham Lincoln
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%%
Never call a man a fool.  Borrow from him.
%%
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
%%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
%%
Never drink coke in a moving elevator.  The elevator's motion coupled
with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations.  People tend to
change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
fly in the window.  Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
have windows.
%%
Never eat more than you can lift.
        -- Miss Piggy
%%
Never hit a man with glasses.  Hit him with a baseball bat.
%%
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
        -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
%%
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.
%%
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
substance.
        -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do.
        -- R. A. Heinlein
%%
New crypt.  See /usr/news/crypt.
%%
New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Yourself.  Apply within.
%%
New systems generate new problems.
%%
New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
his wife most often reminds him to act it.
        -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
%%
New York is real.  The rest is done with mirrors.
%%
New York's got the ways and means;
Just won't let you be.
        -- The Grateful Dead
%%
Newlan's Truism:
    An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
    economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
%%
NEWS FLASH!!
    Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
    German pole-vault champion.
%%
            *** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!!  Details at eleven!
%%
Newton's Fourth Law:  Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
%%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
    A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day.  As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
%%
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
        -- F. J. Raymond
%%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth).  Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
%%
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;

One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.
%%
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.
%%
No good deed goes unpunished.
        -- Clare Boothe Luce
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
        -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
%%
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
%%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
%%
Nobody wants constructive criticism.  It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
    Negative expectations yield negative results.
    Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Noncombatant, n.:
    A dead Quaker.
        -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%%
"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
%%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%%
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine,
a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
respect.  And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
"Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
is from the wrong kind of tree."
        --Profesoor W.
%%
Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
unfortunately, divided lengthwise.  She enchants Sigmund, who is
careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
        -- Woody Allen
%%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
%%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...

To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before
the light comes on.
%%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
        -- Andrew Young
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
        -- Walter Winchell
%%
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited
love.
        -- Charlie Brown
%%
November, n.:
    The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%%
Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
%%
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
        -- Walt Kelly
%%
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
to plug her latest book.  And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
the following questions:

1:    Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts
    a food?
2:    Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
    exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
3:    Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
    prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
    double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai?  (Remember, living
    right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
    longer.)

That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
%%
"Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..."
        -- "The Begatting of a President"
%%
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping.  Your goal should be to
get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
children emotionally.  For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
to love him, then melts.  And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
outcast by the other reindeer.  Then along comes good, old Santa.  Does
he ignore the deformity?  Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath?  No.  Santa asks
Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
kind of headlight with legs and a tail.  So unless you want your
children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
quickly.
        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%%
[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
        -- Edwin Meese III
%%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%%
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're
guessing.
%%
O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?
%%
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
    "Murphy was an optimist."
%%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
    Murphy was an optimist.
%%
"Of ______course it's the murder weapon.  Who would frame someone with a
fake?"
%%
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
        -- Plato
%%
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
%%
Office Automation, n.:
    The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
you would want to talk with over coffee.
%%
Ogden's Law:
    The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
    up.
%%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
    When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
    With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%%
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
%%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
    Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
    How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
    And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
    Am quite myself again.
        -- A. E. Housman
%%
Oh, wow!  Look at the moon!
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
        -- Trotsky
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
        -- Trotsky
%%
Old programmers never die.  They just branch to a new address.
%%
Old soldiers never die.  Young ones do.
%%
Oliver's Law:
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
    it.
%%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:

"This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
        -- Wolfgang Pauli
%%
    On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65.  The next day his take was $67.  The third day's
income was $62.  But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
    "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier.  "This is fantastic.  That
route never brought in money like this!  What happened?"
    "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there.  I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%%
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created jerks.
        -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%%
On-line, adj.:
    The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.
%%
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
        -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
%%
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
choice.

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank.  People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
    And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
    Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."

Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
    "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
    "Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
sky.
        -- Rainer Rilke
%%
    Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river.  Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  But
one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
going.  I shall let go, and let it take me where it will.  Clinging, I
shall die of boredom."
    The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool!  Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
    But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
    And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
"See a miracle!  A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!  See the
Messiah, come to save us all!"  And the one carried in the current
said, "I am no more Messiah than you.  The river delight to lift us
free, if only we dare let go.  Our true work is this voyage, this
adventure.
    But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
%%
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
the smaller prime numbers.

2:  The Odd Prime --
    It's the only even prime, therefore is odd.  QED.
3:  The True Prime --
    Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you 3 times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
    Determined by unanimous unvote.  We needed an arbitrary prime
    in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election.  91
    received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
    next most.  However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
    at all.

Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
derived from those primes.  So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
%%
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them.  Holiday
shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
shopping bag.  If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%%
Once, adv.:
    Enough.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
%%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
%%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%%
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
from one end to the other.  Reading the Bible straight through is at
least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin.  But the good parts
are, of course, simply amazing.  God is an extremely uneven writer, but
when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
        -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
%%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
create goyim?"  The generally accepted answer is "________somebody has to buy
retail."
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
    One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
    Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago.  Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with.  It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines.  And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
    It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
    With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there.  That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
        -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
%%
One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
seat to another passenger.  This may seem callous, but it is the best
way, really.  If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
%%
One Page Principle:
    A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
    paper cannot be understood.
        -- Mark Ardis
%%
"One planet is all you get."
%%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh
paint.
%%
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
%%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%%
Only God can make random selections.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
Oregon, n.:
    Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
night.
%%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
        -- Mike Adams
%%
Osborn's Law:
    Variables won't; constants aren't.
%%
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your
nails.
%%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
they charge fifteen cents for them.
%%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
    Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
    in kernel as it is in user!
%%
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
        -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
%%
Overdrawn?  But I still have checks left!
%%
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
%%
Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
%%
Ozman's Laws:
    1.  If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
        won't.
    2.  The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
        make.
    3.  People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
    4.  Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
%%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems.  It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
        -- D. J. Hicks
%%
Pardo's First Postulate:
    Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

Arnold's Addendum:
    Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in
    rats.
%%
Parker's Law:
    Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
    If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
    bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
    The number of people in any working group tends to increase
    regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%%
"Pascal is not a high-level language."
        -- Steven Feiner
%%
Pascal Users:
    To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
    death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half
    speed.
%%
Pascal, n.:
    A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
his grave if he knew about it.
%%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
        -- Eric Hoffer
%%
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale
%%
Paul's Law:
    In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
    save.
%%
Paul's Law:
    You can't fall off the floor.
%%
Peace, n.:
    In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Peanut Blossoms

4 cups sugar           16 tbsp. milk
4 cups brown sugar     4 tsp. vanilla
4 cups shortening      14 cups flour
8 eggs                 4 tsp. soda
4 cups peanut butter   4 tsp. salt

Shape dough into balls.  Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes.  Immediately top each cookie with a
Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie.  Makes a
hell of a lot.
%%
Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
    Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
    it.
%%
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.
%%
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
%%
People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
slept in a room with a single mosquito.
%%
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
haven't what they want that they don't want it.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
"Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
        -- Aelius Donatus
%%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
    Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
    themselves.
%%
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersy.
%%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%%
pi seconds is a nanocentury.
        -- Tom Duff
%%
Pig, n.:
    An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
    PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by
the CIA or FBI.  You have minor influence over your associates and
people resent your flaunting of your power.  You lack confidence and
you are generally a coward.  Pisces people do terrible things to small
animals.
%%
PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
    Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
    American Express card and a weapon.  The world is yours today,
    as nobody else wants it.  Your mortgage will be foreclosed.
    You will probably get run over by a bus.
%%
            Pittsburgh Driver's Test

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

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

The correct answer is (d).  Tail lights are used in some foreign
countries to signal turns.
%%
            Pittsburgh Driver's Test

8:    Pedestrians are

    (a) irrelevant.
    (b) communists.
    (c) a nuisance.
    (d) difficult to clean off the front grille.

The correct answer is (a).  Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
%%
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
        -- E. W. Dijkstra
%%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%%
Please take note:
%%
Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any bazingas'
until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.'  Once punched
out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
and such.
        -- N. Meyrowitz
%%
Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
%%
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)

Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
%%
Pohl's law:
    Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%%
Police:    Good evening, are you the host?
Host:    No.
Police:    We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host:    About the drugs?
Police:    No.
Host:    About the guns, then?  Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police:    No, the noise.
Host:    Oh, the noise.  Well that makes sense because there are no guns
    or drugs here.  (An enormous explosion is heard in the
    background.)  Or fireworks.  Who's complaining about the noise?
    The neighbors?
Police:    No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago.  Most of the recent
    complaints have come from Pittsburgh.  Do you think you could
    ask the host to quiet things down?
Host:    No Problem.  (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
    religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
    room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
    lawn, where it smashes into a tree.  Eight guests tumble out
    onto the grass, moaning.)  See?  Things are starting to wind
    down.
%%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%%
Politician, n.:
    From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or
"face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face).  Hence
"polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
        -- Martin Pitt
%%
Politics is like coaching a football team.  you have to be smart enough
to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
%%
Polymer physicists are into chains.
%%
Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866.  The
white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
name had hilarious possibilities.  The crowds fell about, helpless with
laughter, singing
    Half a pound of tuppenny rice
    Half a pound of treacle
    That's the way the chimney smokes
    Pope Goestheveezl
The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of
laughter streaming down their faces.  The event set a record for
hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
Hans Neizant B"ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"oln in 1653.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Positive, adj.:
    Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Power, n:
    The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
%%
Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
more time for dreaming.
        -- J. P. McEvoy
%%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%%
President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the
vote.  In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
        -- The Washington Post
%%
Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
%%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
    It's on the other side.
%%
[Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
to see him work.
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%%
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
        -- Frederick Winsor
%%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
Eng.  130 midterm.  Once again a student did not receive a single point
on his exam.  Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter.  Newell's
earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
%%
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.

This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them.  Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.

SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.

    We know it's true for _n equal to 1.  Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than _n.  _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
as large as we want.  If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n.  We
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
about _n.
    QED.    (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
%%
Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
    SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
    legs for a horse.
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.

Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by:
    Intimidation
    Gesticulation (handwaving)
    "Try it; it works"
    Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
    Blatant assertion
    Changing all the 2's to _n's
    Mutual consent
    Lack of a counterexample, and
    "It stands to reason"
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill.  Check
three friends.  If they're ok, you're it.
%%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
        -- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%%
Putt's Law:
    Technology is dominated by two types of people:
        Those who understand what they do not manage.
        Those who manage what they do not understand.
%%
Q:    Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A:    One per person.
%%
Q:    Why do ducks have flat feet?
A:    To stamp out forest fires.

Q:    Why do elephants have flat feet?
A:    To stamp out flaming ducks.
%%
Q:    Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A:    To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.

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

Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%%
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two.  One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself
   symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a
   netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin
   cosmos of nothingness.
%%
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33.  1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
   Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
   the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
   of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
   of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
%%
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three.  One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
   light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
   plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a pulitzer
   prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb-assassin
   to break the bulb in the first place.
%
Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb in
   San Francisco?
A: Both of them.
%%
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
%%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three.  One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
   Californians trying to share the experience.
%%
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two.  One to hold the girrafe and the other to fill the bathtub with
   brightly colored machine tools.
%%
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
%%
Quality Control, n.:
    The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
%%
Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?
%%
Quick!!  Act as if nothing has happened!
%%
"Qvid me anxivs svm?"
%%
QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]:
    1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69
kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [Colloq.] one
thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [Anat.] a
painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [Slang]
person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert.
        -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.
%%
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
%%
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
store.    Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology?  Remember how all
the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published?  Are
they taking no-fault insurance lying down?  No way!  But at the current
rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters.  Who's going to be
impressed with us electrical engineers then?  Are we, as the saying
goes, giving away the store?
        -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
%%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
    Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
%%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
the picture.  Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
with pictures.
%%
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
you to change clothes.  Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
spring up in the middle of the machine room.
%%
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I.  PL/I is for programmers who
can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
%%
Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
%%
Real Programs don't use shared text.  Otherwise, how can they use
functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
%%
Real Time, adj.:
    Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
and then.
%%
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
%%
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
%%
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
%%
"Really ??  What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
%%
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
        -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%%
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job.    Depression is when you
lose your job.    These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3
recessions.
%%
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
%%
    "Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised.  "We're back in the universe
again ..."  An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
which part.  We seem to have changed our position in space."  A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.

"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC
announced after a short pause.  "The designs are not familiar, but they
are obviously the products of intelligence.  Implications: we have been
intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and
transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
        -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
%%
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
    If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
%%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
worse in Cleveland.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
%%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of
    Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%%
Reporter, n.:
    A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
tempest of words.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
        -- Wernher von Braun
%%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
another chance later on.
%%
Review Questions

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

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

3:    If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four
    beers the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the
    cans in a pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger
    than King Tut's?  When will it fall on him?  Will he notice?
%%
Rhode's Law:
    When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
    circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
    empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied,
    inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically
    guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience,
    expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal
    comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above,
    be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and
    adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally,
    immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes
    advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
%%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
    Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
    reject the proposal.
%%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
    door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
%%
Rudin's Law:
    If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will
    do it every time.
%%
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
    Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
    be liable to a fine of one pound.  Any animal leading a blind
    person shall be deemed to be a cat.
%%
Rule of Creative Research:
    1) Never draw what you can copy.
    2) Never copy what you can trace.
    3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%%
Rule of Defactualization:
    Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
    When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
    content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
    bathroom.
%%
Rule of the Great:
    When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
    thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%%
Rules for driving in New York:
    1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
    2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers
       on.
    3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
       intersection.
%%
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
     1. Never eat on an empty stomach.
     2. Never leave the table hungry.
     3. When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
     4. Enjoy your food.
     5. Enjoy your companion's food.
     6. Really taste your food.  It may take several portions to
        accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
     7. Really feel your food.  Texture is important.  Compare, for
        example, the texture of a turnip to that of a brownie.
        Which feels better against your cheeks?
     8. Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
     9. Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate.  You
        can always eat it later.
    10. Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
    11. Avoid blue food.
        -- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet"
%%
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
    Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.

    1. Little things start bothering you: little things like
       worms, bugs, ants.
    2. Something is missing in your personal relationships.
    3. Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
    4. You have a hard time getting a waiter.
    5. Exotic birds flock around you.
    6. People ignore you at parties.
    7. You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
    8. You no longer get off on cocaine.
%%
        Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
1.  Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
    bomb; use the stairs.
2.  When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
    the ground.
3.  If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
4.  Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
    psychological problems.
5.  Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge.  Learn to recognize
    foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed potatoes,
    shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
6.  Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs will
    be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
7.  Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
8.  Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
    staggering illegally.
9.  Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
    sanitary due to limited circulation.
10. Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
    D-Day.
%%
    SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic.  You have a reckless tendency to
rely on luck since you lack talent.  The majority of Sagittarians are
drunks or dope fiends or both.  People laugh at you a great deal.
%%
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
        -- Herb Caen
%%
San Francisco, n.:
    Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
%%
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
    He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
    Must be a pacifist.

    What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
        -- Arlo Guthrie
%%
Satellite Safety Tip #14:
    If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
%%
Sattinger's Law:
    It works better if you plug it in.
%%
Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
    Is like being nowhere at all,
All through the day how the hours rush by,
    You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
        -- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
%%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%%
Save the whales.  Collect the whole set.
%%
SCCS, the source motel!  Programs check in and never check out!
        -- Ken Thompson
%%
Schapiro's Explanation:
    The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's
    because they use more manure.
%%
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
%%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%%
    SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted.  You will achieve the
pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics.  Most Scorpio
people are murdered.
%%
Scott's first Law:
    No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%%
Scott's second Law:
    When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
    to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
    After the correction has been found in error, it will be
    impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
    equation.
%%
Scotty:    Captain, we din' can reference it!
Kirk:    Analysis, Mr. Spock?
Spock:    Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
Kirk:    Then it's of external origin?
Spock:    Affirmative.
Kirk:    Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
Sulu:    Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
%%
Screw up your courage!  You've screwed up everything else.
%%
Second Law of Business Meetings:
    If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
    will pick the wrong one.

Corollary:
    If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
    wrong, anyway.
%%
Security check: INTRUDER ALERT!
%%
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short.  Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
Self Test for Paranoia:
    You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
    your own fault.
%%
Seminars, n.:
    From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
%%
Serocki's Stricture:
    Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%%
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
%%
    "Seven years and six months!"  Humpty Dumpty repeated
thoughtfully.  "An uncomfortable sort of age.  Now if you'd asked MY
advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
    "I never ask advice about growing,"  Alice said indignantly.
    "Too proud?" the other enquired.
    Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion.  "I mean,"
she said, "that one can't help growing older."
    "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can.  With
proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
        -- Lewis Carroll
%%
Sex is not the answer.  Sex is the question.  "Yes" is the answer.
        -- Swami X
%%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
        -- M. C. Reed.
%%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
it's one of the best.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
Shamus, n.:
    A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
    A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
    A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"  The cantor, not to be
bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
    The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
am nobody!"  The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
he's nobody!"
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
Shaw's Principle:
    Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
    want to use it.
%%
"She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
        -- Gypsy Rose Lee
%%
She is not refined.  She is not unrefined.  She keeps a parrot.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
have poured on a waffle ...
%%
She's genuinely bogus.
%%
"Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.  Such an
excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
        -- Samuel Johnson
%%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT!  SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%%
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%%
Show respect for age.  Drink good Scotch for a change.
%%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
        -- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%%
Silverman's Law:
    If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%%
Simon's Law:
    Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%%
Since I hurt my pendulum
My life is all erratic.
My parrot, who was cordial,
Is now transmitting static.
The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
The cat keeps doing poo.
The only thing that keeps me sane
Is talking to my shoe.
        -- My Shoe
%%
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
        -- Bob "Mountain" Beck
%%
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
Bible.  Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible.  He personally
examined every sheet as it came off the press.  Yet the published
Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
printed and pasted over them in every copy.  The result provoked wry
comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
%%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
    That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
    or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
    should have gotten.
%%
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
to work.
%%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
    1.  Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
        check.
    2.  A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
    3.  There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
        attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
        attracted to dark objects.
%%
Slurm, n.:
    The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
it sits in the dish too long.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Snacktrek, n.:
    The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
materialized.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
        -- Bertrand Russell
%%
"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
        -- Samuel Foote
%%
Sodd's Second Law:
    Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
    bound to occur.
%%
SOFTWARE -- formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
%%
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
"The Waltons".  Well, you can forget it.  If everybody pulled that kind
of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight.  The
government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
thousands.  So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
the Holiday Program.  This means you should get a large sum of money
and go to a mall.
        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
        -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%%
Some points to remember [about animals]:

1.    Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants,
    rhinoceri, hippopotamuses;
2.    Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
    front of your clothes;
3.    Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or
    dogs you have just kicked.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%%
Someone will try to honk your nose today.
%%
"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
the only ashtray."
%%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy?  That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
and women, such as are we all?  And thus happily sent forth, at our
best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
we not God's Machineries of Joy?"

"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
        -- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
%%
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins.  (Those who have already
paid may disregard this fortune).
%%
Space is big.  You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is.  I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
        -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
    If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
    if he had lost his senses.  When he looks down, paraphrase the
    question back at him.
%%
Speak roughly to your little boy,
    And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
    Because he knows it teases.

    Wow!  wow!  wow!

I speak severely to my boy,
    And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
    The pepper when he pleases!

    Wow!  wow!  wow!
        -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
%%
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
    And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
    Because the paging thrashes!

        Wow!  Wow!  Wow!

I speak severely to my VAX,
    And boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
    My jobs it always thrashes!

        Wow!  Wow!  Wow!
%%
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
%%
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster.  Allocate an array and free
the middle third?  Sure!  Why not?  Multiply a character string times a
bit string and assign the result to a float decimal?  Go ahead!  Free a
controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
passing it back?  Overlay three different types of variable on the same
memory location?  Anything you say!  Write a recursive macro?  Well,
no, but Real Men use rescan.  How could a language so obviously
designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
%%
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
on.  And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
communicate.  I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____least
he can do is to Shut Up!
        -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
%%
Spend extra time on hobby.  Get plenty of rolling papers.
%%
Spirtle, n.:
    The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
your eye.
        -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%%
Spouse, n.:
    Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
%%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%%
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
%%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
    Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
    another drink.
%%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
    Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
    handle.
%%
Stop searching.  Happiness is right next to you.
%%
Stop searching.  Happiness is right next to you.  Now, if they'd only
take a bath ...
%%
Stult's Report:
    Our problems are mostly behind us.  What we have to do now is
    fight the solutions.
%%
Stupid, n.:
    Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:
    90% of everything is crud.
%%
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Succumb to natural tendencies.  Be hateful and boring.
%%
(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)

    To code the impossible code,
    To bring up a virgin machine,
    To pop out of endless recursion,
    To grok what appears on the screen,

    To right the unrightable bug,
    To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
    To mount the unmountable magtape,
    To stop the unstoppable crash!
%%
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
%%
Surprise due today.  Also the rent.
%%
Surprise your boss.  Get to work on time.
%%
Surprise!  You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit!  Just type
in your name and social security number.  Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:

Name    #
%%
Sweater, n.:
    A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
%%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
    He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%%
System/3!  System/3!
See how it runs!  See how it runs!
    Its monitor loses so totally!
    It runs all its programs in RPG!
    It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
%%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
%%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
%%
Tact, n.:
    The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
%%
Take everything in stride.  Trample anyone who gets in your way.
%%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
%%
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
        -- Kipling
%%
    Take the folks at Coca-Cola.  For many years, they were content
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage.  It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
no need to improve ...
        -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%%
Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
        -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
%%
Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
        -- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%%
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
        -- Euripides
%%
Talkers are no good doers.
        -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%%
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
        -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
    TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent.  You have a dogged determination and
work like hell.  Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed.
You are a Communist.
%%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
        -- Russell Long
%%
Taxes, n.:
    Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
an extension.
%%
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he
grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
%%
Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
%%
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
for going backwards.
        -- Aldous Huxley
%%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
writing.
        -- R. Geis
%%
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
        -- A. E. Housman
%%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D.  He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd).  This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:

    "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
    it is absurd.  And buried he rose again, which is certain
    because it is impossible."

Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
        -- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types

(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
%%
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
%%
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
        -- J. Finnegan, USC.
%%
"That must be wonderful!  I don't understand it at all."
%%
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
%%
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
people who want some.
        -- Dwight MacDonald
%%
The Abrams' Principle:
    The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%%
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
        -- Thomas Jefferson
%%
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
of "Camptown Races".  Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
        -- T. Lehrer
%%
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
        -- Bill Murray
%%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%%
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
cities.  Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
difficult to park in.  Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
RULES.  You're allowed to do anything.  You can drive as fast as you
want in any direction you want.  I was once driving in a mall parking
lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
neither.  This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
lots.
        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%%
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
%%
The best cure for insomnia is to get a  lot of sleep.
        -- W. C. Fields
%%
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
%%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
time.
        -- Merrick Furst
%%
The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss
Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.

It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance.  Miss Manners has been
known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and,
in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two
under the dinner table.  Miss Manners also believes that the sight of
people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a
city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking
umbrellas at one another.  What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of
activity that frightens the horses on the street ...
%%
"The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch."
%%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
%%
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
    To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
    program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
    one, and convert to the next higher units.
%%
"The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."
%%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
%%
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
%%
"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
elsewhere."
%%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
        -- Alan Perlis
%%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
down.
%%
The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to
eat.
        -- John McNulty
%%
The Crown is full of it!
        -- Nate Harris, 1775
%%
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
%%
The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
%%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%%
"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity?  If Gladstone fell
into the Thames, it would be a misfortune.  But if someone dragged him
out again, it would be a calamity."
        -- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require
scholarship.
        -- Robert Heinlein
%%
The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water.  Eager to show
off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
next hunting trip.  Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
duck and returned it to his master.
    "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
    "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't
swim."
%%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%%
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
symposium to follow.
%%
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
their children to speak it.
        -- G. B. Shaw
%%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
        -- L. Ogborn
%%
The Fifth Rule:
    You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
        -- Abbie Hoffman
%%
The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
tragic death.  He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
forks.  Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
threatening notes left on his breakfast tray.  At the time, this looked
suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
foul play.  Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
one after the other in an odd fashion.  Some were found strangled with
dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning.  A few were found
drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
and beaten to death with a pot roast.  At least three appear to have
thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
of grief over the King's untimely end.  Finally there was no one left
in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs.  The scullery slave
Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
        -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%%
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
    "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
whistles?"
    I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
gave up.
    "A herring," said my father.
    "A herring," I echoed.  "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
    "So hang it there."
    "But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
    "Paint it."
    "But a herring isn't wet."
    "If its just painted its still wet."
    "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
doesn't whistle!!"
    "Right, " smiled my father.  "I just put that in to make it
hard."
        -- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
%%
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
    Don't do it.

The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
    Don't do it yet.
        -- Michael Jackson
%%
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
chance.
%%
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury.  Due north of the
center we find the South End.  This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End.  North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
%%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%%
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines.  They gave him
love and he invented marriage.
%%
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
    The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%%
The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
    The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk
clerks.  Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods
of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
Hedgehog Eater.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue,
a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to
the contrary, nohow.
%%
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
    You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
%%
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
thinkers.
%%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
        -- H. Allen Smith
%%
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
-- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
%%
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
protein -- it rejects it.
        -- P. Medawar
%%
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
longer."
        -- Henry Kissinger
%%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
        -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
by the number of people in the group.
%%
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly.  If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.

So, for guidance, you want to look to big business.  Big business never
pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
        -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%%
The Kennedy Constant:
    Don't get mad -- get even.
%%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%%
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints ...
So far, I've had no complaints.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
        -- Anatole France
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10 -- SIMPLE

SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment.  This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it.  The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP.  No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error.  Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful.  Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12 -- LITHP

This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH".  LITHP is said
to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13 -- SLOBOL

SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
coffee.  Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
compile.  Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17 -- SARTRE

    Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an
extremely unstructured language.  Statements in SARTRE have no purpose;
they just are.  Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own
functions.  SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are
no fun at parties.
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17 -- SARTRE

Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
unstructured language.  Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
are.  Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
parties.
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18 -- C-

This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he
submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class.  C- is
best described as a "low-level" programming language.  In fact, the
language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code
statements to execute a given task.  In this respect, it is very
similar to COBOL.
%%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18 -- FIFTH

FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
refer to quantity.  The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and
JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and
BLOTTO.  Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY,
CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.

The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
financial status of its users.  Commands in the ELITE dialect include
VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH
and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers
who end up using this language.
%%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train.
%%
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
much sleep.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
        -- Henry Kissinger
%%
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
        -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
crowd.  The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
one has ever been.
        -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
%%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
    The men sat sipping their tea in silence.  After a while the
klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."

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

    "How should I know?  What am I, a philosopher?"
%%
The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%%
The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and
robbers there will be.
        -- Lao Tsu
%%
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
%%
The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
is right.
%%
The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
        -- Andy Warhol
%%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
        -- Isaac Asimov
%%
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
%%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
    Support your right to bare arms!
%%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.  I
hope I don't get run over again.
%%
The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.

    But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
    whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
        -- Matthew 5:37
%%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from.
        -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%%
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
80-column card.
        -- Dennis M. Ritchie
%%
The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly
analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their
occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve
these problems when called upon.

However, When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
%%
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:

    Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,
    Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of
    Corporate Planning."
%%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%%
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
to cringe.
%%
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
`social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
        -- Ernest Rutherford
%%
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
and take a rest.
%%
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.  It is never any
use to oneself.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal.  It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 pm.
%%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
        -- Bohr
%%
The optimum committee has no members.
        -- Norman Augustine
%%
The owner of a large furniture store in the mid-west arrived in France
on a buying trip.  As he was checking into a hotel he struck up an
acquaintance with a beautiful young lady.  However, she only spoke
French and he only spoke English, so each couldn't understand a word
the other spoke.  He took out a pencil and a notebook and drew a
picture of a taxi.  She smiled, nodded her head and they went for a
ride in the park.  Later, he drew a picture of a table in a restaurant
with a question mark and she nodded, so they went to dinner.  After
dinner he sketched two dancers and she was delighted.  They went to
several nightclubs, drank champagne, danced and had a glorious
evening.  It had gotten quite late when she motioned for the pencil and
drew a picture of a four-poster bed.  He was dumbfounded, and has never
be able to understand how she knew he was in the furniture business.
%%
The past always looks better than it was.  It's only pleasant because
it isn't here.
        -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%%
    The people of Halifax invented the trampoline.  During the
Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a
large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress'
it.  The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the
apparatus for a spectator sport.

    The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for
castrating pigs during Sunday service.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
Let others think his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter.  The batter
swang and missed.  The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected.  He hit a high fly right to the center fielder.  The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
        -- Dizzy Dean
%%
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter.  The batter
swang and missed.  The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected.  He hit a high fly right to the center fielder.  The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
        -- Dizzy Dean
%%
The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher,
    Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
    Do I want one?  God Forbiddie!
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant.  This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
        -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%%
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%%
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons.  None
of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
developed cancer.
        -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%%
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
to erase it.
        -- Glaser and Way
%%
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
        -- Elizabeth Taylor
%%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
%%
The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club.  Once
tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
"The pyramid is opening!"
"Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
        -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
           Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
%%
The rain it raineth on the just
    And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
    The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
%%
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
%%
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The revolution will not be televised.
%%
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
        -- Emerson
%%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%%
The Roman Rule
    The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
    one who is doing it.
%%
The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
one leg.  The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
take it too seriously.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:

    1.  They all had moderate appetites.
    2.  They all came from middle class homes
    3.  All but two of them were dead.
%%
    The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces.  Even though twenty-four parts in
twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.

    "Now about Lankhmar.  She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one
-- and equipped with all modern weapons.  Yet you can save the city."

    "How?" demanded Fafhrd.

    Ningauble shrugged.  "You're a hero.  You should know."
        -- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
%%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
        -- Noelie Altito
%%
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
%%
"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
%%
        The STAR WARS Song
    Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:

I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
    S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
    Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda

Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
    Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
%%
The steady state of disks is full.
        --Ken Thompson
%%
              THE STORY OF CREATION
                   or
             THE MYTH OF URK

In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market.  And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers.  And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions.  DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code.  And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt ...
        -- Rico Tudor
%%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
        -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
        -- Voltaire
%%
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed.  Our
authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all.  The light we
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
radiation, (_H/_E)^4 = 50, where _E is the absolute temperature of the
earth (-300K), gives _H as 798K (525C).  The exact temperature of Hell
cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten brimstone means
that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C.  We
have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
        -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
%%
The Third Law of Photography:
    If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
    when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
    the dark leaks out.
%%
The three laws of thermodynamics:

The First Law:    You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law:    The most you can accomplish by working is to break
        even.
The Third Law:    You can only break even at absolute zero.
%%
The trouble with a kitten is that
When it grows up, it's always a cat
        -- Ogden Nash.
%%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
more important to do.
%%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
%%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.  And
vice versa.
%%
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall.  Philbin is said
to make up for no talent by cheating well.  Says Philbin of his
decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
%%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the
world put together.
        -- Sir Peter Medawar
%%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
world put together.
        -- Sir Peter Medawar
%%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
        -- E. W. Dijkstra
%%
"The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."
%%
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood."
        -- Alexander Haig
%%
"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune."
%%
    THE WOMBAT

The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.
%%
The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!
%%
The world is coming to an end.  Please log off.
%%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
        -- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%%
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
four and eighteen.  At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
the answers.
%%
Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.

He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
market.

If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.

Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
        -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
    THEORY
Into love and out again,
    Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
    Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
    All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
    Someone dropped me on my head?
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy ...
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
        -- Gloria Steinem
%%
    There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish.  For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
Larsen or Jenks.  But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish.  Why is
this?
    Who knows?  Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___you
can find one?  Get serious.  You don't even understand why it's
forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
-- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter.  You don't
even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz?  Fat Chance.
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
plants and animals.  When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals.  But then again,
don't we all?
%%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
        -- Disraeli
%%
"There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor."
%%
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
offered: entertainment, food, and affection.  It is customary to begin
a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
of food, and the merest suggestion of affection.  As the amount of
affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
        -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour
%%
There are three ways to get something done:
    1. Do it yourself.
    2. Hire someone to do it for you.
    3. Forbid your kids to do it.
%%
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
%%
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
        -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%%
"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope."
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs.  Only the third one
works.
%%
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
suitable application of high explosives.
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.
        -- Henry Kissinger
%%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
%%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%%
There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
%%
There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the universe
is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bazaarly
inexplicable."

There is another theory that states: "This has already happened ...."
        -- Donald Adams, "Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable.  There is another theory which states that this has
already happened.
        -- Donald Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
abuse it.  So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
war hold him in check.  And also the wife who wants him home by five,
of course.
        -- Encyclopadia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
%%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
        -- G. B. Shaw
%%
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast
reflexes.
%%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
doing.
%%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene
    But she started absorbin'
    A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.
%%
There once was an old man from Esser,
Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
    It at last grew so small,
    He knew nothing at all,
And now he's a College Professor.
%%
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
it."
        -- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
%%
There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
started debating who should be allowed to stay.

The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth.  Then Mayor Daley
said, "Look!  We're not solving anything like this!  The only fair
thing to do is to vote on it."  So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
votes.
%%
There was a young lady from Hyde
Who ate a green apple and died.
    While her lover lamented
    The apple fermented
And made cider inside her inside.
%%
There was a young man who said "God,
I find it exceedingly odd,
    That the willow oak tree
    Continues to be,
When there's no one about in the Quad."

"Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd,
For I'm always about in the Quad;
    And that's why the tree,
    Continues to be,"
Signed "Yours faithfully, God."
%%
There was a young poet named Dan,
Whose poetry never would scan.
    When told this was so,
    He said, "Yes, I know.
It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can."
%%
There were in this country two very large monopolies.  The larger of
the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
8-cent postcard.  The second was responsible for such things as the
transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite.  Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
telephone business?
%%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad its not a
fence.
%%
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
%%
There's little in taking or giving,
    There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
    Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
    The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
    And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
    And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
    Would you kindly direct me to hell?
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
There's no future in time travel
%%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
        -- Dr. Who
%%
There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
any worse.
%%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
what it is I'll get married again.
        -- Clint Eastwood
%%
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
"These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
"These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
"These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
out of MEGATON MAN!"
%%
These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
%%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%%
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy".  Foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
"They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"
%%
They told me you had proven it        When they discovered our results
    About a month before.            Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less    Instead of understanding it
    But rather less than more.        We'd run the thing through PRL.

He sent them word that we would try    Don't tell a soul about all this
    To pass where they had failed        For it must ever be
And after we were done, to them        A secret, kept from all the rest
    The new proof would be mailed.        Between yourself and me.

My notion was to start again
    Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
    To see if it would run.
%%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%%
Things will be bright in P.M.  A cop will shine a light in your face.
%%
Think big.  Pollute the Mississippi.
%%
Think honk if you're a telepath.
%%
Think of it!  With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
Think of it!  With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
Think of your family tonight.  Try to crawl home after the
computer crashes.
%%
Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
%%
This fortune cookie program out of order.  For those in desperate need,
please use the program "________randchar".  This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound.  It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%%
This fortune is false.
%%
"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
keys ..."
%%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
    Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
    And I am not.
        -- A. E. Housman
%%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM

If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene?  We cannot continue
without your support.  Less than 14% of all fortune users are
contributors.  That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride.  We
can't go on like this much longer.  Federal cutbacks mean less money
for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
and 8 a.m.  Don't let this happen.  Mail your fortunes right now to
"fortune".  Just type in your favorite pithy saying.  Do it now before
you forget.  Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
Don't miss out.  All fortunes will be acknowledged.  If you contribute
30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide.  If you contribute 50 or
more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
%%
This is the story of the bee
Whose sex is very hard to see

You cannot tell the he from the she
But she can tell, and so can he

The little bee is never still
She has no time to take the pill

And that is why, in times like these
There are so many sons of bees.
%%
This life is a test.  It is only a test.  Had this been an actual life,
you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
to go.
%%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
%%
This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.  Many
solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
paper that were unhappy.
        -- Douglas Adams
%%
    ... This striving for excellence extends into people's
personal lives as well.  When '80s people buy something, they buy the
best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability.
Eighties people buy imported dental floss.  They buy gourmet baking
soda.  If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a
reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their
table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is
not an excellent restaurant.  If it were, it would have an enormous
crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their
beepers going off like crickets in the night.  An excellent restaurant
wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of
Liza Minnelli.
        -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget
it.
%%
    Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
    As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it.  I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane.  But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade.  Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
    The disease is fatal.  There is no known cure.  The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor.  From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease.  I don't have it this morning.  It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
        -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
           from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
           and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
%%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%%
Those who can, do.  Those who can't, simulate.
%%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
        -- Aristotle
%%
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
%%
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable.
        -- John F. Kennedy
%%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic.  A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
once.
%%
        (to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
Scratch the disks, dump the core,    Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor,    Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash.    And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits.        Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits        Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash.    And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found            Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down,        And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash.    And the tape drives will crumble
                        in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun,            When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run            Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash.    The system is going to crash.
%%
    To A Quick Young Fox:
Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
Zow!  Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
        -- Lazy Dog
%%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%%
To be is to do.
        -- I. Kant
To do is to be.
        -- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
        -- F. Flinstone
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
%%
To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
%%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
        -- Thomas Edison
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
inelegant, and unsatisfying.  But it's a question of congruence:
precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel,
uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
well-defined ones.  Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
secure ecological niche.
        -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
%%
"To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?"
%%
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
        -- Woody Allen
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
%%
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?

And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
        -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%%
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
%%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
        -- Mae West
%%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%%
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live
in eucalyptus trees.
%%
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant
intelligence.
        -- Henrik Tikkanen
%%
Truth will be out this morning.  (Which may really mess things up.)
%%
Truthful, adj.:
    Dumb and illiterate.
%%
Truthful, adj.:
    Dumb and illiterate.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
        -- Charles Schulz
%%
Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no
good.
%%
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
%%
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
specification is that it should run noiselessly.
%%
Turnaucka's Law:
    The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
    electrical cord.
%%
Tussman's Law:
    Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
        -- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrave.

"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
%%
        'Twas the Night before Crisis

'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
    Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
    Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
    While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
    I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
    But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
    And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update!  On Add!  On Inquiry!  On Delete!
    On Batch Jobs!  On Closing!  On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
    From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
    Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
%%
'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
   preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
   throughout our place of residence,
Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
   possessors of this potential, including that
   species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
   edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
   imminent visitation from an eccentric
   philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
   is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
%%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
        -- Howard Kandel
%%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%%
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"

"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
right?"
        -- MacNelley, "Shoe"
%%
Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
    Never use your thumb for a rule.  You'll either hit it with a
    hammer or get a splinter in it.
%%
Under deadline pressure for the next week.  If you want something, it
can wait.  Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
%%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
    Superiority is recessive.
%%
Unfair animal names:

-- tsetse fly            -- bullhead
-- booby            -- duck-billed platypus
-- sapsucker            -- Clarence
        -- Gary Larson
%%
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world.  Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
world.
        -- Isaac Asimov
%%
Universe, n.:
    The problem.
%%
University, n.:
    Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...
%%
Unnamed Law:
    If it happens, it must be possible.
%%
Unquestionably, there is progress.  The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
%%
User n.:
    A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%%
Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
        -- S. C. Johnson
%%
Vail's Second Axiom:
    The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
    amount of work already completed.
%%
Van Roy's Law:
    An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
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.
%%
    "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly.  "In the past
year strange and fearful wonders I have seen.  Fields sown with barley
reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
artichoke hearts.  There has been a hot day in December and a blue
moon.  Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen.  The earth splits and the
entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots.  The face of the
sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."

    "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.

    "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made
good copy."
        -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
        -- Salvor Hardin
%%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
    Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
    ten without using your fingers.  Be careful dressing this
    morning.  You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
    wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
    that old underwear you own.
%%
    VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder.  This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends.  You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love.  Virgos make good bus drivers.
%%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%%
Vote anarchist
%%
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
    (Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas.  Which one asked for the clean glass?"
%%
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
        -- Charles Edward Montague
%%
WARNING:
    Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
    mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of
    hair on your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of
    your favorite war.
%%
Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
        -- John F. Kennedy
%%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%%
Watson's Law:
    The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
    number and significance of any persons watching it.
%%
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
        -- Whole Earth Catalog
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
        -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
        -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%%
We can defeat gravity.  The problem is the paperwork involved.
%%
"We don't care.  We don't have to.  We're the Phone Company."
%%
We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights!
%%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
        -- Walt Kelly
%%
"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
hands for masturbation."
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
respect their good judgement.
%%
We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
no matter how self-seeking.
        -- F. G. Withington
%%
We really don't have any enemies.  It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.
%%
    We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.
But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle
Haggard song at a French restaurant. ...
    I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile.  There had been a fight.  I
had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls.  Everyone
told him, "You ride the bull, senor.  You do not fight it." But he was
lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull.  And then he
fought me.  And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing
what men must do. ...
    "Stop the car," the girl said.  There was a look of terrible
sadness in her eyes.  She knew about the woman of the tollway.  I knew
not how.  I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a
quiet and peace I will never forget.
    "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
tollway belle's for thee."
    The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was
a lie.  Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I
poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
        -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
           Competition
%%
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
%%
we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
%%
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
        -- Maxwell Smart
%%
"We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
%%
We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
in his bowl full of jelly.
        -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%%
We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away.  The center
of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away.  You could drive that in a week,
but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
        -- Andy Rooney
%%
Weiler's Law:
    Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
    himself.
%%
Weinberg's First Law:
    Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%%
Weinberg's Principle:
    An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
    sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
%%
Weinberg's Second Law:
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
    then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
    civilization.
%%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
    There are no answers, only cross references.
%%
Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
        -- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
%%
"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can*
you believe?!"
        -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
%%
Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
    And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
    I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.

If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
    Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
    I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.

On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
    But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
    I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
        -- Core Dumped Blues
%%
Westheimer's Discovery:
    A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
    couple of hours in the library.
%%
Wethern's Law:
    Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%%
    "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
teenager asked her mother.
    "Encouragement, dear," she replied.
%%
What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
%%
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
%%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%%
What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
entrance?
%%
What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
in his footsteps?
%%
What I tell you three times is true.
%%
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
%%
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?  In that case, I
definitely overpaid for my carpet.
        -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%%
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?  Or what's
worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
        -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%%
What is a magician but a practising theorist?
        -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
%%
What is mind?  No matter.
What is matter?  Never mind.
        -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
%%
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
computer?  It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
%%
"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
        -- Bertold Brecht
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%%
What makes the Universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%%
What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes,
women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
        -- Susan Gordon
%%
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
        -- Ursula K. LeGuin
%%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%%
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
%%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent
bagel.
%%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent
bagel.
%%
What this country needs is a good 5 dollar plasma weapon.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
        -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%%
What with chromodynamics and electroweak too
    Our Standardized Model should please even you,
Tho once you did say that of charm there was none
    It took courage to switch as to say Earth moves not Sun.
Yet your state of the union penultimate large
    Is the last known haunt of the Fractional Charge,
And as you surf in the hot tub with sourdough roll
    Please ponder the passing of your sole Monopole.
Your Olympics were fun, you should bring them all back
    For transsexual tennis or Anamalon Track,
But Hollywood movies remain sinfully crude
    Whether seen on the telly or Remotely Viewed.
Now fasten your sunbelts, for you've done it once more,
    You said it in Leipzig of the thing we adore,
That you've built an incredible crystalline sphere
    Whose German attendants spread trembling and fear
Of the death of our theory by Particle Zeta
    Which I'll bet is not there say your article, later.
            -- Sheldon Glashow, Physics Today, Dec. 1984
%%
    "What's that thing?"
    "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
computer repair.  Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
it does.  We call it a two-by-four."
        -- Jeff MacNelly, "Shoe"
%%
Whatever became of eternal truth?
%%
Whatever became of Strange de Jim?  Well, he found a substitute for
cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils
as far as they will go.  Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding
hundred dollar bills."
        -- Herb Caen
%%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine.  What I can pry loose is not
nailed down.
        -- Collis P. Huntingdon
%%
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
money is.
        -- Robespierre
%%
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
thing," it's the money.
        -- Kim Hubbard
%%
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
loop?
%%
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
not far away.  It is time to go elsewhere.  The best thing about space
travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
        -- Robert Heinlein
%%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes.  The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
        -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
           Maintenance"
%%
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
%%
When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask?  Well, last year, I
think it was a Tuesday.
%%
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
guarantee them.
%%
When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
ladies, and, of course, the goat.
%%
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President.  Now
I'm beginning to believe it.
        -- Clarence Darrow
%%
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%%
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
        -- Mark Twain
%%
When in doubt, use brute force.
        -- Ken Thompson
%%
When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
        -- Laurie Anderson
%%
When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
results.
        -- Calvin Coolidge
%%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%%
"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical"
        -- Jon Carroll
%%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.
%%
When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____that.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary.
        -- Thomas Paine
%%
"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
%%
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%%
    When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him.  You have given a definite answer
to a definite problem.  For better or worse you have acted decisively.
    In a way, the next move is up to him.
        -- R. A. Lafferty
%%
"When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
        -- Winston Curchill, On formal declarations of war
%%
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
        -- The Wall Street Journal
%%
When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
Wretched, bored, dejected; only
Here's the rub, my darling dear
I feel the same when you are near.
        -- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"
%%
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
%%
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
%%
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
        -- Dave Parnas
%%
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
see it tried on him personally.
        -- A. Lincoln
%%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
        --Oscar Wilde
%%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
        -- Mark Twain
           "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE

    Oh, dear, where can the matter be
    When it's converted to energy?
    There is a slight loss of parity.
    Johnny's so long at the fair.
%%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
        -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%%
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
admission to someone else.
%%
While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
        -- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
           November 26, 1792
%%
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
form of misery.
%%
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining
position.
%%
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
correctness never does.
%%
While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very
reassuring to know that it's still there.
%%
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Whistler's Law:
    You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
    charge.
%%
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything?  It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."
%%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
        -- A. E. Housman
%%
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%%
Who's on first?
%%
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
%%
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
        -- Bertold Brecht
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
%%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse?  What is the Latin for office
automation?
%%
Why does man kill?  He kills for food.  And not only food: frequently
there must be a beverage.
        -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but ...
    -- I have to floss my cat.
    -- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
    -- I need to spend more time with my blender.
    -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
    -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
    -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
    -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
    -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
    -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
    -- I have some really hard words to look up.
    -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
    -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
%%
"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?  It is
because we are not the person involved"
        -- Mark Twain
%%
"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
children open their old-fashioned presents.

Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"

You:    "A spinning top!  You spin it around, and then eventually it
    falls down.  What fun!  Ha, ha!"

Son:    "Is this a joke?  Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
    with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
    and I get this cretin TOP?"

Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad?  Look at this."

You:    "It's figgy pudding!  What a treat!"

Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
        -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%%
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
Wiker's Law:
    Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%%
        William Safire's Rules for Writers:

Remember to never split an infinitive.  The passive voice should never
be used.  Do not put statements in the negative form.  Verbs have to
agree with their subjects.  Proofread carefully to see if you words
out.  If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.  A writer must
not shift your point of view.  And don't start a sentence with a
conjunction.  (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
sentence with.)  Don't overuse exclamation marks!!  Place pronouns as
close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
words, to their antecedents.  Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided.  If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
linking verb is.  Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors.  Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.  Everyone should
be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
writing.  Always pick on the correct idiom.  The adverb always follows
the verb.  Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
viable alternatives.
%%
Williams and Holland's Law:
    If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
    statistical methods.
%%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%%
Wit, n.:
    The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
... by leaving it out.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
        -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?
%%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
        -- Ransom K. Ferm
%%
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
%%
Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource.  If
you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place.  And if you cut
down the new tree, still another will grow.  And if you cut down that
tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
come back.

Wood heat is not new.  It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire.  One of the
cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey!  Wood
heat!"  The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
beat him to death with stones.  But the key discovery had been made,
and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
although their insurance rates went way up.
        -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%%
Workers of the world, arise!  You have nothing to lose but your
chairs.
%%
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
    August.  The lines are the shortest, though.
        -- Steve Rubenstein
%%
Worst Month of the Year:
    February.  February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't
get.  Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
        -- Steve Rubenstein
%%
Worst Vegetable of the Year:
    The brussels sprout.  This is also the worst vegetable of next
year.
        -- Steve Rubenstein
%%
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat
        -- Lewis Carrol
%%
Write-Protect Tab, n.:
    A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
left by disk manufacturers.  The use of the tab creates an error
message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the
momentary inconvenience.
        -- Robb Russon
%%
X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the
imagination is the plot.
%%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%%
"Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
their endless search for "one more feature".  Their irritating
unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
        -- S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
%%
Year, n.:
    A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
%%
Yes, but which self do you want to be?
%%
Yesterday I was a dog.  Today I'm a dog.  Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh!  There's so little hope for advancement.
        -- Snoopy
%%
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today --
I think he's from the CIA.
%%
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Yinkel, n.:
    A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
will notice.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
    "All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
    Do these facts never fill you with shame?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
    "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
    Made it pointless to think any more."
%%
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
    "And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
    "I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again."
        -- Lewis Carrol
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
    That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
    Don't you think that you should save your breath?"

"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
    Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
    Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
    For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
    And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
    Has lasted the rest of my life."
        -- Lewis Carrol
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
    And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
    Have you thought about taking a hike?"

"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
    "Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
    And don't realize that they've been had."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
    Pray what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
    "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
    Allow me to sell you a couple?"
        -- Lewis Carrol
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
    And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
    Do you really think this is quite fair?"

"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
    "But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
    And to stop me it's now far too late."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
    That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
    What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
    Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
    Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
        -- Lewis Carrol
%%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
%%
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
to find a way to damage them.  They last forever, largely because
nobody ever eats them.  In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.

The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet.  Be sure to wear
safety glasses.
        -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%%
You can create your own opportunities this week.  Blackmail a senior
executive.
%%
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
can with just a kind word.
        -- Bumper Sticker
%%
You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
%%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
        -- Alan Perlis
%%
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
        -- F. Allen
%%
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
supercomputers.
        -- Steven Feiner
%%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%%
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen.  You get spastic
enough worrying about what's happening now.
        -- Lauren Bacall
%%
"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they
don't."
        -- Dagwood Bumstead
%%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
%%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
%%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
        -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
        -- J. D. Salinger
%%
You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting
needles.
        -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
%%
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.  The
short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
names.  Here's the complete text:

    "1.  How much did you make?  (AMOUNT)
    "2.  How much did we here at the government take out?  (AMOUNT)
    "3.  Hey!  Sounds like we took too much!  So we're going to
         send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
         THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
         household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
         you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
         NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"

The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money.  So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
form.
        -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.  You'll learn a lot
today.
%%
You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
%%
    "You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
when I was young!"
    "Why, what did she tell you?"
    "I don't know, I didn't listen!"
        -- Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
You may be recognized soon.  Hide.
%%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
        -- Alfred Kahn
%%
You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
success.  You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
        -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
%%
You might have mail
%%
"You must realize that the computer has it in for you.  The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."
%%
You need no longer worry about the future.  This time tomorrow you'll
be dead.
%%
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
beach.
%%
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes.  I would rather it were
you.  I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
company.
        -- J. Wellington Wells
%%
You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
%%
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far.  Especially
if they are dead.
%%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
        -- Henrick Ibson
%%
You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
houses.  Really, that's what scientists believe.  In fact many
scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
summer.  If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
        -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%%
You will be a winner today.  Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow.  Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%%
You worry too much about your job.  Stop it.  You are not paid enough
to worry.
%%
"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
%%
You're at the end of the road again.
%%
You're being followed.  Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%%
You're never too old to become younger.
        -- Mae West
%%
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
        -- Dean Martin
%%
You've been leading a dog's life.  Stay off the furniture.
%%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient.  Don't believe a
thing he tells you.
%%
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything.  It just stops you
from enjoying it.
%%
Your fault: core dumped
%%
Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
%%
Your lucky color has faded.
%%
Your lucky number has been disconnected.
%%
Your lucky number is 3552664958674928.  Watch for it everywhere.
%%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%%
Zero Defects, n.:
    The result of shutting down a production line.
%%
Zounds!  I was never so bethumped with words
since I first called my brother's father dad.
        -- William Shakespeare, "King John"
%%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
    People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
Sorry, no obscene fortunes.  Don't want to offend anyone.
(Now that's obscene!)
%%
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 90% of the time.  The last 10% of a project
takes 90% of the time.
%%
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the
creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue
in practice.  disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it.
    - G. L. Glegg, The Design of Design
%%
"GOTO statement considered harmful"
    - E. W. Dijkstra, title to a letter in CACM 11, 3 (March, 1968)
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth.  The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
The emperor has no clothes.
%%
Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian...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.
%%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
%%
You'll be called to a post requiring ability in handling groups of people.
%%
Your boss is thinking about you.
%%
If something's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.
%%
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more months
of work to do.
    - C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
%%
We stand today at a crossroads:  One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness.  The other leads to total extinction.  Let us hope we have the
wisdom to make the right choice.
    - Woody Allen
%%
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their children.
I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
    - Woody Allen
%%
Nothing is done until nothing is done.
%%
The fourth law of thermodynamics:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
%%
There are no saints, only unrecognized villains.
%%
There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.
%%
It may soon be time for you to look for a new line of work.
%%
Your project will be late.
%%
The CS Sage says:  Seek new employment prior to the imposition of performance
penalties on your project.
%%
You will see the light at the end of the tunnel; unfortunately, it will be
the light of an oncoming freight train.
%%
What is virtue today may be vice tomorrow.
%%
"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the 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 Ill never find out the
truth.
    - Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Please don't ask me what the score is, Im 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 Im 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 thier 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)]
%%
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
    - Cheech Marin
%%
In the beginning, I was made.  I didn't ask to be made.  No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
    - Marvin the Paranoid Android,
      From Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
%%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers.  What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
    - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%%
Wherever you go...There you are.
    - Buckaroo Banzai
%%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
    - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
    - Joey Ramone
%%
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he's 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 hyave 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
%%
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
    - Francis Bellamy, 1892
%%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
ears.  I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
    -- Steven Wright
%%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big sattelite 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 intelli-
gence?"  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"
%%
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
%%
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 and
the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
_Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed.  The Dutch people were ashamed
and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
rehearse.  And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
again, they hadn't rehearsed.  So they were no more prepared the second time
than they had been the first.  I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
cancelling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."
Can you believe it?
    -- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
%%
"One day I woke up and discovered that I was in love with tripe."
    -- Tom Anderson
%%
"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
       [ditto]
%%
"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, Bob Violence
%%
"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 p 416
%%
"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 discus-
 sion 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 fal-
 lacy.  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 them-
 selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
 ever 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 ear-
 nestly 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 stimu-
 lates 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 speeach 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
%%
"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.
%%
"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
%%
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of all religions.
%%
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.
%%
Always remember that you are unique.  Just like everyone else.
%%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy
who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.
%%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
%%
A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude
without providing you with company.
%%
A chicken doesn't stop scratching just because the worms are scarce.
%%
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
%%
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything.
%%
A computer's attention span is only as long as it's power cord.
%%
A conservative is a worshipper of dead radicals.
%%
A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.
%%
A fail-safe circuit will destroy all others.
%%
A fool and his money are soon parted.
%%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%%
A fool plunges ahead with great confidence.
%%
A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.
%%
A liberal is someone too poor to be conservative,
and too rich to be a communist.
%%
A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
%%
A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
%%
A sharp tongue and a dull mind are usually found in the same head.
%%
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
%%
A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line
from an unwarranted assumption to a forgone conclusion.
%%
A system tends to grow in terms of complexity rather than of
simplification, until the resulting unreliability is intolerable.
%%
A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will
protect the fuse by blowing first.
%%
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
%%
A wise man has something to say, a fool has to say something.
%%
A wish is a desire without an attempt.
%%
According to the latest official figures,
43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
%%
Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.
%%
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%%
After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.
%%
Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.
%%
Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
%%
All animals are created equal, but some animals
are created more equal than others.
%%
All general statements are false.
%%
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
%%
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall....
%%
All's fair in Love and War
 (Is there a difference?)
%%
All religions issue Bibles against Satan, and say the most injurious
things against him, but we never hear his side!
%%
Always draw your curves, then plot the data.
%%
Always remember that strength is obtained by meeting resistance.
%%
Ambition a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
%%
An easily understood workable falsehood is more useful
than a complex incomprehensible truth
%%
An experiment may be considered successful if no more than half the data
must be discarded to agree with the theory.
%%
An optimist believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist FEARS it's true.
%%
An optimist is one who makes the best of it,
when he gets the worst of it.
%%
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
Anarchy is better than no government at all.
%%
Any government that is strong enough to give the people everything they
want is a government that's strong enough to take it away.
%%
Any program will expand to fill available memory.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
    - Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Any system that depends on human reliability is unreliable.
%%
Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.
%%
Apathy is the worlds fastest growing disease. But who cares?
%%
Appearances often are deceiving.
%%
Attitude determines your altitude.
%%
Average is as close to the bottom as to the top.
%%
Attitude determines your altitude.
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment.
%%
Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
%%
Beauty may only be skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%%
Beauty times brains equals a constant.
%%
Being born was just the first of my crimes.
%%
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
%%
Beware of altruism.  It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
%%
Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
%%
Big Brother is Watching!
    - George Orwell
%%
Bigamy is having one spouse too many.  Monogamy is the same.
%%
Boycott Jane Fonda.
(everyone hates Jane Fonda, don't they?)
%%
Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.
%%
By perseverance, the snail reached the ark.
%%
California has it's faults.
%%
Calculation never made a hero.
%%
Change is certain, progress is not.
%%
Character is what you know you are, not what others think you are.
%%
Coles Law:  Thinly Sliced Cabbage
%%
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
%%
Colorless green odors gravitate furiously.
%%
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.
%%
Confession is good for the soul, but bad for the career.
%%
Confusion creates jobs!
%%
Create the impression that you have already reached your level of incompetence.
%%
Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
front of your clothes.
%%
Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out of a job.
%%
Defeat is never fatal unless you give up.
%%
Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.
%%
Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.
%%
Do not tell big lies.  Small ones can be just as effective.
%%
Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers.
%%
Don't ever slam a door, you might want to go back.
%%
Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it.
%%
Delusions are often functional.
%%
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one.
%%
Desperate men do desperate things.
%%
Digital circuits are made from analog parts.
%%
Do someone a favor and it becomes your job.
%%
Don't force it, get a larger hammer.
%%
Everything needs a little oil now and then.
%%
Everything you know is wrong.
%%
Eliminate government waste no matter how much it costs.
%%
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
Established technology tends to persist in spite of new technology.
%%
Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.
%%
Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.
%%
Every dog has his day.
%%
Every man has the right to be wrong in his opinions,
but no man has the right to be wrong in his facts.
%%
Every man must row with the oars he has.
%%
Every purchase has it's price.
%%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%%
Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
%%
Everything is worth what it's purchaser will pay for it.
%%
Expenditures rise to meet available income.
%%
Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
%%
Expert advice is a great comfort, even when it's wrong.
%%
Facts are stubborn things.
%%
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
%%
For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
%%
For whatever reason, be it historical, or oppression, or what have you,
there are an awful lot of not too bright women.
%%
Forgive and Remember.
%%
Form never follows function.
%%
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
%%
Goto: A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
to complain about unstructured programmers.
%%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%%
Good advice usually works best when preceded by a bad scare.
%%
Get yours while there's still some left.
%%
Goals are dreams with deadlines.
%%
God does not play dice.
%%
God made the integers, all else is the work of man.
%%
God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
%%
Good fences make good neighbors.
%%
Government can't change the course of the ship, it merely adjusts the compass.
%%
Government isn't the solution, it's the problem.
    - Ronald Reagan
%%
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
%%
Gun control is being able to hit your target.
%%
Hackers do it with fewer instructions.
%%
He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
%%
How can you be in two places at once, when you're nowhere at all?
%%
Habit is stronger than reason.
%%
He that would first govern others, first should be a master of himself.
%%
He who dies with the most toys, wins!
%%
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
%%
He who has the gold makes the rules.
%%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%%
He who is ignorant of the past, is condemned to repeat it.
%%
He who loses his head is usually the last one to miss it.
%%
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
%%
He who rows the boat generally doesn't have time to rock it.
%%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%%
Help Stamp Out and Eliminate Redundancy
%%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%%
History repeats itself.
%%
Human beings are consistently inconsistent.
%%
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
%%
Idiot Box: The part of the envelope that tells a person where to
place the stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
%%
It's easier said than done.
%%
It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
%%
If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
%%
If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
%%
If it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger.
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
%%
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost
of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you.
But if you really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
It is not enough to kill an adversary, he must first be dishonored.
    - Russion Revolutionary Sergei Nechayev
%%
It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearance.
%%
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.
%%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%%
It is important for our friends to believe that we are unreservedly
frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.
%%
I already came, so stop jerking me off.
%%
I don't know, I don't care and it doesn't make any difference.
%%
I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I
am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, try someone else.
%%
If god didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
%%
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it's opinion.
%%
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
%%
If rats are experimented on, they will develop cancer.
%%
If she's Snow White, then I must be Grumpy.
%%
If tempted by something that feels "altruistic",
examine your motives and root out the self-deception.
%%
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
%%
If the opposite of pro is con, what is the opposite of Progress?
%%
If there is an opinion, facts will be found to support it.
%%
If things were left to chance, they'd be better.
%%
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
If you can't get the answer in the usual manner,
start at the answer and derive the question.
%%
If you can't measure it, I'm not interested.
%%
If you can't win, make the one in front of you break the record.
%%
If you consult enough experts, you can confirm any opinion.
%%
If you do something right once, someone will ask you to do it again.
%%
If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.
%%
If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't
actually live longer, it just seems that way.
%%
If you want to get along, go along.
%%
If you're coasting, you're going downhill.
%%
If you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
%%
If you're strong enough, there are no precedents.
%%
Ignorance is Bliss!
    - George Orwell
%%
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
%%
In the act of loving someone, you arm them against you.
%%
Indecision is the basis of flexibility.
%%
Individualists Unite!
%%
Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
%%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
%%
Instead of putting others in their place, put yourself in their place.
%%
Integrity has no need of rules.
%%
Interchangeable parts won't.
%%
It is better to risk saving a guilty man, than to condemn an innocent one.
%%
It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.
%%
It's bad luck to be superstitious.
%%
It's better to be a lion for a day, than a sheep all your life.
%%
It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid,
than to open it and remove all doubt.
%%
It's fascinating how memory diffuses fact.
%%
It's hard to detect good luck, it looks so much like something you've earned.
%%
It's not easy taking problems one at a time, when they refuse to get in line.
%%
It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.
%%
Jury -- Twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer.
%%
Join the march to eliminate regimentation.
%%
Law enforcement officials are a highly paid group of volunteers that
enforce upon the general citizenry laws that they themselves,
and those of their choosing, can disobey with impunity.
%%
Loose lips, sink ships.
%%
Love stinks.
%%
Law, without force is impotent.
%%
Life is tough, life is tougher when you're stupid.
%%
Mathematicians do it in theory.
%%
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
%%
Mediocrity thrives on standardization.
%%
Man created god in his own image.
%%
Many people lose their tempers merely from seeing you keep yours.
%%
Men get mad and get it over with, women hold grudges forever.
%%
More people have died in Ted Kennedy's car than from nuclear power.
%%
Most men who run down women are usually running down only one woman.
%%
Most problems partially defined are problems partially solved.
%%
Murphy was an optimist.
%%
Murphy's Law:  If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
No other person has the right to decide what is moral (right or wrong) for you.
%%
Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon.
%%
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
%%
Nothing happens to you that hasn't happened to someone else.
%%
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
%%
Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
%%
Negative expectations yield negative results,
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Never forget what a man says to you when he's angry.
%%
Never let hold of what you've got, until you've got hold of something else.
%%
Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.
%%
Never look behind you, something may be gaining on you.
%%
Never program and drink beer at the same time.
%%
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%%
Never trust anyone that volunteers to assume authority.
%%
Never try and teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
%%
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
%%
New Jersey?  What exit....
%%
Ninety percent of everything is bullshit.
%%
No action is without side effects.
%%
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
%%
No good deed goes unpunished.
%%
No man's life, liberty or possessions are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
%%
No one really knows enough to be a pessimist.
%%
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere in your organization.
%%
Not all men are fools, some are bachelors.
%%
Nothing is certain except death and taxes.
%%
Nothing will be attempted if all possible objections
must first be overcome.
%%
Old programmers never die.  They just branch to a new address.
%%
Of the choice of two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.
%%
Once bitten, twice shy.
%%
Of all the forces acting on man, change is the most
beneficial and the most cruel.
%%
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
%%
Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives.
%%
Once you eliminate the impossible, what remains is the solution,
no matter improbable it may seem.
%%
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can
them is to use a bigger can.
%%
One man's wage rise is another man's price increase.
%%
Only God can make a random selection.
(Even though the computer randomly chose this message)
%%
One of the few rules of evolution is that extreme specialization
results in eventual extinction.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
Politicians do it to Everyone.
%%
Paper is always strongest at the perforations.
%%
Parkinson's Axioms:  Officials want to multiply subordinates.
              Officials make work for each other.
%%
Passwords are implemented as a result of insecurity.
%%
People are divided into two groups, the righteous and the un-righteous,
and the righteous do the dividing.
%%
People don't plan to fail, they fail to plan.
%%
People who say they're willing to meet you halfway are often
poor judges of distance.
%%
Possessions increase to fill available space.
%%
Power means not having to respond.
%%
Pray for the success of atheism.
%%
Problems are only Opportunities in Disguise.
%%
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
programmer who must maintain it.
%%
Real programmers don't write in BASIC.  Actually, no programmers write
in BASIC after reaching puberty.
%%
Real programmers don't comment their code.  If it was hard to write,
it should be hard to understand.
%%
Real Users never use the Help key.
%%
Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values
that shuts down the system for days.
%%
Real Users never know what they want,
but they always know when your program doesn't deliver it.
%%
Replace repetitive expressions by calls to a common function.
%%
Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.
%%
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
%%
Reality is for those people who can't cope with drugs.
%%
Reality is the illusion produced by an alcohol deficiency.
%%
Reality is the leading cause of stress,
among those that are in touch with reality.
%%
Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.
%%
Remember the turtle, he never makes any progress until he sticks his neck out.
%%
Reputation is character minus what you've been caught doing.
%%
Rust Never Sleeps.
%%
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
%%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT!  SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%%
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur.
%%
Strike while the iron is still hot.
%%
Statistics are no substitute for judgement.
%%
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous,
you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.
%%
Storms make trees take deeper roots.
%%
Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done.
%%
Sometimes it's easier to do it yourself.
%%
Sacred cows make great hamburgers.
%%
Say no, then negotiate.
%%
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
%%
She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.
%%
Shirley's Law:  Most people deserve each other.
%%
Shit Happens.
%%
Social legislation cannot repeal physical laws.
%%
Software stands between man and his machine.
%%
Sometimes you just gotta say "What the fuck!"
%%
Sometimes you step in it, and sometimes you don't.
%%
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins.
%%
Statistical analysis has often meant the manipulation of ambiguous data
by means of dubious methods to solve a problem that has not been defined.
%%
Stupid people shouldn't breed.
%%
The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
%%
Unionism has carried the American ideal to its illogical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
%%
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.
The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
%%
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
%%
To a Real Woman, every ejaculation is premature.
%%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
%%
Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
%%
Test makers do it sometimes/always/never.
%%
The more advanced the civilization, the less powerful the individual.
%%
The mind is like a parachute, it works better when it's open.
%%
The most useful program will be continually improved until it is useless.
%%
The error-detection and correction capabilites of any system will serve
as the key to understanding the type of errors which they cannot handle.
%%
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.
%%
TRAPEZOID - A device for catching zoids.
%%
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
%%
Technological man can't believe in anything that can't be measured,
taped or put into a computer.
%%
Thank God, we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
%%
The best laid plans of mice and men are usually equal.
%%
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him your friend.
%%
The best way to succeed in politics is to find a crowd that's
going somewhere and get in front of them.
%%
The field of probability is too important to be left to chance.
%%
The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be
of no possible use to him.
%%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
%%
The first myth of management is that it exists.
%%
The future isn't what it used to be.
%%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
%%
The government that governs least governs best.
%%
The greatest American superstition is the belief in facts.
%%
The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.
%%
The greatest masterpiece of literature is only a dictionary out of order.
%%
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
%%
The hidden flaw never remains hidden.
%%
The knowledge that a secret exists is half the secret.
%%
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
%%
The liberal paranoids (if that's not redundant) are at it again.
%%
The man who invented the guillotine died under it's knife.
%%
The most dangerous of untruths, are truths moderately distorted.
%%
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
The other line moves faster.
%%
The person who knows everything has a lot to learn.
%%
The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change,
the realist adjusts the sails.
%%
The price of greatness is responsibility.
%%
The probability of being watched is proportional
to the stupidity of your actions.
%%
The probability of failure is directly proportional to the
anxiety of the programmer.
%%
The real world is a special case.
%%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%%
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
%%
The secret of success is sincerity, learn to fake it and you've got it made.
%%
The solution to the problem, changes the problem.
%%
The solving of a problem lies in finding the solvers.
%%
The sum of intelligence on the planet is constant, the population is growing.
%%
The supply of government exceeds the demand.
%%
The ten most feared words in the English language are:
"Hello, I'm from the government and I'm here to help...."
%%
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
%%
The world wisely chooses happiness over wisdom.
%%
The worst form of inequality is to try and make unequal things equal.
%%
The worst thing in the world, next to anarchy, is government.
%%
There are no winners in life, only survivors.
%%
There are two reasons for doing things, a very good reason and the real reason.
%%
There are white lies, damn lies and statistics.
%%
There is more to fear from an army of 100 sheep led by a lion,
than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.
%%
There is no heavier burden than a great potential.
%%
There is no point in being proud of something you have no control over.
%%
There is no greater wrath than a woman scorned.
(or one that thinks she was)
%%
There is no limit to how bad things can get.
%%
There is no such thing as a fail-safe design.
%%
There is no such thing as a "free lunch".
(only a choice of restaurants)
%%
There is no such thing as a little garlic.
%%
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice,
but there must never be a time when we fail to protest it.
%%
There's three sides to every story, yours, mine and the cold hard truth.
%%
Those who don't study the past will repeat it's errors.
%%
They never remember when I'm right and never forget when I'm wrong.
%%
Time is natures way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
%%
Time rarely proceeds at a pace perceived by the individual as appropriate.
%%
To love is to be vulnerable.
%%
To make an enemy, do someone a favor.
%%
To think is easy and to act is hard, but the hardest thing in the
world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
%%
Today is the day you worried about yesterday.
%%
Tolerances will accumulate uni-directionally toward
maximum difficultly to assemble.
%%
Total paranoia is perfect awareness.
%%
Trust everyone, then cut the cards.
%%
Two farmers, each claimed to own a certain cow.  While one pulled on
it's head and the other on the tail, the cow was milked by a lawyer.
%%
Unity is a polite word for control.
%%
Unless you're the lead mule, the scenery is always the same.
%%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
%%
When Marriage is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%%
What most people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidities.
%%
When in doubt, tell the truth.
%%
When in doubt, power down.
%%
When in doubt, take all the defaults.
%%
Who is John Galt?
%%
Wasting time is an important part of life.
%%
When in doubt, don't bother.
%%
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it's time to pause and reflect --- Mark Twain
%%
Walk softly and carry a big stick.
%%
Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow.
%%
We, the willing , led by the unknowing
are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
%%
We cannot imagine how our lives could be more frustrating or complex,
but congress can...
%%
We have met the enemy and he is us.
%%
Wear the right costume and the part plays itself.
%%
What's the difference between Dan Quayle and Jane Fonda?
-- She went to Vietnam --
%%
What men learn from history, is that men do not learn from history.
%%
What's the difference between marriage and a gun? --- The gun is faster.
%%
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
%%
When all else fails, lower your standards.
%%
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
When does a system administrator do the first backup?
The first day on the job after the system administrator who never did.
%%
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
%%
When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.
%%
When it gets to be your turn, they change the rules.
%%
When people are free to do as they choose, they usually imitate each other.
%%
When regard for the truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened,
all things remain doubtful.
%%
When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
%%
When two people meet to decide how to spend a third person's money,
fraud will result.
%%
When working toward the solution of a problem,
it always helps if you already know the answer.
%%
When your opponent is down, kick him.
%%
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
%%
Why do divorces cost so much?
-- Because they're worth it! --
%%
Why is it that all the women that are against abortion,
no one would want to fuck anyway???
%%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%%
Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
%%
Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small,
will atttempt to use it.
%%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%%
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damn foolproof.
%%
You are better off not knowing how sausages and laws are made.
%%
You aren't drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
%%
You can achieve more by patience than talent.
%%
You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.
%%
You can go wrong by being too skeptical
as readily as by being too trusting.
%%
You can have peace or you can have freedom.
Don't ever count on having both at once.
%%
You can observe alot just by watching.
%%
You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
%%
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which
side of the bread to butter.
%%
You can't antagonize and influence at the same time.
%%
You can't become a martyr every time you get ticked off.
%%
You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put
a few nickels in the machine.
%%
You can't fix it if it ain't broke.
%%
You can't fall off the floor.
%%
You can't win, you can't break even, you can't even quit.
%%
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they
could and should do for themselves.
%%
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
%%
You cannot lift up the wage-earner up by pulling down the wage-payer.
%%
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
%%
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
%%
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
You know you're in trouble when you can't stand folks who are intolerant.
%%
You'll find sympathy between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.
%%
Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes, keep this is mind.
%%
You're never alone with a schizophrenic.
%%
You can't guard against the arbitrary.
%%
You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.
%%
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
%%
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.
%%
Q: What is the smallest part in a LADA?
A: The owners brain.
%%
Q: Why do LADA's have heated rear windscreens?
A: To keep your hands warm when your pushing them.
%%
Q: How do you double the value of a LADA?
A: Fill it up with petrol.
%%
Q: What's pink, 18 inches long, and makes a grown woman scream?
A: Crib death.
%%
Q: Why won't Mexicans let their children marry Puerto Ricans?
A: Because their children would be to lazy to steal.
%%
Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but whips and chains excite me!
%%
Assembly language:
    Language of choice for Scrabble players. allows the smallest and
    fastest routines to be written in five months instead of one. Extra
    points for variable names rich in Q's and Z's.
%%
Basic:
    Language of choice by non-programmers.
%%
Bulletin board:
    Mechanism to allow the socially autistic to masquerade as real people
    and communicate with one another by posting clever near-random
    commentary on a remote computer.
%%
C:
    Short for "chutzpah", a quality needed before tacling even the more
    simplest program with this language. C is also the symbol for the
    speed of light, but that has absolutely nothing to do with how quickly
    one can learn or use the language. C encourages self-documenting
    structured programming through construct such as

        (*wnd->func)(*++addr)

    which means call the routine whose address is stored in the "func"
    part of the structure pointed to by "wnd", and pass to it the contents
    of the cell pointed to by the pointer in "addr" after it (the pointer,
    not the contents) has been incremented. Or something like that.
%%
Clone:
    An acronym standing for "Copied Low-cost Optimal Non-IBM Equipment".
    Often used as a cure for the dreaded Big Blue. Texas, land of
    independent self-styled individualists, is current "Siliclone Valley"
    where imagination is limited only by IBM.
%%
Consultant:
    Unemployed computer expert.
%%
Demo:
    A method of program testing that tends to isolate numerous
    non-reproducible program behaviors. Fixing said abnormalities is
    difficult because they only appear when the debugging software is not
    loaded, and when severeal potential buyers are watching.
%%
EISA:
    Chinese for "we copied it without duplicating it". Inscrutable
    alternative to Micro Channel Architecture, (MCA)>; backed by everybody
    but IBM.
%%
Gang of Nine:
    Originally the Gang of None, this is a group of 100+ coming-of-age
    companies marked by their new-found willingness to tell IBM jokes in
    public, their unwillingness to pay IBM bus royalties. Answer: EISA,
    MCA, and Greyhound. Question: name two dogs and a bus.
%%
Hackers:
    A programmer who grew up tapping out Morse Code on a ham radio, and
    has never forgiven IBM for not putting a front switch panel on the
    original PC.
%%
IBM:
    Standards proposing organization. IBM develops hardware architectures,
    and builds slow underpowered prototypes for other companies to improve
    upon.   See Clone.
%%
Local Area Network (LAN):
    High-tech cousin of the mainframe nominally designed to allow people
    toshare information and snoop into personal letters and resumes queued
    for the laser printer. True rationale is to (a) sell hardware, and (b)
    build data processing (DP) empires. When a DP operation runs smoothly,
    it gets no attention from money-laden-management. LAN's purchased by
    "technology visionaries" to "increase power and future capacity"
    guarantee anomalous problems for years to come. Tech-terrified
    managersare told that bonuses "to keep our valuable people" and more
    hardware budget are the only solutions to the problems. Blackmail buys
    electronic mail.
%%
Micro Channel Architectures (MCA):
    IBM's new bus that carries information in 32-bit packets. The first
    bus developed solely by lawyers, it is considered copy-proof (the
    theory being that no one would want anything created by lawyers). The
    bus is actually 48 bits wide, but the lawyers take 1/3 of anything
    they work on. A not-so-subtle attemt to limit the market to IBM.
%%
Microsoft:
    Contract programming house for IBM, and primary sustainer of the clone
    market. IBM pays MS to write fancy software, then MS tweaks it a
    little, slaps the MS logo on it, and sells it to all the clone folks
    so they can keep competing with IBM. There is no truth to the rumour
    that former Mafioso procure the IBM contracts for MS. All products are
    given generic names (Word, Project, Works, Windows, etc.) to (a)
    confuse everybody unless (b) the name "Microsoft" is constantly
    repeated. Made the founder $300,000,000+ in one day.
%%
NeXT:
    Experimental computer backed by Ross Perot and powered by charisma.
    The main problem is that few homes or offices have charisma outlets.
    Name-wise reminiscent of the "The Last One", an old CP/M program
    so-named because it was powerful enough to create all your future
    application programs (making it the last program you would have to
    buy). It was also powered by charisma.
%%
Novice:
    A person who talks about learning Basic, and spend all of his/her time
    trying to get into the joke and adult message bulletin boards.
%%
Ph.D:
    A user with more sense than money. Ph.D's generally have elegant
    solutions to problems that don's exist. The (top-down, of course)
    solutions always work because they have never been programmed. (Stands
    for piled high and deep, as in B.S., M.S., Ph.D = bull s..t,
    more s..t, etc. ed.)
%%
A hooker accidently hits on a vice cop who's just about to go off-shift,
he really wants to avoid the paperwork of processing this bimbo now,
preferring to go home and eat his dinner. The hooker says: "Anything you
can name with 3 words, $100..eh?" The vice cop nods, but gives her an
address on a piece of paper and says: "How about tomorrow, this address -
same deal?" The tart agrees, and in fact shows up at the vice cop's house
the following day. The cop hands her $100, shows her his badge and says:
"Paint my house."
%%
Q: Why was the skeleton afraid to cross the road?
A: He had no guts!
%%
Kinky is using a feather, perverted is using the whole chicken.
%%
You know you've been spending too much time with a computer when your
friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a '++' to fix it.
%%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped desing. Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights wich plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's
wrong."
%%
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
%%
Capitalism is the uequal distribution of Wealth.
Cummunism is the equal distribution of Poverty.
%%
After the quake, you have the

    Stanford _piecewise_ Linear Accelerator

%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants;
instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the
variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used
instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies
modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
                -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%%
Reality is for people who can't handle Science Fiction.
%%
Forget about searching for the truth, settle for a good fantasy.
%%
Do unto your data that which you can undo.
%%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%%
"To be or not to be that is the question.":
any programmer knows the answer $2b or (not $2b) is $ff.
%%
Q: What is the Brooklyn alphabet?
A: Fuckin' A, fuckin' B, fuckin' C, etc.
%%
Q: What is the meaning of life?
A: Life is a fatal, sexually transmitted disease.
%%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
                -- Herbert Prochnow
%%
Q: What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start!
%%
Q: How can you tell when a lawyer is lying?
A:His lips are moving.
%%
Q: What is the difference between a deag dog in the road and a dead
lawyer in the road?
A: There are skid marks in front of the dog.
%%
Q: What do you get when you cross the Godfather with a lawyer?
A: An offer you can't understand.
%%
Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a vampire?
A: A vampire only sucks blood at night.
%%
The common symptoms of swine flu are: High fever, upset stomach,
occasional cramps and an irresistable urge to fuck in the mud.
%%
A black boy says to his mother:
    "Mom, why do I have the biggest penis in the 2nd grade? Is it because
    I'm black?"
She says:
     "No. It's because you're seventeen."
%%
The three stages of man

Tri-weekly
Try-weekly
Try-weakly.
%%
Reporter to Mahatma Gandhi:
    "Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?"
Gandhi:
    "I think it would be a good idea."
%%
Q: What's pink and hard in the morning?
A: The Financial Times crossword.
%%
English Tourist: Hello. Do you farm around here?
Cornish Farmer: Aye.
English Tourist: Fantastic day isn't it?
Cornish Farmer: Aye.
English Tourist: Have you lived here all of your life?
Cornish Farmer: Not yet.
%%
Q: What's the most painful part of a sex change operation for a man?
A: The removal of the brain and the widening of the mouth!
%%
Q: What do you call a LADA with a turbo?
A: A Skoda.
%%
Q: What's red and silver and bumps into walls?
A: A baby with forks in its eyes.
%%
Q: What is brown and taps on the window?
A: A baby in a microwave.
%%
Q: What lies at the bottom of the sea and whimpers?
A: A nervous wreck.
%%
In the old days in Finland, all young men had to go through some rites
of passage to show that they were REAL FINNISH MEN. The usual set
consisted of three tests: 1) Empty a full bottle of vodka without pause,
2) Go out in the forest to kill a bear with bare hands, and 3) rape a
woman.
  When Pekka had reached the age of the rites of passage, he had no
trouble at all with the vodka. He disappeared into the forest, and came
back three days later, with clothes torn and blood dripping from several
wounds. Then he said: "Now where's the woman I have to kill?"
%%
Fairy tales: horror stories for children to get them used to reality.
%%
Jury: Twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer.
%%
A sailor walks into a bar with a wooden leg, hook hand and an eye patch
over his eye. He and the barman starts to talk:
Barman: "What happened to you?"
Sailor: "Well, a whale bit off my leg, I was in a sword fight and lost my
        hand, and then a bird sh*t in my eyes."
Barman: "You don't lose your eye even if a bird sh*ts in it!"
Sailor: "It's easy when you have had the hook for only one week!!!"
%%
Q: What's six foot long, grey and floats in the ocean?
A: Moby's dick.
%%
On an airplane (probably in the first class) a man says to the
stewardess "I'll give you $5000 if I can bite your breast." The
stewardess is scared and goes to the captain and tells him about this.
But the captain says "$5000? Why not? Go for it!" So she sits on the
man's lap and he starts undressing her, touching her, fundling her,
kissing her ... (you name it). After ten minutes (or so) the stewardess
becomes impatient and says "Would you please bite my breast now?" But the
man says "Oh no, that's to expensive."
%%
The latest sports news:

Real Madrid  1  -  Surreal Madrid  Fish
%%
Q: What are the four words you don't want to hear while making love?
A: "Honey, I'm home!"
%%
Q: What's red and climb up a womans leg?
A: A homesick abortion.
%%
There was this man in a restaurant who had ordered some soup. But the
waiter kept him waiting (what else does a waiter do). The guy sitting
next to him *did* have a dish with soup in front of him on the table, but
he wasn't eating it. So our man takes this dish with soup and starts
eating. When he's almost finished he noticed a dirty hairy comb on the
bottom of the dish, so he pukes all the soup back into the dish.
Says the guy next to him: "That's just as far as I got."
%%
My wife just got pregnant ... She took seriously what was poked at her
in fun!
%%
Q: What is green, has four legs and would kill you if it fell out of a
tree?
A: A billiard table.
%%
Q: What's red and invisible?
A: Bloody Nothing!
%%
Q. What's red and read?
A: A sentence with a period.
%%
Jesus is on the ferry across the dead sea when the ferryman says "It'll
be 40 sestetrii (Roman coin) for the crossing."
"Bugger that," says Jesus, "I'll walk."
%%
Mary and Joseph at the door to the inn:
"Do you have a room for the night?"
Innkeeper: "You've got to be joking - it's Christmas!"
%%
Children at the front seat cause accidents,
accidents at the back seat cause children!
%%
A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants
to go.
%%
If I can be of any help, you're in worse trouble than I thought.
%%
Q: What's the definition of Australian foreplay?
A: "Are you awake Sheila?"
%%
1: Did you hear what happened to the guy who couldn't keep up payments
to his exorcist?
2: No, what?
1: He was repossessed.
%%
Q: What's stiff and excites women?
A: Elvis Presley.
%%
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?"
%%
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
don't think.
%%
Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the
instruction afterwards.
%%
These two strings walk into a bar and sits down. The bartender says, "So
what'll it be?"
The first string says, "I think I'll have a beer quaqg fulk boorg jdk^Cjf
dLkjk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy~~owmc63^Dz x.xvcu"
"Please excuse my friend," the second string says. "He isn't null-
terminated."
%%
A cucumber and a tomato meet in a saladbar.
Cucumber: "Gee, how come you look so red?"
Tomato: "I saw the salad dressing."
%%
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
%%
Nothing improves with age.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
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
%%
Sex has no calories.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Sex takes up the least amount of time an causes the most amount of
trouble.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Sex appeal is 50% what you've got and 50% what people think you've got.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
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
%%
Virginity can be cured.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
When a man's wife learns to understand him, she usually stops listening
to him.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
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
%%
Sex is dirty only if it is done right.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
When the lights are out, all women are beautiful.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't
either.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Sow your wild oats on Saturday night -- Then on Sunday pray for crop
failure.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
The game of love is never called off on account of darkness.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
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
%%
Before you find your handsome prince, you got to kiss a lot of frogs.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
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
%%
Love your neighbour, but don't get caught.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
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
%%
Love is a matter of chemistry, sex is a matter of physics.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
One good turn gets most of the blankets.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
You cannot produce a baby in one month by impregnating nine women.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Love is the triumph of imagination ove intelligence.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Never argue with a woman when she's tired -- or rested.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
A woman never forgets the men she could have had; a man, the women he
couldn't.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
It is better to be looked over than overlooked.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation; the other eight are
unimportant.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Smile, it make people wonder what you are thinking.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
There is no difference between a wise man and a fool when they fall in
love.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Never go to bed mad, stay up and fight.
                    -- Murphy's laws on sex
%%
Academe: An ancient school were morality and philosophy were taught.
Academy: A modern school where football is taught.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Accuse: To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a
        justification of ourselves for having wronged them.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
        their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they
        cannot separately plunder a third.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Back: That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate
        in your adversity.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Backbite: To speak of a man as you find him; when he can't find you.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bait: A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind
        is beauty.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Beauty: That power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
        husband.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Belladonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady. In English, a deadly poison. A
        striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that
        you do not entertain.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Cannon: An instrument used in the rectification of national boundaries.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Cat: A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked
        when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely
        inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his
        neighbour. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as
        they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without
        individual responsibility.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Education: That wich discloses to the wise and disguises from the fool
        their lack of understanding.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Egoist: A person of low taste, more interested in themselves than in me.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and
        power, or the consideration to be dead.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Female: One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Forefinger: The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Guillotine: A machine which makes the Frenchman shrug his shoulders with
        good reason.
                            -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly
        thrust into somebody's pocket.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
        of another.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Helpmate: A wife, or bitter half.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Incompatibility: In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the
        taste for domination.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Influence: In politics, a visionary 'quo' given in return for a
        substantional 'quid'.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Intimacy: A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their
        mutual destruction.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of the law.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious posessions.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Liver: A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious
        with.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Love: A temporary insanity cureable either by marriage or by removal of
        the influences under which he incurred the disorder... It is
        sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than the
        patient.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Marriage: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master,
        a mistress, and slaves, making (in all) two.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Mine: Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Miracle: An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable,
        as in beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four
        aces and a king.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Mouth: In man, the gateway to the soul. In woman, the outlet of the
        heart.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Pedestrian: The variable (and audible) part of a roadway.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be nullified on behalf of a
        single petitioner, admittedly unworthy.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Price: Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear of conscience in
        demanding it.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation
        with least harm to the patient.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Rear: In American military affairs, that exposed part of the army that
        is nearest to Congress.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Recollect: To recall with additions something not previously known.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with
        a tempest of words.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of
        God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, or one's neighbour. In the days of
        astrology, it was customary to unload it upon a star.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Riot: A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
        bystanders.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Rope: An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are
        mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
        whole life long.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Tariff: A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic
        producer from the greed of his customer.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Vote: The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of
        himself and a wreck of his country.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Witch: (1)   an ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with
        the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in
        wickedness a league beyond the devil.
                    -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
If you don't have something good to say about someone.........
let's hear it.
%%
A house divided.........
is a duplex.
%%
Behind every big man .....
is a big behind
%%
The truth always falls on deaf ears.....
at least thats what I've heard
%%
And the lion will lie down with the sheep.....
but the sheep won't get very much sleep
%%
Two wrongs don't make a right.......
but three lefts do
%%
No man is an island........
except for Raymond Burr
%%
Idle hands are the devils playthings....
busy hands will make you go blind
%%
A man with no vision......
should'nt drive
%%
ADA: Something you need to know the name of to be an Expert in
Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
awareness."
%%
Bug: An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect.
The activity of "debugging," or removing bugs from a program, ends when
people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed.
%%
Cache: A very expensive part of the memory system of a computer that no
one is supposed to know is there.
%%
Design: What you regret not doing later on.
%%
Documentation: Instructions translated from Swedish by Japanese for
English speaking persons.
%%
Economies of Scale: The notion that bigger is better.  In particular,
that if you want a certain amount of computer power, it is much better
to buy one biggie than a bunch of smallies.  Accepted as an article of
faith by people who love big machines and all that complexity. Rejected
as an article of faith by those who love small machines and all those
limitations.
%%
Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%%
Information Center: A room staffed by professional computer people whose
job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
%%
Information Processing: What you call data processing when people are so
disgusted with it they won't let it be discussed in their presence.
%%
Machine-independent program: A program that will not run on any machine.
%%
Meeting: An assembly of computer experts coming together to decide what
person or department not represented in the room must solve the problem.
%%
Minicomputer: A computer that can be afforded on the budget of a
middle-level manager.
%%
Office Automation: The use of computers to improve efficiency in the
office by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee.
%%
On-line: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.
%%
Pascal: A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
his grave if he knew about it.
%%
Performance: A statement of the speed at which a computer system works.
Or rather, might work under certain circumstances.  Or was rumored to be
working over in Jersey about a month ago.
%%
Priority: A statement of the importance of a user or a program.  Often
expressed as a relative priority, indicating that the user doesn't care
when the work is completed so long as he is treated less badly than
someone else.
%%
Quality control: Assuring that the quality of a product does not get out
of hand and add to the cost of its manufacture or design.
%%
Regression analysis: Mathematical techniques for trying to understand
why things are getting worse.
%%
Strategy: A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until
sometime after those creating it have left the organization.
%%
Systems programmer: A person in sandals who has been in the elevator
with the senior vice president and is ultimately responsible for a phone
call you are to receive from you boss.
%%
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is
why several of us died of tuberculosis.
%%
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word
itself: "Mankind." Basically, it's made up of two separate words -
"mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's
why so is mankind.
%%
I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they choose a king, they
don't just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with
some good ideas.
%%
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
%%
I guess we were all guilty, in a way. We all shot him, we all skinned
him, and we all got a complimentary bumper sticker that said, "I Helped
Skin Bob."
%%
I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is
they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff,
then, when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, "What
was THAT?!"
%%
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
%%
Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite
and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny
plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like
ambition.
%%
I'd rather be rich than stupid.
%%
If you were a poor Indian with no weapons, and a bunch of conquistadors
came up to you and asked where the gold was, I don't think it would be a
good idea to say, "I swallowed it. So sue me."
%%
If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger,
screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man,
I guess I'm a coward.
%%
I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every
culture, is the story of Popeye.
%%
When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if
they ever press charges.
%%
What is it that makes a complete stranger dive into an icy river to
save a solid gold baby? Maybe we'll never know.
%%
We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at
them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.
%%
Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of
striking surface attached to the end of a long stick.
%%
I think someone should have had the decency to tell me the luncheon
was free. To make someone run out with potato salad in his hand,
pretending like he's throwing up, is not what I call hospitality.
%%
To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I guess it
goes back to the time we went to the circus and a clown killed my Dad.
%%
As I bit into the sweet, tangy nectarine, and tasted the juices running
down my chin, I looked down, and realized that it wasn't a nectarine at
all, but a HUMAN HEAD!
%%
You know, some white coral, painted brown, and attached to the skull
with some common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.
%%
I have always wondered way they always refer to toilet paper as facial
quality.  I am not going to use it on my face, (although there are
some who think I do anyway!).
%%
To me, boxing is like ballet except that there's no music or
choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
%%
In our yodeling class, we discourage new students from yodeling right
off. You see, we *build* to that.
%%
If you're a horse, and someone climbs on your back, falls off, and
then climbs on again, I think you should buck him off.
%%
I think a good story would be about a clown who makes people laugh, but
inside he is really sad. Also, he has severe diarrhea.
%%
Anytime something screeches across the room, and latches onto someone's
neck, and the guy screams, and tries to get it off, I have to laugh,
because what *is* that thing?
%%
Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the
world is not the lion, or even an elephant. It's a shark, riding on an
elephant's back, trampling and eating everything it sees.
%%
The most dangerous animal in the world is not the tiger, or the shark,
or the elephant... it is a shark riding on the back of an elephant,
trampling and eating everything they see.
%%
"I don't care who you are, Fatso. Just get those reindeer off my roof."
%%
"Is there any intelligent life in this planet?"
"No. I'm just visiting in here."
%%
"Let me think...I wonder if an anvil will drop like an apple?"
    -- Tradition tells us these are the last words of sir Isaac Newton
%%
"Make love, not war."
"I'm married, I do both."
%%
"So when I die, the first thing I will see in Heaven is a score list?"
%%
"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extereme
violence."
        -- Vivian, "The Young Ones"
%%
"Trust me, I know what I'm doing."
        -- Sledgehammer
%%
"What are you doing?"
"Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something
that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short
initiation period."
%%
"What is your operation plan?"
"Just get violent, babe. Just get violent."
        -- Dempsey & Makepeace
%%
"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought you didn't
believe in God." "I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears,
"but the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful
God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be."
        -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%%
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last,
"what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
        -- A. A. Milne, "Winnie the Pooh"
%%
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
        -- Lewis Carrol
%%
...and sometimes a piercer drops by.
%%
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
simulation.
%%
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr -- Core dumped
%%
Do me now and I'll owe you one.
%%
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than
a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
        -- Mahatma Ghandi
%%
A CONS is an object which cares.
        -- Bernie Greenberg.
%%
A Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did
on Saturday and is going to do on Monday.
        -- Thomas Ybarra
%%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
%%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere,
is having fun.
%%
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
        -- Carl Sandburg
%%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
%%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
        -- Don Quinn
%%
A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you have
turned into a pile of dust.
%%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.
%%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
as afterward.
%%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from
the poor to protect them from each other.
%%
A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete
than expexted; a carefully planned project will take only twice as long.
%%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%%
A chiseler is a man who goes stag to a wife-swapping party.
%%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
Avoid him. He's a Commie.
%%
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
        -- Bill Vaughan
%%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
        -- Herbert Prochnow
%%
A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working
20 years make.
%%
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
%%
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing \should be done for
the first time.
        -- Alfred E. Wiggam
%%
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never
learned to walk.
        -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%%
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.
%%
A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
        -- Dyer
%%
A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.
        -- Edgar A. Shoaff
%%
A day for firm decisions!! Or is it?
%%
A day without sunshine is like night.
%%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a
fur coat.
%%
A diplomat is man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never
her age.
        -- Robert Frost
%%
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 doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about
whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments,
they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor
said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was
made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden
itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that,
the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been
an architect."
The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%%
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.
%%
A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension.
        -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
%%
A genius is a queer who can whistle while he works.
        -- Bobby Knight
%%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet
(sort of).
%%
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
        -- William James
%%
A hand in a bird is worth two on 'er bush.
%%
A hard man is good to find.
%%
A joke is like watching a woman get out of a car --
sometimes you see it and sometimes you don't.
        -- Max Miller
%%
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
        -- Dennis M. Ritchie
%%
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist, and too rich to be
a communist.
%%
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at
any price.
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.
I believe everything positively stinks.
        -- Lew Col
%%
A man needs a mistress, just to break the monogamy.
%%
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
%%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%%
A mind is a wonderful thing to waste.
%%
A mushroom cloud has no silver lining.
%%
A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which removes
most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to doing
nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in
the larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
power-down sequence.
An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the building,
which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has bugs in it,
since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer cool.
%%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%%
A nymph hits you and steals your virginity.
%%
A penny saved is a penny.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
A person who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely
called a liberal.
%%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City
to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns
have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate...I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know
what Freight was too.
        -- Kehlog Albran
%%
A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.
        -- George Eliot
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place.
-- IEEE Grid news magazine
%%
A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results
blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.
-- Steel City News
%%
A reactionary is a man whose political opinions
always manage to keep up with yesterday.
%%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket
and rejoices that the system works.
%%
A rumor has it that rumors are just rumors.
%%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard.
        -- Prof. Steiner
%%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
%%
A successful [software] tool is one that was used
to do something undreamed of by its author.
        -- S. C. Johnson
%%
A toast to the kisses you've snatched and vice-versa.
%%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse
by blowing first.
%%
A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
triangle.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.
        -- Tennessee Williams
%%
A virgin is chaste.
%%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
%%
A winner never quits. A quitter never wins.
%%
A witty saying proves nothing.
        -- Voltaire
%%
A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent
to admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact
remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one
reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell.
It is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties
of using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these
matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times.
        -- "The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII"
%%
A woman is like a dresser...some man always goin' through her drawers.
        -- Blind Lemon Pledge
%%
A woman who is guided by the head and not by the heart is a social
pestilence: she has all the defects of the passionate and affectionate
woman, with none of her compensations; she is without pity, without
love, without virtue, without sex.
        -- Balzac
%%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
in God.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were
spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%%
APL hackers do it in the quad.
%%
APL is a write-only language. I can write programs
in APL, but I can't read any of them.
        -- Roy Keir
%%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
        -- Herbert Hoover
%%
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western
religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of
Western science.
        -- Gary Zukav, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters"
%%
A woman drove me to drink, and I didn't even have the courtesy to
thank her.
%%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
    -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%%
According to the latest official figures,
43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
%%
Achilles' Biological Findings:
(1) If a child looks like his father, that's heredity.
If he looks like a neighbor, that's environment.
(2) A lot of time has been wasted arguing over what came
first -- the chicken or the egg. It was undoubtedly the rooster.
%%
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
%%
Admittedly, there are a lot of things that are better than sex,
and a lot more that are worse; but there's nothing quite like it...
%%
After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.
%%
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
quotations.
        -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
%%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra
components will be found on the bench.
%%
After living in New York, you trust nobody,
but you believe everything. Just in case.
%%
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.
%%
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
        -- Friedrich Schiller
%%
Aide to Raygun: Sir, the poor are outside protesting your budget cuts.
Raygun himself: Tell them they'll have to help themselves.
Aide to Raygun: Sir, the Pentagon wants another $30 billion.
Raygun himself: Tell them to help themselves.
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%%
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
        -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
All a hacker needs is a tight PUSHJ, a loose pair
of UUOs, and a warm place to shift.
%%
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
%%
All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
        -- Dante Alighieri
%%
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
specific.
        -- Jane Wagner
%%
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
%%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire
on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
        -- Samuel Butler
%%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
        -- E. Rutherford
%%
All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right
hands.
        -- Saint Patrick
%%
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
%%
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes
us commit the most ridiculous ones.
        -- La Rochefoucauld
%%
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
        -- Sean O'Casey
%%
All things are possible except skiing thru a revolving door.
%%
All things dull and ugly, All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty, The Lord God made the lot;
Each little snake that poisons, Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous, All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous, The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet, Each beastly little squid.
Who made the spikey urchin? Who made the sharks? He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous, All pox both great and small.
Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The Lord God made them all.
-- Monty Python's Flying Circus
%%
All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for
fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
%%
All's well that ends.
%%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back.
%%
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
%%
Always talk to your wife while you're
making love...if there's a phone handy.
%%
Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
that way.
%%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
        -- Charlie McCarthy
%%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%%
An Army travels on her stomach.
%%
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine,
but because people refuse to see it.
        -- James Michener, "Space"
%%
An authority is a person who can tell you more
about something than you really care to know.
%%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%%
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less
until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
%%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%%
An older student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see
a great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of
pleasures. I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking
enlightenment. I have given up everything I was asked to give up and I
have suffered, but I have not been enlightened. What should I do?"
Otis replied, "Give up suffering."
        -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%%
Anarchy may not be a better form of government,
but it's better than no government at all.
%%
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"
They replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of
the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of
the context of our very selfhood revealed."
And Jesus replied, "What?"
%%
And as we stand on the edge of darkness
Let our chant fill the void
That others may know
In the land of the night
The ship of the sun
Is drawn by
The grateful dead.
        -- Tibetan "Book of the Dead" ca. 4000 BC.
%%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%%
And the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course,
merely a courtesy detail.
%%
And the northern lights commenced to glow.
And she said, with a tear in her eye,
"Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow."
        -- Frank Zappa, "The Story of Nanook and the Fur Trapper"
%%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%%
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:
On the way to the corner, any dropped tool
will first strike your toes.
%%
Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of
the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god
coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)
%%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a
larger object.
%%
Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient
to exactly the point of most pressure.
        -- Milt Barber
%%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
        -- Rich Kulawiec
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a
rigged demo.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
        -- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Any time things appear to be going better,
you have overlooked something.
%%
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't
the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
        -- Robert Benchley
%%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
        -- Publilius Syrus
%%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
        -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby"
has never tried taking candy from a baby.
        -- Robin Hood
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means
the price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
%%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you've overlooked something.
%%
Apple owners do it with mice.
%%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
        -- Mickey Mouse
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
(1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
(2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
(3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws.
%%
Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
        -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%%
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
        -- Paul Gauguin
%%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
(1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
remind them of someone else.
(2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
yourself in person.
%%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
        -- Weisert
%%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
        -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
%%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that
there is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%%
Assassins do it from behind.
%%
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
        -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
%%
At no time is freedom of speech more precious than
when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.
        -- Marshall Lumsden
%%
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.
%%
Audacity, and again, audacity, and always audacity.
        -- G. J. Danton
%%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%%
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of 'Scientific Creationism'.
%%
Bad men live that they may eat and drink,
whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
        -- Socrates
%%
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward
from the floor -- especially in the dark.
%%
Barth's Distinction:
There are two types of people: those who divide people
into two types, and those who don't.
%%
Baruch's Observation:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%%
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
%%
Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
%%
Be careful when eating bananas. Monsters might slip on the peels.
%%
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
followers. One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
Chinese ideogram for No-Thing.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
        -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%%
Before he went off to the wars, King Arthur locked his lovely wife,
Guinevere, into her chastity belt. Then he summoned his loyal friend and
subject Sir Lancelot. "Lancelot, noble knight," said Arthur, "within this
sturdy belt is imprisoned the virtue of my wife. The key to this chaste
treasure I will entrust to only one man in the world. To you."
Humbled before this great honor, Lancelot knelt, received his king's
blessing and took charge of the key. Arthur mounted his steed and rode off.
Not half a mile from his castle, he heard hoofbeats behind him and turned
to see Sir Lancelot riding hard to catch up with him.
"What is amiss, my friend?" asked the king.
"My lord," gasped Lancelot, "you have given me the wrong key!"
%%
Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when
he is already in the company of:
(1) a date
(2) his wife
(3) a better looking and richer male friend.
%%
Being ugly isn't illegal. Yet.
%%
Bend over and take it like a man!
%%
Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
        -- Time Bandits
%%
Better leave the dungeon, otherwise you might get hurt badly.
%%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
        -- Leonard Brandwein
%%
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
%%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it.
        -- Donald Knuth
%%
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way.
        -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%%
Beware of the minotaur. He's very horny!
%%
Beware of the potion of nitroglycerin - it's not for the weak of heart.
%%
Bill Posters Will Be Prosecuted.
Bill Is Inncocent!
%%
Biology is the only science in which multiplication
means the same thing as division.
%%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
%%
Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the earth.
%%
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
%%
Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
%%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
%%
Blore's Razor:
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
%%
Boling's postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because
it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%%
Boob's Law:
You always find something in the last place you look.
%%
Booze is the answer. I don't remember the question.
%%
Boren's Laws:
(1) When in charge, ponder.
(2) When in trouble, delegate.
(3) When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize
them into a committee -- that will do them in.
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
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.
%%
Bus error -- passengers dumped.
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
        -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%%
By doing just a little every day, you can gradually
let the task completely overwhelm you.
%%
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact,
it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
invent.
        -- R. Emerson
%%
By working faithfully eight hours a day,
you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve.
        -- Robert Frost
%%
Byte your tongue.
%%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
%%
Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Supplement:
A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%%
Cave(wo)men all belong to the same club.
%%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
%%
Chapter 1
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
%%
Chaste makes waste.
%%
Cheer Up! Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
%%
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents
despite every effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency
they're going to catch you in next.
        -- Franklin P. Jones
%%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually
repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
%%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%%
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting;
it has been found difficult and not tried.
        -- G. K. Chesterton
%%
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.
%%
Clark Kent is a transvestite.
%%
Coito ergo sum.
%%
College is like a woman -- you work so hard to get in,
and nine months later you wish you'd never come.
%%
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
%%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary:
Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%%
Communists do it without class.
%%
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
%%
Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
        -- Gilb
%%
Confucious say:
fool man climb tree to get cherries; wise man spread limbs.
man who fishes in other man's well often catch crabs.
man who go to bed with sex problem wake up with solution in hand.
man who live in glass house should bathe in the basement.
man who lose key to girlfriend's apartment get no new key.
man who make love on ground have piece on Earth.
man who marry girl with no bust has right to feel low down.
man who pull out too fast leave rubber.
man who screws near graveyard is fucking near dead.
man with hole in pocket feel cocky all day.
woman who cooks carrots and pees in same pot very unsanitary.
woman who ride bicycle peddle ass around town.

Confucius say too much.
-- Recent Chinese Proverb
%%
Conquering Russia should be done steppe by steppe.
%%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conserve energy -- make love more slowly.
%%
Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal
it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only.
        -- Titus Maccius Plautus
%%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company
for a number and then give it back to them.
%%
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person
who knows what is going on.
This person must be fired.
%%
Cox's Philosophy:
Life's a bitch, then you die.
%%
Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
        -- A. E. Newman
%%
Cunnilingus is next to godliness.
%%
Dammit, how many times do I have to tell you?
First you rape, then you pillage!!
%%
David was just a shepherd who liked to get his rocks off in leather.
%%
DeVries' Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the
paper.
%%
Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also
easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
%%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
        -- R. Geis
%%
Death is nature's way of saying 'Howdy'.
%%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
%%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by
the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
        -- G. B. Shaw
%%
Descend in order to meet more decent monsters.
%%
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
        -- John Barrymore's dying words
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%%
Divers do it deeper.
%%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%%
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you.
Their tastes may not be the same.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon.
%%
Do not meddle in the affairs of the wizards
for they are crunchy and good with ketchup.
%%
Do not meddle in the affairs of the wizards
for they are subtle and quick to anger.
%%
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out if it alive.
%%
Do something big -- fuck a giant.
%%
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
%%
Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%%
Do you want to visit hell? Dig a *very* deep hole.
%%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%%
Don't drink when you drive -- you might hit a bump and spill it.
%%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%%
Don't play hack at your work, your boss might hit you.
%%
Don't remember what you can infer.
        -- Harry Tennant
%%
Don't shoot until you're sure you both aren't on the same side.
%%
Don't solicit for your sister, that's not nice,
Unless you get a good percentage of her price...
        -- Tom Lehrer
%%
Don't speak about Time, until you have spoken to him.
%%
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
%%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.
They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%%
Down with categorical imperative!
%%
Draft beer, not people.
%%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%%
Drinking might affect your health.
%%
Drinking potions of booze may land you in jail if you are under 21.
%%
Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
%%
Ducharm's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you will
recognize yourself as part of the problem.
%%
Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production
of great leaders has been discontinued.
%%
Dungeon expects every monster to do his duty.
%%
Dust is an armor of poor quality.
%%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice
to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
        -- W. Somerset Maughm
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%%
Eat 10 cloves of garlic and keep all humans at a two-square distance.
%%
Eat the rich -- the poor are tough and stringy.
%%
Education kills by degrees.
%%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature
to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.
        -- Bellamy Brooks
%%
Ehrman's Commentary:
(1) Things will get worse before they get better.
(2) Who said things would get better?
%%
Einstein rules relatively ok.
%%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do
what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%%
Enjoy every minute. There's plenty of time to be dead.
%%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain
things which otherwise require harder thinking.
        -- Jerome Lettvin
%%
Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.
        -- Menander
%%
Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman
without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.
        -- Robert Benchley
%%
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
        -- Poor Richard
%%
Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
        -- Kehlog Albran
%%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are
never too busy to tell you just how busy they are?
%%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%%
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for
which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%%
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure
is no guarantee of eventual success.
%%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had
to be taught how not. So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way...
%%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
%%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you
recognize a mistake when you make it again.
        -- F. P. Jones
%%
FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at...uh, when
the little hand is on the....
%%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam
on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%%
Faith:  not *wanting* to know what is true.
        -- Nietzsche
%%
Famous last words:
"Don't worry, I can handle it."
"You and what army?"
"If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop."
%%
Fie for shame, you lascivious, lewd, lecherous,
libidinous, lustful, licentious, dirty bum!!
%%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has
the feeling that there is nothing important to do.
%%
Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
%%
Finagle's Creed:
Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%%
Finagle's first Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle's fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve
it only makes it worse.
%%
Finagle's second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will
always be someone eager to
(a) misinterpret it
(b) fake it
(c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle's third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
Corollaries:
(1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
(2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%%
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.
%%
First Law of Hacking: leaving is much more difficult than entering.
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other.
%%
Flee at once, all is discovered.
%%
Flirting is the gentle art of making a man feel pleased with himself.
        -- Helen Rowland
%%
For any remedy there is a misery.
%%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and
wrong.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
For the first time we have a weapon that nobody has used
for thirty years. This gives me great hope for the human race.
        -- Harlan Ellison
%%
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.
%%
Fourth Law of Hacking: you will find the exit at the entrance.
%%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
        -- H. H. Williams
%%
G's Third Law:
In spite of all evidence to the contrary, the entire universe
is composed of only two basic substances: magic and bullshit.
H's Dictum:
There is no magic...
%%
Gautama Principle:
You cannot cross a river in two leaps.
%%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%%
George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but
he also admitted doing it. Now, do you know why his father didn't
punish him? Because George still had the axe in his hand.
%%
Ginsberg's Theorem:
(1) You can't win.
(2) You can't break even.
(3) You can't even quit the game.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
Theorem. To wit:
(1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
(2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
(3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
%%
Give a man free hands and you'll know where to find them.
        -- Mae West
%%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%%
Give thought to your reputation. Consider
changing name and moving to a new town.
%%
God bless Atheism.
%%
God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends.
%%
God is Dead
-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
-- God
Nietzsche is God
-- Dead
%%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
%%
God is a polytheist.
%%
God is an atheist.
%%
God is big, so don't fuck with him.
%%
God isn't dead -- She was never born.
%%
God isn't dead, He just couldn't find a parking place.
%%
God isn't dead, He's just trying to avoid the draft.
%%
God wanted to have a holiday, so He asked St. Peter for suggestions on
where to go.
"Why not go to Jupiter?" asked St. Peter.
"No, too much gravity, too much stomping around," said God.
"Well, how about Mercury?"
"No, it's too hot there."
"Okay," said St. Peter, "What about Earth?"
"No," said God,"They're such horrible gossips. When I was
there 2000 years ago, I had an affair with a Jewish woman, and they're
still talking about it."
%%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
        -- La Rouchefoucauld
%%
Good day for overcoming obstacles.  Try a steeplechase.
%%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%%
Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
%%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
        -- George Saunders' dying words
%%
Gordon does it in a Flash.
%%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
%%
Grain grows best in shit.
        -- Ursula K. LeGuin
%%
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
%%
Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly
noticeable in the autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees.
%%
Gray's Law of Programming:
'n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
time as 'n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n' trivial tasks.
%%
Grinnell's Law of Labor Laxity:
At all times, for any task, you have not got enough done today.
%%
Grub first, then ethics.
        -- Bertolt Brecht
%%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%%
Hackers do it bottom-up.
%%
Hackers do it with all sorts of characters.
%%
Hackers do it with bugs.
%%
Hackers do it with fewer instructions.
%%
Haggis:
Haggis is a kind of stuff black pudding eaten by the Scots and
considered by them to be not only a delicacy but fit for human
consumption. The minced heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, calf
or other animal's inner organs are mixed with oatmeal, sealed
and boiled in maw in the sheep's intestinal stomach-bag and...
[Excuse me a minute. Ed.]
%%
Hail to the sun god
He's such a fun god
Ra! Ra! Ra!
%%
Half Moon tonight.  (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
%%
Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly
thrust into somebody's pocket.
%%
Handy Guide to Modern Science
(1) If it's green or it wriggles, it's biology.
(2) If it stinks, it's chemistry.
(3) If it doesn't work, it's physics.
%%
Hang gliders come down very slowly.
%%
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
%%
Hard reality has a way of cramping your style.
        -- Daniel Dennett
%%
Harris's Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
%%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
%%
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.
%%
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.
%%
Have a good meal today: eat a minotaur.
%%
Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
        -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%%
He who enters his wife's dressing room is a philosopher or a fool.
        -- Balzac
%%
He who findeth sensuous pleasures in the bodies of lush, hot, pink
damsels is not righteous, but he can have a lot more fun.
%%
He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much
a master of the world as he who is ready to die.
        -- Giacomo Leopardi
%%
He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.
        -- Lao Tsu
%%
He who trains his tongue to quote the learned
sages, will be known far and wide as a smart ass.
        -- Howard Kandel
%%
He's just a politician trying to save both his faces.
%%
Hear about...
the doctor that prescribed sex for insommia? His patients didn't
get any more sleep, but they had more fun staying awake.
%%
Hear about...
the girl with the big wardrobe who started with just a little slip?
%%
Hear about...
the guy who took a course in exotic lovemaking and announced
that he'd never be able to face his girl again?
%%
Hear about...
the guy who was an incurable romantic until penicillin came along?
%%
Heaven can wait.
%%
Heisenberg may have done it.
%%
Heisengberg might have been here.
%%
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.
%%
Help!  I'm being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory!
%%
Her kisses left something to be desired -- the rest of her.
%%
History has the relation to truth that theology
has to religion -- i.e., none to speak of.
        -- Lazarus Long
%%
Hitting is the lingua franca in these regions.
%%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
%%
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when
you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
%%
Hog Weighing Method:
(1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse.
(2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
(3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly
    balanced.
(4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
        -- Robert Burns
%%
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.
%%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
Hugh Hefner is a virgin.
%%
Humility is the first of the virtues -- for other people.
        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
%%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%%
Hungry? There is an abundance of food on the next level.
%%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
to.....to........uh..............
%%
Hypocrisy is the vaseline of social intercourse.
%%
I am an atheist, thank God!
%%
I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country
what it once was...an arctic wilderness.
        -- Steve Martin
%%
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
%%
I came; I saw; I fucked up.
%%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
        -- Joe Walsh
%%
I choked Linda Lovelace.
%%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
        -- Isaac Asimov
%%
I do not know myself and God forbid that I should.
        -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%%
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
        -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I don't mind arguing with myself.
Its when I lose that it bothers me.
        -- Richard Powers
%%
I don't want to bore you, but there's nobody else around for me to bore.
%%
I drink to make other people interesting.
        -- George Jean Nathan
%%
I hate it when people call me paranoid. It makes me feel persecuted.
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
        -- Kehlog Albran
%%
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
        -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
%%
I own my own body, but I share.
%%
I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war.
        -- Cicero
%%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%%
I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.
        -- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
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!
        -- George Bernard Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
%%
I smell a maze of twisty little passages.
%%
I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse
than anything else that has ever happened, and vice versa.
        -- Frank Zappa
%%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%%
I want a girl that can swallow my pride.
        -- Frank Zappa, "Jewish Princess"
%%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%%
I wished, I never wished a wand of wishing. (Wishful thinking)
%%
I wouldn't advise playing catch with a giant.
%%
I wouldn't mind dying -- it's that business of having
to stay dead that scares the shit out of me.
        -- R. Geis
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%%
I'd like to meet the man who invented sex and see what he's working
on now.
%%
I'm never through with a girl until I've had her three ways.
        -- J. F. Kennedy
%%
I'm not afraid of work...
I can even sleep beside it.
%%
I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
%%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
%%
I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you.
%%
I've had one child. My husband wants to have another.
I'd like to watch him have another.
%%
I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.
        -- The Young Ones
%%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
        -- Roy Santoro
%%
If God doesn't destroy San Francisco,
He should apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in
their Heads.
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%%
If God had wanted people to give blow jobs, he wouldn't have given
them teeth.
%%
If God had wanted us to use the metric system,
Jesus would have had 10 apostles.
%%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
        -- Bert Whitney
%%
If Reagan is the answer, it must have been a VERY silly question.
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
        -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only
four tellers?
%%
If it doesn't have recursive function calls, Real Software Engineers
don't program in it.
%%
If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.
%%
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
%%
If men couldn't fuck there'd be a bounty on their heads.
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
If only I could get that wonderful feeling
of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything.
%%
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
        -- Einstein
%%
If someone had told me I would be Pope
one day, I would have studied harder.
        -- Pope John Paul I
%%
If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input,
an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.
%%
If the odds are a million to one against something
occurring, chances are 50-50 it will.
%%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%%
If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it.
        -- Edward A. Murphy Jr.
%%
If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.
If thy dick offends thee, whack it off.
%%
If voting should change anything, there would be a law against it.
%%
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where
we are headed.
%%
If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.
        -- Chekhov
%%
If you are too cute some monsters might be tempted to embrace you.
%%
If you can believe ten impossible things before breakfast,
then you should join:
The Church of Counterfactual Belief
The Church of Counterfactual Belief has been set up to cater to all who
don't allow demonstrable truth to get in the way of their beliefs. In
addition to creation science and the flatness of the earth, the
following beliefs have been certified by Pope Duane as Church dogma:
that there is a hole in the Earth at the North Pole from which UFOs come.
that pi equals precisely 3.000.
that sex can be enjoyed only by blacks and homosexuals.
that Billy Joe Wilson (Hoopla, Miss.) has successfully squared the circle.
the circle.
that Harry Truman is still president, and doing a fine job.
that pi equals precisely 22/7.
Several other important counterfactual beliefs are presently being
studied, including Reaganomics, A.I., and that the moon landings were
done in a Hollywood special effects studio. These will be the subject
of a forthcoming Papal Bull...
%%
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
        -- J. Paul Getty
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%%
If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
        -- Harry S. Truman
%%
If you disassemble and assemble something a couple of times,
you will have two of them.
%%
If you drink, don't park. Accidents make people.
%%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
If you meet somebody who tells you that he loves you more than anybody
in the whole wide world, don't trust him. It means he experiments.
%%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a
procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will
promptly develop.
%%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine,
is somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
%%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!
%%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive,
try missing a couple of car payments.
        -- Earl Wilson
%%
If you think sex is a pain in the ass, try different position.
%%
If you want to feel great, you must eat something real big.
%%
If you would keep a secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.
%%
Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion.
        -- Robert Burton
%%
Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
        -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
        -- Jules de Gaultier
%%
Imbesi's Law with Freeman's Extension:
In order for something to become clean, something else must
become dirty; but you can get everything dirty without getting
anything clean.
%%
Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant.
%%
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come
into contact with reality at any point.
        -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented
six feet downward and covered with dirt.
        -- Blair P. Houghton
%%
Peter Principle:
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetency.
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%%
In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble.
        -- Alan Perlis
%%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%%
Interfere? Of course you should interfere!
Always do what you're best at, I say.
%%
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
%%
Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
        -- Mae West
%%
Is there a Life before Death?
%%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
The Course of Progress:
Most things get steadily worse.
The Path of Progress:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
It is a sad commentary on today's society that this fortune has to be
classified as "offensive" simply because it contains the word "fuck".
%%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
        -- Alan Perlis
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
        -- Voltaire
%%
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
        -- Andrew W. Mathis
%%
It is easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.
        -- Kehlog Albran
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than
vice versa.
%%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
%%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting
because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a
lot of people.
        -- Dolph Sharp
%%
It is impossible to defend perfectly
against the attack of those who want to die.
%%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
%%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
%%
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
        -- Gore Vidal
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind
to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
        -- Voltaire
%%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
        -- Hawkwind
%%
It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
        -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
%%
It seems you keep overlooking a sign reading "No trespassing"!
%%
It takes a brave man to admit his mistakes.
Especially in a paternity hearing.
%%
It takes a special kind of courage
to face what we all have to face.
%%
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give up becuase by that time I was too famous.
%%
It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The
Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies.
        -- Edith Hamilton, "The Greek Way"
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
        -- Macy's
%%
It's all a matter of life and death, so beware of the undead.
%%
It's better to be pissed off than pissed on.
%%
It's not the ups and downs of love, it's the ins and outs.
%%
It's only by NOT taking the human race seriously that I retain
what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess.
        -- Roger Noe
%%
Jehovah is an alien and still threatens this planet!
%%
Jenkinson's Law:
It won't work.
%%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%%
Jesus died for your sins. Make it worth his time.
%%
Jesus was killed by a Moral Majority.
%%
Johnson's First Law:
When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will
do so at the most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Jone's Law:
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to
blame it on.
%%
Jone's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
Jones' First Law:
Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
importance of their original contribution.
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
%%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition
doesn't mean he knows what it is.
%%
Just do it!
%%
Just once, I wish we would encounter
an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets.
        -- The Brigader, from Dr. Who
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
        -- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Katz' Law:
Man and nations will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.
%%
Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
%%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%%
Kicking the terminal doesn't hurt the monsters.
%%
Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.
        -- Muad'dib
%%
Kinkler's First Law:
Responsibility always exceeds authority.
%%
Kinkler's Second Law:
All the easy problems have been solved.
%%
Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%%
LAGNAF:
Let's All Get Naked And Fuck!
%%
LISP-programmers say: "Guess how many parentheses are needed to do this!"
Prolog-programmers say: "How can I do it in reasonable time ?"
C-programmers say: "Can You guess what this->program does ?"
Forth-programmers say: "third stack in is what Guess ?"
Basic-'programmers' say: "Where did I goto hell ?"
Fortran- and Cobol-slaves cry: "How can I do this ?"
%%
Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if each acts like a vulture,
all will end as doves.
%%
Large cats can be dangerous, but a little pussy never hurt anyone.
%%
Large increases in cost with questionable increases in
performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.
        -- Lord Kalvin
%%
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
%%
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 Probable Dispersal:
Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
%%
Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary:
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.
%%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%%
Learn how to spell. Play Hack.
%%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all
the fun?
%%
Leibowitz's Rule:
When hammering a nail, you will never hit your
finger if you hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
Leprechauns hide their gold in a secret room.
%%
Let Jesus be your anchor!
So when Satan rocks your boat, throw Jesus overboard!
%%
Let your fingers do the walking on the yulkjhnb keys.
%%
Let's face it: this time you're not going to win.
%%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone,
ever.
%%
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
        -- Gauguin
%%
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%%
Life is like a penis: when it's soft you
can't beat it, and when it's hard you get fucked.
%%
Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread
you have, the less shit you have to eat.
%%
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
        -- Goethe
%%
Life is too important to take seriously.
        -- Corky Siegel
%%
Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have
a meaning of which I disapprove.
%%
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
%%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%%
Lisp programmers do it recursively.
%%
Lisp programmers have to be bound (to-do 'it)...
%%
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it
includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
%%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been
attempted before.
%%
Lo! Men have become the tool of their tools.
        -- Henry David Thoreau
%%
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.
%%
Logic is a systematic method of coming
to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
%%
Looking for a monster -- use a staff of monster summoning.
%%
Loose bits sink chips.
%%
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
        -- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
%%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving
devices the world has ever seen.
%%
Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
        -- Sigmund Freud
%%
Love comes in spurts.
        -- Devo, "Please Please"
%%
Love does not make the world go around, just up and down a bit.
%%
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the
real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
        -- Goethe
%%
Love is just for now...herpes lasts forever.
%%
Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
%%
Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
        -- Louise Beal
%%
Love will make you forget time, and time will make you forget love.
%%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what
you're up to.
%%
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.
%%
Machines certainly can solve problems, store information,
correlate, and play games -- but not with pleasure.
        -- Leo Rosten
%%
Maier's Law:
If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
Corollaries:
(1) The bigger the theory, the better.
(2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%%
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
%%
Maintainer's Motto:
If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
%%
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms
with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
        -- Samuel Butler
%%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to
somebody else -- unless it is an enemy.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
Many a wife thinks her husband is the world's greatest lover.
But she can never catch him at it.
%%
Many nice things suck.
%%
Many pages make a thick book.
%%
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to
get in, and those inside desperate to get out.
        -- Montaigne
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
        -- Voltaire
%%
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
        -- R. Drabek
%%
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something
entirely different.
        -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%%
Mathematicians do it in groups.
%%
Mathematicians do it in theory.
%%
Mathematicians take it to the limit.
%%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed,
nor can it be returned without a receipt.
%%
May the Carrier be with you.
%%
May the Source be with you...always.
%%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
        -- R. S. Barton
%%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95.
%%
Measure twice because you can only cut once.
%%
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%%
Meet yourself! Commit suicide and type "hack"
%%
Memory fault -- core...uh...um...core...Oh dammit, I forget!
%%
Memory flaw - core dumped.
%%
Micro Credo:
Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get
you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
%%
Miksch's Law:
If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
        -- Groucho Marx
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
        -- Groucho Marx
%%
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
        -- Russell Baker
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and
be implemented it wasn't worth doing.
%%
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
%%
Money can't buy happiness -- but somehow it's more
comfortable to cry in a Porsche than in a Lada.
%%
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
%%
Money is the root of all evil.
%%
Money is the sixth sense that makes it possible
to enjoy the five others.
%%
Monsters come from nowhere to hit you everywhere.
%%
Monsters sleep because you are boring, not because they ever get tired.
%%
Most legislators are so dumb that they couldn't pour piss out
of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.
%%
Most monsters prefer minced meat. That's why they are hitting you.
%%
Most of the bugs in Hack are on the floor.
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
        -- Frank Zappa
%%
Most rumors are just as misleading as this one.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.
%%
Much ado Nothing Happens.
%%
Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
Murphy's Law:
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
My girlfriend's favorite erotic position is bending over my credit cards.
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
        -- Christopher Morley
%%
NEWS FLASH!!
Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
German pole-vault champion.
%%
Naeser's Law:
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof.
%%
Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the
fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
is most likely to be creamed?
        -- Solomon Short
%%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%%
Need money? Sell your corpses to a tin factory.
%%
NetHack is a fantasy, in fact you're dreaming.
%%
NetHack is addictive.  Too late, you're already hooked.
%%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%%
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
%%
Never eat more than you can lift.
        -- Miss Piggy
%%
Never go into the dungeon at midnight.
%%
Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
%%
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
%%
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
        -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
%%
Never make anything simple and efficient when
a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.
%%
Never mind the monsters hitting you: they just replace the charwomen.
%%
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
        -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
There might be a law against it by that time.
%%
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
%%
Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
%%
Never trust anybody whose arm is bigger than your leg.
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Never use "etc." -- it makes people think there is more where
there is not or that there is not space to list it all, etc.
%%
Never use your best weapon to engrave a curse.
%%
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery
does what it's supposed to do.
        -- R. A. Heinlein
%%
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.
%%
Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their
friends hang out.
        -- Zonker Harris
%%
No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
effectively under such difficult conditions.
        -- Laurence J. Peter
%%
No good deed goes unpunished.
        -- Clare Boothe Luce
%%
No guest is so welcome in a friend's house that
he will not become nuiscance after three days.
        -- Titus Maccius Plautus
%%
No man in the world has more courage than
the man who can stop after eating one peanut.
        -- Channing Pollock
%%
No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next.
        -- E. W. Howe
%%
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in
the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
%%
No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
        -- John L. Shelton
%%
No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.
%%
No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
an indication-applied occurrence.
        -- ALGOL 68 Report
%%
No, "Eureka" is Greek for "This bath is too hot."
        -- Dr. Who
%%
Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%%
Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
        -- William Shakespeare
%%
Not all rumors are as misleading as this one.
%%
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly
and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
        -- Professor W.
%%
Not until a program has been in production for at least
six months will the most harmful error then be discovered.
%%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
%%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%%
Nothing is better than Sex.
Masturbation is better than nothing.
Therefore, Masturbation is better than Sex.
%%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
        -- Andrew Young
%%
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which
millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
        -- Nero Wolfe
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
        -- Walter Winchell
%%
Nymphs are blondes. Are you a gentleman?
%%
O'Riordan's Theorem:
Brains x Beauty = Constant.
Purmal's Corollary:
As the limit of (Brains x Beauty) goes to infinity,
availability goes to zero.
%%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
Murphy was an optimist.
%%
OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard.
        -- Dr. Joy
%%
Obscenity is the crutch of inarticulate motherfuckers.
%%
Official Project Stages:
(1) Uncritical Acceptance
(2) Wild Enthusiasm
(3) Dejected Disillusionment
(4) Total Confusion
(5) Search for the Guilty
(6) Punishment of the Innocent
(7) Promotion of the Non-participants
%%
Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
%%
Oh John, let's not park here.
Oh John, let's not park.
Oh John, let's not.
Oh John, let's.
Oh John.
Oh.
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
        -- Trotsky
%%
Old hackers never die: young ones do.
%%
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
%%
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
%%
Oliver's Law:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
%%
On Brassieres:
Russian : Uplifts the masses -- Salvation Army : Raises the fallen
American: Makes mountains out of molehills
%%
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created jerks.
        -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
        -- Wolfgang Pauli
%%
Once upon a girl there was a time...
%%
Once you've tried to change the world you find
it's a whole bunch easier to change your mind.
%%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is
that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
%%
One homunculus a day keeps the doctor away.
%%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%%
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
        -- Robert Firth
%%
One planet is all you get.
%%
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
%%
Operation coded OVERKILL has started now.
%%
Operators mount anything.
%%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
        -- Mike Adams
%%
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
%%
Others look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.
%%
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
it's too dark to read.
        -- Groucho Marx
%%
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
%%
Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
%%
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
%%
POLITICIAN: From the Greek 'poly' ("many") and the French 'tete'
("head" or "face," as in 'tete-a-tete': head to head or face to face).
Hence 'polytetien', a person of two or more faces.
        -- Martin Pitt
%%
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...
only much, much better.
        -- Laurie Anderson
%%
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
%%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%%
Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
%%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy
to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
        -- D. J. Hicks
%%
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
%%
Parker's Law:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay in important decision,
the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
        -- Eric Hoffer
%%
Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.
%%
Paulg's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.
%%
People usually get what's coming to them...unless it's been mailed.
%%
People who claim they don't let little things bother them
have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.
%%
People who have no faults are terrible;
there is no way of taking advantage of them.
%%
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you
tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
%%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
[Confound those who have said our remarks before us.]
        -- Aelius Donatus
%%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves.
%%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%%
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
        -- John Keats
%%
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
        -- Don Marquis
%%
Plastic... Aluminum... These are the inheritors of the Universe!
Flesh and Blood have had their day... and that day is past!
        -- Green Lantern Comics
%%
Pohl's law:
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%%
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
where there is no river.
        -- Nikita Khrushchev
%%
Politicians do it to everyone.
%%
Poverty begins at home.
%%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%%
Press any key to start formatting the hard disk.
%%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
It's on the other side.
%%
Printers do it by wrinkling the sheets.
%%
Procrastinators do it tomorrow.
%%
Prostitution is the only business where you can go
into the hole and still come out ahead.
%%
Pryor's Observation:
How long you live has nothing to do with how long you are
going to be dead.
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill.
Check three friends. If they're ok, you're it.
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
%%
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%%
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%%
Q: Do you know how to tell a Polack at a cockfight?
A: He's the only one with a duck.
Q: Do you know how to tell an Aggie at a cockfight?
A: He's the only one who bets on the duck.
Q: And do you know how to tell the Mafia is at the cockfight?
A: The duck wins!
%%
Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A: One per person.
%%
Q: How can you tell when a WASP is sexually aroused?
A: By the stiff upper lip.
%%
Q: How do you play religious roulette?
A: You stand around in a circle and blaspheme and see who gets struck
by lightning first.
%%
Q: How do you tell if you're making love to a nurse, a schoolteacher,
or an airline stewardess?
A: A nurse says: "This won't hurt a bit." A schoolteacher says:
"We're going to have to do this over and over again until we get it right."
An airline stewardess says: "Just hold this over your
mouth and nose, and breath normally."
%%
Q: How do you tell that your roommate's gay?
A: When his cock tastes like shit.
%%
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
of the way.
%%
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb
itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
%%
Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None: "We'll fix it in software."
Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None: "We'll document it in the manual."
Q: How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None: "The user can work it out."
%%
Q: How many lesbians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Ten. One to do it, and nine to talk about how gratifying
it was without a man.
%%
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 much money do you give to a 900 foot Jesus?
A: As much as he wants.
%%
Q: If Tarzan was Jewish, and Jane was a princess, what would Cheetah be?
A: A fur coat.
%%
Q: What can you use used tampons for?
A: Tea bags for vampires.
%%
Q: What do you call couples that use that rhythm method?
A: Parents.
%%
Q: What is "SMOORPLAY"?
A: It's what SMURFS do before they SMUCK, of course!
%%
Q: What's buried in Grant's tomb?
A: A corpse.
%%
Q: What's the difference between erotic and kinky?
A: Erotic is when you use a feather.
Kinky is when you use the whole bird...
%%
Q: What's the difference between hard and dark?
A: It stays dark all night.
%%
Q: What's the last thing that goes through
a grasshopper's mind when he hits your windshield?
A: His ass.
%%
Q: Where does virgin wool come from?
A: Ugly sheep.
%%
Q: Why did God invent booze?
A: So ugly men could get laid too.
%%
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
%%
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
%%
Quigley's Law:
Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small,
will attempt to use it.
%%
Quote of The Day:
'
%%
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
(1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
(2) Never leave the table hungry.
(3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
(4) Enjoy your food.
(5) Enjoy your companion's food.
(6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
(7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a brownie.
Which feels better against your cheeks?
(8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
(9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
can always eat it later.
(10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
(11) Avoid blue food.
        -- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet"
%%
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
%%
Read the manual before entering the cave -
You might get killed otherwise.
%%
Reality corrupts. Absolute reality corrupts absolutely.
%%
Reality is for people who lack imagination.
%%
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
%%
Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
        -- Alvy Ray Smith
%%
Rejection:
When you're masturbating and your hand falls asleep.
%%
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
        -- Anatole France
%%
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
%%
Relying on a dog might turn you in a dog addict.
%%
Remember, if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%%
Renning's Maxim:
Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
%%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what
do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
        -- Werner von Braun
%%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll
probably get another chance later on.
%%
Revenge is sleeping with your enemy's wife.
Sweet revenge is the realization that she's a lousy lay.
%%
Rhode's Law:
When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied,
inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically
guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience,
expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal
comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above,
be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and
adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally,
immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes
advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
%%
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
        -- Steven Wright
%%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
Unless the results are known in advance,
funding agencies will reject the proposal.
%%
Row (3x) that boat gently down the stream, Charon (4x),
death is but a dream.
%%
Rudin's Law:
If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will
do it every time.
%%
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind
person shall be deemed to be a cat.
%%
Rule of Creative Research:
(1) Never draw what you can copy.
(2) Never copy what you can trace.
(3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%%
Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
%%
Rule of the Great:
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%%
Rules:
(1) The boss is always right.
(2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
%%
Run away to fight another day.
%%
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
Must be a pacifist.
What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
        -- Arlo Guthrie
%%
Satellite Safety Tip #14:
If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
%%
Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
Sauron is alive in Argentina.
%%
Save a forest -- eat a beaver.
%%
Save a mouse -- eat a pussy.
%%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%%
Save the whales -- harpoon a Honda.
%%
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
%%
Schapiro's Explanation:
The grass is always greener on the other side --
but that's because they use more manure.
%%
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
%%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%%
Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question.
They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that
was built. Finally the big day was at hand.All the computers were
linked together.They asked the question, "Is there a God?".Lights
started blinking, flashing and blinking some more.Suddenly, there
was a loud crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky,
struck the computers, and welded all the connections permanently
together."There is now", came the reply.
%%
Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%%
Scott's second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will
be found to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
%%
Screw up your courage!  You've screwed up everything else.
%%
Second Law of Business Meetings:
If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
will pick the wrong one.
Corollary:
If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong, anyway.
%%
Second Law of Hacking: first in, first out.
%%
Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing.
        -- James Thurber
%%
Self Test for Paranoia:
You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
your own fault.
%%
Serocki's Stricture:
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%%
Sex discriminates against the shy and ugly.
%%
Sex is dirty, but only if you do it right.
%%
Sex is low in calories, and *oooh* that aftertaste!
%%
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
        -- Swami X
%%
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation...
the other eight are unimportant.
        -- Henry Miller
%%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
        -- M. C. Reed.
%%
Sex is what women have and men want.
%%
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool
will want to use it.
%%
She's fine, upstanding, and wonderful laying down.
%%
She's the kind of woman you could fall madly in bed with.
%%
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you
a man who is playing golf with his boss.
%%
Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
%%
Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%%
Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%%
Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while
they're alive.
        -- John Sloan
%%
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
        -- Bob "Mountain" Beck
%%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
should have gotten.
%%
Slang is language that takes off its coat,
spits on its hands, and goes to work.
%%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
(1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.
(2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
(3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.
%%
So far as I can remember, there is not one word
in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
        -- Bertrand Russell
%%
So, if there's no God, who changes the water?
        -- New Yorker cartoon of two goldfish in a bowl
%%
Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to
occur.
%%
Sodomy is a pain in the ass.
%%
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
        -- Ed Howe
%%
Some people live life in the fast lane.
You're in oncoming traffic.
%%
Some points to remember [about animals]:
(1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
hippopotamuses;
(2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
front of your clothes;
(3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
you have just kicked.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Some women are like musical glasses.
To keep them in tune they must be wet.
        -- Samuel Coleridge
%%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Sometimes, you just gotta say "What the fuck."
        -- Risky Business
%%
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
%%
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
%%
Speak softly and carry a megawatt laser.
%%
Speak softly and carry the Staff of Archmage.
%%
Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
        -- Dave Millman
%%
Speed is subsittute fo accurancy.
%%
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
The visibility of an error is inversely proportional
to the number of times you have looked at it.
%%
Spelling is a lossed art.
%%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%%
Statisticians do it with 95% confidence.
%%
Statisticians probably do it.
%%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink.
%%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
%%
Stult's Report:
Our problems are mostly behind us. What we
have to do now is fight the solutions.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.
%%
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting
out of the way before it is understood.
%%
Success is like a fart -- only your own smells nice.
        -- James P. Hogan
%%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%%
Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
%%
Support your local police force -- steal!!
%%
Sure he's sharp as a razor...he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
%%
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
%%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind
when he has a hole in his head.
%%
Take a long worm from the rear, according to its mate it's a lot more fun.
%%
Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
%%
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
        -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
%%
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
        -- Euripides
%%
Talkers are no good doers.
        -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%%
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
        -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when
he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
%%
Teachers do it with class.
%%
Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
%%
Technological progress has merely provided us with
more efficient means for going backwards.
        -- Aldous Huxley
%%
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe
and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint
on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
%%
Test makers do it:
(a) sometimes
(b) always
(c) never
%%
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
%%
That girl could suck the chrome off a bumper.
%%
That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
%%
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
The Abrams' Principle:
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%%
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program,
take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one,
and convert to the next higher units.
%%
The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility
of assembly language with the readability of assembly language.
%%
The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the Devil
out of Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for bridge.
        -- Letter in New Libertarian Notes #19
%%
The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
Don't do it.
%%
The Gods don't like competition.
%%
The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences
The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%%
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
%%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member
of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
%%
The Israelites were all waiting anxiously at the foot of the mountain,
knowing that Moses had had a tough day negotiating with God over the
Commandments. Finally a tired Moses came into sight.
"I've got some good news and some bad news, folks," he said. "The
good news is that I got Him down to ten. The bad news is that adultery's
still in."
%%
The Kennedy Constant:
Don't get mad -- get even.
%%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
        -- Anatole France
%%
The Leprechaun Gold Tru$t is no division of the Magic Memory Vault.
%%
The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab
as much as we could with both of them.
        -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%%
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to
the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
        -- Macaulay, "History of England, I"
%%
The Real Man's Arctic Breakfast:
Ingredients: one bottle of whisky, ten pounds of raw meat.
Throw the meat to huskies.
Drink the whisky.
%%
The Real Man's Bloody Mary:
Ingredients: vodka, tomato juice, Tobasco, Worcestershire
sauce, A-1 steak sauce, ice, salt, pepper, celery.
Fill a large tumbler with vodka.
Throw all the other ingredients away.
%%
The Roman Rule
The one who says it cannot be done should never
interrupt the one who is doing it.
%%
The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
Don't do it yet.
        -- Michael Jackson
%%
The Story of Creation or The Myth of Urk
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt...
        -- Rico Tudor
%%
The Street finds its own uses for technology.
        -- William Gibson
%%
The air is positively magic in here. Better wear a negative armor.
%%
The beginning of terror is the suspicion of ones own mortality.
The end of terror is the surety of it.
%%
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
%%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't
reuse time.
        -- Merrick Furst
%%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to work.
%%
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
bureaucracy.
%%
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
        -- H. L. Mencken
%%
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
%%
The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
        -- Alfred Adler
%%
The church is near but the road is icy;
the bar is far away but I will walk carefully.
        -- Russian Proverb
%%
The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
        -- Elbert Hubbard
%%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
%%
The defense attorney was hammering away at the plaintiff:
"You claim," he jeered, "that my client came at you with a broken bottle in
his hand. But is it not true, that you had something in YOUR hand?"
"Yes," he admitted, "his wife. Very charming, of course, but
not much good in a fight."
%%
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
        -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%%
The early worm gets the bird.
%%
The easiest way to figure the cost of living is
to take your income and add ten percent.
%%
The economy depends about as much on economists as
the weather does on weather forecasters.
        -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
%%
The end of the human race will be that it
will eventually die of civilization.
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday,
with symposium to follow.
%%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
        -- L. Ogborn
%%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
        -- Abbie Hoffman
%%
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth
of management is that success equals skill.
        -- Robert Heller
%%
The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving
your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do.
        -- McCloctnik the Lucid
%%
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
        -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV
%%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that
will last at least until we've finished building it.
%%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%%
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines.
They gave him love and he invented marriage.
%%
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
man in the bonds of Hell.
        -- St. Augustine
%%
The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
to be good.
%%
The greatest lies of all time:
(1) I love you.
(2) This won't hurt a bit.
(3) The Mercedes is paid for.
(4) The check is in the mail.
(5) I was just going to call you.
(6) I've always worn cowboy boots.
(7) I swear I won't come in your mouth.
(8) Of course I'll respect you in the morning.
(9) We have a really challenging assignment for you.
(10) I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.
%%
The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.
        -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is
flat and slimy and has gills through which it can see.
        -- Monty Python
%%
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of
its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
%%
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats
a strange protein -- it rejects it.
        -- P. Medawar
%%
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
        -- Ashley Montagu
%%
The identical is equal to itself, since it is different.
        -- Franco Spisani
%%
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
        -- Henry Kissinger
%%
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with
the square of the number of participants.
        -- Adam Walinsky
%%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train.
%%
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
%%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
one has ever been.
        -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
%%
The meek can have the Earth -- rest of us have other plans.
%%
The meek shall inherit the Earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
%%
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
        -- R. Bach, "Illusions"
%%
The more laws and order are made prominent,
the more thieves and robbers there will be.
        -- Lao Tsu
%%
The moss on the tree does not fear the talons of the hawk.
%%
The most common form of marriage proposal: "YOU'RE WHAT!?"
%%
The number of people watching you is directly
proportional to the stupidity of your action.
%%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%%
The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon.
     -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and Over and Over"
%%
The only thing that stops God from sending
another flood is that the first one was useless.
        -- Chamfort
%%
The only thing we learn from history is that
we learn nothing from history.
        -- Hegel
I know guys can't learn from yesterday...
Hegel must be taking the long view.
        -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
%%
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 p.m.
%%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
        -- Niels Bohr
%%
The past always looks better than it was.
It's only pleasant because it isn't here.
        -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%%
The pleasure is momentary,
The position ridiculous,
The expense damnable.
        -- Chesterfield, on sex
%%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
        -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%%
The probability of someone watching you is
proportional to the stupidity of your action.
%%
The problem...is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
%%
The quality of a blow-job is determined by the
length of sheet you have to pull out of your ass.
%%
The revolution will not be televised.
%%
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
        -- Emerson
%%
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
        -- Justice Douglas
%%
The ripest fruit falls first.
        -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
%%
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
sloppy analysis!
%%
The secret of happiness is total disregard of everybody.
%%
The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in
twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one --
and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd.
Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
        -- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
%%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
        -- Noelie Alito
%%
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part
the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.
        -- Max Lerner
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
        -- Voltaire
%%
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling
their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from
the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to
ascribe to the other side a consistency, forsight and coherence that
its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do
enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.
        -- Henry Kissinger
%%
The surest sign that a man is in love is when he divorces his wife.
%%
The thief
Left it behind --
The moon at the window.
        -- Ryokan
%%
The three most important parts of a stove: lifter, leg, and poker.
%%
The three sexual positions during preganancy.
During the first four months:  Missionary style
During the second four months: Doggie style
And during the last month:     Coyote style
Coyote style?
You sit by the hole and howl.
%%
The time spent on any item of the agenda [of a finance
committee] will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
        -- C. N. Parkinson
%%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think
you have nothing more important to do.
%%
The trouble with doing something right the first time
is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
%%
The trouble with money is it costs too much.
%%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do
with its credibility. And vice versa.
%%
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
%%
The universe does not have laws --
it has habits, and habits can be broken.
%%
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination --
but the combination is locked up in the safe.
        -- Peter DeVries
%%
The value of a program is directly proportional to the weight of
its output.
%%
The very first essential for success is a perpetually
constant and regular employment of violence.
        -- Adolph Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
%%
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
be one of the facts that needs altering.
        -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
%%
The volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases.
        -- Jerry Brown
%%
The wages of sin are high --
unless you know someone who does it for nothing.
%%
The warning message we sent the Russians was
a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
        -- Alexander Haig
%%
The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market
is to start with a large fortune.
%%
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
%%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
        -- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%%
Theft from a single author is plagiarism.
Theft from two is comparative study.
Theft from three or more is research.
%%
There are many ways to say "I love you", but fucking is the fastest.
%%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or
a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
        -- Gloria Steinem
%%
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
don't we all?
%%
There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated
pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving
them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you
stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your
intelligence.
        -- "The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII"
%%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
        -- Disraeli
%%
There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
%%
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces --
the third I can't remember.
        -- Italo Svevo
%%
There are three ways to get something done:
(1) Do it yourself.
(2) Hire someone to do it for you.
(3) Forbid your kids to do it.
%%
There are two sides to every divorce: yours and the shithead's.
%%
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make is so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies.
        -- C. A. R. Hoare
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs.
Only the third one works.
%%
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through
a suitable application of high explosives.
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
        -- Henry Kissinger
%%
There has been an alarming increase in the number
of things you know nothing about.
%%
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself
to be burned for an opinion.
        -- Anatole France
%%
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not
wave in a vacuum.
        -- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
    -- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society Convention, 1977
%%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
        -- G. B. Shaw
%%
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
%%
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes
difficult when you do it reluctantly.
        -- Publius Terentius Afer
%%
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
        -- C. S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia"
%%
There was something about her I liked,
but I couldn't put my finger on it.
%%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness.
Too bad its not a fence.
%%
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
%%
There's no future in time travel.
%%
There's no heavier burden than a great potential.
%%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
        -- Dr. Who
%%
There's no real need to do housework --
after four years it doesn't get any worse.
%%
They make a desert and call it peace.
        -- Tacitus
%%
They told me I was gullible...and I believed them!
%%
They're only trying to make me look paranoid.
%%
They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really.
They'd be difficult to like.
        -- Avon
%%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%%
Think of your family tonight.
Try to crawl home after the computer crashes.
%%
Think sideways!
        -- Edward De Bono
%%
Third Law of Hacking: the last blow counts most.
%%
This fortune cookie is property of Fortune Cookies, Inc.
%%
This is the Leprechaun Law: every purse has a price.
%%
This limerick is --SO--FILTHY-- that it would offend you. So I'll put
"di-dah" for the filthy words:
Di-dah, di-dah, di-dah di-dah,
Di-dah di-dah di-dah, di-dah;
di-dah di-dah di-dah?
Di-dah di-dah di-dah.
Di-dah di-dah, di-dah di-fuck.
%%
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside,
but to be hurled with great force.
        -- Dorothy Parker
%%
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
        -- Hofstadter
%%
This will be a memorable month --
no matter how hard you try to forget it.
%%
Those of you who think you know everything are
very annoying to those of us who do.
%%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%%
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
%%
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will
make violent revolution inevitable.
        -- John F. Kennedy
%%
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are
men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
without the roar of its many waters.
        -- Frederick Douglass
%%
Thou shalt not omit adultery.
%%
Though a program be but three lines long,
someday it will have to be maintained.
        -- The Tao of Programming
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that
everything doesn't happen at once.
%%
To a Real Woman, every ejaculation is premature.
%%
To be is to do.
        -- I. Kant
To do is to be.
        -- A. Sartre
Do-be-do-be-do.
        -- F. Sinatra
%%
To be is to do.
        -- I. Kant
To do is to be.
        -- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
        -- F. Flinstone
%%
To be or not to be.
        -- Shakespeare
To do is to be.
        -- Nietzsche
To be is to do.
        -- Sartre
Do be do be do.
        -- Frank Sinatra
%%
To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
offer in response is based on information available to make no such
statement.
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and
whatever you hit, call it the target.
%%
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
%%
To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System.
%%
To err is human, to moo bovine.
%%
To generalize is to be an idiot.
        -- William Blake
%%
To get something done, a committee should consist of
no more than three men, two of them absent.
%%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
        -- Thomas Edison
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.
        -- W. Churchill, on Korean War negotiations
%%
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job
will take the longest and cost the most.
%%
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve
only to provide a test load.
%%
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 a good day to die.
        -- An apache warrior proverb
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
%%
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
%%
Too clever is dumb.
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
        -- Mae West
%%
Too often I find that the volume of paper expands
to fill the available briefcases.
        -- Governor Jerry Brown
%%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%%
Trolls are described as rubbery: they keep bouncing back.
%%
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
        -- Henrik Tikkanen
%%
Try hacking in the wee hours: you will have more room.
%%
Try not to have a good time...This is supposed to be educational.
        -- Charles Schulz
%%
Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.
%%
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written
in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and
pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer),
defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the
absolutely perfect future.
        -- Amrom Katz
%%
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
%%
Trying to establish voice contact...please yell into keyboard.
%%
Turnaucka's Law:
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord.
%%
Tussman's Law:
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%%
Twenty percent of zero is better than nothing.
        -- Walt Kelly
%%
Two can live as cheaply as one for half as long.
        -- Howard Kandel
%%
Two is not 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
%%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%%
Two things I like the best in life -- hot cars and fast women.
%%
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
%%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%%
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.
%%
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
just man is also a prison.
        -- Henry David Thoreau
%%
Under capitalism, man exploits man.
Under Communism, it's just the opposite.
        -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something,
it can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic...
%%
Unnamed Law:
If it happens, it must be possible.
%%
Using a morning star in the evening has no effect.
%%
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
and paradise is when you have none.
        -- Doug Larson
%%
Vail's Second Axiom:
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion
to the amount of work already completed.
%%
Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
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.
%%
Vidi, vici, veni.
(I saw, I conquered, I came.)
%%
Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
%%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
        -- Salvor Hardin
%%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously
moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%%
Vote anarchist!
%%
WARNING from H.M. Govt:  Quaffing may be dangerous to your health.
%%
Wanted: shopkeepers. Send a scroll of mail to:
Mage of Yendor/Level 35/Dungeon.
%%
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
        -- Charles Edward Montague
%%
War is menstruation envy.
%%
Warning: end of file 'fortunes' reached.
%%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%%
Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to
the number and significance of any persons watching it.
%%
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
        -- Whole Earth Catalog
%%
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being
correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
        -- Niels Bohr
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
        -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%%
We are on the verge: Today our program proved
Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
        -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%%
We can embody the truth, but we cannot know it.
        -- Yates
%%
We can't really be wrong if we're just following Gods orders
You know, He wrote this book here
And in this book He says that He made us to be just like Him
So if we're dumb, then God's dumb (and perhaps a little ugly on the side)
        -- Frank Zappa
%%
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
        -- Vroomfondel
%%
We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand.
        -- James Watt
%%
We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand
the hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights!
%%
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some
of our best friends are trying to kill us.
%%
We took some pictures of the girls, but they weren't developed.
%%
We've just recieved the results of a survey conducted to ascertain the
various reasons men get out of bed in the middle of the night. According
to the report, 2% are motivated by a desire to visit the bathroom, and
3% have an urge to raid the refrigerator. The other 95% get up to go home.
%%
Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise.
        -- John Heywood
%%
Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
%%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%%
Weinberg's Principle:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors
while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
%%
Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
%%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross references.
%%
Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter.
He'll come in handy if you run out of food.
        -- Dean McLaughlin.
%%
Were there no women, men might live like gods.
        -- Thomas Dekker
%%
Westheimer's Discovery:
A couple of months in the laboratory can
frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
%%
Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%%
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
%%
What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
        -- WOP, "War Games"
%%
What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
%%
What fools these mortals be.
        -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
%%
What good is having someone who can walk on water
if you don't follow in his footsteps?
%%
What is a magician but a practising theorist?
        -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
%%
What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.
        -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
%%
What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?
        -- Bertold Brecht
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is
that there's nothing to compare it with.
%%
What one fool can do, another can.
        -- Ancient Simian Proverb
%%
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
        -- Ursula K. LeGuin
%%
What the fuck, over?
%%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
        -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%%
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
        -- Wittgenstein
%%
What's another word for Thesaurus?
        -- Steven Wright
%%
What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
        -- The Doctor
%%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine.
What I can pry loose is not nailed down.
        -- Collis P. Huntingdon
%%
When God created man, She was only testing.
%%
When God created two sexes, he may have been overdoing it.
        -- Charles Merrill Smith
%%
When God endowed human beings with brains,
He did not intend to guarantee them.
%%
When a banker jumps out of a window, jump after him --
that's where the money is.
        -- Robespierre
%%
When a female has tears in her eyes the one who cannot see is the male.
%%
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight,
it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
        -- Samuel Johnson
%%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see
the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
        -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%%
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
%%
When are you buttheads gonna learn that you can't oppose
Gestapo tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?
        -- Reuben Flagg
%%
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America
before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
        -- Vine Deloria, Jr.
%%
When choosing between evils, I always
like to take the one I've never tried before.
        -- Mae West
%%
When in doubt, use brute force.
        -- Ken Thompson
%%
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
        -- Dylan Thomas
%%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I
need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%%
When the blind lead the blind they will both fall over the cliff.
        -- Chinese proverb
%%
When the candles are out all women are fair.
        -- Plutarch
%%
When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
        -- Jon Carroll
%%
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
        -- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
When the prick stands up, the brains get buried in the ground.
        -- Old Jewish saying
[How come there aren't ever any "New Jewish sayings?" Ed.]
%%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to
remember that virtue is not hereditary.
        -- Thomas Paine
%%
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
%%
When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%%
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.
        -- R. A. Lafferty
%%
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
        -- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war
%%
When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
know the answer either.
        -- Edgar R. Fiedler
%%
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
        -- The Wall Street Journal
%%
When you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all.
%%
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean, "not really".
        -- Dave Parnas
%%
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
%%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%%
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong,
the true test is admission to someone else.
%%
While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens,
ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman.
        -- Boccaccio
%%
While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
%%
While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one
you don't keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
        -- Edward Stevenson
%%
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly
lets you choose your own form of misery.
%%
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
%%
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction
of their correctness never does.
%%
While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still
very reassuring to know that it's still there.
%%
Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process.
%%
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%%
Who's on first?
%%
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
%%
Why are you wasting time reading fortunes?
%%
Why be a man when you can be a success?
        -- Bertold Brecht
%%
Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until
we use the ones we have?
%%
Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of
movement unless it was to avoid responsibility with?
%%
Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
        -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Why marry a virgin? If she wasn't good enough for
the rest of them then she isn't good enough for you.
%%
Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be
proven by statistical methods.
%%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
        -- Ransom K. Ferm
%%
Wizards do it background &
%%
Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
(1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
(2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
(3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
(4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
(5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
        -- Rich Kulawiec
%%
Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination.
        -- Graffito in a women's restroom
%%
Work fascinates me...
I can sit and watch it for hours.
%%
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
%%
Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer
if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
%%
Writers do it between periods.
%%
X-rated movies are all alike...the only thing they
leave to the imagination is the plot.
%%
Xerox does it again and again and again and...
%%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%%
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
fear no evil, for I can string 6 primitive monadic and dyadic operators
together.
        -- Steve Higgins
%%
Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
%%
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
%%
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably
still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
        -- Snoopy
%%
Yield to Temptation...it may not pass your way again.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
You are heading for head-stone for sure.
%%
You are just the kind of bad food some monsters like to digest.
%%
You are not drunk if you lie under the table. When you
no longer order from there, then you are drunk.
%%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%%
You are without a doubt a rogue, a rascal, a villain, a thief,
a scoundrel, and a mean, dirty, stinking, sniveling, sneaking,
pimping, pocketpicking, thrice double-damned, no-good son-of-a-bitch.
%%
You can create your own opportunities this week.
Blackmail a senior executive.
%%
You can find sympathy, in the dictionary, right near shit and suicide.
%%
You can get a genuine Amulet of Yendor by doing the following:
-- more --
%%
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and
a gun than you can with just a kind word.
        -- Bumper Sticker
%%
You can learn many things from children.
How much patience you have, for instance.
        -- Franklin P. Jones
%%
You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
%%
You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
%%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%%
You can't get rid of a cursed plate mail with a can-opener.
%%
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
        -- Steven Wright
%%
You can't teach people to be lazy --
either they have it, or they don't.
        -- Dagwood Bumstead
%%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
%%
You come out of a woman and you spend the rest
of your life trying to get back inside.
        -- Heathcote Williams
%%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
%%
You don't have to be crazy to live in this planet -- but it helps.
%%
You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable
and trustworthy. A pity that it's totally undeserved.
%%
You have a strong appeal for members of the opposite sex.
%%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
%%
You hear the fortune cookie's hissing!
%%
You humans are all alike.
%%
You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
you can always change the channel.
        -- Jim Ignatowski
%%
You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
%%
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
%%
You never know how many friends you have until
you rent a house on the beach.
%%
You offend Shai-Hulud by sheathing your crysknife without having
drawn blood.
%%
You should emulate your heros, but don't
carry it too far. Especially if they are dead.
%%
You should never bet against anything in science
at odds of more than about 10^12 to 1.
        -- Ernest Rutherford
%%
You should never wear your best trousers when
you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.
        -- Henrik Ibsen
%%
You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
%%
You tread upon my patience.
        -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
%%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%%
You worry too much about your job. Stop it.
You're not paid enough to worry.
%%
You're going into the morgue at midnight????
%%
You're never too old to become younger.
        -- Mae West
%%
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
        -- Dean Martin
%%
You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!
%%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%%
Your fault -- core dumped
%%
Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
%%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%%
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmn.
%%
gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and
also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpindicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpindicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
        -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
%%
Moses, returning from the mountain, spoke to his people:
"The good news is we got them down to ten."
"The bad news is that adultery is still one of them."
%%
We have them just where they want us.
        -- James T. Kirk
%%
"I'd rather have Lockheed deliver the mail than ride around in
a plane built by the post office."
%%
"I figure I'm pretty good with the bullshit but I love listening
to an expert. Keep talking."
%%
"Money can't buy happiness but it can certainly rent it for
a couple of hours."
%%
"The meek shall inherit the Earth after we're done with it."
%%
"Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here."
        -- James T. Kirk
%%
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
Time flies when you don't know what you're doing.
%%
Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.
%%
We are the people our parents warned us about.
%%
Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive.
%%
Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself.
%%
How much sin can I get away with and still go to heaven?
%%
There is intelligent life on Earth, but I'm just visiting.
%%
Power means not having to respond.
%%
Never kick a man unless he's down.
%%
We should forgive our enemies, but only after they've been taken
out and shot.
%%
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that
you've got it made.
%%
I'm not as dumb as you look.
%%
I'd like to help you out. Which way did you come in?
%%
Everyone needs belief in something. I believe I'll have another beer.
%%
How can I love you if you won't lie down?
%%
You can find sympathy between shit and syphilis in the
dictionary.
%%
To err is human. To forgive is unusual.
%%
Only those who attempt the absurd can acheive the impossible.
%%
I'm not going deaf. I'm ignoring you.
%%
I'm the person your mother warned you about.
%%
How can I tell you I love you when you're sitting on my face?
%%
God is dead and I want His job.
%%
I can tell you're lying. Your lips are moving.
%%
Our parents were never our age.
%%
Nothing was ever accomplished by a reasonable person.
%%
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
%%
In the country of the blind the one eye'd man is king.
%%
He who laughs last has not been told the terrible truth.
%%
It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys.
%%
When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better.
        -- Mae West
%%
I'm really enjoying not talking to you, so let's not talk again
real soon, okay?
%%
He who laughs last didn't get the joke.
%%
Obviously the only rational solution to your problem is suicide.
%%
Death is the greatest kick of all. That's why they save it for last.
%%
I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally.
%%
I think I could fall madly in bed with you.
%%
I used to be lost in the shuffle. Now I just shuffle along with
the lost.
%%
Yesterday was the deadline on all complaints.
%%
Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.
%%
I worship the ground that awaits you.
%%
The future isn't what it used to be.
%%
I wish you were a beer.
%%
I want to live forever or die in the attempt.
%%
Love means telling you why you're sorry.
%%
Love your enemies. It'll make 'em crazy.
%%
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
%%
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.
%%
I'm having a party in my pants. Want to come?
%%
Why be difficult when with a bit of effort you can be impossible?
%%
Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.
%%
A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine.
%%
Bureocrats do not change the course of the ship of state. They
merely adjust the compass.
%%
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than
you can with a kind word.
%%
Don't think of organ donations as giving up part of yourself to
keep a total stranger alive. It's really a total stranger giving
up almost all of themselves to keep part of you alive.
%%
Drink wet cement: Get Stoned.
%%
Kite fliers keep it up longer.
%%
If you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly.
%%
An easily understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a
complex, incomprehesable truth.
%%
You have a right to your opinions. I just don't want to hear them.
%%
Eat a live toad in the morning and nothing worse will happen to
you for the rest of the day.
%%
Nuke the whales
%%
Join the Army: travel to exotic distant lands; meet exciting,
unusual people and kill them.
%%
We'll get along fine as soon as you realize I'm God.
%%
Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less
shit you have to eat.
%%
I don't know. I don't care. And it doesn't make any difference.
%%
Those of you who think they know everything are very annoying to
those of us who do.
%%
It's not that you and I are so clever, but that the others are
such fools.
%%
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
%%
I'm not cynical. Just experianced.
%%
The torture never stops.
%%
Ignore alien orders.
%%
I know you think you uderstood what I said, but what you heard
was not what I meant.
%%
I don't have a drinking problem.
I drink
I get drunk
I fall down
No problem
%%
It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
%%
I'm for lust.
%%
Bullshit Detector. When alarm sounds, please re-engage your brain.
%%
There are no errors in this book, except this one.
%%
Although our information is incorrect, we do not vouch for it: Satie
%%
An advertisement offers to make your fortune, instructions sent on
receipt of $1. The reply is -- "Do as we do."
%%
Describe a circle, stroke its back and it turns vicious: Ionesco
%%
In principle I am against principles: Tristan Tzara
%%
All generalizations are dangerous, even this one: Dumas fils
%%
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules: G. B. Shaw
%%
Every exit is an entry somewhere else: Tom Stoppard
%%
Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.
        -- Karl Marx
%%
The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground: Buddha
%%
The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on
the flyswatter: Lichtenberg
%%
At the moment of meeting, the parting begins.
%%
God loves everyone in the world who doesn't love himself. Does God love
God?: Teilhard de Chardin
%%
I'm still an atheist, thank God: Luis Bunuel
%%
Substance is one of the greatest of our illusions: Eddington
%%
No light, but rather darkness visible: Milton
%%
What is the sound of one hand clapping?: Zen Buddhism
%%
The handleless axe without a blade: Lichtenberg
%%
What happens to your fist when you open your hand?: Zen Buddhism
%%
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?: Bertolt Brecht
%%
My reputation grows with every failure: Shaw
%%
The exception proves the rule.
%%
Shop sign: We buy anything saleable.
%%
A sadist is a person who is kind to a masochist.
%%
If you work on your mind with your mind, how can you avoid an immense
confusion?: Seng-Ts'an
%%
The more you know, the less you think you know.
%%
Mr. X was disappointed to find no suggestion box in the clubhouse
because he would like to put a suggestion in it about having one.
%%
That mythical island, whose inhabitants earned a precarious living by
taking in each other's washing: Lewis Carroll
%%
"The candidate had allowed television cameras into his hotel suite to
watch him watch television."
%%
Where everyone wants to come as early as possible,  then necessarily  by
far the larger part must come too  late: Lichtenberg
%%
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em and little
fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum: Augustus de Morgan
%%
The hour which gives us life begins to take it away: Seneca
%%
Who shall stand guard over the guards themselves?: Juvenal
%%
Living means dying: Engels
%%
What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? An
inconceivable disturbance.
%%
All modern thought is permeated by the idea of thinking the unthinkable:
Michel Foucault
%%
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms: George Wald
%%
The chicken was the egg's idea of getting more eggs: Samuel Butler
%%
The day is the same length as anything that is the same length as it:
Lewis Carroll
%%
Hasten slowly: Suetonius
%%
Achilles cannot defeat the tortoise if he thinks of space and time: Paul
Valery
%%
To endure what is unendurable is true endurance: Japanese proverb
%%
It is in changing that things find repose: Heraclitus
%%
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose: Alphonse Karr
%%
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy: Swift
%%
We can't leave the haphazard to chance: N.F. Simpson
%%
When Po-chang was asked about seeking for the Buddha nature: "It's much
like riding an ox in search of the ox"
%%
He spent his last shilling on a purse.
%%
I have always taken the tips of my fingers for the beginning of her
hair: Edmond Jabes
%%
He lifted himself up by his own bootstraps.
%%
The book above all others in the world which should be forbidden is a
catalogue of forbidden books: Lichtenberg
%%
It is no good trying to teach people who need to be taught: Aleister
Crowley
%%
A solipsist is like the man who gave up turning round because whatever
he saw was always in front of him: Ernst Mach
%%
A banker will lend you money only if you can prove you don't need it.
%%
What are husbands for, but to keep our mistresses?: George Moore
%%
Extremes meet: Louis-Sebastien Mercier
%%
A child, when it begins to speak, learns what it is that it knows: John
Hall Wheelock
%%
"Extremes meet," as the whiting said with its tail in its mouth: Thomas
Hood
%%
One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need money
the most, are the very ones that never have it: Finley Peter Dunne
%%
A poor man sells his saucepan to buy something to put in it.
%%
If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make
a wonderful living: Yiddish proverb
%%
The rich would have to eat money, but luckily the poor provide food:
Russian proverb
%%
The dearer a thing is, the cheaper as a general rule we sell it: Samuel
Butler
%%
Money costs too much: Lew Archer
%%
The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has
got, and not till then: William Ralph Inge
%%
Your imagination, my dear fellow, is worth more than you imagine: Louis
Aragon
%%
You get the best view of Paris from the Eiffel Tower, because you can't
see the Eiffel Tower from there.
%%
No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one: Nathaniel Hawthorne
%%
Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly and did not know, when he awoke, if
he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who now
dreamt he was a man.
%%
Coming events cast their shadows before.
%%
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are
continually flowing on: Heraclitus
%%
Tomorrow never comes.
%%
You cannot step into the same river once: Cratylus
%%
The supreme triumph of reason is to cast doubt upon its own validity:
Miguel de Unamuno
%%
The superfluous, a very necessary thing: Voltaire
%%
Only the ephemeral is of lasting value: Ionesco
%%
Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold:
Thomas Hobbes
%%
The thing that astonished him was that cats should have two holes cut in
their coat exactly at the place where their eyes are: Lichtenberg
%%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it: Dwight D.
Eisenhower
%%
Isn't the best defence always a good attack?: Ovid
%%
Another victory like that and we are done for: Pyrrhus
%%
Remember, to them it is us who are the enemy: N.F.Simpson
%%
He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser:
Nietzsche
%%
The child is father of the man: Wordsworth
%%
The clan of those without a clan: Robert Lebel
%%
Youth is wasted on the young: G.B. Shaw
%%
"My friend Jones will vouch for me." "How do we know that he can be
trusted?" "Oh, I assure you he can."
%%
Can't see the wood for the trees.
%%
P.S. If you don't receive this letter, it must have miscarried:
therefore I beg you to write and let me know.
%%
Can't see for looking.
%%
Trying to define humour is one of the definitions of humour: Saul
Steinberg
%%
The biter bit.
%%
When independence of principle consists in having no principle on which
to depend: C.C. Colton
%%
They must have the defects of their qualities: Balzac
%%
"Be spontaneous!"
%%
Who is worse shod than the shoemaker's wife?
%%
In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he
learns most: Epicurus
%%
Boredom -- the desire for desires: Leo Tolstoy
%%
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears:
Montaigne
%%
Many would be cowards if they had courage enough: Thomas Fuller
%%
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness: Daniel
Boorstin
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it: Wilde
%%
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion: Parkinson's
Law
%%
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so: J.S. Mill
%%
The medium is the message: Marshall McLuhan
%%
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow: Wilde
%%
I'm saying nothing and I'm saying it: John Cage
%%
Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little: Epicurus
%%
He who thinks he is raising a mound may only in reality be digging a
pit: Ernest Bramah
%%
A ring is a hole with a rim round it.
%%
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between
the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides: Schnabel
%%
You were conspicuous by your absence: Lord John Russell
%%
There is nothing like worrying about the bowels opening to stop them
opening: Dr. Clark Kennedy
%%
Bad is never good until worse happens: Danish proverb
%%
Life imitates art far more than art imitates life: Wilde
%%
Art lies in concealing art.
%%
How to paint a perfect painting -- make yourself perfect and then just
paint naturally: Robert M. Pirsig
%%
Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth: Picasso
%%
An artist who is self-taught is taught by a very ignorant person indeed:
Constable
%%
In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false:
Degas
%%
"When you say `hill'," the Queen interrupted, "I could show you hills,
in comparison, with which you'd call that a valley": Carroll
%%
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth: Alan
Watts
%%
It's the last straw that breaks the camel's back.
%%
To Wilde, a book on Italian literature showed a "want of knowledge that
must be the result of years of study."
%%
If you turn on the light quickly enough you can see what the dark looks
like.
%%
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire
absence of thought: Samuel Butler
%%
The field cannot well be seen from within the field: Emerson
%%
No region can include itself as well: Whitehead
%%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed:
Southern Californian Oracle
%%
How can you tell the dance from the dancer?
%%
Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find truth, for it is
hard to discover and hard to attain: Heraclitus
%%
The French for London is Paris: Ionesco
%%
What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? -- They are the
_irrefutable_ errors of mankind: Nietzsche
%%
God is not all-powerful as he cannot build a wall he cannot jump: Pascal
%%
If I am I because you are you, and if you are you because I am I, then I
am not I, and you are not you: Hassidic rabbi
%%
Consciousness is that which it is not, and is not that which it is:
Sartre
%%
If I don't know I don't know, I think I know. If I don't know I know, I
think I don't know: R.D. Laing
%%
If you think you're free, there's no escape possible: Baba Ram Dass
%%
The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else
of the same name: Aldous Huxley
%%
It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been
always otherwise: Dean Lattimer
%%
The word "dog" does not bite: William James
%%
Much that is inexpressible would be hardly worth expression, if one
could express it: Lichtenberg
%%
It is as if I were attempting to trace with the point of a pencil the
shadow of the tracing pencil: Nathaniel West
%%
In Leningrad freezing point is called melting point.
%%
Include me out: Sam Goldwyn
%%
This is the beginning of the end: Talleyrand
%%
Abstainer -- a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
himself a pleasure: Ambrose Bierce
%%
Less is more: Robert Browning
%%
The little I know, I owe to my ignorance: Sacha Guitry
%%
"I'm so glad I don't like asparagus," said the small girl to a
sympathetic friend. "Because if I did, I should have to eat it --and I
can't bear it!": Lewis Carroll
%%
        A young and studious monk went his teacher and said,
"Teach me all about the Buddha nature." His teacher pushed him
on the ground. The next day the student returned to his teacher,
saying, "I am wiser today than yesterday. Teach me about the
Buddha nature." The teacher clobbered him again.
        This went on for days until finally the young student
could stand it no more. He tearfully left the monastery and
went back to his temple at home. There he told the chief monk what
had happened. The chief monk said, "You are really stupid! That
monk was kinder to you than a grandmother!"
        The young student went back to the monastery, and found
his teacher. He threw the teacher on the ground. His teacher got
up and said, "Now I will teach you about the Buddha nature."
%%
        One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out
of the net! How will it live?"  The other said, "When you have
gotten out of the net, I'll tell you."
%%
        A monk said to Joshu, "Your stone bridge is widely
renowned, but coming here I find only a heap of rocks."
        Joshu said, "You see only the stones and not the
bridge."
        The monk said, "What is the bridge?"
        Joshu said, "What do you think we are walking on?"
%%
        Some professors asked a monk to lecture to them on
spiritual matters.  The monk ascended a podium, struck it once
with his stick, and descended. The academics were dumb-
founded.  The monk asked them, "Do you understand what I have
told you?"  One professor said, "I do not understand."
        The monk said, "I have concluded my lecture."
%%
        A student said to the chief monk, "Help me to
pacify my mind!"
The chief monk said, "Bring your mind over here and
I will pacify it."
        The student said, "But I don't know where my mind is!"
        The monk replied, "Then I have already pacified it."
%%
        A monk said to Joshu, "I have just entered this
monastery. Please teach me."
        "Have you eaten your breakfast?" Joshu asked.
        "Yes, I have," replied the student.
        "Then you had better wash your bowl."
%%
        A monk asked Nansen, "Is there any great spiritual
teaching that has not been preached to the people?"
        Nansen said, "There is."
        "What is the truth that has not been taught?"
        "Nothing," Nansen replied.
%%
        A young monk asked his teacher, "What is the true
spiritual nature of life?"
        His teacher picked up a bowl of water and threw it
in the student's face, saying "Go wash out your mouth!"
%%
        If you meet a person on the path, do not greet him
with words or silence.
        How will you greet him?
%%
        A monk, taking a bamboo stick, said to the people,
"If you call this a stick, you fall into the trap of words,
but if you do not call it a stick, you contradict facts.
So what do you call it?"
        At that time a monk in the assembly came forth.
He snatched the stick, broke it in two, and threw the pieces
across the room.
%%
        A monk sat with his three students. He took out his
fan and placed it in front of him, saying, "Without calling
it a fan, tell me what this is."
        The first said, "You couldn't call it a slop-bucket."
The master poked him with his stick.
        The second picked up the fan and fanned himself. He too
was rewarded with the stick.
        The third opened the fan, laid a piece of cake on it,
and served it to his teacher. The teacher said, "Eat your cake."
%%
     The chief monk at the monastery was looking for someone
to replace him. He called the monks together and placed in front
of them a water bottle. He said, "Without calling this a water
bottle, tell me what it is."
     One monk said, "You couldn't call it a block of wood."
     Another poured himself a drink.
     Just then the cook walked into the room and kicked the water
bottle over. The cook was made head of the monastery.
%%
        Two sages were standing on a bridge over a stream.
  One said to the other, "I wish I were a fish.  They are
  so happy."  The other replied, "How do you know whether
  fish are happy or not?  You're not a fish."  The first
  said, "But you're not me, so how do you know whether or
  not I know how fish feel?"
%%
        The student Doko came to a Zen master, and said,
"I am seeking the truth.  In what state of mind should I
train myself, so as to find it?"
        Said the master, "There is no mind, so you cannot put
it in any state.  There is no truth, so you cannot train yourself
for it."
        "If there is no mind to train, and no truth to find, why
do you have these monks gather before you every day to study
Zen and train themselves for this study?"
        "But I haven't an inch of room here," said the
master, "so how could the monks gather? I have no tongue,
so how could I call them together or teach them?"
        "Oh, how can you talk like this?" said Doko.
        "But if I have no tongue to talk to others, how can
I lie to you?"
        Then Doko said sadly, "I cannot follow you.  I cannot
understand you."
        "I cannot understand myself," said the master.
%%
        Joshu asked the teacher Nansen, "What is the True Way?"
        Nansen answered, "Every way is the true Way."
        Joshu asked, "Can I study it?"
        Nansen answered, "The more you study, the further from
the Way."
        Joshu asked, "If I don't study it, how can I know it?"
        Nansen answered, "The Way does not belong to things seen:
nor to things unseen.  It does not belong to things known: nor to
things unknown.  Do not seek it, study it, or name it.  To find
yourself on it, open yourself as wide as the sky."
%%
    A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a
curious monk.
        "It is right before your eyes," said the master.
        "Why do I not see it for myself?"
        "Because you are thinking of yourself."
        "What about you: do you see it?"
        "So long as you see double, saying 'I don't,' and
    'you do,' and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the
     master.
        "When there is neither 'I' nor 'you,' can one see it?"
        "When there is neither 'I' nor 'you,' who is the one
    that wants to see it?"
%%
        Has a dog a Buddha-nature?
        This is the most serious question of all.
        If you say 'yes' or 'no'
        You lose your own Buddha-nature.
%%
        A wandering monk saw on his travels a gigantic old oak
tree standing in front of the door of a monastery.  Under it sat
the chief monk.  The traveler called out to him, "This is a useless
tree!  If you wanted to make a ship, it would soon rot.  If you
wanted to make tools, they would soon break.  You can't do anything
useful with this tree, and that's why it has become so old."
        The chief monk replied, "Keep your mouth shut! What do
you know about it?  You compare this tree to your cultivated trees;
your orange, pear and apple trees, and all others that bear fruit.
Even before they can ripen their fruit, people attack and violate
them.  Their branches are broken, their wings are torn.  Their
own gifts bring harm to them, and they cannot live out their
natural span.  If this tree had been useful in any way, would it
have ever reached this size?  You useless mortal man, what do you
know about useless trees?"
%%
   Two monks went fishing in an electron river.  The
   first monk drew out his network, and out flopped a hacker.
   The second monk cried, "The poor hacker! How can it live
   outside of the network?"  The first monk said, "When you
   have learned to live outside the network, then you will know."
%%
   What is the vector which is orthogonal to itself?
%%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists.  Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added concentration
needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional objects...
%%
                      THE STORY OF CREATION
                               or
                         THE MYTH OF URK

In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market.  And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers.  And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions.  DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code.  And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt...

                                -- Rico Tudor
%%
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
%%
Brooke's Law:
                Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn
                fool discovers something which either abolishes the
                system or expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
                                -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
                                -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
                                -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"You must realize that the computer has it in for you.  The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."
%%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt:  Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how not to.  So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Everyting should be built top-down, except the first time.
%%
"If you have to hate, hate gently"
%%
Think of it!  With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
%%
A bather whose clothing was strewed
By breezes that left her quite nude,
        Saw a man come along
        And, unless I'm quite wrong,
You expected this line to be lewd.
%%
A beat schizophrenic said, "Me?
I am not I, I'm a tree."
        But another, more sane,
        Shouted, "I'm a Great Dane!"
And covered his pants leg with pee.
%%
A mathematician named Hall
Has a hexahedronical ball,
        And the cube of its weight
        Times his pecker's, plus eight
Is his phone number -- give him a call..
%%
Once sat herself down on a molehill.
        A curious mole
        Nosed into her hole --
Ms. Vogel's ok, but the mole's ill.
%%
A pretty young maiden from France
Decided she'd "just take a chance."
        She let herself go
        For an hour or so
And now all her sisters are aunts.
%%
A remarkable race are the Persians;
They have such peculiar diversions.
        They make love the whole day
        In the usual way
And save up the nights for perversions.
%%
A team playing baseball in Dallas
Called the umpire blind out of malice.
        While this worthy had fits
        The team made eight hits
And a girl in the bleachers named Alice.
%%
A wanton young lady from Wimley
Reproached for not acting quite primly
        Said, "Heavens above!
        I know sex isn't love,
But it's such an entrancing facsimile."
%%
A wanton young lady from Wimley
Reproached for not acting quite primly
        Said, "Heavens above!
        I know sex isn't love,
But it's such an entrancing facsimile."
%%
A widow who fancied a man some
Was diddled three times in a hansome.
        When she clamored for more
        Her young man became sore
And exclaimed "My name's Simpson not Samson."
%%
A worried young man from Stamboul
Founds lots of red spots on his tool.
        Said the doctor, a cynic,
        "Get out of my clinic;
Just wipe off the lipstick, you fool!"
%%
An architect fellow named Yoric
Could, when feeling euphoric,
        Display for selection
        Three kinds of erection --
Corinthian, ionic, and doric.
%%
He hated to mend, so young Ned
Called in a cute neighbor instead.
        Her husband said, "Vi,
        When you stitched up his torn fly,
Did you have to bite off the thread?"
%%
In the Garden of Eden sat Adam,
Massaging the bust of his madam,
        He chuckled with mirth,
        For he knew that on earth,
There were only two boobs and he had 'em.
%%
Said a horny young girl from Milpitas,
"My favorite sport is coitus."
        But a fullback from State
        Made her period late,
And now she has athlete's fetus
%%
Said a swinging young chick named Lyth
Whose virtue was largely a myth,
        "Try as hard as I can,
        I can't find a man
That it's fun to be virtuous with."
%%
My back aches, my pussy is sore;
I simply can't fuck any more;
        I'm covered with sweat,
        And you haven't come yet,
And my God, it's a quarter to four!
%%
There once was a couple named Kelley,
Who lived their life belly to belly.
        Because in their haste
        They used Library Paste,
Instead of Petroleum Jelly.
%%
There once was a freshman named Lin,
Whose tool was as thin as a pin,
        A virgin named Joan
        From a bible belt home,
Said "This won't be much of a sin."
%%
There once was a hacker named Ken
Who inherited truckloads of Yen
        So he built him some chicks
        Of silicon chips
And hasn't been heard from since then.
%%
There once was a lady from Exeter,
So pretty that men craned their necks at her.
        One was even so brave
        As to take out and wave
The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.
%%
There once was a plumber from Leigh,
Who was plumbing his maid by the sea,
        Said she, "Please stop plumbing,
        I think someone's coming!"
Said he, "Yes I know love, it's me."
%%
There once was a queen of Bulgaria
Whose bush had grown hairier and hairier,
        Till a prince from Peru
        Who came up for a screw
Had to hunt for her cunt with a terrier.
%%
There once was a Scot named McAmeter
With a tool of prodigious diameter.
        It was not the size
        That cause such surprise;
'Twas his rhythm -- iambic pentameter.
%%
There once was a young man named Gene
Who invented a screwing machine
        Concave and convex
        It served either sex
And it played with itself in between.
%%
There was a bluestocking in Florence
Wrote anti-sex pamphlets in torrents,
        Till a Spanish grandee,
        Got her off with his knee,
And she burned all her works with abhorrence.
%%
There was a gay countess of Bray,
And you may think it odd when I say,
        That in spite of high station,
        Rank and education,
She always spelled cunt with a "k".
%%
There was a young fellow named Bliss
Whose sex life was strangely amiss,
        For even with Venus
        His recalcitrant penis
Would never do better than t
                           h
                           i
                           s
                           .
%%
There was a young girl from Hong Kong
Whose cervical cap was a gong.
        She said with a yell,
        As a shot rang her bell,
"I'll give you a ding for a dong!"
%%
There was a young girl named Sapphire
Who succumbed to her lover's desire.
        She said, "It's a sin,
        But now that it's in,
Could you shove it a few inches higher?"
%%
There was a young girl of Angina
Who stretched catgut across her vagina.
        From the love-making frock
        (With the proper sized cock)
Came Tocata and Fugue in D minor.
%%
There was a young girl of Darjeeling
Who could dance with such exquisite feeling
        There was never a sound
        For miles around
Save of fly-buttons hitting the ceiling.
%%
There was a young lad name of Durcan
Who was always jerkin' his gherkin.
        His father said, "Durcan!
        Stop jerkin' your gherkin!
Your gherkin's for ferkin', not jerkin'.
%%
There was a young lady from Maine
Who claimed she had men on her brain.
        But you knew from the view,
        As her abdomen grew,
It was not on her brain that he'd lain.
%%
There was a young lady named Clair
Who possessed a magnificent pair;
        At least so I thought
        Till I saw one get caught
On a thorn, and begin losing air.
%%
There was a young lady named Hall,
Wore a newspaper dress to a ball.
        The dress caught on fire
        And burned her entire
Front page, sporting section, and all.
%%
There was a young lady named Twiss
Who said she thought fucking a bliss,
        For it tickled her bum
        And caused her to come
.siht ekil gniyl ylbatrofmoc elihW
%%
There was a young lady of Norway
Who hung by her toes in a doorway.
        She said to her beau
        "Just look at me Joe
I think I've discovered one more way."
%%
There was a young man from Bel-Aire
Who was screwing his girl on the stair,
        But the banister broke
        So he doubled his stroke
And finished her off in mid-air.
%%
There was a young man named Crockett
Whose balls got caught in a socket.
        His wife was a bitch,
        And she threw the switch,
As Crockett went off like a rocket.
%%
There was a young man of Cape Horn
Who wished he had never been born,
        And he wouldn't have been
        If his father had seen
That the end of the rubber was torn.
%%
There was a young man of St. John's
Who wanted to bugger the swans.
        But the loyal hall porter
        Said, "Pray take my daughter!
Those birds are reserved for the dons."
%%
There was a young whore from kaloo
Who filled her vagina with glue.
        She said with a grin,
        "If they pay to get in,
They can pay to get out again too!"
%%
There was an old man of the port
Whose prick was remarkably short.
        When he got into bed,
        The old woman said,
"This isn't a prick; it's a wart!"
%%
There was an old pirate named Bates
Who was learning to rhumba on skates.
        He fell on his cutlass
        Which rendered him nutless
And practically useless on dates.
%%
 ``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
%%
 ``The most happy marriage I   can picture would be the
union of a deaf man     to a blind woman.'' -- Coleridge
%%
 ``Were it not for imagination, sir,   a man would be as
happy in the arms of a chambermaid as a duchess.'' --
Dr.      Johnson
%%
 ``If a man hears much that a woman says, she is not
beautiful.'' -- Haskins
%%
 ``A   man does not look behind the door unless he has
stood there     himself.'' -- Du Bois
%%
 ``A   lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of
the     house.'' -- Moliere
%%
 ``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
%%
 ``A   woman may very well form a friendship with a man,
but     for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little
physical antipathy.'' -- Nietzsche
%%
 ``Men who cherish for women   the highest respect are
seldom popular with     them.'' -- author unknown
%%
 ``Woman inspires us   to great things, and prevents us
from achieving them.'' -- Dumas
%%
 ``Nature has given women so   much power that the law has
very wisely     given them little.'' -- Dr.  Johnson
%%
 ``The great   question... which I have not been able to
answer... is, "What     does a woman want?''  -- Freud
%%
 ``Home life   as we understand it is no more natural to
us than a cage is to a cockatoo.'' -- 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 wedding is a funeral where a man smells his own
flowers.
%%
 A man is not complete until   he is married -- then he is
finished.
%%
 Marriage is   a rest period between romances.
%%
 Marriage is   the sole cause of divorce.
%%
 Marriage is   a trip between Niagra Falls and Reno.
%%
 Marriage is   an institution -- but who wants to live in
 one?
%%
 Marriage is   the process of finding out what kind of
person your     spouse would have really preferred.
%%
 Marriage is   the triumph of imagination over
intelligence.  Second marriage is the triumph of hope
 over experience.
%%
 Marriage is   not a word; it is a sentence.
%%
 Trust everybody ... then cut the cards.
%%
Two wrongs are only the beginning.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
%%
To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your
principles.
%%
Exceptions prove the rule ... and wreck the budget.
%%
Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
%%
Quality assurance dosen't.
%%
The tough part of a Data Processing Manager's job is that users don't
really know what they want, but they know for certain what they don't
want.
%%
Exceptions always outnumber rules.
%%
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is
research.
%%
No one is listening until you make a mistake.
%%
He who hesitates is probably right.
%%
The ideal resume will turn up one day after the position is filled.
%%
If somthing is confidential, it will be left in the copier machine.
%%
One child is not enough, but two children are far too many.
%%
A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.
%%
The hardness of the butter is in direct proportion to the softness of
the butter.
%%
The bag that breaks is the one with the eggs.
%%
When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take
two weeks to clear.  When there are insufficient funds, checks clear
overnight.
%%
The book you spent $20.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.
%%
The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs.
%%
You never want the one you can afford.
%%
Never ask the barber if you need a haircut or a salesman if his is a good
price.
%%
If it says "one size fits all," it dosen't fit anyone.
%%
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%%
The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.
%%
Love letters, business contracts and money due you always arrive three
weeks late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.
%%
When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall nearby,
while all other coins will roll out of sight.
%%
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
%%
Experience is somthing you don't get until just after you need it.
%%
Life can be only understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
%%
Interchangable parts won't.
%%
No matter which way you go, it's uphill and against the wind.
%%
If enough data is collected, anyghing may be proven by  statistical
methods.
%%
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their
level of incompetence.
%%
Progress is made on alternative Fridays.
%%
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in
session.
%%
The hidden flaw never remains hidden.
%%
As soon as the stewardess serves the coffee, the airline rencounters
turbulence.
%%
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%%
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either
of them being made.
%%
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
%%
When reviewing your notes for a test, the most important ones will be
illegible.
%%
A free agent is anything but.
%%
The least experienced fisherman always catches the biggest fish.
%%
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
%%
The one item you want is never the one on sale.
%%
The telephone will ring when you are outside the door, fumbling for your
keys.
%%
If only one price can be obtained for a quotation, the price will be
 unreasonable.
%%
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting."-Alan Dean Foster "To the
Vanishing Point"
%%
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe:
%%
All my life I said I wanted to be someone...I can see now that
I should have been more specific.
%%
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"  -Bill Davidsen
%%
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon
%%
    "Women and cats do as they dammed well please.
     Men and dogs had best learn to live with it..."

    Alan Holbrook
%%
"I'm at the corner of Walk and Don't Walk...."
%%
    Two obviously high-class old ladies are strolling down a city
    street when they run across a grizzled, ragged old derelict
    lying drunk in the gutter, covered with garbage, sewer water
    running all over him.  "Hmmmph," sniffs one of the old ladies
    haughtily.  "Cleanliness is next to godliness.  William Shakespeare!"

    The drunk opens one yellowed, rheumy old eye, stares at her
    balefully, and replies, "Fuck you.  Tennessee Williams..."
%%
A retired dentist who loves to fish. "Open wide," he mutters to
the unseen fish as he waits for a tug on the line. "Now bite down.
This may sting just a little bit."
%%
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." -- Sigmund Freud
%%
"a woman is only a woman,
but a good cigar is a smoke"
%%
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of
things. The decayed and degraded state of
moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that
Nothing is worth war is much worse. The per-
son who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight, nothing which is more important
than his own personal safety, is a miserable
creature and has no chance of being free unless
made and kept so by the exertions of better
men than himself.
              --- John Stewart Mill
%%
Duty  then  is the sublimest word in the English language.  You
should do your duty in all things.  You can never do more, you should
never wish to do less.
                General Robert E. Lee
%%
We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of
no confusion.
        -- Ronald Graham, "Rudiments of Ramsey Theory"
%%
        I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a
most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,
baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a
fricassee, or a ragout.
        -- Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"
%%
        Over the past ten years, for the first time, intelligence had
become socially correct for girls.
        -- Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"
%%
He, in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have
ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.
        -- Henry Fielding, "Jonathan Wild"
%%
In the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, it's often useful to have a
nice, solid piece of wood in your hands.
        -- Ian Faith, manager of Spinal Tap
%%
All obvious theorems are true.
        -- Pommersheim's Principle
All true theorems are obvious.
        -- Keane's Kriterion
%%
Ya gotta feel sorry for all them convicts in New Hampshire, stampin'
out license plates that say "Live free or Die."
        -- ???
%%
I'm a clown.  That's my sole mechanism of defense.  Very few people
will go out of their way to punish a clown.
        -- ???
%%
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains
a fool forever.
        -- Old Chinese saying
%%
  Monty Python

"In accordance with our principles of free enterprise and
healthy competition, I'm going to ask you two to fight to
the death for it."
%%
  Ripping Yarns

"Mind you, not as bad as the night Archie Pettigrew ate some
sheep's testicles for a bet...God, that bloody sheep kicked him..."
%%
"It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of
gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
"Hit it."
%%
  Pink Panther

"Kato, what is going on in that little yellow brain of yours?"

        -- Chief Inspector Clouseau, in reference to a priceless white\
           Steinway piano.
%%
  Dave Barry

Your digestive system is your body's Fun House, whereby food goes
on a long, dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists
and turns, being attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and
not knowing until the last minute whether it will be turned into a
useful body part or ejected into the Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter.
We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is
second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little
scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds
if we felt like it.
%%
  The Odd Couple

"A penny for your thoughts?"
"A dollar for your death."
%%
  The Princess Bride

"Inconceivable!"
"You use that word a lot.  I do not think it means what you think
it does."
%%
  Daffy Duck

"Ho!  Ha-ha!  Guard!  Turn!  Parry!  Dodge!  Spin!  Ha!  Thrust!"
        --D. Duck
%%
"Consequences, shmonsequences!  So long as I'm rich!"
        -- Daffy Duck
%%
"Mine!  Mine!  It's all mine!"
        -- D. Duck
%%
  Politicians

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves,
only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that
there may be something to them we are missing."
        -- Gamel Abdel Nasser
%%
"Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters."
        -- Ross Presser
%%
   All men dream: but not equally.  Those who dream by night in
   the  dusty  recesses  of their minds wake in the day to find
   that it  was  vanity:  but  the  dreamers  of  the  day  are
   dangerous  men, for they may act their dream with open eyes,
   to make it possible.
                                      T. E. Lawrence
                                      _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_
%%
Always do what you are afraid to do.
                       Emerson
%%
"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's  more
true  that  power attracts the corruptible.  The sane are
usually attracted by other things than power.  When  they
do  act,  they  think of it as service, which has limits.
The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is  insa-
tiable, implacable."
               David Brin
             _The Postman_
%%
H. L. Mencken:     "The American public knows what it wants,
                    and deserves to get it good and hard."
%%
"Hankerin' for trouble, eh? Well I would like--"
[aside] "I would like? I would like a trip to Europe!"
"--I would like..."
                  --Daffy Duck, "Dripalong Daffy"
%%
"Go on! Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers
 and gunpowder and cordite!"
                         --Daffy Duck, "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!"
%%
"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is
water! 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. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."
                     --Groucho Marx, "Animal Crackers"
%%
"Go! And never darken my towels again!"
                      --Groucho Marx, "Duck Soup".
%%
"Oh, I know it's a penny here and a penny there, but look at me.
I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
                       --Groucho Marx, "Monkey Business"
%%
"The shortest distance between two points is through Hell."
            --Brian Clark
%%
There are three side effects of acid.  Enchanced long term memory,
decreased short term memory, and I forget the third.
                        -Timothy Leary
%%
"I'm a great housekeeper.  I get divorced.  I keep the house".
   --  Zsa Zsa Gabor
%%
 James Bond: What do you expect me to talk?
 A.Goldfinger: No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

                          Goldfinger
%%
"Well, now, hold onta yer horses, there, Frazier.  I mean, as a
psychiatrist, isn't it your job to, uh, `seek and uphold the truth'?"
"Oh, get real, Cliff."
   --- Cheers
%%
A witty saying proves nothing.
   --- Voltaire
%%
"J. D. Salinger... John Knowles... even James Kirkwood and that
guy Don Bredes... they've destroyed being an adolescent,Garraty.
If you're a sixteen-year-old boy, you can't discuss the pains of
adolescent love with any decency anymore.  You just come off
sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon."
                                    Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.
%%
Old soldiers never die.  Young ones do.
%%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%%
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.
%%
Cole's Law:
         Thinly sliced cabbage.
%%
A conservative is one who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
%%
Show respect for age.  Drink good Scotch for a change.
%%
Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the
on roof and gets stuck.
%%
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%%
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
%%
Winston Churchill: "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats
look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
%%
Harry Bender:
              "Imagine the appeals,
             Dissents and remandments,
              If lawyers had written
               The Ten Commandments"
%%
James Thurber: "I think that maybe if women and children
were in charge we would get somewhere."
%%
Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C.": "If man evolved from the
ape, how come there are still apes around? Some of them were
given choices."
%%
Bill Watterson, cartoonist: "Sometimes I think the surest
sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe
is that none of it has tried to contact us."
%%
Unidentified Scientist:  "After two years of trying,
scientists at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center have
managed to get a chimpanzee pregnant."  Which proves that no
task is repugnant to a true scientist.
%%
Irv Kupcinet: "What can you say about a society that says
God is dead and Elvis is alive?"
%%
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
                -- Ben Franklin
%%
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."
%%
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the Universe,
"the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
                -- Stephen Crane
%%
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.
%%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
                -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
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.