(2) Nothing is always.
(3) Everything is sometimes.
%
-1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
+1.80 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
the law!
%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%
-100 buckets of bits on the bus
+100 buckets of bits on the bus
100 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
-FF buckets of bits on the bus
+FF buckets of bits on the bus
-FF buckets of bits on the bus
+FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
-FE buckets of bits on the bus
+FE buckets of bits on the bus
ad infinitum...
%
%
$3,000,000
%
-"355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
-simulation!"
+355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
+simulation!
+%
+3 syncs represent the trinity -- init, the child and the eternal zombie
+process. In doing 3, you're paying homage to each and I think such
+traditions are important in this shallow, mercurial business we find
+ourselves in.
+ -- Jordan K. Hubbard
%
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
%
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
+ -- Mahatma Gandhi
%
A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific
rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results
from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball
and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the
-ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical
-phenomena.
+ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical phenomena.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-- Bill Vaughan
%
-A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
+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
+ -- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
%
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.
+ -- Bernie Greenberg
%
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 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 cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen
lantern.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
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 times 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
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
-- D. Gries
%
-"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
-dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
+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 free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
-A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
+A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
ducks.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *_\b_\b_\b_\bthat _\b_\b_\bhad _\b_\bto _\b_\b_\b_\bmean _\b_\b_\b_\b_\b_\b_\b_\b_\bsomething*.
- -- S. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
+ -- S. Morgenstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
of).
G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
-M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of enui.
+M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of ennui.
O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
-U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
-W is for Winie, embedded in ice, X is for Xercies, devoured by mice.
+U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
+W is for Winnie, embedded in ice, X is for Xerxes, devoured by mice.
Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
- -- Edward Gorey "The Gastly Crumb Tines"
+ -- Edward Gorey "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"
%
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
%
-A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide
-who has the better lawyer.
+A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost
%
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%
-A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
-%
-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 --
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
+ -- Alan Perlis
%
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
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.
+ -- Alan Perlis
%
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
- -- H. H. Munroe
+ -- H. H. Munroe, "Saki"
%
A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
%
paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
fall over gently onto their backs.
- -- Audobon Society Magazine
+
+ -- Audubon Society Magazine
+
+
+[From the BBC, 2001-02-02:
+ For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
+monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as Lynx
+helicopters passed overhead.
+ "Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
+said team leader Dr. Richard Stone.
+ "As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
+calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
+with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
+really."
+ The conclusion, said Dr. Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
+(1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects" on
+king penguins.]
%
A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom
do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
%
-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.
%
A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
-A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
+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,
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
%
-"A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!"
- -- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"
+A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
+ -- The Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Sumatra"
%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
-And he answered:
+And the Master answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
%
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
+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
+series of incomprehensible 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."
+information in the first place.
-- IEEE Grid news magazine
%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
to make a travesty of the game.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
-"A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked
-out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon."
+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 radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives."
+A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.
%
A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:
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
+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
undreamed of by its author.
-- S. C. Johnson
%
+A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
+Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
+other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
+new versions of their own innards!
+ -- Michael O'Brien
+%
A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
in students.
-- John Ciardi
%
-"A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."
- -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
-%
-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 University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
+ -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.
-- Tennessee 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, but saying something pointless gets
people's attention.
%
-"A witty saying proves nothing."
+A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire
%
-"A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to
+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."
+matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times.
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
%
-A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
-in God.
+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
%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%
-"About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
-ends."
+About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%
Absence makes the heart go wander.
Accident, n.:
A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
+ -- Foolish Dictionary
%
Accidents cause History.
According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
dies.
%
-"According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to
+According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to
live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came
in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much.
-Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime."
+Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime.
-- David Letterman
%
Accordion, n.:
A bagpipe with pleats.
%
Accuracy, n.:
- The vice of being right
+ The vice of being right.
%
ACHTUNG!!!
%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%
-Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
+Acid absorbs 47 times its 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."
+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!"
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."
+ -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
%
Admiration, n.:
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Adolescence, n.:
The stage between puberty and adultery.
%
-"Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
-like you ..."
+Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
+like you ...
-- Gilda Radner
%
Adore, v.:
-- Sinclair Lewis
%
Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
-then at least be asceptic.
+then at least be aseptic.
%
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
more advanced than the lichen family.
- -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
- Do"
+ -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%
-"... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
-quotations."
+... 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
It was so granted.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
-"After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
+After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
-cost to others, to win advancement."
+cost to others, to win advancement.
-- Norman Thomas
%
After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
%
Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
%
-Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
+Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
there's the rub.
For all dreams are not equal,
But at least one must be lived ... and died.
%
-"Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
+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."
+up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers.
-- A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
%
-Air is water with holes in it
+Air is water with holes in it.
%
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
-- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
without thinking.
%
"All flesh is grass"
- -- Isiah
+ -- Isaiah
Smoke a friend today.
%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
%
-All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power
+All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
Socrates.
-- Woody Allen
%
-"All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us
-sane."
+All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane.
%
-"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
-specific."
+All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
+specific.
-- Jane Wagner
%
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
every organism to live beyond its income.
- -- Samuel Butler
+ -- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
- -- E. Rutherford
+ -- Ernest Rutherford
%
-"All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right
-hands."
+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 syllogisms have three parts; therefore this is not a syllogism.
%
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
-"... all the modern inconveniences ..."
+... all the modern inconveniences ...
-- Mark Twain
%
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
%
All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for
fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
+ -- Henry Tyroon
%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%
%
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
%
-"Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
-that way."
+Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
+that way.
%
Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
%
pictures on the doors.
-- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
%
-"Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it."
+Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it.
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
is always polite to traffic cops.
%
-"An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to
+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."
+not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
-- David Letterman
%
An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
excellence:
-"The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
+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
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."
+they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
%
-"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
-picturesque liar."
+... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
+picturesque liar.
-- Mark Twain
%
An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
-"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge."
+An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge.
%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%
-"... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
-your own."
+... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
+your own.
-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
Preposterous Words
%
Orson Welles.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%
-"...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
-courtesy detail."
+...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
+courtesy detail.
%
And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a
horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
offers whiter teeth *___\b\b\band* fresher breath.
- -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
- Do"
+ -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
Antonym, n.:
The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%
-Any clod can have the facts, but having an opinion is an art.
- -- Charles McCabe
-%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe
%
undoubtedly true.
-- Solomon Short
%
-Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
+Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
+ -- Andy Finkel, Commodore-Amiga Inc.
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
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
%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%
-Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
+Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
%
-"Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution"
+Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution.
%
Aphorism, n.:
A concise, clever statement.
the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of
coding bums.
%
-"APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I
-can't read any of them."
+APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I
+can't read any of them.
-- Roy Keir
%
Aquadextrous, adj.:
%
Are you a turtle?
%
-Are you a turtle?
-%
-"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
+Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Art is anything you can get away with.
- -- Marshall McLuhan.
+ -- Marshall McLuhan
%
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
-- Paul Gauguin
As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
-"that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ...
+"that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?"
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
-"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
+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."
+meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill
%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
%
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."
+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.
%
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
-As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free
+As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free
variable."
%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
for an answer.
%
-"Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
+Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it,
-she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'"
+she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'
-- David Letterman
%
Ass, n.:
and dying broke.
-- Stanley Walker
%
-"At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
+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."
+under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
%
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
-- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
-challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
- -- The Washington Post Magazine, 9 June, 1985
-%
-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 least they're ___________\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bEXPERIENCED incompetents"
+At least they're ___________\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bEXPERIENCED incompetents
%
At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
thumb with a hammer.
-- Stanley Kaufman
%
Automobile, n.:
- A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
-pedestrians.
+ 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, "Deteriorata"
%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%
-"Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
-we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you."
- -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
+Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
+we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
+ -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a student entering
+ school in the fall after the Kent State shootings
%
Bacchus, n.:
A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
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.
+ukulele.
%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
%
Barach's Rule:
- An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
-physician.
+ An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.
%
Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
floor -- especially in the dark.
Basic is a high level languish.
APL is a high level anguish.
%
-"BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'."
+BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.
%
-Basic, n.:
+BASIC, n.:
A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
%
%
Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
%
-Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
+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 security conscious -- National defense is at stake.
+Be security conscious -- National Defense is at stake.
%
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%
-Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's
-ego.
+Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
%
Begathon, n.:
A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better
looking and richer male friend.
%
-"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
-%
"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
%
Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
(2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
(3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
%
-"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
+Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
-- Time Bandits
%
Besides the device, the box should contain:
santa claus <north pole >town
cat /etc/passwd >list
-ncheck list
+ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
planets, this may be the first message received from us.
- -- The Realist, November, 1964.
+ -- The Realist, November, 1964
%
-"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
-tried it."
+Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
+tried it.
-- Donald Knuth
%
Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
drip under pressure.
%
-"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
+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."
+their ignorance the hard way.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
Binary, adj.:
Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
%
-"Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
-thing as division."
+Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
+thing as division.
%
Bipolar, adj.:
Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
The first and direst of all disasters.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
-Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
+Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
%
Bizoos, n.:
The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...
%
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
+ -- Herbert Hoover
%
-Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as
-Wheels.
+Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles,
+for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
%
-BLISS is ignorance
+BLISS is ignorance.
%
Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%
-BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
+BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
%
Boob's Law:
You always find something in the last place you look.
Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
%
-"Boy, life takes a long time to live
+Boy, life takes a long time to live.
-- Steven Wright
%
Boy, n.:
-- James Thurber
%
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
- -- Kin Hubbard
+ -- Kim Hubbard
%
Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the
unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
(gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend
to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
- -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking
- Style"
+ -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking Style"
%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
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..."
+BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive."
-- Jay Ward
%
Bumper sticker:
-"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
-manufacture"
+All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
+manufacture.
%
Bureaucrat, n.:
A person who cuts red tape sideways.
(4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
-- Robert Burns
%
-... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
+ 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
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
-"But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations
-paws."
+But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations paws.
%
-"But I don't like Spam!!!!"
+But I don't like Spam!!!!
%
-... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
+ 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
-- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
Compilers"
%
-"But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
-to the nearest gas station."
+But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
+to the nearest gas station.
%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
increases.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
-"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
+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?"
+explained yet about the bytes?
%
... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
-- Virginia Masters
%
-"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
-computers?"
+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;
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,
+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)"
+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?!?"]
%
-"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
-to suspect 'Hungry' ..."
+By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
+to suspect 'Hungry' ...
-- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
%
By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I
a man's head.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
-"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."
+Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.
-- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
%
Cahn's Axiom:
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb
%
-"Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
-Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
+Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
+Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept.
%
-"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
+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."
+Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
+Corner, Vermont.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
%
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
+ -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
- -- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"
%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%
-CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
+CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
%
Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
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--
+Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
+But it's very funny--
Did you ever try buying them without money?
-- Ogden Nash
%
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
+Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
%
Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're
%
Cleveland still lives. God ____\b\b\b\bmust be dead.
%
-"Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day."
+Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day.
%
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
%
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
-"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."
+Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong.
-- Blair Houghton
%
-Coincidence, n.:
+Coincidence, n.:
You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
going on.
%
of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
-- David Guaspari
%
-Computer programmers do it byte by byte
+Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
%
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
theory.
than the estimate the job will cost.
%
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
- -- LaRouchefoucauld
+ -- La Rochefoucauld
%
Concept, n.:
Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
good for dandruff.
-- Peter de Vries
%
-Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the
-situation.
+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
+you undoubtedly 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
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
-Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
- -- H. L. Mencken
+Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
+ -- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy"
%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%
Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
wish you weren't.
%
-"Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
- -- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]
+Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich.
+ -- Daffy Duck, "Ali Baba Bunny", [1957, Chuck Jones]
%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
-"Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
-technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."
+Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
+technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat.
%
Conversation, n.:
A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
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
+[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
+ -- A. E. Neuman
%
Critic, n.:
A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
"Hello, cursor!"
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
-"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
+Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
-business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
- -- Johnny Hart
-%
-"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
-eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
-business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
+business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
-- Johnny Hart
%
Cynic, n.:
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cynic, n.:
- One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced
-eye.
+ One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
%
Dare to be naive.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
%
-%DCL-MEM-BAD, bad memory
-VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
+%DCL-E-MEM-BAD, bad memory
+-VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
%
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business
-signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a
+signs to alert the reader that an "S" is coming up at the end of a
word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when
-creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put
+creating hand-lettered small-business signs is that you should put
quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT
DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%
-"Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'".
+Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.
%
-Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down
+Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
%
Death is only a state of mind.
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.
+ -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
%
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
default, n.:
[Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will
-come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear.
+come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
#define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
-#define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
+#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
+%
+Definitions of hardware and software for dummies:
+ Hardware is what you kick;
+ Software is what you curse.
%
DELETE A FORTUNE!
buttered on.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
-"Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow."
+Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
%
Demand the establishment of the government
in its rightful home at Disneyland.
%
-Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than
+Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than
we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
since withdrawn.
%
Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
-board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
+board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
%
Dentist, n.:
A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
-Despising machines to a man,
-The Luddites joined up with the Klan,
- And ride out by night
- In a sheeting of white
-To lynch all the robots they can.
- -- C. M. and G. A. Maxson
-%
Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will
be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over
the table.
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."
+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.
Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
anger.
%
-"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
-with ketchup."
+Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
+with ketchup.
%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And
what the hell, they caught him.
- -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the
- Tick-Tock Man"
+ -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%
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."
+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 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 let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.
%
Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
%
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."
+Don't say yes until I finish talking.
-- Darryl F. Zanuck
%
Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.
%
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 tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
+get more wax!!
%
Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
avoiding you.
-- The Old Farmer's Almanac
%
-"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
-good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
+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
%
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already
%
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
+Don Ameche: 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
E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
%
Double Bucky
- (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
+ (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
+Oh, I sure wish that I,
+Had a couple of bits more!
+Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four.
+
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
-- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
+ (to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit
+ be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use
+ by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"])
%
Double-Blind Experiment, n.:
An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a
-belief in the tooth fairy.
+strong belief in the tooth fairy.
%
Down with categorical imperative!
%
-"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
+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
%
Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
%
-Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic
-route!
+Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!
%
Ducharme's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
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 ...
+it holds the universe together.
-- Carl Zwanzig
%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_\a~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_\a~{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 Maugham
+Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
+nothing whatever to do with it.
+ -- W. Somerset Maugham (last words)
%
E Pluribus Unix
%
%
Earth is a beta site.
%
-"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."
+Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
-- Jeff Berner
%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
means the puzzle is solved.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
- Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
+Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
%
-"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work."
+Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work.
%
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
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
+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
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
+
+Hacker MacKensie
+Writing the code for a program that no one will run
+It's nearly done
+Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's nobody there.
+What does he care?
+
+All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
+All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
+Ah, look at all the lonely users.
+Ah, look at all the lonely users.
%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%
Electrocution, n.:
Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%
-Elevators smell different to midgets
+Elevators smell different to midgets.
%
Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-m"\bumsige Burggoven
Dir mohmen R"\bath ausgraben.
- -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
-- Woody Allen
speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow
%
-"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit
-there."
+Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
%
-"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
+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
day.
%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
-just how busy they are.
+just how busy they are?
%
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."
Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this
woman and stop her.
%
-"Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one
+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."
+highly-motivated, caustic twits.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
%
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
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
+ -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
%
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
-- Don Vonada
%
-"Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95."
+Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95.
%
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
-"Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the
-richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work"
+Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the
+richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
-- Robert Orben
%
Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
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 time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett
that a belch is more satisfying.
-- Ingmar Bergman
%
+Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about
+something you know.
+ -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
+ June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
+%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%
Everything you know is wrong!
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 for drinking heavily. Spike the office water cooler.
%
Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
%
the work.
-- John G. Pollard
%
-Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
+Expect the worst. It's the least you can do.
%
Expense Accounts, n.:
Corporate food stamps.
%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
when you make it again.
- -- F. P. Jones
+ -- Franklin P. Jones
%
Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and
the instruction afterward.
below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card
-(without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the the
+(without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the
Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print
this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and
religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
%
-Familiarity breeds attempt
+Familiarity breeds attempt.
%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
(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.
+ (8) Don't worry! Women love it!
%
Famous, adj.:
Conspicuously miserable.
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 ...
+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
+Fats Loves Madelyn.
%
Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ...
%
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.
+ 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
Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%
-Finagle's fourth Law:
+Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
it worse.
%
%
Finagle's Third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
- beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
+ beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
Corollaries:
(1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
other.
%
-"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
+First things first -- but not necessarily in that order
-- The Doctor, "Doctor Who"
%
First, a few words about tools.
Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
-- Robert Firth
%
-Flappity, floppity, flip
-The mouse on the m"\bobius 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 ....
%
%
For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
%
-For a good time, call (415) 642-9483
-%
For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a
cat.
%
-"For an adequate time call 555-3321"
+For an adequate time call 555-3321.
%
For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
always old-fashioned.
%
For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%
-"For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
+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?"
+computers altogether?
-- Jehan Shuman
%
-For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they
-like.
+For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
-"For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
-phone calls taper off."
+For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
+phone calls taper off.
-- Johnny Carson
%
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.
+ -- Justin Richardson
%
For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
%
Q: Did he kill you?
A: No.
%
-fortune: cpu time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
+fortune: CPU time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
%
-Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samuri
+Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Oh, and have a nice day!
Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
%
Frisbeetarianism, n.:
- The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and
+ The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and
gets stuck.
%
Frobnicate, v.:
%
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.
+ -- Adventures of Asterix
%
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
extracurricular activity except you."
"Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
"Only to ten, Mudhead."
-
- -- Firesign Theater
+ -- The Firesign Theatre
%
-"Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."
+Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.
%
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
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.
+ (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 enough medals, and I'll win any war."
- -- Napolean
+Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war.
+ -- Napoleon
%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%
%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%
-"Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying
-around, I'd rather lie around. No contest."
+Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying
+around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.
-- Eric Clapton
%
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden:
%
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
+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.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Goldenstern's Rules:
- (1) Always hire a rich attorney
+ (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
+ -- La Rochefoucauld
%
Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
%
Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.
%
-"Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored."
+Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words
%
Gordon's first law:
If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing
well.
%
-"Gosh that takes me back ... or forward. That's the trouble with time
-travel, you never can tell."
- -- Dr. Who
-%
Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with
-time travel, you never can tell."
- -- Doctor Who "Androids of Tara"
+time travel, you never can tell.
+ -- Doctor Who, "Androids of Tara"
%
Got Mole problems?
-Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
+Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23
%
Goto, n.:
A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%
-Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
+Gravity is a myth: the Earth sucks.
%
Gray's Law of Programming:
`_\bn+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
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.
+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.
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
%
-"Grub first, then ethics."
+Grub first, then ethics.
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
Gurmlish, n.:
%
Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
%
-... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
+Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.
%
Hail to the sun god
%
Have an adequate day.
%
-Have an adequate day.
-%
Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is
to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite
sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in
their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or
-mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is why
+mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything, which is why
they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
%
Have you reconsidered a computer career?
%
-"He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
+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."
+perversion.
-- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
%
-"He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions"
+He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
+ -- Stephen Leacock
%
He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
perfectly delightful.
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
-"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
+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.
"The nights are rather damp."
%
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
- -- Jonathon Swift
+ -- Jonathan Swift
%
-"He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him
-insufferable."
+He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable.
%
-"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
-eyes ..."
+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.
%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%
-"He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ..."
+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'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 ___\b\b\bOWN brains.
of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx
%
-Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
-of nothing.
- -- Redd Foxx
-%
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
Heavy, adj.:
Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
%
-"Heisenberg may have slept here"
+Heisenberg may have slept here.
%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
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 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.
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
+ -- John Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
%
-"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
-`Psychic Wins Lottery'?"
+Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
+`Psychic Wins Lottery'?
-- Jay Leno
%
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??!"
+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
motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'"
-- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
%
-Hier liegt ein Mann ganz obnegleich;
-Im Leibe dick, an Suden reich.
+Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
+Im Leibe dick, an Suenden reich.
Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws
-Weil es uns dunkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
+Weil es uns duenkt, er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
We buried him today because
As far as we can tell, he's dead.
- -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty
- Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
- "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter
- Schickele
+ -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty-Sue
+ Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
+ "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele
%
-Higgeldy Piggeldy,
+Higgledy Piggledy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
-I just love Mom."
+I just loved Mom."
%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%
%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%
-"His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
-money, he went to Southern California."
+His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
+money, he went to Southern California.
%
-"His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice"
+His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
-"His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier."
+His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier.
%
History is curious stuff
You'd think by now we had enough
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.
+ 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
object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
-a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
+a replacement. The employee, who has never in his life even seen the
inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.
-- Chris Shaw
%
-"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense"
+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
%
Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
%
-"Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed."
+Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
-- Neil Armstrong
%
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%
-"How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows."
+How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows.
%
How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
-- Elliot, "E.T."
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
- -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
How doth the VAX's C compiler
Improve its object code.
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.
%
+How I love to watch the morn,
+ With golden sun that shines,
+Up above to nicely warm
+ These frosty toes of mine.
+
+The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
+ Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
+It must have blown through someone's feet,
+ Like those of ... Caspar Weinberger.
+ -- P. Opus (Bloom County)
+%
How doth the VAX's C-compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
%
-"How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
-carried by a waiter at a nice party?"
+How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
+carried by a waiter at a nice party?
Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell
cheese!" and so on.
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
- How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
-3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
+ How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
+3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
%
-How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to
-Dayton?
+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.
%
-How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
-%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
%
#15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
-
- #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of
- you.
+ #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of you.
%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%
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
+operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a urethral
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
%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%
-"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
+Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
-- William Gilbert
%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
-"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
+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."
+buy some more.
-- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
%
I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.
%
-"I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
+I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
-- Paul McCracken
%
-"I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger."
+I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.
- -- Dennis Ritchie
+ -- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
-"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
+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."
+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."
+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 so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
with an option to buy.
%
-"I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater."
+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,
+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."
+inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
-- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
%
-"I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of
+I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of
the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for
-you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway."
+you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
-- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
%
-"I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
+I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and
steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,
-they don't even invite me."
+they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
%
-'I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
+I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
-"I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat."
+I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers
%
-"I bet the human brain is a kludge."
+I bet the human brain is a kludge.
-- Marvin Minsky
%
I brake for chezlogs!
%
I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
%
-"I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
+I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
-true."
- -- Harry Truman
+true.
+ -- Harry S. Truman
%
-"I can resist anything but temptation."
+I can resist anything but temptation.
%
-"I can't complain, but sometimes I still do."
+I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh
%
-"I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling."
+I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
-- Florence Henderson
%
I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
-- Fred Allen
%
-"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
+I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman
%
I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
-" I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
+I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is
-standing still ..."
+standing still ...
-- Steven Wright
%
I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
dance with the cows till you come home.
-- Groucho Marx
%
-"I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps
-the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ..."
+I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps
+the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ...
-- Peter Oakley
%
-"I didn't know it was impossible when I did it."
+I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.
%
I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The
curtain was up.
different.
-- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
%
-"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them."
+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 forego their use."
+I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
+with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
%
-"I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should."
+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."
+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 believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just
a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
-- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
-"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
-nominating"
+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."
+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."
+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 anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
-- Elvis Presley
-%
-"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- -- Elvis Presley
%
"I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
- -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "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."
+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 mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
+I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path.
-- Ronald Mabbitt
%
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.
-- Victor Hugo
%
-"I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?"
+I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?
%
"I don't think so," said Ren'\be Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
%
-"I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other
-hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out."
+I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other
+hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out.
%
I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is
%
I doubt, therefore I might be.
%
-"I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
+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."
+becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
-"I drink to make other people interesting."
+I drink to make other people interesting.
-- George Jean Nathan
%
I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%
-"I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words."
+I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words.
%
-"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
-reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
- -- Gotama Buddha
+I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
+reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment.
+ -- Gautama Buddha
%
I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most *__________\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bhorrifying* 20
minutes of my life!
%
-'I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
+I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-- Mae West
%
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
And think of the places my get-up has been.
-- Pete Seeger
%
-"I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
-Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!"
+I had this sudden vision of a klein pizza containing all the mozarella
+in the world.
+ -- Peter da Silva
+%
+I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
+Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!
-- Mary Lou Bax
%
-"I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense."
+I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense.
%
-"I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
-it's going to be up all night."
+I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
+it's going to be up all night.
-- Steven Wright
%
-"I hate quotations."
+I hate quotations.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
I have a simple philosophy:
Scratch where it itches.
-- A. R. Longworth
%
-"I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
-any time!"
+I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
+any time!
%
-"I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
-which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'."
+I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
+which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
-- Edgar Allan Poe
%
-"I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
+I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
-of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry."
- -- President Harry S Truman
+of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry.
+ -- President Harry S. Truman
%
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
-Which still grates on
+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."
+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."
+I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
+make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
____\b\b\b\bBODY!
-- from "Cerebus" #82
%
-"I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer."
+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."
+I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
-"I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
+I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it.
-- Steven Wright
%
-"I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..."
+I have to convince you, or at least snow you ...
-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%
-"I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
+I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell
-beating up a child."
+beating up a child.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-- Poul Anderson
%
-"I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere."
+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 haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
%
I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
%
-"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
+I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
-- Bill Hoest
%
I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
%
-"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
-War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
+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 know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
-The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building."
+I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
+The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.
-- Charles Schulz
%
-"I like being single. I'm always there when I need me."
+I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
-- Art Leo
%
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
the way and let them have it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
-"I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours."
+I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours.
%
-"I like your game but we have to change the rules."
+I like your game but we have to change the rules.
%
-"I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
-entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."
+I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
+entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils.
-- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
%
"I love to eat them Smurfies
Bite they ugly heads off,
Nibble on they bluish feet."
%
-"I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
+I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the
-speed of light."
+speed of light.
-- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
%
-"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
+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."
+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 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 never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
%
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
-"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
+I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!
-- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
%
-"I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
+I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no
restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
-nerve disease."
+nerve disease.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
%
-"I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral
-slob."
+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
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"
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that
the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
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 refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
%
I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
"Is that all?" asked Alice.
"That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
- -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
-"I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck."
+I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
-- Graffito in Los Angeles
%
"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
-- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
Points in l'Amour"
%
-"I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full
-house and four people died."
+I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full
+house and four people died.
-- Steven Wright
%
-"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
-see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."
+I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
+see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
-- Shirley Temple
%
I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
tub to face is up.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
-"I think it is true for all _\bn. I was just playing it safe with _\bn >= 3
-because I couldn't remember the proof."
+I think it is true for all _\bn. I was just playing it safe with _\bn >= 3
+because I couldn't remember the proof.
-- Baker, Pure Math 351a
%
-"I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it."
+I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.
%
I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
But I will trick those dirty skunks
And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'.
%
-"I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
+I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the
farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars
-singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
+singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors.
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
%
I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
"I thought you were trying to get into shape."
"I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
%
-" ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
-pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!"
+ ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
+pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!
-- Winston Churchill
%
I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in
%
I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
%
-"I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance."
+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 used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%
-"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
-body. Then I realized who was telling me this."
+I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
+body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
-- Emo Phillips
%
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere
warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
-- Brendan Behan
%
-"I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
+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"!!'"
+HAW"!!'
-- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
%
I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
up.
-- Will Rogers
%
-"I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
+I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
-get off my driveway."
+get off my driveway.
-- Steven Wright
%
-"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
-didn't know."
+I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
+didn't know.
-- Mark Twain
%
I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
-- Emile Henry Gauvreay
%
-"I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
-house and four people died."
+I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
+house and four people died.
-- Steven Wright
%
-"I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything
-specific".
+I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
Holes and the Fate of Stars"
%
-"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
-questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
+I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
+questions, I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
for him then.
-- Steven Wright
%
-"I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
+I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
-included."
+included.
-- Steven Wright
%
-"I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
-statues that are in all the other museums."
+I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
+statues that are in all the other museums.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
it took seven others to beat him!
%
-"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."
+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."
+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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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'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 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 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 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 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 the man on television told me to stay tuned.
%
-"I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
-need worrying about."
+I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
+need worrying about.
%
-"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
+I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%
-"I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
+I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
-I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun."
+I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun.
-- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
%
I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
And in our bound partition never part.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
-"I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
-That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood."
+I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
+That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood.
-- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
%
-"I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from
-man."
+I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man.
%
I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
%
-"I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my
-sister."
+I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister.
%
I'm changing my name to Chrysler
I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
%
I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
%
-"I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did."
-%
-"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
-die in."
+I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
+die in.
-- George McGovern
%
I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a
KOSHER DELI!!
%
-"I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?"
+I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
-- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
%
-i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
+I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
living apart.
-- e. e. cummings
%
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 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 prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
%
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
-- I could be just as proud for half the money.
%
I'm rated PG-34!!
%
-"I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____\b\b\b\bREAL
-soon ..."
+I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____\b\b\b\bREAL
+soon ...
%
-"I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
-(your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage."
+I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
+(your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage.
-- English Professor, Providence College
%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
%
-"I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's
-lives"
+I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives
%
I've built a better model than the one at Data General
For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
on the same day.
%
-"I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer."
+I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer.
%
-"I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer"
+I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer.
-- Senator Claghorn
%
+I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab.
+I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate.
+All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week.
+Time to die...
+ -- Peter Gutmann
+%
I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
Like a bright exhalation in the evening
And no man see me more.
- -- Shakespeare
+ -- William Shakespeare
%
IBM had a PL/I,
Its syntax worse than JOSS;
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-- Roy Santoro
%
-"If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far."
+If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far.
-- Paul White
%
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus
If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have
dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to
maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it
-must drop. The law of gravity supercedes the law of golf.
+must drop. The law of gravity supersedes the law of golf.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
-"If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
+If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to
playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win --
unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager
-can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?"
+can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?
-- Sparky Anderson
%
If all be true that I do think,
%
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, 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 dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%
%
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 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 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 is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%
-"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
+If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.
-- Yiddish saying
%
If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
-- Marvin Kitman
%
-"If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be
-replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!"
+If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be
+replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!
%
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
-- Samuel Goldwyn
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
-- Ted Turner
%
-"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
+If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
of it.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%
-"If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
+If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
-receive Net Mail ..."
+receive Net Mail ...
-- Leith (Casey) Leedom
%
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%
-"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
+If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
-Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
+Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
-- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
%
If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
- -- A. Einstein.
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss bank.
harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
%
-"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."
+If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem.
-- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
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!"
+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.
+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 two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
-"If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely"
+If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely
%
-"If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage."
+If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.
%
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
If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
-- Ann Edwards-Duff
%
-"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
+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 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
+ -- Harry S. Truman
%
If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
%
If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
-- Freeman Dyson
%
-"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
-Lavoris in the toilet."
+If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
+Lavoris in the toilet.
-- Jay Leno
%
If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
either of you for the rest of the day.
%
-"If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
-have to get a toehold in the public eye."
+If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
+have to get a toehold in the public eye.
%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.
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"
+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 have to hate, hate gently.
%
If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to
boot yourself in the posterior.
- -- A. J. Liebling
+ -- A. J. Liebling, "The Press"
%
If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
%
people die past the age of a hundred.
-- George Burns
%
-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 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 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.
+somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
%
If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're
the sucker.
%
If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
%
-If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
-It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock.
- Or some joker who is slicker,
- Will trick you of your liquor,
-If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.
-%
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
%
payments.
-- Earl Wilson
%
+If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you
+don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.
+ -- Bruce Schneier
+%
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
-- Arthur Kasspe
%
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
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 ...
+ -- Dave Barry
%
If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
-- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
%
-"If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."
+If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
-- A. L.
%
If you want divine justice, die.
%
If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
he gave it to.
- -- Dorthy Parker
+ -- Dorothy Parker
%
If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
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
+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."
+even if they don't know what it means.
-- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
%
If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
%
If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
%
-"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 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
Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^\bim'\bes sont les gougebosquex,
Et le m^\bomerade horgrave.
- -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Iles's Law:
There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%
-"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
+Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
-thinks of complaining."
- -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
+thinks of complaining.
+ -- Jef Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
%
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
%
Impossible, adj.:
(1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
-(2) I can't be bothered; (3) God can't be bothered. Meaning (3) may
-perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
+ (2) I can't be bothered;
+ (3) God can't be bothered.
+Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
%
In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of
stairs.
%
-In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled
-waffles.
+In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.
%
In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't
get parts.
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%
-"In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
-nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir."
+In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
+nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir.
-- Stuart Keate
%
In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
in any motor vehicle.
%
-"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
- -- Winston Curchill, of Montgomery
+In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
+ -- Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
%
In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
neighbor.
to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
%
-"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
-universe."
+In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
+universe.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
-"In short, _\bN is Richardian if, and only if, _\bN is not Richardian."
+In short, _\bN is Richardian if, and only if, _\bN is not Richardian.
%
In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
%
... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
fact.
- -- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain
%
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
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
%
-In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse
+In West Union, Ohio, no married man can go flying without his spouse
along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
%
Incumbent, n.:
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
+%
+I/O, I/O,
+It's off to disk I go,
+A bit or byte to read or write,
+I/O, I/O, I/O
%
INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
%
-"Irrationality is the square root of all evil"
+Irrationality is the square root of all evil
-- Douglas Hofstadter
%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I
think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
wits, who believe that it is a joke.
+ -- S. A. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
%
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
-- Voltaire
%
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
-they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
-that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
-much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
-had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But
-conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
-intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
+they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always
+assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had
+achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst
+all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having
+a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that
+they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same
+reasons.
Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
-destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
-alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
+destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert
+mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
misinterpreted ...
- -- Douglas Admas "The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The
- Galaxy"
+
+ -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
coming up it.
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
-- Rod Serling
%
-"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
-lightly greased."
+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 be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
focus of attention, the harder the task.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
-It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
-versa.
+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 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
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 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.
students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential
programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
regeneration.
- -- Dijkstra
+ -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
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
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%
-"It runs like _\bx, where _\bx is something unsavory"
+It runs like _\bx, where _\bx is something unsavory
-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
municipality.
-- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
%
-"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 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.
-- Robert Benchly
%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%
-"It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set
-foot."
+It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot.
%
It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a
breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was
broken ...
-- James Dent
%
-"It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
+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."
+man a lifetime.
-- Thomas Aldrich
%
It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson
%
-"It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone
-underwear."
+It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.
+ -- Cheers
%
It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
%
-"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it."
+It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
-- Steven Wright
%
"It's a summons."
%
It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
%
-"It's bad luck to be superstitious."
+It's bad luck to be superstitious.
-- Andrew W. Mathis
%
-It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all.
+It's better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all.
-- Marty Winch
%
"It's easier said than done."
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!"
+It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
-- Macy's
%
It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
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
+ -- Oxford University Press, "Edpress News"
%
It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right.
Put your hands on your hips
And pull your knees in tight.
-It's the pelvic thrust
- That really gets you insa-a-a-a-ane
+But it's the pelvic thrust
+ That really drives you insa-a-a-a-a-ane!
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
-- Rocky Horror Picture Show
%
-"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
+It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
-- Walt Disney
%
"It's Like This"
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.
%
-"It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name."
+It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name.
%
It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
-- Sam Goldwyn
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
-- Phil White
%
-"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
+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 just a computer -- it's your ass."
+It's not just a computer -- it's your ass.
-- Cal Keegan
%
It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
get a prompt, type like hell.
%
-"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
-immune to bullets"
- -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
+Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
+immune to bullets.
+ -- The Brigadier, "Dr. Who"
%
-"Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
-of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?"
+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, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
%
+Just remember, it all started with a mouse.
+ -- Walt Disney
+%
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!
%
(2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
than "Watch this!"
%
-Keep you Eye on the Ball,
+Keep your Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate
teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
- -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
- Do"
+ -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Kin, n.:
- An affliction of the blood
+ 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."
+Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
%
Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
any of its streets.
%
Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
%
-Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.
-%
Kleptomaniac, n.:
A rich thief.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Lassie filed the applications for.
-- Dave Barry
%
-"Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
+Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to
-my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'"
+my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'
-- Steven Wright
%
-"Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police
+Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police
record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense
-of humor."
+of humor.
%
Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won.
%
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
%
-"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
+Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
-- Victor Borge
%
Law of Communications:
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.
%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%
-"Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
+Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash
-and another number."
+and another number.
-- James Estes
%
Let us live!!!
end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and
bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
-his back."
+his back.
-- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
%
Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%
-"Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
-eat it nevertheless."
+Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
+eat it nevertheless.
-- Flaubert
%
-"Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it."
+Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it.
%
Life is like a simile.
%
-Life is like an analogy
+Life is like an analogy.
%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%
-"Life is too important to take seriously."
+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 may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
+which I disapprove.
%
-"Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility"
+Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility.
-- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
%
-"Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
-weren't for other people"
+Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
+weren't for other people.
-- Blore
%
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
%
-"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
- -- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
+Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
+ -- Marvin, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
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
at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot.
Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be,
too.
- -- "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and Utensils
- into Excuses and Apologies"
+ -- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and
+ Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
%
Lockwood's Long Shot:
The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
%
Loose bits sink chips.
%
-Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA,
-BOOGA!"
+Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying
+"BOOGA, BOOGA!"
%
Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
%
%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%
-Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
-%
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 is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
-flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
+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
%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash
%
-"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
-the ideal never goes unpunished."
- -- Goethe
+Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
+the ideal never goes unpunished.
+ -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
Love is sentimental measles.
%
Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
-- Louise Beal
%
-Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up
-to.
+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
+My love is like an iron wand
That conks me on the head,
-My love is like the valium
+My love is like the valium
That I take before my bed,
-My love is like the pint of scotch
+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.
%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%
-"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
-the smallest amount of thoughts."
+MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
+the smallest amount of thoughts.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Machine-Independent, adj.:
-- Leo Rosten
%
Mad, adj.:
- Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
+ 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
entire nodal aggravations.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
-Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism
+Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism.
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
-The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
+The two definition immediately preceding 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.
+ 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
+ A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Maier's Law:
- If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed
- of.
+ If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
Corollaries:
(1) The bigger the theory, the better.
obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%
Main's Law:
- For every action there is an equal and opposite government
-program.
+ For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
%
Maintainer's Motto:
If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%
-Man 1: Ask me the what the most important thing about telling a good
+Man 1: Ask me what the most important thing about telling a good
joke is.
Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
Man 1: ______\b\b\b\b\b\bTIMING!
%
-"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
+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
-- Mark Twain
%
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 is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
%
%
Man, n.:
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
-e is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His hief
-occupation is extermination of other animals and his own pecies, which,
-however, multiplies with such insistent apidity as to infest the whole
+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"
%
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.
+information you need is in the others.
-- Ray Simard
%
-Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
+Many years ago in a period commonly known 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 ...
-- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
James Blish
%
-"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
+Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence.
%
-Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
-receipt.
+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 a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts.
%
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
%
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.
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
+ -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
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.
+ever hope to acquire it.
%
Menu, n.:
A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
-- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
+ Preposterous Words
%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%
Micro Credo:
Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%
-"Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
-watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks."
+Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
+watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks.
%
-"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
-out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
+Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
+out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
+ -- Casablanca
%
Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
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"
+ -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
%
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, and man needs roots.
%
Money is the root of all wealth.
%
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
+ -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
-133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,255!" An electronic
+133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic
computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
fun to watch.
-- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%
-"Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ..."
+Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Goedel's Theorem ...
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
long it has become a science project.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%
-"My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on
-it."
+My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
-- "Grendel", by John Gardner
%
My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
OK.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
-"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
-there are three other people."
+My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
+there are three other people.
-- Orson Welles
%
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
%
-"My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?"
- -- MadameX
+My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?
+ -- MadameX
%
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
And I wish he were in Asia.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
-My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been
-one.
+My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
-- Groucho Marx
%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
And I wish I'd never met him.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
-... My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
-Alley!!
-%
-"My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
-Alley!!"
+My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!!
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
-- Byron
%
-My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not
-signed.
+My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
-- Christopher Morley
%
-"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
+My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies
%
Mythology, n.:
The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
%
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
%
-Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
-%
Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
%
-Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
+Never 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
+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 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.
+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 underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
-- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
%
-"Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon."
+Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon.
%
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do.
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 Friday will not be your lucky day.
+As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.
%
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond
%
-"Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice."
+Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%
-"Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
+Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
-that much."
+that much.
-- Augustine
%
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
%
-"Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends
+Nirvana? That's the place where the powers that be and their friends
hang out.
-- Zonker Harris
%
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
- -- Fran Lebowitz
+ -- Fran Leibowitz
%
No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
-"No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid."
+No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.
%
No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
(chorus)
%
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
+ -- C. Schulz
%
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
%
-"No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
+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."
+an indication-applied occurrence.
-- ALGOL 68 Report
%
-"No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of
-paper."
+No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper.
-- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
taken over by Rupert Murdoch
%
- No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider
-the furniture!
+No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
-"No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'"
+No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'
-- Dr. Who
%
-Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing
-it.
+Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%
-NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
+NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
%
Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
%
%
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
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
-"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
- -- Shakespeare
+Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
+ -- William Shakespeare
%
-"Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
-is from the wrong kind of tree."
- -- Professor W.
+Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
+is from the wrong kind of tree.
+ -- Professor W., EECS, George Washington University
%
Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
-- Woody Allen
%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
+ -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%
Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell
%
-Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited
-love.
+Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charlie Brown
%
November, n.:
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."
+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
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
+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 ..."
+were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ...
-- "The Begatting of a President"
%
-"Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a
-smurfette."
+Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette.
-- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
%
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
direct sunlight.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
-"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
+Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%
-"Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
-normal routines, for children and adults alike."
+Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
+normal routines, for children and adults alike.
-- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
%
-"Nuclear war would really set back cable."
+Nuclear war would really set back cable.
-- Ted Turner
%
[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
%
(null cookie; hope that's ok)
%
-Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're
-guessing.
+Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
%
O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
Murphy was an optimist.
%
-"Of ______\b\b\b\b\b\bcourse it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
-fake?"
+Of ______\b\b\b\b\b\bcourse it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
+fake?
%
Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
-- Fletcher Knebel
%
-"Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
-tools aren't soluble in alcohol ..."
+Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
+tools aren't soluble in alcohol ...
-- Crazy Nigel
%
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
%
Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
%
-"OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
+OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard.
-- Dr. Joy
%
OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
-"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
+This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
-- Wolfgang Pauli
%
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
-created jerks.
- -- Avery
-%
-On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created jerks.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%
indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
-- Blair P. Houghton
%
-"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
+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."
+confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage
%
On-line, adj.:
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"
+called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukkah"
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!"
+Hanukkah!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
-Upon you knees if you appear,
+Upon your knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."
Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
the smaller prime numbers.
2: The Odd Prime --
- It's the only even prime, therefore is odd. QED.
+ It's the only even prime, therefore it's odd. QED.
3: The True Prime --
Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
do and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant
%
-"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
+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."
+their C programs.
-- Robert Firth
%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
paper cannot be understood.
-- Mark Ardis
%
-"One planet is all you get."
+One planet is all you get.
%
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
%
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 thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
%
-"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
+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."
+sheer terror.
-- W. K. Hartmann
%
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%
-Optimization hinders evolution.
-%
Oregano, n.:
The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
%
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.
+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.
+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.
a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
-- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
%
-"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it."
- -- Alex Schure
-%
-"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it."
+Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it.
-- Alex Schure
%
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Beware the infiniteloop
And shun the inprectoo.
%
-"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
-it's too dark to read."
+Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
+it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
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
+ If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%
-"Pascal is not a high-level language."
+Pascal is not a high-level language.
-- Steven Feiner
%
-"Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat."
+Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat.
-- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340
%
Pascal Users:
The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
under brain transplants.
%
-Paul Revere was a tattle-tale
+Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
%
Paul's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.
%
-"People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense."
+People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
-- Ken Kesey
%
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersey.
%
-Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
+Philogeny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogeny.
%
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
-- John Keats
%
Pick another fortune cookie.
%
-"Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
+Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
-sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..."
+sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ...
%
Pig, n.:
An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
%
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
- -- E. W. Dijkstra
+ -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
-"Plaese porrf raed."
+Plaese porrf raed.
-- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
%
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
-- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
Shell"
%
-Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill
-them.
+Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them.
%
-Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic
-table.
+Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
Please ignore previous fortune.
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
+Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagen 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
%
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
where there is no river.
- -- Nikita Khrushchev
+ -- Nikita Khrushchev
%
-Politics is like coaching a football team. you have to be smart enough
+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.
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
+
+The square was finally cleared by armed carabinieri 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"\bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"\boln in 1653.
%
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
%
-"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat"
+Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
%
Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
%
Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
encryption standard and they came up with ...
-Student: EBCDIC!"
+Student: EBCDIC!
%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on
his exam. Newell has now tossed five shutouts this quarter. Newell's
earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
%
+Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
+build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
+to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
+ -- Rich Cook
+%
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
This technique is used on equations with "_\bn" in them. Induction
-techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
+techniques are very popular; even the military used them.
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
(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.
+(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:
+Topics to be covered in future issues include proof by:
Intimidation
Gesticulation (handwaving)
"Try it; it works"
PVLC Punch Variable Length Card
RASC Read And Shred Card
RPM Read Programmers Mind
-RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy)
-RTAB Rewind tape and break
-RWDSK rewind disk
+RSSC Reduce Speed, Step Carefully (for improved accuracy)
+RTAB Rewind Tape and Break
+RWDSK Rewind Disk
RWOC Read Writing On Card
-SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write
+SCRBL Scribble to disk - faster than a write
SLC Search for Lost Chord
SPSW Scramble Program Status Word
SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk
TDB Transfer and Drop Bit
WBT Water Binary Tree
%
-"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
-than the both put together."
+Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
+than the both put together.
%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
-Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off of the TV screen.
-%
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
%
Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
%
-Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
+Q: How many DEC repairmen 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?
+Q: How many DEC repairmen 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?
in San Francisco?
A: Both of them.
%
-Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
+Q: How many IBM CPUs 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?
+Q: How many IBM CPUs 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?
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
+ 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.
%
%
Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
%
-Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
+Quidquid latine dictum est, altum videtur.
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
%
Quigley's Law:
Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
-atttempt to use it.
+attempt to use it.
%
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
`
%
-"Qvid me anxivs svm?"
+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
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
- -- Dorothy Parker
+ -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926
%
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
be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
-tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4.
-The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
+tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5.
+4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
"Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
-- Alvy Ray Smith
%
-"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
-away".
+Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"
-- Philip K. Dick
%
-"Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
+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.
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
-- Anatole France
%
-"Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used
-it."
+Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it.
-- Dave Barry
%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
-
+
SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
-career be being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
+career by being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
can't help it.
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
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."
+Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
-- Steven Wright
%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
reject the proposal.
%
Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
- -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With
- Pogo"
+ -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo"
%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
can always eat it later.
(10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
(11) Avoid blue food.
- -- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet"
+ -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
%
Rules:
(1) The boss is always right.
%
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
%
-"Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I
+Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I
ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.
-- Steven Wright
%
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
is not necessarily science.
- -- Henri Poincair'\be
+ -- Henri Poincar'\be
%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%
If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
wrong, anyway.
%
-"Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
+Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
multiline message byte.
In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
(1) The ANRS if DAV is false
(2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
(a) The LADS is active
- (b) Nor LACS is active"
+ (b) Nor LACS is active
-- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
Programmable Instrumentation
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
-"See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ..."
+See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ...
%
Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
Ice Cream cures all ills.
From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
%
Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
- notify you if the record has pornographics material or
+ notify you if the record has pornographic material or
material glorifying violence?"
Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
-- Swami X
%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
- -- M. C. Reed.
+ -- M. C. Reed
%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
it's one of the best.
Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
- A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
+ A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagogue
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
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."
+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.
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
have poured on a waffle ...
%
-"She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
-you should hear me play piano.'"
+She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
+you should hear me play piano.'
-- Morrisey
%
She's genuinely bogus.
%
-"Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
+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."
+excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
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
+ -- from the Brown University Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%
Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
-- Fletcher Knebel
%
-Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
- -- Fletcher Knebel
-%
Snacktrek, n.:
The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
-- Bertrand Russell
%
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
-who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
+who wish to tyranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
-- Voltarine de Cleyre
into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
-"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
+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."
+gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
-- Samuel Foote
%
... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
along.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
-So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever
-remember his Bible?
+So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway?
+And why can't he ever remember his Bible?
%
Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
%
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 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
"They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
in me."
%
-Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already
-paid may disregard this fortune).
+Sooner or later you must pay for your sins.
+(Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune).
%
Sorry, no fortune this time.
%
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"
+ -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
-"Spare no expense to save money on this one."
+Spare no expense to save money on this one.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! wow! wow!
- -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
he can do is to Shut Up!
-- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
%
-"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
+Speed is subsittute fo accurancy.
%
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
%
-"Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
+Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'\bee of bat guano; and the
greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
-take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
+take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
-- Harlan Ellison
%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%
-"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
+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
%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
%
-Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
-take a bath ...
+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.:
+Stupid, adj.:
Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
%
Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
the room is punishable under law:
Name #
+
+
%
Swahili, n.:
- The language used by the National Enquirer to print their
-retractions.
+ The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions.
-- Johnny Hart
%
Sweater, n.:
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
-System/3! System/3!
-See how it runs! See how it runs!
- Its monitor loses so totally!
- It runs all its programs in RPG!
- It's made by our favorite monopoly!
-System/3!
-%
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
- -- H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
+ -- H. S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
He don't rock, and he don't roll;
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
+enough cheese.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
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.
+Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when they
+grows up, they will never be able to edge their 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.
+Technological progress has merely provided us
+with more efficient means for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Telephone, n.:
writing.
-- R. Geis
%
-"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
+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.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
-Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
+Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.
-- A. E. Housman
%
-"Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
+Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
-hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother."
+hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother.
-- Len Cool, "American Pie"
%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
-(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
+(Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
%
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
%
Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
%
-"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
-one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
+Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
+one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
-- J. Finnegan, USC.
%
Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
-- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
%
-"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver"
+That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
-"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
+That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
+ -- Moliere
%
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
%
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
The Advertising Agency Song:
-
+
When your client's hopping mad,
Put his picture in the ad.
If he still should prove refractory,
Add a picture of his factory.
%
-"The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
-someone with it."
+The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
+someone with it.
-- M. Devine, Computer Science 340
%
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%
-"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
+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."
+anything.
-- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
%
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
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.
+The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
-- W. C. Fields
%
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
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 bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch.
%
The bogosity meter just pegged.
%
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
bureaucracy.
%
-"The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
-flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."
+The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
+flexibility and power of assembly language with the readability
+of assembly language.
%
The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary two;
party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
-"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
+The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.
-- G. Fitch
%
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.
+ -- Eric Sevareid
%
The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
-- Alfred Adler
walk carefully.
-- Russian Proverb
%
-"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
-elsewhere."
+The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
%
-"The Computer made me do it."
+The Computer made me do it.
%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis
%
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 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
+The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to
eat.
-- John McNulty
%
%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%
-"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
+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."
+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.
+requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, 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."
+ "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."
%
The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
and owns the worm farm.
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
%
-"The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
-Compute' -- I forget which."
+The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
+Compute' -- I forget which.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
hard."
-- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
%
-"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
-hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."
+The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
+hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do.
-- McCloctnik the Lucid
%
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%
-"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and
-vinyl."
+The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.
-- Dave Barry
%
The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
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 goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
+The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him
love and he invented marriage.
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%
-"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
+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."
+man in the bonds of Hell.
-- St. Augustine
%
The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
Heading out where danger lies
And you live in dread
If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
- -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
+ -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
%
The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
statistics. These are raised to the _\bnth degree, the cube roots are
%
The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
- -- Benjamin Franklin.
+ -- Benjamin Franklin
%
The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
- The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
+ The Great 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
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 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.
lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smith
%
-"The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
-has gills through which it can see."
+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 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.
procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain
%
-The idea is to die young as late as possible.
- -- Ashley Montagu
-%
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
-- Ashley Montague
%
devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
-"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
+The identical is equal to itself, since it is different.
-- Franco Spisani
%
-"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
-longer."
+The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
So far, I've had no complaints.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
-"The last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a
-word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about
-drugs.'
+The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a
+word processor," I replied, "They used to say the same thing about
+drugs."
-- Roy Blount, Jr.
%
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
bread.
-- Anatole France
%
-"The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all
+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
+presently imagine we own.
+ -- H. G. Wells
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
-DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
+Descartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
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."
+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 makers may make
-and the users may use,
-but the fixers must fix
-with but minimal clues
+And the users may use,
+But the fixers must fix
+With but minimal clues
%
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
%
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
- -- Mark Twain.
+ -- Mark Twain
%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
%
-"... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..."
+... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ...
-- Dave Barry
%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%
The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%
-"The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
-lower the mailing cost."
+The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
+lower the mailing cost.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
-The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and
-robbers there will be.
+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 mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
-- Andy Warhol
%
-"The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
-to watch someone else do it wrong without comment."
+The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
+to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
-- Theodore H. White
%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
-"The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
-1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert."
+The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
+1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert.
-- D. Letterman
%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
-- Matthew 5:37
%
-"The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
+The New York 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
+and running the country ...
+ -- Robert J. Woodhead
%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from.
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
+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:
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
and take a rest.
%
-"The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon."
+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"
%
finished, and put inside boxes.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
-The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any
-use to oneself.
+The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.
+It is never any use to oneself.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
-"The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from
-history."
+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."
+I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
+long view.
-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
until 5 or 6 p.m.
%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- -- Bohr
-%
-The optimum committee has no members.
- -- Norman Augustine
+ -- Niels Bohr
%
The optimum committee has no members.
-- Norman Augustine
%
-"The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
-went back in time."
+The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
+went back in time.
-- Steven Wright
%
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to
Excruciatingly Correct Behavior"
%
-"The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more
-often."
+The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often.
%
The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
+
+ -- M. Gallaher
%
... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
"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
+ -- The Firesign Theatre, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
%
The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
+ --Lord Bowen
%
The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
cursed.
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This
means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%
-"The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
-and to his imagination for his facts."
+The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
+and to his imagination for his facts.
-- Sheridan
%
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
%
-"The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
+The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
-you have and what rights you have not got."
+you have and what rights you have not got.
-- J. Parnell Thomas
%
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
take it too seriously.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
-The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or
+The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
-- Jane Bryant Quinn
%
-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
-respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones
-from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
-milestones are lifted.
+respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones
+from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
+millstones are lifted.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
way.)
-- Dan Roddick
%
-"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
+The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
-neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
+neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
%
-"The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
-money."
+The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
+money.
-- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon"
%
-"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
+The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!
%
The sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you will be
able to correct them.
the Russians.
-- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
%
- The STAR WARS Song
+ "Yoda", by "Weird Al" Yankovic;
Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
-Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
+Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated 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
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 ...
+and there was morning, one interrupt.
-- Rico Tudor
%
The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make
them unsafe.
-- Mayor Frank Rizzo
%
-"The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
-is an emerging underachiever."
+The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
+is an emerging underachiever.
%
The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant
biology.
%
-"The subspace _\bW inherits the other 8 properties of _\bV. And there aren't
-even any property taxes."
+The subspace _\bW inherits the other 8 properties of _\bV. And there aren't
+even any property taxes.
-- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
%
The sum of the Universe is zero.
%
The trouble with a kitten is that
When it grows up, it's always a cat
- -- Ogden Nash.
+ -- Ogden Nash
%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%
The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
-The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
-vice versa.
+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.
In such a fix to be so fertile.
-- Ogden Nash
%
-"The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and
-stupidity."
+The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
- -- E. W. Dijkstra
+ -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
the worst cigars.
be one of the facts that needs altering.
-- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
%
-"The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."
-%
-"The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
-it's just a tired feeling:"
+The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
+it's just a tired feeling:
%
The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
%
-"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
-that would be clearly understood."
+The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
+that would be clearly understood.
-- Alexander Haig
%
-"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
-with a large fortune."
-%
-The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
- Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
-It must have blown through someone's feet,
- Like those of Caspar Weinberger.
- -- P. Opus
+The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
+with a large fortune.
%
THE WOMBAT
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
%
The world's as ugly as sin,
-And almost as delightful
+And almost as delightful.
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own
cats.
%
-There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis
+There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axes
are chosen correctly.
%
There are no games on this system.
obviously impossible.
-- Richard Davisson
%
-There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the
-truth without lying.
+There are people so addicted to exaggeration
+that they can't tell the truth without lying.
+ -- Josh Billings
%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
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
+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?"
+don't we all?
%
-"There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
+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."
+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 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
Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
-- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
%
-"There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
+There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far
-the more certain."
+the more certain.
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
%
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
-- Woody Allen
%
-"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
+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."
+deficiencies.
-- C. A. R. Hoare
%
-"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
-other is to read Pope."
+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
There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
-- Walt Disney
%
-"There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,
+There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,
Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and
-love of the Fatherland."
+love of the Fatherland.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
-There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the universe
-is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bazaarly
-inexplicable."
-
-There is another theory that states: "This has already happened ...."
- -- Douglas 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.
+inexplicable.
+
+There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
+
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
-"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a
-vacuum."
+There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
of course.
-- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
%
-"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their
-home."
- -- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society
+There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
+ -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, World Future Society
Convention, 1977
%
-There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
+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 substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
%
There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
%
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
%
-There once was a girl named Irene
-Who lived on distilled kerosene
- But she started absorbin'
- A new hydrocarbon
-And since then has never benzene.
-%
-There once was a member of Mensa
-Who was a most excellent fencer.
- The sword that he used
- Was his -- (line is refused,
-And has now been removed by the censor).
-%
-There once was an old man from Esser,
-Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
- It at last grew so small,
- He knew nothing at all,
-And now he's a College Professor.
-%
-"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
-it."
+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
thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
votes.
%
-There was a young lady from Hyde
-Who ate a green apple and died.
- While her lover lamented
- The apple fermented
-And made cider inside her inside.
-%
-There was a young man who said "God,
-I find it exceedingly odd,
- That the willow oak tree
- Continues to be,
-When there's no one about in the Quad."
-
-"Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd,
-For I'm always about in the Quad;
- And that's why the tree,
- Continues to be,"
-Signed "Yours faithfully, God."
-%
-There was a young poet named Dan,
-Whose poetry never would scan.
- When told this was so,
- He said, "Yes, I know.
-%
-There was a young poet named Dan,
-Whose poetry never would scan.
- When told this was so,
- He said, "Yes, I know.
-It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can."
-%
-"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
+There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
-during the trial."
+during the trial.
-- David Letterman
%
There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
-- Walt Kelly
%
-There's no future in time travel
+There's no future in time travel.
%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
working for you.
-- Will Rodgers
%
-"There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead
-armadillos."
+There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and
+dead armadillos.
-- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
%
-"There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't
-aggravate."
+There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them
+won't aggravate.
%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
what it is I'll get married again.
%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%
-"They make a desert and call it peace."
+They make a desert and call it peace.
-- Tacitus (55?-120?)
%
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.
-- Mark Twain
%
-"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
-safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
+They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
+safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
%
-"They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"
+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
%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%
-"They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult
-to like."
+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.
%
This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
%
-This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need,
+This fortune cookie program is out of order. For those in desperate need,
please use the program "________\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\brandchar". 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
%
This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
%
-"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
-regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
-keys ..."
+This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
+regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
%
-"This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT
-DOG."
+This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT DOG.
-- Bob Violence
%
-"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
-actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?"
+This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
+actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
%
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
And I am not.
-- A. E. Housman
%
-"This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
-to one."
+This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
+to one.
-- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
This land is full of trousers!
this land is full of mausers!
And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
- -- Firesign Theater
+ -- The Firesign Theatre
%
This land is made of mountains,
This land is made of mud,
paper that were unhappy.
-- Douglas Adams
%
-"This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
-something child-like."
+This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
+something child-like.
-- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
%
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
which identifies errors in the original program.
%
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
- -- Hofstadter
+ -- Douglas Hofstadter
%
... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives
as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as
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.
+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
%
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
%
-"Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics."
+Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics.
-- French Proverb
%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
%
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
%
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
-revolution inevitable.
+Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
+will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
To do is to be.
-- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
- -- F. Flinstone
+ -- F. Flintstone
%
-"To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
+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."
+statement.
%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
%
To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
%
-"To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System"
+To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System
%
To err is human, to moo bovine.
%
-- Thomas Edison
%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
+ -- Robert Heller
%
To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
%
To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
-precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel,
+precision and flexibility may be just as dysfunctional 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
-- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
Phones?"
%
-"To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?"
+To 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."
+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 first day of the rest of the mess.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
%
-Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
+Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
%
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
-"Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
-cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
-spectacular adventure starring ... Tippy, the Wonder Dog."
+Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
+cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
+spectacular adventure starring ... Tippy, the Wonder Dog.
-- Bob & Ray
%
-"Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
-except in major motion pictures."
+Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
+except in major motion pictures.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%
Toilet Toup'\bee, n.:
briefcases.
-- Governor Jerry Brown
%
+Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
+ 10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
+ 9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
+ 8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
+ 7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
+ Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
+ assurance people in its wake.
+ 6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
+ - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
+ 5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
+ 4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
+ 3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
+ are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
+ 2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
+ original Klingon.
+ 1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it!
+ Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
+%
Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the
earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century.
As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help.
(2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like
curling.
-(4) Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
+(4) Avoid showers ... take baths instead.
(5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big
pile.
(6) Stop flipping pancakes
%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%
-Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live
+Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful, wealthy, and live
in eucalyptus trees.
%
-Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant
-intelligence.
+Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
-- Henrik Tikkanen
%
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
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 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
%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%
-"Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
-I forget the second."
+Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
+I forget the second.
%
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
%
Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
hammer or get a splinter in it.
%
-Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
- Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
-hammmer or get a splinter in it.
-%
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
just man is also a prison.
- -- Henry David Thoreau
-%
-Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
-just man is also in prison.
- -- Henry David Thoreau
%
Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
%
UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
- -- Andy Tannenbaum
+ -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%
Unnamed Law:
If it happens, it must be possible.
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
+Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.
%
-VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M.
+VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.
%
-Vote anarchist
+Vote anarchist.
%
Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
TAX-DEFERRED!
%
-"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
+Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain
%
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
-- Charles Edward Montague
%
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
-%
- WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
-
-Firings will continue until morale improves.
%
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
socialism?
-- Fidel Castro
%
-"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last
-theorem."
+We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
-"We are upping our standards ... so up yours."
- -- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988.
+We are upping our standards ... so up yours.
+ -- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988
%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%
deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
-- James E. Day, Postmaster General
%
-"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
+We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
-- Vroomfondel
%
-"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
+We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
%
We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a
fish.
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
-- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
%
-"We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
+We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
-our grave singing Haleleuia ..."
+our grave singing Haleleuia ...
-- Monty Python
%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
We have only two things to worry about: That things will never get
back to normal, and that they already have.
%
-"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
-hands for masturbation."
+We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
+hands for masturbation.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
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 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 &
And a Sun Myung Moon!
-- Maxwell Smart
%
-"We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
+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
-- Andy Rooney
%
Weiler's Law:
- Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
-himself.
+ Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%
Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if
you run out of food.
- -- Dean McLaughlin.
+ -- Dean McLaughlin
%
Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
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 *___\b\b\bcan*
-you believe?!"
+Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___\b\b\bcan*
+you believe?!
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
%
Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is
no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five
hundred."
- -- The Mahabharata.
+ -- The Mahabharata
%
Westheimer's Discovery:
A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%
-"What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
+What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our
-country. Nice try anyway, George."
- -- D.J. on KSFO/KYA
+country. Nice try anyway, George.
+ -- D. J. on KSFO/KYA
%
What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
entrance?
%
What I tell you three times is true.
%
-"What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
+What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
%
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
%
-"What I've done, of course, is total garbage."
+What I've done, of course, is total garbage.
-- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
%
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
-What is a magician but a practising theorist?
+What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
%
What is mind? No matter.
"I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
-- Bloom County
%
-"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
- -- Bertold Brecht
+What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?
+ -- Bertolt Brecht
%
-"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
-which is the exact opposite."
+What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
+which is the exact opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%
What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
%
-What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent
-bagel.
-%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%
What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
%
-"What's another word for Thesaurus?"
+What's another word for Thesaurus?
-- Steven Wright
%
"What's that thing?"
it does. We call it a two-by-four."
-- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
%
-"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
+What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
-- Dr. Who
%
-"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
- -- The Doctor
-%
Whatever became of eternal truth?
%
Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon
%
-"Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not
-cockroaches!"
+Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches!
-- Mom
%
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
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
+ -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
%
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"
+ -- 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?"
+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
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
guarantee them.
%
-"When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
+When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if
-I'm leaving."
+I'm leaving.
-- Steven Wright
%
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
and get you."
-- Jerry Lewis
%
-"When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
-firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'"
+When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
+firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'
-- Steven Wright
%
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%
-"When in doubt, tell the truth."
+When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain
%
When in doubt, use brute force.
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"
+When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
-- Jon Carroll
%
When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
-investigation of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand,
+investigation of a topic, it is well to have the answer firmly in hand,
so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
swayed, directly to the goal.
-- Amrom Katz
%
-"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
+When you 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 an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
- -- Harry Truman
+ -- Harry S. Truman
%
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
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 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
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 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.
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 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.
%
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
%
-"Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
-have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."
+Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
+have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing.
-- Ian Shoales
%
-"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
- -- Bertold Brecht
+Why be a man when you can be a success?
+ -- Bertolt Brecht
%
Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we
have?
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 did the Roman Empire collapse?
+What is the Latin for office automation?
%
Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
%
-- 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"
+Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
+because we are not the person involved
-- Mark Twain
%
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
%
-"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
+Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
-- Lily Tomlin
%
-"Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
-you knowing nothing?"
+Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
+you knowing nothing?
-- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
%
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
-"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
+Why was I born with such contemporaries?
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
- -- John L. Shelton
+ -- John L. Shelton
%
Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%
With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
try to be a fraud and a half.
- -- Otto von Bismark
+ -- Otto von Bismarck
%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
- -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
+ -- Douglas Adams, "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?
such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
%
+With trembling hands he unfurled the ancient cracked parchment,
+this was the place, it had to be. Uncertainly he began to mumble the
+chant "rdbms, sql, third normal formal form, java, table, scalable".
+Something moved... From outside they heard a scream and a thud.
+The sales department had awoken.
+%
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
%
Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
bargained for.
%
-Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your
-chairs.
+Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs.
%
World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
dress code!
%
"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
+"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
+ -- Lewis Carroll
%
-"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
+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?"
+and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
%
Write-Protect Tab, n.:
A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
%
-X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the
+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 ...
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"
+ -- Stephen C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
%
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic
operators together.
-- Steve Higgins
%
-"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."
+Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
%
Year, n.:
A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
%
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.
+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
%
You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
%
-You are here:
+You are here:
***
***
*********
But you're not all there.
%
+You are not illiterate.
+ -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
+%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
"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
+ -- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
That your lectures bore people to death.
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
+ -- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
And there isn't one language you like;
"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
+ -- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And make errors few people could bear;
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
+ -- Lewis Carroll
%
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 buttered your bread, now lie in it.
+You buttered your bread, now lie in it!
%
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
safety glasses.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
-"You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
-doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on."
+You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
+doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on.
-- Hepler, Systems Design 182
%
-You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior
-executive.
+You can create your own opportunities this week.
+Blackmail a senior executive.
%
-"You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
-Why do you find that funny?"
- -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350
+You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
+Why do you find that funny?
+ -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350, University of Washington
%
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
can with just a kind word.
%
You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
%
-"You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename."
+You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename.
-- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%
-"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
+You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%
-"You can't make a program without broken egos."
+You can't make a program without broken egos.
%
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
enough worrying about what's happening now.
-- Lauren Bacall
%
-"You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten."
+You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten.
-- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
Over and Over"
%
-"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they
-don't."
+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 have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
wrinkled.
%
-You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot
-today.
+You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
%
You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
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"
+ -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
%
party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
%
-You might have mail
+You might have mail.
+%
+You might have had 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 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 probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
know how seldom they do.
- -- Olin Miller.
+ -- Olin Miller
%
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.
another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
-If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
+If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
hemorrhoids.
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
-"You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
-plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture"
+You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
+plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture.
-- Business Professor, University of Georgia
%
You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
minute and a huff.
-- Groucho Marx
%
-"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
+You'll never be the man your mother was!
%
You're at the end of the road again.
%
%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%
-"You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."
+You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.
-- Gary Giddens
%
"You've got to think about tomorrow!"
%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%
-"Yow! Am I having fun yet?"
+Yow! Am I having fun yet?
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%
-YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!"
+YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!
%
Zero Defects, n.:
The result of shutting down a production line.
%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
+%
+ THE LAST BUG
+
+"But you're out of your mind," It still wasn't perfect,
+They said with a shrug. As year followed year,
+"The customer's happy; And strangers would comment,
+What's one little bug?" "Is that guy still here?"
+
+But he was determined. He died at the console,
+The others went home. Of hunger and thirst.
+He spread out the program, Next day he was buried,
+Deserted, alone. Face down, nine-edge first.
+
+The cleaning men came, And the last bug in sight,
+The whole room was cluttered An ant passing by,
+With memory-dumps, punch cards. Saluted his tombstone,
+"I'm close," he muttered. And whispered, "Nice try."
+
+The mumbling got louder,
+Simple deduction,
+"I've got it, it's right,
+Just change one instruction."
+%
+Speaking of the philosophy involved in moving humanity into space:
+
+Furniture will be a largely obsolete concept. Take for example the dresser my
+mom bought for me when I was a kid. I still have it, and by the standards of
+its era, it's an admirable household fixture. It is a massive construction of
+maple wood, expertly joined with cunningly fit pieces, fitted and glued with
+the strength of iron. It is set with massive brass fixtures, and looks today
+-- discounting the dust -- as new as the day it was purchased, a quarter
+century ago. So far, so good; a fine piece of furniture, you might say. But
+let's look at it objectively, as a machine, as an object with a purpose. Here
+sit a hundred pounds of hardwood with a compressive strength of 1500 psi,
+jointed by an expert craftsman into a rigid box that would easily support a
+bull elephant. And what is the sole purpose of this massive crate, this
+monument to a dead tree? -- it holds my socks.
+
+Not only is it blind engineering overkill of epic proportions, it is also an
+environmental disaster. The home to generations of squirrels, a sentinel post
+for falcons, an autumnal banner of golden glory, a living creature, was chopped
+down to enshrine some underwear. This, my friends, is no way to run a planet.
+ -- Marshall T. Savage, from The Millennial Project:
+ Colonizing the Galaxy -- In Eight Easy Steps
+%
+Nearly every software professional has heard the term spaghetti code as a
+pejorative description for complicated, difficult to understand, and impossible
+to maintain, software. However, many people may not know the other two
+elements of the complete Pasta Theory of Software.
+
+Lasagna code is used to describe software that has a simple, understandable,
+and layered structure. Lasagna code, although structured, is unfortunately
+monolithic and not easy to modify. An attempt to change one layer conceptually
+simple, is often very difficult in actual practice.
+
+The ideal software structure is one having components that are small and
+loosely coupled; this ideal structure is called ravioli code. In ravioli
+code, each of the components, or objects, is a package containing some meat
+or other nourishment for the system; any component can be modified or replaced
+without significantly affecting other components.
+
+We need to go beyond the condemnation of spaghetti code to the active
+encouragement of ravioli code.
+ -- Raymond J. Rubey, in a letter to the editor of Crosstalk
+ magazine
+%
+63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
+ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
+now there's 63,005 bugs in the code!!
+%
+"It's not very common in Crowthorne"
+%
+ 1) Don't expect fairings.
+ 2) If confused read #1.
+%
+Cheer up. You could have all the problems you have now, and then also
+be named Eustace Clarence Scrubb.
+%
+Never leave a macassar and an antimacassar in the same room together.
+%
+Why did the furry install Unix? Because it supports catman(8).
+%
+Many people don't realize that trailhead doggerel is illegal -- but
+surely you've heard of "hike rhymes and misdemeanors"...
+%
+We all know political bumper stickers and some of us even put them on
+our cars. However, if you show up at headquarters on Friday afternoon
+after a long campaign week, you're more likely to see a stumper
+bicker.
+%
+When you're under siege by a winter storm, that's a "frontal assault".
+%
+Somebody has mail.
+%
+'Agnosis' is when you don't know. 'Diagnosis' is when you don't know
+twice.
+%
+An assortment of ways to be assimilated is a "smorgasborg".
+%
+The Navy's forever doomed to be inefficient because it's always trying
+to do things in a sub-optimal manner.
+%
+Q. What do you do if you find an abomination rooted in and need a
+druid in a hurry?
+A. Call the copse.
+%
+A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.
+-- Jo Godwin
+%
+Give a man a 0day and he'll have access for a day, teach a man to phish
+and he'll have access for life.
+-- the grugq
+%
+Information wants to be free and also extremely difficult to use.
+-- An ancient open source proverb
+%
+I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.
+-- Mitch Hedberg
+%
+You, the Poles, have a funny nature. When the people going along the
+road are attacked by a dog with its insistent and noisy barking, you
+immediately feel like jumping off the vehicle, standing on all fours
+and starting to bark back at it. We, in the Vilnius region, let the
+dog bark because that is what its canine nature is like but we do not
+stop out journey because of its canine barking and without any war
+against dogs we calmly continue our journey until we reach our
+destination. It seems that you care more about barking more than the
+dog does and about winning the war with any lousy puppy than about
+reaching the destination quickly.
+-- Jozef Pilsudski
git.ckatri.com / bsdgames-darwin.git / blobdiff