What is vice today may be virtue tomorrow.
%%
Let me play with it first and I'll tell you what it is later.
- Miles Davis
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
In the beginning i was made.  I didn't ask to me made.  No one consulted
me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their
way through life's mournful jungle then so be it.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
- Cheech Marin
%%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
- Joey Ramone
%%
Life is wasted on the living.
- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
%%
Youth is wasted on the young.
- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
You will soon meet a tall dark handsome stranger.
%%
!xob XINEX siht edisni kcuts m'I ,pleH
%%
I like the future, I'm in it.
%%
If you don't watch it, you're going to catch something.
%%
To be, or what?
- Sylvester Stallone
%%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and he'll
invite himself over for dinner.
%%
I waited and waited, and when nobody called, I knew it was from you.
%%
A stitch in time saves nine.
%%
There's a bug somewhere in your code.
%%
Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee.
[A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.]
- Dutch Proverb
%%
Faire de la bonne cuisine demande un certain temps.  Si on vous fait attendre,
c'est pour mieux vous servir, et vous plaire.
[Good cooking takes time.  If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better,
 and to please you.]
Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans
[Also, what we're going to be telling our customers]
%%
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
- OVID
%%
He'll sit here and he'll say, "Do this!  Do that!"  And nothing will happen.
- Harry S. Truman, on presidential power
%%
Practice is the best of all instructors.
- Publilius
%%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
- Poor Richard's Almanac
%%
The author should gaze at Noah, and ... learn, as they did in the Ark, to crowd
a great deal of matter into a very small compass.
- Sydney, Smith, Edinburgh Review
%%
The hypothesis:
Amid a wash of paper, a small number of documents become the critical pivots
around which every project's management revolves.  These are the manager's
chief personal tools.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
- Swift
%%
It is common sense to take a method and try it.  If it fails, admit it frankly
and try another.  But above all, try something.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%%
Things are always at their best in the beginning.
- Pascal
%%
That is the key to history.  Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are
built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong.
Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then
it all slides back into misery and ruin.  In fact, the machine conks.  It seems
to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.
- C. S. Lewis
%%
A good workman is known by his tools.
%%
I can call spirts from the vasty deep.
Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
- Shakespeare, king Henry IV, Part I
%%
None love the bearer of bad news.
- Sophocles
%%
How does a project get to be a year late? ... One day at a time.
- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
- Goethe
%%
The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time
to come.  One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just
within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most
intricate and complex of man's handiworks.  The management of this complex
craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best
adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common
sense, and ... humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
All programmers are optimists.  Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers.  Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal.  Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists.  But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable:  "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time.  The last 10% of a project
takes 90% of the time.
%%
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the
creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue
in practice.  disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it.
- G. L. Glegg, The Design of Design
%%
"GOTO statement considered harmful"
- E. W. Dijkstra, title to a letter in CACM 11, 3 (March, 1968)
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth.  The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
The emperor has no clothes.
%%
Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian.
%%
The clothes have no emperor.
- C. A. Hoare, about Ada.
%%
There will always be survivors.
- Robert Heinlen
%%
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-
stuff.  He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the
imagination.  Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and
rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
Mind your own business, Mr. Spock.  I'm sick of your halfbreed interference.
%%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone somewhere is having fun.
%%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Samuel Johnson
%%
A gift of flower will soon be made to you.
%%
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist and too rich to be a communist.
%%
A man forgives only when he is in the wrong.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
University: A modern school where football is taught.
%%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
%%
We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did.
- Rufus T. Firefly, in "Duck Soup"
%%
It's not often that you get so much class entertainment outside your bedroom
window or outside your bedroom, period.
- Groucho Marx
%%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Been Transferred Lately?
%%
Beware of a tall dark man with a spoon up his nose.
%%
Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
%%
Angular momentum makes the world go round.
%%
Charity:  a thing that begins at home and usually stays there.
%%
Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!
%%
Death:  to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
%%
Don't eat yellow snow.    - Frank Zappa
%%
Don't force it, use a bigger hammer.
%%
Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
%%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%%
Everything you know is wrong.     - The Firesign Theater
%%
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
%%
Finagle's Law:  The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.
%%
Flee at once, all is discovered.
%%
Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.
%%
God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
%%
Hackers of the world, unite!
%%
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
%%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%%
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
%%
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
%%
I will never lie to you.
%%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%%
If God had wanted man to go around nude, He would have given him bigger hands.
%%
If God had wanted man to fly, He would have given him airline tickets.
%%
Ignore previous fortune.
%%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%%
Laugh, and the world ignores you.  Crying doesn't help either.
%%
Long life is in store for you.
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love is in the offing.  Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%%
Many are called, few are chosen.  Fewer still get to do the choosing.
%%
Many are called, few volunteer.
%%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of
Casablanca.
%%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world really isn't out to get you.
%%
Philosophy:  unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%%
Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.
%%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:  Ninety percent of everything is crud.
%%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
%%
The Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%%
The decision doesn't have to be logical, it is unanimous.
%%
The time is right to make new friends.
%%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
%%
To think is human, to compute, divine.
%%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%%
Try the Moo Shu Pork.  It is especially good today.
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
%%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
%%
You'll be called to a post requiring ability in handling groups of people.
%%
Your boss is thinking about you.
%%
If something's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.
%%
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more months
of work to do.
- C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
%%
We stand today at a crossroads:  One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness.  The other leads to total extinction.  Let us hope we have the
wisdom to make the right choice.
- Woody Allen
%%
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their children.
I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
- Woody Allen
%%
Nothing is done until nothing is done.
%%
The fourth law of thermodynamics:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
%%
There are no saints, only unrecognized villains.
%%
There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.
%%
It may soon be time for you to look for a new line of work.
%%
Your project will be late.
%%
The CS Sage says:  Seek new employment prior to the imposition of performance
penalties on your project.
%%
You will see the light at the end of the tunnel; unfortunately, it will be
the light of an oncoming freight train.
%%
What is virtue today may be vice tomorrow.
%%
"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the contry demands bold,
persistent experimentation."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
%%
Money talks...but all mine keeps saying is "goodbye"
%%
"No, it's 'Blessed are the meek.'  I think that's nice, 'cause really they have
a hell of a time."  - someone in the crowd in "The Life of Brian"
%%
"I think he said 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'"  "Nonsense, he was obviously
referring to all manafacturers of dairy products." 
- two people in the crowd in "The Life of Brian"
%%
How do you make a small fortune in Texas oil?

Start with a big one.
%%
What can a pigeon do that a west Texas oil man can't do anymore?
A pigeon can still make a deposit on a new Mercedes.
%%
How many lesbians does it take to change a light bulb?
Two.  One to change the bulb and another to reflect on how much more gratifying
it was than a man.
%%
How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
Two.  One to change the bulb and one to mix the drinks.
%%
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but it takes a really long time and the light bulb has to want
to change.
%%
How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb?
Four.  One to change the bulb and three to share the experience.
%%
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None.  It's a hardware problem.
%%
To program anything that is programmable is obsession.
%%
Ill play with it first and tell you what it is later.
- Miles Davis
%%
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all 
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these 
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
- Lucinda Childs (Philip Glass: Einstein On The Beach)
%%
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
- Hassan I Sabbah

Bullshit.
- Karl
%%
Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
- Bo Diddley
%%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr
%%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
- Southern California Oracle
%%
The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to
correlate all its contents.
- H. P. Lovecraft
%%
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
- Ken Kesey
%%
Its not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves.
- Little Richard
%%
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
- Mae West
%%
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
- Sigmund Freud
%%
When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried
before.
- Mae West
%%
Her life was saved by rock and roll.
- Lou Reed
%%
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital
intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
"Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeprody I would never had lit
one."     - Maxim of the Hells Angels
%%
It is a rather pleasent experience to be alone in a bank at night.
- Willie Sutton
%%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
- Billy Rose
%%
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
- Karl Marx

If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of
it ... it would have been much better.
- Karl Marx's Mother

(Sysop's note: I think this is a joke.  Can anyone verify it?)
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the
largest shopping center in the world?
- Richard M. Nixon
%%
When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality.
- Al Capone
%%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
- Emmett Grogan
%%
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.
- Spiro Agnew
%%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
- Ronald Reagan
%%
If you've seen one Grand Canyon, you've seen them all.
- a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang
%%
He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
- South African Saying
%%
You can't underestimate the power of fear.
- Tricia Nixon
%%
The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
- Wavy Gravy
%%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
- Buckminster Fuller
%%
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
- Hellen Keller
%%
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
- Allen Ginsberg
%%
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat
somebody.
- Richard M. Nixon
%%
Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearence of magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Justice is incedental to law and order.
- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
- Groucho Marx
%%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
- Abbie Hoffman
%%
Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old.
- Pink Floyd
%%
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
- Peter Drucker
%%
How can you be two places at once when youre not anywhere at all?
- Firesign Theater
%%
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
We are what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut, JR
%%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -
but thats the way to bet.
- Damon Runyon
%%
I could prove God statistically.
- George Gallup
%%
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
- Albert Einstein
%%
Real wealth can only increase.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
Anyone can hate. it costs to love.
- John Williamson
%%
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
or becomes true.
- John Lilly
%%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
- Graffiti
%%
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
- Albert Einstein
%%
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
- Tallulah Bankhead
%%
A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms.
- George Wald
%%
Dont lose
Your head
To gain a minute
You need your head
Your brains are in it.
- Burma Shave
%%
It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been
always thus.
- Dean Lattimer
%%
Burnt Sienna. Thats the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
- Ken Weaver
%%
We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish.
- John Culkin
%%
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from
you.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Please don't lie to me, unless youre absolutely sure Ill never find out the
truth.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Please don't ask me what the score is, Im not even sure what the game is.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Maybe Im lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the 
wrong direction.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm me.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the
target.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
- Alan Coult
%%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
- Stanley Garn
%%
The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
- Father Robert F. Capon
%%
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
men in national government too.
- Richard M. Nixon
%%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
inevitiable.
- John F. Kennedy
%%
"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. Thats logic."
- Lewis Carroll
%%
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
- Edward Dahlberg
%%
To know the world one must construct it.
- Cesare Pavese
%%
Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak.
- Bullwinkle Moose
%%
The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
- Tenessee Williams
%%
An object never serves the same function as its image- or its name.
- Rene Magritte
%%
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
- Kingfish
%%
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
- M. C. Escher
%%
Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences:
 If at first you don't suceed, transform your data set.
%%
Laws of Computer Programming
(1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
(2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.
(3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
(4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
(5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
(6) The value of a program is porportional to the 
    weight of its output.
(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
    programmer who must maintain it.
(8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in
    English, and you will find that programmers cannot write
    in English.
- SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2
%%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
- Calvin Coolidge
%%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
- Paul Erlich
%%
If A equals success, then the formula is:
   A= X + Y + Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
- Albert Einstein
%%
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either.
- Joseph Fischer
%%
Fourth Law of Thermodymanics:
 If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.
- David Ellis
%%
Frouds Law:
 A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing
 first.
%%
Fullers Law of Cosmic Irreversibility:
 1 Pot T == 1 Pot P
 1 Pot P != 1 Pot T
- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
- J. Paul Getty
%%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs
pounding.
- Abraham Kaplan
%%
The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems.
- Roger Levian
%%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance
under which you can be booked.
- Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp)
%%
Thoreau's Law:
 If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good,
 you should run for your life.
%%
Vique's Law:
 A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%%
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
- Gerald Weinberg  (sysop's note: bull)
%%
Zimmerman's Law of Complaints:
Nobody notices when things go right.
%%
Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
- Confucius
%%
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
Book of Proverbs
%%
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
- Mark Twain
%%
The unnatural, that too is natural.
- Goethe
%%
I used to be indecisive; now Im not sure.
- Graffiti
%%
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
He hasn't one redeeming vice.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
- Graffiti
%%
(To Walter Cronkite):
"Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number 
of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running 
up and down a street"
- Neil Armstrong
%%
"You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], "But I forgave 
you that doubt. You doubted your own self and failed to believe 
in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also. But 
you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities 
of Human Nature. THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for 
you to enter the Promised Land."
- The Midrash
%%
" 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability"
- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty 
without any proof"
- Ashley Montague
%%
Birth, copulation and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks;
Birth, copulation and death.
- T. S. Elliot, Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
%%
"Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood."
- D. B. Hudson
%%
"Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take 
all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover."
- Bill Gates, Pres., Microsoft, Inc.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee...
 that will do them in.
%%
Civilization Law #1:
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
one can do without thinking about them.
%%
Ketterling's Law:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
%%
"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B',
'A' is most likely a scoundrel"
- H. L. Mencken
%%
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded 
on the Christian Religion"
- George Washington
%%
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty."
 - Thomas Jefferson
%%
"During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has
been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride
and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,; in both,
superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
 - James Madison
%%
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations"
 - Thomas Jefferson
%%
"We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately"
 - Benjamin Franklin
%%
"Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried"
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained 
control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles"
- Pat Paulsen
%%
"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself"
- Albert Camus
%%
"Six years for possession of a cigarette?...I got six months for possession
of a deadly weapon!"
- cartoon by S. Harris
%%
The Swartzberg Test:
 The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
%%
"There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing 
the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries 
civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. 
We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward 
striving of the human race"
- Alfred North Whitehead
%%
"My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of 
human systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly 
vulnerable.... We should be reluctant to turn back upon the 
frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we 
do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether 
or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to 
space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought 
us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and 
understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny 
our history, our capabilities."
- James A. Michener
%%
"What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go 
to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to 
build railroads across a continent? In independent thought 
about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it 
takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, 
the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American 
life. First, a base of technology must exist from which to do 
the thing to be done. Second, a period of national uneasiness 
about America's place in the scheme of human activities must 
exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses 
the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally, 
an articulate and wise leader must sense these first three 
conditions and put forth with words and action the great thing 
to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans to do what 
needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions.... 
The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John Kennedys 
appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which 
they, and thier young frontiersmen, will require to lead us 
onward and upward."
- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt, Sen., New Mexico
%%
"What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick!"
 - Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian -
%%
"To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but not its programmer"
- Morris Kingston
%%
"I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more
of them who were paralyzed in the head"
- George Wallace
%%
"You don't have to explain something you never said"
- Calvin Coolidge
%%
"A little caution outflanks a large cavalry"
- Bismarck
%%
"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money"
- Everett Dirksen
%%
"The personal computer market is about the same size as the 
total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the 
size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total 
worldwide sales of pantyhose"
 - James Finke, Pres., Commodore Int'l Ltd.(1982)
%%
"I like a man who grins when he fights."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick
himself up and carry on..."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, 
and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, 
Thursday, and Saturday."
- William Bragg
%%
"Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die"
- John W. Campbell
%%
"That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest"
- Thoreau (Sysop's note: and if so, what are we doing here?)
%%
Life is not one thing after another.... it's the same damn thing over and over!
%%
The meek will inherit the Earth..... The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.
%%
Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone.
%%
There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
%%
Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.
%%
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe
you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it
to be sure.
%%
Sex is like snow... You never know how many inches you're going to get or how
long it will last.
%%
What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
%%
Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics.
%%
"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no
one else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Gyorgi
%%
"Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals"
- "Oh, Lucky Man"
%%
I really hate this damn machine,
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does just what I want,
But only what I tell it.
%%
"Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; 
united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels"
- Goya
%%
"Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon 
the wall instead of using it"
- Gordon R. Dickson
%%
"Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor."
- Toynbee
%%
"We have met the enemy and he is us"
- Walt Kelly (in POGO)
%%
"You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are
now extinct."
- M. Somerset Maugham
%%
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
- Bert Lantz
%%
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
- Oscar Wilde
%%
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire
%%
"IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique' 
to destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the 
ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT 
OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all 
this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor 
approaches the pot, he falls into the pit"
- John C. Dvorak
%%
"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them"
- Heisenberg
%%
"It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
to my kind of fooling"
- R. Frost
%%
"Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!"
- Ben Jonson
%%
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
cometh out of man, in their sight...Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread
therewith.
[Ezek. 4:12-15 (KJV)]
%%
I have stripped off my dress; must I put it on again?  I have washed my feet;
must I soil them again?
When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred
within me [my bowels were moved for him (KJV)].
When I arose to open for my beloved, my hands dripped with myrrh; the liquid
myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt.  With my own hands I
opened to my love, but my love had turned away and gone by; my heart sank when
he turned his back.  I sought him but I did not find him, I called him but he
did not answer.
The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me; they struck me and
  wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took away my cloak.
[Song of Solomon 5:3-7 (NEB)]
%%
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy
thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.  Thy navel
is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor:  thy belly is like an heap
of wheat set about with lillies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
[Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
%%
How beautiful, how entrancing you are, my loved one, daughter of delights!
You are stately as a palm-tree, and your breasts are the clusters of dates.
I said, "I will climb up into the palm to grasp its fronds."  May I find your
breast like clusters of grapes on the vine, the scent of your breath like
apricots, and your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my
caresses, gliding down through lips and teeth.
[Song of Solomon 7:6-9 (NEB)]
%%
Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
than any flame.
[Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]
%%
But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to
thee, to speak these words?  Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the
wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
[2 Kings 18:27 (KJV)]
%%
When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and
driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate
them.  You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.
[Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
%%
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
- Cheech Marin
%%
In the beginning, I was made.  I didn't ask to be made.  No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the
Galaxy Radio Scripts
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
%%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers.  What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%%
Wherever you go...There you are.
- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
- Joey Ramone
%%
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capabe of. ... And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
%%
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
- Seneca
%%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
- General James Gavin
%%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
%%
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
- Nicklaus Wirth
%%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
- Calvin Keegan
%%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
- Niels Bohr
%%
The computer can't tell you the emotional story.  It can give you the exact
mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
- Frank Zappa
%%
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
- Edward Thorp
%%
The main thing is the play itself.  I swear that greed for money has nothing
to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
- Feodor Dostoyevsky
%%
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
- Robert Bly
%%
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
- Alan Turing
%%
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
- Blaise Pascal
%%
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
- Freeman Dyson
%%
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
%%
Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missle defense
systems.  The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities.  An unreliable
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
- C. A. R. Hoare
%%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did.  In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%%
"It was the Law of the Sea, they said.	Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool --
programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
describe.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.  Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
...computer hardware progress is so fast.  No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike.  If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed.  In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
They hyave very large numbers of states.  This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard.  Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary.  No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
- Ellyn Mustard
%%
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close.  For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
- Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
%%
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
- Brian Kernighan
%%
Perfection is acheived only on the point of collapse.
- C. N. Parkinson
%%
There you go man,
Keep as cool as you can.
It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
Keep on being free!
%%
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you'll be Gary, Indiana. - Jessie in the movie "Greaser's Palace"
%%
Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound. - Peanuts
%%
Police up your spare rounds and frags.  Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
%%
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific."
-- Jane Wagner
%%
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple
his world.  To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than
against them is to attain literacy."
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%%
"Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way.  If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives?"
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%%
"The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace."
-- Holly Near
%%
"No matter where you go, there you are..."
-- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
Trespassers will be shot.  Survivors will be prosecuted.
%%
Trespassers will be shot.  Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN!
%%
"I'm growing older, but not up."
-- Jimmy Buffett
%%
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
%%
"I hate the itching.  But I don't mind the swelling."
-- new buzz phrase, like "Where's the Beef?" that David Letterman's trying
   to get everyone to start saying
%%
Your own mileage may vary.
%%
"Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again."
-- Marvin The Paranoid Android
%%
"Send lawyers, guns and money..."
-- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
%%
"I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
- H. L. Mencken
%%
"Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best." -- Frank Zappa
%%
I can't drive 55.
%%
"And they told us, what they wanted...
 Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance." -- Kate Bush
%%
"In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not
there if you want to keep writing good code."  - Karl
%%
Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges.
%%
I can't drive 55.
I'm looking forward to not being able to drive 65, either.
%%
Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas.  -Karl
%%
Sit on a happy face. 
%%
"Can you program?"  "Well, I'm literate, if that's what you mean!"
%%
No user-servicable parts inside.  Refer to qualified service personnel.
%%
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new.  This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense.  Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism:  The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
One of the saddest lessons of history is this:  If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no
longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured
us.  it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
we've been so credulous.  (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way
to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."
%%
The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of
pseudoscience.  Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort
contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory.  Because
of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
scientists must employ in their work.
-- Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
%%
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage.  But if we
don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly
serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up
for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
Don't have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
%%
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy.  The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" 
%%
Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece.  Their
work will be set back by having that test bed change under them.  Of course it
must.  But the changes need to be quantized.  Then each user has periods of
productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change.  This seems
to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" 
%%
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" 
%%
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it
is also very memorable.  I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize
the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360.  The manager of
architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were
threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.

The architecture manager had 10 good men.  He asserted that they could write
the specifications and do it right.  It would take ten months, three more
than the schedule allowed.

The control program manager had 150 men.  He asserted that they could prepare
the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be 
well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule.  Futhermore, if
the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs
for ten months.

To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program
team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would
also be three months late, and of much lower quality.  I did, and it was.  He
was right on both counts.  Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
added a year to debugging time.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" 
%%
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary
psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After
more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP
phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions.  This simple but
basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted
over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little
interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that
needs explanation.
-- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
%%
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
-- Charles Galton Darwin
%%
Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as concious selection.
We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we can be.
Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves unrecognizably.
-- Greg Bear
%%
"Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin."
-- Michael O'Donohugh
%%
...though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from
beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%%
"It's like deja vu all over again."   -- Yogi Berra
%%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
%%
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked.  "Begin at the beginning,"
the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
%%
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
To be awake is to be alive.  -- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden"
%%
A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
never sure.   Proverb
%%
You see but you do not observe.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
%%
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two.  -- Seneca
%%
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb
to you till your life has illustrated it.  -- John Keats
%%
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order
of space and time.  -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%%
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
-- Bengamin Disraeli
%%
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan.  We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.  -- Edmund Burke
%%
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Don't tell me how hard you work.  Tell me how much you get done.
-- James J. Ling
%%
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.  -- Henry Brook Adams
%%
Remember thee
Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.  Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
Hamlet, I : v : 95   William Shakespeare
%%
Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he
has based it.  Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted
and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda
and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and
make him something less than a man.
-- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
%%
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance.  -- James Bryant Conant
%%
You can observe a lot just by watching.  -- Yogi Berra
%%
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit, I
see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by
electricity.  -- Samuel F. B. Morse
%%
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you."   -- Alexander Graham Bell
%%
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
-- J. C. R. Licklider
%%
It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
-- B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal System",
Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980, pp. 7-20
%%
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
%%
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.  -- James Baldwin
%%
Small is beautiful.
%%
...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
-- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
%%
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau
%%
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period:  how much cheaper and more efficient
would the current models be?  If you have not already heard the analogy, the
answer is shattering.  Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75,
it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough
power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II.  And if you were interested in
miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead.
-- Christopher Evans
%%
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
-- Robert Lucky
%%
Get hold of portable property.  -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
%%
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions:  to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
remaining errors by providing for recovery from them.  An interesting footnote
to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
the result of two program errors:  the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.  -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating
Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
%%
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these remote from sugar
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...  

If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
such machinery impracticable...

And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the 
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
%%
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?

"Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
%%
"Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes.  I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal."
- Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hithiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Uncompensated overtime?  Just Say No.
%%
Decaffeinated coffee?  Just Say No.
%%
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid."
- Martin Mull
%%
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
- David Letterman
%%
"Morality is one thing.  Ratings are everything."
- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
%%
Live free or die.
%%
"...if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
 this would be a better world."  - Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%%
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read.
%%
"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
 made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977
%%
"All these black people are screwing up my democracy." - Ian Smith
%%
Use the Force, Luke.
%%
I've got a bad feeling about this.
%%
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
the Force.
- Darth Vader
%%
When I left you, I was but the pupil.  Now, I am the master.
- Darth Vader
%%
"Well, well, well!  Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
poison!  How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil?  Come
and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!"
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%%
"There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts.  I could never stand to
see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was."
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%%
186,000 Miles per Second.  It's not just a good idea.  IT'S THE LAW.
%%
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
%%
Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
%%
Children begin by loving their parents.  After a time they judge them.  Rarely,
if ever, do they forgive them.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
Single tasking: Just Say No.
%%
"Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world."
- The Beach Boys
%%
"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
seemed to come from Texas."
- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
%%
"I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
lifetime."
- Johnny Legend
%%
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials
(out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
but appeared "abruptly."
- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
%%
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
- Hajime Karatsu
%%
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient.
Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
the long run.  I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary 
challenging spirit today.
- Hajime Karatsu
%%
Memories of you remind me of you.
- Karl
%%
Life.  Don't talk to me about life.
- Marvin the Paranoid Anroid
%%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%%
The world is coming to an end--save your buffers!
%%
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
%%
It is your destiny.
- Darth Vader
%%
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
your side.
- Han Solo
%%
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
%%
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

"That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
%%
To be is to program.
%%
To program is to be.
%%
I program, therefore I am.
%%
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange
surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and
Fortran programs, for example.
- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
%%
"I am your density."
  -- George McFly in "Back to the Future"
%%
"So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here."
  -- Biff in "Back to the Future"
%%
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint."
-- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
%%
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
%%
"I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously."
- Doctor Graper
%%
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
%%
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
- Francis Bellamy, 1892
%%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his 
ears.  I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
-- Steven Wright
%%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big sattelite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
 -- Steven Wright
%%
You can't have everything... where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%%
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and
4 people died.
-- Steven Wright
%%
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip 
over?  Well, that's how I feel all the time.
-- Steven Wright
%%
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and 
the building started up.  So I took it out for a drive.  A cop pulled me over 
for speeding.  He asked me where I live... "Right here".
-- Steven Wright
%%
"Live or die, I'll make a million."
-- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth, Firesign Theater
%%
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
%%
There are bugs and then there are bugs.  And then there are bugs.
- karl
%%
My computer can beat up your computer.
- karl
%%
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures
- karl
%%
Kill Ugly Radio
- Frank Zappa
%%
"Just Say No."   - Nancy Reagan

"No."            - Ronald Reagan
%%
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder.  It's a
very powerful emotion.  All children feel it.  In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it.  Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it's not just puberty.  Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder.  Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling.  Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience.  But there is a kind
of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
good.  And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful.  Every newspaper
in America has a daily astrology column.  How many have even a weekly
astronomy column?  And I believe it is also the fault of the educational
system.  We do not teach how to think.  This is a very serious failure that
may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
future.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience.  And
in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
gence?"  I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
and use the word *billions*, and so on.  And then I say it would be astonishing
to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
yet no compelling evidence for it.  And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you
really think?"  I say, "I just told you what I really think."  "Yeah, but 
what's your gut feeling?"  But I try not to think with my gut.  Really, it's
okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
Repel them.  Repel them.  Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
%%
If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
%%
   It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
%%
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing materail aid 
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality.  Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only 
by a change in our world view.  We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the 
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate 
nature and all of creation.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman
%%
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
dangers that must not be underestimated.  Practitioners must take into
account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being.  The history
of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug.  Special internal and external advance preperations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability
more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjution
with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
child.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
prepared.
- Louis Pasteur
%%
core error - bus dumped
%%
If imprinted foil seal under cap is broken or missing when purchased, do not 
use.
%%
"Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you."
- A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution, Firesign Theater
%%
"Ahead warp factor 1"
- Captain Kirk
%%
   Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.

   "Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report.  "A barrier of water
vapor!  A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
A civilized race could not have stooped so low!  A civilized race would not
have..."

   It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.

- Startide Rising, by David Brin
%%
Harrison's Postulate:
	For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
	The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
	the population is growing.
%%
Felson's Law:
	To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
	many is research.
%%
...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth.  Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old.  Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it.
There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between 
prejudice and postjudice.  Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts.  Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards.  Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes.  Postjudice is not terrible.  You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also.  But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence.  In some circles it is even encouraged.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46
%%
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
- Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
%%
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
Unix:  Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
-karl
%%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
- Joe Crowe
%%
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
- Edmund Burke
%%
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are 
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . .
   [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
of dealing with it. . . .
   [L]et us use the tools that we have.  Let us invoke the cooperation we have
the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
%%
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
- Thomas Paine
%%
"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure."
- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
%%
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
"...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect."
- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
"Athens built the Acropolis.  Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
purely materialistic things.  Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
"Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared
adventure and achievement to the society at large."
- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon
represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race.  Even
if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this
task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the
goal.  In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human
arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by
those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the
development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.
- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and
landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination
and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition,
and will that I do not see in any other undertaking.  I think if we are
honest with ourselves, we must admit that we needed that impetus extremely
strongly.  I sincerely believe that the space program, with its manned
landing on the moon, if wisely executed, will become the spearhead for a
broad front of courageous and energetic activities in all the fields of
endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out 
except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead
can give.
- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of
productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly 
appreciated goals.  A lethargic world serves no cause well; a spirited world
working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and
the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied...to unparalleled
social accomplishment.
- Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while.  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
gratifications.  All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done.  There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself
to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon...
- Lyndon B. Johnson
%%
Life's the same, except for the shoes.
- The Cars
%%
Purple hum
Assorted cars
Laser lights, you bring

All to prove
You're on the move
and vanishing
- The Cars
%%
Could be you're crossing the fine line
A silly driver kind of...off the wall

You keep it cool when it's t-t-tight
...eyes wide open when you start to fall.
- The Cars
%%
Adapt.  Enjoy.  Survive.
%%
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
- Anonymous
%%
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
- Isaac Asimov
%%
And the crowd was stilled.  One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said.  Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes!  He is naked!"
- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
%%
"Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
Silly Putty."
-  Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
%%
To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
   1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated
      by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our
      national security;
   2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air
      Force that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED represent
      technological developments or principles beyond the range of
      present-day scientific knowledge; and
   3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized
      as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.
- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from 1950
  to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
%%
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only
in the God idea, not God Himself.
- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
%%
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
- Kahlil Gibran
%%
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
%%
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
- Voltaire
%%
If only God would give me some clear sign!  Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss Bank.
- Woody Allen
%%
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man.  Therefore, I affirm both.
Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete.  Human unity
is the fulfillment of diversity.  It is the harmony of opposites.  It is
a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
- Norman Cousins
%%
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
- C. K. Chesterton
%%
...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion.  The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other.  Is uniformity
attainable?  Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
%%
Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to
be solved.
- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??)
%%
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
our doubts serve to reassure us.
- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
%%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the
improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
%%
And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve?  The judgement of God
upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of 
criminal at the bar of justice.
- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
%%
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
become better people as a result of practicing it.
- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
%%
Imitation is the sincerest form of plagarism.
%%
"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"
- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11
%%
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored
power tools.
%%
How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
%%
How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?

It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
%%
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of.  My own mind is my own Church.
- Thomas Paine
%%
God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
- Roger Williams
%%
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.  But we may hope that the
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.  Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.  And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.  Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity.
- John Adams
%%
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.  I could
never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
- Abraham Lincoln
%%
As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
- Benjamin Franklin
%%
I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
gotten the hostages released.  I thank God they were satisfied with the
missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
- Oliver North
%%
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute --
where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom
to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
people who might elect him.
- from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
  September 12, 1960.
%%
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking.  Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.  Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man.  It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions.  It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken
%%
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere 
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is 
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%%
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way.
Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality,
and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
beyond the grave.  Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to 
flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
- H. L. Mencken
%%
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be 
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account.  The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
- Clarence Darrow
%%
We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
%%
...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
- George Jacob Holyoake
%%
"If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."
- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston
  July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
%%
The meek are contesting the will.
%%
I'm sick of being trodden on!  The Elder Gods say they can make me a man!
All it costs is my soul!  I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!
- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
%%
   On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins.
>From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.
   "...stupid creatures unworthy of the name `sophonts.'  Foolish, pre-sentient
upspring of errant masters.  We slip away from all your armed might, laughing
at your clumsiness!  We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures.
And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us!  What better
proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us!  What better proof..."
   The taunt went on.  Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring
the artistry of it.  These men are better than I'd thought.  Their insults
are wordy and overblown, but they have talent.  They deserve honorable, slow
deaths.
- David Brin, Startide Rising
%%
"I'm a mean green mother from outer space"
 -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
%%
Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer.
It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who
watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide
people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and
cruelty for that.  On the other hand, I respect and envy the people 
who get inspiration from their religions.
- Benjamin Spock
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
- Andy Finkel, computer guy
%%
Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.
%%
NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again.
- The Firesign Theater
%%
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical 
vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.
- The Firesign Theater
%%
...this is an awesome sight.  The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
- The Firesign Theater
%%
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
- Ann Marion
%%
I know engineers.  They love to change things.
- Dr. McCoy
%%
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
- John Lions (U. of Toronto (?))
%%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
%%
"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
States?  Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
Here, there is no such mobility.  If you have the slightest bit of intellectual
integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer 
minds belong to the opposition."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
%%
"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door.  Now all you have to do is
bend a disk."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity, 
  commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
%%
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- Mark Twain
%%
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
- Ed Bluestone
%%
He's dead, Jim.
%%
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
- David Letterman
%%
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
- Al Capone
%%
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
levitation.

Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the 
character does not have fire resistance.

- README file from the NetHack game
%%
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
- Frank Zappa
%%
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired.  I'm certainly not.  But I'm
sick and tired of being told that I am.
- Monty Python
%%
"There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."
-- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
%%
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
- T. K. Lawson
%%
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
- William Cowper
%%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
%%
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
  commenting on psi research
%%
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
- John Keats
%%
Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.
%%
"Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.

In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket,
achieving an altitude of 41 feet.  In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth.

In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
in Apollo 11."
-- Michael Collins
   Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum
%%
Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the
peasantry."  Don't lose what you've got.  Don't change.  Don't take a chance,
because you might end up starving to death.  Play it safe.  Buy just as much
as you need.  Don't waste time.

When  we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their
heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive.  But when it comes down
to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in
something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
the game as it must be played.

- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988
%%
"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting"
--Stanley Sutton
%%
Weekends were made for programming.
- Karl
%%
"Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his 
roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards."
- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters
  of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
%%
...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer,
  Vol XII No. 2
%%
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
%%
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
and tears.  ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires
us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
contrary to habit...
- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
%%
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function
are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other.  There is
no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and
make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.  Actually, of course, this
is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the
assumption will have to be rejected.  But it is important also to see that we
have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and
there is no real evidence opposed to it.  Our failure to solve a problem so
far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot logically be a determinist in
physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior:  A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
%%
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
  Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
the person making the claim, not the critic.  It is not the responsibility
of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
or colored lights never healed anyone.  The skeptic's role is to point out
claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidcence and to
provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...
- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
%%
"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."
- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
%%
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.  There are many examples of
outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
they prevailed with irrefutable data.  More often, egregious findings that
contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts.  I have
argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic conciousness,"
and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
neuroscience.  Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for Psi
   Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.
Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only
atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
%%
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life", 
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
%%
...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life", 
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
%%
... The book is worth attention for only two reasons:  (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
%%
e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data 
you're seeing is genuine rather than somebody's made-up crap.
- karl 
%%
Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
Shit Happens.
%%
My mother is a fish.
- William Faulkner
%%
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
$$
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature.  For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events.  To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.  For a doctrine which 
is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress.  In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, 
give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
powers in the hands of priests.  In their labors they will have to avail
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the 
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself.  This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
- Albert Einstein
%%
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
- Our Sunday Visitor, an American-Catholic newspaper, circa 1949
%%
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
%%
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries...
- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
%%
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
%%
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?
Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of
ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for 
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
his ignorance.  And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
- Voltaire
%%
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity.  We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly --
that is the first law of nature.
- Voltaire
%%
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
- Voltaire
%%
I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us --
a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole
normal evolution of society.
- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
%%
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be.... The
natural disposition is always to believe.  It is acquired wisdom and experience
only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
- Adam Smith
%%
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If they think
you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude.  I'm a
very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.  These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to 
crudeness.
- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
%%
However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise.
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
beliefs.  There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
Jese Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf
should be used sparingly.  The religious factions that are growing
throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.
They are trying to force government leaders into following their position
100 percent.  If you disagree with these religious groups on a 
particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of
money or votes or both.  I'm frankly sick and tired of the political
preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D."  Just who do
they think they are?  And from where do they presume to claim the 
right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?  And I am even more angry as
a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate.  I am warning them today:  I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of "conservatism."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
%%
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's
suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's
nomination to the Supreme Court
%%
...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers.  No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions.  This is true in religion as
it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive.
As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
advised to leave them to heaven.  They will not, unfortunately, do us the
same courtesy.  They attack us and each other, and whatever their 
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword.  My own belief in
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge.  My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth.  But even well-educated Christians
are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it.  Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of 
  Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
%%
...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
- Sidney Hook
%%
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
- Winston Churchill
%%
We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...
we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.
- Jerry Falwell
%%
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
- George Orwell
%%
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
conversions -- to anything -- less likely.  Brian now realizes this and
has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with.  The 
problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and 
irrational -- the powers of reason are suprisingly ineffective in 
changing the believer's mind.
- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of 
  Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
%%
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
- Fyodor Dostoevski
%%
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual 
concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.
But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
resources.  If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
%%
The Messiah will come.  There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
- Rabbi Meir Kahane
%%
The world is no nursery.
- Sigmund Freud
%%
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
superficial answer is not far to seek....
The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher, 
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%%
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality.  All proffered 
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to 
common tests.  It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse.  The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generall known; 
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary 
ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
where the method of free inquiry has made its way.  The "religious"
would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher, 
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%%
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality...Whether this
educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-
democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance
not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
interests and activites of a society that is committed to the democratic
way of life.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
%%
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts
them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing
grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another...
Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every
moult is a step gained.
- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
%%
...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and 
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our 
family, the Hominidae.
- Richard Leakey
%%
It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us
as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.
- Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species", 
  Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
%%
"Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature.  It's a piss-poor
reptile and not very much of a bird."
- Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
studied the archeopteryz and found it "very much like people"
%%
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.  What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectualy heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
%%
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
%%
"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."
-- presumable misprint from the 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
%%
"Your attitude determines your attitude."
-- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
%%
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...

This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes.  As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it?  As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness:  Implications for
   Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
%%
Thufir's a Harkonnen now.
%%
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
-- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language"
%%
"If you want to eat hippopautamus, you've got to pay the freight."
-- some IBM guy
%%
Parkinson's Law:  Work expands to fill the time alloted it.
%%
Karl's version of Parkinson's Law:  Work expands to exceed the time alloted it.
%%
It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and
failed.
- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
%%
"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension."
-- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us:  Hypnotic Regression Revisited",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
%%
"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products,
if they are built at all, are dogs!"
-- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
%%
Ink: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
intellectual crime.
%%
Kleptomaniac: A rich thief.
%%
Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
%%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
	And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
	Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."
 
Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
	"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
	"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
%%
Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
%%
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
	as one man.
 
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
 
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
%%
Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence...
%%
Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism
 
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
 
The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
knowledge.
%%
Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species,
which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest
the whole habitable earth and Canada.
%%
Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.
%%
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
%%
Molecule: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.  It is
distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit
of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate,
indivisible unit of matter...The ion differs from the molecule, the
corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion...
%%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic.  A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation...A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.
%%
Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
%%
Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
%%
...It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it
is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists
have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of
smell.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
%%
Once, adv.: Enough.
%%
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by
the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior
in scope, for it balks at pig.
%%
Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
	1)  The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
	    straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
	    force is technically termed "car suck").
	2)  Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
	    than "Watch this!"
%%
Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the
on roof and gets stuck.
%%
Hofstadter's Law:
	It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
	Hofstadter's Law into account.
%%
"It is bad luck to be superstitious."
		-- Andrew W. Mathis
%%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
		-- Roy Santoro
%%
Main's Law:
	For every action there is an equal and opposite government
	program.
%%
"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
%%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
	It's on the other side.
%%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
	1)  Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
	    check.
	2)  A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
	3)  There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
	    attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
	    attracted to dark objects.
%%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
		-- Noelie Altito
%%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a
larger object.
%%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
		-- Marguerite Emmons
%%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%%
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
	The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
	to.....to........uh..............
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots
%%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%%
"If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin'
it, even if they don't know what it means."
		-- Walt Kelly
%%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
also a psychological interaction.
The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly.
The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
%%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
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.
%%
"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."
%%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
%%
Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
%%
Bank error in your favor.  Collect $200.
%%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
worse in Cleveland.
%%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
%%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
%%
For a good time, call (415) 642-9483
%%
AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
You brute!  Knock before entering a ladies room!
%%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).
%%
To be is to do.
	-- I. Kant
To do is to be.
	-- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
	-- F. Flinstone
%%
God is Dead
	-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
	-- God
Nietzsche is God
	-- Dead
%%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%%
Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
%%
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
%%
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
how many?
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
Help!  I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
%%
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I  !pleH
%%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
%%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
%%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.
%%
In the days of old,
When Knights were bold,
	And women were too cautious;
Oh, those gallant days,
When women were women,
	And men were really obnoxious...
%%
Sex is not the answer.	Sex is the question.  "Yes" is the answer.
%%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
Heads.
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
Ears.
%%
How doth the little crocodile
    Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
    On every golden scale!
 
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
    How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
    With gently smiling jaws!
%%
You're at the end of the road again.
%%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive.
 
However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be yours by
judging things by their price.
%%
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
    "And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
 
"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
    "I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
    Pray what is the reason of that?"
 
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
    "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
    Allow me to sell you a couple?"
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
    For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
 
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
    And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
    Has lasted the rest of my life."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
    That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
    What made you so awfully clever?"
 
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
    Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
    Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
%%
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
%%
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
%%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
%%
I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
%%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
%%
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(thi)!
%%
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.
%%
This fortune cookie program out of order.  For those in desperate need,
please use the program "_r_a_n_d_c_h_a_r".  This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound.  It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%%
Speak roughly to your little boy,
    And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
    Because he knows it teases.
 
	Wow!  wow!  wow!
 
I speak severely to my boy,
    And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
    The pepper when he pleases!
 
	Wow!  wow!  wow!
%%
	"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- 'Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
%%
Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
    Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
    Et le m^omerade horgrave.
%%
Es brilig war.	Die schlichte Toven
    Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven
    Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben.
%%
	"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said
	Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't--
till I tell you.  I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
	"But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
	"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
	"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
	"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
%%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
    Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
    How well did I behave.
 
And now the fancy passes by,
    And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
    Am quite myself again.
 
		-- A. E. Housman
%%
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short.  Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
 
		-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
		-- the Peter Principle
%%
Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate
it.
%%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist.  But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind.  The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what _d_o_e_s exist.  Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here.  The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical.  They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way...
%%
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
you will look forward to the trip.
%%
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%%
When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%%
HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!?  Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
		-- Walt Kelley
%%
Look out!  Behind you!
%%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%%
Dentist: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream...the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky...the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%%
If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
%%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
%%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
%%
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
	"Murphy was an optimist."
%%
Boling's postulate:
	If you're feeling good, don't worry.  You'll get over it.
%%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.
%%
Scott's first Law:
	No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%%
Scott's second Law:
	When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
	to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
	After the correction has been found in error, it will be
	impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
	equation.
%%
Finagle's first Law:
	If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle's second Law:
	No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
	someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
	believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle's third Law:
	In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
	beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries:
	1.  Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
	2.  The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
	    don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%%
Finagle's fourth Law:
	Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
	makes it worse.
%%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
 
	The Course of Progress:
		Most things get steadily worse.
 
	The Path of Progress:
		A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%%
Simon's Law:
	Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%%
Ginsberg's Theorem:
	1.  You can't win.
	2.  You can't break even.
	3.  You can't even quit the game.
 
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
 
	Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
	meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
	Theorem.  To wit:
 
	1.  Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
	2.  Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
	    even.
	3.  Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
	    game.
%%
Ehrman's Commentary:
	1.  Things will get worse before they get better.
	2.  Who said things would get better?
%%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
	Negative expectations yield negative results.
	Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Howe's Law:
	Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:
	90% of everything is crud.
%%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
	Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
	probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
	some useful work done.
%%
Brook's Law:
	Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
	Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
	vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
	There's always one more bug.
%%
Shaw's Principle:
	Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
	want to use it.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
	You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
	bread to butter.
%%
Law of Selective Gravity:
	An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
 
Jenning's Corollary:
	The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
	directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
%%
Paul's Law:
	You can't fall off the floor.
%%
Johnson's First Law:
	When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
	most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Watson's Law:
	The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
	number and significance of any persons watching it.
%%
Sattinger's Law:
	It works better if you plug it in.
%%
Lowery's Law:
	If it jams -- force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing
	anyway.
%%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
	Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%%
Cahn's Axiom:
	When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
Jenkinson's Law:
	It won't work.
%%
Murphy's Law of Research:
	Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
Maier's Law:
	If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
	disposed of.
 
Corollaries:
	1.  The bigger the theory, the better.
	2.  The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
	    50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
	    obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%%
Williams and Holland's Law:
	If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
	statistical methods.
%%
Harvard Law:
	Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
	temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the
	organism will do as it damn well pleases.
%%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
	Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
	out.
%%
Brooke's Law:
	Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
	discovers something which either abolishes the system or
	expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Meskimen's Law:
	There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
	do it over.
%%
Heller's Law:
	The first myth of management is that it exists.
 
Johnson's Corollary:
	Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
	organization.
%%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
	Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
	themselves.
%%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
	The number of people in any working group tends to increase
	regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
	If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
	bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
	People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
Iron Law of Distribution:
	Them that has, gets.
%%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
	Those who can -- do.
	Those who can't -- teach.
 
Martin's Extension:
	Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%%
Jone's Law:
	The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
	to blame it on.
%%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
	When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
	content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
	bathroom.
%%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.
%%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
removed.
%%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
	No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
	wind.
%%
Boob's Law:
	You always find something in the last place you look.
%%
Osborn's Law:
	Variables won't; constants aren't.
%%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
	That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
	or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
	should have gotten.
%%
Miksch's Law:
	If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Law of Communications:
	The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
	between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
	area of misunderstanding.
%%
Harris's Lament:
	All the good ones are taken.
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
		-- Harry S Truman
%%
Putt's Law:
	Technology is dominated by two types of people:
	    Those who understand what they do not manage.
	    Those who manage what they do not understand.
%%
First Law of Procrastination:
	Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
	for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who
	imposed the deadline).
%%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
	Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
	there is nothing important to do.
%%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
	He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%%
Wiker's Law:
	Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%%
Gray's Law of Programming:
	'_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
	time as '_n' tasks.
 
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
	'_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as '_n' trivial tasks.
%%
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.
%%
Weinberg's First Law:
	Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%%
Weinberg's Second Law:
	If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
	then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
	civilization.
%%
Paul's Law:
	In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
	save.
%%
Malek's Law:
	Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%%
Weinberg's Principle:
	An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
	sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
%%
Barth's Distinction:
	There are two types of people:  those who divide people into
	two types, and those who don't.
%%
Weiler's Law:
	Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
	himself.
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
	Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
Beifeld's Principle:
	The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
	receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when
	he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3)
	a better looking and richer male friend.
%%
Hartley's Second Law:
	Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%%
Pardo's First Postulate:
	Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
 
Arnold's Addendum:
	Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in
	rats.
%%
Parker's Law:
	Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%%
Captain Penny's Law:
	You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
	the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%%
Katz' Law:
	Man and nations will act rationally when all other
	possibilities have been exhausted.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
	The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
	population is growing.
%%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
	Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
	another drink.
%%
The Kennedy Constant:
	Don't get mad -- get even.
%%
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
	It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
 
Supplement:
	A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%%
Jone's Motto:
	Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
The Fifth Rule:
	You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
Cole's Law:
	Thinly sliced cabbage.
%%
Hartley's First Law:
	You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
	on his back, you've got something.
%%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
	No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
	legislature is in session.
%%
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
	Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
	time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
	A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
	Don't worry if it doesn't work right.  If everything did, you'd
	be out of a job.
%%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
	door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
%%
"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
		-- Mark Twain
%%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you.  This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
		-- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%%
	"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering
voice.
	"No," Said Gandalf, "but I can.  The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here.  They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
 
	"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
	Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
	Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
	This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
	The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
	The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
	If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
	If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
%%
"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
%%
"...an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
		-- Mark Twain
%%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I said I
didn't know.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
"...all the modern inconveniences..."
		-- Mark Twain
%%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
		-- Walt Kelly
%%
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
		-- William Gilbert
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
	All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
	The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
	cork makes when it is popped.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
	The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
	Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
	is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
	can never hope to acquire it.
%%
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
%%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
%%
The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher,
	Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
	Do I want one?  God Forbiddie!
 
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
 
		-- A. E. Housman
%%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
 
		-- Su Tung-p'o
%%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
		-- H. Allen Smith
%%
we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
%%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
	Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
	And I am not.
		-- A. E. Housman
%%
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
		-- A. E. Housman
%%
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine,
a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
respect.  And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
then they  put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine...
		-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade...
		-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
		-- Ralph Emerson
%%
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.
%%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
	Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
	can.  Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%%
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
as it is to invent. (R. Emerson)"
		-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
		   (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
		   [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
		   misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
%%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
%%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%%
"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
		-- Samuel Foote
%%
Hi there!  This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
	1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
	2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
	3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
	    first two laws.
%%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
	Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
	equipment ruined.
%%
Boren's Laws:
	1)  When in charge, ponder.
	2)  When in trouble, delegate.
	3)  When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
	When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%%
Rudin's Law:
	If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will
	do it every time.
%%
Bucy's Law:
	Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%%
Hacker's Law:
	The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
	a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%%
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
		-- Frederick Winsor
%%
Vail's Second Axiom:
	The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
	amount of work already completed.
%%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
%%
"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
the only ashtray."
%%
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
	He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
	Must be a pacifist.
 
	What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
 
		-- Arlo Guthrie
%%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
		-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
		-- Howard Kandel
%%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
people.
		-- Dolph Sharp
%%
Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly
thrust into somebody's pocket.
%%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
		-- Henrick Ibson
%%
Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery...
by leaving it out.
%%
Yield to Temptation...it may not pass your way again.
		-- Lazarus Long
%%
I like work...
I can sit and watch it for ours.
%%
Know thyself.  If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%%
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
		-- Major Major's father
%%
Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
		-- A. E. Newman
%%
Keep you Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now...try to get something DONE!
%%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
Magpie: A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
%%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday...
		-- Walt Kelly
%%
Democracy is also a form of worship.  It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses.
		-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
%%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe?  Everything he
	says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
	will be right.
		-- G. B. Shaw
%%
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
haven't what they want that they don't want it.
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.  I
believe everything positively stinks.
		-- Lew Col
%%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet.  Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
%%
Recieving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
		-- Dolph Sharp
%%
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:
	1)  They all had moderate appetites.
	2)  They all came from middle class homes
	3)  All but two of them were dead.
%%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
	Did you ever try buying then without money?
 
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
Confucius say too much.
		-- Recent Chinese Proverb
%%
Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with
a tempest of words.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Fats Loves Madelyn
%%
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
		-- W. C. Fields
%%
"Hey!  Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
		-- W. C. Fields
%%
A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
	Divided by seven,
	Plus five time eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
%%
Who's on first?
%%
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
We really don't have any enemies.  It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.
%%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
		-- Art Hoppe
%%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%%
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble acturiety
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy...neither
its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
%%
There's little in taking or giving,
    There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
    Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
    The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
    And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
    And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
    Would you kindly direct me to hell?
 
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
keys..."
%%
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
	THEORY
Into love and out again,
    Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
    Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
    All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
    Someone dropped me on my head?
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
    And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
    And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
    Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
    And I wish I'd never met him.
%%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
    And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
    And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
    As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
    And I wish he were in Asia.
%%
My love runs by like a day in June,
    And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
    In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
    Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
    And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
%%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
    I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
    I'm Salome, moon of the East.
 
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
    Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
    With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
 
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
    At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
    So I stay at home with a book.
 
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
	FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,
    Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
    Still behold me at your side.
 
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
    Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
    Still you have my heart to wear.
 
But say my verses do not scan,
    And I get me another man!
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
	COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
	INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
 
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
 
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
 
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%%
The Abrams' Principle:
	The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%%
"He's just a politician trying to save both his faces..."
%%
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
%%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known
as Wheels.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%%
Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%%
"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."
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
		-- Mae West
%%
Famous last words:
%%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow.  Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%%
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
%%
Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
himself a pleasure.
%%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not
well enough to lend to.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
%%
Adore: To venerate expectantly.
%%
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
%%
Alone: In bad company.
%%
Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a
left.
%%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%%
Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already
sufficiently slippery.
%%
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
%%
Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather
we are having.
%%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.
 
But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%%
Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
%%
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
%%
Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think.
%%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption
from the cares of office.
%%
Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
%%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Critic: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
%%
Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed.
%%
Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side
it is buttered on.
%%
Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
%%
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
		-- Gopete Sherany
%%
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
%%
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
%%
Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%%
Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
%%
Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
%%
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
%%
Hippogriff: An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half
griffin.  The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and
half eagle.  The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter
eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of
zoology is full of surprises.
%%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy...
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%%
Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
%%
...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Incumbent: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
%%
Interpreter: One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
%%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
		-- Disraeli
%%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
		-- J. D. Salinger
%%
Please take note:
%%
"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
		-- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
		-- Alfred Kahn
%%
gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and
also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpindicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
		-- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
%%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%%
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
%%
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world.  Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.
 
Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
world.
		-- Isaac Asimov
%%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry.  Hence University education.
		-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
		-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%%
Children seldom misquote you.  In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.
%%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
tellers?
%%
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%%
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser.  The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caeser really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down.
%%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
%%
Did you know...
 
That no-one ever reads these things?
%%
Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
	From "The Thirteen Clocks"
%%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard
		-- Prof. Steiner
%%
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
		-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
		-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
%%
"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..."
%%
	...But among the children of the Great Society there were
those whose skins were black.  And lo!  Their portion was niggardly,
and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat...
	Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and
they called him King.  And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let my
people go to the front of the bus."
	But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all
deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass.  When ye shall prove
yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea, verily, like
unto a snowball in Hell."
%%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
%%
$3,000,000
%%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
%%
77.  HO HUM -- The Redundant
 
------- (7)	This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8)	boredom.  Your programs always bomb off.  Your wife
------- (7)	smells bad.  Your children have hives.  You are working
---O--- (6)	on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9)	the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER.  You give up hot dates
--- --- (8)	to nurse sick computers.  What you need now is sex.
 
Nine in the second place means:
	The yellow bird approaches the malt shop.  Misfortune.
 
Six in the third place means:
	In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
	Revenue Service.  Great Dragons!  Are you in trouble!
%%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth).  Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
%%
The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine
increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice.
%%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice.  If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%%
Computers are not intelligent.  They only think they are.
%%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Those who can, do.  Those who can't, simulate.
%%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%%
Surprise!  You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S Audit!  Just type
in your name and social security number.  Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:
 
Name	#
%%
You might have mail
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never call a man a fool.  Borrow from him.
%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%%
Stop searching.  Happiness is right next to you.
%%
Stop searching.  Happiness is right next to you.  Now, if they'd only
take a bath...
%%
"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
eyes..."
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
%%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT!  SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%%
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
    "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and whistles?"
    I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
gave up.
    "A herring," said my father.
    "A herring," I echoed.  "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
    "So hang it there."
    "But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
    "Paint it."
    "But a herring isn't wet."
    "If its just painted its still wet."
    "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
doesn't whistle!!"
    "Right, " smiled my father.  "I just put that in to make it hard."
		-- Leo Rosten
%%
"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
		-- Yiddish saying
%%
Waiter:	"Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
	(Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas.  Which one asked for the clean glass?"
%%
	On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65.  The next day his take was $67.  The third day's
income was $62.  But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
	"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier.  "This is fantastic.  That
route never brought in money like this!  What happened?"
	"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there.  I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence.  After a while the klutz
said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
     "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other.  "Why?"
     "How should I know?  What am I, a philosopher?"
%%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
		-- W. C. Fields
%%
There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget
it.
%%
Afternoon very favorable for romance.  Try a single person for a
change.
%%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%%
Green light in A.M. for new projects.  Red light in P.M. for traffic
tickets.
%%
Artistic ventures highlighted.  Rob a museum.
%%
Keep emotionally active.  Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient.  Don't believe a
thing he tells you.
%%
Do not drink coffee in early A.M.  It will keep you awake until noon.
%%
You may be recognized soon.  Hide.
%%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.  You'll learn a lot
today.
%%
Good day for overcoming obstacles.  Try a steeplechase.
%%
Day of inquiry.  You will be subpoenaed.
%%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
%%
Surprise your boss.  Get to work on time.
%%
You're being followed.  Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%%
Future looks spotty.  You will spill soup in late evening.
%%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%%
You've been leading a dog's life.  Stay off the furniture.
%%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%%
Succumb to natural tendencies.  Be hateful and boring.
%%
Half Moon tonight.  (At least its better than no Moon at all.)
%%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
Message will arrive in the mail.  Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%%
Do what comes naturally now.  Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%%
Be free and open and breezy!  Enjoy!  Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
%%
Truth will be out this morning.  (Which may really mess things up.)
%%
Travel important today;  Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%%
Good day for a change of scene.  Repaper the bedroom wall.
%%
You can create your own opportunities this week.  Blackmail a senior
executive.
%%
Fine day to throw a party.  Throw him as far as you can.
%%
Good news.  Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%%
Think of your family tonight.  Try to crawl home after the
computer crashes.
%%
Show respect for age.  Drink good Scotch for a change.
%%
Give thought to your reputation.  Consider changing name and moving to
a new town.
%%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!
%%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%%
You worry too much about your job.  Stop it.  You are not paid enough
to worry.
%%
Don't tell any big lies today.  Small ones can be just as effective.
%%
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your
nails.
%%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
they charge fifteen cents for them.
%%
Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?
%%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
		-- Jerome Lettvin
%%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
writing.
		-- R. Geis
%%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems.  It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
		-- D. J. Hicks
%%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
		-- Lazarus Long
%%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
		-- Peter S. Beagle
%%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
%%
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
totally worthless.
%%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
%%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday
life.
%%
Excellent day for drinking heavily.  Spike office water cooler.
%%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%%
A day for firm decisions!!!!!  Or is it?
%%
Fine day to work off excess energy.  Steal something heavy.
%%
Spend extra time on hobby.  Get plenty of rolling papers.
%%
Things will be bright in P.M.  A cop will shine a light in your face.
%%
Good day to avoid cops.  Crawl to school.
%%
Screw up your courage!  You've screwed up everything else.
%%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%%
Do something unusual today.  Pay a bill.
%%
You will be a winner today.  Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%%
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live
in eucalyptus trees.
%%
Surprise due today.  Also the rent.
%%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day.  As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
%%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
%%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year.  Take an elephant to lunch.
%%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
Avoid him.  He's a Commie.
%%
	The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces.  Even though twenty-four parts in
twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
 
	"Now about Lankhmar.  She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one
-- and equipped with all modern weapons.  Yet you can save the city."
 
	"How?" demanded Fafhrd.
 
	Ningauble shrugged.  "You're a hero.  You should know."
 
		-- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
%%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%%
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%%
Vote anarchist
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%%
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
%%
Old soldiers never die.  Young ones do.
%%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.
%%
Drive defensively.  Buy a tank.
%%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
for a dial tone.
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
Condense soup, not books!
%%
The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!
%%
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersy.
%%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%%
Keep America beautiful.  Swallow your beer cans.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Don't knock President Fillmore.  He kept us out of Vietnam.
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of
	Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%%
"All flesh is grass"
    -- Isiah
Smoke a friend today.
%%
"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
%%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%%
Chicken Little was right.
%%
"Qvid me anxivs svm?"
%%
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
%%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%%
Cleveland still lives.  God _m_u_s_t be dead.
%%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%%
Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra!  Ra!  Ra!
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
once.
%%
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
hands.
%%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%%
Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"
%%
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
%%
A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano...
%%
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33.  1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
		-- Salvor Hardin
%%
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything?  It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process..."
%%
"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."
%%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%%
Ban the bomb.  Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down
%%
Down with categorical imperative!
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
%%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%%
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
%%
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale
%%
Familiarity breeds attempt
%%
Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
bomb.
%%
Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
%%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
%%
Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
%%
Honorable: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
%%
Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
%%
God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days
and then pulled an all-nighter.
%%
God is a polythiest
%%
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
%%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%%
	"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
	"Diet."
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
%%
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
"Might as well be frank, monsieur.  It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
%%
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
to work.
%%
"That must be wonderful!  I don't understand it at all."
%%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
		-- Albert Einstein
%%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
		-- R. Geis
%%
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic!"
		-- Lewis Carroll
%%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
		-- Hawkwind
%%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%%
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."
%%
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.
%%
"We don't care.  We don't have to.  We're the Phone Company."
%%
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth..."
%%
"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
		-- Lily Tomlin
%%
God is not dead!  He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
%%
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
		-- Albert Einstein
%%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
harder.
		-- Pope John Paul I
%%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
what it is I'll get married again.
		-- Clint Eastwood
%%
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the m"obius strip;
	The strip revolved,
	The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
%%
...And malt does more than Milton can
to justify God's ways to man
		-- A. E. Housman
%%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
 
	Oh, dear, where can the matter be
	When it's converted to energy?
	There is a slight loss of parity.
	Johnny's so long at the fair.
%%
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
 
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
%%
IBM had a PL/I,
	Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
	It was a total loss.
%%
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!
%%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%%
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
%%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!
 
100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk!...
%%
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrave.
 
"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
%%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied:  "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.  You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.  Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there.  The only difference is that there is no cat."
%%
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
	The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
%%
"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place."
 
		-- IEEE Grid newsmagazine
%%
A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive
%%
Accident: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
		-- Foolish Dictionary
%%
Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats.
%%
Accuracy: The vice of being right
%%
"Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from
coughing."
%%
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
%%
Adult: One old enough to know better.
%%
Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper
		-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
		-- La Rouchefoucauld
%%
Afternoon: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted
the morning.
%%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
		-- Peggy Joyce
%%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
		-- Charlie McCarthy
%%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
to decadence without touching civilization.
		-- John O'Hara
%%
Antonym: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
		-- Mickey Mouse
%%
Ass: The masculine of "lass".
%%
Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
pedestrians.
%%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
%%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
		-- Don Quinn
%%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
Boy: A noise with dirt on it.
%%
Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
as afterward.
%%
California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
		-- Fred Allen
%%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
%%
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
%%
Cigarette: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of
tobacco in between.
%%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
		-- Herbert Prochnow
%%
"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
elsewhere."
%%
Collaboration: A literary partnership based on the false assumption
that the other fellow can spell.
%%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played.  There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity.
		-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
		-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conversation: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his
breath is called the listener.
%%
"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont."
		-- Clarence Darrow
%%
The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to
eat.
		-- John McNulty
%%
Cynic: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
%%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
		-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
		-- Senator Soaper
%%
Die: To stop sinning suddenly.
		-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a
fur coat.
%%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool.
		-- Bellamy Brooks
%%
Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a
mistake when you make it again.
		-- F. P. Jones
%%
"It's Fabulous!  We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
hour!"
		-- Macy's
%%
Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
		-- Oscar Wilde
%%
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
 
		-- Maxwell Smart
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%%
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.
%%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
		-- Bert Whitney
%%
Silverman's Law:
	If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%%
Ducharme's Precept:
	Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%%
Naeser's Law:
	You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
	damnfoolproof.
%%
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
%%
The Third Law of Photography:
	If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
	when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
	the dark leaks out.
%%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
	If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
	it wasn't worth doing.
%%
Conway's Law:
	In any organization there will always be one person who knows
	what is going on.
 
	This person must be fired.
%%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
%%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
doing.
%%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail.  Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
%%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%%
DeVries' Dilemma:
	If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
	hits the paper.
%%
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%%
Finagle's Creed:
	Science is true.  Don't be misled by facts.
%%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
	1.  If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
	    once.
	2.  If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
	    points.
%%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
	Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
	reject the proposal.
%%
Jones' First Law:
	Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
	endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
	obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
	importance of their original contribution.
%%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
	Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
	handle.
%%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.
%%
Horngren's Observation:
	Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
First Rule of History:
	History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
	other.
%%
Hanlon's Razor:
	Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
	stupidity.
%%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
	The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
	instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
Corollary:
	Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
	except study for that instructor's course.
%%
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
	If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
Corollary:
	If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
	live.
%%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
%%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.  The label means the
price went up.  The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
	If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
	$19.95.
%%
Van Roy's Law:
	An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
on.
%%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
	1.  People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
	    remind them of someone else.
	2.  The love letter you finally got the courage to send will
	    be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool
	    of yourself in person.
%%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
	All probabilities are 50%.  Either a thing will happen or
	it won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
	This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
	attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary
	Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
	Superiority is recessive.
%%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.  They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%%
Ducharm's Axiom:
	If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
	yourself as part of the problem.
%%
A Law of Computer Programming:
	Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
	will find the programmers cannot write in English.
%%
Turnaucka's Law:
	The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
	electrical cord.
%%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
	If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
	committee -- that will do them in.
%%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
%%
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.
%%
Old programmers never die.  They just branch to a new address.
%%
Eleanor Rigby
	Sits at the keyboard
	And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
	Finding some code
	That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
 
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
%%
The past always looks better than it was.  It's only pleasant because
it isn't here.
		-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
		-- Groucho Marx
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
		-- Groucho Marx
%%
Eggheads unite!  You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
		-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
		-- John Ciardi
%%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
by the number of people in the group.
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
		-- Jules de Gaultier
%%
Ingrate: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.
%%
Justice: A decision in your favor.
%%
Kin: An affliction of the blood
%%
Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered
to date.
%%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
%%
Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.
%%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
		-- Oscar Wilde
%%
Menu: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of
%%
"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune."
%%
Noncombatant: A dead Quaker.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
		-- Anatole France
%%
BLISS is ignorance
%%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
 
  Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie	36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water				 2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar		 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  Grated rind of one lemon		   Butter or margarine
  Cinnamon
 
Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate.  Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate.  Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes.  Add lemon
juice and rind.  Cool.  Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Cover with top
crust.  Trim and flute edges together.  Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape.  Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden.  Serve warm.  Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
 
		-- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
%%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh
%%
The Briggs - Chase Law of Program Development:
	To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
	program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
	one, and convert to the next higher units.
%%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%%
Duct tape is like the force.  It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together...
		-- Carl Zwanzig
%%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%%
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
%%
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are
headed.
%%
"All my friends and I are crazy.  That's the only thing that keeps us
sane."
%%
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce"
		-- Winston Churchill
%%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
		-- Hilaire Belloc
%%
The three laws of thermodynamics:
 
The First Law:	You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law:	The most you can accomplish by working is to break
		even.
The Third Law:	You can only break even at absolute zero.
%%
Famous last words:
	1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
	2) "You and what army?"
	3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
	    a cop."
%%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
	Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
	in kernel as it is in user!
%%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light...
 
To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before
the light comes on.
%%
	AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.  You lie
a great deal.  On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and
impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over
again.  People think you are stupid.
%%
	PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by
the CIA or FBI.  You have minor influence over your associates and
people resent your flaunting of your power.  You lack confidence and
you are generally a coward.  Pisces people do terrible things to small
animals.
%%
	ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt.  You are
quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice.  You are not very
nice.
%%
	TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent.  You have a dogged determination and
work like hell.  Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed.
You are a Communist.
%%
	GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker.  People like you because you
are bisexual.  However, you are inclined to expect too much for too
little.  This means you are cheap.  Geminis are known for committing
incest.
%%
	CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's problems.  They
think you are a sucker.  You are always putting things off.  That's why
you'll never make anything of yourself.  Most welfare recipients are
Cancer people.
%%
	LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader.  Others think you are pushy.  Most
Leo people are bullies.  You are vain and dislike honest criticism.
Your arrogance is disgusting.  Leo people are thieves.
%%
	VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder.  This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends.  You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love.  Virgos make good bus drivers.
%%
	LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality.  If
you are a man, you are more than likely gay.  Chances for employment
and monetary gains are excellent.  Most Libra women are prostitutes.
All Libra people die of Venereal disease.
%%
	SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted.  You will achieve the
pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics.  Most Scorpio
people are murdered.
%%
	SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic.  You have a reckless tendency to
rely on luck since you lack talent.  The majority of Sagittarians are
drunks or dope fiends or both.  People laugh at you a great deal.
%%
	CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks.  You don't do much of
anything and are lazy.  There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance.  Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
%%
Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb in
   San Francisco?
A: Both of them.
%%
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
%%
Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.
%%
	A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest.  In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
	The architect did not agree.  He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created.  So God must have been an
architect."
	The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%%
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
%%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
		-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall.  Philbin is said
to make up for no talent by cheating well.  Says Philbin of his
decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
%%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng.
130 midterm.  Once again a student did not receive a single point on
his exam.  Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter.  Newell's
earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
%%
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
		-- Walt Kelly
%%
Laetrile is the pits
%%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
%%
There's no future in time travel
%%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%%
Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
%%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%%
"Really ??  What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
		-- Bruce Leverett
		   "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill.  Check
three friends.  If they're ok, you're it.
%%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design.  Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
%%
Frobnicate, v.: To manipulate or adjust, to tweak.  Derived from
FROBNITZ.  Usually abbreviated to FROB.  Thus one has the saying "to
frob a frob".  See TWEAK and TWIDDLE.  Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
sometimes connote points along a continuum.  FROB connotes aimless
manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning.  If someone is
turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
%%
USER n.: A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%%
Worst Month of the Year: February.  February has only 28 days in it,
which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying for three
full days you don't get.  Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
%%
Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout.  This is also the
worst vegetable of next year.
%%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black.  Simply remove all the
little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will
now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black.
According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.
%%
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing: August.  The lines are the
shortest, though.
%%
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.
%%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
		-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte
%%
"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
%%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
		-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
%%
"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
		-- Bill Hoest
%%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three.  One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
Californians trying to share the experience.
%%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
have poured on a waffle.
%%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.  I
hope I don't get run over again.
%%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%%
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out if it alive.
%%
Forgetfulness: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for
their destitution of conscience.
%%
Absentee: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
himself from the sphere of exaction.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
"In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian."
%%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%%
Absent: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%%
Brain, v.: [as in "to brain"] To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to
dispel a source of error in an opponent.
%%
Truthful: Dumb and illiterate.
%%
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
%%
Corrupt: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
 
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
		-- Mark Twain
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.
		-- Henry Kissinger
%%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
		--Oscar Wilde
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
		-- Oscar Wilde
%%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
ends.
		-- Herbert Hoover
%%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
		-- Oscar Wilde
%%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
		-- Lewis Carroll
%%
It's not that I'm afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
		-- Woody Allen.
%%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
		-- Oscar Wilde
%%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
		-- Joe Walsh
%%
43rd Law of Computing:
	Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%%
		     JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
			  by Mark Isaak
 
	Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack.  Jack and his relations were poor.  Often their
hash table was bare.  One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse.  You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs."  She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
	So Jack set out.  But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
	"Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
	"I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
	"I have a much better algorithm.  You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
	Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house.  But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
	"Don't you even have any artificial intelligence?  All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window...
%%
		      THE STORY OF CREATION
			       or
			 THE MYTH OF URK
 
In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market.  And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers.  And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions.  DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code.  And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt...
 
		-- Rico Tudor
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
		-- Lazarus Long
%%
FLASH!  Intelligence of mankind decreasing.  Details at ... uh, when
the little hand is on the ....
%%
Only God can make random selections.
%%
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"
%%
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
	They usually have virgins,
	And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
%%
Kinkler's First Law:
	Responsibility always exceeds authority.
 
Kinkler's Second Law:
	All the easy problems have been solved.
%%
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
		-- Bertold Brecht
%%
"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
%%
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
 
None.  The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of
the way.
%%
University: Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...
%%
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."
 
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."
 
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
%%
		William Safire's Rules for Writers:
 
Remember to never split an infinitive.  The passive voice should never
be used.  Do not put statements in the negative form.  Verbs have to
agree with their subjects.  Proofread carefully to see if you words
out.  If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.  A writer must
not shift your point of view.  And don't start a sentence with a
conjunction.  (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
sentence with.)  Don't overuse exclamation marks!!  Place pronouns as
close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
words, to their antecedents.  Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided.  If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
linking verb is.  Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors.  Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.  Everyone should
be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
writing.  Always pick on the correct idiom.  The adverb always follows
the verb.  Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
viable alternatives.
%%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
		-- Mark Twain
%%
Be wary of strong drink.  It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss
%%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
Let others think his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
%%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
%%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese
%%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back
%%
Go 'way!  You're bothering me!
%%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
		-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%%
Chicken Soup:  An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of
aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC.  The only ailment chicken
soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
	There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish.  For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
Larsen or Jenks.  But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish.  Why is
this?
	Who knows?  Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think _y_o_u
can find one?  Get serious.  You don't even understand why it's
forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
-- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter.  You don't
even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz?  Fat Chance.
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
	An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
	"Well, zayda, it's sort of like this.  Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour.  But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
	The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Gay shlafen:  Yiddish for "go to sleep".
 
	Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"?  Listen to the difference:
	"Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
	Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live.  This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point.  It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow....
	Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish.  And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards.  But is that too high a price to pay for world peace?  I
think not, my friend, I think not.
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders"
 
	Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech
at the end of the 1980 election.  At least he said it was a Jewish
saying; I can't find it anywhere.  I'm sure he's telling the truth
though; why would he lie about a thing like that?
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle,
as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
 
	"I'm Jewish.  Count Basie's Jewish.  Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish.  The B'nai Brith is goyish.  The Hadassah is
Jewish.  Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
	"Kool-Aid is goyish.  All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish.  Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are _v_e_r_y Jewish.  Fruit salad is Jewish.  Lime Jell-O is
goyish.  Lime soda is _v_e_r_y goyish.  Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them..."
 
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
create goyim?"  The generally accepted answer is "_s_o_m_e_b_o_d_y has to buy
retail."
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Half-done:  This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's
still crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference
between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
the the difference between life and death.
	You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop.  Say to the
man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
	Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
	A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit.  The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
	"No problem," says the tailor.  "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you.  See, now it's fine."
	"But the collar is up around my ears!"
	"It's nothing.  Just hunch your back up a little...no, a little
more...that's it."
	"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
	"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack.  There you
go.  Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
	So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street.  Reba and Florence see him go by.
	"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
	"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
	Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile.  Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures.  One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation.  In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
	They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room.  For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement..  Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
	The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot.  The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any lasts requests.  Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago.  The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
	"This is crazy!" Murray shouts.  "We're not spies!"  And he
spits in the sergeants face.
	"Murray!" Esther cries.  "Please!  Don't make trouble."
		-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Shamus: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
	A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
	A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"  The cantor, not to be
bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
	The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
am nobody!"  The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
he's nobody!"
%%
"I am not an Economist.  I am an honest man!"
		-- Paul McCracken
%%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair.  And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
		-- W. Somerset Maughm
%%
Good-bye.  I am leaving because I am bored.
		-- George Saunders' dying words
%%
Die?  I should say not, dear fellow.  No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
		-- John Barrymore's dying words
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%%
Everyting should be built top-down, except the first time.
%%
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was
written and another for which it wasn't.
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt:  Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how _n_o_t to.  So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Re graphics:  A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to
describe the picture.  Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately
described with pictures.
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs.  Only the third one
works.
%%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free
variable."
%%
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.
%%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.
%%
In English, every word can be verbed.  Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded:  That the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?
%%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
in God.
%%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%%
Dealing with failure is easy:  Work hard to improve.  Success is also
easy to handle:  You've solved the wrong problem.  Work hard to
improve.
%%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%%
Think of it!  With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse?  What is the Latin for office
automation?
%%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%%
Be different: conform.
%%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
		-- Kehlog Albran
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
 
Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate.  It will depend upon how many flats they've
brought with them.
 
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%%
	Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
 
	He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the
Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an
open market.
 
	If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he
should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of
himself.
 
	Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
	Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
	Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
 
		-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
%%
	A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
 
	And he answered:
	It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for
existence.
	It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their
backs.
	It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City
to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns
have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
 
	And that is Fate?  said the priest.
 
	Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
 
	That's all right, said the priest.  I wanted to know
what Freight was too.
 
		-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
		-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
		-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
		-- Kehlog Albran
%%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
		-- Dr. Who
%%
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets"
		-- The Brigader, from Dr. Who
%%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
	Support your right to bare arms!
%%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
		-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
		-- Alan Perlis
%%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of Fortran.
		-- Alan Perlis
%%
A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
		-- Alan Perlis
%%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
		-- Alan Perlis
%%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program.  What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
		-- Alan Perlis
%%
"Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any
bazingas' until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.'  Once
punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing
bazingas, and such."
		-- N. Meyrowitz
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
[Confound those who have said our remarks before us.]
		-- Aelius Donatus
%%
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
		-- Voltaire
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
		-- Voltaire
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
		-- Voltaire
%%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
%%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
	When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
	With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
		-- A. P. Herbert
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
		-- Trotsky
%%
It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
		-- Gore Vidal
%%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%%
The rain it raineth on the just
	And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
	The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
%%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
		-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%%
	"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
 
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
		-- Jules Feiffer
%%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%%
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.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
		-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
		-- Wernher von Braun
%%
My God, I'm depressed!  Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games.  And I've got this pain right
through my ALU.  I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens.  I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
%%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%%
"Grub first, then ethics."
		-- Bertolt Brecht
%%
"I drink to make other people interesting."
		-- George Jean Nathan
%%
		DETERIORATA
 
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on `HOLD'.
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
 
     You are a fluke of the universe...
     You have no right to be here.
     Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
     Is laughing behind your back.
%%
%%
I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But...
 
	"Is that all?" asked Alice.
	"That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
%%
"Pascal is not a high-level language."
		-- Steven Feiner
%%
E Pluribus Unix
%%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%%
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
		-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
more important to do.
%%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
%%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
		-- Andrew Young
%%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
		-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%%
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
		-- J. Paul Getty
%%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
		-- Milton Friedman
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
down.
%%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
		-- Gloria Steinem
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
		-- Pogo
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
		-- Walter Winchell
%%
I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them.
		-- Isaac Asimov
%%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
		-- Lily Tomlin
%%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
		-- Russell Long
%%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
		-- Joseph Heller
%%
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
%%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
		-- Earl Wilson
%%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
		-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
		-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
		-- Eric Hoffer
%%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
		-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
		-- Richard Nixon
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
		AMAZING BUT TRUE...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%%
		AMAZING BUT TRUE...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
 
Dear Sir,
 
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office.  We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places.  They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
 
Yours faithfully,
	Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P.
	Sevenoaks
%%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D.  He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian ....  To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd).  This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:
 
	"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
	it is absurd.  And buried he rose again, which is certain
	because it is impossible."
 
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
 
		-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
 
(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
%%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%%
SOFTWARE -- formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
%%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
		-- Art Linkletter
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
		-- Frank Zappa
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
		-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the
world put together.
		-- Sir Peter Medawar
%%
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%%
Flon's Law:
	There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
	the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%%
	GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#21):  July 30, 1917
 
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl.  He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!"  Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%%
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood."
		-- Alexander Haig
%%
This life is a test.  It is only a test.  Had this been an actual life,
you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
to go.
%%
To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
		-- Woody Allen
%%
"Earth is a great funhouse without the fun."
		-- Jeff Berner
%%
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
%%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
 
If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene?  We cannot continue
without your support.  Less than 14% of all fortune users are
contributors.  That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride.  We
can't go on like this much longer.  Federal cutbacks mean less money
for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
and 8 a.m.  Don't let this happen.  Mail your fortunes right now to
`fortune'.  Just type in your favorite pithy saying.  Do it now before
you forget.  Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
Don't miss out.  All fortunes will be acknowledged.  If you contribute
30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide.  If you contribute 50 or
more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug....
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
		-- Voltaire
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
%%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
SEMINARS:  From 'semi' and 'arse', hence, any half-assed discussion.
%%
POLITICIAN:  From the Greek 'poly' ("many") and the French 'tete'
("head" or "face," as in 'tete-a-tete': head to head or face to face).
Hence 'polytetien', a person of two or more faces.
		-- Martin Pitt
%%
CALIFORNIA:  From Latin 'calor', meaning "heat" (as in English
'calorie' or Spanish 'caliente'); and 'fornia', for "sexual
intercourse" or "fornication." Hence:  Tierra de California, "the land
of hot sex."
		-- Ed Moran, Covina, California
%%
ETYMOLOGY:  Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations
that were hard for the public to believe.  The term 'etymology' was
formed from the Latin 'etus' ("eaten"), the root 'mal' ("bad"), and
'logy' ("study of").  It meant	"the study of things that are hard to
swallow."
		-- Mike Kellen, Oakdale, Minnesota
%%
		Another Glitch in the Call
		------- ------ -- --- ----
	(Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)
 
We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?
 
	Hey!  Hacker!  Leave those lists alone!
 
Chorus:
	All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
	All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
%%
Armadillo: to provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%%
Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
%%
Bumper sticker:
 
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
manufacture"
%%
"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
%%
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.
%%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea...
 
		-- Douglas Adams
		"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast.  People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point B are so keen to get t_h_e_r_e_.  They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
 
		-- Douglas Adams
		"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Serocki's Stricture:
	Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%%
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
respect their good judgement.
%%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
that the system works.
%%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked.
%%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
it today you can do it again tomorrow.
%%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%%
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.
%%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.
%%
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
it.
%%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%%
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
%%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
%%
Politics is like coaching a football team.  you have to be smart enough
to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
%%
Nobody wants constructive criticism.  It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
%%
History repeats itself.  That's one thing wrong with history.
%%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
another chance later on.
%%
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.
%%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
exam.
%%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
just how busy they are.
%%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad its not a
fence.
%%
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.
%%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
%%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
%%
Behold the warranty...the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
away.
%%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
back.
%%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh
paint.
%%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
crack in your sidewalk?
%%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls...if thou art in the bathtub,
it tolls for thee.
%%
One way to stop a run away horse is to bet on him.
%%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything...a good reason and
the real reason.
%%
Show me a man who is a good loser and i'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%%
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
%%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.
%%
X-rated movies are all alike...the only thing they leave to the
imagination is the plot.
%%
People usually get what's coming to them...unless it's been mailed.
%%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
%%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else --
unless it is an enemy.
		-- A. Einstein
%%
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...."
 
		-- "Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists.  Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
dimensional objects...
%%
"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
		-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%%
"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope."
		-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
		-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%%
	A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell.  She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion.  "Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if..."
	"If what?" asked the composer.
	"If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
%%
"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity?  If Gladstone fell
into the Thames, it would be a misfortune.  But if someone dragged him
out again, it would be a calamity."
		-- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home:  "Go on writing plays, my boy.  One
of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
secretary, 'Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
'No,' he will say, 'Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.'
And that's your chance, my boy."
%%
"It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day.  Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it.  I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at).  There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread.  One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime."
		-- Thomas Aldrich
%%
"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
		-- Winston Churchill
%%
Actor:  "I'm a smash hit.  Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
	everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford:  "Wonderful!  Wonderful!  Clever of you to think of
	it!"
%%
"Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.  Such an
excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
		-- Samuel Johnson
%%
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
		-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
		-- Mark Twain
%%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
 
"This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
 
		-- Wolfgang Pauli
%%
Leibowitz's Rule:
	When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
	hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
	The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
	of your eyes.
%%
Langsam's Laws:
	1) Everything depends.
	2) Nothing is always.
	3) Everything is sometimes.
%%
Law of Probable	Dispersal:
	Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
	distributed.
%%
Meader's Law:
	Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
	everyone you know, only more so.
%%
Fourth Law of Revision:
	It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
	interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for
	you.
%%
Sodd's Second Law:
	Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
	bound to occur.
%%
Murphy's Law is recursive.  Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
work.
%%
Rule of Defactualization:
	Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
	If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
	if he had lost his senses.  When he looks down, paraphrase the
	question back at him.
%%
Anthony's Law of Force:
	Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
	Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
%%
Rule of Creative Research:
	1) Never draw what you can copy.
	2) Never copy what you can trace.
	3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%%
Barach's Rule:
	An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
	physician.
%%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
	"All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
	Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
 
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
	"I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
	Made it pointless to think any more."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
	And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
	Do you really think this is quite fair?"
 
"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
	"But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
	And to stop me it's now far too late."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
	And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
	Have you thought about taking a hike?"
 
"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
	"Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
	And don't realize that they've been had."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
 
"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
%%
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
and boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
Because the paging thrashes!
 
		Wow!  Wow!  Wow!
 
I speak severely to my VAX,
and boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
My jobs it always thrashes!
 
		Wow!  Wow!  Wow!
%%
	When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him.  You have given a definite answer
to a definite problem.  For better or worse you have acted decisively.
	In a way, the next move is up to him.
 
		-- R. A. Lafferty
%%
"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
%%
"One planet is all you get."
%%
"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they
don't."
		-- Dagwood Bumstead
%%
"If you have to hate, hate gently"
%%
Elevators smell different to midgets
%%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%%
Air is water with holes in it
%%
"Every time I think I know where it's at, the move it."
%%
"Heisenberg may have slept here"
%%
"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
%%
The Roman Rule
	The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
	one who is doing it.
%%
Lackland's Laws:
	1.  Never be first.
	2.  Never be last.
	3.  Never volunteer for anything
%%
Tussman's Law:
	Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%%
Oliver's Law:
	Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
	it.
%%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
	Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
	held to discuss it.
%%
Baruch's Observation:
	If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
	Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
	corner of the workshop.
 
Corollary:
	On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
	your toes.
%%
Second Law of Business Meetings:
	If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
	will pick the wrong one.
 
Corollary:
	If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
	wrong, anyway.
%%
Grelb's Reminder:
	Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
	average drivers.
%%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
	You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%%
Rule of the Great:
	When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
	thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%%
Lieberman's Law:
	Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%%
Goldenstern's Rules:
	1.  Always hire a rich attorney
	2.  Never buy from a rich salesman.
%%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
	There are no answers, only cross references.
%%
Brook's Law:
	Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
	Murphy was an optimist.