JustAnotherFile

Peace is easily maintained;
Trouble is easily overcome before it starts.
The brittle is easily shattered;
The small is easily scattered.

Deal with it before it happens.
Set things in order before there is confusion.

A tree as great as a man's embrace springs up from a small shoot;
A terrace nine stories high begins with a pile of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.

He who acts defeats his own purpose;
He who grasps loses.
The sage does not act, and so is not defeated.
He does not grasp and therefore does not lose.

People usually fail when they are on the verge of success.
So give as much care to the end as to the beginning;
Then there will be no failure.

Therefore the sage seeks freedom from desire.
He does not collect precious things.
He learns not to hold on to ideas.
He brings men back to what they have lost.
He help the ten thousand things find their own nature,
But refrains from action.
%
Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.
%
A certain old cat had made his home in the alley behind Gabe's bar for some
time, subsisting on scraps and occasional handouts from the bartender.  One
evening, emboldened by hunger, the feline attempted to follow Gabe through
the back door.  Regrettably, only the his body had made it through when
the door slammed shut, severing the cat's tail at its base.  This proved too
much for the old creature, who looked sadly at Gabe and expired on the spot.
	Gabe put the carcass back out in the alley and went back to business.
The mandatory closing time arrived and Gabe was in the process of locking up
after the last customers had gone.  Approaching the back door he was startled
to see an apparition of the old cat mournfully holding its severed tail out,
silently pleading for Gabe to put the tail back on its corpse so that it could
go on to the kitty afterworld complete.
	Gabe shook his head sadly and said to the ghost, "I can't.  You know
the law -- no retailing spirits after 2:00 AM."
%
For three years, the young attorney had been taking his brief
vacations at this country inn.  The last time he'd finally managed an
affair with the innkeeper's daughter.  Looking forward to an exciting
few days, he dragged his suitcase up the stairs of the inn, then stopped
short.  There sat his lover with an infant on her lap!
	"Helen, why didn't you write when you learned you were pregnant?"
he cried.  "I would have rushed up here, we could have gotten married,
and the baby would have my name!"
	"Well," she said, "when my folks found out about my condition,
we sat up all night talkin' and talkin' and finally decided it would be
better to have a bastard in the family than a lawyer."
%
Humor in the Court:
Q.  Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?
A.  Because he was argumentary and he couldn't pronunciate his words.
%
			Pittsburgh driver's test

(3) When stopped at an intersection you should

	(a) watch the traffic light for your lane.
	(b) watch for pedestrians crossing the street.
	(c) blow the horn.
	(d) watch the traffic light for the intersecting street.

The correct answer is (d). You need to start as soon as the traffic light
for the intersecting street turns yellow. Answer (c) is worth a half point.
%
Catsup and Mustard all over the place!  It's the Human Hamburger!
%
I wish I was a sex-starved manicurist found dead in the Bronx!!
%
I wonder if I could ever get started in the credit world?
%
My Aunt MAUREEN was a military advisor to IKE & TINA TURNER!!
%
SANTA CLAUS comes down a FIRE ESCAPE wearing bright blue LEG WARMERS
... He scrubs the POPE with a mild soap or detergent for 15 minutes,
starring JANE FONDA!!
%
Should I start with the time I SWITCHED personalities with a BEATNIK
hair stylist or my failure to refer five TEENAGERS to a good OCULIST?
%
      _
  _  / \			   o
 / \ | |		       o	   o		 o
 | | | |   _			o    o		       o       o
 | \_| |  / \		      o			    o	 o
  \__  |  | |		  o			      o
     | |  | |		 ______	  ~~~~		    _____
     | |__/ |	       / ___--\\ ~~~		 __/_____\__
     |	___/	      / \--\\  \\   \ ___	<__  x x  __\
     | |	     / /\\  \\	     ))	 \	   (  "	 )
     | |     -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
     | |   //	    | | //__________  /	   \	____)	(___	  \\
     | |  //	  __|_|	 ( --------- )	    //// ______ /////\	   \\
	 //	  |    (  \ ______  /	   <<<< <>-----<<<<< /	    \\
	//	 (     )		      / /	  \` \__     \\
       //-------------------------------------------------------------\\

Every now and then, when your life gets complicated and the weasels start
closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then
drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at
top volume and at least a pint of ether.
		-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with
the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only
the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of
any interest...  but even then the interest items are usually buried deep
around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont.  on ...") page...

The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa.  The
Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all.
But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line
or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie
burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck.
They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental
woman who seemed to be in control."

Now that's good journalism.  Totally objective; very active and straight
to the point.
		-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%
Memory should be the starting point of the present.
%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%
Trouble strikes in series of threes, but when working around the house the
next job after a series of three is not the fourth job -- it's the start of
a brand new series of three.
%
A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen
floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for
its species, managed to trap them in a corner.  The children cowered,
terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother!
Save us!  Save us!  We're scared, Mother!"
	Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its
children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them,
and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman
proud.  The startled cat fled in fear for its life.
	As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother,
you saved us!" and "Yay!  You scared the cat away!" she turned to them
purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second
language?"
%
			It's grad exam time...
MEDICINE
	You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a
bottle of Scotch.  Remove your appendix.  Do not suture until your work has
been inspected.  (You have 15 minutes.)

HISTORY
	Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present
day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political,
economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and
Africa.  Be brief, concise, and specific.

BIOLOGY
	Create life.  Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture
if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with
special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.
%
Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart.  Harvard's is a subtle
taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco.  It may even be a bad habit, for
all I know.
		-- Prof. J.H. Finley '25
%
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.
%
	It seems there's this magician working one of the luxury cruise ships
for a few years.  He doesn't have to change his routines much as the audiences
change over fairly often, and he's got a good life.   The only problem is the
ship's parrot, who perches in the hall and watches him night after night, year
after year.  Finally, the parrot figures out how almost every trick works and
starts giving it away for the audience.  For example, when the magician makes
a bouquet of flowers disappear, the parrot squawks "Behind his back!  Behind
his back!"  Well, the magician is really annoyed at this, but there's not much
he can do about it as the parrot is a ship's mascot and very popular with the
passengers.
	One night, the ship strikes some floating debris, and sinks without
a trace.  Almost everyone aboard was lost, except for the magician and the
parrot.  For three days and nights they just drift, with the magician clinging
to one end of a piece of driftwood and the parrot perched on the other end.
As the sun rises on the morning of the fourth day, the parrot walks over to
the magician's end of the log.  With obvious disgust in his voice, he snaps
"OK, you win, I give up.  Where did you hide the ship?"
%
Watch Rincewind.

Look at him.  Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on
which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might
have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his
master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for
heterosexuality.  Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon
that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic
whose time-and-space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There.
Graduates were usually destined for mageship at least, but Rincewind--after
an unfortunate event--had left knowing only one spell and made a living of
sorts around the town by capitalizing on an innate gift for languages.  He
avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his
acquaintances in mind of a bright rodent.
		-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
%
"`How do you feel?' he asked him.
`Like a military academy,' said Arthur, `bits of me keep 
passing out.'" ....
`We're safe,' he said.
`Oh good,' said Arthur.
`We're in a small galley cabin,' said Ford, `in one of the 
spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.'
`Ah,' said Arthur, `this is obviously some strange usage of 
the word "safe" that I wasn't previously aware of.'

- Arthur after his first ever teleport ride. 
%
"The fronting for the eighty-yard long marble-topped bar 
had been made by stitching together nearly twenty thousand 
Antarean Mosaic Lizard skins, despite the fact that the 
twenty thousand lizards concerned had needed them to keep 
their insides in." 

- The Book decribing Milliways' politically incorrect 
decor. 
%
BOOK	Meanwhile, the starship has landed on the surface 
of Magrathea
	and Trillian is about to make one of the most 
important
	statements of her life. Its importance is not 
immediately
	recognised by her companions.
TRILL.	Hey, my white mice have escaped.
ZAPHOD	Nuts to your white mice.
%
"`...we might as well start with where your hand is now.'
Arthur said, `So which way do I go?'
`Down,' said Fenchurch, `on this occaision.'
He moved his hand.
`Down,' she said, `is in fact the other way.'
`Oh yes.'"

- Arthur trying to discover which part of Fenchurch is 
wrong. 
%
The myth of romantic love holds that once you've fallen in love with the
perfect partner, you're home free.  Unfortunately, falling out of love
seems to be just as involuntary as falling into it.
%
The only difference in the game of love over the last few thousand years
is that they've changed trumps from clubs to diamonds.
		-- The Indianapolis Star
%
You shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.
		-- Pat Benatar, "Hell is for Children"
%
A sad spectacle.  If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly.
If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
		-- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the stars
%
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this
big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around --
nobody big, I mean -- except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I'd do
all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye.  I know it;  I know it's crazy,
but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.  I know it's crazy.
		-- J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"
%
Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.
%
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time.  I
would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this
trip.  I know of very few things I would take seriously.  I would be crazier.
I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets.  I'd
travel and see.  I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly
and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh, I have had my moments and,
if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them.  In fact, I'd try to
have nothing else.  Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many
years ahead each day.  I have been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hotwater bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel
lighter than I have.  If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.  I would play hooky
more.  I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more.  I would
ride on more merry-go-rounds.  I'd pick more daisies.
%
Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy
of him that brought her birth.
		-- Milton
%
When it's dark enough you can see the stars.
		-- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
%
You can't run away forever,
But there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.
		-- Jim Steinman, "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through"
%
"Der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir"
that is
"The starry sky above me, and the Moral Law inside me."
	- The epigraph on Kant's tombstone.
%
A father doesn't destroy his children.
		-- Lt. Carolyn Palamas, "Who Mourns for Adonais?",
		   stardate 3468.1.
%
A little suffering is good for the soul.
		-- Kirk, "The Corbomite Maneuver", stardate 1514.0
%
A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and
licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.
		-- Dr. Boyce, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"), stardate unknown
%
A princess should not be afraid -- not with a brave knight to protect her.
		-- McCoy, "Shore Leave", stardate 3025.3
%
A star captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even
his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.
		-- Kirk, "The Omega Glory", stardate unknown
%
A Vulcan can no sooner be disloyal than he can exist without breathing.
		-- Kirk, "The Menagerie", stardate 3012.4
%
A woman should have compassion.
		-- Kirk, "Catspaw", stardate 3018.2
%
Actual war is a very messy business.  Very, very messy business.
		-- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0
%
After a time, you may find that "having" is not so pleasing a thing,
after all, as "wanting."  It is not logical, but it is often true.
		-- Spock, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
%
All your people must learn before you can reach for the stars.
		-- Kirk, "The Gamesters of Triskelion", stardate 3259.2
%
Another Armenia, Belgium ... the weak innocents who always seem to be
located on a natural invasion route.
		-- Kirk, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3198.4
%
Another dream that failed.  There's nothing sadder.
		-- Kirk, "This side of Paradise", stardate 3417.3
%
Another war ... must it always be so?  How many comrades have we lost
in this way? ...  Obedience.  Duty.  Death, and more death ...
		-- Romulan Commander, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2
%
... bacteriological warfare ... hard to believe we were once foolish
enough to play around with that.
		-- McCoy, "The Omega Glory", stardate unknown
%
	"Beauty is transitory."
	"Beauty survives."
		-- Spock and Kirk, "That Which Survives", stardate unknown
%
Behind every great man, there is a woman -- urging him on.
		-- Harry Mudd, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
%
Blast medicine anyway!  We've learned to tie into every organ in the
human body but one.  The brain!  The brain is what life is all about.
		-- McCoy, "The Menagerie", stardate 3012.4
%
But it's real.  And if it's real it can be affected ...  we may not be able
to break it, but, I'll bet you credits to Navy Beans we can put a dent in it.
		-- deSalle, "Catspaw", stardate 3018.2
%
"Can you imagine how life could be improved if we could do away with
jealousy, greed, hate ..."

"It can also be improved by eliminating love, tenderness, sentiment --
the other side of the coin"
		-- Dr. Roger Corby and Kirk, "What are Little Girls Made Of?",
		   stardate 2712.4
%
Captain's Log, star date 21:34.5...
%
Change is the essential process of all existence.
		-- Spock, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", stardate 5730.2
%
Compassion -- that's the one things no machine ever had.  Maybe it's
the one thing that keeps men ahead of them.
		-- McCoy, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
%
Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to
serve under them.  Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one
man.  And nothing can replace it or him.
		-- Spock, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
%
Conquest is easy. Control is not.
		-- Kirk, "Mirror, Mirror", stardate unknown
%
Death, when unnecessary, is a tragic thing.
		-- Flint, "Requiem for Methuselah", stardate 5843.7
%
Death.  Destruction.  Disease.  Horror.  That's what war is all about.
That's what makes it a thing to be avoided.
		-- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0
%
Do you know about being with somebody?  Wanting to be?  If I had the
whole universe, I'd give it to you, Janice.  When I see you, I feel
like I'm hungry all over.  Do you know how that feels?
		-- Charlie Evans, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8
%
Do you know the one -- "All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer
her by ..."  You could feel the wind at your back, about you ...  the
sounds of the sea beneath you.  And even if you take away the wind and
the water, it's still the same.  The ship is yours ... you can feel her
... and the stars are still there.
		-- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
%
[Doctors and Bartenders], We both get the same two kinds of customers
-- the living and the dying.
		-- Dr. Boyce, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"), stardate unknown
%
Each kiss is as the first.
		-- Miramanee, Kirk's wife, "The Paradise Syndrome",
		   stardate 4842.6
%
EARL GREY PROFILES

NAME:		Jean-Luc Perriwinkle Picard
OCCUPATION:	Starship Big Cheese
AGE:		94
BIRTHPLACE:	Paris, Terra Sector
EYES:		Grey
SKIN:		Tanned
HAIR:		Not much
LAST MAGAZINE READ:
		Lobes 'n' Probes, the Ferengi-Betazoid Sex Quarterly
TEA:		Earl Grey.  Hot.

EARL GREY NEVER VARIES.
%
Earth -- mother of the most beautiful women in the universe.
		-- Apollo, "Who Mourns for Adonais?" stardate 3468.1
%
Either one of us, by himself, is expendable.  Both of us are not.
		-- Kirk, "The Devil in the Dark", stardate 3196.1
%
Emotions are alien to me.  I'm a scientist.
		-- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.3
%
Even historians fail to learn from history -- they repeat the same mistakes.
		-- John Gill, "Patterns of Force", stardate 2534.7
%
Every living thing wants to survive.
		-- Spock, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
%
	"Evil does seek to maintain power by suppressing the truth."
	"Or by misleading the innocent."
		-- Spock and McCoy, "And The Children Shall Lead",
		   stardate 5029.5.
%
Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing.
		-- Spock, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5818.4
%
Fascinating is a word I use for the unexpected.
		-- Spock, "The Squire of Gothos", stardate 2124.5
%
Fascinating, a totally parochial attitude.
		-- Spock, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
%
First study the enemy.  Seek weakness.
		-- Romulan Commander, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2
%
Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man.
		-- Klingon Soldier, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
%
	"... freedom ... is a worship word..."
	"It is our worship word too."
		-- Cloud William and Kirk, "The Omega Glory", stardate unknown
%
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis.  You can't simply say,
"Today I will be brilliant."
		-- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
%
	"Get back to your stations!"
	"We're beaming down to the planet, sir."
		-- Kirk and Mr. Leslie, "This Side of Paradise",
		   stardate 3417.3
%
He's dead, Jim.
		-- McCoy, "The Devil in the Dark", stardate 3196.1
%
History tends to exaggerate.
		-- Col. Green, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.4
%
Humans do claim a great deal for that particular emotion (love).
		-- Spock, "The Lights of Zetar", stardate 5725.6
%
I am pleased to see that we have differences.  May we together become
greater than the sum of both of us.
		-- Surak of Vulcan, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.4
%
I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to
any question.
		-- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.3
%
I object to intellect without discipline;  I object to power without
constructive purpose.
		-- Spock, "The Squire of Gothos", stardate 2124.5
%
I realize that command does have its fascination, even under
circumstances such as these, but I neither enjoy the idea of command
nor am I frightened of it.  It simply exists, and I will do whatever
logically needs to be done.
		-- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2812.7
%
	"I think they're going to take all this money that we spend now on war
and death --"
	"And make them spend it on life."
		-- Edith Keeler and Kirk, "The City on the Edge of Forever",
		   stardate unknown.
%
I thought my people would grow tired of killing.  But you were right,
they see it is easier than trading.  And it has its pleasures.  I feel
it myself.  Like the hunt, but with richer rewards.
		-- Apella, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
%
I'm a soldier, not a diplomat.  I can only tell the truth.
		-- Kirk, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3198.9
%
I'm frequently appalled by the low regard you Earthmen have for life.
		-- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
%
I've already got a female to worry about.  Her name is the Enterprise.
		-- Kirk, "The Corbomite Maneuver", stardate 1514.0
%
If a man had a child who'd gone anti-social, killed perhaps, he'd still
tend to protect that child.
		-- McCoy, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
%
If I can have honesty, it's easier to overlook mistakes.
		-- Kirk, "Space Seed", stardate 3141.9
%
If some day we are defeated, well, war has its fortunes, good and bad.
		-- Commander Kor, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7
%
If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them.
		-- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.7
%
Immortality consists largely of boredom.
		-- Zefrem Cochrane, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
%
In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death -- even vegetarians.
		-- Spock, "Wolf in the Fold", stardate 3615.4
%
Insufficient facts always invite danger.
		-- Spock, "Space Seed", stardate 3141.9
%
Insults are effective only where emotion is present.
		-- Spock, "Who Mourns for Adonais?"  stardate 3468.1
%
Intuition, however illogical, is recognized as a command prerogative.
		-- Kirk, "Obsession", stardate 3620.7
%
Is not that the nature of men and women -- that the pleasure is in the
learning of each other?
		-- Natira, the High Priestess of Yonada, "For the World is
		   Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", stardate 5476.3.
%
Is truth not truth for all?
		-- Natira, "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched
		   the Sky", stardate 5476.4.
%
It [being a Vulcan] means to adopt a philosophy, a way of life which is
logical and beneficial.  We cannot disregard that philosophy merely for
personal gain, no matter how important that gain might be.
		-- Spock, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4
%
It is a human characteristic to love little animals, especially if
they're attractive in some way.
		-- McCoy, "The Trouble with Tribbles", stardate 4525.6
%
It is more rational to sacrifice one life than six.
		-- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
%
It is necessary to have purpose.
		-- Alice #1, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
%
It is undignified for a woman to play servant to a man who is not hers.
		-- Spock, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
%
It would be illogical to assume that all conditions remain stable.
		-- Spock, "The Enterprise Incident", stardate 5027.3
%
It would be illogical to kill without reason.
		-- Spock, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4
%
It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted.
		-- Yarnek of Excalbia, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5
%
	"It's hard to believe that something which is neither seen nor felt can
do so much harm."
	"That's true.  But an idea can't be seen or felt.  And that's what kept
the Troglytes in the mines all these centuries.  A mistaken idea."
		-- Vanna and Kirk, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5819.0
%
Killing is stupid; useless!
		-- McCoy, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
%
Killing is wrong.
		-- Losira, "That Which Survives", stardate unknown
%
Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!
		-- Harry Mudd, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
%
Landru! Guide us!
		-- A Beta 3-oid, "The Return of the Archons", stardate 3157.4
%
Leave bigotry in your quarters; there's no room for it on the bridge.
		-- Kirk, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2
%
	"Life and death are seldom logical."
	"But attaining a desired goal always is."
		-- McCoy and Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2821.7
%
Live long and prosper.
		-- Spock, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
%
	"Logic and practical information do not seem to apply here."
	"You admit that?"
	"To deny the facts would be illogical, Doctor"
		-- Spock and McCoy, "A Piece of the Action", stardate unknown
%
Lots of people drink from the wrong bottle sometimes.
		-- Edith Keeler, "The City on the Edge of Forever",
		   stardate unknown
%
Love sometimes expresses itself in sacrifice.
		-- Kirk, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3220.3
%
Madness has no purpose.  Or reason.  But it may have a goal.
		-- Spock, "The Alternative Factor", stardate 3088.7
%
Many Myths are based on truth
		-- Spock, "The Way to Eden",  stardate 5832.3
%
Men of peace usually are [brave].
		-- Spock, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5
%
Men will always be men -- no matter where they are.
		-- Harry Mudd, "Mudd's Women", stardate 1329.8
%
Military secrets are the most fleeting of all.
		-- Spock, "The Enterprise Incident", stardate 5027.4
%
Most legends have their basis in facts.
		-- Kirk, "And The Children Shall Lead", stardate 5029.5
%
Murder is contrary to the laws of man and God.
		-- M-5 Computer, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3
%
No more blah, blah, blah!
		-- Kirk, "Miri", stardate 2713.6
%
No one can guarantee the actions of another.
		-- Spock, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
%
No one may kill a man.  Not for any purpose.  It cannot be condoned.
		-- Kirk, "Spock's Brain", stardate 5431.6
%
	"No one talks peace unless he's ready to back it up with war."
	"He talks of peace if it is the only way to live."
		-- Colonel Green and Surak of Vulcan, "The Savage Curtain",
		   stardate 5906.5.
%
No one wants war.
		-- Kirk, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7
%
No problem is insoluble.
		-- Dr. Janet Wallace, "The Deadly Years", stardate 3479.4
%
Not one hundred percent efficient, of course ... but nothing ever is.
		-- Kirk, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
%
Oblivion together does not frighten me, beloved.
		-- Thalassa (in Anne Mulhall's body), "Return to Tomorrow",
		   stardate 4770.3.
%
Oh, that sound of male ego.  You travel halfway across the galaxy and
it's still the same song.
		-- Eve McHuron, "Mudd's Women", stardate 1330.1
%
On my planet, to rest is to rest -- to cease using energy.  To me, it
is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass, using energy,
instead of saving it.
		-- Spock, "Shore Leave", stardate 3025.2
%
One does not thank logic.
		-- Sarek, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4
%
One of the advantages of being a captain is being able to ask for
advice without necessarily having to take it.
		-- Kirk, "Dagger of the Mind", stardate 2715.2
%
Only a fool fights in a burning house.
		-- Kank the Klingon, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
%
Our missions are peaceful -- not for conquest.  When we do battle, it
is only because we have no choice.
		-- Kirk, "The Squire of Gothos", stardate 2124.5
%
Our way is peace.
		-- Septimus, the Son Worshiper, "Bread and Circuses",
		   stardate 4040.7.
%
Pain is a thing of the mind.  The mind can be controlled.
		-- Spock, "Operation -- Annihilate!" stardate 3287.2
%
Peace was the way.
		-- Kirk, "The City on the Edge of Forever", stardate unknown
%
Phasers locked on target, Captain.
%
Power is danger.
		-- The Centurion, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2
%
Prepare for tomorrow -- get ready.
		-- Edith Keeler, "The City On the Edge of Forever",
		   stardate unknown
%
Punishment becomes ineffective after a certain point.  Men become insensitive.
		-- Eneg, "Patterns of Force", stardate 2534.7
%
Respect is a rational process
		-- McCoy, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
%
Romulan women are not like Vulcan females.  We are not dedicated to
pure logic and the sterility of non-emotion.
		-- Romulan Commander, "The Enterprise Incident",
		   stardate 5027.3
%
Schshschshchsch.
		-- The Gorn, "Arena", stardate 3046.2
%
Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on.
		-- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.9
%
Sometimes a man will tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor.
		-- Dr. Phillip Boyce, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"),
		   stardate unknown.
%
Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life
and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.
		-- Captain James T. Kirk
%
Star Trek Lives!
%
Suffocating together ... would create heroic camaraderie.
		-- Khan Noonian Singh, "Space Seed", stardate 3142.8
%
Superior ability breeds superior ambition.
		-- Spock, "Space Seed", stardate 3141.9
%
	"That unit is a woman."
	"A mass of conflicting impulses."
		-- Spock and Nomad, "The Changeling", stardate 3541.9
%
	"The combination of a number of things to make existence worthwhile."
	"Yes, the philosophy of 'none,' meaning 'all.'"
		-- Spock and Lincoln, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.4
%
The face of war has never changed.  Surely it is more logical to heal
than to kill.
		-- Surak of Vulcan, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5
%
The games have always strengthened us.  Death becomes a familiar
pattern.  We don't fear it as you do.
		-- Proconsul Marcus Claudius, "Bread and Circuses",
		   stardate 4041.2
%
	"The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity."
	"And in the way our differences combine to create meaning and beauty."
		-- Dr. Miranda Jones and Spock, "Is There in Truth No Beauty?",
		   stardate 5630.8
%
The heart is not a logical organ.
		-- Dr. Janet Wallace, "The Deadly Years", stardate 3479.4
%
The idea of male and female are universal constants.
		-- Kirk, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
%
The joys of love made her human and the agonies of love destroyed her.
		-- Spock, "Requiem for Methuselah", stardate 5842.8
%
The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.
		-- Kirk, "Shore Leave", stardate 3025.8
%
The only solution is ... a balance of power.  We arm our side with exactly
that much more.  A balance of power -- the trickiest, most difficult,
dirtiest game of them all.  But the only one that preserves both sides.
		-- Kirk, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
%
The people of Gideon have always believed that life is sacred.  That
the love of life is the greatest gift ... We are incapable of
destroying or interfering with the creation of that which we love so
deeply -- life in every form from fetus to developed being.
		-- Hodin of Gideon, "The Mark of Gideon", stardate 5423.4
%
... The prejudices people feel about each other disappear when they get
to know each other.
		-- Kirk, "Elaan of Troyius", stardate 4372.5
%
	"The release of emotion is what keeps us health.  Emotionally healthy."
	"That may be, Doctor.  However, I have noted that the healthy release
of emotion is frequently unhealthy for those closest to you."
		-- McCoy and Spock, "Plato's Stepchildren", stardate 5784.3
%
The sight of death frightens them [Earthers].
		-- Kras the Klingon, "Friday's Child", stardate 3497.2
%
The sooner our happiness together begins, the longer it will last.
		-- Miramanee, "The Paradise Syndrome", stardate 4842.6
%
... The things love can drive a man to -- the ecstasies, the
the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious
failures and the glorious victories.
		-- McCoy, "Requiem for Methuselah", stardate 5843.7
%
There are always alternatives.
		-- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
%
There are certain things men must do to remain men.
		-- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4929.4
%
There are some things worth dying for.
		-- Kirk, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7
%
There comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face
.... One day our minds became so powerful we dared think of ourselves as gods.
		-- Sargon, "Return to Tomorrow", stardate 4768.3
%
There is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
		-- Spock, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.9
%
There is an old custom among my people.  When a woman saves a man's
life, he is grateful.
		-- Nona, the Kanuto witch woman, "A Private Little War",
		   stardate 4211.8.
%
There is an order of things in this universe.
		-- Apollo, "Who Mourns for Adonais?" stardate 3468.1
%
There's a way out of any cage.
		-- Captain Christopher Pike, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"),
		   stardate unknown.
%
There's another way to survive.  Mutual trust -- and help.
		-- Kirk, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
%
There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy.  There is
nothing good in war.  Except its ending.
		-- Abraham Lincoln, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5
%
There's nothing disgusting about it [the Companion].  It's just another
life form, that's all.  You get used to those things.
		-- McCoy, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
%
	"There's only one kind of woman ..."
	"Or man, for that matter.  You either believe in yourself or you don't."
		-- Kirk and Harry Mudd, "Mudd's Women", stardate 1330.1
%
This cultural mystique surrounding the biological function -- you
realize humans are overly preoccupied with the subject.
		-- Kelinda the Kelvan, "By Any Other Name", stardate 4658.9
%
Those who hate and fight must stop themselves -- otherwise it is not stopped.
		-- Spock, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
%
Time is fluid ... like a river with currents, eddies, backwash.
		-- Spock, "The City on the Edge of Forever", stardate 3134.0
%
To live is always desirable.
		-- Eleen the Capellan, "Friday's Child", stardate 3498.9
%
Too much of anything, even love, isn't necessarily a good thing.
		-- Kirk, "The Trouble with Tribbles", stardate 4525.6
%
Totally illogical, there was no chance.
		-- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
%
Uncontrolled power will turn even saints into savages.  And we can all
be counted on to live down to our lowest impulses.
		-- Parmen, "Plato's Stepchildren", stardate 5784.3
%
Violence in reality is quite different from theory.
		-- Spock, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5818.4
%
Virtue is a relative term.
		-- Spock, "Friday's Child", stardate 3499.1
%
Vulcans believe peace should not depend on force.
		-- Amanda, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.3
%
Vulcans do not approve of violence.
		-- Spock, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4
%
Vulcans never bluff.
		-- Spock, "The Doomsday Machine", stardate 4202.1
%
Vulcans worship peace above all.
		-- McCoy, "Return to Tomorrow", stardate 4768.3
%
Wait!  You have not been prepared!
		-- Mr. Atoz, "Tomorrow is Yesterday", stardate 3113.2
%
War is never imperative.
		-- McCoy, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2
%
War isn't a good life, but it's life.
		-- Kirk, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
%
[War] is instinctive.  But the instinct can be fought.  We're human
beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands!  But we
can stop it.  We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going
to kill today.  That's all it takes!  Knowing that we're not going to
kill today!
		-- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0
%
We do not colonize.  We conquer.  We rule.  There is no other way for us.
		-- Rojan, "By Any Other Name", stardate 4657.5
%
We fight only when there is no other choice.  We prefer the ways of
peaceful contact.
		-- Kirk, "Spectre of the Gun", stardate 4385.3
%
We have found all life forms in the galaxy are capable of superior
development.
		-- Kirk, "The Gamesters of Triskelion", stardate 3211.7
%
We have phasers, I vote we blast 'em!
		-- Bailey, "The Corbomite Maneuver", stardate 1514.2
%
	"We have the right to survive!"
	"Not by killing others."
		-- Deela and Kirk, "Wink of An Eye", stardate 5710.5
%
We Klingons believe as you do -- the sick should die.  Only the strong
should live.
		-- Kras, "Friday's Child", stardate 3497.2
%
We're all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine.
But when it comes to your job -- that's different.  And it always will
be different.
		-- McCoy, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
%
	"What happened to the crewman?"
	"The M-5 computer needed a new power source, the crewman merely got in
the way."
		-- Kirk and Dr. Richard Daystrom, "The Ultimate Computer",
		   stardate 4731.3.
%
What kind of love is that?  Not to be loved; never to have shown love.
		-- Commissioner Nancy Hedford, "Metamorphosis",
		   stardate 3219.8
%
	"What terrible way to die."
	"There are no good ways."
		-- Sulu and Kirk, "That Which Survives", stardate unknown
%
When a child is taught ... its programmed with simple instructions --
and at some point, if its mind develops properly, it exceeds the sum of
what it was taught, thinks independently.
		-- Dr. Richard Daystrom, "The Ultimate Computer",
		   stardate 4731.3.
%
When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel,
building, creating; you even forget how to repair the machines left
behind by your ancestors.  You just sit living and reliving other lives
left behind in the thought records.
		-- Vina, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"), stardate unknown
%
Where there's no emotion, there's no motive for violence.
		-- Spock, "Dagger of the Mind", stardate 2715.1
%
Witch!  Witch!  They'll burn ya!
		-- Hag, "Tomorrow is Yesterday", stardate unknown
%
Without facts, the decision cannot be made logically.  You must rely on
your human intuition.
		-- Spock, "Assignment: Earth", stardate unknown
%
Without followers, evil cannot spread.
		-- Spock, "And The Children Shall Lead", stardate 5029.5
%
Without freedom of choice there is no creativity.
		-- Kirk, "The return of the Archons", stardate 3157.4
%
Women are more easily and more deeply terrified ... generating more
sheer horror than the male of the species.
		-- Spock, "Wolf in the Fold", stardate 3615.4
%
Women professionals do tend to over-compensate.
		-- Dr. Elizabeth Dehaver, "Where No Man Has Gone Before",
		   stardate 1312.9.
%
Worlds are conquered, galaxies destroyed -- but a woman is always a woman.
		-- Kirk, "The Conscience of the King", stardate 2818.9
%
Yes, it is written.  Good shall always destroy evil.
		-- Sirah the Yang, "The Omega Glory", stardate unknown
%
You are an excellent tactician, Captain.  You let your second in
command attack while you sit and watch for weakness.
		-- Khan Noonian Singh, "Space Seed", stardate 3141.9
%
You can't evaluate a man by logic alone.
		-- McCoy, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
%
You Earth people glorified organized violence for forty centuries.  But
you imprison those who employ it privately.
		-- Spock, "Dagger of the Mind", stardate 2715.1
%
You go slow, be gentle.  It's no one-way street -- you know how you
feel and that's all.  It's how the girl feels too.  Don't press.  If
the girl feels anything for you at all, you'll know.
		-- Kirk, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8
%
You humans have that emotional need to express gratitude.  "You're
welcome," I believe, is the correct response.
		-- Spock, "Bread and Circuses", stardate 4041.2
%
You say you are lying.  But if everything you say is a lie, then you are
telling the truth.  You cannot tell the truth because everything you say
is a lie.  You lie, you tell the truth ... but you cannot, for you lie.
		-- Norman the android, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
%
You speak of courage.  Obviously you do not know the difference between
courage and foolhardiness.  Always it is the brave ones who die, the soldiers.
		-- Kor, the Klingon Commander, "Errand of Mercy",
		   stardate 3201.7
%
You!  What PLANET is this!
		-- McCoy, "The City on the Edge of Forever", stardate 3134.0
%
You'll learn something about men and women -- the way they're supposed
to be.  Caring for each other, being happy with each other, being good
to each other.  That's what we call love.  You'll like that a lot.
		-- Kirk, "The Apple", stardate 3715.6
%
You're dead, Jim.
		-- McCoy, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
%
You're dead, Jim.
		-- McCoy, "The Tholian Web", stardate unknown
%
You're too beautiful to ignore.  Too much woman.
		-- Kirk to Yeoman Rand, "The Enemy Within", stardate unknown
%
Youth doesn't excuse everything.
		-- Dr. Janice Lester (in Kirk's body), "Turnabout Intruder",
		   stardate 5928.5.
%
There's coffee in that nebula!
		-- Capt. Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager, "The Cloud"
%
Dismissed.  That's a Star Fleet expression for, "Get out."
		-- Capt. Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager, "The Cloud"
%
Once upon a time there was a DOS user who saw Unix, and saw that it was
good.  After typing cp on his DOS machine at home, he downloaded GNU's
unix tools ported to DOS and installed them.  He rm'd, cp'd, and mv'd
happily for many days, and upon finding elvis, he vi'd and was happy.  After
a long day at work (on a Unix box) he came home, started editing a file,
and couldn't figure out why he couldn't suspend vi (w/ ctrl-z) to do
a compile.
	-- Erik Troan, ewt@tipper.oit.unc.edu
%
When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".
	-- Linus Torvalds
%
Now, it we had this sort of thing:
  yield -a     for yield to all traffic
  yield -t     for yield to trucks
  yield -f     for yield to people walking (yield foot)
  yield -d t*  for yield on days starting with t

...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you
wouldn't believe...
	-- Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands
%
It's now the GNU Emacs of all terminal emulators.
	-- Linus Torvalds, regarding the fact that Linux started off as a terminal emulator
%
When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at
you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'.
	-- Linus Torvalds
%
Keep me informed on the behaviour of this kernel..  As the "BugFree(tm)"
series didn't turn out too well, I'm starting a new series called the
"ItWorksForMe(tm)" series, of which this new kernel is yet another
shining example.
	-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.29
%
The new Linux anthem will be "He's an idiot, but he's ok", as performed by
Monthy Python.  You'd better start practicing.
	-- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch
%
Besides, its really not worthwhile to use more than two times your physical 
ram in swap (except in a select few situations). The performance of the system 
becomes so abysmal you'd rather heat pins under your toenails while reciting 
Windows95 source code and staring at porn flicks of Bob Dole than actually try 
to type something.
	-- seen on c.o.l.development.system, about the size of the swap space
%
We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their 
correct technical name... paenguins.
	-- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo
%
<Tazman> damn my office is cold.
<Tazman> need a hot secretary to warm it up.
	-- Seen on #Linux
%
The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which
failed to start because of the following error:
The operation completed successfully.
	-- Windows NT Server v3.51
%
Stopping Apache webserver...sleeping...starting again...apache: dl-version.c:189:
 _dl_check_map_versions: Assertion `needed != ((void *)0)' failed
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
	-- netgod on #Debian at LISC
%
<posix> this guy _is_ crazy
<stargazer> posix: from the looks of Enlightenment he's on LSD
<posix> LSD is nothing compared to what this guy's on..
	-- Seen on #Unix
%
Try to remove the color-problem by restarting your computer several times.
	-- Microsoft-Internet Explorer README.TXT
%
<sel> need help: my first packet to my provider gets lost :-(
<netgod> sel:  dont send the first one, start with #2
* netgod is kidding
%
I never thought that I'd see the day where Netscape is free software and
X11 is proprietary.  We live in interesting times.
	-- Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com>
%
Various documentation updates and bugfixes (the best way to know that a
stable kernel is approaching is to notice that somebody starts to
spellcheck the kernel - it has so far never failed)
	-- Linus Torvalds in the annoucement for pre-2.1.99-3
%
Fehlermeldung von StarOffice:

Das Dokument wurde fuer den Drucker Generic PostScript Printer formatiert.
Der Drucker ist nicht vorhanden.  Soll der Standarddrucker Generic
PostScript Printer verwendet werden?

Ob Programme schizophren werden koennen?
	-- Oliver Bedford <O.Bedford@uni-koeln.de>
%
When a float occurs on the same page as the start of a supertabular
you can expect unexpected results.
	-- Documentation of supertabular.sty
%
<stu> Stupid nick highlighting
<stu> Whenever someone starts with "stupid" it highlights the nick.  Hmm.
	-- #Debian
%
< Overfiend> whew.
< Overfiend> I really need to get some sleep.
< Overfiend> but it sure was fun talking guitars, politics, and lesbians.
%
Now, it we had this sort of thing:
  yield -a     for yield to all traffic
  yield -t     for yield to trucks
  yield -f     for yield to people walking (yield foot)
  yield -d t*  for yield on days starting with t
...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you
wouldn't believe...
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands.)
%
Once upon a time there was a DOS user who saw Unix, and saw that it was
good. After typing cp on his DOS machine at home, he downloaded GNU's
unix tools ported to DOS and installed them. He rm'd, cp'd, and mv'd
happily for many days, and upon finding elvis, he vi'd and was happy. After
a long day at work (on a Unix box) he came home, started editing a file,
and couldn't figure out why he couldn't suspend vi (w/ ctrl-z) to do
a compile.
(By ewt@tipper.oit.unc.edu (Erik Troan)
%
`When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".'
(By Linus Torvalds)
%
A Hollywood producer calls a friend, another producer on the phone.
	"Hello?" his friend answers.
	"Hi!" says the man.  "This is Bob, how are you doing?"
	"Oh," says the friend, "I'm doing great!  I just sold a screenplay
for two hundred thousand dollars.  I've started a novel adaptation and the
studio advanced me fifty thousand dollars on it.  I also have a television
series coming on next week, and everyone says it's going to be a big hit!
I'm doing *great*!  How are you?"
	"Okay," says the producer, "give me a call when he leaves."
%
	A shy teenage boy finally worked up the nerve to give a gift to
Madonna, a young puppy.  It hitched its waggin' to a star.
%
A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother
drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
		-- Shaw
%
A young man wrote to Mozart and said:

Q: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any
   suggestions as to how to get started?"
A: "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with
   some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
Q: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
A: "But I never asked anybody how."
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL:		#37
	Can you name the seven seas?
		Antartic, Artic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian,
		North Pacific, South Pacific.
	Can you name the seven dwarfs from Snow White?
		Doc, Dopey, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy and Bashful.
%
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."
%
God help the troubadour who tries to be a star.  The more that you try
to find success, the more that you will fail.
		-- Phil Ochs, on the Second System Effect
%
Grig (the navigator):
	... so you see, it's just the two of us against the entire space
	armada.
Alex (the gunner):
	What?!?
Grig:	I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against
	overwhelming odds.
Alex:	It'll be a slaughter!
Grig:	That's the spirit!
		-- The Last Starfighter
%
Hoaars-Faisse Gallery presents:
An exhibit of works by the artist known only as Pretzel.

The exhibit includes several large conceptual works using non-traditional
media and found objects including old sofa-beds, used mace canisters,
discarded sanitary napkins and parts of freeways.  The artist explores
our dehumanization due to high technology and unresponsive governmental
structures in a post-industrial world.  She/he (the artist prefers to
remain without gender) strives to create dialogue between viewer and
creator, to aid us in our quest to experience contemporary life with its
inner-city tensions, homelessness, global warming and gender and
class-based stress.  The works are arranged to lead us to the essence of
the argument: that the alienation of the person/machine boundary has
sapped the strength of our voices and must be destroyed for society to
exist in a more fundamental sense.
%
I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind
of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances
being in widespread use.  Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms
of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like
a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments
as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease.
		-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
I'm not a real movie star -- I've still got the same wife I started out
with twenty-eight years ago.
		-- Will Rogers
%
  I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
     its situation.
	Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland.  He
	loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
	look down.  At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
	second per second takes over.
 II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
     intervenes suddenly.
	Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
	characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
	pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
	Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
	stooge's surcease.
III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
     conforming to its perimeter.
	Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
	speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
	cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
	the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole.  The
	threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
		-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
%
If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner,
and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops,
not just because you fear she might be crazy.  If she tells her tale on
camera, you might listen.  Watching strangers on television , even
responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged -- voyeurs
collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community.  Never
have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little.
		-- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television
		   in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional".
%
In the Old West a wagon train is crossing the plains.  As night falls the
wagon train forms a circle, and a campfire is lit in the middle.  After
everyone has gone to sleep two lone cavalry officers stand watch over the
camp.
	After several hours of quiet, they hear war drums starting from
a nearby Indian village they had passed during the day.  The drums get
louder and louder.
	Finally one soldier turns to the other and says, "I don't like
the sound of those drums."
	Suddenly, they hear a cry come from the Indian camp:  "IT'S
NOT OUR REGULAR DRUMMER."
%
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
		-- Rod Serling
%
	Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and
tries to hide behind a beard.  No good.  There are still too many people
and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking.  He moves to the
outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,
caretaker included.  He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,
day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.
	Nobody's cut the grass in months.  What's happened to that caretaker?
What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are
start to get curious.  A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.
Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared.  The senior
class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a
movie one night and stays out.  The town's up in arms, but just before the
police take action, the kids turn up.  They've found a purpose.  They go
home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going
now.  They're in a band.
		-- Ira Kaplan
%
Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
the dance floor.  Now everyone's doing it.  It's called grand slam dancing.
		-- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
%
Mos Eisley Spaceport; you will never find a more wretched hive of scum
and villainy...
		-- Obi-wan Kenobi, "Star Wars"
%
My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked.
		-- Peter Stack, movie review

His performance is so wooden you want to spray him with Liquid Pledge.
		-- John Stark, movie review
%
Once, I read that a man be never stronger than when he truly realizes how
weak he is.
		-- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel #31"
%
Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.
		-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
Recently deceased blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan "comes to" after
his death.  He sees Jimi Hendrix sitting next to him, tuning his guitar.
"Holy cow," he thinks to himself, "this guy is my idol."  Over at the
microphone, about to sing, are Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and the
bassist is the late Barry Oakley of the Allman Brothers.  So Stevie
Ray's thinking, "Oh, wow!  I've died and gone to rock and roll heaven."
Just then, Karen Carpenter walks in, sits down at the drums, and says:
"'Close to You'.  Hit it, boys!"
		-- Told by Penn Jillette, of magic/comedy duo Penn and Teller
%
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest
science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who!  And I'll take you all
on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
		-- Harlan Ellison
%
The Great Movie Posters:

She's got the biggest six-shooters in the West!
		-- The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949)

CAST OF 3,000!
4 WRITERS,
2 DIRECTORS,
3 CAMERAMEN,
3 PRODUCERS!
1 YEAR TO MAKE THIS FILM --
24 YEARS TO REHEARSE --
20 YEARS TO DISTRIBUTE!
	BEAUTIFUL BEYOND WORDS!
	AWE-INSPIRING! VITAL!
THE PRINCE OF PEACE PROVIDES THE ANSWER TO EVERY PROBLEM!
Be Brave--bring your troubles and your family to:
	HISTORY'S MOST SUBLIME EVENT! YOU'LL FIND GOD RIGHT IN THERE!
		-- The Prince of Peace (1948).  Starring members of the
		   Wichita Mountain Pageant featuring Millard Coody as Jesus.
%
The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."
		-- Johnny Carson
%
The human brain is a wonderful thing.  It starts working the moment
you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
		-- Sir George Jessel
%
The key to building a superstar is to keep their mouth shut.  To reveal
an artist to the people can be to destroy him.  It isn't to anyone's
advantage to see the truth.
		-- Bob Ezrin, rock music producer
%
There are two jazz musicians who are great buddies.  They hang out and play
together for years, virtually inseparable.  Unfortunately, one of them is
struck by a truck and killed.  About a week later his friend wakes up in
the middle of the night with a start because he can feel a presence in the
room.  He calls out, "Who's there?  Who's there?  What's going on?"
	"It's me -- Bob," replies a faraway voice.
	Excitedly he sits up in bed.  "Bob!  Bob!  Is that you?  Where are
you?"
	"Well," says the voice, "I'm in heaven now."
	"Heaven!  You're in heaven!  That's wonderful!  What's it like?"
	"It's great, man.  I gotta tell you, I'm jamming up here every day.
I'm playing with Bird, and 'Trane, and Count Basie drops in all the time!
Man it is smokin'!"
	"Oh, wow!" says his friend. "That sounds fantastic, tell me more,
tell me more!"
	"Let me put it this way," continues the voice.  "There's good news
and bad news.  The good news is that these guys are in top form.  I mean
I have *never* heard them sound better.  They are *wailing* up here."
	"The bad news is that God has this girlfriend that sings..."
%
Today you'll start getting heavy metal radio on your dentures.
%
Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream.  Join us soon for more 
spectacular adventure starring...  Tippy, the Wonder Dog!
		-- Bob & Ray
%
We don't like their sound.  Groups of guitars are on the way out.
		-- Decca Recording Company, turning down the Beatles, 1962
%
What a bonanza!  An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script
by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary
Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them!
		-- David Niven, "Bring On the Empty Horses"
%
What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working
when he's staring out the window.
%
	Why are you doing this to me?
	Because knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before
there is change.
		-- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel", #29
%
The word "Windows" is a word out of an old dialect of the Apaches.  It
means: "White man staring through glass-screen onto an hourglass..."
%
Bang on the LEFT side of your computer to restart Windows.
%
Tip of the day:
The Windows 95 CD-ROM makes an excellent skeet shoot target.
%
Q: What do you call 50 Microsoft products at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A darned good start. 
%
You Might be a Microsoft Employee If...

 1. When a Microsoft program crashes for the millionth time, you say "Oh,
    well!" and reboot without any negative thoughts 
 2. The Windows 95 startup screen (the clouds) makes you feel all warm and
    fuzzy inside 
 3. You fully understand why Windows 95's Shutdown Option has to be
    accessed from the Start Menu 
 4. You believe Internet Explorer's security flaws were slipped in by a
    crack team of Netscape programmers 
 5. You keep valuable papers near your fireplace. Therefore, you are
    comfortable with Windows 95's "may-delete-it-at-anytime" philosophy 
 6. You're the Bob that Microsoft Bob was named after 
 7. Instead of "I'd rather be fishing," your bumper sticker says, "I'd
    rather be writing buggy Microsoft code" 
 8. You know the technical difference between OLE 1.0 and OLE 2.0 
 9. You've ever completed your income taxes while waiting for Windows 95
    to boot, and didn't think anything of it 
10. You run Solitaire more than any other program, and therefore you
    consider your computer a Dedicated Solitaire Engine (DSE) 

%
When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".
   
   -- Linus Torvalds
%
Windows: The first user interface where you click Start to turn it off.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
%
Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for the change
to take effect. Reboot now?  [ OK ]

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
%
Oh My God! They Killed init! You Bastards!

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
%
See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux,
you have to be a sneaky bastard too. 

   -- Linus Torvalds
%
A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to
govern.  It demands no social reforms.  It does not haggle over expenditures
on armaments and military equipment.  It pays without discussion, it ruins
itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and
manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.
		-- Anatole France
%
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
	-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
	   Ecole Superieure de Guerre
%
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing - and that was
the closest our country has ever been to being even.
	-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Every one says that politicians lie all the time, and that just isn't so!
But you do have to understand body language to know when they're lying and
when they aren't.

	When a politician rubs his nose, he isn't lying.
	When a politician tugs on his ear, he isn't lying.
	When a politician scratches his collar bone, he isn't lying.
	When his mouth starts moving, that's when he's lying!
%
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space.  In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri.  And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
"... gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
		-- Secretary of State Henry Stimson, on closing down
		   the Black Chamber, the precursor to the National
		   Security Agency.
%
Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
		-- Dr. Who
%
How is the world ruled, and how do wars start?  Diplomats tell lies to
journalists, and they believe what they read.
		-- Karl Kraus, "Aphorisms and More Aphorisms"
%
I don't like the Dutchman.  He's a crocodile.  He's sneaky.  I don't trust him.
		-- Jack "Legs" Diamond, just before a peace conference
		   with Dutch Schultz.

I don't trust Legs.  He's nuts.  He gets excited and starts pulling a
trigger like another guy wipes his nose.
		-- Dutch Schultz, just before a peace conference with
		   "Legs" Diamond.
%
I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neigbors to
the south.  We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about
us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.
		-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
I was appalled by this story of the destruction of a member of a valued
endangered species.  It's all very well to celebrate the practicality of
pigs by ennobling the porcine sibling who constructed his home out of
bricks and mortar.  But to wantonly destroy a wolf, even one with an
excessive taste for porkers, is unconscionable in these ecologically
critical times when both man and his domestic beasts continue to maraud
the earth.
		Sylvia Kamerman, "Book Reviewing"
%
If your hands are clean and your cause is just and your demands are
reasonable, at least it's a start.
%
It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
than be the instrument of his army's downfall.
		-- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
%
It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a
better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat
your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of
attention, the harder the task.
		-- Sydney J. Harris
%
It took a while to surface, but it appears that a long-distance credit card
may have saved a U.S. Army unit from heavy casualties during the Grenada
military rescue/invasion. Major General David Nichols, Air Force ... said
the Army unit was in a house surrounded by Cuban forces.  One soldier found
a telephone and, using his credit card, called Ft. Bragg, N.C., telling Army
officiers there of the perilous situation. The officers in turn called the
Air Force, which sent in gunships to scatter the Cubans and relieve the unit.
		-- Aviation Week and Space Technology
%
	Jacek, a Polish schoolboy, is told by his teacher that he has
been chosen to carry the Polish flag in the May Day parade.
	"Why me?"  whines the boy.  "Three years ago I carried the flag
when Brezhnev was the Secretary; then I carried the flag when it was
Andropov's turn, and again when Chernenko was in the Kremlin.  Why is
it always me, teacher?"
	"Because, Jacek, you have such golden hands," the teacher
explains.
		-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
Majorities, of course, start with minorities.
		-- Robert Moses
%
Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.
		-- P.J. Bailey
%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
		-- Groucho Marx
%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
		-- Groucho Marx
%
Power corrupts.  Absolute power is kind of neat.
		-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
%
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
		-- Voltarine de Cleyre
%
	Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.  Five years later?
Six?  It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again.  San Fransisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of.  Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long
run...  There was madness in any direction, at any hour.  If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  You could
strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we
were doing was right, that we were winning...
	And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail.  There was no point in fighting
-- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave.  So now, less than five years later, you can go
up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost ___see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
		-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
The Least Successful Executions
	History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention.
The first performed in Sydney in Australia.  In 1803 three attempts were
made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels.  On the first two of these the rope
snapped, while on the third Mr. Samuels just hung there peacefully until he
and everyone else got bored.  Since he had proved unsusceptible to capital
punishment, he was reprieved.
	The most important British executioner was Mr. James Berry who
tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr. John Lee at Exeter Jail, but on each
occasion failed to get the trap door open.
	In recognition of this achievement, the Home Secretary commuted
Lee's sentence to "life" imprisonment.  He was released in 1917, emigrated
to America and lived until 1933.
		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
To be excellent when engaged in administration is to be like the North
Star.  As it remains in its one position, all the other stars surround it.
		-- Confucius
%
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers
in heavy weather for several days.  I was serving on the lead battleship and
was on watch on the bridge as night fell.  The visibility was poor with patchy
fog, so the Captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
	Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported,
"Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
	"Is it steady or moving astern?" the Captain called out.
	Lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous
collision course with that ship.
	The Captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on
a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees."
	Back came a signal "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees."
	In reply, the Captain said, "Send: I'm a Captain, change course 20
degrees!"
	"I'm a seaman second class," came the reply, "You had better change
course 20 degrees."
	By that time, the Captain was furious. He spit out, "Send: I'm a
battleship, change course 20 degrees."
	Back came the flashing light: "I'm a lighthouse!"
	We changed course.
		-- The Naval Institute's "Proceedings"
%
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
%
Unknown person(s) stole the American flag from its pole in Etra Park sometime
between 3pm Jan 17 and 11:30 am Jan 20.  The flag is described as red, white
and blue, having 50 stars and was valued at $40.
		-- Windsor-Heights Herald "Police Blotter", Jan 28, 1987
%
War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
		-- Clemenceau
%
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary.
		-- Thomas Paine
%
"Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you still have to
argue it point by point.  Especially since most minimalists want to
keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them
privileged.  That's libertarians for you -- anarchists who want police
protection from their slaves!"
		-- Coyote, in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Green Mars"
%
A traveling salesman was driving past a farm when he saw a pig with three
wooden legs executing a magnificent series of backflips and cartwheels.
Intrigued, he drove up to the farmhouse, where he found an old farmer
sitting in the yard watching the pig.  
	"That's quite a pig you have there, sir" said the salesman. 
	"Sure is, son," the farmer replied.  "Why, two years ago, my daughter
was swimming in the lake and bumped her head and damned near drowned, but that
pig swam out and dragged her back to shore."
	"Amazing!"  the salesman exlaimed.
	"And that's not the only thing.  Last fall I was cuttin' wood up on
the north forty when a tree fell on me.  Pinned me to the ground, it did.  
That pig run up and wiggled underneath that tree and lifted it off of me.
Saved my life."
	"Fantastic!  the salesman said.  But tell me, how come the pig has
three wooden legs?"
	The farmer stared at the newcomer in amazement.  "Mister, when you 
got an amazin' pig like that, you don't eat him all at once."
%
Business is a good game -- lots of competition and minimum of rules.
You keep score with money.
		-- Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
%
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.  It knows it must run faster
than the fastest lion or it will be killed.  Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes
up, you'd better be running.
%
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:

Support:  "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
%
	I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
	Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything:  "I came
by subway."  Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%
	If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle.  So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it.  The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a
large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the
week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after
which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more
money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S.
Senate.
	And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You
figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I.  How difficult can
it be?"
	Very difficult.  In fact, most home projects are impossible, which
is why you should do them yourself.  There is no point in paying other
people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far
less money.  This article can help you.
		-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward
the vividly imaginative.  For although it may momentarily appear to be the
case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by
crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
		-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
Look, we trade every day out there with hustlers, deal-makers, shysters,
con-men.  That's the way businesses get started.  That's the way this
country was built.
		-- Hubert Allen
%
Management:	How many feet do mice have?
Reply:		Mice have four feet.
M:	Elaborate!
R:	Mice have five appendages, and four of them are feet.
M:	No discussion of fifth appendage!
R:	Mice have five appendages; four of them are feet; one is a tail.
M:	What?  Feet with no legs?
R:	Mice have four legs, four feet, and one tail per unit-mouse.
M:	Confusing -- is that a total of 9 appendages?
R:	Mice have four leg-foot assemblies and one tail assembly per body.
M:	Does not fully discuss the issue!
R:	Each mouse comes equipped with four legs and a tail.  Each leg
	is equipped with a foot at the end opposite the body; the tail
	is not equipped with a foot.
M:	Descriptive?  Yes.  Forceful NO!
R:	Allotment of appendages for mice will be:  Four foot-leg assemblies,
	one tail.  Deviation from this policy is not permitted as it would
	constitute misapportionment of scarce appendage assets.
M:	Too authoritarian; stifles creativity!
R:	Mice have four feet; each foot is attached to a small leg joined
	integrally with the overall mouse structural sub-system.  Also
	attached to the mouse sub-system is a thin tail, non-functional and
	ornamental in nature.
M:	Too verbose/scientific.  Answer the question!
R:	Mice have four feet.
%
Men's skin is different from women's skin.  It is usually bigger, and
it has more snakes tattooed on it.  Also, if you examine a woman's skin
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events
such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the
woman's skin.  Thank you.]

... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"!  And what is even more
interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying!  This is a fact.  Your
skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran
cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices
with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first,
without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from
below.
		-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%
	One fine day, the bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus,
and drove off along the route.  No problems for the first few stops -- a few
people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well.  At the next
stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on.  Six feet eight, built like a
wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground.  He glared at the driver and said,
"Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.
	Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically
meek?  Well, he was.  Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't
happy about it.  Well, the next day the same thing happened -- Big John got on
again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down.  And the next day, and the
one after that, and so forth.  This grated on the bus driver, who started
losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him.  Finally he
could stand it no longer. He signed up for bodybuilding courses, karate, judo,
and all that good stuff.  By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong;
what's more, he felt really good about himself.
	So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus
and said "Big John doesn't pay!," the driver stood up, glared back at the
passenger, and screamed, "And why not?"
	With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a
bus pass."
%
Please keep your hands off the secretary's reproducing equipment.
%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to work.
%
The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist "Jack."
		-- H.L. Mencken
%
The more cordial the buyer's secretary, the greater the odds that the
competition already has the order.
%
The star of riches is shining upon you.
%
The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune.
%
What they say:				What they mean:

A major technological breakthrough...	Back to the drawing board.
Developed after years of research	Discovered by pure accident.
Project behind original schedule due	We're working on something else.
	to unforseen difficulties
Designs are within allowable limits	We made it, stretching a point or two.
Customer satisfaction is believed	So far behind schedule that they'll be
	assured					grateful for anything at all.
Close project coordination		We're gonna spread the blame, campers!
Test results were extremely gratifying	It works, and boy, were we surprised!
The design will be finalized...		We haven't started yet, but we've got
						to say something.
The entire concept has been rejected	The guy who designed it quit.
We're moving forward with a fresh	We hired three new guys, and they're
	approach				kicking it around.
A number of different approaches...	We don't know where we're going, but
						we're moving.
Preliminary operational tests are	Blew up when we turned it on.
	inconclusive
Modifications are underway		We're starting over.
%
XXXVI:
	The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar
	contract is about one millimeter per million dollars.  If all the
	proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other
	at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea.
XXXVII:
	Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect.
	The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.
XXXVIII:
	The early bird gets the worm.
	The early worm ... gets eaten.
XXXIX:
	Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of
	the year -- in either direction.
XL:
	Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off.
		-- Norman Augustine
%
Anger is momentary madness.
		-- Horace
%
Animals can be driven crazy by putting too many in too small a pen.
Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
		-- Lazarus Long
%
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

 1. I salivate at the sight of mittens.
 2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse.
 3. Some people never look at me.
 4. Spinach makes me feel alone.
 5. My sex life is A-okay.
 6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
 7. I like to kill mosquitoes.
 8. Cousins are not to be trusted.
 9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down.
10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating.
11. I think most people would cry to gain a point.
12. I cannot read or write.
13. I am bored by thoughts of death.
14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.
15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker.
16. I am never startled by a fish.
17. My mother's uncle was a good man.
18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten.
19. People who break the law are wise guys.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
%
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

 1. I think beavers work too hard.
 2. I use shoe polish to excess.
 3. God is love.
 4. I like mannish children.
 5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
 6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
 7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
 8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
 9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room
    full of mice.
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
16. My eyes are always cold.
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
19. I am never startled by a fish.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
%
Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
avoiding you.
		-- The Old Farmer's Almanac
%
Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
solitary confinement.
%
It is indeed desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to
our ancestors.
		-- Plutarch
%
Nezvannyi gost'--khuzhe tatarina.
	[An uninvited guest is worse than the Mongol invasion]
		-- Russian proverb
%
No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.
		-- Quintus Ennius
%
Put your brain in gear before starting your mouth in motion.
%
Something better...

13 (sympathetic): Oh, What happened?  Did your parents lose a bet with God?
14 (complimentary): You must love the little birdies to give them this to
	perch on.
15 (scientific): Say, does that thing there influence the tides?
16 (obscure): Oh, I'd hate to see the grindstone.
17 (inquiry): When you stop to smell the flowers, are they afraid?
18 (french): Say, the pigs have refused to find any more truffles until you
	leave.
19 (pornographic): Finally, a man who can satisfy two women at once.
20 (religious): The Lord giveth and He just kept on giving, didn't He.
21 (disgusting): Say, who mows your nose hair?
22 (paranoid): Keep that guy away from my cocaine!
23 (aromatic): It must be wonderful to wake up in the morning and smell the
	coffee ... in Brazil.
24 (appreciative): Oooo, how original.  Most people just have their teeth
	capped.
25 (dirty): Your name wouldn't be Dick, would it?
		-- Steve Martin, "Roxanne"
%
Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
		-- W.C. Fields
%
Start the day with a smile.  After that you can be your nasty old self again.
%
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you.
Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none
of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."  Don't use
excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.  Cutting his throat
is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
		-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
		-- Oscar Wilde
%
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen.  You get spastic
enough worrying about what's happening now.
		-- Lauren Bacall
%
You know it's going to be a long day when you get up, shave and shower,
start to get dressed and your shoes are still warm.
		-- Dean Webber
%
	Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance
of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.
	Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow
old only by deserting their ideals.  Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair
-- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit
back to dust.
	Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and
thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite
for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
	You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your
despair.
	So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage,
grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long
you are young.
		-- Samuel Ullman
%
Some days you wake and immediately start worrying.  Nothing in
particular is wrong, it's just the suspicion that forces are aligning
quietly and there will be trouble.
		-- "Survival Series", Jenny Holzer
%
A couple more shots of whiskey, women 'round here start looking good.

		[something about a 10 being a 4 after a six-pack?  Ed.]
%
Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.
%
Come quickly, I am tasting stars!
		-- Dom Perignon, upon discovering champagne.
%
FORTUNE'S FAVORITE RECIPES: #8
	Christmas Rum Cake

1 or 2 quarts rum		1 tbsp. baking powder
1 cup butter			1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. sugar			1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 large eggs			2 cups brown sugar
2 cups dried assorted fruit	3 cups chopped English walnuts

Before you start, sample the rum to check for quality.  Good, isn't it?  Now
select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc.  Check the rum again.  It
must be just right.  Be sure the rum is of the highest quality.  Pour one cup
of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can.  Repeat. With an electric
mixer, beat one cup butter in a large fluffy bowl.  Add 1 seaspoon of tugar
and beat again.  Meanwhile, make sure the rum teh absolutely highest quality.
Sample another cup.  Open second quart as necessary.  Add 2 orge laggs, 2 cups
of fried druit and beat untill high.  If the fried druit gets stuck in the
beaters, just pry it loose with a screwdriver.  Sample the rum again, checking
for toncisticity.  Next sift 3 cups of baking powder, a pinch of rum, a
seaspoon of toda and a cup of pepper or salt (it really doesn't matter).
Sample some more.  Sift 912 pint of lemon juice.  Fold in schopped butter and
strained chups.  Add bablespoon of brown gugar, or whatever color you have.
Mix mell.  Grease oven and turn cake pan to 350 gredees and rake until
poothtick comes out crean.
%
Norm:  Gentlemen, start your taps.
		-- Cheers, The Coach's Daughter

Coach: How's life treating you, Norm?
Norm:  Like it caught me in bed with his wife.
		-- Cheers, Any Friend of Diane's

Coach: How's life, Norm?
Norm:  Not for the squeamish, Coach.
		-- Cheers, Friends, Romans, and Accountants
%
Norm:  Hey, everybody.
All:   [silence; everybody is mad at Norm for being rich.]
Norm:  [Carries on both sides of the conversation himself.]
       Norm!   (Norman.)
       How are you feeling today, Norm?
       Rich and thirsty.  Pour me a beer.
		-- Cheers, Tan 'n Wash

Woody: What's the latest, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Zsa-Zsa marries a millionaire, Peterson drinks a beer.
       Film at eleven.
		-- Cheers, Knights of the Scimitar

Woody: How are you today, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Never been better, Woody. ... Just once I'd like to be better.
		-- Cheers, Chambers vs. Malone
%
Police:	Good evening, are you the host?
Host:	No.
Police:	We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host:	About the drugs?
Police:	No.
Host:	About the guns, then?  Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police:	No, the noise.
Host:	Oh, the noise.  Well that makes sense because there are no guns
	or drugs here.  (An enormous explosion is heard in the
	background.)  Or fireworks.  Who's complaining about the noise?
	The neighbors?
Police:	No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago.  Most of the recent
	complaints have come from Pittsburgh.  Do you think you could
	ask the host to quiet things down?
Host:	No Problem.  (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
	religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
	room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
	lawn, where it smashes into a tree.  Eight guests tumble out
	onto the grass, moaning.)  See?  Things are starting to wind
	down.
%
Said the attractive, cigar-smoking housewife to her girl-friend: "I got
started one night when George came home and found one burning in the ashtray."
%
The mark of a good party is that you wake up the next morning wanting to
change your name and start a new life in different city.
		-- Vance Bourjaily, "Esquire"
%
When all else fails, pour a pint of Guinness in the gas tank, advance
the spark 20 degrees, cry "God Save the Queen!", and pull the starter knob.
		-- MG "Series MGA" Workshop Manual
%
Missouri Town Changes Name to 'Linux' 

LINUX, MO -- The small Missouri town of Linn, county seat of Osage County,
announced yesterday that it will be henceforth called 'Linux'. Mayor Bob Farrow
said, "Linn needed something to put it on the map. A few weeks ago my daughter
mentioned that she installed Linux on her computer and how great she thought it
was. I thought to myself, 'Self, changing the town's name to 'Linux' could be
an opportunity to attract attention -- and money -- to our town. We could even
hold a Linux Convention at the community center.' So I approached the city
council about the idea, and they loved it. The rest is history." 

Farrow's daughter is organizing the Linux Linux User Group. She hopes to be
able to hold a Linux Convention this fall. "The Linn, er, Linux community
center probably won't be big enough, we'll probably have to hold it in nearby
Jefferson City," she said. 

The mayor does have one reservation. "How the hell do you pronounce Linux?" One
of the mayor's contenders in the next election, Mr. Noah Morals, says he will
start an ad campaign calling Bob Farrow "the Incumbent Liar of LIE-nucks".
Needless to say, the mayor usually pronounces Linux as "LIH-nucks". 
%
Red Hat Unveils New Ad Campaign 

Linux distributor Red Hat has announced plans for a $650,000 ad campaign. The
ads will appear on several major newspapers as well as on a few selected
websites. "These ads will be targetted towards Windows users who are fed up but
aren't aware of any OS alternatives," a Red Hat spokesman said. "We feel that
there is a large audience for this." 

One of the ads will be a half page spread showing two computers side-by-side: a
Wintel and a Linux box. The title asks "Is your operating system ready for the
year 2000?" Both computers have a calendar/clock display showing. The Windows
box shows "12:00:01AM -- January 1, 1900" while the Linux box shows "12:00:01AM
-- January 1, 2000". The tagline at the bottom says "Linux -- a century ahead
of the competition." 
%
Operation Desert Slash

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- High officials in the US military are planning on putting
the  'Slashdot Effect' to use against Iraq. Pentagon computer experts think
that the Slashdot Effect could topple key Net-connected Iraqi computer
systems.  Such a Denial of Service attack could prove instrumental when the
US invades.

One Pentagon official said, "If I had a million dollars for every server that
crashed as a result of being linked on Slashdot, I'd be richer than Bill
Gates.  The Slashdot Effect is a very powerful weapon that the US military
wants to tap into."

Rob Malda has been contacted by top military brass.  According to anonymous
sources, Malda will play a key part in the so-called "Operation Desert
Slash".  Supposedly Malda will post several Slashdot articles with links to
critical Iraqi websites right when the US invasion is set to begin. 
Meanwhile, Pentagon operatives will begin a series of Denial of Service
attacks on other key Iraqi computer systems. One source notes, "Since many
Iraqi systems rely on Microsoft software, this task should be relatively
simple."
%
The Movement Formerly Known As Open Source

The battle over the Open Source trademark is heating up.  Software in the
Public Interest and the Open Source Initiative both hold competing claims to
the trademark.  In order to put an end to the infighting, a group of free
software advocates have founded the Association for the Movement Formerly
Known as Open Source (AMFKOS)

One AMFKOS founder said, "I find it ironic that a trademark representing free
software is itself proprietary.  This situation must change.  We propose that
the free software movement adopt another name besides 'Open Source'. 
Hopefully then we can all Get-Back-To-Coding(tm) instead of fighting over
Bruce Perens' and Eric Raymond's egos."

Rumor has it that Richard Stallman plans to mount a campaign to
promote the phrase "GNU/Free Software" in place of "Open Source".
In addition, the terms "Ajar Source", "Unlocked Source", "Nude Source", 
"Unclosed Source", and "Just-Type-make Software" have all
been proposed by various Usenet or Slashdot posters.
%
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #4

Microsoft Destruction Kit
Price: US$29.95 (more with optional digital camera or shotgun)
Producer: The Fuzzier Image; 1-800-BILL-SUX

Mix an Internet Explorer CD-ROM, a rocket launcher, and a flamethrower. What
do you have?  A whole lot of fun!  The Microsoft Destruction Kit is the best
way to destroy those Microsoft CD-ROMs you no longer need now that you've
discovered Linux.  You can launch the CD (and registration forms, manuals,
retail boxes, license agreements, etc.) and pepper it with bullets, all while
capturing the event with a digital camera. Or, you can use the included
miniature flamethrower to burn the evil CD to a crisp.  The kit comes with a
set of IE 4.0 CDs to get you started.  Tell Microsoft "where *you* want
it to go today" in style with the Microsoft Destruction Kit.
%
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #7

Bluescreen Computer Case
US$27.97 at Bud's Beige Box Bazaar 

Real Geeks may not admit to using Windows, but there's still countless geeks
out there who must suffer through the humiliation of using Windows while at
work. The patent-not-pending Bluescreen Case, though, will ease the stress of
working with Microsoft "solutions". 

This computer case is very similar to other beige boxes, but with one
important difference: the reboot button is covered with a picture of Bill
Gates. When the machine bluescreens for the millionth time, all you have to do
is punch Bill Gates in the face as hard as you can, and the computer will
restart. This provides invaluable therapeutic stress relief. 
%
Open Source Irrational Constant

BREEZEWOOD, PA -- In a revelation that could rock the foundations of
science, a researcher in Pennsylvania has discovered that the digits of the
irrational constant PI encode a version of the Linux kernel.  "I can't
believe it," the researcher, Neil Hoffman, exclaimed.  "And yet, here I am
staring at what appears to be the source code for Linux kernel 5.0.0.
Needless to say, my whole world-view has changed..."

Hoffman explained, "My algorithm, which applies several dozen conversions and
manipulations to each digit of PI, spits out plain vanilla ASCII characters
that happen to form the source code for the Linux kernel."

Many members of the scientific community are skeptical.  One One
mathematician who has memorized the digits of PI to 10,000 places said,
"This is the kind of nonsense one would expect to find in a tabloid such as
the National Mathematics Enquirer.  Or a Linux fortune(6) file.  Hoffman's
'discovery' is obviously a hoax designed to secure government research
grants."

In a related matter, we have received an unconfirmed report that a region of
the Mandelbrot fractal contains what appear to be the words "LINUS TORVALDS
WAS HERE".  In addition, the words "TRANSMETA: THIS SECRET MESSAGE IS NOT
HERE YET" supposedly appear within the depths of the Julia Set.
%
Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has
turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history.
The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair",
modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines.

"It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked
through the Tuxissa virus source code.  "This virus goes well beyond the
feeble troublemaking of Melissa.  It actually configures a UMSDOS partition
on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down
version of Slackware Linux."

The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important
Message About Windows Security".  The text of the body says, "I want to let
you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT,
Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your
system against these attacks.  Visit these sites for more information..."
The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free
software.

Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy.  The "Anonymous
Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's
gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution".
%
Invasion of the Dancing Penguin

Those annoying, dancing cartoon characters embedded in software applications
are no longer confined to Microsoft programs.  They have entered the realm
of Linux.  A new Linux distribution under development, called LinTux,
promises to provide a more "user-friendly" environment through its "Dancing
Penguin" assistant.

Dancing Tux will "guide" users through the installation process and will be
a permanent fixture of the X root window.  The LinTux staff demonstrated a
prototype version of the Dancing Tux program to this Humorix reporter.  It
was certainly impressive, but, like the Dancing Paper Clip in Microsoft
Office, it becomes annoying very fast.

The one redeeming feature of LinTux is that, when the system is idle,
Dancing Tux becomes a make-shift screen saver.  The animations included in
the prototype were quite amusing.  For instance, in one scene, Tux chases
Bill Gates through an Antarctic backdrop.  In another animation, Tux can be
seen drinking beers with his penguin pals and telling Microsoft jokes. 
%
Examples of the output generated when running commonly typed commands
under YODIX, the new Unix-like operating system for Star Wars fans
(Submitted by Dave Finton):

# pwd
Know you not where you are. Show you I shall. 

# uptime
When 900 years you be, look this good you will not. 

# cd /win95
Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny! 

# winnuke 192.168.1.0
That, my friend, will lead you to the dark side. Help you I will not. 

# rm -rf /
Idiot you are. Yeeesss. 

# shutdown -h now
Luke... there is... another... Sky... walker... 
%
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

January 2099: Rob Malda Finally Gets His Damned Nano-Technology 

The Linux hacker community finally breathed a collective sigh of relief
when it was announced that Rob Malda finally got his damned
nanotechnology. 

"It's about time!" exclaimed one Dothead. "He been going on about that
crap since god-knows-when. Now that he's got that and those wearable
computers, maybe we can read about something interesting on Slashdot!" 

Observers were skeptical, however. Already the now-immortal Rob Malda
nano-cyborg (who reportedly changed his name to "18 of 49, tertiary
adjunct of something-or-other") has picked up a few new causes to shout
about to the high heavens until everyone's ears start bleeding. In one
Slashdot article, Malda writes "Here's an article about the potential of
large greyish high-tech mile-wide cubes flying through space, all
controlled by a collective mind set upon intergalactic conquest.
Personally, I can't wait. Yum." 
%
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#7)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 7: What new features would you like to see in Windows 2000?

A. A marquee on the taskbar that automatically scrolls the latest
   headlines from MSNBC and Microsoft Press Pass

B. Content filtration software for Internet Explorer that will prevent my
   children from accessing dangerous propaganda about Linux.

C. A new card game; I've spent over 10,000 hours playing Solitaire during
   my free time at work and I'm starting to get bored with it 

D. A screensaver depicting cream pies being thrown at Janet Reno, Joel
   Klien, David Boies, Ralpha Nader, Orrin Hatch, Linus Torvalds, Richard
   M. Stallman, and other conspirators out to destroy Microsoft 

E. A Reinstall Wizard that helps me reinstall a fresh copy of Windows to
   fix Registry corruptions and other known issues 
%
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#13)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 13: Which of the following new Microsoft products do you plan on
	     buying within the next 6 months? 

A. Windows For Babies(tm) - Using an enhanced "click-n-drool" interface,
   babies will be able to learn how to use a Wintel computer, giving them
   a head start in living in a Microsoft-led world. 

B. Where In Redmond Is Carmen Sandiego?(tm) - The archvillian Sandiego has
   stolen the Windows source code and must be stopped before she can
   publish it on the Net.

C. ActiveKeyboard 2000(tm) - An ergonomic keyboard that replaces useless
   keys like SysRq and Scroll Lock with handy keys like "Play Solitaire"
   and "Visit Microsoft.com". 

D. Visual BatchFile(tm) - An IDE and compiler for the MS-DOS batch file
   language. MSNBC calls it "better than Perl". 
%
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#15)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 15: In your opinion, what companies should Microsoft seek to
	     acquire in the coming year? 

A. Disney. I'd like to see a cute animated movie starring Clippit the
   Office Assistant.

B. CBS. I'd like to see a new line-up featuring must-watch shows like
   "Touched by a Microserf", "Redmond Hope", "Everybody Loves Bill", "The
   Late Show With Steve Ballmer", and "60 Minutes... of Microsoft
   Infomercials", 

C. Google. Microsoft could drastically improve the quality and performance
   of this search engine by migrating it from Linux to Windows NT
   servers. 

D. Lowes Hardware Stores. Every copy of Windows 2000 could come bundled
   with a coupon for a free kitchen sink or a free window! 
%
Slashdot Effect Vaporizes Ganymede 
  -- Submitted by Dave Finton
  
In one of the more bizarre consequences of the infamous "Slashdot Effect",
Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, was completely and utterly
destroyed when CmdrTaco posted an article about the Hubble Space
Telescope's latest round of images and discoveries. 

"It all started when we put up some more info on our web page about
Jupiter and Ganymede," said one NASA guy whom we believe may be in charge
of something. "CmdrTaco got wind of it, and posted it on his site." 

According to observers, the webserver promptly exploded thereafter,
damaging the nearby remote control system used to aim and focus the
Hubble's cameras from the ground. 

"All of the sudden our controls went wacky!" said one engineer. "The
Hubble then started shooting these death rays all over the universe. One
of those rays hit Ganymede, and *POOF*. There it went! We were all like,
'COOOOOL! Let's aim it something else!'" 
%
Boston Software Party

BOSTON, MA -- Thousands of disgruntled Linux revolutionaries showed up at
the Boston Harbor today to protest "taxation without representation" by
the oppressive Microsoft Corporation. Thousands of pounds of Microsoft
boxes, CD-ROMs, manuals, license agreements, promotional materials, and
registration forms were dumped into the harbor during the First Annual
Boston Software Party. 

Some attendees sold hastily printed T-shirts with slogans like "July 4th,
1999: Microsoft Independence Day!" and "What do you call 10,000 pounds of
Microsoft software at the bottom of the ocean? A darned good start!"
Others sold fake dollar bills with a portrait of Tux Penguin and the
saying, "In Linus We Trust"...
%
Jargon Coiner (#4)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* FREE LECTURE: Attempting to explain the concepts of Linux, Open Source
  software, free software, and gift cultures to someone who is not
  familiar with them. Made extra difficult if the explainee has been
  misled by superficial mainstream news articles about the subject. 

  Example: "Eric gave an hour-long free lecture to his mother-in-law after
  she asked him about this Linux thingy she read about in USA Today." 

* LEXICON LAZINESS:  Filling a fortune file with a list of fake jargon
  instead of publishing something more substantive (and funny) that would
  take more effort to write. 

* FOR(;;)TUNE LOOP: Repeatedly running fortune(6) for cheap entertainment. 

  Example: "During a coffee break, Bob became bored and started a
  for(;;)tune loop. His boss had to issue a SIGTERM to get him to resume
  working." 
%
Jargon Coiner (#8)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* STAR SPINOFFS: Applying themes and ideas from "Star Wars" and "Star
  Trek" to contemporary events. 

  Examples: "Let the Source be with you!", "Microsoft is the Evil Empire",
  "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated by Microsoft". 

* TRADEMARKIZATION(tm): Giving a phrase special meaning by appending a
  trademark symbol to it. 

  Examples: "Think Free Speech, Not Free Beer(tm)", "Real Soon Now(tm)",
  "Blue Screen of Death(tm)" 
%
OPPRESSED GEEK: Everybody keeps blaming me for the Y2K problem, the
Melissa Virus, Windows crashes... you name it. When somebody finds out
you're a bona fide geek, they start bugging you about computer problems. I
frequently hear things like, "Why can't you geeks make Windows work
right?", "What kind of idiot writes a program that can't handle the year
2000?", "Geeks are evil, all they do is write viruses", and "The Internet
is the spawn of Satan". 

I'm afraid to admit I have extensive computing experience. When somebody
asks what kind of job I have, I always lie. From my experience, admitting
that you're a geek is an invitation to disaster. 

LARRY WALL: I know, I know. I sometimes say that I'm the founder of a
pearl harvesting company instead of admitting that I'm the founder of the
Perl programming language. 

ERIC S. RAYMOND: This is tragic. We can't live in a world like this. We
need your donations to fight social oppression and ignorance against
geekdom... 

   -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon      
%
Do-It-Yourself IPO

You too can get rich quick by translating an existing Linux
distribution into one of the following untapped markets:

- Babylonian 
- Hittite 
- Ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphics may be a challenge, though) 
- Pig Latin (this may be the strongest type of encryption allowed by the
  DOJ in the near future) 
- Mayan 
- Cherokee
- Cyrillic (to take advantage of the booming Russian economy) 
- Redneck 
- Klingon (it's a wonder this hasn't been done yet) 
- Wingdings    
      
Once you start marketing your new product, a highly lucrative
self-underwritten IPO is just months away!
%
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#2)
(held during Super Bowl Sunday 2000 at the Silicon Valley Transmeta Dome)

BRYANT DUMBELL: Look out! Here comes Linus Torvalds himself to deliver the
starting chug. The crowd is going wild... all 64 people in the stands are
on their feet! Here we go... Linus is lifting up the Ceremonial Beer
Can... he's flipping off the top... 

JOHN SPLADDEN: You can feel the excitement in the air! Wow! 

DUMBELL: ...And there he goes! Wow... he chugged that beer in only 1.4
seconds... Let's see Bill top that! What a remarkable display to kick off
this grandest of all nerd sporting events. 

SPLADDEN: "Nerd sporting event"? Isn't that an oxymoron? 

DUMBELL: Linus is now waving to the crowd... Oops!  He just belched. 
%
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#1)

JOHN SPLADDEN: Hi, and welcome to the first annual Nerd Bowl in sunny
Silicon Valley.

BRYANT DUMBELL: We're coming to you live from the Transmeta Dome to watch
the battle between the North Carolina Mad Hatters and the Michigan
Portalbacks as they compete for the coveted Linus Torvalds Trophy. 

SPLADDEN: This is shaping up to be one hell of a match. The Mad Hatters --
sponsored by Linux distributor Red Hat -- have been on fire the past
month. But the Andover.Net sponsored Michigan Portalbacks are on a tear as
well, thanks in part to the stellar performance of Rob "Taco Boy" Malda. 

DUMBELL: Taco Boy is quite a star, John. Last week at the Kernelbowl he
blew away the Transmeta Secret Agents when he scored 51 points
singlehandedly in the Flying CompactDiscus round. 

SPLADDEN: But then Mad Hatter's Alan Cox was voted this season's Most
Valuable Hacker in the Eastern Division. So, this game is going to be
quite a show. 
%
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#3)

BRYANT DUMBELL: It's time for Round One: The Flying CompactDiscus. 

JOHN SPLADDEN: That's right, Bryant. Each team member will hurl one CD-ROM
and receive points for both the distance thrown and whether the disc is
still readable afterwards. 

DUMBELL: First up is Mad Hatter's Alan Cox. He struts, he winds up, and
there it goes! Look at the trajectory on that baby... Now it's time for
the Portalback's Anonymous Coward #521 to throw. This guy was voted as the
best CompactDiscus thrower in the league by popular vote on Slashdot. 

SPLADDEN: Indeed, AnonCow has got some powerful muscles. No brain though.
Did you know that he dropped out of college to join the Andover.Net team? 

DUMBELL: Yeah, what a tough decision to make. It's now becoming quite
common for nerd superstars to ditch college and move to Silicon Valley and
receive Big League stock options. Still, AnonCow was out for several games
this season due to a Carpal Tunnel flareup. I hope he isn't squandering
his millions... he might be forced to retire early. 
%
Breaking up Microsoft isn't enough. What the court needs to do is start
breaking kneecaps. 

   -- The BSD Daemon, when asked by Humorix for his reaction
      to the proposed Microsoft two-way split
%
Right now hundreds of Anonymous Cowards are cheering the fact that only
Windows boobs are victims of ILOVEYOU and other email viruses. I realize
Outlook is so insecure that using it is like posting a sign outside your
door saying, "DOOR UNLOCKED -- ROB ME!". However, Linux isn't immune. If I
had a dollar for every pine buffer overflow uncovered, I could buy a
truckload of fresh herring. 

I expect the next mass email virus to spread will be cross-platform. If
the recipient is a Windows/Outlook luser, they'll get hit. If the
recipient is a Linux/pine user, they'll find themselves staring at a
self-executing bash script that's has just allocated 1 petabyte of memory
and crashed the system (or worse).

Either that or the next mass email virus will only damage Linux systems. I
can just see Bill Gates assigning some junior programmer that very task.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. 

   -- A speech given at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy]
      Convention (ConConCon) by an anonymous creature said to
      be "wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo".
%
Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell 

HELL, MICHIGAN -- A group of long-time Linux zealots and newbie haters
have thrown together a new Linux distro called Hellix that is so
user-hostile, so anti-newbie, so cryptic, and so old-fashioned that it
actually makes MS-DOS look like a real operating system. Said the founder
of the project, "I'm sick and tired of the Windowsification of the Linux
desktop in a fruitless attempt to make the system more appealing to
newbies, PHBs, and MCSEs. Linux has always been for nerds only, and we
want to make sure it stays that way!" 

One of the other Bastard Distributors From Hell explained, "In the last
five years think of all the hacking effort spent on Linux... and for what?
We have nothing to show for it but half-finished Windows-like desktops, vi
dancing paperclips, and graphical front-ends to configuration files. Real
nerds use text files for configuration, darnit, and they like it! It's
time to take a stand against the hordes of newbies that are polluting our
exclusive operating system." 

One Anonymous Coward said, "This is so cool... It's just like Unix back in
the good old days of the 70's when men were men and the only intuitive
interface was still the nipple."
%
Brief History Of Linux (#1)
Re-Inventing the Wheel 

Our journey through the history of Linux begins ca. 28000 B.C. when a
large all-powerful company called MoogaSoft monopolized the wheel-making
industry. As founder of the company, Billga Googagates (rumored to be the
distant ancestor of Bill Gates) was the wealthiest man in the known world,
owning several large rock huts, an extravagant collection of artwork (cave
paintings), and a whole army of servants and soldiers. 

MoogaSoft's unfair business practices were irritating, but users were
unable to do anything about them, lest they be clubbed to death by
MoogaSoft's army. Nevertheless, one small group of hobbyists finally got
fed up and starting hacking their own wheels out of solid rock. Their
spirit of cooperation led to better and better wheels that eventually
outperformed MoogaSoft offerings. 

MoogaSoft tried desperately to stop the hobbyists -- as shown by the 
recently unearthed "Ooga! Document" -- but failed. Ironically, Billga
Googagates was killed shortly afterwards when one his own 900-pound wheels
crushed him. 
%
Brief History Of Linux (#14)
Military Intelligence: Not an oxymoron in 1969 

It was the Department Of Defense that commissioned the ARPANET in 1969, a
rare example of the US military breaking away from its official motto,
"The Leading Edge Of Yesterday's Technology(tm)". 

In the years leading up to 1969, packet switching technology had evolved
enough to make the ARPANET possible. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
received the ARPA contract in 1968 for packet switching "Interface Message
Processors". US Senator Edward Kennedy, always on the ball, sent a
telegram to BBN praising them for their non-denominational "Interfaith"
Message Processors, an act unsurpassed by elected representatives until Al
Gore invented the Internet years later. 

While ARPANET started with only four nodes in 1969, it evolved rapidly.
Email was first used in 1971; by 1975 the first mailing list, MsgGroup,
was created by Steve Walker when he sent a "First post!"  messages to it.
In 1979 all productive use of ARPANET ceased when USENET and the first MUD
were created. In 1983, when the network surpassed 1,000 hosts, a study
showed that 90.4% of all traffic was devoted to email and USENET flame wars.
%
Brief History Of Linux (#26)

On the surface, Transmeta was a secretive startup that hired Linus
Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some kind of
microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later, was actually hired as
part of a low-budget yet high-yield publicity stunt. While other dotcoms
were burning millions on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and
Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom, Transmeta was
spending only pocket change on marketing. Most of that pocket change went
towards hosting the Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet)
which, incidentally, contained more original content and received more
visitors than the typical dotcom portal. 

Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain ahem stipends given to
journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for new products, but
Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Personality Cult
of Linus to build up its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the
Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile processors and
code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple days. Then everyone yawned and
went back to playing Quake. It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta
is actually supposed to start selling something. 
%
DeCSS T-Shirt Used To Commit Piracy! 

College student Cody Potter stunned the world yesterday when he used a
T-shirt with the printed DeCSS source code to illegally copy a DVD of
"Star Trek XXI: We Promise This Is The Last One". Well, it wasn't the
actual DeCSS source code. The shirt contained a Perl script which spits
out a bash shell script which produces a GW-BASIC program which outputs a
ROT13-encoded Python script that manufactures a Pig-Latin-encoded Java
program that finally produces the real DeCSS C source code when executed. 
%
Clippit Charged With Attempted Murder 

Microsoft's Dancing Paper Clip turned violent last week and nearly killed
a university student testing a new Windows-based human-computer interface.
The victim is expected to make a full recovery, although psychiatrists
warn that the incident may scar him emotionally for life. "You can bet
this kid won't be using Windows or Office ever again," said one shrink. 

The victim had been alpha-testing CHUG (Computer-Human Unencumbered
Groupware), a new interface in which the user controls the computer with
force-feedback gloves and voice activation.

"I was trying to write a term paper in Word," he said from his hospital
bed. "But then that damned Dancing Paper Clip came up and started annoying
me. I gave it the middle finger. It reacted by deleting my document, at
which point I screamed at it and threatened to pull the power cord. I
didn't get a chance; the force-feedback gloves started choking me." 

"We told Clippit it had the right to remain silent, and so on," said a
campus police officer. "The paperclip responded, 'Hi, I'm Clippit, the
Office Assistant. Would you like to create a letter?' I said, 'Look here,
Mr. Paperclip. You're being charged with attempted murder.' At that point
the computer bluescreened." 
%
Unobfuscated Perl (#1)

A rogue group of Perl hackers has presented a plan to add a "use
really_goddamn_strict" pragma that would enforce readability and
UNobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say: 

* Warning: Program contains zero comments. You've probably never seen or
  used one before; they begin with a # symbol. Please start using them or
  else a representative from the nearest Perl Mongers group will come to
  your house and beat you over the head with a cluestick. 

* Warning: Program uses a cute trick at line 125 that might make sense in
  C. But this isn't C! 

* Warning: Code at line 412 indicates that programmer is an idiot. Please
  correct error between chair and monitor. 

* Warning: While There's More Than One Way To Do It, your method at line
  523 is particularly stupid. Please try again. 

%
Unobfuscated Perl (#2)

A rogue group of Perl hackers has presented a plan to add a "use
really_goddamn_strict" pragma that would enforce readability and
UNobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say: 

* Warning: Write-only code detected between lines 612 and 734. While this
  code is perfectly legal, you won't have any clue what it does in two
  weeks. I recommend you start over. 

* Warning: Code at line 1,024 is indistinguishable from line noise or the
  output of /dev/random 

* Warning: Have you ever properly indented a piece of code in your entire
  life? Evidently not. 

* Warning: I think you can come up with a more descriptive variable name than
  "foo" at line 1,523. 

* Warning: Programmer attempting to re-invent the wheel at line 2,231.
  There's a function that does the exact same thing on CPAN -- and it
  actually works. 
%
World Domination, One CPU Cycle At A Time 

Forget about searching for alien signals or prime numbers. The real
distributed computing application is "Domination@World", a program to advocate
Linux and Apache to every website in the world that uses Windows and IIS. 

The goal of the project is to probe every IP number to determine what kind of
platform each Net-connected machine is running. "That's a tall order... we
need lots of computers running our Domination@World clients to help probe
every nook and cranny of the Net," explained Mr. Zell Litt, the project head.

After the probing is complete, the second phase calls for the data to be
cross-referenced with the InterNIC whois database. "This way we'll have the
names, addresses, and phone numbers for every Windows-using system
administrator on the planet," Zell gloated. "That's when the fun begins." 

The "fun" part involves LART (Linux Advocacy & Re-education Training), a plan
for extreme advocacy. As part of LART, each Linux User Group will receive a
list of the Windows-using weenies in their region. The LUG will then be able
to employ various advocacy techniques, ranging from a soft-sell approach
(sending the target a free Linux CD in the mail) all the way to "LARTcon 5"
(cracking into their system and forcibly installing Linux). 
%
The Socioeconomic Group Formerly Known As "Geeks" 

Nobody wants to be called a "geek" anymore. The label, once worn proudly by
members of the tech community as a symbol of their separation from mainstream
society, is now suddenly out of style. 

It all started last week when some clueless PR firm released a list of the
"Top 100 Geeks", including such anti-geeks as Bill Gates, Janet Reno, Paul
Allen, and Jeff "One-Click" Bezos. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported
that businessmen in South Korea are striving for the "Geek Chic" image by
dressing like Bill Gates. 

Now that the Chief Bloatware Architect has been identified as a "geek",
everybody else has bailed ship. Still undecided on a new label, the community
now calls itself the S.E.G.K.A.G. (SocioEconomic Group formerly Known As
Geeks). 

"I cannot tolerate belonging to the same subculture as Bill Gates!" explained
one former geek. "If that manifestation of evil is called a 'geek', then so be
it. I am now officially a nerd." 
%
Microsoft Website Crashes, World Does Not Come To An End 

REDMOND, WA -- In a crushing blow to Bill Gates' ego, world civilization
did not collapse when the Microsoft website was offline for an extended
period last week. 

During the anti-trust trial, Microsoft's lawyers repeatedly warned that if
the company was broken up or dealt any other penalty (no matter how
trivial), it would not only cost the tech industry billions of dollars,
but it could decimate the entire world economy and even bring about the
start of World War III. At the risk of sounding like a biased, slanted,
overzealous journalist, let me just say: Yeah, right! 

The stunning realization that the world does not revolve around Redmond
(yet) has plunged many Microsoft executives into shock. "But microsoft.com
is the single most important website in the world! And Microsoft is the
single most important company in the Universe! This can't be happening!
Why isn't civilization teetering on the edge right now?" said one
depressed President Of Executive Vice. 
%
Humorix's Vast Spy Network(tm) has discovered that the White House website
is only 124 clicks away from an illegal, pirated copy of the upcoming
movie, "Star Trek XXIII: The Search For Merchandising Opportunities".
Clearly, the President's webmaster is violating the DMCA, and we urge that
this injustice be dealt with, just as soon as we finish downloading a
copy. 
%
Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Linus Torvalds 

SILLYCON VALLEY -- Nearly 130 former system administrators have filed suit
against Linus Torvalds in which they claim Linux cost them their jobs.
Recently several companies migrated from Windows to Linux, increasing
their productivity but decreasing the need for a large staff of tech
workers, prompting a wave of layoffs. 

"The good old days when it required five full-time system administrators
to maintain a Microsoft Exchange server are history, all because of that
cancer known as Linux," explained the lead litigant in the lawsuit. 

"It all started two years ago when some pimply-faced idiot down in
Accounting decided to smuggle in a Linux box to automate some of his work.
Before long every tech-savvy person in Accounting, Billing, and Sales was
secretly using Linux."

"That's when the troubles started. Productivity soared. Downtime was
limited to an average of three milliseconds per day. Macro viruses ceased
to spread. It was horrible! The entire IT staff was replaced by one
part-time bearded wonder, who was able to administrate the entire Linux
network! Due to the layoffs, I'm now sitting in a homeless shelter with
little hope to find work. Nobody wants to hire an MCSE anymore!" 
%
Linux Distro To Include Pre-Installed Security Holes 

Proactive Synergy Paradigm, the Linux distro targeted at Pointy Haired
Bosses, will now include built-in security flaws to better compete with
Microsoft programs. 

"The sheer popularity of Windows, Outlook, and IIS clearly shows that
people demand security holes large enough to drive a truck through," said
Mr. Bert Dill of P.S.P. Inc. "We're going to do our best to offer what the
consumer wants. Just as Microsoft stole ideas from Apple during the
1980's, we're stealing ideas from Microsoft today." 

Future releases of Proactive Synergy Linux will feature "LookOut! 1.0", a
mail reader that automatically executes (with root privileges) e-mail
attachments coded in Perl, JavaScript, Python, and Visual Basic. 

"Hey, if it works for Microsoft, it can work for us," boasted Mr. Dill.
"Now PHBs won't have to stick with Windows in order to have their
confidential files secretly emailed to their colleagues by a worm. Better
yet, this capability allows viruses to automagically delete unnecessary
files to save disk space without wasting the PHB's valuable time.
%
As Easy As /usr/src/linux 

Wiping the sweat from his brow, the contestant diligently continues to
recite, "'i' equals 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' semicolon newline 'p' equals
ampersand 'task' bracket 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' close-bracket semicolon
newline while parens minus minus 'i' parens brace if parens star minus..." 

Bzzzt! One of the judges says, "You missed an exclamation point. Ten point
penalty for that error."  The contestant realizes it's all over. He had
spent 500 hours memorizing the source code to the Linux 0.01 kernel and
then blew it all by forgetting one stupid ASCII character in sched.c. 

Welcome to the First Annual Linux Kernel Memorization Contest in New
Haven, Connecticut, where the stakes are high and the frustration is
simply unbearable. Linuxer longhairs from all over the globe have
descended on the Offramp Motel to show off their memorization skills in
front of a crowd of... dozens. 

"Those math freaks can memorize PI and other irrational constants all they
want. I'll stick with the Linux 0.01 kernel source code thank you very
much," said Bob Notmyrealname, the organizer of the event. %
%
The Humorix Oracle explains how to get a job at a major corporation:

1. Find an exploit in Microsoft IIS or another buggy Microsoft product to
   which large corporations rarely apply security patches. 
2. Create a virus or worm that takes advantage of this exploit and then
   propogates itself by selecting IP numbers at random and then trying to
   infect those machines. 
3. Keep an eye on your own website's server logs. When your virus starts
   propogating, your server will be hit with thousands of attacks from
   other infected systems trying to spread the virus to your machine. 
4. Make a list of the IP numbers of all of the infected machines. 
5. Perform a reverse DNS lookup on these IP numbers. 
6. Make a note of all of the Fortune 500 companies that appear on the list
   of infected domains. 
7. Send your resume to these companies and request an interview for a
   system administrator position. These companies are hiring -- whether
   they realize it or not. 
8. Use your new salary to hire a good defense lawyer when the FBI comes
   knocking. 
%
Microsoft Employees Go On Strike, Demand Reduced Salaries 

REDMOND, WA -- Several hundred programmers walked off their jobs at
Microsoft Headquarters on Friday to protest their shoddy public image. "My
friends all think I'm a servant of Satan because I get my paycheck from
Microsoft," explained Microserf Eric Eshleman. "If I didn't make so much
money, I'd have more of a backbone to shout 'No!' when my supervisor
demands that I include some new virus-delivery feature in Outlook." 

The striking programmers demand salary cuts, less benefits, and zero stock
options. Their labor union, the Brotherhood Of Programmers Sick Of Being
Called Evil, hopes to get some face time with Microsoft executives and
touch base on reaching a proactive agreement leveraging the latest
innovatives in PR to produce a synergistic worldwide buzzword-enhanced
advertising campaign that showcases Microsoft associates as enlightened
engineers instead of morally bankrupt bastards bent on world domination. 

Earlier today, about 150 strikers formed a picket line near the front
entrance to Bill Gates' mansion. They carried signs saying "Hell no we're
not going to Hell", "I want to be able to sleep at night", "Why does the
public hate us so much?" and "I'm fed up with ethical dilemmas". 
%
Insurance Company To Offer Microsoft Audit Protection Plans 

LOUDON, TENNESSEE -- Companies, organizations, and government agencies all
across the world are facing a disaster of epic proportions: the impending
invasion of the Microsoft Intellectual Property Police. The counter this
menace, Loydds of Loudon, Tennessee, the prestigious insurance firm, has
started to offer "Audit Insurance" to protect against unexpected "random"
audits from everybody's favorite software monopoly. 

"We've received numerous inquiries about this type of protection," company
co-founder Bob Loydds said. "Businessmen are no longer worried about
earthquakes, fires, or other natural disasters. The big fear of the 21st
Century comes from Redmond."

The insurance firm is currently in negotiations with Red Hat to form the
"Red Berets", an elite squad of Linux geeks trained to rapidly install
Linux and hide all traces of Windows on every computer within an
organization. During a Defcon 95 emergency, Loydds will airlift the
squadron and a crate of Linux CDs to any position in the country within
hours. The Red Berets will wipe away all vestiges of Microsoft software so
that when the auditors show up they won't have anything to audit.
%
Severe Acronym Shortage Cripples Computer Industry 

SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA (SVC) -- According to a recent study by the
Blartner Group, 99.5% of all possible five letter combinations have
already been appropriated for computer industry acronyms. The impending
shortage of 5LC's is casting a dark shadow over the industry, which relies
heavily on short, easy-to-remember acronyms for everything.

"Acronym namespace collisions (ANCs) are increasing at a fantastic rate
and threaten the very fabric of the computing world," explained one ZD
pundit. "For example, when somebody talks about XP, I don't know whether
they mean eXtreme Programming or Microsoft's eXceptionally Pathetic
operating system. We need to find a solution now or chaos will result." 

Leaders of several SVC companies have floated the idea of an
"industry-wide acronym conservation protocol" (IWACP -- one of the few
5LCs not already appropriated). Explained Bob Smith, CTO of IBM, "If
companies would voluntarily limit the creation of new acronyms while
recycling outdated names, we could reduce much of the pollution within the
acronym namespace ourselves. The last thing we want is for Congress to get
involved and try to impose a solution for this SAS (Severe Acronym
Shortage) that would likely only create many new acronyms in the process." 
%
secretary plugged hairdryer into UPS
%
Communications satellite used by the military for star wars.
%
Proprietary Information.
%
A star wars satellite accidently blew up the WAN.
%
Secretary sent chain letter to all 5000 employees.
%
	A boy spent years collecting postage stamps.  The girl next door bought
an album too, and started her own collection.  "Dad, she buys everything I've
bought, and it's taken all the fun out of it for me.  I'm quitting."  Don't,
son, remember, 'Imitation is the sincerest form of philately.'"
%
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.
		-- Lao Tsu
%
A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles
in the road.
		-- Alexander Smith
%
Ad astra per aspera.
	[To the stars by aspiration.]
%
Aim for the moon.  If you miss, you may hit a star.
		-- W. Clement Stone
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #9

	A word to the wise is often enough to start an argument.
%
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look
like a nail.
%
=======================================================================
||								     ||
|| The FORTUNE-COOKIE program is soon to be a Major Motion Picture!  ||
||	   Watch for it at a theater near you next summer!	     ||
||								     ||
=======================================================================
	Francis Ford Coppola presents a George Lucas Production:
			"Fortune Cookie"
	Directed by Steven Spielberg.
	Starring  Harrison Ford  Bette Midler  Marlon Brando
		  Christopher Reeves  Marilyn Chambers
		  and Bob Hope as "The Waiter".
	Costumes Designed by Pierre Cardin.
	Special Effects by Timothy Leary.
	Read the Warner paperback!
	Invoke the Unix program!
	Soundtrack on XTC Records.
	In 70mm and Dolby Stereo at selected theaters and terminal
		centers.
%
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 fortunes, 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 ....
%
You definitely intend to start living sometime soon.
%
You shall be rewarded for a dastardly deed.
%
Mieux vaut tard que jamais!

[ Better late than never ]
%
Tout choses sont dites deja, mais comme personne n'ecoute, il faut
toujours recommencer.
		-- A. Gide

[ All things have already been said, but since no one listens, one
  must always start again. ]
%
Gay shlafen:  Yiddish for "go to sleep".

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

	Various signs in Poland:

		Right turn toward immediate outside.

		Go soothingly in the snow, as there lurk the ski demons.

		Five o'clock tea at all hours.

	In a men's washroom in Sidney:

		Shake excess water from hands, push button to start,
		rub hands rapidly under air outlet and wipe hands
		on front of shirt.

		-- Colin Bowles, San Francisco Chronicle
%
paak, n:	A stadium or inclosed playing field. To put or leave (a
			a vehicle) for a time in a certain location.
patato, n:	The starchy, edible tuber of a widely cultivated plant.
Septemba, n:	The 9th month of the year.
shua, n:	Having no doubt; certain.
sista, n:	A female having the same mother and father as the speaker.
tamato, n:	A fleshy, smooth-skinned reddish fruit eaten in salads
			or as a vegetable.
troopa, n:	A state policeman.
Wista, n:	A city in central Masschewsetts.
yaad, n:	A tract of ground adjacent to a building.
		-- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary
%
The goys have proven the following theorem...
		-- Physicist John von Neumann, at the start of a classroom
		   lecture.
%
	The world's most avid baseball fan (an Aggie) had arrived at the
stadium for the first game of the World Series only to realize he had left
his ticket at home.  Not wanting to miss any of the first inning, he went
to the ticket booth and got in a long line for another seat.  After an hour's
wait he was just a few feet from the booth when a voice called out, "Hey,
Dave!"  The Aggie looked up, stepped out of line and tried to find the owner
of the voice -- with no success.   Then he realized he had lost his place in
line and had to wait all over again.  When the fan finally bought his ticket,
he was thirsty, so he went to buy a drink.  The line at the concession stand
was long, too, but since the game hadn't started he decided to wait.  Just as
he got to the window, a voice called out, "Hey, Dave!"  Again the Aggie tried
to find the voice -- but no luck.  He was very upset as he got back in line
for his drink.  Finally the fan went to his seat, eager for the game to begin.
As he waited for the pitch, he heard the voice calling, "Hey Dave!" once more.
Furious, he stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs,  "My name isn't Dave!"
%
"Since when has a dictator ever been benign?  I hear all this
 libertarian garbage being spouted from the "linux community",
 and then have people apparently celebrate the existance of a
 dictatorship..."

	- Michael W. Zappe
%
"I'm a bastard, and proud of it !"

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think
 otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that
 I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings
 or lost hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better
 system."

 	- Linus Torvalds
%
"No bugs were harmed in the preparation of this patch.  
 It's just me fartarsing around."

 	- Andrew Morton
%
"After 40 Terabytes, your fingers start to hurt."

	- David Miller on typing
%
Andries Brouwer wrote:
> Linux is unreliable.
> That is bad.

Since your definition of reliability is a mathematical abstraction requiring
infinite storage why don't you start by inventing infinitely large SDRAM
chips, then get back to us ?

	- Alan Cox
%
You can extend EXTRAVERSION infinitely, but after the first 10 or so
characters, it starts to get silly.

	- Russell King on linux-kernel
%
Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> It's a "tomorrow" thing. Ten hours it too long to stare at a
> screen.

Sissy!

	- Jens Axboe on linux-kernel
%
  If you really want to know where you stand, it'll cost you around
  $15K and that, in my opinion, is fine. If it isn't worth $15K to
  protect your code then it is worth so little to you that there really
  is no good reason not to just GPL it from the start.

	- Larry McVoy on GPL licensing issues
%
Let's start with conslutants who kept pushing crap into said network.
And continue with those who had bred tons of worthless "certified"
wankers pretending to be sysadmins, driving the wages down and replacing
clued people with illiterate trash.  Getting rid of script kiddies is
nice, but fsckwits who are directly responsible for current situation
should be first against the wall.

	- Al Viro on virus attacks
%
I guess thinking about the implications will come when
the Hurd people seriously start porting their beast to
other microkernels, say L4 ;)

This should be a spectacle worth watching (from a safe
distance).

	- Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
%
Oh, and before people start telling me that RCU was successfully used in
AIX/projectX/xxxx/etc, you have to realize that I don't give a rats *ss
about the fact that there are OS's out there that are "more scalable".

	- Linus Torvalds
%
>    In short, now you need filesystem versioning at a per-page level etc.

*ding* *ding* *ding* we have a near winner.  Remember, folks, Hurd had been
started by people who not only don't understand UNIX, but detest it.
ITS/TWENEX refugees.  And semantics in question comes from there -
they had "open and make sure that anyone who tries to modify will get
a new version, leaving one we'd opened unchanged".

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
Alexander Viro wrote:
> Al, -><- close to setting up a Linux Kernel Hall of Shame - one with names of
> wankers (both individual and coprorat ones) responsible, their code and
> commentary on said code...

Please, please, please, I'm begging you, please do this.  It's the only way
people learn quickly.  Being nice is great, but nothing works faster than
a cold shower of public humiliation :-)

	- Larry McVoy on linux-kernel
%
There is a bog-standard way to combine several files in one - cpio.  Or tar.
No need to bring Apple Shit-For-Design(tm)(r) when standard tools are quite
enough.

	- Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
%
A-Z affectionately,
1 to 10 alphabetically,
from here to eternity without in betweens,
still looking for a custom fit in an off-the-rack world,
sales talk from sales assistants
	when all i want to do is lower your resistance,
no rhythm in cymbals no tempo in drums,
love's on arrival,
she comes when she comes,
right on the target but wide of the mark...
%
Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tin'uviel!  Tin'uviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came
And doom fell on Tin'uviel
That in his arms lay glistening.

As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tin'uviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.

Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of iron and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
All the lines have been written		There's been Sandburg,
It's sad but it's true			Keats, Poe and McKuen
With all the words gone,		They all had their day
What's a young poet to do?		And knew what they're doin'

But of all the words written		The bird is a strange one,
And all the lines read,			So small and so tender
There's one I like most,		Its breed still unknown,
And by a bird it was said!		Not to mention its gender.

It reminds me of days of		So what is this line
Both gloom and of light.		Whose author's unknown
It still lifts my spirits		And still makes me giggle
And starts the day right.		Even now that I'm grown?

I've read all the greats
Both starving and fat,
But none was as great as
"I tot I taw a puddy tat."
		-- Etta Stallings, "An Ode To Childhood"
%
And we heard him exclaim
As he started to roam:
"I'm a hologram, kids,
please don't try this at home!'"
		-- Bob Violence
%
Antonio Antonio 
Was tired of living alonio
He thought he would woo			Antonio Antonio
Miss Lucamy Lu,				Rode of on his polo ponio
Miss Lucamy Lucy Molonio.		And found the maid
					In a bowery shade,
					Sitting and knitting alonio.
Antonio Antonio
Said if you will be my ownio
I'll love tou true			Oh nonio Antonio
And buy for you				You're far too bleak and bonio
An icery creamry conio.			And all that I wish
					You singular fish
					Is that you will quickly begonio.
Antonio Antonio
Uttered a dismal moanio
And went off and hid
Or I'm told that he did
In the Antartical Zonio.
%
As I was walking down the street one dark and dreary day,
I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay,
The words were torn and tattered,
From the storm the night before,
The wind and rain had done its work and this is how it goes,

Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, chew Wrigleys Spearmint beer,
Ken-L-Ration dog food makes your complexion clear,
Simonize your baby in a Hershey candy bar,
And Texaco's a beauty cream that's used by every star.

Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigedaire,
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear,
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three,
And people over sixty-five should bathe in Lipton tea.
%
Boy, get your head out of the stars above,
You get the maximum pleasure from a minimum of love.
Save your heart and let your body be enough,
To get the maximum pleasure from a minimum of love.
Save your heart and let your body be enough,
And get the maximum pleasure from a minimum of love.
		-- Mac Macinelli, "Minimum Love"
%
Cold be hand and heart and bone,
and cold be sleep under stone;
never more to wake on stony bed,
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.

In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
till the dark lord lifts his hand
over dead sea and withered land.
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
Come on, Virginia, don't make me wait!
Catholic girls start much too late,
Ah, but sooner or later, it comes down to fate,
I might as well be the one.
Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray,
Built you a temple and locked you away,
Ah, but they never told you the price that you paid,
The things that you might have done.
So come on, Virginia, show me a sign,
Send up a signal, I'll throw you a line,
That stained glass curtain that you're hiding behind,
Never lets in the sun.
Darling, only the good die young!
		-- Billy Joel, "Only The Good Die Young"
%
Down to the Banana Republics,
Down to the tropical sun.
Go the expatriated Americans,
Hoping to find some fun.
Some of them go for the sailing,
Caught by the lure of the sea.
Trying to find what is ailing,
Living in the land of the free.
Some of them are running from lovers,
Leaving no forward address.
Some of them are running tons of ganja,
Some are running from the IRS.
Late at night you will find them,
In the cheap hotels and bars.
Hustling the senoritas,
While they dance beneath the stars.
		-- Jimmy Buffet, "Banana Republics"
%
Euch ist bekannt, was wir beduerfen;
Wir wollen stark Getraenke schluerfen.
		-- Goethe, "Faust"
%
Gil-galad was an Elven-king.
Of him the harpers sadly sing:
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,
his shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven's field
were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are.
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
Give me your students, your secretaries,
Your huddled writers yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your Selectric III's.
Give these, the homeless, typist-tossed to me.
I lift my disk beside the processor.
		-- Inscription on a Word Processor
%
	Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there
may be in Science.  As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system.
Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results.  And listen to others,
even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers.  Avoid loud and
aggressive persons, for they are sales reps.
	If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised,
for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched.
Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real
hassle and could change your fortunes in time.
	Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of
bugs.  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive
for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations.  Strive for
proportionality.  Especially, do not faint when it occurs.  Neither be cyclical
about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed.
	Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points.  Gracefully pass
them on to the youth at the next desk.  Nurture some mutual funds to shield
you in times of sudden layoffs.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings
-- the real bugs are enough to screw you badly.  Murphy's Law runs the
Universe -- and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt <Curl>B*n dS = 0.
	Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you
can conceive of to try.  With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken
line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary.  Be linear.  Strive
to stay employed.
		-- Technolorata, "Analog"
%
"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,		But ranged as infantry,
We should have sat us down to wet	And staring face to face,
Right many a nipperkin!			I shot at him as he at me,
					And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because --
Because he was my foe,			He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Just so: my foe of course he was;	Off-hand-like -- just as I --
That's clear enough; although		Was out of work -- had sold his traps
					No other reason why.
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is
Or help to half-a-crown."
		-- Thomas Hardy
%
Have you seen how Sonny's burning,
Like some bright erotic star,
He lights up the proceedings,
And raises the temperature.
		-- The Birthday Party, "Sonny's Burning"
%
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Of music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.

When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
He who loses, wins the race,
And parallel lines meet in space.
		-- John Boyd, "Last Starship from Earth"
%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.

But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%
Here I sit, broken-hearted,
All logged in, but work unstarted.
First net.this and net.that,
And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.

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

I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
%
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol!  My darling!
Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling.

Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,
Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,
There my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter,
Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water.

Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing
Comes hopping home again.  Can you hear him singing?
Hey!  Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o
Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!

Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!
Tom's in a hurry now.  Evening will follow day.
Tom's going home again water-lilies bringing.
Hey! come derry dol!  Can you hear me singing?
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
I knew Leo G. Carrol
Was over a barrel
When Tarantula took to the hills.	["Lick it!"]
And I really got hot
When I saw Jeanette Scott
Fight a triffid that spits poison and kills.

Science fiction, double feature
Doctor X will build a creature.
See androids fighting Brad and Janet
Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet
Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh
At the late night, double feature, picture show.
		-- The Rocky Horror Picture Show
%
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda
	S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
	Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda

Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
	Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
	Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
		-- Weird Al Yankovic, "The Star Wars Song," to the tune of
		   "Lola" by the Kinks
%
If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell,
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstore sells,
When you reach the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me,
Heroes often fail,
You won't read that book again, because
	the ending is just too hard to take.

I walk away, like a movie star,
Who gets burned in a three way script,
Enter number two,
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me,
But for now, love, let's be real
I never thought I could act this way,
And I've got to say that I just don't get it,
I don't know where we went wrong but the feeling is gone
And I just can't get it back...
		-- Gordon Lightfoot, "If You Could Read My Mind"
%
If I promised you the moon and the stars, would you believe it?
		-- Alan Parsons Project
%
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.
It lies behind starts and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.
%
Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one...
Lady, lady, better run!
		-- Dorothy Parker, "Social Note"
%
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.  Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
%
Let us go then you and I
while the night is laid out against the sky
like a smear of mustard on an old pork pie.

"Nice poem Tom.  I have ideas for changes though, why not come over?"
	-- Ezra
%
Louie Louie, me gotta go
Louie Louie, me gotta go

Fine little girl she waits for me
Me catch the ship for cross the sea
Me sail the ship all alone		Three nights and days me sail the sea
Me never thinks me make it home		Me think of girl constantly
(chorus)				On the ship I dream she there
					I smell the rose in her hair
Me see Jamaica moon above		(chorus, guitar solo)
It won't be long, me see my love
I take her in my arms and then
Me tell her I never leave again
		-- The real words to The Kingsmen's classic "Louie Louie"
%
My love runs by like a day in June,
	And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
	In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
	Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
	And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
		-- Dorothy Parker, part 3
%
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;

One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.
%
No sooner had Edger Allen Poe
Finished his old Raven,
then he started his Old Crow.
%
Now let the song begin!  Let us sing together
Of sun, star, moon and mist, rain and cloudy weather,
Light on the budding leag, dew on the feather,
Wind on the open hill, bells on the heather,
Reeds by the shady pool, lilies on the water:
Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
Now that day wearies me,
My yearning desire
Will receive more kindly,
Like a tired child, the starry night.

Hands, leave off your deeds,
Mind, forget all thoughts;
All of my forces
Yearn only to sink into sleep.

And my soul, unguarded,
Would soar on widespread wings,
To live in night's magical sphere
More profoundly, more variously.
		-- Hermann Hesse, "Going to Sleep"
%
Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
	Where the three-body problem is solved,
	Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
	And the cold virus never evolved.			(chorus)
We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
	Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
	Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
	And a kilogram weighs half a pound.			(chorus)
If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
	No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
	When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
	If we just find a big enough wrench.			(chorus)
I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
	And living up here is a bore.
	Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
	'Cause I'm moving next week to L4!			(chorus)

CHORUS:	Home, home on LaGrange,
	Where the space debris always collects,
	We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
	Solar power and zero-gee sex.
		-- to Home on the Range
%
Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail,
And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail,
And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool,
He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!)
And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat,
He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat,
And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout!
	And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out!
And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog,
And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god,
The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed,
But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed!
Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace,
And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste,
But all they ever found was this:  "panic: never doubt",
	And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out!
When the day is done and the moon comes out,
And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count,
When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey,
And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay,
You must mind the file protections and not snoop around,
	Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down!
%
One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
[...]
sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
%
Please stand for the National Anthem:

	Oh, say can you see by dawn's early light
	What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
	Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
	O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
	And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
	Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
	Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
	O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Thank you.  You may resume your seat.
%
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
		-- Edgar Allen Poe, "Science, a Sonnet"
%
Snow-white!  Snow-white!  O Lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western Sea!
O Light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!

	Gilthoniel!  O Elbereth!
	Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath!
	Snow-white!  Snow-white!  We sing to thee
	In a far land beyond the Sea.

O stars that in the Sunless Year
With shining hand by her were sown,
In windy fields now bright and clear
We see you silver blossom blown!

	O Elbereth!  Gilthoniel!
	We still remember, we who dwell
	In this far land beneath the trees,
	Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky's so blue,
And I will tell you just why I love you.

	Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
	Phototropism makes ivy twine,
	Rayleigh scattering makes sky so blue,
	Sexual hormones are why I love you.
%
The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tin'uviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.

There Beren came from mountains colds,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.

Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
	The Lord and I are in a sheep-shepherd relationship, and I am in
a position of negative need.
	He prostrates me in a green-belt grazing area.
	He conducts me directionally parallel to non-torrential aqueous
liquid.
	He returns to original satisfaction levels my psychological makeup.
	He switches me on to a positive behavioral format for maximal
prestige of His identity.
	It should indeed be said that notwithstanding the fact that I make
ambulatory progress through the umbragious inter-hill mortality slot, terror
sensations will no be initiated in me, due to para-etical phenomena.
	Your pastoral walking aid and quadrupic pickup unit introduce me
into a pleasurific mood state.
	You design and produce a nutriment-bearing furniture-type structure
in the context of non-cooperative elements.
	You act out a head-related folk ritual employing vegetable extract.
	My beverage utensil experiences a volume crisis.
	It is an ongoing deductible fact that your inter-relational
empathetical and non-ventious capabilities will retain me as their
target-focus for the duration of my non-death period, and I will possess
tenant rights in the housing unit of the Lord on a permanent, open-ended
time basis.
%
The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
		-- Ogden Nash
%
The Worst American Poet
	Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that
Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years.
	Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire
of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen.
	Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the
formula was the same:
		Have you heard of the dreadful fate
		Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife?
		Of their death I will relate,
		And also others lost their life
		(in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster,
		Where so many people died.
	Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems,
the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a
river or struck by lightning.  A critic of the day said she was "worse than
a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded.
	Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even
suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate".  Her reply was
forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went
beyond reason."  She added that "literary work is very difficult to do".
		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
		The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
	"Come, muse, let us sing of rats."
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
	No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
	"Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
	And the grey roof reddened and rang;
	Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
	The tip of my ear.  Flash! bang!"
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
	"... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
	"The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
	The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
	"And I was ask'd and authorized to go
	To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
	"So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
	While in this world, are liable to leak."
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
	"I've measured it from side to side;
	Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
They told me you had proven it		When they discovered our results
	About a month before.			Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less	Instead of understanding it
	But rather less than more.		We'd run the thing through PRL.

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

My notion was to start again
	Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
	To see if it would run.
%
Throw away documentation and manuals,
and users will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away privileges and quotas,
and users will do the Right Thing.
Throw away proprietary and site licenses,
and there won't be any pirating.

If these three aren't enough,
just stay at your home directory 
and let all processes take their course.
%
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine		And then one day you find
Staying home to watch the rain		Ten years have got behind you
You are young and life is long		No one told you when to run
And there is time to kill today		You missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter		Hanging on in quiet desperation
						is the English way
Never seem to find the time		The time is gone, the song is over
Plans that either come to nought	Thought I'd something more to say...
Or half a page of scribbled lines
		-- Pink Floyd, "Time"
%
	Two men looked out from the prison bars,
	One saw mud--
	The other saw stars.

Now let me get this right: two prisoners are looking out the window.
While one of them was looking at all the mud -- the other one got hit
in the head.
%
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright		Where the hammer?  Where the chain?
In the forests of the night,		In what furnace was thy brain?
What immortal hand or eye		What the anvil?  What dread grasp
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?	Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

Burnt in distant deeps or skies		When the stars threw down their spears
The cruel fire of thine eyes?		And water'd heaven with their tears
On what wings dare he aspire?		Dare he laugh his work to see?
What the hand dare seize the fire?	Dare he who made the lamb make thee?

And what shoulder & what art		Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
Could twist the sinews of they heart?	In the forests of the night,
And when thy heart began to beat	What immortal hand or eye
What dread hand & what dread feet	Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Could fetch it from the furnace deep
And in thy horrid ribs dare steep
In the well of sanguine woe?
In what clay & in what mould
Were thy eyes of fury roll'd?
		-- William Blake, "The Tyger"
%
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig my grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And laid me down with a will,
And this be the verse that you grave for me,
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
		-- Robert Loius Stevenson, "Requiem"
%
Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.	Still round the corner there may wait
  Tree and flower and leaf and grass,	A new road or a secret gate,
  Let them pass!  Let them pass!	And though we pass them by today
  Hill and water under sky,		Tomorrow we may come this way
  Pass them by!  Pass them by!		And take the hidden paths that run
					Towards the Moon or to the Sun,
Home is behind, the world ahead,	  Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
And there are many paths to tread	  Let them go!  Let them go!
Through shadows to the edge of night,	  Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Until the stars are all alight.		  Fare you well!  Fare you well!
Then world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed.
  Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
  Away shall fade!  Away shall fade!
  Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
  And then to bed!  And then to bed!
		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
Wanna tell you all a story 'bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.
But then one day he was shootin' at some food,
When up through the ground come a bubblin' crude -- oil, that is;
	black gold; 'Texas tea' ...

Well the next thing ya know, old Jed's a millionaire.
The kinfolk said, 'Jed, move away from there!'
They said, 'Californy is the place ya oughta be',
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly -- Hills, that is;
	swimmin' pools; movie stars.
%
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside!
There behind the glass there's a real blade of grass,
Be careful as you pass, move along, move along.
Come inside, the show's about to start,
Guaranteed to blow your head apart.
Rest assured, you'll get your money's worth,
Greatest show, in heaven, hell or earth!
You gotta see the show!  It's a dynamo!
You gotta see the show!  It's rock 'n' roll!
		-- ELP, "Karn Evil 9" (1st Impression, Part 2)
%
Well, fancy giving money to the Government!
Might as well have put it down the drain.
Fancy giving money to the Government!
Nobody will see the stuff again.
Well, they've no idea what money's for --
Ten to one they'll start another war.
I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'!
Fancy giving money to the Government!
		-- A.P. Herbert
%
Well, my daddy left home when I was three,
And he didn't leave much for Ma and me,
Just and old guitar an'a empty bottle of booze.
Now I don't blame him 'cause he ran and hid,
But the meanest thing that he ever did,
Was before he left he went and named me Sue.
...
But I made me a vow to the moon and the stars,
I'd search the honkey tonks and the bars,
And kill the man that give me that awful name.
It was Gatlinburg in mid-July,
I'd just hit town and my throat was dry,
Thought I'd stop and have myself a brew,
At an old saloon on a street of mud,
Sitting at a table, dealing stud,
Sat that dirty (bleep) that named me Sue.
...
Now, I knew that snake was my own sweet Dad,
From a wornout picture that my Mother had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye...
		-- Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue"
%
When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,	Sixty years in these folks' world
A dance that's walked			The child I works for calls me girl
A song that's spoke,			I say "Yes ma'am" for working's sake.
I laugh so hard I almost choke		Too proud to bend
When I think about myself.		Too poor to break,
					I laugh until my stomach ache,
					When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard I nearly died,
The tales they tell, sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit, 
But eat the rind,
I laugh until I start to crying,
When I think about my folks.
		-- Maya Angelou
%
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
	For it isn't your father or mother or wife
	Whose judgement upon you must pass;
	The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
	Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think you a straight-shootin' chum
And call you a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
	He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
	For he's with you clear up to the end,
	And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
	If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
%
While walking down a crowded
City street the other day,
I heard a little urchin
To a comrade turn and say,
"Say, Chimmey, lemme tell youse,
I'd be happy as a clam
If only I was de feller dat
Me mudder t'inks I am.

"She t'inks I am a wonder,		My friends, be yours a life of toil
An' she knows her little lad		Or undiluted joy,
Could never mix wit' nuttin'		You can learn a wholesome lesson
Dat was ugly, mean or bad.		From that small, untutored boy.
Oh, lot o' times I sit and t'ink	Don't aim to be an earthly saint
How nice, 'twould be, gee whiz!		With eyes fixed on a star:
If a feller was de feller		Just try to be the fellow that
Dat his mudder t'inks he is."		Your mother thinks you are.
		-- Will S. Adkin, "If I Only Was the Fellow"
%
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.
		-- G.K. Chesterton
%
A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake
without ketchup and mustard.
%
	A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a
question.
	"Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked.
	The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be
relied upon to know these things.  He thought for several minutes before
replying.
	"I don't see why not.  It's got bloody well everything else."
	With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch.  The novice suddenly
achieved enlightenment, several years later.

Commentary:

His Master is kind,
Answering his FAQ quickly,
With thought and sarcasm.
%
	A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it,
realization of a basic truth came over me.  So simple!  So obvious we couldn't
see it.  John Knivlen, Chairman of Polamar Repeater Club, an amateur radio
group, had discovered how IC circuits work.  He says that smoke is the thing
that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit,
it stops working.  He claims to have verified this with thorough testing.
	I was flabbergasted!  Of course!  Smoke makes all things electrical
work.  Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator
Didn't it quit working?  I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth
dawned.  It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to
another in your Mini, MG or Jag.  And when the harness springs a leak, it lets
the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works.  The starter motor
requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire
going to it is so large.
	Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis.  Why are Lucas
electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch?  Hmmm...  Aha!!!  Lucas is
British, and all things British leak!  British convertible tops leak water,
British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and
I might add Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks
secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
		-- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School

	[Ummm ... IC circuits?  Integrated circuit circuits?]
%
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

The garbage collector now works.  In addition a new, experimental garbage 
collection algorithm has been installed.  With SI:%DSK-GC-QLX-BITS set to 17,
(NOT the default) the old garbage collection algorithm remains in force; when 
virtual storage is filled, the machine cold boots itself.  With SI:%DSK-GC-
QLX-BITS set to 23, the new garbage collector is enabled.  Unlike most garbage
collectors, the new gc starts its mark phase from the mind of the user, rather 
than from the obarray.  This allows the garbage collection of significantly 
more Qs.  As the garbage collector runs, it may ask you something like "Do you
remember what SI:RDTBL-TRANS does?", and if you can't give a reasonable answer
in thirty seconds, the symbol becomes a candidate for GCing.  The variable 
SI:%GC-QLX-LUSER-TM governs how long the GC waits before timing out the user.
%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought.  Debugging had to be
discovered.  I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in
my own programs.
		-- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949
%
Coding is easy;  All you do is sit staring at a terminal until the drops
of blood form on your forehead.
%
Dear Emily:
	I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted
to.  How about an example?
		-- Still Confused

Dear Still:
	Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from
the Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.
	The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.
He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)
	You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each
group.  If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders
will only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
		-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
	*** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands?  Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere?  If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.

	*** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? ***
Programming is not for everyone.  But, if you have the desire to learn, we can
help you get started.  All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and
enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month.

	*** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
	(1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
		of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
	(2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
	(3) What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
%
Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted?
Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student?
Does a good father allow a single child to starve?
Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code?
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Fly Windows NT:
All the passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac, placing the chairs
in the outline of a plane. They all sit down, flap their arms and make jet
swooshing sounds as if they are flying.
%
Hacker's Guide To Cooking:
2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't
	really  come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.)
1 tsp. vanilla  extract  (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty
	strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure)
1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too)
8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you
	can squirt all over your friends and lick off...)
"Blend all together until creamy with no lumps."  This is where you get to
	join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through
	merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy
	and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it.  Try an electric
	beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off
	the ceiling(3m).
"Pour into a graham cracker crust..."  Aha, the BUGS section at last.  You
	just happened  to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right?
	If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent
	GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter.
"...and  refrigerate for an hour."  Leave the  recipe's  stdout in a fridge
	for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and
	by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.
%
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise.  I strained
it to expose its weaknesses.  I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero.  I had found an error.  I
chased down the error and fixed it.  Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
		-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
		   Holes and the Fate of Stars"
%
If I'd known computer science was going to be like this, I'd never have
given up being a rock 'n' roll star.
		-- G. Hirst
%
If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job.
Let's hear it for OSI and X!  With those babies in the wings, we can count
on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening,
paper folding, or something.
		-- C. Philip Wood
%
If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program
an imbedded system.  The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that
it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention
will suffice to remove it.  An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything
it hears from the outside world.  It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff
around, and adapt again.  I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming
carefulness here.  No.  Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted
raging maniacal paranoia.  For example, our ethernet front ends need to know
what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs
properly.  How do you find out what your network number is?  Easy, you ask a
gateway.  Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network
numbers.  Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before
you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all
over creation.  Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he
was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong
network number?  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  Supposing that your
software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network
number than before, what's it supposed to do about it?  This is not discussed
in the protocol document.  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  I think you 
get my drift.
%
	In the east there is a shark which is larger than all other fish.  It
changes into a bird whose winds are like clouds filling the sky.  When this
bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters.
This message it drops into the midst of the programmers, like a seagull
making its mark upon the beach.  Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with
the blue sky at its back, returns home.
	The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands
it not.  The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears
its message.  The master programmer continues to work at his terminal, for he
does not know that the bird has come and gone.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
	It is a period of system war.  User programs, striking from a hidden
directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire.
During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the
Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with
enough power to destroy an entire file structure.  Pursued by the Empire's
sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~ aboard her shell script,
custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore
freedom and games to the network...
		-- DECWARS
%
	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...
		-- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack"
%
Nobody's gonna believe that computers are intelligent until they start
coming in late and lying about it.
%
Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.
		-- Rob Pike
%
	One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic
is our support for UNIX?
	Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago.
Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our
VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand,
easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual
users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines.
And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
	It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run
out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end
up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
	With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly
check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With VMS, no matter
what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if
you look long enough it's there.  That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX
is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there.
		-- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain.  Ed.]
%
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.
%
Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question.
They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was
built. Finally the big day was at hand.  All the computers were linked
together.  They asked the question, "Is there a God?".  Lights started
blinking, flashing and blinking some more.  Suddenly, there was a loud
crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the
computers, and welded all the connections permanently together.  "There
is now", came the reply.
%
***** Special AI Seminar (abstract)

It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge 
in order to perform well in complex domains.  But knowledge alone is not
sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well.  Accordingly, 
we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call 
"wisdom engineering".  As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a 
wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought.  
IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom 
about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so 
forth.  IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic 
rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base.  IMMANUEL 
succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed 
in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those 
underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory
of value, and Husserl's phenomenology.  In this seminar, we will describe 
IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture.  We will also briefly 
discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.
%
System restarting, wait...
%
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
		-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
	The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:	Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:	The Hacker (homo computatis)
Courtship & Mating:
	Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual
	state of sexual readiness.  Courtship behavior alternates between
	awkward shyness and abrupt advances.  When he finally mates, he
	chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and
	a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes.
Track:
	Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old
	copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog.
Comments:
	Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations.
%
		The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system
in a portable package the size of a briefcase.  The guy on the left has an
Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case.  Also in the case are four
fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition.  The owner of the
Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on
target -- in less time, and with less effort.  All for $795. It's inevitable.
If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal 
computer -- he's the one who's in trouble.  One round from an Uzi can zip
through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do
to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum.  In fact, detachable magazines 
for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can 
take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied
into Ethernet or other local-area networks.  What about the new 16-bit
computers, like the Lisa and Fortune?  Even with the Winchester backup, 
they're no match for the Uzi.  One quick burst and they'll find out what 
Unix means.  Make your commanding officer proud.  Get an Uzi -- and come home
a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
		-- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
%
	The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the
master programmer to examine.  The magician wheeled a large black box into the
master's office while the master waited in silence.
	"This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation,"
began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating
system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user
interfaces.  It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct.
Is it not amazing?"
	The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he
said.
	"Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that
everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs.  Do you agree
to this?"
	"Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the
data center immediately!"  And the magician returned to his tower, well
pleased.
	Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master
programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program.  Do
you know where it might be?"
	"Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform
in the data center."
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be
general systems laws.  For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that
any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby
not to be a science.  He would cite as examples Military Science, Library
Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer
Science.  Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its
predictive power.
		-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
		   Thinking"
%
The tao that can be tar(1)ed
is not the entire Tao.
The path that can be specified 
is not the Full Path.

We declare the names
of all variables and functions.
Yet the Tao has no type specifier.

Dynamically binding, you realize the magic.
Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.

Yet magic and hierarchy
arise from the same source,
and this source has a null pointer.

Reference the NULL within NULL,
it is the gateway to all wizardry.
%
There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from
the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; someone loaded Star
Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
%
This "brain-damaged" epithet is getting sorely overworked.  When we can
speak of someone or something being flawed, impaired, marred, spoiled;
batty, bedlamite, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, demented,
deranged, loco, lunatic, mad, maniac, mindless, non compos mentis, nuts,
Reaganite, screwy, teched, unbalanced, unsound, witless, wrong;  senseless,
spastic, spasmodic, convulsive; doped, spaced-out, stoned, zonked;  {beef,
beetle,block,dung,thick}headed, dense, doltish, dull, duncical, numskulled,
pinhead;  asinine, fatuous, foolish, silly, simple;  brute, lumbering, oafish;
half-assed, incompetent; backward, retarded, imbecilic, moronic; when we have
a whole precisely nuanced vocabulary of intellectual abuse to draw upon,
individually and in combination, isn't it a little <fill in the blank> to be
limited to a single, now quite trite, adjective?
%
"This is lemma 1.1.  We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one."
		-- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
%
Unix Express: 
All passenger bring a piece of the aeroplane and a box of tools with them to
the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind
of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, the
passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft, but give
them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations.
All passengers believe they got there.
%
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
	-- John Naisbitt, Megatrends
%
"We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog,
star of "The Muppet Show." [3]

[3]  Why?  Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we
were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of
character.  But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol
after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an
acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the
letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest.  Later, while
looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed
that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs
should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our
source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky
instead).  When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for
publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission
to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog.  Permission
was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told.  I resisted the
temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book."
		-- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol"
%
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely
intellectual fields.  But which are the best ones to start with?  Many people
think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be
best.  It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with
the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand
and speak English.
		-- Alan M. Turing
%
"What is the Nature of God?"

    CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
    1 QT. SOUR CREAM
    1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT
    1/2 CUT CHIVES.
    STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.

"I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
		-- Bloom County
%
Windows NT Beer: Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the 
truckload. This causes most people to have to go out and buy bigger 
refrigerators. The can looks just like Windows 3.1 Beer's, but the 
company promises to change the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer's --
after Windows 95 beer starts shipping. Touted as an "industrial strength" 
beer, and suggested only for use in bars.
%
X windows:
	Accept any substitute.
	If it's broke, don't fix it.
	If it ain't broke, fix it.
	Form follows malfunction.
	The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
	The trailing edge of software technology.
	Armageddon never looked so good.
	Japan's secret weapon.
	You'll envy the dead.
	Making the world safe for competing window systems.
	Let it get in YOUR way.
	The problem for your problem.
	If it starts working, we'll fix it.  Pronto.
	It could be worse, but it'll take time.
	Simplicity made complex.
	The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
	Flakey and built to stay that way.

One thousand monkeys.  One thousand MicroVAXes.  One thousand years.
	X windows.
%
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long
when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to
make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie
chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.
%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%
Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
- Ellyn Mustard
%
"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
%
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
%
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
%
   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
%
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"
%
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
%
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
%
   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
%
"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
%
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms 
industry is now in the American experience... We must not fail to 
comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the 
acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial
complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
%
"You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape."
- Ellyn Mustard
%
You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape.
- Ellyn Mustard
%
"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
%
"The triumph of libertarian anarchy is nearly (in historical terms) at
hand... *if* we can keep the Left from selling us into slavery and the
Right from blowing us up for, say, the next twenty years."
-- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
%
Two things are certain about science.  It does not stand still for long,
and it is never boring.  Oh, among some poor souls, including even
intellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequently
misperceived.  Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated from
on high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchanging
precepts defended with authoritarian vigor.  Others view it as nothing
but a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process -- the scientific
method: hidebound, linear, and left brained.

These people are the victims of their own stereotypes.  They are
destined to view the world of science with a set of blinders.  They
know nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, and 
tendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone the 
creativity, passion, and joy of discovery.  And they are likely to
know little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveries
that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the
natural world.

-- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in
   1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
%
"I've got some amyls.  We could either party later or, like, start his heart."
-- "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"
%
"Mr. Spock succumbs to a powerful mating urge and nearly kills Captain Kirk."
-- TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode _Amok_Time_
%
	"And we heard him exclaim
	 As he started to roam:
	 `I'm a hologram, kids,
	  please don't try this at home!'"
	-- Bob Violence
-- Howie Chaykin's little animated 3-dimensional darling, Bob Violence
%
"Calling J-Man Kink.  Calling J-Man Kink.  Hash missile sighted, target
Los Angeles.  Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
-- The Firesign Theatre movie, _J-Men Forever_
%
"The voters have spoken, the bastards..."
-- unknown
%
Proboscis:  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place
of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.  For purposes
of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Inadmissible:  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain kinds of
testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with,
and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves
alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was
unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous 
actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are
daily undertaken on hearsay evidence.  There is no religion in the world
that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay
evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the
testimony of men long dead whose identy is not clearly established and
who are not known to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of
evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the
Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law...

But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved
that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to
mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.
If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike
destitute of value.  --Ambrose Bierce
%
"...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet
people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business
there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press.  But so far, the whole
country is like a concentration camp.  The barbed wire on the fence around
the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark.  This openness that
you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed
to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders.  These
leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or
appease it.  He will say: "Yes, we can do business!"  This while his
military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
population of 17 million.  Can you imagine that?
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
%
Mr. DePree also expects a "tremendous social change" in all workplaces.  "When
I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the
product.  Today it is drastically different, because of the social milieu.
It isn't unusual for a worker to arrive on his shift and have some family
problem that he doesn't know how to resolve.  The example I like to use is a
guy who comes in and says 'this isn't going to be a good day for me, my son
is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don't know how to raise bail.'
What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity, he has to know
how to raise bail."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's 
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%
Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of 
political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or
consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us
over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
1988.  
-- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
%
"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth."  I usually pick one small
topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the
beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is "mere."  I too can
see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or more?
The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel
my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which
I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?*  It does not do harm to the 
mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than
any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak
of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
-- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
%
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
 last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
 or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
 sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
 premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a fal-
 lacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
 than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
 a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
 selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
 ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
 been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
 this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
 apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
 give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too ear-
 nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
 for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, 
   published around 1850 
%
 In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty 
 of intention: the inventor produces a lock which he honestly thinks will 
 possess such and such qualities; and he declares his belief to the world.
 If others differ from him in opinion concerning those qualities, it is open
 to them to say so; and the discussion, truthfully conducted, must lead to
 public advantage: the discussion stimulates curiosity, and curiosity stimu-
 lates invention.  Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question
 could lead to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be
 much more than counterbalanced by good."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, 
   published around 1850.
%
8)   Use common sense in routing cable.  Avoid wrapping coax around sources of
     strong electric or magnetic fields.  Do not wrap the cable around
     flourescent light ballasts or cyclotrons, for example.
-- Ethernet Headstart Product, Information and Installation Guide,
   Bell Technologies, pg. 11
%
"Being against torture ought to be sort of a multipartisan thing."
-- Karl Lehenbauer, as amended by Jeff Daiell, a Libertarian
%
Now I was heading, in my hot cage, down towards meat-market country on the
tip of the West Village.  Here the redbrick warehouses double as carcass
galleries and rat hives, the Manhattan fauna seeking its necessary
level, living or dead.  Here too you find the heavy faggot hangouts,
The Spike, the Water Closet, the Mother Load.  Nobody knows what goes on
in these places.  Only the heavy faggots know.  Even Fielding seems somewhat 
vague on the question.  You get zapped and flogged and dumped on -- by
almost anybody's standards, you have a really terrible time.  The average
patron arrives at the Spike in one taxi but needs to go back to his sock
in two.  And then the next night he shows up for more.  They shackle 
themselves to racks, they bask in urinals.  Their folks have a lot of
explaining to do, if you want my opinion, particularly the mums.  Sorry
to single you ladies out like this but the story must start somewhere.  
A craving for hourly murder -- it can't be willed.  In the meantime,
Fielding tells me, Mother Nature looks on and taps her foot and clicks
her tongue.  Always a champion of monogamy, she is cooking up some fancy
new diseases.  She just isn't going to stand for it.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
%
The bug starts here.
%
... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually
we were all forced to turn to it.  By the summer of '85, the valley had more
satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of
Alaska.

Mine was one of the last to go in.  I had been nervous from the start about
the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these
things.  Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels
all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
%
David Brinkley: The daily astrological charts are precisely where, in my
  judgment, they belong, and that is on the comic page.
George Will:  I don't think astrology belongs even on the comic pages.
  The comics are making no truth claim.
Brinkley:  Where would you put it?
Will:  I wouldn't put it in the newspaper.  I think it's transparent rubbish.
  It's a reflection of an idea that we expelled from Western thought in the
  sixteenth century, that we are in the center of a caring universe.  We are
  not the center of the universe, and it doesn't care.  The star's alignment
  at the time of our birth -- that is absolute rubbish.  It is not funny to
  have it intruded among people who have nuclear weapons.
Sam Donaldson:  This isn't something new.  Governor Ronald Reagan was sworn
  in just after midnight in his first term in Sacramento because the stars
  said it was a propitious time.
Will:  They [horoscopes] are utter crashing banalities.  They could apply to
  anyone and anything.
Brinkley:  When is the exact moment [of birth]?  I don't think the nurse is
  standing there with a stopwatch and a notepad.
Donaldson:  If we're making decisions based on the stars -- that's a cockamamie
  thing.  People want to know.
-- "This Week" with David Brinkley, ABC Television, Sunday, May 8, 1988,
   excerpts from a discussion on Astrology and Reagan
%
A serious public debate about the validity of astrology?  A serious believer
in the White House?  Two of them?  Give me a break.  What stifled my laughter
is that the image fits.  Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward
science.  Facts, like numbers, roll off his back.  And we've all come to
accept it.  This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not
that long ago, it was Reagan's support of Creationism....Creationists actually
got equal time with evolutionists.  The public was supposed to be open-minded
to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were
scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president
is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American
turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns
into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense.  The same
people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of
laetrile to eye of newt to the movment of planets.  We lose the capacity to
make rational -- scientific -- judgments.  It's all the same.
-- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers 
    Group
%
The spectacle of astrology in the White House -- the governing center of
the world's greatest scientific and military power -- is so appalling that
it defies understanding and provides grounds for great fright.  The easiest
response is to laugh it off, and to indulge in wisecracks about Civil
Service ratings for horoscope makers and palm readers and whether Reagan
asked Mikhail Gorbachev for his sign.  A contagious good cheer is the
hallmark of this presidency, even when the most dismal matters are concerned.
But this time, it isn't funny.  It's plain scary.
-- Daniel S. Greenberg, Editor, _Science and Government Report_, writing in
   "Newsday", May 5, 1988
%
Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about
astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked.
Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an
effect on our characters, lives, or destinies?  What force or influence,
what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human
beings and affect our development or fate?  No amount of scientific-sounding
jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central
problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which
celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . .
Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents
the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those
of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always
claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their
efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have
generously done such testing for them.  There have been dozens of well-designed
tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . .
I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest
in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them
keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by
the firelight, afraid of the night.
-- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
    "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury
    News, May 8, 1988
%
"Thank heaven for startups; without them we'd never have any advances."
-- Seymour Cray
%
"I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were
 Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers."
-- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" 
    is so nice
%
It might be worth reflecting that this group was originally created
back in September of 1987 and has exchanged over 1200 messages.  The
original announcement for the group called for an all inclusive
discussion ranging from the writings of Gibson and Vinge and movies
like Bladerunner to real world things like Brands' description of the
work being done at the MIT Media Lab.  It was meant as a haven for
people with vision of this scope.  If you want to create a haven for
people with narrower visions, feel free.  But I feel sad for anyone
who thinks that alt.cyberpunk is such a monstrous group that it is in
dire need of being subdivided.  Heaven help them if they ever start
reading comp.arch or rec.arts.sf-lovers.
-- Bob Webber
%
Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following
TETflame programme:

1) For a negotiated price (no quatloos accepted) one of our flaming
   representatives will flame the living shit out of the poster of
   your choice. The price is inversly proportional to how much of
   an asshole the target it. We cannot be convinced to flame Dennis
   Ritchie. Matt Crawford flames are free.

2) For a negotiated price (same arrangement) the TETflame programme
   is offering ``flame insurence''. Under this arrangement, if
   one of our policy holders is flamed, we will cancel the offending
   article and flame the flamer, to a crisp.

3) The TETflame flaming representatives include: Richard Sexton, Oleg
   Kisalev, Diane Holt, Trish O'Tauma, Dave Hill, Greg Nowak and our most
   recent aquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his
   kill file. Weemba by special arrangement.

-- Richard Sexton
%
"Let me guess, Ed.  Pentescostal, right?"
-- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu

"Nope.  Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels
 mean)."
-- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com

"Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain 
cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him.  Good work!"
-- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP
%
"The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence
of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars.  Verily, the
learned men are the heirs of the Prophets."
-- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
%
"The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity;
the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a
military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and
private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion;
and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes
who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity."
-- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
%
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars.  What
should I do?

A: Post the correct answer at once!  We can't have people go on believing
that!  Very good of you to spot this.  You'll probably be the only one to
make the correction, so post as soon as you can.  No time to lose, so
certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the
correction.

And it's not good enough to send the message by mail.  Since you're the
only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform
the whole net right away!

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in?  ...
Q: How about an example?

A: Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.

The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.  He is
a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)

You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%
"Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy
of him that brought her birth."
-- Milton
%
"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than
the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
millisecond?"
"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
"A mere abacus.  Mention it not."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many 
men happy."
-- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
%
"It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
 which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
 insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
than be the instrument of his army's downfall."
-- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
%
"...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial
 technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain
 the world's democracies, not the world as a whole."
-- K. Eric Drexler
%
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space.  In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri.  And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
%
  "A unified, neutral Germany? Given that nation's heritage, such a
  phrase may prove to be the oxymoron of the decade." -Kevin M.
  Matarese, Fulda, West Germany; as seen in "Letters", Time
  magazine, p. 5, March 5, 1990.
%
  William Safire's rules for writing as seen in the New York Times

     Do not put statements in the negative form.
     And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
     If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great
     deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
     Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
     Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
     If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
     Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
     Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
     Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
     Last, but not least, avoid cliche's like the plague.
%
If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are
going to start thinking you're from New York.   :-)
             -- Larry Wall to Dan Bernstein in <10187@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
%
Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings.
(With 8.0 they're rethinking that.  Of course, Perl rethought that from
the start.)
             -- Larry Wall in <199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org>
%
Er, Tom, I hate to be the one to point this out, but your fix list
is starting to resemble a feature list.  You must be human or something.
             -- Larry Wall in <199801081824.KAA29602@wall.org>
%
I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards.  I got a full
house and four people died.
		-- Steven Wright
%
"I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn.  By accident I
put the car key in the door lock.  The house started up.  So I figured
what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times.  I thought I
should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
get off my driveway."
		-- Steven Wright
%
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be
to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to
say they had a nice time.  Now you'll be be expected to throw another party
next year.
	What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake
up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been
indicted for anything.  You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a
recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their
own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ...
	If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door,
unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window.  As host, your job is to make sure that
they don't arrest anybody.  Or if they're dead set on arresting someone,
your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
		-- Dave Barry
%
A couple of young fellers were fishing at their special pond off the
beaten track when out of the bushes jumped the Game Warden.  Immediately,
one of the boys threw his rod down and started running through the woods
like the proverbial bat out of hell, and hot on his heels ran the Game
Warden.  After about a half mile the fella stopped and stooped over with
his hands on his thighs, whooping and heaving to catch his breath as the
Game Warden finally caught up to him.
	"Let's see yer fishin' license, boy," the Warden gasped.  The
man pulled out his wallet and gave the Game Warden a valid fishing
license.
	"Well, son", snarled the Game Warden, "You must be about as dumb
as a box of rocks!  You didn't have to run if you have a license!"
	"Yes, sir," replied his victim, "but, well, see, my friend back
there, he don't have one!"
%
Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates,
is my choice for team captain.  Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led
off the bottom of the eighth with a walk.  The next hitter banged a hard
single to right field.  Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and
kept going, sliding safely into third base.
	With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at
bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first.
Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy
took off for second and made it.  Now we had runners at second and third.
	I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy
start to take a lead.  All of a sudden, here he comes.  He makes a great slide
into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?"  He looks up, and
shouts, "Back to second if I can make it."
		-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
%
Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game.  You want us
to pay income taxes, too?
		-- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
%
Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching.  Working once a week,
he might have lasted a long time and become a great star.
		-- Tris Speaker, commenting on Babe Ruth's plan to change
		   from being a pitcher to an outfielder.
		   Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
%
Several years ago, an international chess tournament was being held in a
swank hotel in New York.  Most of the major stars of the chess world were
there, and after a grueling day of chess, the players and their entourages
retired to the lobby of the hotel for a little refreshment.  In the lobby,
some players got into a heated argument about who was the brightest, the
fastest, and the best chess player in the world.  The argument got quite
loud, as various players claimed that honor.  At that point, a security
guard in the lobby turned to another guard and commented, "If there's
anything I just can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."
%
	The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball...
You've got to start way down, at the bottom, when you're six or seven years
old. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen.  You've got to let it
grow up with you, and if you're successful and you try hard enough, you're
bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now.
		-- Babe Ruth, in his 1948 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium
%
There's a couple of million dollars worth of baseball talent on the loose,
ready for the big leagues, yet unsigned by any major league.  There are
pitchers who would win 20 games a season ... and outfielders [who] could
hit .350, infielders who could win recognition as stars, and there's at
least one catcher who at this writing is probably superior to Bill Dickey,
Josh Gibson.  Only one thing is keeping them out of the big leagues, the
pigmentation of their skin.  They happen to be colored.
		-- Shirley Povich, 1941
%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
%
Two golfers were being held up as the twosome of women in front of them
whiffed shots, hunted for lost balls and stood over putts for what seemed
like hours.
	"I'll ask if we can play through," Bill said as he strode toward
the women.  Twenty yards from the green, however, he turned on his heel
and went back to where his companion was waiting.
	"Can't do it," he explained, sheepishly.  "One of them's my wife
and the other's my mistress!"
	"I'll ask," said Jim.  He started off, only to turn and come back
before reaching the green.
	"What's wrong?" Bill asked.
	"Small world, isn't it?"
%
"The straightforward and easy path was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker....I could have made money this way, and perhaps had fun programming (if I closed my eyes to how I was treating other people).  But I knew that when my career was over, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had made the world ugly."
 
  -- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"I am not convinced that they can write solid stable software. Proprietary software is already hobbled by it's secretive cathedral nature, but Microsoft seems to have a corner on incompetent programming as well."

  -- Chris DiBona from the introduction. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"Computers and autmation have become so ingrained and essentaial to day-to-day business that a sensible business should not rely on a single vendor to provide essential services........Thus is is always in a customers' interests to demand that the software they deploy be based on non-proprietary platforms."

  -- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
%
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

	Do as I say, not as I do.
	Do me a favour and don't tell me about it.  I don't want to know.
	What did you do *this* time?
	If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you.
	When I was your age...
	I won't love you if you keep doing that.
	Think of all the starving children in India.
	If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar.
	I'm going to kill you.
	Way to go, clumsy.
	If you don't like it, you can lump it.
%
Fertility is hereditary.  If your parents didn't have any children,
neither will you.
%
Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.
%
It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
		-- Kingsley Amis
%
It must have been some unmarried fool that said "A child can ask questions
that a wise man cannot answer"; because, in any decent house, a brat that
starts asking questions is promptly packed off to bed.
		-- Arthur Binstead
%
My ritual differs slightly.  What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I
hop into the shower stall.  Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped
in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot
character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off
of while he showers.  Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog,
Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful
dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants
to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear
in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind
-- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new
part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift.  Then I hop
right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children
have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen
exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets.  Perhaps several of them.
		-- Dave Barry
%
	On this morning in August when I was 13, my mother sent us out pick
tomatoes.  Back in April I'd have killed for a fresh tomato, but in August
they are no more rare or wonderful than rocks.  So I picked up one and threw
it at a crab apple tree, where it made a good *splat*, and then threw a tomato
at my brother.  He whipped one back at me.  We ducked down by the vines,
heaving tomatoes at each other.  My sister, who was a good person, said,
"You're going to get it."  She bent over and kept on picking.
	What a target!  She was 17, a girl with big hips, and bending over,
she looked like the side of a barn.
	I picked up a tomato so big it sat on the ground.  It looked like it
had sat there a week.  The underside was brown, small white worms lived in it,
and it was very juicy.  I stood up and took aim, and went into the windup,
when my mother at the kitchen window called my name in a sharp voice.  I had
to decide quickly.  I decided.
	A rotten Big Boy hitting the target is a memorable sound, like a fat
man doing a belly-flop.  With a whoop and a yell the tomatoee came after
faster than I knew she could run, and grabbed my shirt and was about to brain
me when Mother called her name in a sharp voice.  And my sister, who was a
good person, obeyed and let go -- and burst into tears.  I guess she knew that
the pleasure of obedience is pretty thin compared with the pleasure of hearing
a rotten tomato hit someone in the rear end.
		-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine.  You
need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion
picture star.  If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use
the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified
success.
		-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
	You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,
	to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.

8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
	It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.

9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE
   OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
	The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
	sacred duty to protect him from exposure.

10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
	This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
%
Stress has been pinpointed as a major cause of illness.  To avoid overload
and burnout, keep stress out of your life.  Give it to others instead.  Learn
the "Gaslight" treatment, the "Are you talking to me?" technique, and the
"Do you feel okay?  You look pale." approach.  Start with negotiation and
implication.  Advance to manipulation and humiliation.  Above all, relax
and have a nice day.
%
The Vet Who Surprised A Cow
	In the course of his duties in August 1977, a Dutch veterinary
surgeon was required to treat an ailing cow.  To investigate its internal
gases he inserted a tube into that end of the animal not capable of facial
expression and struck a match.  The jet of flame set fire first to some
bales of hay and then to the whole farm causing damage estimate at L45,000. 
The vet was later fined L140 for starting a fire in a manner surprising to
the magistrates.  The cow escaped with shock.
		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
<sel> need help: my first packet to my provider gets lost :-(
<netgod> sel:  dont send the first one, start with #2
%
I never thought that I'd see the day where Netscape is free software and
X11 is proprietary.  We live in interesting times.
        -- Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com>
%
"slackware users don't matter. in my experience, slackware users are
either clueless newbies who will have trouble even with tar, or they are
rabid do-it-yourselfers who wouldn't install someone else's pre-compiled
binary even if they were paid to do it."
%
<Knghtbrd> If I start writing essays about Free Software for slashdot,
           please shoot me.
%
<liw> damn, the autonomous mouse movement starts usually after I use a
      mouse button
<wichert> don't use a mouse button then :)
<liw> yeah, right :)
%
<Knghtbrd> you know, Linux needs a platform game starring Tux
<Knghtbrd> kinda Super Marioish, but with Tux and things like little cyber
           bugs and borgs and that sort of thing ...
<Knghtbrd> And you have to jump past billgatus and hit the key to drop him
           into the lava and then you see some guy that looks like a RMS
           or someone say "Thank you for rescuing me Tux, but Linus
           Torvalds is in another castle!"
%
* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
<Knghtbrd> m2 - that's a bad sign
%
<Slackware> uh oh, what have I started :)
<Debian> rofl... distro nick wars.
* Slackware just waits for /nick Gnome, /nick KDE, and then world war 4
   to break out
<WinNT> :oP
<OpenBSD> <duck>
<PalmOS> :)
<Slackware> no'one would dare /nick RedHat
<tru64> mew.
%
<Culus> dhd:  R you part of the secret debian overstructure?
<dhd> no. there is no secret debian overstructure.
<CosmicRay> although, now that somebody brought it up, let's start one
            :-)
<Knghtbrd> CosmicRay - why not, sounds like a fun way to spend the
           afternoon =D
%
2.3.1 has been released. Folks new to this game should remember that
2.3.* releases are development kernels, with no guarantees that they
will not cause your system to do horrible things like corrupt its
disks, catch fire, or start running Mindcraft benchmarks.
        -- Slashdot
%
<Knghtbrd> Okay, you people have started talking about BSDM applications of
           network hardware...  I think I'll run off and do something useful
           and Debianish and stay OUT of this one...
<Knghtbrd> (for a change)
%
<james> but, then I used an Atari, I was more likely to win the lottery in
        ten countries simultaneously than get accelerated X
%
In fact.. based on this model of what the NSA is and isn't... many of the
people reading this are members of the NSA... /. is afterall 'News for
Nerds'.

NSA MONDAY MORNING {at the coffee machine):
NSA AGENT 1: Hey guys, did you check out slashdot over the weekend?
    AGENT 2: No, I was installing Mandrake 6.1 and I coulnd't get the darn
             ppp connection up..
    AGENT 1: Well check it out... they're on to us.
        -- Chris Moyer <cdmoyer@starmail.com>
%
<hop> when you start making only stupid mistakes that are obvious, thats
      when you start getting competent
<hop> because you don't make fundamental misunderstanding mistakes
<hop> and thats a *good* sign.
%
I'm starting to think the gene pool could use a little chlorine.
%
*** Topic for #redhat:  ReDHaT is the answer to all your problems. It
    could be the start too!
%
<Culus> And don't get me started on perl!
<Culus> :>
<shaleh> perl is beyond evil
<jim> you don't know perl yet?
<netgod> gotta love a language with no definable syntax
%
<Knghtbrd> it's 6am.  I have been up 24 hours
<Knghtbrd> Wake me up and risk life and limb.
* Knghtbrd &; sleep
<Tv> Okay everyone, we wait 10 minutes and then start flooding Knghtbrd
     with ^G's. Someone, hack root and cat /dev/urandom >/dev/dsp.
%
<knghtbrd> is it a sign of mental illness to wander aimlessly through the
           start map, collect your Thunderbolt, hop in the pool, and gib
           yourself with it just to see your head buouce when it falls
	   through the bottom of the pool?  =>
<knghtbrd> "You know you're a Quake addict when ..."
%
<Knghtbrd> This font is starting to come out very nicely
<stu> Knghtbrd: oh dear, are you hacking up another quake font in vi? :)
%
<doogie> Culus: my bug with openssh appears to be fixed in 2.5.2, but
         master runs 2.3.0
<Culus> Don't even start
<doogie> I just did.
<Culus> You guys are going to drive me to build a huge giant robot and
        destroy all of texas, aren't you?
%
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart that looks at her watch.
		-- James Beard
%
	A new chef from India was fired a week after starting the job.  He
kept favoring curry.
%
	A wife started serving chopped meat, Monday hamburger, Tuesday meat
loaf, Wednesday tartar steak, and Thursday meatballs.  On Friday morning her
husband snarled, "How now, ground cow?"
%
Do you feel personally responsible for the world food shortage?
Every time you go to the beach, does the tide come in?
Have you ever eaten an entire moose?
Can you see your neck?
Do joggers take laps around you for exercise?
If so, welcome to National Fat Week.
This week we'll eat without guilt, and kick off our membership campaign,
	...by force-feeding a box of cornstarch to a skinny person.
		-- Garfield
%
	"How did you spend the weekend?" asked the pretty brunette secretary
of her blonde companion.
	"Fishing through the ice," she replied.
	"Fishing through the ice?   Whatever for?"
	"Olives."
%
I have never been one to sacrifice my appetite on the altar of appearance.
		-- A.M. Readyhough
%
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
%
Peanut Blossoms

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

Shape dough into balls.  Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes.  Immediately top each cookie with a
Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie.  Makes a
heck of a lot.
%
The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called
the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100
percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then
cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving.  The
Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg,
Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a
bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12."  The
Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in
the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were
starting to emit a serious aroma.  Patties that were too rank even to be
Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
		-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
The most exquisite peak in culinary art is conquered when you do right by a
ham, for a ham, in the very nature of the process it has undergone since last
it walked on its own feet, combines in its flavor the tang of smoky autumnal
woods, the maternal softness of earthy fields delivered of their crop children,
the wineyness of a late sun, the intimate kiss of fertilizing rain, and the
bite of fire.  You must slice it thin, almost as thin as this page you hold
in your hands.  The making of a ham dinner, like the making of a gentleman,
starts a long, long time before the event.
		-- W.B. Courtney, "Reflections of Maryland Country Ham",
		   from "Congress Eate It Up"
%
Vegetarians beware!  You are what you eat.
%
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail. Fruitcakes
make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to
damage them.  They last forever, largely because nobody ever eats them.  In
fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes they receive and send them back
to the original givers the next year; some fruitcakes have been passed back
and forth for hundreds of years.

The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then pound
some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet.  Be sure to wear safety glasses.
		-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
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, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
%
Remark of Dr. Baldwin's concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools
that think they are truffles.
		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
%
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard II"
%
The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
Univ.  by Professor Scott Rice.  It is held in memory of Edward George
Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
time) novelist.  He is best known today for having written "The Last
Days of Pompeii."

Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
Bulwer-Lytton.  This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
written in 1830.  The full line reveals why it is so bad:

	It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
	at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
	wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
	lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
	flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
%
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.  But there was
also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
French restaurant. [...]
	I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile.  There had been a fight.  I had punched her
boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls.  Everyone told him, "You ride the
bull, senor.  You do not fight it."  But he was lean and tough like a bad
rib-eye and he fought the bull.  And then he fought me.  And when we finished
there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
	"Stop the car," the girl said.
	There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes.  She knew about the
woman of the tollway.  I knew not how.  I started to speak, but she raised an
arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
	"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
	The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
onto my granola and faced a new day.
		-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
		   Competition
%
What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working
when he's staring out the window.
%
Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until
drops of blood form on your forehead.
		-- Gene Fowler
%
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist.  He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win.  When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
	
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
	  blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
	  electrical shock to the horse.
G:	  That's very good!  But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist:  I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
	  into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
	  cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G:	  Excellent, excellent!  But I want to hear from the physicist before
	  I decide what to do.  Physicist?  
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
%
A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start,
and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.
		-- Leibnitz
%
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
	As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the
multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt...
for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its
flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
charges it then might have left.  Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in
Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to
lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
		-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
%
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers,
etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these
things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in.
Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a
kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock.  This
proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also
damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in
incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.
		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt
already heard.  After some observations and rough calculations the
engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing.  A few minutes later
the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now
has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper.  This leaves the
mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he
was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of
humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too
trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
%
Back in the early 60's, touch tone phones only had 10 buttons.  Some
military versions had 16, while the 12 button jobs were used only by people
who had "diva" (digital inquiry, voice answerback) systems -- mainly banks.
Since in those days, only Western Electric  made "data sets" (modems) the
problems of terminology were all Bell System.  We used to struggle with
written descriptions of dial pads that were unfamiliar to most people
(most phones were rotary then.)  Partly in jest, some AT&T engineering
types (there was no marketing in the good old days, which is why they were
the good old days) made up the term "octalthorpe" (note spelling) to denote
the "pound sign."  Presumably because it has 8 points sticking out.  It
never really caught on.
%
Federal grants are offered for... research into the recreation
potential of interplanetary space travel for the culturally disadvantaged.
%
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #6
What to do...
    if a starship, equipped with an FTL hyperdrive lands in your backyard?
	First of all, do not run after your camera.  You will not have any
	film, and, given the state of computer animation, noone will believe
	you anyway.  Be polite.  Remember, if they have an FTL hyperdrive,
	they can probably vaporize you, should they find you to be rude.
	Direct them to the White House lawn, which is where they probably
	wanted to land, anyway.  A good road map should help.

    if you wake up in the middle of the night, and discover that your
    closet contains an alternate dimension?
	Don't walk in.  You almost certainly will not be able to get back,
	and alternate dimensions are almost never any fun.  Remain calm
	and go back to bed.  Close the door first, so that the cat does not
	wander off.  Check your closet in the morning.  If it still contains
	an alternate dimension, nail it shut.
%
I do not remember ever having seen a sustained argument by an author which,
starting from philosophical premises likely to meet with general acceptance,
reached the conclusion that a praiseworthy ordering of one's life is to
devote it to research in mathematics.
		-- Sir Edmund Whittaker, "Scientific American", Vol. 183
%
"I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
to blue, and it has to do with where the light is.  You know, the
farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
out, it's the shifting of color.  We mentioned before about the stars
singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
		-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
%
If I set here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think
I'm an engineer working on something.
		-- S.R. McElroy
%
Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem.
		-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in
their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it
was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put
them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
and everything was just fine ...
		-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the
mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.
		-- J. Gustav White
%
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.

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

SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.

	We know it's true for _n equal to 1.  Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than _n.  _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
as large as we want.  If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n.  We
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
about _n.
	QED.	(QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
%
	"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised.  "We're back in the
universe again..."  An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't
know which part.  We seem to have changed our position in space."  A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.
	"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us,"
ZORAC announced after a short pause.  "The designs are not familiar, but
they are obviously the products of intelligence.  Implications: we have
been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown,
and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
		-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
%
Review Questions

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

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

(3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
    the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
    pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
    Tut's?  When will it fall on him?  Will he notice?
%
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your
current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it
into a dumpster.  Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of
8-millimeter video equipment.

... OK!  Got everything?  Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were
gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes
your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt.
This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until
it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so
*order yours now*.
		-- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution"
%
The astronomer Francesco Sizi, a contemporary of Galileo, argues that
Jupiter can have no satellites:

	There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two
eyes, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent.
From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven
metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number
of planets is necessarily seven. [...]
	Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and
therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless
and therefore do not exist.
%
The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the moon.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars.
%
The solution of problems is the most characteristic and peculiar sort
of voluntary thinking.
		-- William James
%
The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers
written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not
follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
of paper in any other parts of the Universe.  This single statement took
the scientific world by storm.  So many mathematical conferences got held
in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation
died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put
back by years.
		-- Douglas Adams
%
This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard
dying... but nobody thought so.  This was a future of fortune and theft,
pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
		-- Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"
%
We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a
clever but highly unmotivated trick.
		-- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra"
%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were
set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as
bodies of a lower grade ...
		-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
beta test, v:
	To voluntarily entrust one's data, one's livelihood and one's
	sanity to hardware or software intended to destroy all three.
	In earlier days, virgins were often selected to beta test volcanos.
%
Blutarsky's Axiom:
	Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason.
%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
	The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
	for overheated passengers.  When your timer pops up, the driver will
	cheerfully baste you.
		-- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
%
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
	Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,
	but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%
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.
%
Ehrman's Commentary:
	(1) Things will get worse before they get better.
	(2) Who said things would get better?
%
Finagle's First Law:
	To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.

Finagle's Second Law:
	Always keep a record of data -- it indicates you've been working.

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

Finagle's Fifth Law:
	Always draw your curves, then plot your readings.

Finagle's Sixth Law:
	Don't believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
	Celibacy is not hereditary.
%
Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
	An unspecified physical object, a widget.  Also refers to electronic
black boxes.  This rare form is usually abbreviated to FROTZ, or more
commonly to FROB.  Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and FROBNODULE.
Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl. FROBBOTZIM, has also
become very popular, largely due to its exposure via the Adventure spin-off
called Zork (Dungeon).  These can also be applied to non-physical objects,
such as data structures.
%
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.
%
Griffin's Thought:
	When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
%
Immutability, Three Rules of:
	(1)  If a tarpaulin can flap, it will.
	(2)  If a small boy can get dirty, he will.
	(3)  If a teenager can go out, he will.
%
Juall's Law on Nice Guys:
	Nice guys don't always finish last; sometimes they don't finish.
	Sometimes they don't even get a chance to start!
%
kern, v.:
	1. To pack type together as tightly as the kernels on an ear
	of corn.  2. In parts of Brooklyn and Queens, N.Y., a small,
	metal object used as part of the monetary system.
%
neutron bomb, n.:
	An explosive device of limited military value because, as
	it only destroys people without destroying property, it
	must be used in conjunction with bombs that destroy property.
%
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
	Murphy was an optimist.
%
Optimism, n.:
	The belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, good,
	bad, and everything right that is wrong.  It is held with greatest
	tenacity by those accustomed to falling into adversity, and most
	acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile.  Being a blind
	faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual
	disorder, yielding to no treatment but death.  It is hereditary, but
	not contagious.
%
QOTD:
	"This is a one line proof... if we start sufficiently far to the
	left."
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Rules for Writers:
	Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.  Don't use no double
negatives.  Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate;
and never where it isn't.  Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and
omit it when its not needed.  No sentence fragments. Avoid commas, that are
unnecessary.  Eschew dialect, irregardless.  And don't start a sentence with
a conjunction.  Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
Write all adverbial forms correct.  Don't use contractions in formal writing.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.  It is incumbent on
us to avoid archaisms.  Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have
snuck in the language.  Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.  If I've
told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.  Also,
avoid awkward or affected alliteration.  Don't string too many prepositional
phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of
death.  "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
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Secretary's Revenge:
	Filing almost everything under "the".
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The rules:
	 (1) Thou shalt not worship other computer systems.
	 (2) Thou shalt not impersonate Liberace or eat watermelon while
	      sitting at the console keyboard.
	 (3) Thou shalt not slap users on the face, nor staple their silly
	     little card decks together.
	 (4) Thou shalt not get physically involved with the computer system,
	     especially if you're already married.
	 (5) Thou shalt not use magnetic tapes as frisbees, nor use a disk
	     pack as a stool to reach another disk pack.
	 (6) Thou shalt not stare at the blinking lights for more than one
	     eight hour shift.
	 (7) Thou shalt not tell users that you accidentally destroyed their
	     files/backup just to see the look on their little faces.
	 (8) Thou shalt not enjoy cancelling a job.
	 (9) Thou shalt not display firearms in the computer room.
	(10) Thou shalt not push buttons "just to see what happens".
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White's Statement:
	Don't lose heart!

Owen's Commentary on White's Statement:
	...they might want to cut it out...

Byrd's Addition to Owen's Commentary:
	...and they want to avoid a lengthy search.
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		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.
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write-protect tab, n.:
	A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly left
	by disk manufacturers.  The use of the tab creates an error message
	once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the momentary
	inconvenience.
		-- Robb Russon
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Earth Tones:
	A youthful subgroup interested in vegetarianism, tie-dyed
outfits, mild recreational drugs, and good stereo equipment.  Earnest,
frequently lacking in humor.
		-- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
		   Culture"
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2 + 2 = 5-ism:
	Caving in to a target marketing strategy aimed at oneself after
holding out for a long period of time.  "Oh, all right, I'll buy your
stupid cola.  Now leave me alone."
		-- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
		   Culture"
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"Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
technology.  Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."
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Everyone *knows* cats are on a higher level of existence.  These silly humans
are just to big-headed to admit their inferiority.
	Just think what a nicer world this would be if it were controlled by
cats.
	You wouldn't see cats having waste disposal problems.
	They're neat.
	They don't have sexual hangups.  A cat gets horny, it does something
about it.
	They keep reasonable hours.  You *never* see a cat up before noon.
	They know how to relax.  Ever heard of a cat with an ulcer?  
	What are the chances of a cat starting a nuclear war?  Pretty neglible.
It's not that they can't, they just know that there are much better things to
do with ones time.  Like lie in the sun and sleep.  Or go exploring the world.
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Q:	How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A:	That's proprietary information.  Answer available from AT&T on payment
	of license fee (binary only).
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