(1) Alexander the Great was a great general.

(2) Great generals are forewarned.

(3) Forewarned is forearmed.

(4) Four is an even number.

(5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.

(6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.

Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.

(1) Everything depends.

(2) Nothing is always.

(3) Everything is sometimes.

$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

99 blocks of crud on the disk,

99 blocks of crud!

You patch a bug, and dump it again:

100 blocks of crud on the disk!

100 blocks of crud on the disk,

100 blocks of crud!

You patch a bug, and dump it again:

101 blocks of crud on the disk! ...

A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce. -- Don Quinn

A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it adds up to be real money. -- Everett McKinley Dirksen

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

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

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

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.

A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."

The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect."

The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"

A dozen, a gross, and a score, Plus three times the square root of four, Divided by seven, Plus five time eleven, Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.

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

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

by Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional objects ...

A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard -- Prof. Steiner

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. -- Tenessee Williams

Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.

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

Acid -- better living through chemistry.

Adolescence, n.: The stage between puberty and adultery.

After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.

All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around you. Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents, insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They all dress funny -- and they all succeed. Are you catching on? -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"

AMAZING BUT TRUE ...

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

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. -- Charlie McCarthy

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

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no government at all.

Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:

1. None. (Moses didn't have an ark).

2. Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.

3. I don't know.

4. Who cares?

5. 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk, Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.

6. There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of Papyrus Books).

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

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

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.

Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is probably parked.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. -- Publilius Syrus

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. -- Samuel Goldwyn

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.

Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW" means the price went way up.

Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse

Arnold's Laws of Documentation:

(1) If it should exist, it doesn't.

(2) If it does exist, it's out of date.

(3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws.

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs. -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949

As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there is always a future in Computer Maintenance. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"

Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee.

Baruch's Observation: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.

better !pout !cry

better watchout

lpr why

santa claus < north pole > town

cat /etc/passwd > list

ncheck list

ncheck list

cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist

cat list | grep nice > giftlist

santa claus < north pole > town

who | grep sleeping

who | grep awake

who | egrep 'bad|good'

for (goodness sake) { be good }

Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic

Boren's Laws:

(1) When in charge, ponder.

(2) When in trouble, delegate.

(3) When in doubt, mumble.

But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

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

Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

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

Call on God, but row away from the rocks. -- Indian proverb

"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

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

Supplement: A .44 magnum beats four aces.

Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes.

Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.

Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.

Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.

Command, n.: Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.

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

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

Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDED AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH HE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT? -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking -- H. L. Mencken

Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.

Dawn, n.: The time when men of reason go to bed. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.

"Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow."

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- G. B. Shaw

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. -- E. B. White

Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.

Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.

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

Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code. -- Dave Storer

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.

Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out if it alive.

Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.

Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!

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

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together ... -- Carl Zwanzig

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

/Earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.

Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where the "nog" comes from.

Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.

Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. -- Jerome Lettvin

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. -- Woody Allen

Etymology, n.: Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy" ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow." -- Mike Kellen

"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.

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

Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

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

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. -- Olivier

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones

Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward.

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

Frobnicate, v.: To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ. Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard

1. An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.

2. An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.

3. The energy required to change either one of these states will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so much as to make the task totally impossible.

God is Dead -- Nietzsche

Nietzsche is Dead -- God

Nietzsche is God -- The Dead

Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.

Got Mole problems? Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23

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

Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.

He who Laughs, Lasts.

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

"Heisenberg may have slept here"

"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense"

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

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

If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.

Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks? "Is it PC compatible?" (Note from Drew- This seriously dates the page I took this off of...)

It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

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

Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.

Jesus Saves, Moses Invests, But only Buddha pays Dividends.

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

Jone's Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.

Jone's Motto: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Jones's First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.

Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is.

"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets" -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"

Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty! Justice is incidental to law and order. -- J. Edgar Hoover Justice is incidental to law and order. -- J. Edgar Hoover

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

Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.

Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.

Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.

Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
1. The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck").
2. Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"

Keep your Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now ... try to get something DONE!

Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong."

Kin, n.: An affliction of the blood

Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority.

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

"Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack."

Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.

Kleptomaniac, n.: A rich thief.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

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

Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions. -- Henry N. Camp

Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr): The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Labor, n.: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Lackland's Laws:
1. Never be first.
2. Never be last.
3. Never volunteer for anything

Lactomangulation, n.: Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Langsam's Laws:
1) Everything depends.
2) Nothing is always.
3) Everything is sometimes.

Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false.

Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her? What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the applications for.
-- Dave Barry

Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
-- Victor Borge

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

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

Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

Laws of Serendipity:
1. In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something.
2. If you wish to make an improved product, you must already be engaged in making an inferior one.

Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats -- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Leibowitz's Rule: When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you hold the hammer with both hands.

LEO (July 23 - Aug 22) Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore. Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got a sick sense of humor.

LEO (July 23 - Aug 22) You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieves.

Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.

Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!

You first.

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

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)

Dear Sir,

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

Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
Sevenoaks

Lewis's Law of Travel: The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever.

Liar, n.: A lawyer with a roving commission.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22) Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.

LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22) You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay. Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of Venereal disease.

Lie, n.: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date.

Lieberman's Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.

Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find there is nothing in it.

"Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove."

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
-- Alan McKay

Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.

Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown: No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get better.

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

Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And plunged it deep into the VAX;
Don't you envy people who
Do all the things YOU want to do?

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

Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"

Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen.

Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken

Lowery's Law: If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.

Lunatic Asylum, n.: The place where optimism most flourishes.

"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts." -- Winston Churchill

Mad, adj.:Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.-- W. C. Fields

Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism

Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.

The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Magnocartic, adj.: Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"

Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

Corollaries:
1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory.

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

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

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

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

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Majority, n.: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.

Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files. -- System V.2 administrator's guide

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

"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain." -- Lily Tomlin

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. -- Oscar Wilde

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun

Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it is an enemy. -- A. Einstein

Man, n.: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history, dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first primitive umpire.
What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers. -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"

Manual, n.: A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The information you need in in the others. -- Ray Simard

Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ... -- Walt Kelly

Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery: Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a simple yes or no answer.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. -- Voltaire

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

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

Maturity is only a short break in adolescence. -- Jules Feiffer

May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts

May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!

May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.

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

Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology. -- R. S. Barton

Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge it.

Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city nativity scene removed: "They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a virgin in the whole organization."

McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom: If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95.

Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so.

Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.

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

Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the Empire forged. -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams

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

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

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

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

Menu, n.: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.

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

Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.

Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.

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

"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."

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

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. -- Groucho Marx

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. -- Groucho Marx

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz

Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black. -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
 

Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.

Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.

Misfortune, n.: The kind of fortune that never misses. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Miss, n.: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.

Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.

Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.

Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit ofmatter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion ... -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing.

Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.

Monday, n.: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots

Mophobia, n.: Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.

MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a fight and the match was called by officials.

More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -- Woody Allen

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

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

Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

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

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

Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Mustgo, n.: Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so long it has become a science project. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"

My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again.

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.

"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"

Mythology, n.: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

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

NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he sayswill be right.
-- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Necessity is a mother.

Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.

Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.

Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off

Never drink coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators have windows.

Never eat more than you can lift.
-- Miss Piggy

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

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
-- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977

Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.

Never try to outstubborn a cat.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
-- R. A. Heinlein

New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.

New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.

New systems generate new problems.

New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and his wife most often reminds him to act it.
-- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary

New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.

New York's got the ways and means;
Just won't let you be.
-- The Grateful Dead

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

NEWS FLASH!!
Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West German pole-vault champion.

*** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!

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

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

Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond

Nihilism should commence with oneself.

Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value.

Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;

One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.

No good deed goes unpunished.
-- Clare Boothe Luce

No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION

Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise.

Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results.

Noncombatant, n.:
A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

"Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree."
--Professor W.

Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman -- unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
-- Woody Allen

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.

Nothing is faster than the speed of light... To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the light comes on.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young

Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charlie Brown

November, n.:
The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.

"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
-- Walt Kelly

"Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..."
-- "The Begatting of a President"

... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop quickly.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
-- Edwin Meese III

Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.

Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.

O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?

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

"Of course it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a fake?"

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
-- Plato

Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.

Office Automation, n.:
The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee.

Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.

Oh don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!

Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.

Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-- A. E. Housman

Oh, wow! Look at the moon!

Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky

Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.

Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.

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

On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli

On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than $283 on the desk before the cashier. "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That route never brought in money like this! What happened?" "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"

On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"

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

Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
-- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice. In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka" and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

Once Law was sitting on the bench
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."

Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
-- Rainer Rilke

    Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
    The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
    And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure. But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.

Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
the smaller prime numbers.

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

Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.

... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

Once, adv.:
Enough.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.

One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet when well oiled.

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
-- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983

One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________ somebody has to buy retail."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984

One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.

One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood.
-- Mark Ardis

"One planet is all you get."

One seldom sees a monument to a committee.

One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.

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

Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.

Only God can make random selections.

Optimization hinders evolution.

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

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams

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

Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.

Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is they charge fifteen cents for them.

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
in kernel as it is in user!

Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
-- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries

Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!

Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.

Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.

Ozman's Laws:
1. If someone says he will do something "without fail," he won't.
2. The more people talk on the phone, the less money they make.
3. People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
4. Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.

Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.

Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
-- D. J. Hicks

Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
 

Parker's Law: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

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

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

Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.

"Pascal is not a high-level language."
-- Steven Feiner

Pascal Users: To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half
speed.

Pascal, n.: A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it.

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer

Paul Revere was a tattle-tale

Paul's Law: In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.

Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor.

Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Peanut Blossoms

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

Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
hell of a lot.

Pecor's Health-Food Principle: Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in it.

People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future.

People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.

People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it.
-- Ogden Nash

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

People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
"Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
-- Aelius Donatus

Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.

Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves.

Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to exciting Camden, New Jersy.

Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.

pi seconds is a nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff

Pig, n.:
An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by
the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your associates and
people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack confidence and
you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible things to small
animals.

PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today,
as nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed.
You will probably get run over by a bus.

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

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

The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
countries to signal turns.
 

Pittsburgh Driver's Test
8: Pedestrians are

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

The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.

PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
-- E. W. Dijkstra

Please ignore previous fortune.

Please take note: Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any bazingas' until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.' Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.
-- N. Meyrowitz

Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?

PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)

Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.

Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.

Police: Good evening, are you the host?
Host: No.
Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host: About the drugs?
Police: No.
Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police: No, the noise.
Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
The neighbors?
Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
ask the host to quiet things down?
Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
down.

Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.

Politician, n.:
From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
-- Martin Pitt

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

Polymer physicists are into chains.

Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with laughter, singing:
"Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the chimney smokes
Pope Goestheveezl!"
The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant B" ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K" oln in 1653.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Power, n: The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.

Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming.
-- J. P. McEvoy

Predestination was doomed from the start.

President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.

President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
-- The Washington Post

Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!

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

[Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves to see him work.
-- Winston Churchill

Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
-- Frederick Winsor

Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem. Eng. 130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%

Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction. This technique is used on equations with "_ n" in them. Induction techniques are very popular, even the military used them.

SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.

We know it's true for _ n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true for every natural number less than _ n. _ N is arbitrary, so we can take _ n as large as we want. If _ n is sufficiently large, the case of _ n+1 is crivially equivalent, so the only important _ n are _ n less than _ n. We can take _ n = _ n (from above), so it's true for _ n+1 because it's just about _ n.

QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")

Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
legs for a horse.
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.

Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by:
Intimidation
Gesticulation (handwaving)
"Try it; it works"
Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
Blatant assertion
Changing all the 2's to _ n's
Mutual consent
Lack of a counterexample, and
"It stands to reason"

Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're ok, you're it.

Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.

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

Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A: One per person.

Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
A: To stamp out forest fires.
Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
A: To stamp out flaming ducks.

Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.

Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.

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

Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.

Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself
symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a
netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin
cosmos of nothingness.

Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.

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

Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
of non-blank characters separated by blanks".

Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a pulitzer
prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb-assassin
to break the bulb in the first place.

Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.

Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
Californians trying to share the experience.

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the girrafe and the other to fill the bathtub with
brightly colored machine tools.

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

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

Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!

"Qvid me anxivs svm?"

QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]:
1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [Colloq.] one thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [Anat.] a painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [Slang] person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert.
-- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.

Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.

Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store?
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President

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

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-- Dorothy Parker

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

Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room.

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

Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.

Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?

Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then.

Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.

Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.

Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.

"Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"

Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict, but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.

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

Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
-- Ogden Nash

"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the starfield surrounding the ship.
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"

Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.

Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Cleveland.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"

Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.

Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.

Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Reporter, n.:
A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun

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

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

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

3: If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?

Rhode's Law: When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience,
expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.

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

ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church- door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.

Rudin's Law: If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it every time.

Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.

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

Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.

Rule of Feline Frustration: When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
bathroom.

Rule of the Great:
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.

Rules for driving in New York:
1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on.
3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the intersection.

RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
1. Never eat on an empty stomach.
2. Never leave the table hungry.
3. When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
4. Enjoy your food.
5. Enjoy your companion's food.
6. Really taste your food. It may take several portions to accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
7. Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare, for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
8. Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
9. Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You can always eat it later.
10. Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
11. Avoid blue food.
-- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet"

Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.

1. Little things start bothering you: little things like
worms, bugs, ants.
2. Something is missing in your personal relationships.
3. Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
4. You have a hard time getting a waiter.
5. Exotic birds flock around you.
6. People ignore you at parties.
7. You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
8. You no longer get off on cocaine.

Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
1. Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear bomb; use the stairs.
2. When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit the ground.
3. If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
4. Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to psychological problems.
5. Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
6. Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
7. Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
8. Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be staggering illegally.
9. Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more sanitary due to limited circulation.
10. Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on D-Day.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to
rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority of Sagittarians are
drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at you a great deal.

San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
-- Herb Caen

San Francisco, n.:
Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.

Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
Must be a pacifist.
What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
-- Arlo Guthrie

Satellite Safety Tip #14:
If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.

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

Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
Is like being nowhere at all,
All through the day how the hours rush by,
You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
-- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"

Save energy: be apathetic.

Save the whales. Collect the whole set.

SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
-- Ken Thompson

Schapiro's Explanation:
The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's because they use more manure.

Schizophrenia beats being alone.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.

Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.

Scott's second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.

Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
Spock: Affirmative.
Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.

Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.

Second Law of Business Meetings:
If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one.
Corollary: If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong, anyway.

Security check: INTRUDER ALERT!

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Self Test for Paranoia:
You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's your own fault.

Serocki's Stricture:
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.

Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.

"Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now." "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly. "Too proud?" the other enquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"she said, "that one can't help growing older."
"ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
-- Lewis Carroll

Shamus, n.:
A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the temple, and makes sure everything is in working order. A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks he's nobody!"
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

"She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
-- Gypsy Rose Lee

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
-- Mark Twain

She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could have poured on a waffle ...

She's genuinely bogus.

"Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
-- Samuel Johnson

SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!

Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss.

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

Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet

Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

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

Since I hurt my pendulum
My life is all erratic.
My parrot, who was cordial,
Is now transmitting static.
The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
The cat keeps doing poo.
The only thing that keeps me sane
Is talking to my shoe.
-- My Shoe

Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
-- Bob "Mountain" Beck

[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
-- Winston Churchill

Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text. This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.

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

Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
1. Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.
2. A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
3. There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects.

Slurm, n.:
The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when it sits in the dish too long.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Snacktrek, n.:
The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have materialized.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell

"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
-- Samuel Foote

Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur.

SOFTWARE -- formal evening attire for female computer analysts.

Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
 tringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money and go to a mall.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"

Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit them on the head.

Some points to remember [about animals]:
1. Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotamuses;
2. Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the front of your clothes;
3. Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs you have just kicked.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear.

Someone will try to honk your nose today.

"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm the only ashtray."

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin

    "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
    "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
-- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"

Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune).

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.

Wow! wow! wow!

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

Wow! wow! wow!
-- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

Speak roughly to your little VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
Because the paging thrashes!

Wow! Wow! Wow!

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

Wow! Wow! Wow!

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

Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?

Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to Shut Up!
-- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"

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

Spirtle, n.:
The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in your eye.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"

Spouse, n.:
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.

Stay away from flying saucers today.

Stay away from hurricanes for a while.

"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."

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

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

Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
take a bath ...

Stult's Report:
Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is fight the solutions.

Stupid, n.:
Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.

Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain

Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.

(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)

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

To right the unrightable bug,
To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
To mount the unmountable magtape,
To stop the unstoppable crash!

Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!

Surprise due today. Also the rent.

Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.

Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving the room is punishable under law:
Name #

Sweater, n.: A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.

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

System/3! System/3!
See how it runs! See how it runs!
Its monitor loses so totally!
It runs all its programs in RPG!
It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!