Fun_People Archive
29 Jan
News of the Wired (tm)

Date: Sun, 29 Jan 95 15:05:20 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: News of the Wired (tm)

[Here are a few items of interest from Fun_Reporters... -psl]
_______________________________________________________________________________

 From: robert@rockmore.com (Robert D. Poor)
 Subject: Re: "Hey Blitzen, did he say what I thought he did?"

[The following note from my brother (another pilot) supports my theory that
there's a limited amount of information in the world -- we just divvy it up in
different ways.  The joke in question is Jim Littlefield's chestnut w.r.t. the
FAA examiner, Santa's sleigh, and the shotgun. - rob]

> From: Alfred Poor <0003218136@mcimail.com>
> Subject: The "Santa" Joke
> 
> On the Aviation Forum on CompuServe, they have a contest for the first
> sighting of this joke on the forum each year.  The average number of
> postings runs to about a dozen, which I take to be a measure of its
> popularity -- it's a good one.
> 
> Maybe, someday, "The Top 9.9996 New Pentium Marketing Slogans" will
> achieve similar standing.
_______________________________________________________________________________

From: jordan@Heuristicrat.COM (Jordan Hayes)
Subject: two canibals are eating a clown ...

i saw the origin of that joke.  What's more funny is that it's a movie
where Dennis Hopper plays a private detective, snooping around some
huge house.  At one point, a security guard in the house sneeks up
behind him, puts a gun to his head and says "Say something funny." to
which Dennis says "Say something funny?  Say something *funny*?!?  Two
cannibals are eating a clown; one says to the other ... 'does this
taste funny to you?' ... is that what you mean by say something funny?"
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: <REEDZSTEIN@aol.com>
Subject: Our parent who art in heaven....

From: The Scene column in the Phila. Inquirer, 1/8/95
Used w/o permission

British Vicar Turns "Hymns" Into "Thems"

The flock in a British church can now raise their voices in politically
correct praise--the vicar has dropped all reference to men from the hymn
books.

Anglican vicar Derek Sawyer, whose midweek services in the western Enlish
town of Gloucester often have an all-female congregation, has changed
"father" to "heavenly parent", "sons" to "children", and "men" to "people."

"We are doing this in solidarity with women who feel marginalized and treated
unfairly", he told the Times of London.

[Okay, so the article is only logical, but I liked the headline...  -psl]
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: "pardo@cs.washington.edu" <pardo@cs.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Useless Quotes Vol III (F-I)

While you're at it:

``To be clear is professional; not to be clear is unprofessional.''
				-- Sir Ernest Gower

``At any rate, C++ != C.  Actually, the value of the expression
`C++ != C' is implementation-defined.''
				-- Peter da Silva
``Actually, the value is undefined.''
				-- Mark Brader
[What's the difference?  -psl]

``When the comments and the code disagree, both are probably wrong.''
		-- Norm Schryer.  Bumper-Sticker Computer Science,
		   Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls column,
		   Communications of the ACM (CACM), September 1985,
		   Volume 28, Number 9.

``Many's the time when I've thanked the Doug A. Gwyn of past
years for anticipating future maintenance questions and providing
helpful information in the original sources.''
				-- Doug A.  Gwyn

``C takes the point of view that the programmer is always right.''
				-- Michael DeCorte

int i;main(){for(;i["]<i;++i){--i;}"];read('-'-'-',i+++"hell\\
o, world!\n",'/'/'/'));}read(j,i,p){write(j/p+p,i---j,i/i);}
	-- Dishonorable mention, Obfuscated C Code Contest, 1984.
	   Author requested anonymity.

``C Code.  C code run.  Run, code, run...  PLEASE!!!''
				-- Barbara Tongue

``C combines the power of assembler with the portability of assembler.''
	-- Anonymous, alluding to Dan Franklin  (The original is
	   embedded in the comments for ``Recommended C Style and
	   Coding Standards'', available via anonymous ftp from
	   `ftp.cs.washington.edu' in `pub/cstyle.tar.Z'.)

``10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0'' -- Kernighan and Plauger

``The `#pragma' command is specified in the ANSI standard to have an
arbitrary implementation-defined effect.  In the GNU C preprocessor,
`#pragma' first attempts to run the game `rogue'; if that fails, it
tries to run the game `hack'; if that fails, it tries to run GNU Emacs
displaying the Tower of Hanoi; if that fails, it reports a fatal error.
In any case, preprocessing does not continue.''
	-- Manual for an old version of the GNU C preprocessor
	   (GNU CC 1.34)
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: mo@uunet.uu.net (Mike O'Dell)

Some words to live by....

"Stand up straight and
 ar-ti-cu-late."		(spoken in meter as a couplet)

		-Ms. June Holden
		 Speech and Drama Coach
		 Ardmore High School

"Always do Right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Good judgement comes from experience.  
 And where does experience come from? 
 Experience comes from bad judgement."

		 Both from Mark Twain

"Nature neither seeks nor abides your opinion."

"In any complex system, Grief is conserved."

		Both from Mike O'Dell

"The difference between theory and practice in practice
 is always greater than
 the difference between theory and practice in theory."

		-Peter Salus
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
From: Robert.Reynolds@directory.Reed.EDU (Robert Reynolds)
Subject: Re: Useless Quotes Vol IV (I - S)

--- You wrote:
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.
--- end of quoted material ---
As you no doubt have heard before (but maybe not!):

Serendipity is Murphy's Law applied to Murphy's Law.

(source unknown to me)
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: rossen@lmis.loral.com (Tom Rossen)
Subject: Re: "Useless Quotes Vol IV"

> May you have an interesting life.
>                 -- chinese curse.

Nope - it's "May you live in interesting times!" - a subtle but signicant
diff, no?

P. Dant
_______________________________________________________________________________

From: nicholls@cyberquest.com (Debra Nicholls)

True Story:
 When the US distribution of a new film about England's King George III was
 being planned, the name was changed to "The Madness of King George" - they
 were afraid some people would think that they missed parts I and II.
_______________________________________________________________________________

 From: Robert.Reynolds@directory.Reed.EDU (Robert Reynolds)
 Subject: Re: Useless Quotes Vol V (T - Y)

> There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
> 		-- Mark Twain [or was that Disraeli?]
> 
> There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
> 		-- Disraeli [or was that Mark Twain?]

There are three kinds of people in the world:  those who divide people into
three kinds, those who don't, and .. uhh .. uhh ..  
_______________________________________________________________________________

 From: Robert.Reynolds@directory.Reed.EDU (Robert Reynolds)
 Subject: Re: Useless Quotes Vol V (T - Y)

> Too clever is dumb.
> 		-- Ogden Nash

  Here's a good rule of thumb:
  Too clever is dumb.

is the entire poem!

I'll try to transcend this urge to reply that seems to be setting in!
_______________________________________________________________________________

 From: Robert.Reynolds@directory.Reed.EDU (Robert Reynolds)
 Subject: Re: Useless Quotes Vol V (T - Y)

> Why is the alphabet in that order?  Is it because of that song?

Steven Wright?

oops
_______________________________________________________________________________

From: mgr@aggroup.com (Mike Russell)
Subject: Re: Ignorance & Politics

In defense of America's astonomical ignorance:

<paraphrasing Doyle's original>:
----
Watson: "My dear Holmes, do you mean to tell me that you did not know that the
Earth revolves around the sun?"

Holmes: "Yes, my dear Watson, and having learned so, I will endeaver to
forget it
as rapidly as possible, for it has no possible bearing on my profession.
The mind is an attic, and has finite capacity.  The time inevitably comes when
each additional fact must crowd out another, previously stored, fact."
---
So, by ignoring the rotation of the earth, Americans are simply guarding 
a non-renewable resource.
_______________________________________________________________________________

From: jordan@Heuristicrat.COM (Jordan Hayes)
Subject: Re:  Job Interview Tips

I was in the final stages of the interview process at Morgan Stanley.
I got pushed up the chain of command until I finally got interviewed by
a fairly senior guy.  The first question he asked me was "Why does UNIX
suck so much?" ... leter, this happened:

	Him:	"Do you watch Star Trek?"
	Me:	[hesitant] "Uh ... I have watched some ... why?"
	Him:	"You know that transporter thing?"
	Me:	[thinking he'd ask me how it works] "Yeah, sure."
	Him:	[leaning in toward me] "Would you ever *get in*
		one of those things?"
	Me:	[totally startled at the line of questioning]
		"Uh ... well, I fly a lot, and that seems to be
		more dangerous"
	Him:	"No, no.  I mean, how do you think that thing works?
		If it just breaks you down and sends your matter across
		the universe, how do you know it'll put you back
		together correctly?  Or if it just breaks you down and
		encodes you as data, to be re-created on the other side
		from the instructions and handy matter, would you
		really be you?"

I talked about metaphysics for a while.  I got the job.
_______________________________________________________________________________

From: Julie Mangin <jmangin@access.digex.net>
Subject: Re: Some Yucks

H. L. Mencken said, "Demagogue:  One who preaches doctrines he knows to be 
untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: Hal Glatzer <0002018560@mcimail.com>
Subject: RE: Even More SPAM(tm)OLOGY

FYI - Hawaii consumes more Spam than any other state.  (Supposedly,
this is because of WW II experience, with GIs sharing their rations
with local girls, but I think the real answer is simply that Spam
is cheap and doesn't need refrigeration.
_______________________________________________________________________________
To: psl (by way of rossen@lmis.loral.com (Tom Rossen))
From: golub@lmis.loral.com (Joshua Golub)

who is peter langston and doesn't he have some sort of full-time job?

[Several.  -psl]
Fun_People Archive 29 JanNews of the Wired (tm)

Fun_People Archive
29 Jan
News of the Wired (tm)
