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From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Message-Id: [199406021335.GAA18793@netcom.com]
To: JWry.dl@netcom.com
Subject: Life A.N
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
Status: R
---------------
Date: 13 Sep 93 11:14:00 PDT (Monday)
Subject: Life A.N
----------------------------------------------------
The following is from dsc.cuties
Run by
lindsay%dscatl.UUCP@mathcs.emory.edu (Lindsay Cleveland)
--------------------------
Contributed by: gcoac!gcegb
ACADEMIA REVISITED
Smart is when you believe only
half of what you hear.
Brilliant is when you know
which half.
B. Bader, WSJ, 4/11/84
--------------------------
Contributed by: cwruecmp!sundar
There was this Viceroy during the British Raj who strongly believed
that Indians were arrant fools. One day his friend arrives from London.
To prove his point to his friend, the Viceroy takes him to his
coconut grove. He stops by a farmer tending a coconut tree and says,
"There are 243 coconut trees in this grove. Each bears about
37 coconuts in a season.
Now, tell me, how old I am ?"
The farmer ponders over this rather quizzical question for a minute or so,
and then replies, "56 Sir".
The viceroy was astonished. That was his 56th birthday. That is why his
friend had come all the way from England. Naturally he wanted to find
out this source of unusual intelligence.
"How do you know?"
The farmer goes,
"I have a brother who turned 28 today. He is half as crazy".
--------------------------
Contributed by: smu!leff
From Wall Street Journal in an article about mules
When the last Army mule packing station was closed up in 1956, the
men there said that the U. S. would never win another war without its
mules.
--------------------------
Contributed by: nwuxd!jmb
This is a true story.
Last night I was talking to my daughter Amy and she asked me
this question.
"Daddy, when I get married will I have to change my name?"
I said yes.
Then Amy said: "Good, I'm going to change my name to Janet".
--------------------------
Contributed by: ihnp4!cfiaime
Did you hear about this small tribe of Indians in Kansas?
This was a very old tribe, who never married outside the
tribe at all. The largest the tribe ever was, was in
1873, when there was about 1000 members. During the winter
of 1873, half of the tribe died of the plague. Since then,
the population has been constant.
The interesting thing about this tribe is that no member of
the tribe has a nipple. Not one nipple among the lot of them.
Anthropologists studying the tribe have coined a name for the
tribe. They call the tribe the:
Indian-nippless 500.
--------------------------
Contributed by: smu!leff
Metaphor Dept.
a. You know crime is bad when the police have more felony arrests than
traffic tickets
(This is actually the case on one shift in Ramparts, a high crime area
in LA according to U. S. News and World Report)
--------------------------
Contributed by: gcoac!gccwb
Found in the Greensboro Daily News for June 21, 1984 - authorship not
attributed:
"The first screw to come loose in a person's head
is generally the one that holds the tongue"
--------------------------
Contributed by: hp-pcd!john
Several years ago an enrollment crunch forced Purdue to offer a large number
of Saturday morning classes. Someone soon discovered a method to trick the
computer into not giving you any of these. It seems that there was this one
course in Sheep Shearing that was only offered from 8 am to noon on Saturday.
If you signed up for it the computer could not give you any other Saturday
classes. Once your schedule was set you could drop it and be off free.
The course normally had about a dozen ag majors in it but for a while it became
real popular.
--------------------------
Contributed by: dec-delphi!malik
The following anecdote is attributed to William Saroyan (American
Author) - seems relevant to minimalism.
There was this husband and wife. The husband played the cello as
a hobby. The thing was, he would play this one note, over and over for
hours at a time.
The wife put up with this for weeks, but finally couldn't stand
it any longer and confronted her husband. "Husband', she said, "I've
noticed that when other people play the cello, they move their hands up
and down the fingerboard and play many notes, but you just keep repeating
that one note!".
"Ah", said the husband, "that's because they're looking for it,
and I've found it!".
--------------------------
Contributed by: smu!leff
A workaholic was asked, 'Why don't you take a day off? Even God took a day
off to rest.' He answered, 'I am not as good as God, I need a day to
catch up.'
--------------------------
Found in the September 1984 Saturday Evening Post:
The patient awakened after the operation to find herself in a
room with all the blinds drawn.
"Why are all the blinds closed?" she asked her doctor.
"Well," the surgeon responded, "They're fighting a huge fire
across the street, and we didn't want you to wake up and think the
operation had failed."
--------------------------
"You poor man," said the dowager to the beggar. "It must be
terrible to lame, but I suppose it would be worse yet if you were
blind."
"You're right, ma'am," said the beggar. "When I was bilnd, I
was always getting bus tokens and paper clips."
-- Lloyd Byers
S.E.P.
--------------------------
Contributed by: smu!leff
Murphy's Law of Studying:
a) In order to study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you
start
b) There is no correlation between the amount of preparation a student
puts in for an exam and the grade that he/she gets.
--------------------------
A man was celebrating his 80th birthday and his 50th wedding
anniversary. A reported asked, "Sir, how do you account for
looking so fit?"
"Well," the old-timer told him, "when we got married, my wife
and I made and agreement that any time we saw an argument coming
on, I would grab my hat and walk three time around the block.
You'd be surprised what 50 years of outdoor exercise will do for
your health!"
-- Kenneth E. Hall
--------------------------
A shabbily-dressed man stood shaking in the cold outside an
abandoned building and a woman watched from her warm office while
people gave the man money. During he lunch break she gave the man
a note containing her last two dollars. The note said simply,
"Keep your chin up."
A few days later the same man approached her and said, "Here ya
go loady. Fifty-two bucks. 'Keep Your Chin Up' came in at 26
to 1."
-- James Curname
--------------------------
Contributed by: tekigmjameso
The following appeared in the May 15, 1984 Oregonian in an
article by Joyce Lain Kennedy, (c) 1984, Sun Features, Inc.
The Computer's Prayer
Our computer, which art infallible,
hallowed be thy data. Thy program
be run on-line as it is off-line.
Give us this day our daily print-out,
and delete our errors as we delete those
that error against us.
Lead us not into unauthorized files,
but deliver us from invalid entries.
For thine is the format, the power-up,
and the modem forever and repeat.
Sign off.
- Wayne E Wilt
Hollywood, Fla.
--------------------------
Contributed by: aesat!jalsop
Back in WW II, there was a young American pilot called Bill,
who used to fly various secret missions in the Pacific theater.
He always flew with his best friend, Art, who was his radar
operator. Art was quite famous at the airbase in Hawaii,
because he was always tinkering with novel radar design
techniques, and had actually come up with some significant
contributions to the state-of-the-art.
In early '45, Bill and Art were sent on a mission to test some
of Art's newest radar devices, which were intended to generate
easily recognizable reflections whenever they were "scanned"
by a regular radar beam. After a few hours in the air, their
plane developed engine trouble, and it became clear that they
were not going to make it back to their base. They made a
forced landing in the ocean, and hurried to get out of the
airplane before it sank. Bill inflated his lifejacket, and
jumped into the sea. He turned around and saw that Art's
lifejacket would not inflate. A strong wind was rapidly blowing
the plane away and with a sinking feeling, Bill realized that
he might never see Art again.
After drifting for three days, Bill was picked up by a passing
destroyer, and was returned shortly to his base. Despite a
prolonged search, no sign of Art or the downed aircraft was
found.
After the war, Bill became a commercial pilot for Pan-Am, and
in early 1982, was assigned to fly the Hawaii-Tokyo route. On
his second run, Bill was dozing off somewhere over the Pacific,
when he was awakened by his second officer. "Look, sir", his
assistant said, "We're picking up some very strange reflections
on the radar from one of those islands down there".
Bill examined the 'scope closely, and realized there was
something familiar about the reflections, which triggered some
dim memory from the distant past. He studied the screen
intensely for several moments, dredging his memory for clues to
the meaning of those vaguely familiar patterns.
"Oh my God", he suddenly exclaimed, "it's Radars of the Lost
Art!".
--------------------------
How to tell a Republican from a Democrat:
(Published in the Congressional Record, Oct 1, 1974 by Rep Craig
Holsmer [R-Cal]. Quoted from "The Official Rules" edited by Paul
Dickson.)
Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned
somewhere. Republicans form censorship committees and read them
as a group.
Republicans consume three-fourths of all the rutabaga produced
in this country. The remainder is thrown out.
Republicans usually wear hats and almost always clean their
paint brushes.
Democrats give their worn-out clothes to those less fortunate.
Republicans wear theirs.
Republicans employ exterminators. Democrats step on the bugs.
Democrats name their children after currently popular sports
figures, politicians, and entertainers. Republican children are named
after their parents or grandparents, according to where the money is.
Democrats keep trying to cut down on smoking but are not
successful. Neither are Republicans.
Republicans study the financial pages of the newspaper. Democrats
put them in the bottom of the bird cage.
Most of the stuff alongside the road has been thrown out of car
windows by Democrats.
Republicans raise dahlias, Dalmatians, and eyebrows. Democrats
raise Airedales, kids, and taxes.
Democrats eat the fish they catch. Republicans hang them
on the wall.
Democrats make up plans and then do something else. Republicans
follow the plans their grandfathers made.
--------------------------
Contributed by: akgua!glc
For all you folks about to embark on a large project and for all
you Government folks about to fund same, I submit the following
for your contemplation:
When the Aswan Dam was completed in 1967, it was the biggest and
most expensive dam in the world.
The Egyptians expected this "man-made miracle" to prevent the
annual flooding of the Nile River and to generate badly needed
hydroelectric power.
Unfortunately, the Aswan Dam has produced some unexpected
results. For example, the regular flooding of the Nile deposited
rich silt along the banks of the river and, at the same time,
carried away the salts that abound in desert soil. Withe the
building of the dam, the course of nature has been changed.
It became necessary to build fertilizer plants which require
immense amounts of electricity. The drainage ditches built to
irrigate the land now collect large amounts of salt. Drainage
systems and pumps to desalinate the land may coast as much as the
dam itself.
That is not all. The nutrients that were formerly swept
downstream by the river have disappeared. As a result, the
sardine catch dropped by 97 percent within three years after the
dam was built.
There have been other adverse effects, too. When the bill is
added up, it appears that the Aswan Dam produces economic *losses*
as high as $550 million a year.
-- Stanley F. Maxwell
"The Northern Light"
--------------------------
Contributed by: dcc2!douglas
My father handed me this while in church last Sunday :
FORWARD - In the 1930's we went through the GREAT DEPRESSION which covered
a space of about 10 years, the latter part of which was in the Roosevelt
Administration, and Franklin D. created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
(RFC) as a government agency designed to lend money to worthy, but distressed
businesses, primarily as a means to create jobs and pull ourselves up by
our bootstraps. This commentary was prepared at that time, but it might just
as well have occurred in the 1980's, if you have had occasion to deal with
bureaucrats of today.
A New Orleans lawyer sought an RFC loan for a client. He was told
that the loan would be approved if he could prove satisfactory title for
the property offered as collateral. The title went back to 1803, and it
took the lawyer three months to run it all down.
After submitting the title abstract to the RFC, he got this
reply:
"WE RECEIVED TODAY YOUR LETTER ENCLOSING THE APPLICATION FOR THE
LOAN FOR YOUR CLIENT, SUPPORTED BY THE ABSTRACT TITLE. LET US
COMPLIMENT YOU ON THE ABLE MANNER IN WHICH YOU PREPARED THE
APPLICATION. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE NOT CLEARED THE TITLE PRIOR TO
1803, AND THEREFORE BEFORE FINAL APPROVAL CAN BE MADE, IT WILL
BE NECESSARY THAT YOU CLEAR THE TITLE BACK OF 1803".
It would be putting it midly to say that the lawyer was annoyed, and
he brought himself to make this response to the RFC:
"Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received,
and I note that you wish the title search extended back beyond 1803.
I was unaware that any educated man in the world failed to know that
Louisiana was purchased from France in 1803. The title to the land
was acquired by France by right of conquest from Spain. The land
came into possession of Spain by right of discovery in 1492, by a
sailor named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the
privilege of seeking a new route to India by the then reigning
monarch, Queen Isabel. The good queen, being a pious woman, and
as careful about titles almost as much as the RFC, took the
precaution of seeking and securing the blessing of the Pope on the
voyage before she sold her jewels to help Columbus. Now, as I am
sure you must know, the Pope is the emissary of Jesus Christ, who
was the son of God. It is commonly accepted that God created the
earth. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that He also made
that part of the U. S. called Louisiana...and I hope to hell you are
satisfied.
In another version, the last sentence is as follows :
earth. However, there is a different theory, that the Devil created
the earth. If you wish to explore this theory, you can go to hell
and find out for yourself.
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