Lifec I

Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 09:24:04 -0800
From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Message-Id: [199412081724.JAA17538@netcom13.netcom.com]
To: JWry.dl@netcom.com
Subject: Life  C.I
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
Status: R

--------------- 
Date: 21 Feb 94 12:00:20 PST (Monday)
Subject: Life  C.I





The following are selections from a mailing list run by: Victor Schwartz

----------------------------------------------------

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function."
                                -- Garrison Keillor

--------------------------

European Travel Tip from Dave Barry

Many travel experts recommend that you take a piece of chalk and place a
distinctive mark on each cathedral you visit, because sometimes the tour
guides, as a prank, will take a group to same one five or six times in a
single afternoon.

--------------------------

(This item, from a recent "Q&A" column in the San Jose Mercury News, is
more "interesting" than "humorous".)

Q:  With e mail access world-wide through services such as Internet and
CompuServe, are there reasonable estimates as to the number of messages
that are sent daily?

A:  About 42.3 million e-mail users worldwide send a rough average of 25
messages a month, according to a recent study, for a daily volume of 35
million messages.  The study was conducted by Eric Arnum, editor of the
Washington-based Electronic Mail and Micro Systems newsletter, which
details some of the findings in its June issue.  Arnum found that 65
percent of the world's e-mail users are in North America, 30 percent in
Western Europe and 5 percent elsewhere.  He found the top 11 countries in
e-mail usage per capita are the United States, Canada, Netherlands, Norway,
Sweden, Britain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Germany, and that
those countries account for 92 percent of all e mail.  Japan, he said, uses
relatively little e-mail, though it leads the world in per capita fax
usage, with one fax machine for every 23 people.

--------------------------

Dave Barry on the Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Triomphe is a moving monument to the many brave men and women
who have died trying to visit it, which we do not recommend because it's
located in the middle of La Place de la Traffic Coming from All Directions
at 114 Miles Per Hour.

--------------------------

(Here's another item which Roy Ogus (Ogus@impact.xerox.com) forwarded from
a collection by cammack@impact.xerox.com:)


You know that little indestructable black box that is used on planes,
 why can't they make the whole plane out of the same substance?

--------------------------

(The following item also comes from the Letters to the Editor section of the
September issue of Consumer Reports magazine.)

Bugged in Texas ...

Once again you have demonstrated your Yankee, big city, anti-pet attitude. 
Your July report on household pests didn't even mention the flea.  As for
mosquitoes, we find that if we build homes with windows less than two feet
by two feet, our Texas mosquitoes can't get in.

TEXARKANA, TEX.                                             E.D.B.

--------------------------

(From the August 16 issue of Adam Engst's TidBITS newsletter:)

**Newton's Law** -- One's affinity to Newton is directly proportional to
how well it recognizes one's handwriting.  -Ross Scott Rubin.  [However, it
is fun to consult the Newton Oracle by drawing squiggles in the NotePad and
seeing how it interprets them.  And then there's the Newton's unfortunate
predilection for recognizing "call" as "kill" - a wee problem when entering
to do items.  -Adam]

--------------------------

(An excerpt from an article in the San Jose Mercury News on 10/27/93.)

"The house must be big to match the trees"

For the co-founder and newly-appointed chairman of Apple Computer Inc.,
building an 18,000-square foot house in Woodside isn't ostentatious.  It's
a simple matter of aesthetics.

The house Clifford Markkula Jr. wants to build would match a grove of
stately, 120-foot redwoods on his 50-acre estate.  The problem is that it
also would be more than twice as big as the town now allows.

Markkula has argued that the redwoods would dwarf anything less than what
he proposed before the town planning commission on Oct. 14.

--------------------------

(A contribution from Roy Ogus (ogus@impact.xerox.com)):

My next-door office mate showed me the fortune he received from a
fortune cookie yesterday:  "Don't take advice from a fortune cookie"

--------------------------

(From today's "News of the Weird" column:)

Robert Williams, a University of Tennessee neurobiologist, has reported
that the brains of successive generations of house cats are getting
smaller, which he says is probably attributable to their association with
humans.

--------------------------

(From the Letters to the Editor column in the December 1993 issue of
Consumer Reports Magazine:)

You referred to the lower prices of American drugs abroad as a form of
"subsidy" from American drug consumers to foreigners.  It is interesting to
note that when the foreigners return the favor by pricing their products
(computers, memory chips, etc.) lower in the U.S. than in their domestic
markets, the practice is known as "dumping."

--------------------------

(From the "Selling It" column in the December 1993 issue of Consumer
Reports Magazine:)

What happened to oil and vinegar?

OLD FAMILY RECIPE@ RANCH DRESSING

INGREDIENTS: SOYBEAN OIL, DISTILLED VINEGAR, WATER, DEHYDRATED BUTTERMILK,
CORN SYRUP, SALT, EGG YOLK, NON-FAT DRY MILK SOLIDS, DEHYDRATED ONION AND
GARLIC, DEXTROSE, SPICES, XANTHAN GUM, POLYSORBATE 60, SODIUM BENZOATE AND
POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVATIVES) PROPYLENE GLYCOL ALGINATE, PARSLEY,
CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA (TO PROTECT FLAVOR), NATURAL FLAVOR.

"Apparently," a Maryland reader notes, "that old family [established 1811,
the label says] had access to some mighty sophisticated ingredients."
What?  Didn't everyone's great-great-grandmother cook with propylene glycol
alginate?

--------------------------

For those women receiving this message who are "ex-married," this item
should be particularly pertinent:

I recently purchased an EXCELLENT spelling-checker program for my
Macintosh, called "Thunder 7."  It has a terrific user interface, but
sometimes surprises me with some spelling corrections it proposes.

In particular, I was corresponding with a colleague, and one of her
messages made reference to her ex-husband.  When I ran the text through
Thunder 7, it didn't like "ex-husband", and proposed the following choices:

 hex-husband
 vex-husband
 sex-husband
 ax-husband
 ox-husband

--------------------------

(On December 13 I sent you an article entitled "IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?".
In a spirit of editorial fairness and "equal time," I bring you an opposing
view, written by Tim Nichols, and forwarded to "Thought for the Day" by
Paul Graziano (graz@rochgte.fidonet.org):)


                  YES DEANNA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS

                        - Tim Nichols (nichols@pixel.kodak.com)


I feel it necessary to respond to the attack on the existance of Santa
circulating the net lately.  The attack argued using Newtonian physics
that Santa couldn't exist given the sheer volume of gifts to be
delivered in the time allowed.  I find that view myopic.

What if Santa were in fact a time traveller from the 24th century.
What if he wound up on our present day Earth by having his shuttlecraft
fall through a temporal distortion.  (This is a very probable happening
as television tells us space is just rife with this sort of plot
device.)

Our traveller chose to land and live at the North Pole as he didn't
want to risk influencing the present and hence disrupt his own future.
But boredom set in as it will, and based on his extensive knowledge of
history he decided to bring the myth of Santa to life.

In an effort to look really cool, he gave the shuttle a rag-top
conversion and a red paint job and called it his sleigh.  The National
Geographic photographers in the area bought this, but then they'd been
out in the cold for a very long time.  "Santa" explained the warp
nacelles as magic runners on his sleigh.  (After all, as the Paclids
say, "They make him go.")

Now, with his Warp 2 capable sleigh he was more than able to visit all
the children in one night.  Force fields explain away all the heat
dissipation difficulties, and the inertial dampers solve all those
nasty acceleration problems.  (My nephew calls them "inertial
dampeners" but I think that's just another name for your bladder.)

Of course he doesn't haul all those toys from the North Pole.  He
simply replicates them using the on-board matter replicator.  This
makes more sense than trying to justify how elves make Nintendo
cartidges anyway.

I'm not certain of the point of the reindeer.  Perhaps they are just 8
plastic lawn ornaments he's using as dashboard clutter.  Kind of the
24th century equivalent of the plastic Jesus.  I've never really
understood geezer-cool anyway.

The only remaining hole is trying to figure out how Santa knows what
you want for Christmas.  Hmmmm...  Well judging by the reported girth
of Santa and the well known beard, I might speculate that Santa is
really Commander Riker.  This could make Counselor Troy Mrs. Claus.
With her empathic abilities she could sense whether you've been bad or
good and know what to get you in either case.  The fact she's only half
empath could also explain why sometimes Santa's insight is a little
fuzzy and you get socks when what you really wanted was Hot Wheels.

So you see, Santa can exist.  He just needs better technology.

--------------------------

(From  1993 "Best & Worst of Everything" article in the January 2 "Parade"
magazine, brought to my attention by Roy Ogus:)

Mum's the Bird

]From "The Houston Chronicle"

A defense attorney in a Northern California murder case says he believes
Max the parrot may hold the answer to who smothered Jane Gill to death in
her bedroom two years ago.  But an attempt to get the African gray parrot's
testimony into evidence last week was blocked by the judge.

Max was found dehydrated and hungry in his cage two days after Gill's
murder.  After the parrot was coaxed back to health at a pet shop, the
shop's owner said the bird began to cry out, "Richard, no, no, no!"  The
man charged in the case is Gill's business partner, and his name is not
Richard.  He says he is innocent.

Gary Dixon, a private investigator working on the case, surmised that the
bird is now in a witness-protection program.  "Max's identity has been
changed, and his now a macaw," he said.

--------------------------

(From  1993 "Best & Worst of Everything" article in the January 2 "Parade"
magazine, brought to my attention by Roy Ogus:)

Best Legal Comment

By Malcolm Ford, to his preschool classmates on what his father, Harrison
Ford, does for a living:

"My daddy is a movie actor, and sometimes he plays the good guy, and
sometimes he plays the lawyer."

--------------------------

Concerned about the volume of electronic mail you receive?  (E.g., junk
mail like Victor's "Thought for the Day?!)

McWhorter's Stationers is selling a Micro General "Electronic Mail Scale"
for $45.99.

--------------------------

Left to their own devices, the three networks would televise live executions.  Except Fox  --  they'd televise live naked executions.

                                     --  TV producer Gary David Goldberg

--------------------------

Why is it "A penny for your thoughts," but, "you have to put your two cents in?"

Somebody's making a penny.

                                     -- Steven Wright

--------------------------

"An (industry) analyst gets paid to 'shoot from the lip'."

                          -- Peter Kastner
                             (an industry analyst with the Aberdeen Group)

--------------------------

At a training class this week, an Informix colleague from England used the
following phrase to describe a difficult task:

"It's like pushing water uphill with a rake."

--------------------------

"I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of a hill."
                                  -- Erma Bombeck

--------------------------

(Are you a Usenet user?  If so, you can almost certainly relate to this.
For those of you who do not follow any newsgroups on the Usenet system, you
problem have similar experiences with "flaming" on e-mail distribution
lists.

This item comes to me via the following hand-offs:

bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein) =] christophe@taligent.com (Christopher
Pettus) =] Micah Doyle =] diane_olsen@genmagic.genmagic.com)


How many USENET posters does it take to change a lightbulb?

A1. Define "change"

A2. How do you know the lightbulb is out?

A3. Don't use the word "posters" to describe us, it's offensive to large
sheets of papers with pictures on them which hang on walls.

A4. That question is not appropriate for this group, please take it elsewhere.

A5. I think it's perfectly appropriate, this is alt.fan.lightbulbs.

A6. Well, that's because you're a twit.

A7. Who are you calling a "twit"? Besides, you spelled "twit" wrong.

A8. Oh? And how exactly do *you* spell "twit", twit?

A9. Could you two take this to e-mail? Doesn't anyone want to talk about
lightbulb fans instead of flaming?

A10. You're a twit also, who died and made you net.cop?

A11. Look, all of you, take it to alt.flame or e-mail or something.

A12. Hey, USENET is an anarchy, you have no right to tell them what to post
or not post.

A13. Speaking of anarchists, why don't you all vote for Andre Marrou,
Libertarian Party Candidate for President?

A14. Because the Libertarians are all twits.

A15. Waitaminit! Now we're arguing politics on alt.fan.lightbulb????

A16. Stop wasting bandwidth with this stuff!

A17. What "stuff" pray tell?

A18. Yikes! It's dark in here!

A19. Define "dark".

A20. I mean the lightbulb must be out.

A21. So change it.

A22. Define "change"...
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