Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically. ------------ A UNIX saleslady, Lenore, Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more. She found a good way To combine work and play: She sells C shells by the seashore. ------------ In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length. ------------ What color is a chameleon on a mirror? ------------ Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it to him. So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path, he met the traveling salesman. "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman in high-level language. "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips and Apples," commented Jack. "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now." Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she started thrashing. "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the window... -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack" ------------ "355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!" ------------ It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~ aboard her shell script, custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore freedom and games to the network... -- DECWARS ------------ Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points. -- M. M. Johnston ------------ The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the pavement is precisely 1 bananosecond. ------------ Got Mole problems? Call Avogadro at 602-1023. ------------ Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything. -- Bob Dylan ------------ 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 three 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. ------------ C Code. C Code Run. Run, Code, RUN! PLEASE!!!! ------------ 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR (1) Scarecrow for centipedes (2) Dead cat brush (3) Hair barrettes (4) Cleats (5) Self-piercing earrings (6) Fungus trellis (7) False eyelashes (8) Prosthetic dog claws . . . (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors) (100) Killer velcro (101) Currency ------------ Television is a medium because anything well done is rare. -- attributed to both Fred Allen and Ernie Kovacs ------------ It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. ------------ From the "Guiness Book of World Records", 1973: Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground)." ------------ Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks. ------------ Just because they are called 'forbidden' transitions does not mean that they are forbidden. They are less allowed than allowed transitions, if you see what I mean. -- From a Part 2 Quantum Mechanics lecture. ------------ After taking Linux off my computer, I no longer have access to KDE Fortune. But I think there was a Richard Feynmann quote in there that went something like this: All theoretical chemistry is really physics, and all theoretical chemists know this.