A long time ago, on a node far, far away (from ucbvax)..... ********* D E C W A R S ! ! ********* From the adventures of luke vaxhacker episode n Luke had grown up on an out of the way terminal cluster whose natives only spoke BASIC, but even he could recognize an old ASR-33. "It needs and eia conversion at least," sniffed 3CPU, who was (as usual) trying to do several things at once. Lights flashed on Con Solo's eyes as he whirled to face the parallel processor. "I've added a few jumpers. The Milliamp Falcon can run current loops around any Imperial TTY Fighter. She's fast enough for you." "Who's your co-pilot?" asked PDP-1 Kenobie. "Two Bacco, here, my bookie." "Odds aren't good," said the brownish lump beside him, and then fell silent, or over. Luke couldn't tell which way was top underneath all those leaves. Suddenly, RS232 started spacing wildly. They turned just in time to see a write cycle coming down the unibus toward them. "Imperial Bus Signals!" shouted Con Solo. "Lets boot this popsicle stand! Tooie, set clock fast!" "Ok, Con," said Luke. "You said this crate was fast enough. Get us out of here!" "Shut up, kid! Two Bacco, prepare to make the jump into system space! I'll try to keep their buffers full." As the bookie began to compute the vectors into low core, spurious characters appeared around the milliamp falcon. "they're firing!" shouted Luke. "can't you do something??" "The jump into system space takes time, kid. One missed cycle and you could come down right in the middle of a pack of stack frames!" "In three to five we can go now," said the bookie. Bright chunks of position independent code flashed by the cockpit as the Milliamp Falcon jumped through the kernel page tables. As the crew breathed a sigh of relief, the bookie started paying off bets. "Not bad, for an acoustically coupled network," remarked 3CPU. "Though there was a little phase jitter as we changed parity." TO BE CONTINUED......... SOME MONTHS LATER......... Luke was feeling rather bored. 3CPU could get to be rather irritating and RS232 didn't really speak Luke's language. Suddenly, luke felt someone's eyes boring through the back of his skull. He turned slowly to see.....nothing. A quiet voice came from somewhere in front of him. "Grasshopper, the carrier is strong within you." Luke froze, which was a good thing since his legs were insisting that he run but they weren't likely to be particular about direction. Luke guessed that his odds of getting lost in the dense tree structures were pretty good. Unfortunately, the bookie wasn't available. "Yes, very strong, but the modulation is yet weak. His network interface is totally undeveloped," the voice continued. A small furry creature walked out of the woods as Luke stared on. Luke's stomach had now joined the rest of his body in loud complaints. Whatever was peering at him was certainly small and furry, but Luke was quite sure that it didn't come from Alpha Centauri. "Well, well," said the creature as it rolled its eyes at Luke. "Frobozz, y'know. morning, name's modem. what's your game? Adventure? D&D? Or are you just one of those apple-pong types that hang around the store demonstrations?" Luke closed his eyes. Perhaps if he couldn't see it, it wouldn't notice him. "H'mm," muttered the creature. "Must use a different protocol. !@@@H @@ @@($5@@@H ]^"G$ @#&@@G_ (O% @@@@%%H(B ?" "No, no," stammered Luke. "I don't speak EBCDIC. I was sent here to become a Unix Wizard. must have the wrong address." "Right address," said the creature. "I am a Unix Wizard. Device drivers are a specialty. Or do you prefer playing with virtual memory?" Luke eyed the creature cautiously. If this was what happened to System Wizards after years of late night crashes, Luke wasn't sure he wanted anything to do with it. He felt a strange affection for the familiar microcomputers of his home. And wasn't virtual memory something you got from drinking too much coke? TO BE CONTINUED.... IF WE'RE NOT LYNCHED...... Gorbachev, Brezhnev, and Stalin are riding in a train when suddenly it comes to a halt. Stalin jumps up infuriated and demands, "Shoot the engineer!" Gorbachev motions for Stalin to sit down. "No, that won't be necessary. We just need to rehabilitate the engine, that's all." Brezhnev turns to Stalin and Gorbachev. "Now gentlemen, you're making much too much of a fuss over this. Let's simply draw the blinds and *pretend* the train is moving." A man decides to buy a horse, and heads down to the local used horse yard. The salesman convinces him to buy one particular horse, which appears in good condition. After he has paid his money, and is saddling up, the salesman tells him, "There's just one thing, the horse used to belong to a minister, so to make it go you have to say 'Praise the Lord', and to make it stop, you have to say 'Amen'". This doesn't seem too much of a problem to the man, who mounts his latest acquisition, and shouts, "Praise the Lord", at which the horse trots out the gate and down the road. The man decides to take his horse for a long ride, and heads out of town and into the hills. Suddenly he realises he is heading for the top of a cliff and panics. "Whoa, stop!!!", he yells, and of course the horse ignores him, and actually speeds up. Now dangerously close to the edge, he contemplates jumping from the horse, which shows no indication of slowing or turning. At the last possible moment, the man remembers the salesman's words, and shouts "Amen!". The horse instantly stops in its tracks, right on the brink of the cliff, sending a shower of stones clattering the hundreds of metres to the bottom. The man pulls out a handkerchief, wipes the sweat from his brow, looks up, and says, "Praise the Lord"..... A bank manager is getting himself acquainted with his fellow workers In one cabin, he meets a man counting money furiously. The B.M. is impressed and asks him his name. The man replies 'Yim Yonson", without even pausing to stop counting. The B.M. is even more impressed, and asks "My dear man where did you learn to count money like that ?" The man replies "Yale" A girl is out on a date, after driving around for sometime her date asks her, "What do you want to do?" She replies, "I want to get weighed" After a lot of looking around, he finally finds a weighing scale, puts in a coin and gets her weight. After some time he again asks her "what do you want to do" Again she replies "I want to get weighed" This goes on for a couple more times, when the date gets really frustrated & drives her back home & dumps her on her front yard. The girl goes in & obviously is looking very depressed. Her mom asks her "How was your date?" "Wousy" A new arrival, about to enter hospital, saw two white coated doctors searching through the flower beds. "Excuse me," he said, "have you lost something?" "No," replied one of the doctors. "We're doing a heart transplant for an income-tax inspector and want to find a suitable stone. A man was roaming around the jungle with a notebook in his hand. After a while he was spotted by a tribe of cannibals, who took him back to their camp for the Chief's dinner. After being placed in the cauldron, the Chief came to him and said : "What was your occupation?" "I was an assistant editor on a newspaper," the man said. The Chief replied : "Oh well, cheer up - soon you'll be an Editor-in-Chief." A lunatic recently escaped from a mental home. He raped 14 women before being captured by police. The newspaper headline read, "NUT BOLTS AND SCREWS!" This is really a true story from 10-15 years ago. The lunatic actually raped a washerwoman at the mental home before escaping. The headline was: "NUT SCREWS WASHER AND BOLTS!" Woman A: "Isn't your new baby lovely. Was your husband present at the birth?" Woman B: "No. He wasn't even present at the conception!" Two little old ladies, who have a very weak eye sight go shopping one day. After shopping a while, they decide to go to the rest room. Mistakenly, they walk into the men's room instead of the ladies room. Two men who are equally desperate to take a leek are standing on the urinals and about to begin. The two ladies walk in and the men not knowing what else to do, put their backs against the wall and pretend that they are part of the rest-room fixtures. The first lady mistaking one of the men for the sink, walks up to him and pulls his penis a couple of time. The man looses control and lets go. She then turns to the other one and says, "Oh, My... you should try this one. It has warm water!" The second lady replies, "No dear, I think I'll stick with this one. It not only has warm water, it dispenses liquid soap as well!! A beautiful young brunette was about to undergo a minor operation. She had been prepared and wheeled along to the operation chamber's door where the nurse had left her to check if the operation staff were ready. Hardly had the nurse left when a young man in a white coat came up to the trolley, lifted the sheet, examined her closely and walked away, nodding reflectively. He consulted with another man in a white coat who then approached the woman, lifted the sheets, examined her intimately and walked away. When a third man appeared and drew back the sheet, the young woman demanded to know when they were going to get on with the operation. "I've no idea lady," the young man said, "we're just painting the corridor." There was a young fellow named Dave, who kept a dead whore in a cave, He said, "I admit, I'm a bit of a shit, but think of the money I save!" Heard from the MacIntosh Distribution List (DL) I love Xerox technology...that is why I bought a Machintosh. An avid hunter had recently undergone a conversion experience. He also had a big hunting trip to Alaska scheduled, and decided to go ahead with the trip. He was standing near a ledge halfway up a mountain, when the Lord spoke to him: "Do you really think you should be out here killing my creatures just for sport?" Well, he thought about it and decided that he must give up hunting, and to make it final he threw his rifle over the cliff he was standing by. He really felt great; his conscience was clean -- then he heard a growl. The former hunter turned around to find himself trapped between the cliff and a giant black bear. "What do I do now Lord?", he asked. Shaking with fear, he prayed, "God, please make this bear a Christian!" Suddenly, the bear knelt down and crossed himself! Then the bear said, "Bless us o Lord, for these thy gifts which we are about to receive ..." New Freeway Signs 12 gauge and over use TRUCK ROUTE RELOADERS use right lane I have a friend who is a pilot on a 747. I said "Hi Jack." He shot me. If you can't convince them, confuse them. -- Harry S. Truman Why does a ship carry cargo and a truck caries shipments? DAILY NEWS, September 7: One in two Californians believes that people are less honest today than they were 10 years ago, according to a statewide poll released today. What's more, many of those surveyed for the latest California poll admitted to committing dishonest acts, according to pollster Mervin Field, but Field thinks that some of those people may have been lying. I recently attended a lecture by Alvy Ray Smith , of Lucasfilm/Pixar. (ever notice how VIPs want us to know their middle names?) Anyway, he was talking about the old days at New York Institute of Technology, where heavy computer animation first took place. The guy who founded NYIT (I cant remember his name) made this statement with regard to their intentions to lower computation time: "We are going to speed up time, and eventually delete it" Sue and Bob, a pair of tight wads, lived in the mid west, and had been married years. Bob had always want to go flying. The desire deepen each time a barn stormer flew into town to offer rides. Bob would ask, and Sue would say, "No way, ten dollars is ten dollars." The years went buy, and Bob figured he didn't have much longer, so he got Sue out to the show, explaining, it's free to watch, let's atleast watch. And once he got there the feeling become real strong. Sue and Bob started an arguement. The Pilot, between flights, overheard, listened to they problem, and said, "I'll tell you what, I'll take you up flying, and if you don't say a word the ride is on me, but if you back one sound, you pay ten dollars. So off they flew. The Pilot doing as many rolls, and dives as he could. Heading to the ground as fast as the plane could go, and pulling out of the dive at just the very last second. Not a word. Finally he admited defeat and went back the air port. "I'm surprised, why didn't you say anything?" "Well I almost said something when Sue fell out, but ten dollars is ten dollars." Out in the old west, in a dingy, two bit town, there was a bar, built of a few pieces of wood, and a couple sheets. A dog came in one hot dusty afternoon and asked for a beer. After the bartender got over his surprise, he yelled "Get out of here, we don't serve your kind." "Not till I get some rye." "Get out of here now!" "No way, I want my drink." The bartender pulled out a rifle and shot the dog in the leg. The dog limbed out, bleeding all over the place. A couple days later the door swings open, there's the dog, dress in a black vest, a big ten gallon hat, and two pearl handled pistels. "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw." I got aquainted with a young widow, observes a writer, who lived with her step-daughter in the same house. I married that widow. Shortly afterward, my father fell in love with the step-daughter and married her. My wife became the mother-in-law and also the daughter-in-law of my own father, and my wife's step-daughter is my step-mother. My father's wife has a boy, who is naturally my step-brother because he is the son of my father and of my step-mother, but because he is the son of my wife's step-daughter, my wife is the grandmother of the little boy, and I am the grandfather of my step-brother. My wife also has a boy. My step-mother is consequently the step-sister of my boy, and also his grandmother because he is the child of her step-son; and my father is the brother-in-law of my son because he has his own step-sister for a wife. I am the brother-in-law of my mother; my wife is the aunt of her own son; my son is the grandson of my father; and I am my own grandfather!!! _______________________ DOES WHOEVER DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WIN? By Lindsy Van Gelder Until my friend Richard installed his hard disk, he had regarded me as a guru; I was first on my block to own a PC back in early 1982; I had initiated Richard and other friends into the mysteries of DOS and helped them put their hardware on speaking terms with their software. But now suddenly it was Richard who was prattling on about "paths" and "trees", sneering at access times of more than a millisecond, and saying that he would rather swim in a suit of armor than go back to floppy disks. I felt digitally dowdy. "But I don't _need_ 40 megabytes," I explained. "I write magazine articles, not corporate mailing lists. It takes me _months_ to fill up a floppy!" Richard just kept looking superior. It was a look I was to get familiar with, as others of my former band of rapt pupils began to pluck down cash for AT closes, extended memory, EGA boards, laser printers and 2400-baud modems. And while some of them unquestionably _needed_ this stuff to run their businesses, a lot of them seemed to be buying it simply because it was there. I'm thinking particularly of the friend who bought a new Mac SE with 20-megabyte hard disk to store his recipes, but there were plenty of less extreme cases. I think we have an epidemic on our hands; a culturally transmitted disease that I'll call hypertechnology. Its major symptom is a fascination with the cutting edge, even among those who are likely to get cut to shreds on it. Lest you think this is all sour grapes, listen to Dr. Harold E. Berson, a New York psychiatrist whose clientele includes many bright, successful people who are hypertechnology victims. According to Berson, they're a subgenre of the "compulsive, Type A personality. They have very high standards, and they want to function on a very high level. Computers fill all those needs--in another era, these people might have bought a new Mercedes every year. Now, they upgrade!" They are on a space-age treadmill, says Dr. Berson, because "the technology changes so fast that they'll never be satisfied. It's a losing game of one-upmanship." (I won't even go into what Dr. Berson had to say about the real meaning of Throughput Envy.) New York technical consultant Jim Kolman, who describes himself as a troubleshooter, sees entire corporations infected with hypertechnology. "Usually by the time a business comes to me, it's already been ripped off by somebody else," says Kolman. "These days vendors are selling computers on the basis of superstition, not reality. I've seen people who thought they needed a 3-megabyte AT to run WordPerfect." What irks Kolman most is the waste. "Before the industry explores one technology, it's moving on to the next. These guys don't have to build a better mousetrap; all they have to do is change the cheese." As a public service, I'm presenting here, for the first time, the Seven Warning Signs of Hypertechnology: 1. When you read about new generations of computers, do you look at your computer and see a Model T Ford? Have you ever fantasized about owning a laptop Cray? 2. Have you, on more than one occasion, had to buy a piece of hardware or software solely to support some other piece of hardware or software that didn't work? 3. Do you lust to put the records for your entire business on a machine with a chip for which no math coprocessor yet exists? 4. Do you suffer from high baud pressure? Have you bought a 2400-baud modem for the express purpose of "saving connect-time dollars," only to find that you use it mostly to chat with your friends on the CB simulator? 5. Do you feel it's reasonable to use a streaming tape unit to back up the three letters you wrote today? 6. Have you thought of installing a local area network at home so that you and your kids can play LodeRunner? 7. Do you think it would be nice to have a computer with 256 function keys? If you answered *yes* more than once, consider yourself a hypertechnology victim. Spend the weekend locked in a small room with a 128K PCjr with one disk drive, and don't come out until you find at least half a dozen worthwhile things you can do with it. You know who you are. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ---- You know you're getting old when.... You actually READ the articles in Playboy! You find your Tony the Tiger Breakfast Bowl in an antique shop! College age people address you as "Sir" or "Ma'am". Scouts offer to help you across the street. You actually enjoy getting up with the sun. You can recall that Paul McArtney had a band before "Wings". You are unbeatable at Trivial Pursuit (The Nostalgia Version). You are too old to die young. You save up your cash to hire a "naughty person" for your birthday, then decide to spend the money on a cellular phone! ----- Heard on the radio: Breast Self-Examination by Phone -------------------------------- Press 1. Now press the other. Everybody knows what *supposedly* happens when you play a 'heavy metal' record backwards, right? Well, what happens when you play a 'country' record backwards? - Your wife/husband comes back to you. - You get your truck back from the bank. - Your mama/daddy gets out of prison. - You finally get sober. - Your Dog comes back to life. What's Jeffrey Dahmer's favorite cookbook? The American HEART Association cookbook. What goes "hoppity clank, hoppity clank"? The Easter Bunny with polio. How Many PRO FOOTBALL TEAMS Can You Identify? ============================================================== 1. 747's (Example) ------ Jets ------ 2. Stupid Sunbather Redskins 3. Wise Sunbather Browns 4. $1.00 for Corn Buckaneers 5. Midnight Snackers Raiders 6. 6 Rulers Vikings 7. Uncles Spouse in the Army Giants 8. Peter & Paul Saints 9. Ewe's Mate Rams 10. Half Bovine-Half Man Cowboys 11. Marine Bird Seahawks 12. Loaders Packers 13. Seven Squared 49ers 14. Indians Leader Chiefs 15. Credit Card User Chargers 16. Henry's First Compact Falcons 17. A Girl's Toy and a Fish's Arm Dolphins 18. Lubricators Oilers 19. American Forefathers Patriots 20. Fundamental Laws Cardinals 21. I.O.U.s Bills 22. Six Shooters Colts 23. Thieves Steelers 24. Streakers Bears 25. King of Beasts Lions 26. Tigers Bengals 27. U.S. Bird Eagles 28. Equine Goes Wild Bronkos Admission's free; pay at the door, Pull up a chair and sit on the floor. I come before you to stand behind you, to tell you something I know nothing about. One fine day in the middle of the night, Two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other, Drew their swords and shot one another. One deaf policeman heard the noise, Came and killed the two dead boys. If you don't believe my tale is true, Just ask the blind man. He saw it too. Have you heard about the world's only Reggae pro hockey team? Bob Marley and the Hartford Wailers. The Germans and the Mexicans are going to have a combined holiday. It's going to be called Cinco de Bismarck. I met a lawyer at a cocktail party. Just to strike up a conversation, I asked him, "What you charge me to just answer three questions?" "Two hundred dollars," he replied. "That's kinda expensive isn't it?", I asked. "Yes," he said . . . "Now what's your third question?" Fred noticed his roommate had a black eye upon returning from a dance. "What happened?" "I was struck by the beauty of the place." A pushy romeo asked a gorgeous elevator operator, "Don't all these stops and starts get you pretty worn out?" "It isn't the stops and starts that get on my nerves, it's the jerks." An airplane pilot got engaged to two very pretty women at the same time. One was named Edith; the other named Kate. They met, discovered they had the same fiancee, and told him. "Get out of our lives you rascal. We'll teach you that you cann't have your Kate and Edith, too." A domineering man married a mere wisp of a girl. He came back from his honeymoon a chastened husband. He became aware of the will of the wisp. A young husband with an inferiorty complex insisted he was just a little pebble on the beach. The marriage counselor told him, "If you wish to save your marriage, you'd better be a little boulder." During a fight, a husband threw a bowl of Jello at his wife. She had him arrested for carrying a congealed weapon. In another fight, the wife decked him with a heavy glass pitcher. She's a women who conks to stupor. Upon reading a story about a man who throttled his mother-in-law, a man commented, "Sounds to me like a practical choker." Lawyer: Did you say the plaintiff was shot in the woods? Doctor: No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region. Real-estate man: Would you like to see a model home? Man: I sure would, when does she get off work? It's the theory of Jess Birnbaum, of Time magazine, that women with bad legs should stick to long shirts because they cover a multitude of shins. It's not the inital skirt length, it's the upcreep. A bachelor is a cagey guy and has a load of fun: He sizes all the cuties up and never Mrs. one. The bank sent our stement this morning. The sheet was a sight of great awe. It figures and mine might have balanced, But my wife was too quick on the draw. Penn's aunts made great pies at low prices. No one else in town could compete with the pie rates of Penn's aunts. A wife started serving chopped meat, monday hamburger, tuesday meat loaf, wednesday tartar steak, and thrusday meatballs. On Friday the morning asked her, "How now, ground cow?" A journalist, thrilled over his dinner, asked the chef for the recipe. The chef answered, "Sorry, we have the same policy as you journalists, we never reveal our sauce." J. Paul Getty was thinking about opening an Italian restaurant, the name, "Sp Getty." The snack bar next door to an atom smasher was called "The Fission Chips." On April Fools day, a mother put a fire cracker under the pancakes. She blew her stack. A new chef from India was fired a week after starting the job. He keep favoring curry. One day, Texas A&M (a local University) decides to perform an experiment to see how people react under stress. They took an engineer, a technician, and a mathmatician and locked them each in seperate rooms for one week, with nothing but water and one can of food. Well, the week ends and the scientists go and open the room. They open the technicians room first, and looking around they see that the walls and the floors are covered in dents, and they look and see that the can has been smashed open, and that the technician is alive and well. They then proceed to the engineer's room. They open the door, and see that one wall is just covered with equations and calculation, and there is one dent in the floor, the can is open, and the engineer is alive and well. Finally, they proceed to the mathmatician's room. They open the door, and they can see that the mathmatician is lying face down in the middle of room. The walls, floors, and ceiling are covered in euations and calculations, and in one corner they can see a line that says "And this proves that the can opener exists." Q: What do you call a teapot of boiling water on top of mount everest? A: A HIGH-POT-IN-USE Q: What do you call a broken record? A: A Decca-gone There are three kinds of people in the world; those who can count and those who can't. Q: How many topologists does it take to change a light bulb? A: It really doesn't matter, since they'd rather knot. A small, 14-seat plane is circling for a landing in Atlanta. It's totally fogged in, zero visibility, and suddenly there's a small electrical fire in the cockpit which disables all of the instruments and the radio. The pilot continues circling, totally lost, when suddenly he finds himself flying next to a tall office building. He rolls down the window (this particular airplane happens to have roll-down windows) and yells to a person inside the building, "Where are we?" The person responds "In an airplane!" The pilot then banks sharply to the right, circles twice, and makes a perfect landing at Atlanta International. As the passengers emerge, shaken but unhurt, one of them says to the pilot, "I'm certainly glad you were able to land safely, but I don't understand how the response you got was any use." "Simple," responded the pilot. "I got an answer that was completely accurate and totally irrelevant to my problem, so I knew it had to be the IBM building." A team of engineers were required to measure the height of a flag pole. They only had a measuring tape, and were getting quite frustrated trying to keep the tape along the pole. It kept falling down, etc. A mathematician comes along, finds out their problem, and proceeds to remove the pole from the ground and measure it easily. When he leaves, one engineer says to the other: "Just like a mathematician! We need to know the height, and he gives us the length!" A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer were given the problem of finding the height of a tall building. The only tool they were given was a barometer. The mathematician decided to use the length of the barometer as a standard length. He measured how many barometer lengths there were from the foot of the tower to a point where the angle that the top of the tower made with the ground was forty five degrees. He then concluded that the height of the tower was the same as the distance he was from the foot of the tower. The physicist climbed to the top of the tower, dropped the barometer, and measured how long it took for the barometer to hit the ground. The engineer went to see the caretaker of the building, and promised to give him the barometer if he told him how high the building was. A mathematician decides he wants to learn more about practical problems. He sees a seminar with a nice title: "The Theory of Gears." So he goes. The speaker stands up and begins, "The theory of gears with a real number of teeth is well known ..." Let us not forget the ever popular ( x | e = f(u ) ) n ^ | Integral sign This is not a joke, but it seems appropriate here... A math major, a computer science major, and a pre-med student (all freshmen) wanted to buy a rug for their new dorm room. They wanted to roughly approximate the size they'd need. The computer science major lay down and used his height to estimate the distance. The pre-med student got a piece of rope and marked off the distance, so that he could measure the rope with a ruler later. The math major counted the tiles (which were 1' square, plus or minus about 1/16", it turned out) on the floor. So, what's the funny part? First of all, all three of these people had tape measures in that very room. Second, this really happened. I know, because I was the math major, and this occurred in my freshman year as an undergrad. A group of scientists were doing an investigation into problem-solving techniques, and constructed an experiment involving a physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician. The experimental apparatus consisted of a water spigot and two identical pails, one of which was fastened to the ground ten feet from the spigot. Each of the subjects was given the second pail, empty, and told to fill the pail on the ground. The physicist was the first subject: he carried his pail to the spigot, filled it there, carried it full of water to the pail on the ground, and poured the water into it. Standing back, he declared, "There: I have solved the problem." The engineer and the mathematician each approached the problem similarly. Upon finishing, the engineer noted that the solution was exact, since the volumes of the pails were equal. The mathematician merely noted that he had proven that a solution exists. Now, the experimenters altered the parameters of the task a bit: the pail on the ground was still empty, but the subjects were presented with a pail that was already half-filled with water. The physicist immediately carried his pail over to the one on the ground, emptied the water into it, went back to the spigot, *filled* the pail, and finally emptied the entire contents into the pail on the ground, overflowing it and spilling some of the water. Upon finishing, he commented that the problem should have been better stated. The engineer, in turn, thought for some time before going into action. He then took his half-filled pail to the spigot, filled it to the brim, and filled the pail on the ground from it. Again he noted that the problem had an exact solution, which of course he had found. The mathematician thought for a long time before stirring. At last he stood up, emptied his pail onto the ground, and declared, "The problem has been reduced to one already solved." Q: What is a logarithm? A: A method of birth control for two sticks. This huge man storms into an insane asylum and starts chasing the people around shouting that he is going to differentiate them. Everyone, needless to say, is terrified of him and is running away. Everyone except one person sitting calmly in a chair. One person running by asks him, "why aren't you trying to get away from him?" He answers calmly "I'm e to the x" Since the universe tends towards chaos, why should my room be the exception? Dmitri Schoeman Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a grape? A: Elephant grape sin \theta. Haha. Q: What do you get when you cross a moswuito with a montain climber? A: You can't cross a vector with a scaler! Hahaha... What's yellow and equiv. to the axiom of choice? Zorn's lemon. No, what *else* is yellow and equivalent to the axiom of choice? Zormello's Pustule. Hahaha. Yuk. What's big, grey, and proves the uncountability of the reals? Cantor's Diagonal Elephant! how can you tell harvard was layed out by a mathematician? The div school [divinity school] is right next to the grad school... ( 1 ) ----- = log cabin cabin ^ Integral sign... 8 5 If lim - = oo (infinity), then what does lim - = ? x->0 x x->0 x answer: (write 5 on it's side) Why did the cat fall off the roof? Because he lost his mu. (mew=sound cats make, mu=coeff of friction) Oops, you forgot your constant of integration. ( 1 ) ----- = log cabin + C cabin And, as we all know, log cabin + C = houseboat "In calculus I have my limits." What follows is a "quiz" a student of mine once showed me (which she'd gotten from a previous teacher, etc...) It's multiple choice, and if you sort this letter (with upper and lower case disjoint, ie on an ASCII machine) questions and answers will come out next to each other. Enjoy... S. What the acorn said when he grew up N. bisects u. A dead parrot g. center F. What you should do when it rains R. hypotenuse m. A guy who has been to the beach H. coincide h. The set of cards is missing y. polygon A. The boy has a speech defect t. secant K. How they schedule gym class p. tangent b. What he did when his mother-in-law wanted to go home D. ellipse O. The tall kettle boiling on the stove W. geometry r. Why the girl doesn't run a 4-minute mile j. decagon How do you send a 2 dimensional man to New York? By Plane. What side of the plane should he sit on? 96.37% of all statistics are made up. A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer were in a train crossing from England into Scotland. Looking out of the window they saw a black sheep. "Scottish sheep are black!" commented the engineer "No, no" said the physicist, "all we can tell is that _some_ Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician looked at both of then with withering disdain, "There is, in Scotland, at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black." A man camped in a national park, and noticed Mr. Snake and Mrs. Snake slithering by. "Where are all the little snakes?" he asked. Mr. Snake replied, "We are adders, so we cannot multiply." The following year, the man returned to the same camping spot. This time there were a whole batch of little snakes. "I thought you said you could not multiply," he said to Mr. Snake. "Well, the park ranger came by and built a log table, so now we can multiply by adding!" Back in the 1700's, the king of a certain small European country had problems with his favorite cow, she wouldn't give any milk. He called for the local scientific community to help him, many stepped forward and did their best, but none was successful. Finally, the court physicist volunteered. He worked day and night for a month without stopping to eat or sleep, only taking a small bit of tea every third day. At the end of the month, he crawled back to the thrown room, whispered "I have the answer!", and died. When other scientists were brought in to decipher his notes, they gave up after the very first line: "Assume the cow is a sphere." When considering the behaviour of a howitzer: A mathematician will be able to calculate where the shell will land A physicist will be able to explain how the shell gets there An engineer will stand there and try to catch it An addicted horse-better decided to try to better his odds on picking the ponies by hiring a mathmetician to determine a way to calculate the odds So he goes to the university and hires the head of the math dept. and pays him $1000. He returns two weeks later and asks the prof. for the anwers. The prof. says that he is not yet finished and needs more time. The bettor then gives him an additional $1000. Another two weeks pass, and again the bettor returns to find the prof. not yet finished. So, after another $1000 incentive the bettor goes home and waits. Five days later, at three in the morning the bettors phone rings. Sure enough it's the professor with the answer. Excitedly the bettor asks for it. The professor replies; "First, assume the horses are spheres...." The firm hired the mathematician and put gave him his first assignment. "We need this in a hurry!!!" Three days later they still hadn't seen any results so they asked their new math whiz how he was coming. He replied" Well, i haven't found the solution yet but I've proven that one exists and it is unique." Q : How to make an elephant sit on a tree ? A : Plant a seed and let the elephant stand on it. Q : How do you get it down ? A : Wait for the fall season. ha ha ha. Q: Why did the elephant fall out of the tree? A: Because it was dead. Q. What did tarzan say when the elephants came walking over the hill? A. Oh look, here come the elephants, walking over the hill. Q. What did tarzan say when the elephants came walking over the hill wearing sunglasses? A. Nothing, he didn't recognize them. Q: What's more difficult than getting two pregnant elephants into a Mini/Geo Metro? A: Getting two elephants pregnant in a Mini/Geo Metro Q: How do you get 4 elephants into a Mini/Geo Metro? A: 2 in the front and 2 in the back Q: How do you know if there is an elephant in your fridge? A: Footprints in the butter/low fat cholestrol, sodium free spread Q: How do you know if there are 2 elephants in your fridge? A: Can't get the fridge door closed Q: How do you know if there are 4 elephants in your fridge? A: There's a Mini/Geo Metro parked outside it. Q: Why are elephants wrinkly? A: Ever tried to iron one? Q: How do you know if there's an elephant in bed with you? A: SHe has a big 'E' on their pyjama jacket pocket. Q: What did Tarzan say when he saw a herd of elephants coming over the hill? A: "Oh look, a herd of elephants coming over the hill." Q: What did Tarzan say when he saw a herd of sunglass wearing elephants coming over the hill? A: Nothing, he didn't recognise them. Q: How do you know if an elephant has been fucking in your back yard? A: The trash can liner bag is missing. Q: How many elephants does it take to change a light bulb? A: Don't be fucking stupid, elephants can't change light bulbs. Why do elephants paint their nuts red? So they can hide in cherry trees... Wot's the loudest sound in the jungle? Tarzan picking cherries... Q. What is the difference between an elephant and a plum? A. They're both purple, except for the elephant. Q. What did Jane say when she saw the elephants coming? A. "Here come the plums." (She was colorblind) Q. Why do elephants wear green hats? A. To walk across a pool table without being seen. Q. Why do ducks have flat feet? A. To stamp out forest fires. Q. Why do elephants have flat feet? A. To stamp out burning ducks. Q: Why do elephants wear springs on their feet? A: So they can jump up in trees and rape monkeys. Q: What sound do monkeys hate most? A: BOING...BOING...BOING... Q: How do you stop an elephant from charging? A: Take away his credit card.