From:	IN%"SEWALL@UCONNVM.bitnet"  "Murph Sewall"  9-NOV-1990 10:11:18.12
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Subj:	Another missive from Henry Cate III (need I say more :-)

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From: Murph Sewall <SEWALL@UCONNVM.bitnet>
Subject: Another missive from Henry Cate III (need I say more :-)
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To Live is to risk Dying
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
If a lawyer and an IRS agent were both drowning, and you could
only save one of them, would you go to lunch or read the paper?
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Q.  Why did the lawyer drive his truck off a cliff?
A.  He wanted to test his air brakes.
 
Q.  Why did the lawyer drive his car into a tree?
A.  He wanted to hear its bark.
 
Q.  Why did the very lawyer drown in the kitchen sink?
A.  He was trying to learn tap dancing.
 
Q:  How many lawyers does it take to stop a moving bus?
A:  Never enough.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Have you heard about the lawyers word processor?  No matter what font
you select, everything come out in fine print.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
BTW, 4 out of 5 doctors say that if they were stranded on a deserted
island with no lawyers, they wouldn't need ANY aspirin.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Pete Rose is very depressed today.  His lawyer informed him that his
suspension is for the duration of *his* lifetime, not that of the
comissioner....
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
What do you call a girl who likes her computer more than her
boyfriend?  An infomaniac.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Why does hamburger have less energy than steak?
Because hamburger is in a ground state.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
(From the 10 September edition of the "News of the Weird" column
in the San Jose Mercury News)
 
 
When Lebanese police raided a print shop in West Beirut recently, they
found 2,000 copies of an unauthorized Arabic edition of Salman Rushdie's
"The Satanic Verses," banned almost everywhere in the Muslim world, but
which had been ordered for the private libraries of the Muslim Shiite
leadership.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
The following joke is being told by the Belgian comedian Urbanus van Anus:
 
Yesterday I met a person who said, "Hey, did you know that since your
show started on television, TV sales have doubled?"
 
I beamed proudly, until he said, "Yes, I sold mine, too."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Why do fireman were red suspenders?
 
To hold their pants up.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Read in the "Quoatable Quotes" section of Readers Digest:
 
	"The best kind of humor is that which makes me
laugh for 5 seconds, and think for 10 minutes."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
My brother and I took a few road trips across the Missouri-Kansas-Colorado
strip over the years.  Alan really liked to stop at Mcdonalds for lunch.
He'd get a large Iced-Tea "to go".
 
About fifty to eighty miles down the road, we'd pull into the next
McDonalds, and go through the drive-thru.  At that time, McDonalds
would give free refills for iced tea.  And that is what my brother
would order!  One time, he got seven (7) refills, starting in Lawrence,
Kansas, and going all the way to Denver, for a drink he bought in
Kansas City!
 
This was during those HOT summers, and anyone who has driven I-70 across
Kansas in August knows exactly what I mean!
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
I've got a friend who was tired of always getting his order screwed up at
the golden arches.  One day, he drove up and ordered:
 
	"1 Big Mac, cold; 1 large fries, spilled all over the bag;
	 A strawberry shake so thick you can't suck it through a straw;
	 and no napkins!"
 
        Attendant: "Huh?"
        Friend: "That's what I got last time I came here."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
       Jim Bakker was found to be sane when his first words upon
    entering the psychiatric ward for testing last week were:
         "How did I do? Do you think they bought it?"
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
As *most* women lie about their age, (including me!) I had to
laugh at a dedication by an author into a novel I am reading,
It was from Virginia Henley to her husband:
 
She wrote: For my husband Arthur,
           When we married thirty-three
           years ago, we were the same age;
           now, however, I'm *much* younger!
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
The best I've ever heard is where there were 7 stations on a server named
SnowWhite and the stations were named, you guessed it, Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy,
Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, and Doc.  Imagine getting mail from someone@Dopey...
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Well, I work as a Student Assistant in the computer center here at Dartmouth,
where about 95% of the students have macs, and the dumbest question we've
ever gotten had to be from a student who walked in one day with a troubled
look on her face. She explained that the little lightbulb in her mac screen
had burnt out, and she wanted to know where could she get a replacement bulb
for it... ;-) ;-) ;-)
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
True story from Kentucky:
 
A friend's car battery needed water.  She phoned the nearest
convenience store and asked, "Do you have distilled water?"
 
The reply:  "I don't know; we just got in a new bunch of videos and I
haven't checked all the titles."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
There was a king long, long ago... who had a castle built high upon a rocky
bluff.  One day he noticed grass growing in the courtyard, so he had one of
the court's pages go out to cut it with a scythe.  He found, however, that
the scythe was magically turned away.  Next, he assigned his knights to go
out there and hack at it with their weapons--and again, they were magically
turned away.  [Long description of attempts to cut the growing grass.]
 
Finally, in desperation, he turned to his court jester, asking if the
jester had any ideas.  The jester thought long and hard, and finally said,
"I've got it!" and went out into the courtyard.  The king hurried after
him, but got there only in time to see all the grass dying off as the
jester muttered something unintelligible.  The king asked "What did you
do?" and the jester replied "Everyone knows the pun is mightier than the
sward."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
PACHYDERMIC PERSONNEL PREDICTION
 
A bold new proposal for matching high-technology people and professions
 
Over the years, the problem of finding the right person for the right
job has consumed thousands of worker-years of research and millions of
dollars in funding.  This is particularly true for high-technology
organizations where talent is scarce and expensive.  Recently, however,
years of detailed study by the finest minds in the field of
psychoindustrial interpersonnel optimization have resulted in the
development of a simple and foolproof test to determine the best match
between personality and profession.  Now, at last, people can be
infallibly assigned to the jobs for which they are truly best suited.
 
The procedure is simple: Each subject is sent to Africa to hunt
elephants.  The subsequent elephant-hunting behavior is then categorized
by comparison to the classification rules outlined below.  The subject
should be assigned to the general job classification that best matches
the observed behavior.
 
CLASSIFICATION GUIDLINES
 
Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out
everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is
left.  Experienced mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of
at least one unique elephant before proceeding to step 1 as a
subordinate excercise.  Professors of mathematics will prove the
existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection
and capture of an actual elephant as an excercise for their graduate
students.
 
Computer scientists hunt elephants by excercising Algorithm A:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent
   alternately east and west.
4. During each traverse pass,
   a. Catch each animl seen.
   b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
   c. Stop when a match is detected.
 
Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known
elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate.  Assembly
language programmers prefer to execute Algorithm A on their hands and
knees.
 
Engineers hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at
random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15
percent of any previously observed elephant.
 
Economists don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are
paid enough, they will hunt themselves.
 
Statisticians hunt the first animal they see N times and call it an
elephant.
 
Consultants don't hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at
all, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do.
Operations research consultants can also measure the correlation of hat
size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies,
if someone else will only identify the elephants.
 
Planners, who haven't the faintest idea what an elephant looks like or
where it lives, will nonetheless plan a perfect utopia in which these
hypothetical elephants are to be hunted.  Of course, this utopia (with
five, ten, fifteen, and twenty year horizon plans) will never be
achieved.  This is because all the other hunters are too damn busy
already hunting or can't afford the costs of administering the best-case
social delivery system of manufactured alternative Indian Palm Trees.
Of course, it really doesn't matter, a federal grant paid for all those
studies.
 
Politicians don't hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you
catch with the people who voted for them.
 
Lawyers don't hunt elephants, but they do follow the herds around
arguing about who owns the droppings.  Software lawyers will claim that
they own an entire herd based on the look and feel of one dropping.
 
Vice presidents of engineering, research, and development try hard to
hunt elephants, but their staffs are designed to prevent it.  When the
vice president does get to hunt elephants, the staff will try to ensure
that all possible elephants are completely prehunted before the vice
president sees them.  If the vice president does see a nonprehunted
elephant, the staff will (1) compliment the vice president's keen
eyesight and (2) enlarge itself to prevent any recurrence.
 
Senior managers set broad elephant-hunting policy based on the
assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper
voices.
 
Quality assurance inspectors ignore the elephants and look for mistakes
the other hunters made when they were packing the jeep.
 
Salespeople don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants
they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens.
Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an
invoice for an elephant.  Hardware salespeople catch rabbits, paint them
gray, and sell them as desktop elephants.
 
VALIDATION
 
A validation survey was conducted about these rules.  Almost all the
people surveyed about these rules were valid.  A few were invalid, but
they expected to recover soon.  Based on the survey, a statistical
confidence level was determined.  Ninety-five percent of the people
surveyed have at least 67 percent confidence in statistics.
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
 
This study has benefited from the suggestions and observations of many
people, all of whom would prefer not to be mentioned by name.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
This story was related to me yesterday at lunch by a fellow manager, who
heard it from his dad (guaranteed true...)  Phenominal testimony that
physics shall not be denied, with some small humor value as well.
 
This story involves railroad cars, Denver and a fascinating gadget used in
auto wrecking yards called a 'chipper'.  Apparently this device is fed
old auto carcasses, and it in turn produces manageable-sized 'chips' of
metal.
 
Seems that on this eventful evening, four gondola cars were filled by a
chipper and headed out of Denver around dusk.  Somewhere along the track,
on an uphill grade, something mechanical failed on one of the cars, and
the train pulled to a siding to uncouple it.  The dutiful crew chocked
the wheels with rocks, wood chunks, etc. and then proceeded to unhook the
car.
 
Seems no one had the slightest idea of the mass being packed in that unit,
as the rocks/wood held it in place for about 6 seconds.  Since the crew
had not yet re-switched the tracks (they thought the rest of the train would
be returning to the main line) the gondola car soon found itself back on the
main trackline, heading back into Denver.
 
The engineer sprinted to the engine and full-throttled the thing after the
car.  After 15 minutes, he still didn't even have a visual on it, so he
abandoned the engine, flagged down the nearest car, and drove to the
nearest station, from which he radioed the situation that this car was
cranking toward town and no one knew exactly where it was.
 
The station crews immediately calculated the correct combination of switches
to route this car on the straightest course thru Denver, the rail yard, and
out the other side, then remotely downed every crossing gate they could,
followed by dispatching crews, cops and civil servants to down the rest
 of the crossing arms manually and staff the intersections.
 
Several witnesses testified that the gondola car passed their locations at
between 85 and 90 MPH.
 
Whilst traversing the rail yard, the car was forced to execute a slight
left-hand curve in the track on its way out of Denver.  The "post mortem"
revealed that the curved section of track was "stretched" and displaced
8 feet to the right by the car.
 
Immediately upon leaving the yard, two of the fastest engines they had were
dispatched, full-throttle, in hot pursuit of the errant gondola car.
Since dusk had now turned into evening, no one could get a visual on the car,
but it did proceed out of Denver until it hit yet another uphill grade, at
which time the pendulum effect took over...
 
The drivers of the engines (serially-coupled) suddenly saw a dark blob
approaching them on the track,  They quickly (?) slammed the engines into
reverse, but could see after about a minute that they were not gaining
any ground on this car, so they jumped from the cab.
 
One of them, looking back at the impact, noted that, although the mass of
the two engines was sufficient to stop the car, the front coupling assembly
of the lead engine was obliterated, and the front engine was "lifted in
place and set back down" by the impact.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Having just returned from a brief visit to Puerto Rico, I must report
how well the mixed english/metric system has made live easier on
the island.
 
All speed limits are posted in Miles Per Hour
All distances on the highway are posted in Kilometers
 (however short distances are posted in feet & inchs)
 
Therefore it is normal to see the following three signs next to each other:
 
       ----------           ------------          -------------
       |        |           |          |          |           |
       | SPEED  |           |  PONCE   |          |  MAXIMUM  |
       |        |           |          |          |           |
       | LIMIT  |           |  55 KM   |          | CLEARANCE |
       |        |           |          |          |           |
       |  55    |           | SAN JUAN |          |   12'6"   |
       |        |           |          |          |           |
       |  MPH   |           |  285 KM  |          |           |
       ----------           ------------          -------------
 
---
 
Just think how this must translate to one of the old common math problems
assigned in school:
 
1) Train A (comprised of an engine, 22 box cars and a caboose) leaves San
   Juan at 12 noon south-bound for Ponce.
 
   Train B (comprised of an engine, 16 box cars and a caboose) leaves Ponce
   15 minutes later north-bound for San Juan.
 
   There is only one stretch of double track where the trains may pass
   safely.  This starts 100KM south of San Juan and is 2.5KM long.
 
   It is 230KM from San Juan to Ponce (from front of engine)
   Train A travels at 45MPH
   Engines are 52'6" long
   Box Cars are 42'8" long
   Cabooses are 30'4" long
 
   What is the slowest and fastest speeds at which Train B may travel
   to safely pass Train A?
 
---
 
Or, of a slightly more topical nature:
 
[Radio Anouncer] Hurricane Hugo is 120 KM East South East of the Island
and is aproching at 18 Miles Per Hour.  That means we should expect the
center of the storm to pass over this area in .... er.... about .. ah...
But, first a word from our sponsor.
 
