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From: Murph Sewall <SEWALL@UCONNVM.bitnet>
Subject: We haven't heard from Henry in a while; better late than never
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    This is probably old, but I heard it from a friend for the first time
    a couple of days ago:
 
        Two Kentuckians [or your favorite ethnic/social group] were driving
        a semi down a road when they came to a viaduct.  The sign said 10 feet
        zero inches, so they got out to measure their truck.  Unfortunately,
        the truck was just over 12 feet high.  They didn't know what to do,
        when finally one of them looked both directions and said, "I don't
        see any cops, let's go for it.!"
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
 
A telephone sales person makes a call to an unknown prospect and
a very small, very soft, very quiet, and obviously young person
answers the phone.
 
Sales person: Hello, may I speak to the man of the house please?
 
Youngster: (whispering)  No, he's busy.
 
Sales person: Well then, can I please speak to your mother?
 
Youngster: (in a whisper)  She's busy too.
 
Sales person: I see, how about your brother?  Can I speak to him?
 
Youngster: (whispering)  No.  He's busy too.
 
Sales person: (losing patience) Is your sister there?  Can I talk to her?
 
Youngster: (in a whisper)  She's busy too.
 
Sales person: ( by now quite exasperated)  What are all these people
doing that keeps them so busy?!!!
 
Youngster: (still whispering) Looking for me.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
	Three old ladies are sitting in a diner, chatting about various things.
One lady says, "You know, I'm getting really forgetful. This morning, I was
standing at the top of the stairs, and I couldn't remember whether I had just
come up or was about to go down."
	The second lady says, "You think that's bad? The other day, I was
sitting on the edge of my bed, and I couldn't remember whether I was going to
bed or had just woken up!"
	The third lady smiles smugly. "Well, my memory's just as good as it's
always been, knock wood." She raps the table. With a startled look on her face,
she asks, "Who's there?"
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
In New York City, Mayor David Dinkins's City Hall ceremony to
honor the Super Bowl champion Giants had to be canceled after
it was discovered that no one had invited the team.
 
	-- The American Spectator, April 1991
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Heard on a local radio station:
 
Have you heard that Teddy Kennedy is running for office in Baghdad?
 
Since all the bridges are gone, he should be a shoo-in.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Top Ten Things Saddam Hussein has to do Before January 15
(Late Night With David Letterman - 1/10/91)
 
 
10.  Call Jacoby & Mayers about will.
9.  Get the best damn ear plugs money can buy.
8.  Try the McRibs (they're for a limited time only).
7.  Week of appearances on "The Match Game".
6.  Take some time to stop and smell the camels.
5.  Get the Bat Signal to work.
4.  RSVP "no" to wedding invitation from Stacy Ellis & Michael Tierney
of Duluth, Minnesota.
3.  Take the New York City cab drivers test.
2.  Shower.
1.  Fill out post office change of address card for hell.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Do you know what Saddam Hussein and the almost champion  L. A. Lakers have in
common?
 
Neither of them can shoot with any accuracy over Jordan.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Saddam sends a battalion of the elite Republican Guard troops south to Kuwait
to reinforce the troops already there.  The battalion commander is at the front
of the column, in a jeep, scanning the horizon with binoculars.  He sees a lone
Marine standing at the top of a hill, holding up his middle finger.
 
The commander dispatches an armored personnel carrier to attack the Marine.  As
the carrier nears the top of the hill, the Marine disappears, and soon the
carrier disappears over the hilltop, too.  There's a lot of noise and smoke,
then all is quiet.  The Marine reappears, this time both arms upraised, with
both middle fingers extended.
 
Enraged, the commander signals for a whole column of tanks to go destroy the
American.  The tanks rumble up over the hill, there's a tremendous commotion,
and then all is quiet.
 
The commander is about to send the whole battalion over the hilltop when a lone
Iraqi soldier, bruised and bloodied, comes crawling over the hilltop, into
view.  The soldier painfully cups his hands to his mouth and shouts something.
The commander strains to hear.  "Go back, go back.  It's a trap.  There's TWO
of them."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
A woman goes into a sporting goods store to buy a rifle. "It's for my
husband," she tells the clerk. "Did he tell you what gauge to get? asked the
clerk. "Are you kidding?" she says. "He doesn't even know that I'm going to
shoot him!" -Cindy
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
How do you know when your divorce is getting ugly?
 
When your lawyer doesn't seem like a bloodsucking leech anymore...
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Experts are people who know a great deal about very little and who go
along learning more and more about less and less until they know
practically everything about nothing.
 
Lawyers, on the other hand, are people who know very little about many
things and keep learning less and less about more and more until they
know practically nothing about everything.
 
Judges are people who start out knowing everything about everything but
end up knowing nothing about anything because of their constant
association with experts and lawyers.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
If you laid all of the lawyers in the world, end to end, on the equator
 
It would be a good idea to just leave them there.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
The story around Harvard was that there was a graduate Math course
whose final always consisted of "Make up an appropriate final exam for
this course and answer it.  You will be graded on both parts."
 
Then one year, a student answered as follows:
 
The exam is: "Make up an appropriate final exam for this course and
answer it.  You will be graded on both parts."  The answer is: "Make
up an appropriate final exam for this course and answer it.  You will
be graded on both parts."
 
His reasoning was that since that was the best exam the professor
could write, it certainly ought to be good enough for a student.
 
He got an A.  The professor specifically prohibited that answer from
then on.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
  A ``small college story'' going around here (at least three people
have told me this story, each one claiming it was them):
 
  A student, working on a rather long math homework assignment,
discovered that one problem fairly easy to solve, except that it
required about three pages of fairly simple proof after the one
or two difficult steps.  It being rather late at night, he did the
difficult steps and left the proof undone, along with a note:
 
 ``this proof is left as an exercise for the grader.''
 
  Next week, he received his homework back.  He noted that several extra
pages had been stapled to the back of it.  Examining the extra pages,
he was surprised to find the entire proof written down step-by step.
At the end, in red pen, the grader had written:
 
 ``I made a minor math error.  minus 2.''
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
From: reg@pinet.aip.org (Dr. Richard Glass)
 
While taking a psych. course in college, the teacher had a habit of
putting the following questions on an exam:
 
"Ask yourself a question and answer it"
 
Being a math major,
I asked myself "Solve the following differential equation [* equation
deleted *] under the following conditions [* conditions deleted *]"
 
and proceeded to solve it.
 
The next day I stopped by the math office to see one of the profs.  He
told me "go away, I'm stuck grading your stupid psych. exam"
 
I got full credit, and the psych prof. never put that question on an
exam again.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
From: neufeld@aurora.physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld)
 
   Well, I've got a favorite story from my Math-Phys course in
undergrad. I figure the statute of limitations on the marks has expired
now, so here goes.
   The typical problem, show <expr> is equal to <much simpler expr>. The
math was pretty nasty, and half-way through it looked like I'd need a
clue to getting to the answer, so I went to the result and tried to work
it back to the intermediate result (typical test/homework trick). They
didn't meet. I had two expressions which I knew were equal from plugging
into the calculator, but I couldn't show it algebraically. So, I used
another familiar trick, between the two lines I wrote:
ICBS (it can be shown) and stuck it between the two pieces I couldn't
connect.
Now, somebody else in the class did the same thing, exactly, and got
stuck in exactly the same place. He wrote:
TAMO (then a miracle occurs) in the same place.
   I got full marks, he lost marks and got a sarcastic comment from the
corrector.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
a professor was known for being an easy grader.  the grades he gave for a
survey course (i.e. the type where you are expected to learn generalities and
not specifics) were based entirely on two exams, and the stuff on the exams
was entirely covered in the textbook.  so showing up for class wasn't a big
deal.  however, this started to get out of hand.  as word of the course spread,
each term there was a larger block of students who would show up infrequently
or not at all, except for the exam days.  finally, it got so bad that about
half of the students one term never showed before the midterm.  the say of the
midterm everyone came in, and a graduate assistant handed out exams.  "prof
x. is sick, so he asked me to give you your exams."
 
there was only one question in the exam booklets: "which one of the pictures
below is of professor x?"
 
obviously, the students who never showed up didn't know and had to guess.  many
failed, while the students who had been showing up regularly got As.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
When I used to work on an oil rig, there were several of these that we
used on new "hands".  Many require knowledge of the field, but one of
my favorites was when we told one new guy to run down to the tool room
and get the pipe stretcher.  He returned after several minutes looking
kind of desperate and said he couldn't find it anywhere.  We said it
was okay because we didn't have time to wait, so we went ahead and
stretched it by hand...  He didn't catch on for another few days.
 
---------------------------------------------------
 
Mail 5$ cash to the following organizations with a typed letter from the
offending party expressing deep interest in their organizations:
 
The NRA
Scientology
The Unification Church
Westech
 
 
Depending on their particular peeves, of course.
 
 
you forgot:
 
KKK
American Nazi Party
Atheists of America
 
somebody did this to me almost 10 years ago... i still receive flyers
and junk mail.
 
these suckers are persistent!  i mean, i've moved 5 times!
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
At any wedding, there are a couple of gifts that have lost tags, are
signed simply "Best Wishes, Aggie" and so on.  Then there are a bunch of
gifts from people you barely know, or that the in laws barely know, and from
people whose last names you never remember, or from a neighbor you lived
next to a decade ago, or are from an n-th cousin that was invited, but
nobody knows how because nobody knew the n-th cousin existed.
 
At my brother's wedding, at least 25 presents ranging from melon ballers to
soap dishes to picture frames fit into this category.  And most of them were
from me.  All it took was about fifty dollars and half an hour in a kitchen
supply shop.
 
After they opened the third melon baller in a row, the happy couple started
to compare handwriting on the cards.  My co-workers all had had a lovely time
filling out the cards, so no two had the same greeting or handwriting.  Most
of them, I didn't even know what was on the card (other than the name...).
 
Then they compared wrapping paper and ribbons.  Sure, some were the same,
but there seem to be about 10 different patterns of wedding paper, and
only a couple weren't duplicated somewhere.  And there are always a couple
gifts wrapped in something that everybody knows is the Christmas paper that
doesn't look as Christmas-sy as the rest of the Christmas paper.
 
Then the happy couple started to compare names.  Some of the last names
had been culled from the more common surnames on the family trees of both
families up to three generations back.  The rest of the last names were
pulled out of the phone book, by picking a name that was not uncommon,
like Johnson, Schwartz, Huber, Peterson, or Taft.  Who didn't go to school
with or know someone with a name like that?  (Names like Smith or Dudley
Fudpucker were ruled out as too obvious.)  The first names were all
relatively common names.
 
And then the happy couple's parents would say something helpful like "Just
write it down; we'll figure it out later."  "Wasn't your aunt's first
husband's name XXX?"  "Grandma knew a YYY back in Clinton."
 
Of course, the *real* fun began afterwards, when they had to write
thank you notes.  How do you find an address for John Wilson if you
don't even know where he's from?
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
(Found in Bill Kirby's "Piney Woods Wit" column, Gwinnett Daily News,
  Duluth, Ga    5 Dec 1990)
 
  A poor farm boy in Wayne County, Ga. left home to make his way in
the world.  He walked into town and stopped by the local church to
ask about work.
 
  "The Lord's answered your prayers," said the pastor.  "Our church
janitor just quit and we can hire you on the spot.  Just fill
out this form."
 
  "I'm sorry," said the young man, "but I never learned to so much
as write my name."
 
  "Oh, I'm sorry," the pastor said, "but we can't hire you.  What
if the phone were to ring when everyone was out?  Why, you couldn't
even take a message."
 
  The young man was discouraged, so he continued walking down the
road all the way to the coastal city of Brunswick.  There he found
work as a fisherman.  He saved his money and after a year invested
in a restaurant.  It became popular and he became wealthy...so rich,
in fact, that he decided to open a chain of seafood restaurants.  A
big loan was needed, so he hopped in his private jet and flew to meet
with a banker in Atlanta.
 
  Everything went well, and finally the banker pushed a paper
toward him to sign for the loan.  "I'm sorry," the young man said,
"but I never did learn to sign my name."
 
  "Goodness," said the Atlanta banker, "you're one of the wealthiest
men in the state.  Just think, where would you be now if you could
write your name?"
 
  "I guess," the young man said, "I'd be a church janitor in Wayne
County, Georgia."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
[From the "Around New York" column of the New York Times, April 3, 1991]
 
COURT SAYS LEGAL AID LAWYERS HAD RIGHT TO WEAR BUTTONS
 
A state appeals court ruled yesterday that Legal Aid Society lawyers
had a constitutional right to wear "Ready to Strike" buttons in
October, when they argued their cases in court.
 
The lawyers were wearing the buttons to signify their support of a
threatened strike. But Justice George Roberts of State Supreme Court
ordered them to remove their buttons in his Manhattan courtroom on the
ground they could prejudice the court and upset their clients.
 
The Apellate division of the State Supreme Court said "the mere act of
wearing a button" was protected by the Constitution's guarantee of
free speech.
 
Justice Richard W. Wallach pointed out in a concurring opinion that
Justice Roberts had said he would have allowed non-political buttons
such as those that said "Save the Whales". But Justice Wallach issued
a caution to all lawyers:
 
"If the choice had to be made between saving the lives of lawyers  or
saving whales, there is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of
Americans would come down on the side of the whales"
