Sir Humphrey Davy Detested gravy. He lived in the odium of having discovered Sodium. Edmund Clerihew Bentley %% The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. Paul Ehrlich %% It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. Gore Vidal %% Rupert Murdoch, with glee, shouted "What a lot of newspapers I've got! I've just got to get the 'Beekeeper's Gazette' and 'War Cry', and I've got the lot!" %% LISP programmers (do it). %% Everything can be expressed in first order logic, even irony. %% There was a young lady called Muffet, who sat spooning whey on a tuffet, When a hairy arachnid, in terms coarse and hackneyed, succinctly enjoined her to stuff it. %% How it really happened number 47: Poet: [walking through contryside] What did you say those yellow ones are called? Buttercups? Companion: Daffodils, Mister Wordsworth. %% How it really happened number 13: Newton: [Groans]. My head doth ache, and I do tremble as though I had an ague. If I ever catch the slippery-fingered soddish son of a whore who let slip the chamber-pot as I walked through London today, I shall whip him roundly to within an inch of his despicable life. I have had to dodge the contents of such vessels on many times, but today, 'tis the first that I must dodge not only the contents, but the vessel itself. And yet, if I had moved my head but a fraction more quickly, the pot would have continued in its flight un-impeded. My head doth ache... it is hard to think. But soft! I do scent the germ of an idea here... %% Scenes in French family life number 9: Little Pierre: Maman, maman. I do not like zis meat. Can I feed it to the dog? Maman: Shut up and eat. It _is_ ze dog! %% He coded in Fortran like hell, wrote programs with whistle and bell. Now feels that this tool has made him a fool but cannot get rid of its spell. %% And now, one for comms programmers: Q: How do frogs die? A: They Kermit suicide! %% Maggie T.: So it's settled then. We can dig a long straight shaft several miles under the ocean, and safely dispose of our nuclear waste there. BNFL rep : Exactly! NIREX rep: Right on! Maggie T.: So, we kill two birds. We lose the waste; and we find a use for the Channel Tunnel. [Week Ending] %% Boaster: There is nothing I can't do! Friend: Oh yeah! Let's see you slam that revolving door then. %% All that glisters may not be gold, but at least it contains free electrons. John Desmond Bernal %% It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Winston Churchill %% It works better if you plug it in. Satterthwaite's Law. %% Oh, Langley devised the bolometer; It's really a kind of thermometer that can measure the heat from a polar bear's feet at a distance of half a kilometre. %% The organic chemist's prayer: Oh Lord I pray, forgive me please, my unsuccessful syntheses. Thou knowst of course, in Thy position, I'm up against such competition. %% Old chemists never die they merely fail to react. %% The UNIX operating system was originally known as EUNIX. The E was dropped for reasons of politeness. Why? Because UNIX was developed by simplifying the older MULTICS system: its name derived from "Castrated MULTICS". %% Advice to beginning doctors, quoted in New Scientist: "If a patient who's been shot comes into Casualty, count the number of bullet holes. If it's odd, there's a bullet left somewhere..." %% Quoted in New Scientist: An American company is marketing dehydrated urine crystals. Why? For use by motorists stopped for drunken driving. When the police ask the motorist for a urine specimen, ... %% Q: How do you tell the clan of a Scotsman? A: Look up his kilt. If it's not wimpy, then he's a MacDonald. %% A Chemist, Physicist, and Economist are shipwrecked. They swim for days, and eventually come to a desert island, just as they're about to die of starvation. The island has lots of edible animals, but our team lack the energy to catch them; all they've managed to salvage from the wreck is a can of beans, and not even a tin-opener. Physicist : I know, we'll build a fire under the tin. When the sauce inside boils, the tin will explode. I'll calculate how hot the fire has to be. Chemist : OK. And I'll work out how much wood we need. Physicist : And I'll calculate the trajectory of the beans as they spurt out of the tin, so we can catch them. Economist : You two do make things complicated. Why not just _assume_ you have a tin-opener? %% In economics exams, the questions are the same, but the answers change each year. %% When economists are working in the Bod in the morning, why don't they [the men, of course] scratch their balls? Because then they'd have nothing to do in the afternoon. %% An economist is a man who takes long strides to save his $20 shoes, and splits his $50 trousers. %% To prove that all prime numbers are odd... Mathematician: 3's prime; 5's prime; 7's prime. Therefore, by induction, all prime numbers are odd. Chemist: 3's prime; 5's prime; 7's prime; 11's prime; ... 9's not prime - ah well, experimental error. Therefore, all prime numbers are odd. Economist: 3's prime; 5's prime; 7's prime; 9's prime; 11's prime; ... ... %% Economists of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your Keynes. %% God does not care about our experimental difficulties. He integrates empirically. Einstein %% How can you distinguish a mathematician from a physicist? 1. Give them each a kettle-full of cold water, and ask them to make a cup of tea. They will both boil the water, pour it into the tea-pot, and brew the tea. 2. Now, give them each a kettle-full of *hot* water. The physicist will pour it into the tea-pot, and so on as before. The mathematician will empty the kettle down the sink, and fill it with cold water, thus reducing the problem to one which he's already solved. %% A mathematician, an engineer, and a logician are travelling on a train through Wales. They pass by a field with a black sheep in it. Engineer - Ah! All sheep in Wales are black. Mathematician - No. Some Welsh sheep are black. Logician. - There is at least one sheep in Wales which is black on at least one side. [ In some versions, Bertrand Russell is the logician. ] %% Last year, there was a terrible forest fire in Southern France, which burnt out several hundred acres near Nice. The French tried to put it out with water-spraying planes, but failed. When it had stopped, the French forestry commission flew over the remains in a helicopter, to try and find the cause. They found nothing unusual; except that near the centre of the fire, was a totally dead frogman, clad in rubber wetsuit, etc. Much puzzlement. It turned out that the spray-planes took their water from the Mediterranean. One of them, in scooping up the top 20 feet or so, had sucked in a frogman... %% Biologists study animals mating on the lawn. Physicists study the movements they make. Biochemists study the stains they leave on the grass. D G Thomas, Linacre %% "Air pollution" - a poem: I shot an arrow into the air. It stuck. Gerald Clesham, St Peter's %% [ Scene : The White House ] Presidential Aide - Mr. Reagan!. Mr Reagan Sir!!! The Russians have just landed on the Moon! And they've started to paint it red! What shall we do? Ronnie - Come back when they've finished, son. P.A. [later] - Mr. Reagan Sir. The Russians have painted a quarter of the moon red! Ronnie - Don't worry about it, son. Tell me when they've finished. P.A. [still later]- Mr. Reagan Sir. The Russians have now painted half the moon red! Aren't you going to do anything! Ronnie - Nope, not yet. P.A. [still later and even more anxious] - Mr. Reagan Sir. The Russians have now painted THREE-QUARTERS of the moon red! Can we bomb them, Sir! Please Sir! Ronnie - [ as before ] P.A. - Mr Reagan. They've painted the *WHOLE* moon red! Ronnie - OK. Now call NASA, and tell them to get a rocket up there, with plenty of white paint, and paint "Coca-Cola" across it. [ This one from one of our Polish members. Apparently a popular joke there ] %% LISP - "Lots of Irritating Single Parentheses". %% LISP programmers do it in brackets. %%