A director is running around the set of a movie, pulling at his
hair. His eyes bug out of his crimson face as he yells, "We'll
never get this movie finished in time! I don't even have anyone
to operate the cameras!"
The assistant director grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him,
then shouts, "Get a grip!"
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( Excerpted from "Quotes, Damned Quotes" by John Bibby )
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
translate into their own language and forthwith it is something
entirely different. (Goethe)
If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9
times out of ten it will. (Paul Harvey News, 1979)
``Give us a copper Guv'' said the beggar to the Treasury
statistician, when he waylaid him in Parliament square. ``I
haven't eaten for three days.'' ``Ah,'' said the statistician, ``and
how does that compare with the same period last year?'' (Russell
Lewis)
``I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of
Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call
for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want
is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than
when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political
statistic.'' (Winston Churchill)
``You haven't told me yet,'' said Lady Nuttal, ``what it is your
fiance does for a living.''
``He's a statistician,'' replied Lamia, with an annoying sense of
being on the defensive.
Lady Nuttal was obviously taken aback. It had not occurred to
her that statisticians entered into normal social relationships.
The species, she would have surmised, was perpetuated in some
collateral manner, like mules.
``But Aunt Sara, it's a very interesting profession,'' said Lamia
warmly.
``I don't doubt it,'' said her aunt, who obviously doubted it very
much. ``To express anything important in mere figures is so
plainly impossible that there must be endless scope for
well-paid advice on the how to do it. But don't you think that
life with a statistician would be rather, shall we say,
humdrum?''
Lamia was silent. She felt reluctant to discuss the surprising
depth of emotional possibility which she had discovered below
Edward's numerical veneer.
``It's not the figures themselves,'' she said finally. ``It's what
you do with them that matters.'' (K.A.C. Manderville, The undoing
of Lamia Gurdleneck)
"Home is where the heart lies, but if the heart lies,
Where is home, is where the heart lies,
But where is home?... "
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The head doctors in an insane asylum had a meeting and decided that one
of their patients was potentially well. So they decide to test him and
take him to the movies. When they get to the movie theater, there are
signs of wet paint pointing to the benches. The doctors just sit down,
but the patient puts a newspaper down first and then sits down.
The doctors get all excited cause they think maybe he's in touch
w/reality now. So they ask him, " Why did you put the newspaper down first?"
He answers, "So I'd be higher and have a better view."
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Dancing around in circles,
Singing their little chants,
Playing stupid instruments
and wearing only pants.
Going through their rituals,
thwarting all that's swell
the Satan Smurfs are here,
and they've been sent from hell.
With their pointed blue horns,
and little blue tails,
they terrorize the furries,
their work never fails.
You cannot stop them,
don't you dare to try,
they'll stab you with their horns,
and leave you there to die.
by Jonathan Blacke
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Boris Yeltsin had issued a directive to all police chiefs within the
Soviet Republic of Russia to clamp down on speeders. Anyone, _ANYONE_
caught speeding was to be stiffly fined for exceeding the posted speed
limit, regardless of political or social standing. Well, one
morning Michail Gorbachev was late for a meeting and told his chauffeur
to "step on it". Sure enough, they got not two klicks down the road
when a Militia motorcycle officer pulled him over. "Quick", said
Gorbachev, "switch places. He wouldn't _dare_ give me a ticket."
So they switch places, and the officer, upon seeing Gorby in the driver's
seat, says "Oh, I didn't realize it was you, comrade president.
Please proceed."
Later the officer was called on the carpet for showing in his report
that he pulled over a speeder but did not issue a citation. His
response: "Look, when I saw this guy's chauffeur was Michail Gorbachev,
I figured he must be someone really important!"
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She had a wedding to go to, and needed a wedding gift. Aha, thought she, I
have that monogrammed silver tray from my wedding that I never use. I'll just
take it to a silversmith and have him remove my monogram and put hers on it.
Voila, one cheap wedding present.
So she took it to the silversmith and asked him to remove her monogram and put
the new one on. The silversmith took a look at the tray, shook his head, and
said,
"Lady, you can only do this so many times!"
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When a friend's wife turned 40, he told her, "Honey, I'm trading
you in for two 20-year-old girls." Instant reply, "Better not, John, you're
not wired for 220."
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A. Whitney Brown, in his commentary about the war, had this to say on
Saturday Night Live (Feb. 9, 1991):
"But you have to admit, our bombs are incredibly smart. In fact, our
bombs are better-educated than the average high-school graduate. I
mean, at least they can *find* Kuwait."
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A questionnaire sent out in the Soviet Union contained the questions :
1. Where were you born ?
2. Where did you go to school ?
3. Where did you attain your majority ?
4. Where do you wish to live ?
One return provided the following answers :
1. St Petersburg
2. Petrograd
3. Leningrad
4. St Petersburg
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IBM and DEC decided to have a boat race, on the
Thames, following the famous Oxford vs Cambridge course.
Both teams practiced hard, and came the big day, they were as
ready as they could be.
IBM won by a mile.
Afterwards, the DEC team were very downhearted, and a decision
was made that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be
found, so a working party was set up to investigate and
report.
Well, they had everybody on the working party, Sales, Systems
Engineering, Marketing, Customer Education, Field Service,
the whole lot, and after 3 months they came up with the
answer, and the working party coordinator gave his summary
presentation.
"The problem was", he said, "that IBM had 8 people rowing
and 1 steering, whereas we had 1 person rowing and 8
steering."
The working party was then asked to go away and come up with
a plan to prevent a recurrence the following year, for DEC's
pride had been damaged, and another defeat was not wanted.
2 months later, the working party had worked out a plan, and
the coordinator gave his (customarily brief) summary_
"The guy rowing has got to work harder"
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TOP TEN REASONS WHY OPERATION DESERT STORM IS NOT ANOTHER VIET NAM
10) Viet Nam was a jungle war;
Desert Storm is a desert war. (as noted by V.P. Quayle)
9) The U.S. is not the world's most profligate waster of rice.
8) We are not killing Vietnamese women and children in Desert Storm.
7) The White House wasn't smart enough to come up with a catchy name
for the Viet Nam war.
7') Viet Nam was a conflict_Desert Storm is an operation.
6) Some Americans actually believed that we were defending a democratic
government in Viet Nam.
5) The time difference from the U.S. to the middle east is better suited
to prime time live coverage of the festivities.
4) Nobody ever compared Ho Chi Minh to Adolf Hitler.
3) We hadn't been supplying weapons and intelligence to the North Vietnamese
until weeks before the war began.
2) The networks didn't have slick computer graphics with dramatic theme
music for the Viet Nam war.
and the number one reason why Operation Desert Storm is not like Viet Nam:
1) Since Viet Nam came first, we could claim that we didn't know any better.
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During the Gulf Crisis, airports have had to beef up their
security. One airport went as far as to hire psychiatrists as
security guards, so they could evaluate the mental states of the
waiting passengers. On the first day, a psychiatrist arrested
a fellow psychiatrist.