Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the
Vulgate Bible.  Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull
automatically excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration
in the text.  This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible.
He personally examined every sheet as it came off the press.  Yet the
published Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps
had to be printed and pasted over them in every copy.  The result
provoked wry comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and
Pope Sixtus had no recourse but to order the return and destruction of
every copy.

	So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].  With
a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver
the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the
lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land
and evolve.  Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over,
when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the
sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed
right straight toward us.
	Many people would have panicked at this point.  But Richard and I
were not "many people."  We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads.
We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and
a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower
calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using
a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below
the surface of the water.  We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we
had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach,
and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island
until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
		-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"

	"So you don't have to, Cindy, but I was wondering if you might
want to go to someplace, you know, with me, sometime."
	"Well, I can think of a lot of worse things, David."
	"Friday, then?"
	"Why not, David, it might even be fun."
		-- Dating in Minnesota

	Some 1500 miles west of the Big Apple we find the Minneapple, a
haven of tranquility in troubled times.  It's a good town, a civilized town.
A town where they still know how to get your shirts back by Thursday.  Let
the Big Apple have the feats of "Broadway Joe" Namath.  We have known the
stolid but steady Killebrew.  Listening to Cole Porter over a dry martini
may well suit those unlucky enough never to have heard the Whoopee John Polka
Band and never to have shared a pitcher of 3.2 Grain Belt Beer.  The loss is
theirs.  And the Big Apple has yet to bake the bagel that can match peanut
butter on lefse.  Here is a town where the major urban problem is dutch elm
disease and the number one crime is overtime parking.  We boast more theater
per capita than the Big Apple.  We go to see, not to be seen.  We go even
when we must shovel ten inches of snow from the driveway to get there.  Indeed
the winters are fierce.  But then comes the marvel of the Minneapple summer.
People flock to the city's lakes to frolic and rejoice at the sight of so
much happy humanity free from the bonds of the traditional down-filled parka.
Here's to the Minneapple.  And to its people.  Our flair for style is balanced
by a healthy respect for wind chill factors.
	And we always, always eat our vegetables.
	This is the Minneapple.

	Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void.  Waiting
alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion.  It is
the source of all programs.  I do not know its name, so I will call it the
Tao of Programming.
	If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great.  If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great.  If the compiler is
greater, then the applications is great.  The user is pleased and there is
harmony in the world.
	The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of
morning.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

	Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees
on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert
Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of
employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of
farmers in America."
		-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"

	"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy?  That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and
women, such as are we all?  And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with
good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's
Machineries of Joy?"
	"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
		-- Ray Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"

	Split		1/4 bottle	.187 liters
	Half		1/2 bottle
	Bottle		750 milliliters
	Magnum		2 bottles	1.5 liters
	Jeroboam	4 bottles
	Rehoboam	6 bottles	Not available in the US
	Methuselah	8 bottles
	Salmanazar	12 bottles
	Balthazar	16 bottles
	Nebuchadnezzar	20 bottles	15 liters
	Sovereign	34 bottles	26 liters

	The Sovereign is a new bottle, made for the launching of the
largest cruise ship in the world.  The bottle alone cost 8,000 dollars
to produce and they only made 8 of them.
	Most of the funny names come from Biblical people.

	Stop!  Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first
these questions three, ere the other side he see!

	"What is your name?"
	"Sir Brian of Bell."
	"What is your quest?"
	"I seek the Holy Grail."
	"What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments
to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?"
	"I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!"

	Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.  Five years later?
Six?  It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again.  San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of.  Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long
run...  There was madness in any direction, at any hour.  If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  You could
strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we
were doing was right, that we were winning...
	And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail.  There was no point in fighting
-- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave.  So now, less than five years later, you can go
up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
		-- Hunter S. Thompson

	"Surely you can't be serious."
	"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

	Take the folks at Coca-Cola.  For many years, they were content
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage.  It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!"  So Coca-Cola
was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to
improve ...
		-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"

	"That wife of mine is a liar," said the angry husband to a
sympathetic pal seated next to him in a bar.
	"How do you know?" the friend asked.
	"She didn't come home last night, and when I asked her where
she'd been she said she'd spent the night with her sister Shirley."
	"So?"
	"So, she's a liar.  I spent the night with her sister Shirley."

	"That's right; the upper-case shift works fine on the screen, but
they're not coming out on the damn printer...  Hold?  Sure, I'll hold."
		-- e. e. cummings last service call

	"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff
and blow, "is to learn something.  That's the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love,
you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your
honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for
it then -- to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is
the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be
tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.  Learning
is the only thing for you.  Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
		-- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"

	The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time
for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
	It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance.  Miss Manners
has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a
curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a
foot or two under the dinner table.  Miss Manners also believes that the
sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand
dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of
people shaking umbrellas at one another.  What Miss Manners objects to
is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street...

	The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff
in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up.  Everybody but one girl
laughed uproariously.  "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you
got a sense of humor?"
	"I don't have to laugh," she said.  "I'm leaving Friday anyway.

	The doctor had just finished giving the young man a thorough
physical examination.  "The best thing for you to do," the M.D. said,
"is give up drinking, give up smoking, get to bed early and stay away
from women."
	"Doc, I don't deserve the best," pleaded his patient.  "What's
second best?"

	The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:	Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:	The Hacker (homo computatis)
Courtship & Mating:
	Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual
	state of sexual readiness.  Courtship behavior alternates between
	awkward shyness and abrupt advances.  When he finally mates, he
	chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and
	a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes.
Track:
	Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old
	copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog.
Comments:
	Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations.

	The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:	Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:	The Hacker (homo computatis)
Description:
	Gangly and frail, the hacker has a high forehead and thinning hair.
	Head disproportionately large and crooked forward, complexion wan and
	sightly gray from CRT illumination.  He has heavy black-rimmed glasses
	and a look of intense concentration, which may be due to a software
	problem or to a pork-and-bean breakfast.
Feathering:
	HOMO COMPUTATIS saw a Brylcreem ad fifteen years ago and believed it.
	Consequently, crest is greased down, except for the cowlick.
Song:
	A rather plaintive "Is it up?"