______ __
/ ____/___ _____/ /___ ______ ___
/ /_ / __ \/ ___/ __/ / / / __ \/ _ \
/ __/ / /_/ / / / /_/ /_/ / / / / __/
/_/ \____/_/ \__/\__,_/_/ /_/\___/
IBM had a PL/I,
Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
It was a total loss.
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up.
-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian.
I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer.
LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and
polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
Holes and the Fate of Stars"
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
-- Daniel B. Luten
Monday, 20 October 2025 Michael J. Chappell Contact me at:
mcsuper5@freeshell.org