______ __
/ ____/___ _____/ /___ ______ ___
/ /_ / __ \/ ___/ __/ / / / __ \/ _ \
/ __/ / /_/ / / / /_/ /_/ / / / / __/
/_/ \____/_/ \__/\__,_/_/ /_/\___/
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
increases.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
assurance people in its wake.
6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
original Klingon.
1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it!
Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
-- Frank Moore Colby
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
-- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
to cringe.
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an
impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter
is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
amounts of fertilization ...
HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many
teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
Thursday, 21 May 2026 Michael J. Chappell Contact me at:
mcsuper5@freeshell.org
