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Yucks Digest V1 #78



Yucks Digest                Tue, 27 Aug 91       Volume 1 : Issue  78 

Today's Topics:
          "If Party could laugh, this would have been funny"
                   From Henry's Joke List (3 msgs)
                              More stuff
                   Old School Reports of the Famous
                            Paper Quality
                          project management
                           Shutdown notice
                   The MIT Engineer's drinking song
                            Various items
                            Vaxen in Space
                  weakest precondition, set to music

The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous.  It is issued on a
semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present themselves.

Back issues may be ftp'd from arthur.cs.purdue.edu from
the ~ftp/pub/spaf/yucks directory.  Material in archives
Mail.1--Mail.4 is not in digest format.

Back issues may also be obtained through a mail server.  Send mail to
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list, or to obtain an index of past issues.

Submissions and subscription requests should be sent to
spaf@cs.purdue.edu or yucks@uther.cs.purdue.edu

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 0:52:47 PDT
From: oleg@veritas.com (Oleg Kiselev)
Subject: "If Party could laugh, this would have been funny"

For those of you who are deprived of slack:

From: clarinews@clarinet.com (ERICK BLUE)
Subject: LEAD: MOSCOW (UPI) -- The coup against Mikhail Gorbachev a prank
Date: 23 Aug 91 05:17:23 GMT
 
 
        MOSCOW (UPI) -- The coup against Mikhail Gorbachev is reported late 
Thursday to be a misguided prank. 
        The nominal leader of the abortive coup, Gennady Yanayev, reported 
early this morning that the supposed coup was actually a practical joke gone 
awry. 
        Yanayev apologized this morning saying that the ``emergency council'' 
``did not mean to upset the people of the Soviet Union or the people of the 
world.''
        In a tearful apology to Gorbachev and the media, Yanayov explained that
he and the other members of the ``emergency council'' had been reviewing
American reruns of ``The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show'' for broadcast on Soviet 
television and came up with the idea of playing a prank on President Gorbachev.
        ``Our broadcast was never to be sent to outside media,'' explained
Yanayov. ``President Gorbachev complained about his lumbago and we think we can
make him laugh because laughter is the best medicine. We never meant to make 
people hurt, we meant them to laugh, ha ha.''
        Yanayov further explained that they had persuaded aides in Gorbachev's 
Crimean resort to hide his jet as part of the ruse.
        Unfortunately for ``the Gang of Eight'' as they are being called now,  
``icompetant bureaucrats'' of the government-controlled Russian Television
network broadcasted the feed meant for Gorbachev alone to the whole of the
world, transmuting a harmless joke into an international incedent.
        Yanayov explained further that he thought that orders given by
``General Badenov''  for ``Operation Fearless Leader'' would be seen for the 
joke that they were.
        Yanayov concluded his apology by tendering his resignation and
appealing to President Gorbachev not to hold the Communist party responsible
for the actions of the Gang of Eight. ``Rest of Party has no sense of humor,''
explained Yanayov. ``If Party could laugh, this would have been funny.''

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1991 22:49:50 PDT
From: cate3.osbu_north@xerox.com
Subject: From Henry's Joke List
To: JXerarch.dl.osbu_north@xerox.com

>From: s65327@ursa.calvin.edu (John A. Bolhuis)

[Why did the chicken cross the road?]

Walt Whitman: To cluck the song of itself.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to.  That's the (censored)
reason.

John Paul Jones: It has not yet begun to cross!

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Roseanne Barr: Urrrrrp.  What chicken?

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

William Shakespeare: I don't know why, but methinks I could rattle off a
hundred-line soliloquy without much ado.

Thomas Paine: Out of common sense.

TS Eliot: Weialala leia / Wallala leialala.

Groucho Marx: Chicken?  What's all this talk about chicken?  Why, I had an
uncle who thought he was a chicken.  My aunt almost divorced him, but we
needed the eggs.

Karl Marx: To escape the bourgeois middle-class struggle.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Mr. Scott: 'Cos ma wee transporter beam was na functioning proprely.
Ah canna work miracles, captain!

Robert Frost: To cross the road less traveled by.

Sigmund Freud: The chicken obviously was female and obviously interpreted
the pole on which the crosswalk sign was mounted as a phallic symbol of
which she was envious, selbstverstaendlich.

William Wordsworth: To have something to recollect in tranquility.

Caesar: To come, to see, to conquer.

Bill the Cat: Oop Ack.

Rene Descartes: It had sufficient reason to believe it was dreaming anyway.

Leda: Are you sure it wasn't Zeus dressed up as a chicken?  He's into that
kind of thing, you know.

Zsa Zsa Gabor: It probably crossed to get a better look at my legs, which
thank goodness are good, dahling.

George Bush: To face a kinder, gentler thousand points of headlights.

Epicurus: For fun.

TS Eliot revisited: Do I dare to cross the road?

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing
events to grace the annals of history.  An historic, unprecedented avian
biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly
relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Gregor Mendel: To get various strains of roads.

Sisyphus: Was it pushing a rock, too?

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Lee Iacocca: It found a better car, which was on the other side of the road.

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out
of life

Mae West: I invited it to come up and see me sometime.

Joseph Conrad: Mistah Chicken, he dead.

Gerald R. Ford: It probably fell from an airplane and couldn't stop
its forward momentum.

Gottfried Von Leibniz: In this best possible world, the road was made for
it to cross.

Candide: To cultivate its garden.

George Washington: Actually it crossed the Delaware with me back in 1776.
But most history books don't reveal that I bunked with a birdie during
the duration.

Dylan Thomas: To not go (sic) gentle into that good night.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

John Milton: To justify the ways of God to men.

James Tiberius Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Gilligan: The traffic started getting rough; the chicken had to cross.
If not for the plumage of its peerless tail the chicken would be lost.
The chicken would be lost!

Thomas Dequincy: Because it ran out of opium.

Socrates: To pick up some hemlock at the corner druggist.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

--- 
[Originally] Reprinted with permission from the December, 1989
issue of the Calvin College Dialogue

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1991 18:46:49 PDT
From: Henry_Cate_III.OSBU_North@xerox.com
Subject: From Henry's Joke List
To: JXerarch.dl.OSBU_North@xerox.com

The following is from the L.A. Times Magazine Nov.11,1990:

Brief anecdotes from the Dumb Crook News an occasional feature
of Out Front from the Charlotte Observer.

Robbery victims inspected a lineup up of 5 men in San Diego.
Each of the men in the lineup were ordered to step forward and
say,"Give me all the money-and I need some change in quarters and dimes.

The first two men got it right. The third man stepped forward and said,
"That isn't what I said."

A man in Delaware represented himselft at his trial for robbing a woman
at a gas station. In cross-examining a detective he said," Why are
you talking about some witness, man? There was only me and her at the store."

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1991 18:17:27 PDT
From: cate3.osbu_north@xerox.com
Subject: From Henry's Joke List
To: JXerarch.dl.osbu_north@xerox.com

The DP manager died, went to heaven, and had to admit his profession.
St. Peter immediately sent him down to Hell ...

"Welcome," said the Duty Devil. "You have a choice of three Hells: an
IBM hell, a Unisys hell, and an ICL hell."

"What's the difference?" asked the cautious DP manager.

"Well," said the duty devil, "The IBM hell is 22 hours a day of trying to
compile a JCL pack for a 1401 program still running 25 years on, under
emulation on a 3990, followed by two hours of being nailed to a cross
and pelted with coal by IBM salesmen."

"The Unisys hell is 22 hours a day trying to understand communications
protocols based on a thinly disguised 1960s Exec 8 manual, followed by
two hours of being nailed to a cross and pelted with coal by Unisys salesmen."

"The ICL hell is 22 hours a day of trying to convert a George 3 program to
run under ICLs current OS, whatever that is, followed by two hours of being
nailed to a cross and pelted with coal by ICL salesmen."

On hearing this, the DP manager looked worried. A passing Imp took
pity on him, and suggested that he try the ICL hell. Upon being
asked to explain, the Imp said,

"Well, they never learn in the ICL hell. By the time the salesman have
collected the wood to make the cross, found the hardware support
engineers and gotten them to nail the bits together, and then called
out for the coal, the two hours are almost always over."

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 10:11:34 CDT
From: Joe Wiggins <JWIGG@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU>
Subject: More stuff
To: yucks

Just received this in the mail from our campus psychological
services.  I'm not making light of this;  they do excellent work
and are very effective (CYA).  The scary part is that numbers 1,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, and 16 are an incredibly
accurate description of the faculty of a certain department that
shall remain nameless.

Some Signs and Symptoms of a Student in Distress:

1. Excessive procrastination and very poorly prepared work,
especially if this is inconsistent with previous work.

2. Infrequent class attendance with little or no work completed.

3. Dependency, e.g., the student who hangs around you, or
makes excessive appointments to see you during office hours.

4. Listlessness, lack of energy, or frequently falling asleep in
class.

5. Marked changes in personal hygiene.

6. Repeated requests for special consideration, e.g., deadline
extensions.

7. Impaired speech or garbled, disjointed thoughts.

8. Homicidal threats.

9. Behavior which regularly interferes with the decorum or
effective management of your class.

10. Overtly suicidal thoughts, e.g., referring to suicide as a
current option.

11. High levels of irritability, including unruly, aggressive,
violent, or abrasive behavior.

12. Inability to make decisions despite your repeated attempts
to clarify and to encourage.

13. Dramatic weight loss or weight gain.

14. Bizarre or strange behavior which is obviously
inappropriate to the situation, e.g., talking to 'invisible' people.

15. Normal emotions that are displayed to an EXTREME degree
or for a PROLONGED period of time, e.g., fearfulness, tearfulness,
nervousness.

16. Odor of alcohol or marijuana, unsteady gait, runny and
blood shot eyes, slurred speech.

Actually, to be admitted to the CS degree program, a candidate
MUST exhibit at least eight of the above symptoms.

[I am worried to admit I exhibit 9 or 10 of these on a regular basis! --spaf]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 24 Aug 91 16:27:36 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Old School Reports of the Famous
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU

From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Kernel Mustered)

                  Old School Reports of the Famous, #1:

                            Richard Stallman.

   "He is an excellent pupil.  Our only complaint is that he encourages
    all the other pupils to copy his work."

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 13 Oct 88 16:48:06 PDT
From: hidley%cs@ucsd.edu (greg hidley)
Subject: Paper Quality
To: andrew@research.att.com, avie@cs.cmu.edu, bostic@okeeffe.berkeley.edu,

[This is an oldie from my archives, but one not sent to Yucks yet. --spaf]

>From knuth@kermit.stanford.edu Thu Oct 13 13:54:16 1988
From: knuth@kermit.stanford.edu (Donald E. Knuth)
To: csgrads@cs.ucsd.edu

			    SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT

Title:  	Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker:	Don "The Lion" Knuth
Date:		21 October 1988
Time:		7:00 PM
Location:	2337 AP&M

				ABSTRACT

	     Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been
	studying the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in
	particular.  The problem of frog computability has become a critical
	issue that ranges across all areas of computer science.  It has been
	shown that anything computable by an amphibian community in a
	fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size pond--that
	is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete.  We will show that there
	is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine
	program to a frog.  We will suggest	represent a proper subset of 
	frog-computable functions.

	     This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump
	seminar.  This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and
	their colleagues.

	Refreshments will be served.  Music will be played.

	RSVP to the local coordinator: bergan@cs <Charles Bergan>

------------------------------

Date: 24 Aug 91 10:30:04 GMT
From: devine@cookie.enet.dec.com (Bob Devine 03-Jul-1991 1425)
Subject: project management
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny

	Project Managers
	----------------

 If you get in my way, I'll kill you!
	- ideal project manager

 If you get in my way, you'll kill me!
	- somewhat less than ideal project manager

 If I get in my way, I'll kill you!
	- somewhat misguided project manager

 If I get in your way, I'll kill you!
	- A tough m. f. project manager
	  (eats glass, live cats, etc.)

 If get kill in will way I you.
	-dyslexic, functionally illiterate project manager

 I am the way! Kill me if you can!
	-messianic project manager

 Get away, I'll kill us all!
	-suicidal project manager

 If you kill me, I'll get in your way.
	-thoughtful but ineffective project manager

 If I kill you I'll get in your way.
	-project manager who has trouble dealing with the obvious

 If a you getta ina my way, I gonna breaka you arm.
	-project manager from New York

 I am quite confident that there is nothing in the way,
  so no one will get killed.
	-project manager who is about to get in big trouble

 If you kill me, so what?  If you get in my way, who cares?
	-weak, uninspired, lackluster project manager

 If I kill me, you'll get your way.
	-pragmatic project manager

 Kill me, it's the only way.
	-every project manager to date.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 23:35:32 -0700
From: brian@UCSD.EDU (Brian Kantor)
Subject: Shutdown notice
To: spaf

From an original I snagged off a bulletin board at MIT 20 years ago.

	                          SHUTDOWN
	
	To: All At UCSD
	From: Physical Plant
	Subject: Interruption of Gravity
	
	The campus architect has requested a temporary  interruption
	of  gravity  for the purpose of making certain major altera-
	tions of campus design.  The following changes will be made:
	
	        1) Removal of Bonner Hall.
	        2) Removal of the upper three floors of Urey Hall.
	        3) Conversion of Mandeville Center into a parking lot.
	
	
	It is expected that gravity will be  off  for  a  period  of
	approx.  11  hours  on April 1, 1985, from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00
	p.m.  Only the campus areas south of Torrey Pines Road  will
	be affected.
	
	We have been advised that the interruption will  undoubtedly
	create  non-causal  gravitational  singularities  along  the
	boundaries of the region affected.  Therefore  Torrey  Pines
	Road will be closed to traffic throughout the day.
	
	It is advised that the following precautions be taken:
	
	1)        All heavy equipment  should  be  tied  down.   All
	          laboratories  will be carefully inspected on March
	          31.  Be sure that  animals  are  properly  sedated
	          and/or  secured,  and  that  fragile  equipment is
	          installed in shock absorbing cradles.
	
	2)        Due to danger of walking  outside,  all  personnel
	          are  urged  not  to leave buildings.  If forced to
	          travel from one building to another the steam tun-
	          nels should be used.
	
	3)        Change in the pressure differential in  pipes  may
	          trigger fire alarms and sprinklers.  Please do not
	          leave buildings.
	
	4)        Since elevators will be  inoperative  during  this
	          time, please use stairways.
	
	5)        All people normally parking cars south  of  Torrey
	          Pines  Road should take care not to do so on April 1.
	
	6)        Please do not flush toilets.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 91 23:39:37 -0700
From: brian@UCSD.EDU (Brian Kantor)
Subject: The MIT Engineer's drinking song
To: spaf

>From "HowToGAMIT (How to Get Around MIT) XV" 1983 edition.
Additional verses from the APO song book.
	
	
	         The Engineers' Drinking Song (Lady Godiva)
	
	Godiva was a lady who through Coventry did ride
	To show the royal villagers her fair and pure white hide.
	The most observant man of all, an engineer of course,
	Was the only man who noticed that Godiva rode a horse.
	
	                              chorus:
	        We are, we are, we are, we are, we are the engineers.
	        We can, we can, we can, we can demolish forty beers.
	        Drink rum, drink rum, drink rum all day and come along with us.
	        For we don't give a damn for any old man who don't give a damn
				for us.
	
	
	She said I've come a long, long way, and I shall go as far
	With the man who takes me from this horse and leads me to a bar.
	The men who took her from her steed and lead her to her beer
	Were a bleary eyed surveyor and a drunken engineer.
	
	     chorus
	
	My father was a miner from the Northern Malamute,
	My mother was a mistress in a house of ill repute.
	The last time that I saw them, these words rang in my ears,
	"GO TO MIT YOU SON OF A BITCH AND JOIN THE ENGINEERS!!!"
	
	     chorus
	
	Princeton's run by Wellesley, Wellesley's run by Yale
	Yale is run by Vassar, and Vassar's run by tail
	Harvard's run by stiff pricks, this kind you raise by hand.
	But MIT's run by engineers, the finest in the land.
	
	     chorus
	
	If we should find a Harvard man within our sacred walls,
	We'll take him up to physics lab and amputate his balls.
	And if he hollers Uncle, I'll tell you what we'll do
	We'll stuff his ass with broken glass, and seal it up with glue
	
	     chorus
	
	MIT was MIT when Harvard was a pup.
	And MIT will be MIT when Harvard's time is up.
	And any Harvard son of a bitch who thinks he's in our class
	Can pucker up his rosy lips and kiss the beaver's ass.
	
	     chorus
	
	An artsman and an Engineer once found a gallon can,
	Said the artsman "Match me drink for drink, let's see if you're a man."
	They drank three times, the artsman falls, his face was turning gree,
	But the Engineer drank on and said "It's only gasoline."
	
	     chorus
	
	The Army and the Navy went out to have some fun.
	They went down to the taverns where the fiery liquors run.
	But all they found were empties, for the engineers had come,
	And traded all their instruments for gallon kegs of rum.
	
	     chorus
	
	Venus was a statue made entirely of stone.
	Without a stitch upon her, she was naked as a bone.
	On seeing that she had no clothes, an engineer discoursed:
	"Why the damn thing's only concrete, and should be reinforced!"
	
	     chorus
	
	Rapunzel let her hair down for two suitors down below,
	So one of them could grab a hold and give the old heave-ho.
	The Prince began to climb at once, but soon came out the worst,
	For the Engineer took the elevator and reached Rapunzel first.
	
	     chorus
	
	Caesar set out for Egypt at the age of fifty three,
	But Cleopatra's blood was warm, her heart was young and free.
	And every night when Julius said goodnight at three o'clock,
	There was a Roman engineer waiting just around the block!
	
	     chorus
	
	An engineer once staggered in through the Roderick Gate,
	He was carrying a load you would expect to ship by freight.
	The only thing that kept him upright and on his course,
	Were the boundary conditions and the coriolis force.
	
	     chorus
	
	Ace Towing roams the streets of Cambridge each and every night.
	They tow cars and stow cars and hide them out of sight;
	They tried to tow Godiva's horse, the Engineers said "Hey!"
	They towed away their towing truck and now the Ace must Pay!
	
	     chorus
	
	Sir Francis Drake and all his ships set out for Calais Bay.
	They'd heard the Spanish rum fleet was headed on their way.
	But the engineers had beat them by a night and half a day
	And though as drunk as ptarmigans, you still could hear them say:
	
	     chorus
	
	A maiden and an engineer were sitting in the park,
	The engineer was working on some research after dark.
	His scientific method was a marvel to observe --
	While his right hand wrote the figures, his left hand traced the curves.
	
	     chorus
	
	A coed and a Harvard man were sitting in the park,
	Doing independent, intermural, research after dark.
	She felt his pace was slowing down: he'd only had six beers.
	She said "take me back to MIT, I want my Engineers!"
	
	     chorus
	
	An MIT computer man got drunk one fateful night.
	He opened up the console and smashed everything in sight.
	And after they subdued him, the judge he stood before,
	Said, "Lock him up for 20 years, he's rotten to the core!"
	
	     chorus
	
	A physics man from MIT went out and drank his fill.
	And then went to a strip joint 'cause he had some time to kill.
	The motions that he witnesses there excited all his nerves,
	And he filled eleven napkins with equations of the curves.
	
	     chorus
	
	A graduate in chemistry went out to take a stroll
	Along the Charles River bank, where all the compounds roll.
	That day he felt dejected at the bursting of a dream,
	He couldn't seem to find a trace of water in the stream.

------------------------------

Date: Fri Aug 23 13:25:04 PDT 1991
From: t-robtp@microsoft.COM
Subject: Various items
To: QUA@cornella.cit.cornell.edu, WOM@cornella.cit.cornell.edu,

[Whiteboard News from joeha@microsoft]

This first story comes from MicroSoftie, JonGr:

The other day I called a company called "Bull Information
Systems" to get hardware support on a computer line they had
purchased from another company.

When the receptionist answered the phone, her greeting was a
cheerful but quite abrupt "Bull!"  (I almost laughed out loud) I
guess she was right because they were no help to me whatsoever.
==========

This next item comes from MicroSoftie, KenHo:

In his press conference, Mikhail Gorbachev told the story of how
all his communications with the World were cut off by the
leaders of the coup.  During this isolation and house arrest,
Gorbachev found an old radio.  The clearest broadcasts that he
could receive were from the BBC and Voice of America.  They
were his source for world news for the duration of the crisis.  

Ironic that the President of the Soviet Union had to rely on
broadcasts from the West to find out what was going on in his
country, the same as Soviet citizens have done for several
decades.
==========

St. Paul, MN

The burglar who broke into the house of Monsignor Terrence
Murphy apparently thought the better of his sin and left the loot
behind.

The Roman Catholic monsignor returned from a trip to find his
basement window kicked out and two brown paper bags filled
with his belongings witting on the porch.  On one of the bags was
note.

"I'm sorry, Monsignor," it said.  "Please forgive me."

"It's possible it was some crazy guy's idea of a prank," Murphy
said.  "He also might have gotten in and discovered it was my
place.  Who knows?"

Lt. Richard Dugan, commander of the St. Paul police burglary
unit, tends to support the latter theory.

"My guess is that he ran upstairs, took the stuff, ran downstairs
and all of a sudden her realized where he was," he said.

"The guy evidently didn't have any faith in the criminal justice
system.  But he obviously had faith in something else."
==========

Honolulu, Hawaii

Divers gathered up an unexpected pile of underwear during a
cleanup of Waimea Bay, primarily the men's variety.

"It's kind of strange.  I don't know what's going on out there,"
said Henry Holthaus, one of three divers with a nonprofit
preservation group who made the organizations first underwater
trash cleanup on Sunday.

Cans and bottles led the list of discards, but underwear was a
close third.

"We want people to know that when they leave their trash out
there, it's pretty disgusting for people who do snorkeling."
==========

Altoona, PA

A toddler helped her 14-year-old uncle get out of a sticky
situation when his tongue got stuck to the inside of a freezer.

"I was in the freezer looking for something to eat, and I bent
over to yell at her for trying to climb into the refrigerator," said
Duane Della of his 2-year-old niece, Melissa Garman.

When Duane bent over, his tongue got stuck on the bottom of the
freezer.

"I was breathing hot air to melt the ice," he said.

That didn't work, so he told Melissa to drag her high chair to the
telephone, climb up, get the receiver and bring it to him, he said. 
He then called 911.

"We couldn't understand what he was saying," said one of the
officers who took the call and tried to decipher Duane's speech.

The fire department was eventually dispatched and the firemen
gently poured warm water over Duane's tongue to loosen it.

------------------------------

Date: 27 Aug 91 23:30:06 GMT
From: yhartojo@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Francis Hartojo)
Subject: Vaxen in Space
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny

I got this from the comp.os.vms.  I think it is quite funny, what do you
think?

(from an internal DEC article a week or two old, used here without
permission...)

                ON-BOARD SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY
                          VAX IN SPACE

    Sunday morning at Mission Elapsed Time 0 days, 4 hours,
11 minutes, and 55 seconds at 11:45:09 am local time, the first
VAX in-space, booted VMS.  Controllers at Goddard Space Flight
Center report that all sensors are nominal and that the
verification and checkout phase of the mission is proceeding
normally.

    The computer is a specially-built, militarized VAX 6210
manufactured by Raytheon Equipment Division.  The boot device is
a read/write optical disk manufactured by Sundstrand Avionics
Systems Division.  The system was flight-qualified by the
Engineering Division of Goddard Space Flight Center.

    Controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center also report, based
on Discovery's orbital velocity of 17,438 mph, that VMS is now
the fastest commercially-available operating system.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 90 05:18:58 GMT
From: rieman@boulder.Colorado.EDU (John Rieman)
Subject: weakest precondition, set to music
Newsgroups: cu.cs.grads

For those who are studying (or in the past have studied) 
for the SE prelim, here's a musical version of Gries's 
checklist 11.9.  Gries's version is shown to the right
of appropriate sections of the verse.    -john

(To be sung to the tune of "Day-O," the Jamaican 
banana-boat song.)  

1.  Work on my program all night long!
      Exit come and result gotta hold.	
    Show weakest precondition can't be wrong!
      Exit come and result gotta hold.

chorus (repeat after every verse): 

        Dave-O, Dave-O, Da-a-a-ave-O,
          David Gries say that result gotta hold!
        Dave-O, Dave-O, Da-a-a-ave-O,
          Exit come and result gotta hold!

2. Enter the loop, P implied by Q!                  1. Q => P 
     Exit come and result gotta hold.	
   After every branch that P still true!            2. P ^ Bk => wp(Sk,P)
     Exit come and result gotta hold.

3. If P is true but no branch can... 
     Exit come and result gotta hold.	
   Then show the result has got to stand!           3. P ^ ~BB => R
     Exit come and result gotta hold.

4. Hey Mr. Talley-Man, Talley me a loop now!
     Exit come and result gotta hold.
   Gotta make sure these loops are gonna end now!
     Exit come and result gotta hold.

5. If I can branch I check my t! 
     Exit come and result gotta hold.	
   Make sure it bigger than zero be!                4. P ^ BB => t > 0
     Exit come and result gotta hold.

5. With every branch that t must shrink!            5. P ^ Bk => 
     Exit come and result gotta hold.                  wp("t1:=t;Sk", t < t1)	
   Someday this loop will end I think! 
     Exit come and result gotta hold.

6. All five of the points look good to me!
     Exit come and result gotta hold.
   I've proved weakest precondition, QED:           QED: Q => wp(DO,R)
     Exit come and result gotta hold!

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End of Yucks Digest
------------------------------