Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 06:26:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  Top 40 Nostalgia

  Going through my mp3 collection ripped from my CD's, I found over half
of these, too...

-----

During this week in 1973, the following songs were in BillBoard's Top Ten:

10. "Frankenstein" Edgar Winter Group
 9. "Sing A Song" The Carpenters
 8. "Twelfth of Never" Donny Osmond
 7. "Stuck In The Middle With You" Stealer's Wheel
 6. "Drift Away" Dobie Gray
 5.  "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" Vicki Lawrence
 4. "Sunshine of My Life" Stevie Wonder
 3. "Little Willy" The Sweet
 2. "Cisco Kid" War
 1. "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" Tony Orlando & Dawn

Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 06:40:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  going for a walk

  A little girl asked her Mom, "Mom, may I take the dog for a walk around
the block?"

  Mom replies, "No, because she is in heat."

  "What's that mean?" asked the child.

  "Go ask your father. I think he's in the garage."

  The little girl goes to the garage and says, "Dad, may I take Belle for
a walk around the block? I asked Mom, but she said the dog was in heat,
and to come to you."

  Dad said, "Bring Belle over here." He took a rag, soaked it with
gasoline, and scrubbed the dog's backside with it and said, "Okay, that
should take care of that problem. You can go now, but keep Belle on the
leash and only go one time around the block."

  The little girl left, and returned a few minutes later with no dog on
the leash.

  Surprised, Dad asked, "Where's Belle?"

  The little girl said, "She ran out of gas about halfway around the
block, so another dog is pushing her home."

Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 07:47:09 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

"It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that 
virginity could be a virtue."
-- Voltaire

Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 06:33:08 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  why not?

Everyone seems to be wondering why the Middle Eastern terrorists are so
quick to commit suicide.  Let's see now:

No booze
No bars
No television
No Internet
No organized sports, stadiums or tailgate parties.
Actually, no tailgates
No Hooters
No meat from a pig
Sand everywhere and not a dune buggy in sight
Ever try to fish at an oasis
Rags for clothes and hats
Eating only with your right hand cause you wipe your butt with your left.
Like life isn't complicated enough already
Constant wailing from the guy next door because he is sick and no doctors
No music
No radio
You can't shave
You can't shower
Bar-B-Q donkey cooked over burning camel dung
The women have to wear baggy dresses and veils at all times.
Your bride is picked by someone else

Oh, and then they tell you that when you die it all gets better!

Who wouldn't go for it?

Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 21:12:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are
right more than half of the time." 
-- E. B. White

Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 10:21:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

"If little else, the brain is an educational toy."
-- Tom Robbins

Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 09:35:17 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  fortune OTD

Only two groups of people fall for flattery -- men and women.

Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 10:13:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  Siege Weapons

Note to all you medieval recreationists on the list, from one of us:

-----

2 observations:

You can put a 6' trebuchet, fully assembled, on top of a Ford Escort. Even
when you're doing 40 in a 55, no one tailgates you.

If you disassemble the trebuchet for transport, make sure you tie the arm
down tight on the roof rack. I'm the only person in Ohio that's been in an
accident between a truck and a siege engine (the rope broke, the arm swung
and took out an outside mirror). Try to explain *that* to the insurance
company.

Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 11:14:39 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  The Case for the Empire (minor SW spoilers included)

The Case for the Empire
Everything you think you know about Star Wars is wrong.
by Jonathan V. Last
05/16/2002 12:00:00 AM

  STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, "Attack of the
Clones." There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic
morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the
beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of
Star Wars is that the Empire is good.

  It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor
over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a
careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf
moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.

  First, an aside: For the sake of this discussion, I've considered only
the history gleaned from the actual Star Wars films, not the Expanded
Universe. If you know what the Expanded Universe is and want to argue
that no discussion of Star Wars can be complete without considering
material outside the canon, that's fine. However, it's always been my
view that the comic books and novels largely serve to clean up Lucas's
narrative and philosophical messes. Therefore, discussions of intrinsic
intent must necessarily revolve around the movies alone. You may
disagree, but please don't e-mail me about it.

  If you don't know what the Expanded Universe is, well, uh, neither do I.

I. The Problems with the Galactic Republic

  At the beginning of the Star Wars saga, the known universe is governed
by the Galactic Republic. The Republic is controlled by a Senate, which
is, in turn, run by an elected chancellor who's in charge of procedure,
but has little real power.

  Scores of thousands of planets are represented in the Galactic Senate,
and as we first encounter it, it is sclerotic and ineffectual. The
Republic has grown over many millennia to the point where there are so
many factions and disparate interests, that it is simply too big to be
governable. Even the Republic's staunchest supporters recognize this
failing: In "The Phantom Menace," Queen Amidala admits, "It is clear to
me now that the Republic no longer functions." In "Attack of the Clones,"
young Anakin Skywalker observes that it simply "doesn't work."

  The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression
between member states. In "The Phantom Menace" a supra-planetary
alliance, the Trade Federation (think of it as OPEC to the Galactic
Republic's United Nations), invades a planet and all the Senate can agree
to do is call for an investigation.

  Like the United Nations, the Republic has no armed forces of its own,
but instead relies on a group of warriors, the Jedi knights, to "keep the
peace." The Jedi, while autonomous, often work in tandem with the Senate,
trying to smooth over quarrels and avoid conflicts. But the Jedi number
only in the thousands--they cannot protect everyone.

  What's more, it's not clear that they should be "protecting" anyone. The
Jedi are Lucas's great heroes, full of Zen wisdom and righteous power.
They encourage people to "use the Force"--the mystical energy which is
the source of their power--but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom
Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble. The Force comes
from midi-chlorians, tiny symbiotic organisms in people's blood, like
mitochondria. The Force, it turns out, is an inherited, genetic trait. If
you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi
not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard.

  And an arrogant royalist Swiss guard, at that. With one or two notable
exceptions, the Jedi we meet in Star Wars are full of themselves. They
ignore the counsel of others (often with terrible consequences), and seem
honestly to believe that they are at the center of the universe. When the
chief Jedi record-keeper is asked in "Attack of the Clones" about a
planet she has never heard of, she replies that if it's not in the Jedi
archives, it doesn't exist. (The planet in question does exist, again,
with terrible consequences.)

  In "Attack of the Clones," a mysterious figure, Count Dooku, leads a
separatist movement of planets that want to secede from the Republic.
Dooku promises these confederates smaller government, unlimited free
trade, and an "absolute commitment to capitalism." Dooku's motives are
suspect--it's not clear whether or not he believes in these causes.
However, there's no reason to doubt the motives of the other
separatists--they seem genuinely to want to make a fresh start with a
government that isn't bloated and dysfunctional.

  The Republic, of course, is eager to quash these separatists, but they
never make a compelling case--or any case, for that matter--as to why, if
they are such a freedom-loving regime, these planets should not be
allowed to check out of the Republic and take control of their own
destinies.

II. The Empire

  We do not yet know the exact how's and why's, but we do know this: At
some point between the end of Episode II and the beginning of Episode IV,
the Republic is replaced by an Empire. The first hint comes in "Attack of
the Clones," when the Senate's Chancellor Palpatine is granted emergency
powers to deal with the separatists. It spoils very little to tell you
that Palpatine eventually becomes the Emperor. For a time, he keeps the
Senate in place, functioning as a rubber-stamp, much like the Roman
imperial senate, but a few minutes into Episode IV, we are informed that
the he has dissolved the Senate, and that "the last remnants of the Old
Republic have been swept away."

  Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the
Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them
in black.

  But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The
Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling
delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he
laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."

  Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to
produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility,
there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric
Straussian.

  Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively
benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business
with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized
crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire
has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding
citizen.

  Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The
Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career
at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often
rapidly. In "The Empire Strikes Back" Captain Piett is quickly promoted
to admiral when his predecessor "falls down on the job."

  And while it's a small point, the Empire's manners and decorum speak
well of it. When Darth Vader is forced to employ bounty hunters to track
down Han Solo, he refuses to address them by name. Even Boba Fett, the
greatest of all trackers, is referred to icily as "bounty hunter." And
yet Fett understands the protocol. When he captures Solo, he calls him
"Captain Solo." (Whether this is in deference to Han's former rank in the
Imperial starfleet, or simply because Han owns and pilots his own ship,
we don't know. I suspect it's the former.)

  But the most compelling evidence that the Empire isn't evil comes in
"The Empire Strikes Back" when Darth Vader is battling Luke Skywalker.
After an exhausting fight, Vader is poised to finish Luke off, but he
stays his hand. He tries to convert Luke to the Dark Side with this simple
plea: "There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. . . . Join me, and I
will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this
destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." It is here we find
the real controlling impulse for the Dark Side and the Empire. The Empire
doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order.

  None of which is to say that the Empire isn't sometimes brutal. In
Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand
Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But
viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear.
Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid
the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They
aren't given due process, but they are traitors.

  The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the
Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even.
As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to
spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her
plea is important, if true.

  But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the
truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is
willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a
diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying
to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked
where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.

  Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the
greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of
whether or not Alderaan really is peaceful and defenseless. If anything,
since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of
Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for
Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like
Leia.

  Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire
is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the
survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed
to its destruction.

III. After the Rebellion

  As we all know from the final Star Wars installment, "Return of the
Jedi," the rebellion is eventually successful. The Emperor is
assassinated, Darth Vader abdicates his post and dies, the central
governing apparatus of the Empire is destroyed in a spectacular space
battle, and the rebels rejoice with their small, annoying Ewok friends.
But what happens next?

  (There is a raft of literature on this point, but, as I said at the
beginning, I'm going to ignore it because it doesn't speak to Lucas's
original intent.)

  In Episode IV, after Grand Moff Tarkin announces that the Imperial
Senate has been abolished, he's asked how the Emperor can possibly hope to
keep control of the galaxy. "The regional governors now have direct
control over territories," he says. "Fear will keep the local systems in
line."

  So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with
access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These
governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead,
the galaxy will be plunged into chaos.

  In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear
of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe.
All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't
liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large:
dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

  Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic
royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara
back.

  I'll take the Empire.

-----
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
-----

Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 08:17:15 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

"Never trust an automatic pistol or a D.A.'s deal." 
-- John Dillinger

Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 06:33:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical
substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
-- Carl Jung

Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 06:46:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  QOTD

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
-- Groucho Marx

Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 08:10:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  cabbies

  A mother, accompanied by her small daughter, was in New York City.
The mother was trying to hail a cab, when her daughter noticed several
wildly dressed women who were loitering on a nearby street corner. The
mother finally hailed her cab and they both climbed in, at which point the
young daughter asked her mother, "Mommy, what are all those ladies waiting
for by that corner?"

  The mother replied, "Those ladies are waiting for their husbands to come
by and pick them up on the way home from work."

  The cabbie, upon hearing this exchange, turned to the mother and said,
"Ah, c'mon lady! Tell your daughter the truth! For crying out loud...
they're hookers!"

  A brief period of silence followed, and the daughter then asked, "Mommy,
do the hooker ladies have any children?"

  The mother replied, "Of course, Dear. Where do you think cabbies come
from?"

Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 09:06:49 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  extrapolation

  Kentucky hillbilly, Herman James was drafted into the Army and on the
first day as an enlisted man he was given a comb. The following day the
Army barber sheared all of his hair off. On the third day the Army gave
him a tooth brush. On the next day the Army dentist yanked several of his
teeth out. On the fifth day he was given a jock strap...that afternoon
Herman went AWOL.

Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 07:17:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  remember

It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier,
Who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.
-- Father Denis Edward O'Brien, U.S. Marine Corps

Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 07:11:37 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  The Boob Poem

  The Boob Poem

  For years and years they told me,
  Be careful of your breasts.
  Don't ever squeeze or bruise them.
  And give them monthly tests.

  So I heeded all their warnings,
  And protected them by law.
  Guarded them very carefully,
  And I always wore my bra.

  After 30 years of astute care,
  My gyno, Dr. Pruitt,
  Said I should get a Mammogram.
  "O.K," I said, "let's do it."

  "Stand up here real close" she said,
  (She got my boob in line),
  "And tell me when it hurts," she said,
  "Ah yes! Right there, that's fine."

  She stepped upon a pedal,
  I could not believe my eyes!
  A plastic plate came slamming down,
  My hooter's in a vise!

  My skin was stretched and mangled,
  From underneath my chin.
  My poor boob was being squashed,
  To Swedish Pancake thin.

  Excruciating pain I felt,
  Within it's viselike grip.
  A prisoner in this vicious thing,
  My poor defenseless tit!

  "Take a deep breath" she said to me,
  Who does she think she's kidding?!?
  My chest is mashed in her machine,
  And woozy I am getting.

  "There, that's good," I heard her say,
  (The room was slowly swaying.)
  "Now, let's have a go at the other one."
  Have mercy, I was praying.

  It squeezed me from both up and down,
  It squeezed me from both sides.
  I'll bet SHE'S never had this done,
  To HER tender little hide.

  Next time that they make me do this,
  I will request a blindfold.
  I have no wish to see again
  My knockers getting steamrolled.

  If I had no problem when I came in,
  I surely have one now.
  If there had been a cyst in there,
  It would have gone "ker-pow!"

  This machine was created by a man,
  Of this, I have no doubt.
  I'd like to stick his balls in there,
  And see how THEY come out !!

Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 08:45:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  another .sig

"Crazy people, of course, are not required to do any math at all, which is
why their theories are far more fun to read."
-Kenneth Hite

Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 08:56:09 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humor:  Why engineers do not write recipe books

Why engineers do not write recipe books

Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Ingredients:
01. 532.35 cm3 gluten
02. 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
03. 4.9 cm3 refined halite
04. 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
05. 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
06. 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
07. 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
08. Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
09. 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10. 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

  To a 2-L jacketed round bottom flask (reactor #1) with an overall heat
transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two,
and three with constant agitation.

  In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at
100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is
homogeneous.

  To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of
the homogeneous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine
and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point
in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of
an exothermic reaction.

  Using a screw extruder attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture
piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a
period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order
rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the
reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C ? 5C heat-transfer table,
allowing the product to come to equilibrium.