Recently General Motors addressed
this comment by releasing the following statements....
1. Yes, but would you want your
car to crash twice a day?"
2. Every time they repainted
the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would
die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this; restart and
drive on.
4. Occasionally, executing a
maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to reinstall
the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept
this too.
5. You could only have one person
in the car at a time; unless, you bought "Car95" or "CarNT". But, then you would
have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car
that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy
to drive, but would only run on 5% of the roads.
7. The Macintosh car owners would
get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run
much slower.
8. The oil, gas and alternator
warning lights would be replaced by a single, "general fault",
warning light.
9. New seats would force everyone
to have the same size butts.
10. The airbag
system would say, "are you sure?", before going off.
11. If you were involved in a
crash, you would have no idea what happened.
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Recently, a group of
computer scientists (all males) announced that computers should also be
referred to as being female. Their reasons this conclusion follow:
Five reasons to believe computers
are female:
1. No one but the Creator understands
their internal logic.
2. The native language they use
to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible
to everyone else.
3. The message "Bad command or
file name" is about as informative as, "If you don't know why I'm mad at you,
then I'm certainly not going to tell you."
4. Even your smallest mistakes
are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
5. As soon as you make a commitment
to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for
it.
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2. Give a dissertation on the ancient Babylonian Empire with particular reference to architecture, literature, law and social conditions -OR- give the first name of Pierre Trudeau.
3. Would you ask William Shakespeare
to
(a) build
a bridge
(b) sail
the ocean
(c) lead
an army or
(d) WRITE
A PLAY
4. What religion
is the Pope?
(a) Jewish
(b) Catholic
(c) Hindu
(d) Polish
(e) Agnostic (check only
one)
5. Metric conversion. How many feet in 0.0 meters?
6. What time is it when the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 5?
7. How many commandments was Moses given? (approximately)
8. What are people in America's
far north called?
(a) Westerners
(b) Southerners
(c) Northerners
9. Spell -- Bush, Carter and Clinton
10. Six kings of England have been called George, the last one being George the Sixth. Name the previous five.
11. Where does
rain come from?
(a) Macy's
(b) a 7-11
(c) Canada
(d) the
sky
12. Can you explain Einstein's
Theory of Relativity?
(a) yes
(b) no
13. What are coat hangers used for?
14. The Star Spangled Banner is the National Anthem for what country?
15. Explain Le Chateliers
Principle of Dynamic Equilibrium -OR- spell your name in BLOCK
LETTERS.
16. Where is the basement in a three story building located?
17. Which part of America
produces the most oranges?
(a) New
York
(b) Florida
(c) Canada
(d) Wisconsin
18. Advanced math. If you have three apples how many apples do you have?
19. What does NBC (National Broadcasting Corp) stand for?
20. The Cornell University
tradition for efficiency began when (approximately)?
(a) B.C.
(b) A.D.
(c) still
waiting.
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Dearest creature
in creation,
Study English
pronunciation.
I will teach
you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse,
and worse.
I will keep you,
Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow
dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will
tear.
So shall I! Oh
hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard,
and heard,
Dies and diet,
lord and word,
Sword and sward,
retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter,
how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague
you
With such words as plaque and
ague.
But be careful
how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak
and streak;
Cloven, oven,
how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem,
and toe.
Hear me say, devoid
of trickery,
Daughter, laughter,
and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles,
topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes,
and reviles;
Scholar, vicar,
and cigar,
Solar, mica,
war and far;
One, anemone,
Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen,
laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German,
wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene,
mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with
ballet,
Bouquet, wallet,
mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like
food,
Nor is mould like should and
would.
Viscous, viscount,
load and broad,
Toward, to forward,
to reward.
And your pronunciation's
OK
When you correctly
say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and
sieve,
Friend and fiend,
alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous;
clamour
And enamour rhyme
with hammer.
River, rival,
tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll
and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with
anger,
Neither does
devour with clangour.
Souls but foul,
haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand,
and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first
say finger,
And then singer,
ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge
and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and
age.
Query does not rhyme with
very,
Nor does fury
sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth,
loth.
Job, nob, bosom,
transom, oath.
Though the differences
seem little,
We say actual
but victual.
Refer does not
rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does,
and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate
and sedate;
Dull, bull, and
George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic,
Pacific,
Science, conscience,
scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and
heaven,
Rachel, ache,
moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed,
but allowed,
People, leopard,
towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences,
moreover,
Between mover,
cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches,
wise, precise,
Chalice, but
police and lice;
Camel, constable,
unstable,
Principle, disciple,
label.
Petal, panel,
and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait,
promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise,
chaos, chair,
Senator,
spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour,
four.
Gas, alas,
and Arkansas.
Sea, idea,
Korea, area,
Psalm,
Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern,
cleanse and clean.
Doctrine,
turpentine, marine.
Compare
alien with Italian,
Dandelion
and battalion.
Sally with
ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey,
and key.
Say aver,
but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein,
deceiver.
Heron,
granary, canary.
Crevice and device and
aerie.
Face, but preface, not
efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass,
glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin,
give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour,
scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear
and tear
Do not rhyme with here
but ere.
Seven is right, but so
is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew
Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and
jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork
and work.
Pronunciation -- think
of Psyche!
Is a paling
stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose
your wits,
Writing groats and saying
grits?
It's a
dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed,
solace, gunwale,
Islington
and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and
indict.
Finally, which rhymes
with enough --
Though, through, plough,
or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound
of cup.
My advice
is to give up!!!
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Costello: I just got
my first computer.
Abbott: That's great Lou.
What did you get?
Costello: A Pentium
II-266, with 40 Megs of RAM, a 2.1 Gig hard drive, and a 24X
CD-ROM.
Abbott: That's terrific,
Lou.
Costello: But I don't
know what any of it means!!
Abbott:
You will in time.
Costello: That's exactly
why I am here to see you.
Abbott:
Oh?
Costello: I heard that
you are a real computer expert.
Abbott:
Well, I don't know-
Costello: Yes-sir-ee.
You know your stuff. And you're going to train me.
Abbott:
Really?
Costello: Uh huh. And
I am here for my first lesson.
Abbott: O.K. Lou. What
do want to know?
Costello: I am having
no problem turning it on, but I heard that you should be very careful how
you turn it off.
Abbott:
That's true.
Costello: So, here I
am working on my new computer and I want to
turn it off. What do I
do?
Abbott: Well, first you
press the Start button, and then -
Costello: No, I told
you, I want to turn it off.
Abbott: I know, you press
the Start button-
Costello: Wait a second.
I want to turn it off. Off. I know how to start it. So tell
me what to do.
Abbott:
I did.
Costello:
When?
Abbott: When I told
you to press the Start button.
Costello: Why should I
press the Start button?
Abbott: To shut off
the computer.
Costello: I press Start
to stop.
Abbott: Well Start doesn't
actually stop the computer.
Costello: I knew it! So
what do I press.
Abbott:
Start
Costello:
Start what?
Abbott:
Start button.
Costello: Start button
to do what?
Abbott:
Shut down.
Costello: You don't have
to get rude!
Abbott: No, no, no!
That's not what I meant.
Costello: Then say what
you mean.
Abbott: To shut down
the computer, press-
Costello:
Don't say, "Start!"
Abbott: Then what do
you want me to say?
Costello: Look, if I want
to turn off the computer, I'm willing to press the Stop button, the End button
and Cease and Desist button, but no one in their right mind presses the Start
to Stop.
Abbott: But that's what
you do.
Costello: And you probably
Go at Stop signs, and Stop at green lights.
Abbott:
Don't be ridiculous.
Costello: I am being ridiculous?
Well. I think it's about time we started this conversation.
Abbott: What are you
talking about?
Costello: I am starting
this conversation right now. Good-bye.
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