It’s now clear why things such as this happen on a regular basis:
Stepping out of the humor track for a second, I just discovered this as well – apparently it’s a very serious matter:
Doctors’ sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually. It’s a shocking statistic, and, according to a July 2006 report from the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM), preventable medication mistakes also injure more than 1.5 million Americans annually. Many such errors result from unclear abbreviations and dosage indications and illegible writing on some of the 3.2 billion prescriptions written in the U.S. every year.
Men’s and women’s shopping habits have long been grist for the humorist’s mill.
Men shop until they have what they came for; women shop until they’re tired.
Men would rather rake their eyeballs out with a cat brush than go shopping; women shop for entertainment.
Men shop for what they need; women shop to find out what they want.
But the best humor is rooted immovably in truth, and people often find funny what they resonate with:
A woman was in town on a shopping trip. She began her day finding the most perfect shoes in the first shop and a beautiful dress in the sale in the second. In the third everything had just been reduced by 50 percent when her mobile phone rang. It was a female doctor notifying her that her husband had just been in a terrible car accident and was in a critical condition and in the ICU. The woman told the doctor to inform her husband where she was and that she’d be there as soon as possible. As she hung up, she realized she was leaving, what was shaping up to be, her best day ever in the boutiques. She decided to get in a couple of more shops before heading to the hospital.
She ended up shopping the rest of the morning, Finishing her trip with a cup of coffee and a beautiful chocolate cake, compliments of the last shop. She was jubilant.
Then she remembered her husband. Feeling guilty, she dashed to the hospital. She saw the doctor in the corridor and asked her about her husband’s condition. The lady doctor glared at her and shouted, ‘You went ahead and finished your shopping trip didn’t you! I hope you’re proud of yourself! While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself in town, your husband has been languishing in the Intensive Care Unit!
It’s just as well you went ahead and finished, because it will more than likely be the last shopping trip you’ll ever have! He will require round the clock care for the rest of his life and he will now be your full time career!’
The woman was feeling so guilty she broke down and sobbed.
The lady doctor then chuckled and said, ‘I’m just pulling your leg, he’s dead. Show me what you bought.’
Heartless! But why would jokes like this even surface if there were not a grain of truth to them?
A friend of mine, Mark Stanley, author and illustrator of the webcomic Freefall, came up with what seems like a very cogent explanation for the difference in shopping patterns, at least from an energy-conservation standpoint. In this scene, Florence Ambrose, a gengineered wolf (and an engineer in her own right) is shopping for clothes, when this interaction takes place:
This makes a lot of sense; there’s even science behind it. Of course, it doesn’t touch the psychological differences between men and women, or how they tend to think; have a look at these two representations of the shopping decision process (click them for larger versions):
These are funny, but again there’s truth here. Men evolved with a basic biological thought process:
Kill food
Reproduce
Women, on the other hand, have always had a list of responsibilities that this blog entry wouldn’t hold:
cook
clean
nurture
teach
drive
heal
support
manage
counsel
etc., ad infinitum
This mindset may be represented by the following device:
Like it or not, as genders we think differently. Even our visual cortices process input differently, as illustrated by how men and women perceive the shopping environment:
As long as people insist on living as couples, shopping together may always be an area of divisiveness. Remembering that expectations are essentially pre-planned resentments, it might be helpful to keep the following things in mind:
Talk to each other. Find out what your partner likes and enjoys. This prepares a playing field for good communication.
If you love to shop and your partner doesn’t, for the love of Mogg’s holy grandfather, don’t insist that they follow you around to every store under the starry vault.
Some husbands/boyfriends/partners may enjoy shopping with you simply because they know you enjoy it; others would rather be stung by a thousand bees. Either way, roll with what’s there. If you really enjoy shopping with someone, find a like-minded friend and go with them.
Split up for the shopping trip if necessary. If you’re out for necessities, divide and conquer. Just remember that even guys have some hangups when it comes to certain kinds of shopping, and plan your route accordingly.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear Home Depot calling me.
Listen, I know leetspeak is paleolithic and not funny anymore, but it’s a great lead-in to this awesome infographic about programming. If it got you here, mission accomplished. Suck it down.
Although I was a programmer for years, having started with FORTRAN on a Univac 1108, and progressing through PL/I in the IBM environment to Algol on Data General machines, and using Basic, PL/M, Javascript and C in the PC environment, this chart forces me to confront the fact that I only really danced around the core of the programming world. But having done as much as I did, I thoroughly respect the people who code for today’s computers, tablets and smartphones.
Programming is a fertile field for humor, mostly as a stress-reliever. I shared a poem by Dan Nessett previously, and I’ll give you a few more examples of his work – and that of others – below.
This poem appeared in Droll Science by Robert L. Weber (1987), and was noted as an original submission for that volume. However, I first saw it printed off on a Tektronix thermal printer at Washington State’s Office of Financial Management in 1980, so I’m not sure quite what to make of that.
——-
Another poem by Nessett, also chanted to the cadence of “Hiawatha”:
The strange tale of Jeremiah Hoop
Jeremiah Hoop, a stranger, came to be advised concerning The addition of some figures Needed for his Income Tax.
To the University of Hoopla State he brought his query, “Please explain what I must do to Add these on your fine computer.”
“Please attend,” the first man told him. “The error in your computation Will depend on the solution Of this Eigenvalue problem.”
“Epsilon in this case surely Will destabilize your answer And your round-off will truncate so That your sum must disappear.”
Jeremiah’s admiration Of this man’s remarkable grasp Of the gallic language did not Rid him of his pressing question.
So he sought and found another Fine distinguished-looking teacher – “Ah! A fine example of the Non-deterministic parsing Requisite in PDL Automata and T. M. Scanners.
Here, I have a proof that this is Quite unsolvable,” he answered. “Huh!?!” was all that Mr. Hoop Could muster after this Greek lesson.
Once again he posed the question. Once again a Rorschach answer. “If we generalize your question Into one of n-dimensions We can then apply the Tensor Calculus and Einstein’s methods.”
“With but one Christoffel symbol And ignoring oscillations, I believe we’ll find the answer To our question in three years.” Again and once more Jeremiah Questioned those of higher learning –
If we write a microprogram…” or, “An SVC exists…” “Pooh!” was all that Jeremiah Could respond, exasperated. “In the time I’ve wasted asking, I could sum the list by hand.”
Wiser, Jeremiah Hoop turned And in silence walked away. Went back to his farm in Clodville. Laughed out loud occasionally.
One day while cleaning off my desk there came Into my hands a scrap, upon it writ Five lines of code – a subroutine whose name Was “Magic” which required no arguments.
My curiosity began to itch. I wrote a simple driver with but one “Call Magic” statement – and submitted it And walked outside to bask beneath the sun.
Four hours later I awoke in pain. A sunburn had decided it should Take out a lease and dwell upon my skin. So I returned inside in no sweet mood.
I claimed my job – my reason was enraged. Queer looks were given me when I exclaimed, “Great Caesar’s Ghost,” for on its final page Was “For your sunburn try some Solarcaine™”.
Three times I ran that job – three times amazed. For once it solved a problem that had been My tormentor for months, and, sans arrays, It gave a winning strategy for Gin.
The second run output a proof which showed That every map with four colors may be Completely marked and all adjacent nodes Have different hues for their identity.
The third described a model of the skies Which made the Einstein formulation seem As trivial as one plus four is five, And yet could be explained to a Marine.
Just one more time I ran that job and while It executed I sat deep in thought. I concentrated all my earthly guile On making “Magic” show the key to Luck.
The world is full of greed and avarice. It spins on axes hewn from Mankind’s lust. Small children learn – avoid the precipice Of grabbing for that final piece of crust.
No trace of “Magic” could be found by this Sad author after I turned in that job Which disappeared with all the previous Results collected – dust to worthless dust.
– Dan Nessett
——-
Ode to a Programmer
(Unknown)
“No program is perfect,” they said with a shrug. “The client is happy – what’s one little bug?” But he was determined; The others went home. He dug out the flowcharts, Deserted, alone. Night passed into morning, The room became cluttered With core-dumps and punch-cards. “I’m close,” he muttered. Chain-smoking, cold coffee, Logic, deduction, “I’ve got it!” her cried, “Just change one instruction!” Then change two, then three more, As year followed year, And strangers would comment, “Is that guy still here?” He died at the console Of hunger and thirst. Next day he was buried Face down, 9-edge first. And his wife, through her tears, Not accepting his fate, Said, “He’s not really gone, He’s Just Working Late!”
——-
Even though times were undoubtedly simpler in 1978,
I’m sure programmers have always had the same challenges.
Quoted for truth
——-
On that note, a bit of history. Back in 1984, the company I joined was running on Wang OIS hardware, at one time the foremost word processing system available in the business world. Their famous V2 editor, designed in tight assembly code to run in 32K of workspace (although most workstations by that time had 64K) was stored in the Wang headquarters in Lowell, Massachussetts, in a tall rack of drives. Source code and backups, all in the same rack. Which got knocked over. Hence no improvements were ever made to the editor; when it came time for Wang to release WP Plus, they basically had to re-write the code from the bottom up, emulating the function of their own editor… and of course it was slower than molasses. Source code is important…
——-
While Mike Royko praised the virtues of the Macintosh in 1995, it was not always popular; at the Macworld in 1986, Philippe Kahn, then CEO of Borland International, raised hackles when he called the Mac a “piece of shit.” He later did an about face when he woke up and smelled the money, but it was a gutsy thing to say in the middle of a convention of Mac enthusiasts.
I know people like this. Me, I’ll use whatever’s at hand, whatever works, whatever’s cheapest. I love the Mac platform but have never been able to afford it for my own personal machines (fortunately I was able to dig deeply into Apple technology at work, and for years attended the Macworld conventions in San Francisco, where I serendipitously encountered some of my favorite music. I’ve never dared navigate the Unix learning curve, despite being told by all my friends that it’s the only way to go. So I’m happy with my core i7 machine, which will probably meet my needs for the foreseeable future. Running Win7 Pro 64, I finally feel as though I have a machine that is really fast enough for everything I care to do. Heck, I can even play Duke Nukem 3D (Forever was a huge disappointment) using the eduke32 port – what more could a man ask for? [1] – and XP is still available as a virtual machine for the few programs that choke at Win7.
One of the earliest iterations of this joke that I’ve seen.
I think this has happened in real life more than once.
A friend of mine in Norway posted this one.
-Did you have your own computer when you were little?
-We didn’t even have the Internet.
-Huh‽
-Why is your iPad so big and clunky? Is it a first generation?
-That’s a TV.
-Huh‽
It’s somewhat disturbing to take note of the fact that there are young people alive today who don’t know a world without the Internet. Problems, of course, are always grist for the humorist’s mill:
Despite Microsoft’s best efforts to manage 1080 lines of operating system code, this still happens:
Fortunately they give their valued users an opportunity to provide feedback:
If you’re not satisfied with the bounteous information provided when things go wrong, you can always call Microsoft Customer Support
Naturally, as the above recording indicates, they will always try to redirect you to their website:
On that note, users who need help need to make sure their tech support agents are competent, and not evil:
Computer humor goes back a long, long way – Byte Magazine enjoyed throwing an April Fool’s advert into their “What’s New” section. Interesting technology from 1981 – can you spot the joke?
A year earlier, Datamation published a lovely send-up of Poe’s “The Raven” which still resonates with coders of today, even though the architecture has shifted a bit (many versions of this can be found around the internet, but I believe this one is the original).
Of course, many people even today are afraid of technology, and the supermarket rags wasted no time exploiting those fears:
As technology became more mainstream, people needed to learn how to deal with it in everyday situations:
(From Ernie, later The Piranha Club)
Dave Barry had some interesting things to say about technophobes in 1995.
Some were more successful than others:
But students did their best to adapt and take advantage of all technology had to offer:
Working in a software development environment is never easy. There are so many bosses and customers and dotted lines that situations like this are fairly common:
Every new technology has to work the bugs out:
We’ve come a long way since the early days of computing. Moore’s Law[2], outsourcing and competition have done a lot to keep consumer prices on a downward trend (except for Apple, of course):
This state-of-the-art computer from Tandy would cost $15,937.75 in 2013 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you wanted to add a 28K Modem, it would only cost you an additional $800.00;
Whereas a 15 Megabyte Hard Drive would set you back $2495.00… plus $495.00 for that “required installation kit.”
Hardware back then was ruddy expensive; that Tandy 5000 would cost $16,004.44 in 2013 dollars, and for that you could buy the best, fastest system available today with every conceivable bell and whistle, and still have enough left over for some nice add-ons.
Today’s internet connection speeds make this seem like stone-age technology (although working for Washington State’s Office of Financial Management in 1980, I was connecting to WASU’s IBM’s over a 300 BAUD AT&T TTY terminal, and felt incredibly blessed when our new TI’s bumped that to 1200 BAUD – all things are relative!) (Keep in mind that my HTC Incredible 2 smartphone, already 5 years old, has a 1 GHz processor, 786MB of ram, and a 32GB memory card that’s smaller than my fingernail, and I paid around $200.00 for it.)
There may come a day when we begin to regret making our computers smarter than we are:
\
But until that time, we will just have to accept the fact of what computers really are: wonderful servants, but harsh taskmasters.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
[1] Well, maybe smoothly-working versions of all of the Myst series. The first one is a bear to get working in any emulated environment.
[2] Moore’s law simply says that computer power doubles every eighteen months. First stated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of the Intel Corporation, this simple law has helped to revolutionize the world economy, generated fabulous new wealth, and irreversibly altered our way of life. When you plot the plunging price of computer chips and their rapid advancements in speed, processing power, and memory, you find a remarkably straight line going back fifty years. (This is plotted on a logarithmic curve. In fact, if you extend the graph, so that it includes vacuum tube technology and even mechanical hand-crank adding machines, the line can be extended over 100 years into the past.)
Exponential growth is often hard to grasp, since our minds think linearly. It often starts deceptively slowly. It is so gradual that you sometimes cannot experience the change at all. But over decades, it can completely alter everything around us.
According to Moore’s Law, every Christmas your computer games are almost twice as powerful (in terms of memory and processing speed) as they were the previous year. Furthermore, as the years pass, this incremental gain becomes truly monumental. For example, when you receive a birthday card in the mail, it often has a chip which sings “Happy Birthday” to you. Remarkably, that chip has more computer power than all the Allied Forces of 1945. Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt might have killed to get that chip. But what do we do with it? After the birthday, we throw the card and chip away. Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969 when it sent two astronauts to the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3D situations, use more computer power than main frame computers of the previous decade. The Sony Playstation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.
-Kaku, Michio, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100.
And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)
Areopagus (Mars Hill) at the foot of the Acropolis
Anyone who has spent any serious time studying Latin has probably felt the need for something more powerful than Tylenol™ to quiet the throbbing in his or her head. In the absence of Oxycontin™, humor has long been a good substitute for mitigating the effects of “bonus, bona, bonum, boni, bonæ, boni…”
Here a random collection of humorous tidbits regarding the vagaries of classical Latin (and other languages). Macaronics are, properly, text which uses multiple languages, and often bilingual puns.
While not macaronics proper, it’s still a great Latin joke: It reads (liberally translated), “If you can read this bumper sticker, you’re well-educated and TOO DAMN CLOSE!”
——-
What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo—
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:—
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!
Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos! –Alfred Dennis Godley
The above poem pokes fun at the difficulty of Latin declensions, and inflects the words “motor” and “bus” as though they were classical Latin nouns (which, in a certain sense, they are.)
——
Latin verbs are memorized with their principal parts:
sum, esse, fui, futurus (to be) ferro, ferre, tuli, latus (to carry) – did you know transfer and translate are basically the same word, meaning “carry across”?
Students, in apparent desperation at having to learn these niceties, came up with
flunko, flunkere, faculty, bouncem
to which I add my own sophomoric creation:
farto, fartere, pui, flatus
I’m quite proud of it, actually. And thanks to reader bman:
spitto, spittere, achtui, splattus
——-
As the title of this article indicates, “leges romanorum boni sunt” (the laws of the Romans are good,) but obviously this sounds like something much sillier.
——-
A bad Latin joke:
A professor of Latin at Yale, (sounds like a limerick in the offing, doesn’t it?) having ordered a meal at a fine New Haven restaurant, decided that he would like some wine with his dinner. So he summoned the wine steward and asked for a bottle of hock. Feeling clever, he added, “hic, haec, hoc.”
“Very good, sir,” replied the wine steward, and left.
Twenty minutes later, no wine. The learned man summoned the steward again, and asked, “Didn’t I order a bottle of hock?”
“You did indeed, sir,” replied the steward, “but then you declined it.”
——
Found on the wall at Pompeii:[1]
Civili derego
Fortibus in ero
Demes nobus, demes trux
Vadis inem, causan dux
Parvus Jacobus Horner Sedebat in corner Edens a Christmas Pie Infuerit thumb, Extraherit plum, Clamans, “Quid sharp puer am I!”
——-
Mollis abuti Has an acuti; No lasso finis Molly divinis.
——-
Macaronics are not restricted to Latin, but rather are more properly any sort of bilingual wordplay. As a teenager playing with calligraphy, I did this for my father, who long treasured it:
It’s no more Provençal than I am Abkhazian, but it makes for a funny sign, and good advice in any age.
——-
The above sign leads me to one of the greatest collections of macaronics ever, Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames by Louis d’Antin van Rooten. This is a collection of (purportedly) classical French poetry with illuminating notes. However, if one reads them aloud, they become heavily-accented modern Mother Goose rhymes. One of my favorite examples:
Jacques s’apprête
Coulis de nos fête.[a]
Et soif que dites nos lignes.[b]
Et ne sauve bédouine tempo[c] y aussi,
Telle y que de plat terre, cligne.[d]
Notes:
a. Coulis, a sort of strained broth. Jacques was either a sauce chef or an invalid. b. Jacques was also an alcoholic, since his thirst is beyond description. c. He was fond of Arab music. d. He believed the earth was flat. The last word of the line, meaning “wink,” is obviously a stage direction. Poor Jacques, whoever he was, was obviously considered a fool.
Um die Dumm’ die Saturn Aval;
Um die Dumm’ die Ader Grät fahl.
Alter ging’s Ohr säss und Alter ging’s mähen.
Kuh den “putt” um Dieter Gitter er gähn’.
——-
If you are familiar with both classical Greek and French, you might be both delighted and scandalized by
οὐκ ἔλαβον πόλιν, ἀλλά γάρ ἐλπίς έφὲ κακά .[2]
Supposedly from a text by Xenophon – I have not been able to source it definitively – the sentence means “They did not capture the city, since they didn’t have a hope of taking it.” It’s pronounced “Ouk élabon polin, alla gar elpis éphè kaka.”
In French, however, it sounds like something quite different, the kind of thing schoolchildren would laugh up their sleeves about: “Où qu’est la bonne Pauline? À la gare, elle pisse et fait caca.” Google Translate will help you out if you’re really curious.
Vetus lupus locutus est.[3]
[1]Not really. I don’t think the Pompeiians would have resonated with
See, Willy, there they go
Forty buses, in a row
Dem is no bus, dem is trucks!
What is in ’em? Cows and ducks.
[2] If any classical Greek scholar would care to correct this – I know it’s not perfect – I welcome your input.
It would appear that things haven’t changed much from the days of programming in Fortran, PL/1, COBOL, and JCL in the IBM environment.
I share with you a poem by Dan Nessett. I have no idea who this brilliant man is, but he has written some classic DP humor. This one was collected in 1980; old-school programmers will probably relate more than today’s OOP whizkids, but there may be echoes that even the newer generation can relate to.
“I Was Wondering About This Error Message,” I said
Beneath my stare began to blur
10,000 lines of print.
Buried alive by 0C5[1]
Which gave not clue nor hint.
Up from my chair, I neared the lair
Branded “Consultants’ Room.
With puzzled gaze I paraphrased
My mind’s perplexing gloom.
“That bilious sty of wire,” said I,
“Has dumped its DUMP on me.
I cannot guess where in that mess
I’ll find the missing key.”
“The clues are everywhere,” he said.
And I began to think
Of : “Water, water everywhere
But not a drop to drink.”
“Aha!” said he, “Your DCB
Has lost BUFL.
MSHI is far to high
And BLKSIZE looks not well.”
“BLDL in this case will
Cause 0C5 or 4.
To BSP hex ‘503’
Will backspace low cost store.”
“You FREEMAIN twice and GETMAIN once’
This cannot be advised.
And all of this, I’m positive
Has caused your 0C5.”
My jaw had slackened to my knees;
A fly flew in my mouth.
I gathered up my SYSUDUMP
And crawled off in a slouch.
Back to my desk; I placed to rest
My chin upon my hand.
My weary eyes seemed quite surprised
To gaze on print again.
Beneath my stare began to blur
10,000 lines of print.
Buried alive by 0C5
Which gave not clue nor hint.
-Dan Nessett
The Old Wolf has spoken.
[1] 0c5 and 0c4 are basically the IBM compilation error codes that mean “You screwed up big-time somewhere, and I have no idea what’s wrong.”
2.1.3 ABEND CODE 0C4 1. ERROR ID: none 2. DESCRIPTION: This is a storage protection violation generally caused by your program trying to STORE data in memory that is not allocated for your use. 3. CORRECTIVE PROCEDURE: Make sure any subscripts used do not exceed the boundary specified. Correct all bad addresses in a store-type statement.
2.1.4 ABEND CODE 0C5 1. ERROR ID: none 2. DESCRIPTION: The computer tried to ADDRESS an area in a non-existent part of memory (beyond the bounds of our installation memory). 3. CORRECTIVE PROCEDURE: Check for improper subscripts and for inconsistent lists for subprograms.
This reminds me of my very first FORTRAN programming class in 1969, working on a Univac 1108. The instructor told us about various compilation errors we could get, and what they meant. He went on to say that there was one high-level error we were unlikely to see, because in essence it meant that we were smarter than the computer: “unresolvable ambiguity in source code” or some such thing. Guess what the machine gave me when I submitted my very first deck?
A man opened his refrigerator to find a small rabbit on the shelf. “What are you doing in here?” asked the man. “Well,” replied the rabbit, “this is a Westinghouse, isn’t it? I’m westing…”
This thing looks like a cross between “2001” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” I’m not sure I’d let it anywhere near me.
According to today’s news:
“(NEWSER) – You may not have heard of the da Vinci surgical robot, but your local hospital surely has. The $1.5 million robot is a hot item in the medical world, having been used in 367,000 US surgeries last year. Now, however, the FDA is talking a closer look after an increase in reported problems linked to the device, including five deaths, reports AP. In one case, a woman died after the robot nicked a blood vessel. The device is operated by surgeons, and the story takes pains to note that the robot itself may not be at fault.
The multi-armed robot has also made some bizarre moves during surgeries, including refusing to release tissue it was holding and hitting a patient on the face. These days, da Vinci is being used three times as often as it was four years ago; it’s in one of four US hospitals. Some experts say that’s partially thanks to extensive marketing. “The rapid adoption of robotic surgery … has been done by and large without the proper evaluation,” says one. But the robot’s maker, Intuitive Surgical, says “adverse event rates” are “in line with historical trends” after 1.5 million surgeries.”
Playing in the World Game 