Humor 9/29/97: 25 Lessons in Life

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my weekly humor email for those of you who are new to it, and
welcome back to some of you whose email addresses I've finally updated.
If you send me a personal email, I'll write you back. Please send your
emails to me at my JUNO account: joshli@juno.com.

For those of you who haven't heard, I am definately starting a project
in New York City this week. Potentially, I could be there all the way
to May of 1998. I may finish earlier than that. I'll be working for a
company on 27th Street and Madison Ave, in Manhattan. For my New York
friends, or anyone else with some good advice concerning apartment
rentals in New York, please give me your thoughts on the following
question: "Should I try to rent an apartment within walking distance of
the company's office, or should I rent a nice place somewhere else in
Manhattan and just take the subway to work?" Do you have any
recommendations of areas or even specific apartment buildings? I'm
probably looking for a fully-furnished, month-to-month corporate
apartment.

This week's recommendation for movie, CD, book or something else is the
movie "The Peacemakers", with George Clooney. Air Force One is better,
but this film is pretty good. Go see it if you get a chance.

Okay, let's get to the humor email. It's not exactly humor, but I think
it's interesting. Thanks to Vivian Chiang for forwarding it to us. Pay
special attention to # 14. (My roommate and I will be organizing a
ballroom dancing session in later October. Probably Swing. I'll send
out more details in a few weeks).

Take care and keep in touch!

-Josh.
________________________________________________

Emery Styron, publisher of the Mount Pleasant News sent the following
message to the high
school graduating class in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. The wisdom in the
editorial is timeless and
just as useful in now as it was when published in May.
____________________________

ATTENTION GRADUATES: There is the kind of education you get in school
and the kind you get
afterward. Both are important. Put them together, and you have
wisdom. The trouble is, life
is generally half over before you figure out what is going on.
Graduating seniors can save 25
years of trial, error and hard knocks by memorizing the lessons of life
listed below.

On the average, you learn about one big lesson per year after you leave
high school.
In really tough years, you learn two or three. Some years, you don't
learn anything. After
40, you forget things and have to learn them again.

Some of this information is borrowed. Some is stolen. Some may
even be original, but
that's doubtful. It's pretty hard to be original in a world as old as
this one.

25 Things You'll Need to Know After High School

1. Don't sweat the small stuff, and remember, most stuff is small.

2. The most boring word in any language is "I".

3. Nobody is indispensable, especially you.

4. Life is full of surprises. Just say "never" and you'll see.

5. People are more important than things.

6. Persistence will get you almost anything eventually.

7. Nobody can make you happy. Most folks are about as happy as
they make up their minds
to be.

8. There's so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the
worst of us that it
doesn't behoove any of us to talk about the rest of us.

9. Live by what you trust, not by what you fear.

10. Character counts. Family matters.

11. Eating out with small children isn't worth it, even if someone
else is buying.

12. If you want to have kids until you can afford them, you probably
never will.

13. Baby kittens don't begin to open their eyes for six weeks after
birth. Men generally
take about 26 years.

14. The world would run a lot smoother if more men knew how to
dance.

15. Television ruins more minds than drugs.

16. Sometimes there is more to gain in being wrong than right.

17. Life is so much simpler when you tell the truth.

18. People who do the world's real work don't usually wear neckties.

19. A good joke beats a pill for a lot of ailments.

20. There are no substitutes for fresh air, sunshine and exercise.

21. A smile is the cheapest way to improve your looks, even if your
teeth are crooked.

22. May you live life so there is standing room only at your
funeral.

23. Mothers always know best, but sometimes fathers know, too.

24. Forgive yourself, your friends and your enemies. You're all
only human.

25. If you don't do anything else in life, love someone and let
someone love you.

Humor 9/21/92: History of Math

Hey,

What have you been up to? I just finished working on a proposal in
Andersen Consulting's New York office. It was quite a long and tiring
project, and I'm really glad that it's over. Now I wait for my next
assignment. For those of you who received my last email, I mentioned
that I was suppose to go to New Jersey for a project, but that got put
on hold. So, I think I'll be assigned to a project in New York City.
I'll let you know for sure when I get there.

This week, my recommendation for a CD, book, movie, or something else,
is a book titled, "First Things First", by Stephen Covey. This is the
same guy that wrote, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". The book
contains lots of great things on time management, priority setting in
life, understanding the roles you play, etc. For those of you at
Andersen, I highly recommend the "First Things First" one-day workshop,
which also provides you with a copy of the book, the book on audio-tape,
and a nice planner using the First Things First format.

While I'm on the subject of career development, another recommendation I
have is an article written by Tom Peters, "The Brand Called You", in the
August/September 1997 issue of Fast Company magazine. Here's a short
intro to the article: "Big companies understand the importance of
brands. Today, in the Age of the Individual, you have to be your own
brand. Here's what it takes to be the CEO of Me Inc." I think that no
matter what line of work you're in, or even if you're still in school,
this article will be helpful for your career. You can probably find the
article at the magazine's website: www.fastcompany.com. If not, please
email me and I can fax you a copy of the article.

Okay, this week's humor email comes to us from Brian Ibbotson. Enjoy!

-Josh.
____________________________________________________

Teaching Math in 1950: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for
$100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his
profit?

Teaching Math in 1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for
$100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his
profit?

Teaching Math in 1970: A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a
set "M" of money. The cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is
worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set
"M". The set "C", the cost of production contains 20 fewer points
than set "M". Represent the set "C" as a subset of set "M" and answer
the following question: What is the cardinality of the set
"P" of profits?

Teaching Math in 1980: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for
$100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your
assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990: By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the
logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living?
Topic for class participation after answering the question?
How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut
down the trees? There are no wrong answers.

Teaching Math in 1996: By laying off 402 of its loggers, a company
improves its stock price from $80 to $100. How much capital gain per
share does the CEO make by exercising his stock options at $80. Assume
capital gains are no longer taxed, because this encourages investment.

Teaching Math in 1997: A company outsources all of its loggers. They
save on benefits and when demand for their product is down the logging
work force can easily be cut back. The average logger employed by the
company earned $50,000, had 3 weeks vacation, received a nice
retirement plan and medical insurance. The contracted logger charges
$50 an hour. Was outsourcing a good move?

Teaching Math in 1997b: A logging company exports its wood-finishing
jobs to its Indonesian subsidiary and lays off the corresponding half of

its US workers (the higher-paid half). It clear-cuts 95% of the forest,

leaving the rest for the spotted owl, and lays off all its remaining US
workers. It tells the workers that the spotted owl is responsible for
the absence of loggable trees and lobbies Congress for exemption from
the Endangered Species Act. Congress instead exempts the company from
all federal regulation. What is the return on investment of the
lobbying costs?


- Magoons

Humor 9/14/97: What a Zoo!

Hi everyone,

I hope your weekend is going well. Welcome to my weekly humor email
distribution list, for all of you who are new.

This week's recommendation on a movie, CD, or something else, is a movie

called "Shall We Dance". It's in Japanese with English subtitles, and
it's about ballroom dancing. It's really good and I highly recommend
it. In fact, if you are in the Boston area, I think my roommate and I
are thinking of organizing a group of people to go ballroom dancing on
Sunday afternoons at MIT, right before volleyball. If you're
interesting in joining us, please let me know.

This week humor email comes to us from Vivian Chiang. Enjoy! -Josh.
______________________________________________________________________________

One day an out of work mime is visiting the zoo and attempt to earn
some money as a street performer. As soon as he starts to draw a
crowd, a zoo keeper grabs him and drags him into his office

The zoo keeper explains to the mime that the zoo's most popular
attraction, a gorilla, has died suddenly and the keeper fears that
attendance at the zoo will fall off. He offers the mime a job to
dress up as the gorilla until they can get another one. The mime
accepts.

So the next morning the mime puts on the gorilla suit and enters
the
cage before crows comes. He discovers that it's a great job. He
can
sleep all he wants, play and make fun of people and he draws bigger

crowds than he ever did as a mime. However, eventually the crowds
tire of him and he tires of just swinging on tires. He begins to
notice that the people are paying more attention to the lion in the

cage next to his. Not wanting to lose the attention of his
audience,
he climbs to the top of his cage, crawls across a partition, and
dangles from the top to the lion's cage. Of course, this makes the

lion furious, but the crowd loves it. At the end of the day the
zoo
keeper comes and gives the mime a raise for being such a good
attraction.

Well, this goes on for some time, the mime keeps taunting the lion,

the crowds grow larger, and his salary keeps going up. Then one
terrible day when he is dangling over the furious lion he slip and
fails. The mime is terrified. The lion gathers itself and
prepares
to pounce. The mime is so scared that he begins to run round and
round the cage with the lion close behind.

Finally, the mime starts screaming and yelling, "Help, Help me!",
but
the lion is quick and pounces. The mime soon finds himself flat on

his back looking up at the angry lion and lion says "Shut up you
idiot! Do you want to get us both fired"

Humor 9/7/97: Chocolate Joke

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my weekly humor email distribution list, for all the new
people I've met recently, especially all the people I have met at the
NAAAP Conference in Houston over Labor Day weekend. Once things quiet
down a bit at work, I hope to send personal emails to you guys. Also,
welcome back for all the people who went away for the summer.

It's been a while since I last sent out a humor email. I've been very
busy working in New York over the last few weeks and traveling to
Houston for the NAAAP Conference. As some of you know, in about a week
and a half, most likely I will be assigned to a project in central New
Jersey, near Rutgers University, for about 6 months. I think it's about
30 - 45 minutes outside New York. Once I'm settled in, you're all
invited to come and visit. Since I will be in NJ, I've started to use
an email account on Juno, since this email account is a local
Boston-based ISP account. My Juno email address is: joshli@juno.com.
I'll still be keeping this GIS account for a while, but use it mostly on
weekends when I'm back in Boston. If you would like to get in touch
with me during the week, you can leave me a toll-free message at:
1-888-454-4010, mailbox 8208, and I will call you back.

This week's recommendation on a movie, CD, or other, is a CD called
"Stranger" by Ronnie Po. Ronnie is an up and coming Asian rock
performer, who performed many of the songs from his album at the NAAAP
Conference. I really liked it and bought his CD. I highly recommend
it. If you would like to buy a copy, you can email Ronnie at:
RonniePo@aol.com.

Okay, this week humor email comes to us from Dave Shim. Enjoy! -Josh.
______________________________________________________________________________

A preacher visits an elderly woman from his congregation. As he
sits on the couch he notices a large bowl of peanuts on the coffee
table. "Mind if I have a few?" he asks. "No, not at all," the woman
replied.

They chat for an hour and as the preacher stands to leave, he
realizes that instead of eating just a few peanuts, he emptied most
of the bowl.

"I'm terribly sorry for eating all your peanuts, I really just meant
to eat a few," he said.

"Oh, that's all right," the woman says. "Ever since I lost my teeth
all I can do is suck the chocolate off them anyway."