Which God?
When someone told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, “Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?”
Scientific Advances
While I was employed by a private corporation and assigned to the space-shuttle program, my job included ordering supplies.
One of the engineers asked me to get a new dictionary for him. The request form said, “State reason this item is needed,” so I asked him why he wanted one. I expected his answer would be “My old copy is lost” or “The cover is falling off.”
Instead he replied, “My edition defines spaceship as an ‘imaginary aircraft.'”
He got his new dictionary.
Cow Predictions
A farmer was describing his lifestyle to a touring group of city folks. “One of the benefits of this profession,” he explained, “is that we have built-in weather predictions.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked one inquisitive visitor.
“When the cows are standing,” the farmer explained, “it means no rain is likely for the next twenty-four hours. When they’re lying down, it means it’s going to rain.”
“On our bus trip,” another visitor piped in, “I saw half the herd standing and the other half lying down. What does this mean?”
The farmer flashed a smile and answered, “That means half of them are wrong.”
Friends
When the subject of heaven and hell was broached in conversation one day, Ernest Hemingway politely declined to offer any opinion.
“Excuse me for not answering,” he said. “I have friends in both places.”
