Humor for Wednesday: Baseball and Data General

Three items. The first came in my e-mail, and stood out because the “from” address was “email hidden; JavaScript is required.” That’s right, zom. Do these phishers know how unbearably funny they are?

Dear Amazon Member:

Due to recent account takeovers and unauthorized listings, Amazon is introducing a new account verification method. From time to time, randomly selected accounts are subjected to an advanced verification process based on our merchant accounts/bank relations and customer debit card.

Your account is not suspended, but if in 48 hours after you receive this message your account is not confirmed, we reserve the right to suspend you Amazon registration. amazone is committed to assist law enforcement with any inquires related to attempts to misappropiate personal information with the intent to commit fraud or theft.

To confirm your identity with us click here. Please do not respond to this confirmation e-mail.

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Second is a link posted by on a journalist message board. The conversation in the thread was wandering back and forth from Gilbert & Sullivan to “filks” – that is, some of the humorous poems written by science fiction fans. This one is a true Golden Oldie written by Steven Levine, which starts with

I’ve built a better model than the one at Data General
For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
My storage system’s better than magnetic core polarity,
You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
There isn’t any reason to install non-static floor matting;
My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.

You can find it on many places on the Internet, including this reasonably well-formatted rendition.

The third is this commentary on one of baseball’s greatest teams. While it was written in July, think about tonight’s division-series starter between the Chicago Cubs and the Arizona Diamondbacks.