Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 14, 1995                   TAG: 9511140065
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: IOWA CITY, IOWA                                LENGTH: Medium

A TASTE OF THE JOKER'S TALL TALES OF WISDOM

``I helped build the jet stream. Back in the 1960s, the jet stream was a way to get airplanes from one place to another without using engines. We've still got a jet stream, but nobody uses it.''

``There are ways of answering questions even when you have no data at your disposal. It involves the use of disposable data.''

``Vacuum cleaners are in themselves silent. What makes the noise you find offensive are the actual particles of dirt and pollution in the space being cleaned. If your living room were clean when you vacuumed, then your vacuum cleaner would make no noise at all. The flaw in all of this, of course, is that if your living room were clean, you wouldn't be vacuuming. Because there are no perfectly clean rooms, scientists had to prove this hypothesis by vacuuming in outer space, itself a perfect vacuum. Space is also incredibly clean. Astronauts reported that even the most powerful, poorly maintained vacuum cleaners made absolutely no noise in space. Millions of your tax dollars went toward proving this.''

``It's Velcro that holds the skeleton together. When the body decomposes, only Velcro is left. Indeed, this is the naturally occurring source of Velcro. It's a grisly job, scraping it off the bones.''

To the question of why light moves at only 186,000 miles per second: ``Scientists are working on this. There is already a prototype vehicle that travels at 200,000 miles per second. This is the equivalent of driving down the freeway backward with your headlights not only out, but actually chasing you down the road. This is why so many scientists today no longer own a driver's license.''

On whether cobwebs should be cleaned: ``You could, but your entire house would fall down within minutes. They're actually held together by cobwebs. Once you begin to unravel them, like a sweater with a loose piece of thread, it will just completely go. So leave them alone and spray them with lacquer to ensure their safety.''