Back to computer humour
Last updated: 2016/06/22

Believe it or not, UNIX and all its derivatives can be quite amusing. This isn't to say that it is all good, however; it reveals things that some might not wish to see and it also (theoretically) answers real world questions many people frequently ask.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Those of us with enough experience in UNIX or any of its derivatives who have also thought about it will understand that it is the creation of sexually depraved wizards: the commands tail, finger and head along with the library of curses is more than enough evidence of this. But sexually depraved wizards or not, we tend to be especially wise. This document highlights some examples for the enlightenment and amusement of all.

Politicians and Politics

Politicians and politics. These two words can be hard to fathom. Many will say that politicians are the most unintelligent of the human race and when they're in power it can be truly terrifying. Of course, even an intelligent person in power can also be scary, since like everyone else, different people have different motives. Rather than get into real life (what's that?), let's just pretend that they are. Can it be proven in fun?

The notion of the IQ is ironically rather stupid itself and it misses a great deal so the below is very ridiculous. But still, let's pretend that it is a valid science. Can we determine the IQ?

Well it so happens that the very powerful tool grep has this functionality, at least in theory. Realising that a match for politician also matches politicians, we can ask grep this very question! 

$ grep -ciH politician iq
iq:0

So there you have it. According to this, the bogus science of the IQ would end up being 0 for politicians. Of course the only person with an IQ of 0 is really someone who is not alive or maybe completely brain dead. But let's go further than that. Another utility whatis is used to query what something is and we can ask it what politics is. Let's do that, shall we? What is politics?

$ whatis politics
politics: nothing appropriate.

Okay that's quite fair. It's a necessary thing, sure, but it often has a lot of inappropriateness to it.

Of course there are other things that could be played with by those two tools, not just politics. Everyone has their own likes an dislikes, after all.

But are there additional useful utilities when it comes to answering contentious questions in this world? It so happens that YES there are.

Humanity

Human decency. Is there such a thing? And if there is where is it ? If we understand it is an unusual trait (relatively speaking) then we need only ask the whereis utility to search for unusual things; if all we see is another prompt ('$') then there was nothing found:

$ whereis -u 'human decency'
$

Manuals

And then there is the subject of manuals - and manual work. The man command is used to look at the manual of a command (and many other things including functions, standards and numerous other things). But there is one manual lacking here and some might suggest this is the very reason men tend to be rubbish when it comes to women:

$ man women
No manual entry for women

Personally I don't buy that theory but I can see how many would make such an excuse (for humans love to make excuses for their problems or problems they sympathise with) - and instead of living in the moment turn socialising into hard, manual labour (and not succeed). Not that I should talk about socialising much, as I usually prefer small groups.

Conclusions

So to those who say UNIX is too complicated, outdated or useless I challenge you to refute the above evidence notwithstanding the men who wish for a simple manual about women.