Humor
Denning is an inveterate punster who frequently uses humor to get points across. Examples:
- April Fool special section (when he was editor), ACM Communications (April 1984).
- On Active and Passive Writing, a treatise exhorting students to write in the active voice.
- A Tale of Two Islands. Fable about a controversy in queueing theory over operational analysis. First published in 1991. Contained as an appendix to a 2006 overview of operational analysis
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Famous quotes containing the word humor:
“Carlyle’s humor is vigorous and titanic, and has more sense in it than the sober philosophy of many another. It is not to be disposed of by laughter and smiles merely; it gets to be too serious for that: only they may laugh who are not hit by it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I made him a low curtsy and thanked him for the honor he intended me, but told him I had no kind of ambition to be his upper servant.... I then asked him how many offices he had allotted for me to perform for those great advantages he had offered me, of suffering me to humor him in all his whims and to receive meat, drink, and lodging at his hands; but hoped he would allow me some small wages, that I might now and then recreate myself with my fellow servants.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Men’s happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)