A certain lawyer was
A certain lawyer was quite wealthy and had a summer house in the country, to which he retreated for several weeks every year. Each summer, the lawyer would invite a different friend of his (no, that's not the punch line) to spend a week or two at this home, which happened to be in a backwoods.

On one particular occasion, he invited a Czechoslovakian friend to stay with him. The friend, eager to get a freebie off a lawyer, agreed. They had a splendid time in the country - rising early and living in the great outdoors.

Early one morning, the lawyer and his Czechoslovakian companion went out to pick berries for their morning breakfast. As they went around the berry patch, gathering blueberries and raspberries in tremendous quantities, along came two huge Bears - a male and a female. The lawyer, seeing the two bears and sensing danger, immediately dashed for cover. His friend, however, being ignorant of nature, was not so lucky. The male bear charged the paralyzed Czechoslovakian, then swallowed him whole.

The lawyer, instilled with fright, rushed back to his car and sped into town to get the local sheriff. The sheriff, upon hearing the lawyer's unsettling story, grabbed his rifle and dashed back to the berry patch with the lawyer following closely behind.

Sure enough, the two bears were still there. ''He's in THAT one!'', cried the lawyer, pointing to the male, all the while visions of lawsuits from his friend's family lagged in the back of his mind. He just had to save his friend. The sheriff looked at the two bears, and without batting an eye, leveled his rifle, took careful aim, and SHOT THE FEMALE.

''What did you do that for!'', exclaimed the lawyer, ''I said he was in the other one!''

''Exactly,'' replied the sheriff, ''Would YOU believe a lawyer who told you the Czech was in the male?''

Bad computer viruses
Economic computer viruses

INTEREST GROUP ECONOMIST VIRUS - Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of the computer.

ECONOMETRICIAN VIRUS - Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of

POLITICAL THINK TANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Doesn't do anything, but you can't get rid of it until next election.

GOVERNMENT ECONOMIST VIRUS - nothing works on your system, but all your diagnostic software says everything is just fine.

MARXIAN ECONOMIST VIRUS - Helps your computer shut down whenever it wants to.

SOVIET ECONOMIST VIRUS - Crashes your computer, but denies it ever happened.

MAINSTREAM ECONOMIST VIRUS - It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases then in "self-defense."

CENTRAL BANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION ECONOMIST VIRUS - Deletes all monetary files, but keeps smiling and sending messages about how the economy is going to get better.

SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMIST VIRUS - Puts your computer to sleep for four years. When your computer wakes up, you're trillion more dollars in debt.

ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMIST VIRUS - Before allowing you to delete any file, it first asks you if you've considered the alternatives