>WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
>
>Plato:
> For the greater good.
>
>Karl Marx:
> It was a historical inevitability.
>
>Machiavelli:
> So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has
>the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for
>whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian
>virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
>
>Hippocrates:
> Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
>
>Jacques Derrida:
> Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of
>the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as
>the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD,
>DAMMIT, DEAD!
>
>Noam Chomsky:
> The chicken didn't exactly cross the road. As of 1994, something
>like 99.8% of all US chickens reaching maturity that year, had spent 82% of
>their lives in confinement. The living conditions in most chicken coops
>break every international law ever written, and some, particularly the ones
>for chickens bound for slaughter, border on inhumane. My point is, they had
>no chance to cross the road (unless you count the ride to the supermarket).
>Even if one or two have crossed roads for whatever reason, most never get a
>chance. Of course, this is not what we are told. Instead, we see chickens
>happily dancing around on Sesame Street and Foster Farms commercials where
>chickens are not only crossing roads, but driving trucks (incidentally,
>Foster Farms is owned by the same people who own the Foster Freeze chain, a
>subsidiary of the dairy industry). Anyway, ...
>(Chomsky continues for 32 pages. For the full text of his answer, contact
>Odonian Press)
>
>Thomas de Torquemada:
> Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
>
>Timothy Leary:
> Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
>
>Douglas Adams:
> Forty-two.
>
>Nietzsche:
> Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the
>Road gazes also across you.
>
>Oliver North:
> National Security was at stake.
>
>B.F. Skinner:
> Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from
>birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to
>cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
>
>Carl Jung:
> The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that
>individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore
>synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
>
>Jean-Paul Sartre:
> In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it
>necessary to cross the road.
>
>Ludwig Wittgenstein:
> The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and
>"road," and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of
>this potential
>occurrence.
>
>Albert Einstein:
> Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken
>depends upon your frame of reference.
>
>Aristotle:
> To actualize its potential.
>
>Buddha:
> If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
>
>Howard Cosell:
> It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace
>the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the
>temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to
>homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
>
>Salvador Dali:
> The Fish.
>
>Darwin:
> It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
>
>Emily Dickinson:
> Because it could not stop for death.
>
>Epicurus:
> For fun.
>
>Ralph Waldo Emerson:
> It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
>
>Johann Friedrich von Goethe:
> The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
>
>Ernest Hemingway:
> To die. In the rain.
>
>Werner Heisenberg:
> We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was
>moving very fast.
>
>David Hume:
> Out of custom and habit.
>
>Saddam Hussein:
> This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in
>dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
>
>Jack Nicholson:
> 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.
>
>Pyrrho the Skeptic:
> What road?
>
>Ronald Reagan:
> I forget.
>
>John Sununu:
> The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite
>understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
>
>The Sphinx:
> You tell me.
>
>Henry David Thoreau:
> To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
>
>Mark Twain:
> The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
>
>Katherine McKinnon:
> Because, in this patriarchial state, for the last four centuries,
>men have applied their principles of justice in determining how chickens
>should be cared for, their language has demeaned the identity of the
>chicken, their technonogy and trucks have decided how and where chickens
>will be distributed, their science has become the basis for what chickens
>eat, their sense of humor has provided the framework for this joke, their
>art and film have given us our perception of chicken life, their lust for
>flesh has has made the chicken the most consumned animal in the US, and
>their legal system has left the chicken with no other recourse.
>
>Stephen Jay Gould:
> It is possible that there is a sociobiological explanation for it,
>but we have been deluged in recent years with sociobiological stories
>despite the fact that we have little direct evidence about the genetics of
>behavior, and we do not know how to obtain it for the specific behaviors
>that figure most prominently in sociobiological speculation.
>
>Joseph Stalin:
> I don't care. Catch it. I need its eggs to make my omlette.
>
>Malcom X:
> It was coming home to roost.
>
>Islamist:
> How dare it do this! This clearly violates sura X.xx of the Koran.
>I hereby issue a fatwa against this chicken for blasphemy!
>
>Hindu:
> The chicken, by identifying itself with its ego, doesn't realize
>his or her Godhood. Unless it meditates, it will forever be doomed by the
>cycle of Karma into mindlessly crossing the road. Once it does meditate
>it will eventually achieve Nirvana thereby, escaping this cycle of birth,
>death and crossing roads.
>
>Empiricist:
> Let's not jump to any conclusions. Let's ask all the above people
>this question and collect the facts first. This is, after all, the only
>way to arrive at a proper conclusion, based not on biases but on facts.