"These damn astronomers can find new solar systems, but they can't find intelligent life during a Gallup Poll."—Will Vehrs

"John Major—by day, a mild-mannered former British PM; by night, crime-stopping avenger—has fathered yet another child."—Tim Carvell

"John is alive?"—Peter Lerangis

"Well, of course there's Adam Clymer. Then there's Richard Berke and Kit Seelye, also at the New York Times. According to Dubya, who became confused about who's a journalist and who isn't, the new forth supermajor is Jon Stewart."—David M. King (Ben Sheriff, Jay D. Majors, and Will Vehrs had similar answers.)

"Put me down as a 'big-time' similarly for inevitable 'supermajor league asshole' Clymer joke."—Peter G. Eipers

"Somebody ought to tell Dubya that though the three 'supermajor educational R's' are in fact readin', writin', and arithmetic, the fourth is not 'racial profiling, which is illiterate children.' Oh God, they're not having a fourth debate are they?"—Ariel Gilbert-Knight

"Please tell me they haven't found additional labia in Jocelyn Wildenstein's nether regions."—Larry Amoros

"The Holy Trinity can add anyone they want, but if they wanted a fourth for their golf outing, why choose Madeleine Albright?"—Steven Davis (similarly Catholic, Dave Donovan)

"What? A fourth supermajor? No one told me that Burns and Hoolihan at the 4077 had even done a threesome!!"—Bob Barnes

"Since I know that we're talking about the Chevron-Texaco merger here, I guess the answer is that there will be fewer jobs for Dick Cheney to apply for once the election is over."—Mark Wade

"God, Heather was already, like, sooo supermajorly crushed out on Danny Parfrey from fourth-period algebra, Cody Peltz from the swim team, and Justin Timberlake from 'N Sync, but, y'know, that new German exchange student is totally hot!"—Eric Fredericksen (similarly, Terrence Laukkanen)

"It has just been decided that on Survivor 2: The Australian Outback, a two-thirds majority will be required to vote off any contestant."—Deborah Guy

"Oh, right. As if the UPN fall lineup actually qualifies it as anything but a superminor network."—Carrie Rickey (similarly, but Fox, Ellis Weiner, Steven Davis, Mark Wade, and Sharon Dynek)

"Someone has to tell Terry Bradshaw that it's still too early in the season to be gushing about the St. Louis Rams like that."—Mark Wade

"I can't explain it. I'm just thrilled to learn we have four supermajors when I hadn't realized we already had one, let alone three."—David Finkle (similarly, Sean Carman)

"Sweet Jesus. Crosby, Stills, Nash, AND YOUNG?"—Dan Dickinson

"Did Pamela Anderson Lee reverse the reversal? Will C become D again?"—Chris Gwaltney

"Former drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey will star in a sitcom about a gay ex-military type who moves back to the Midwest and, I don't know, buys a bowling alley and trades wisecracks with a neurotic, streetwise New York career woman. I know it sounds kind of confusing, but David Letterman produced it and so it's the HIT OF THE SEASON."—Peter Carlin

"Australians are getting a bit uppity about their Olympic medal count, aren't they"?—Brooke Saucier

"Supermajor? I think I went out with him."—Larry Amoros

"By their Miss America work, Donny and Marie have joined Oprah and Rosie in the TV family pantheon of pathetic but beloved big-sister stand-ins."—Barry Johnson

"[It] is about defying gravity. This is the idea. It's Copenhagen complemenatrianism all over again. The strong force and the weak force, the fourth superminor always indicated a fourth supermajor, it's just that we couldn't ever really know any damn thing about it since it has neither position nor velocity. Duh."—David Feige

"The Beatles are getting back together and joining the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Hootie and the Blowfish on tour this summer."—Sarah M. Balcomb

"Wasn't that George W. Bush trying to deflect a military question? 'I know the answer, but since its a military matter you'll have to ask the supermajor, er super, oh, whatever, to explain it.' "—Tim Nichols

"I know that Al Gore's Harvard thesis was good, but I think he's stretching his impact on the field."—Anthony Wright

"A 'supermajor' is a new honorary military rank being given to conservative hawks who somehow managed to sit out the Vietnam War with deferments and National Guard Duty. The fourth 'supermajor' was, as announced on Sunday, given to Dick Cheney."—Allen Specht

"Desperate to counteract Dick Cheney's charges of a crumbling military, Commander-in-Chief Clinton is promoting the dickens out of anything in uniform."—Mark Romoser (similarly, Will Vehrs)

"When I went to the new Hayden Planetarium, I didn't realize that the Milky Way was in the 'Orion Cluster' or any of this new-fangled astronomy that wasn't around when I was a kid. What will they think of next? A ninth planet in the solar system?"—Anthony Wright

Self-Reference Corner

"What? You promised us only three more weeks of this stuff!"—Ben Sheriff

"I'll thank you to leave the results my most recent colonoscopy out of the News Quiz."—Sean Carman

"Well, I don't know how to explain this, except to point out that the addition of another 'supermajor' coincides with Tim Carvell's increasing hooky-playing from the News Quiz. Think about it. Beth Sherman: accounted for. Greg Diamond: present as always. But Tim Carvell, where's Tim Carvell? Rather than confront Carvell with the shame of his indolent ways, however, they just promoted him to News Quizzer Emeritus and looked for another supermajor. So that's the explanation. It defies gravity, too."—Dola Nasr

Newz Kwiz 4 Kidz Korner

"Today we honor geese! Geese are supermajor cool! Do you know that geese have been used as 'watchdogs' (except that they're geese) because they honk when strangers approach their territory? And did you know that geese try to fool you into thinking that they're going to peck at you with their bills when actually they're going to try to knock you over with their shoulders? There was a great story you may have heard about a kingdom where there lived a goose that would lay golden eggs. And then one day the new king decided to that since the kingdom had so much gold now, it had to have a feast to celebrate, and so he killed the goose that laid the golden eggs and served it up to the wealthiest 1 percent of the—what's that? I'm getting a message from the control booth. No, frankly I don't think this is too heavy-handed. I don't care that they're only children. Oh, all right, fine. They killed the goose, but it was OK because the wealthiest 1 percent started laying their own golden eggs after they ate the goose and the wealth they created trickled down to the middle class, although not to the poor because they were already slotted to lose their welfare benefits after the expiration of the five-year transition period into—all right, fine, I'll stop. Everyone lived happily ever after because once an economy is going well there's nothing you can do to ruin it even if you skim off most of the benefits and shunt them to your fat-cat contributors. Happy ending. OK, happy now?"—Greg Diamond