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5.12. Some of these posts in rec.humor (and elsewhere) are gibberish. What's with that?

In an effort to keep clean minds clean (while allowing those of us with our minds in the gutter to wallow there), you'll find some postings that appear as gibberish at first glance. They're encoded with rot13, a popular Net cipher. Rot13 is sometimes used to "hide" dirty jokes and "spoilers" (posts that can ruin your fun by, for example, giving video game hints or telling you what happens in each episode of the Prisoner).

It's entirely up to the person who posts the message whether it will be encoded with rot13 or not. It's pretty easy to read rot13-encoded text. In fact, it's supposed to be easy. With rot13, each letter is replaced by the letter 13 farther along in the alphabet (cycling around at the end). Most newsreaders have a built-in command to decrypt rot13 articles. By pressing the special keys, you acknowledge that you're about to see something that may annoy or offend you. 

Program	Command
Here's a message with rot-13 encoding: 
                  Gur Frk Yvsr bs na Ryrpgeba

                      ol n Qvfgbegrq Jnir

Bar avtug jura uvf punetr jnf cyragl uvtu, zvpeb snenq qrpvqrq gb
trg  n  phgr yvggyr pbvy gb yrg uvz qvfpunetr. Ur cvpxrq hc zvyyv
nzcf naq gbbx ure sbe n evqr ba uvf zrtnplpyr. Gurl ebqr npebff n
jurng-fgbar oevqtr naq fgbccrq va n  zntargvp svryq  arne n fznyy
fgernz bs rqql pheeragf.
And without 
                  The Sex Life of an Electron

                      by a Distorted Wave

One night when his charge was plenty high, micro farad decided to
get  a  cute little coil to let him discharge. He picked up milli
amps and took her for a ride on his megacycle. They rode across a
wheat-stone bridge and stopped in a  magnetic field  near a small
stream of eddy currents.

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