1 "You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are
5 "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
8 "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a necessity."
11 "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
14 "IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique'
15 to destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the
16 ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT
17 OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all
18 this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor
19 approaches the pot, he falls into the pit"
22 "There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them"
25 "It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
26 to my kind of fooling"
29 "Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!"
32 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
33 cometh out of man, in their sight...Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
34 have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread
38 I have stripped off my dress; must I put it on again? I have washed my feet;
39 must I soil them again?
40 When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred
41 within me [my bowels were moved for him (KJV)].
42 When I arose to open for my beloved, my hands dripped with myrrh; the liquid
43 myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt. With my own hands I
44 opened to my love, but my love had turned away and gone by; my heart sank when
45 he turned his back. I sought him but I did not find him, I called him but he
47 The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me; they struck me and
48 wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took away my cloak.
49 [Song of Solomon 5:3-7 (NEB)]
51 How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy
52 thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel
53 is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap
54 of wheat set about with lilies.
55 Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
56 [Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
58 How beautiful, how entrancing you are, my loved one, daughter of delights!
59 You are stately as a palm-tree, and your breasts are the clusters of dates.
60 I said, "I will climb up into the palm to grasp its fronds." May I find your
61 breast like clusters of grapes on the vine, the scent of your breath like
62 apricots, and your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my
63 caresses, gliding down through lips and teeth.
64 [Song of Solomon 7:6-9 (NEB)]
66 Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
67 as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
69 [Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]
71 But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to
72 thee, to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the
73 wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
76 When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and
77 driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate
78 them. You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.
81 I just thought of something funny...your mother.
84 In the beginning, I was made. I didn't ask to be made. No one consulted
85 with me or considered my feelings in this matter. But if it brought some
86 passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
87 through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
88 - Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the
91 You will be successful in your work.
93 The life of a repo man is always intense.
95 If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
97 That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
98 really hate is lousy programmers.
99 -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
101 Wherever you go...There you are.
104 Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
105 -- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
107 Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
110 No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
111 at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does
112 know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
113 decide a single human fate.
114 -- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
116 Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
119 When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
120 anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
121 two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the
122 history of war have so few been led by so many.
123 -- General James Gavin
125 The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
129 You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
132 Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
133 Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
136 Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
139 The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact
140 mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
143 Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
146 The main thing is the play itself. I swear that greed for money has nothing
147 to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
148 -- Feodor Dostoyevsky
150 It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
153 Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
156 Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
159 After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
162 There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make
163 it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
164 make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
165 -- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
167 Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
168 applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
169 cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missile defense
170 systems. The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
171 error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
172 It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities. An unreliable
173 programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
174 greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
175 pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
178 Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
179 way he did. In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
180 indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
181 important to him than his table or his white robe.
182 -- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
184 "It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline.
185 Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
186 -- Hunter S. Thompson
188 In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
189 today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool --
190 programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
194 The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
195 "airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
196 seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
197 see only a very few things at once.
200 ...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
201 been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
204 A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
205 have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
206 those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
207 the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix,
208 APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
209 with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
212 ...computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
213 civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
217 Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
218 construct because no two parts are alike. If they are, we make the two
219 similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed. In this respect, software
220 systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
221 repeated elements abound.
224 Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
225 They have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing,
226 and testing them hard. Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
230 The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
231 Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
232 often abstract away its essence.
235 Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
236 God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
240 Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
243 The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
244 and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting
245 language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
247 -- Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
249 The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
252 Perfection is achieved only on the point of collapse.
256 Keep as cool as you can.
257 It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
260 Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
261 and you'll be Gary, Indiana. - Jessie in the movie "Greaser's Palace"
263 Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound. - Peanuts
265 Police up your spare rounds and frags. Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
266 -- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
268 "All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
272 "Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple
273 his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than
274 against them is to attain literacy."
275 -- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
277 "Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
278 make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
279 As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
280 we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
281 personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make
282 computing a part of our lives?"
283 -- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
285 "The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace."
288 "No matter where you go, there you are..."
291 Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.
293 Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN!
295 "I'm growing older, but not up."
298 Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
300 "I hate the itching. But I don't mind the swelling."
301 -- new buzz phrase, like "Where's the Beef?" that David Letterman's trying
302 to get everyone to start saying
304 Your own mileage may vary.
306 "Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again."
307 -- Marvin The Paranoid Android
309 "Send lawyers, guns and money..."
310 -- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
312 "I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
315 "Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
316 Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
317 Love is not music; Music is the best." -- Frank Zappa
321 "And they told us, what they wanted...
322 Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance." -- Kate Bush
324 "In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not
325 there if you want to keep writing good code." -- Karl Lehenbauer
327 Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.
330 I'm looking forward to not being able to drive 65, either.
332 Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas.
334 "Can you program?" "Well, I'm literate, if that's what you mean!"
336 No user-servicable parts inside. Refer to qualified service personnel.
338 At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
339 contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
340 or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
341 of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
342 nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
343 world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
344 enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
346 -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
348 One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled
349 long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no
350 longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured
351 us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
352 we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
353 new bamboozles rise.)
354 -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
356 Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way
357 to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."
359 The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of
360 pseudoscience. Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort
361 contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory. Because
362 of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
363 scientists must employ in their work.
364 -- Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
366 Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
367 bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we
368 don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the
369 truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of
370 suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
371 -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade,
374 Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
376 Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
377 Don't have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
379 As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
380 bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
381 or putatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new
382 version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
383 component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
384 efficient test cases will usually be available.
385 -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
387 Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
388 version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece. Their
389 work will be set back by having that test bed change under them. Of course it
390 must. But the changes need to be quantized. Then each user has periods of
391 productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change. This seems
392 to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
393 -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
395 Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
396 mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
397 -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
399 It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it
400 is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize
401 the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of
402 architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were
403 threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.
405 The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write
406 the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more
407 than the schedule allowed.
409 The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare
410 the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be
411 well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Furthermore, if
412 the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs
415 To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program
416 team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would
417 also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He
418 was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
419 the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
420 added a year to debugging time.
421 -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
423 The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary
424 psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After
425 more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP
426 phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions. This simple but
427 basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies
428 conducted over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is
429 now of little interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated
430 phenomenon that needs explanation.
431 -- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
433 The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
434 years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
435 is and will always be a wild animal.
436 -- Charles Galton Darwin
438 Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as conscious
439 selection. We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we
440 can be. Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves
444 "Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin."
445 -- Michael O'Donohugh
447 ...though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage
448 from beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
450 "It's like deja vu all over again." -- Yogi Berra
452 The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
455 "Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked. "Begin at the
456 beginning," the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then
458 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
460 A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
463 To be awake is to be alive. -- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden"
465 A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
468 You see but you do not observe.
469 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
471 A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
472 unless there be two. -- Seneca
474 Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no
475 proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. -- John Keats
477 The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order
478 of space and time. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
480 What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
483 Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of
484 rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. -- Edmund Burke
486 For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
489 Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
492 One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
493 Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
494 a rivalry of aim. -- Henry Brook Adams
497 Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
498 In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
499 Yea, from the table of my memory
500 I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
501 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
502 That youth and observation copied there.
503 Hamlet, I : v : 95 William Shakespeare
505 Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he
506 has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
507 the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with
508 distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with
509 propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning
510 processes, and make him something less than a man.
511 -- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
513 Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
514 based on excellence of performance. -- James Bryant Conant
516 You can observe a lot just by watching. -- Yogi Berra
518 If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit, I
519 see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by
520 electricity. -- Samuel F. B. Morse
522 "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." -- Alexander Graham Bell
524 It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
525 -- J. C. R. Licklider
527 It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
528 design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
529 and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
530 -- B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal
531 System", Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980,
534 A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
537 The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
538 knowledge of its ugly side. -- James Baldwin
542 ...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
543 tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
544 -- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
546 It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
549 Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
552 Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
553 rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more
554 efficient would the current models be? If you have not already heard the
555 analogy, the answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a
556 Rolls-Royce for $2.75, it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it
557 would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you were
558 interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a
562 In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
563 You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
566 Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
568 Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
569 complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through
570 rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
571 remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote
572 to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
573 the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the
574 problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
575 system. -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage
577 Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal,
578 Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
580 I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
581 Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal
582 advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
583 for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
584 expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
585 England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
586 I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
587 of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
588 who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
590 If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
591 triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
592 of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
593 might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
594 that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
595 an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
596 distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
597 such machinery impracticable...
599 And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
600 exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
601 which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
602 application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
603 calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
604 In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
605 be economized by the aid of machinery.
606 -- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
608 How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?
610 "Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
612 "Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free
613 with my breakfast cereal."
614 -- Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
616 Uncompensated overtime? Just Say No.
618 Decaffeinated coffee? Just Say No.
620 "Show business is just like high school, except you get paid."
623 "This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
626 "Morality is one thing. Ratings are everything."
627 -- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
631 "...if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
632 this would be a better world." - Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
634 Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too
637 "Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
638 made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977
640 "All these black people are screwing up my democracy." - Ian Smith
644 I've got a bad feeling about this.
646 The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
650 When I left you, I was but the pupil. Now, I am the master.
653 "Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
654 poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come
655 and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!"
656 -- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
658 "There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
659 away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
660 a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to
661 see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was."
662 -- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
664 186,000 Miles per Second. It's not just a good idea. IT'S THE LAW.
666 Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
668 Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
670 Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely,
671 if ever, do they forgive them.
674 Single tasking: Just Say No.
676 "Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world."
679 "Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
680 seemed to come from Texas."
681 -- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
683 "I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
687 By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials
688 (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
689 to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
690 but appeared "abruptly."
691 -- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
693 Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
694 sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
697 In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient.
698 Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
699 meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
700 the long run. I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary
701 challenging spirit today.
704 Memories of you remind me of you.
707 Life. Don't talk to me about life.
708 -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
710 On a clear disk you can seek forever.
712 The world is coming to an end--save your buffers!
714 grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
719 Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
723 How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
725 3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
727 How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
729 "That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
735 I program, therefore I am.
737 People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange
738 surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and
739 Fortran programs, for example.
740 -- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
743 -- George McFly in "Back to the Future"
745 "So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here."
746 -- Biff in "Back to the Future"
748 "Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint."
749 -- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
751 The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
753 "I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously."
756 Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
757 functions of a computer.
758 -- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
760 I pledge allegiance to the flag
761 of the United States of America
762 and to the republic for which it stands,
767 - Francis Bellamy, 1892
769 People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
770 ears. I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
773 My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of
774 the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
777 You can't have everything... where would you put it?
780 I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and
784 You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
785 over? Well, that's how I feel all the time.
788 I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and
789 the building started up. So I took it out for a drive. A cop pulled me over
790 for speeding. He asked me where I live... "Right here".
793 "Live or die, I'll make a million."
794 -- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth,
797 The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
798 light table for cutting and pasting documents.
800 There are bugs and then there are bugs. And then there are bugs.
803 My computer can beat up your computer.
806 Kill Ugly Processor Architectures
812 "Just Say No." - Nancy Reagan
814 "No." - Ronald Reagan
816 I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a
817 very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom
818 everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
819 at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
820 and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach
821 much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
822 of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor
823 popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
824 -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
827 If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
828 and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind
829 of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
830 good. And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
831 ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
832 media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful. Every newspaper
833 in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly
834 astronomy column? And I believe it is also the fault of the educational
835 system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that
836 may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
838 -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
841 "I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And
842 in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
843 additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
844 -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
847 I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
848 gence?" I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
849 and use the word *billions*, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing
850 to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
851 yet no compelling evidence for it. And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you
852 really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but
853 what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's
854 okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
855 -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
858 Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
859 -- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad
862 If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
863 If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
864 -- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
866 It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
867 primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
868 of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
869 arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
870 completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
871 once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
872 subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
874 -- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
876 The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
877 the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
878 makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
879 perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
880 I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid
881 to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
882 reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
883 of LSD as a sacred drug.
884 -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
886 I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
887 pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
888 by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
889 dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
890 new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
891 experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
892 nature and all of creation.
893 -- Dr. Albert Hoffman
895 Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
896 hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
897 dangers that must not be underestimated. Practitioners must take into
898 account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
899 influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being. The history
900 of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
901 ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
902 for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations
903 are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
905 -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
907 I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability
908 more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjuction
909 with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
911 -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
913 In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
917 core error - bus dumped
919 If imprinted foil seal under cap is broken or missing when purchased, do not
922 "Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you."
923 -- A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution,
926 "Ahead warp factor 1"
929 Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
930 the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.
932 "Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report. "A barrier of water
933 vapor! A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
934 A civilized race could not have stooped so low! A civilized race would not
937 It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.
939 -- Startide Rising, by David Brin
941 Harrison's Postulate:
942 For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
945 The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
946 the population is growing.
949 To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
952 ...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
953 inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
954 ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
955 haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it.
956 There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
957 prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
958 looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
959 is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
960 mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
961 may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
962 have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
963 -- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer,
966 If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
967 and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
968 convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
969 -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
971 America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
974 Unix: Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
977 Sometimes, too long is too long.
980 When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
981 an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
984 Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
985 bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
986 standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
987 conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . .
988 [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
989 of dealing with it. . . .
990 [L]et us use the tools that we have. Let us invoke the cooperation we have
991 the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
992 the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
993 to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
994 committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
995 -- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
997 "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
1000 "I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
1001 -- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
1003 "There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
1004 do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
1005 -- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
1007 "...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
1008 downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
1009 awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect."
1010 -- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of
1011 Manned Space Flight"
1013 "Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
1014 purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
1015 old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth."
1016 -- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
1018 "Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
1019 serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
1020 society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared
1021 adventure and achievement to the society at large."
1022 -- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
1024 The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon
1025 represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race. Even
1026 if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this
1027 task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the
1028 goal. In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human
1029 arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by
1030 those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the
1031 development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.
1032 -- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
1034 The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and
1035 landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination
1036 and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition,
1037 and will that I do not see in any other undertaking. I think if we are
1038 honest with ourselves, we must admit that we needed that impetus extremely
1039 strongly. I sincerely believe that the space program, with its manned
1040 landing on the moon, if wisely executed, will become the spearhead for a
1041 broad front of courageous and energetic activities in all the fields of
1042 endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out
1043 except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead
1045 -- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space
1048 Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of
1049 productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly
1050 appreciated goals. A lethargic world serves no cause well; a spirited world
1051 working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and
1052 the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied...to unparalleled
1053 social accomplishment.
1054 -- Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
1056 The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
1057 aims are worth-while. Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
1058 objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
1059 gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
1060 a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
1061 the Peace brought by something worth-while.
1062 -- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
1064 I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself
1065 to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon...
1066 -- Lyndon B. Johnson
1068 Life's the same, except for the shoes.
1073 Laser lights, you bring
1080 Could be you're crossing the fine line
1081 A silly driver kind of...off the wall
1083 You keep it cool when it's t-t-tight
1084 ...eyes wide open when you start to fall.
1087 Adapt. Enjoy. Survive.
1089 Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
1092 Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
1093 lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
1096 And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
1097 turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed,
1098 the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
1099 clothes! He is naked!"
1100 -- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
1102 "Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
1104 -- Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
1106 To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
1107 1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated
1108 by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our
1110 2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air
1111 Force that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED represent
1112 technological developments or principles beyond the range of
1113 present-day scientific knowledge; and
1114 3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized
1115 as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.
1116 -- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from
1117 1950 to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
1119 Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
1120 hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
1121 without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only
1122 in the God idea, not God Himself.
1123 -- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
1125 Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
1128 Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
1129 -- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
1131 Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
1134 If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
1135 in my name at a Swiss Bank.
1138 I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both.
1139 Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity
1140 is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is
1141 a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
1144 To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
1147 ...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion. The several sects
1148 perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity
1149 attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
1150 introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
1151 yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
1152 -- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
1154 Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to
1156 -- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank
1159 So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
1160 our doubts serve to reassure us.
1161 -- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
1163 Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
1167 And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve? The judgement of God
1168 upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of
1169 criminal at the bar of justice.
1170 -- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
1172 I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
1173 become better people as a result of practicing it.
1174 -- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
1176 Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.
1178 "Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"
1179 -- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the
1182 How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
1184 One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored
1187 How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a light bulb?
1189 Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
1191 How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a light bulb?
1193 It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
1195 It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
1196 It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
1199 I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
1200 Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
1201 nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.
1204 God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
1207 The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
1208 as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
1209 the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the
1210 dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
1211 this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
1212 doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
1215 Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us
1216 restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
1217 liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect
1218 that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
1219 mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
1220 political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
1221 bloody persecutions.
1224 I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
1227 The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere
1228 in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
1229 Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
1233 The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could
1234 never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
1237 As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
1238 as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
1239 but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
1240 with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
1242 -- Benjamin Franklin
1244 I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
1245 gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the
1246 missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
1249 I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute --
1250 where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
1251 how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom
1252 to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
1253 political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
1254 because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
1255 people who might elect him.
1256 -- from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial
1257 Association September 12, 1960.
1259 The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
1260 opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
1261 at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
1262 knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest
1263 days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
1264 effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and
1265 everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
1266 laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an
1267 apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
1270 The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
1271 leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
1272 effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could,
1273 science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
1274 every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
1275 To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
1276 not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
1277 ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
1278 -- H. L. Mencken, 1930
1280 The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
1281 support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
1282 its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way.
1283 Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality,
1284 and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
1285 recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
1286 and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
1287 beyond the grave. Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
1288 they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
1289 flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
1292 There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
1293 however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
1294 Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
1295 discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
1296 on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
1297 even highly probable.
1298 -- H. L. Mencken, 1930
1300 The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
1301 fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
1302 drifting side by side to our common doom.
1305 We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
1306 -- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
1308 ...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
1309 the practice of truth.
1310 -- George Jacob Holyoake
1312 "If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."
1313 -- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center,
1314 Houston July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
1316 The meek are contesting the will.
1318 I'm sick of being trodden on! The Elder Gods say they can make me a man!
1319 All it costs is my soul! I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!
1320 -- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
1322 On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins.
1323 From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.
1324 "...stupid creatures unworthy of the name `sophonts.' Foolish, pre-sentient
1325 upspring of errant masters. We slip away from all your armed might, laughing
1326 at your clumsiness! We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures.
1327 And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us! What better
1328 proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us! What better proof..."
1329 The taunt went on. Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring
1330 the artistry of it. These men are better than I'd thought. Their insults
1331 are wordy and overblown, but they have talent. They deserve honorable, slow
1333 -- David Brin, Startide Rising
1335 "I'm a mean green mother from outer space"
1336 -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
1338 Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer.
1339 It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who
1340 watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide
1341 people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and
1342 cruelty for that. On the other hand, I respect and envy the people
1343 who get inspiration from their religions.
1346 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
1347 -- Andy Finkel, computer guy
1349 Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.
1351 NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again.
1352 -- The Firesign Theater
1354 Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical
1355 vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.
1356 -- The Firesign Theater
1358 ...this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel resistance buried under six
1359 million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
1360 -- The Firesign Theater
1362 We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
1365 I know engineers. They love to change things.
1368 On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
1369 tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
1370 -- John Lions (University of New South Wales)
1372 Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
1373 -- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
1375 "You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
1376 States? Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
1377 Here, there is no such mobility. If you have the slightest bit of intellectual
1378 integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer
1379 minds belong to the opposition."
1380 -- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
1382 "Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
1383 eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is
1385 -- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
1386 commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
1388 Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
1391 The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
1396 New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
1399 You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
1402 The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
1403 into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
1406 Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
1407 character does not have fire resistance.
1409 -- README file from the NetHack game
1411 Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
1414 I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
1415 tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
1416 country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm
1417 sick and tired of being told that I am.
1420 "There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."
1421 -- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
1423 There is a time in the tides of men,
1424 Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
1425 On the other hand, don't count on it.
1428 To follow foolish precedents, and wink
1429 With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
1432 It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
1433 -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
1435 One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
1436 about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
1437 experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
1438 merit a wise man's reflection.
1439 -- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
1440 commenting on psi research
1442 Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
1445 Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.
1447 "Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.
1449 In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket,
1450 achieving an altitude of 41 feet. In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth.
1452 In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
1453 for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
1456 Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space
1459 Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the
1460 peasantry." Don't lose what you've got. Don't change. Don't take a chance,
1461 because you might end up starving to death. Play it safe. Buy just as much
1462 as you need. Don't waste time.
1464 When we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their
1465 heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive. But when it comes down
1466 to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in
1467 something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
1468 the game as it must be played.
1470 -- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times,
1473 "We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting"
1476 Weekends were made for programming.
1479 "Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
1480 roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
1481 forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
1482 the railroad yards."
1483 -- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the
1484 supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey
1487 This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
1488 a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
1489 no wires, no controls.
1490 -- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
1492 Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
1493 pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
1494 and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires
1495 us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
1496 inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
1497 contrary to habit...
1498 -- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
1500 Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function
1501 are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other. There is
1502 no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and
1503 make neural cells do what they would not otherwise. Actually, of course, this
1504 is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the
1505 assumption will have to be rejected. But it is important also to see that we
1506 have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and
1507 there is no real evidence opposed to it. Our failure to solve a problem so
1508 far does not make it insoluble. One cannot logically be a determinist in
1509 physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
1510 -- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
1512 Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
1513 from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
1514 not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
1515 of individual human brains.
1516 -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
1517 Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
1519 ... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
1520 the person making the claim, not the critic. It is not the responsibility
1521 of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
1522 responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
1523 or colored lights never healed anyone. The skeptic's role is to point out
1524 claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidence and to
1525 provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
1526 the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...
1527 -- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
1529 "Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."
1530 -- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
1532 Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of
1533 outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
1534 they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings that
1535 contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have
1536 argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic consciousness,"
1537 and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
1538 neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
1539 handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
1540 than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
1541 offer more plausible alternatives.
1542 -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
1543 Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
1545 Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.
1546 Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only
1547 atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
1548 -- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
1550 Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
1551 the sun. At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
1552 evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
1553 can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact. That all
1554 present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
1555 time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology. Biologists differ
1556 only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
1557 -- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
1558 The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
1560 ...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
1561 opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
1562 give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
1563 the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
1564 -- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
1565 The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
1567 ... The book is worth attention for only two reasons: (1) it attacks
1568 attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
1569 plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
1571 -- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
1572 The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
1574 Now I lay me down to sleep
1575 I hear the sirens in the street
1576 All my dreams are made of chrome
1577 I have no way to get back home
1580 I am here by the will of the people and I won't leave until I get my raincoat
1582 -- a slogan of the anarchists in Richard Kadrey's "Metrophage"
1584 How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ?
1586 Seven: One to install the new bulb, and six to determine what to do
1587 with the old one for the next 10,000 years.
1590 For a lumber company employing two men and a cut-off saw, the
1591 marginal product of labor for any number of additional workers
1592 equals zero until the acquisition of another cut-off saw.
1593 Let's not even consider a chainsaw.
1595 [You could always schedule the saw, though - ed.]
1597 As long as we're going to reinvent the wheel again, we might as well try making
1601 This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
1602 industry is now in the American experience... We must not fail to
1603 comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the
1604 acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial
1605 complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
1606 exists and will persist.
1607 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
1609 This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered
1610 french toast in the renaissance.
1611 -- Steven Wright, comedian
1613 Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television.
1616 A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal.
1617 The smallness of it is what's attractive. It's weird, 'cause it's so
1618 intellectually lame. It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of
1619 my life. But at the same time, it's what I do best.
1620 -- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David
1623 e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data
1624 you're seeing is genuine rather than somebody's made-up crap.
1627 Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
1630 My mother is a fish.
1633 The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
1634 seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
1635 fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
1636 after rational knowledge.
1639 The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
1640 becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
1641 regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of
1642 human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
1643 events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
1644 events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
1645 doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
1646 has not yet been able to set foot.
1648 But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
1649 of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which
1650 is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
1651 of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
1652 progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
1653 must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is,
1654 give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
1655 powers in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail
1656 themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
1657 True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more
1658 difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
1661 Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
1662 recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
1663 particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
1664 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
1666 Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
1667 service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
1668 have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
1669 whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
1670 -- from "Our Sunday Visitor", an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949
1672 Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
1673 church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
1674 of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
1675 religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
1676 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
1678 Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
1679 power should not become too important in any church.
1680 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
1682 Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...
1683 -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
1685 If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
1686 identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
1687 collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
1688 I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
1689 plentiful as blackberries...
1690 -- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
1692 It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
1693 insufficient evidence.
1694 -- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
1696 Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
1697 wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
1698 that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?
1699 Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of
1700 ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
1701 be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
1702 falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for
1703 our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
1704 the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
1705 to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
1706 of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
1707 he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
1708 -- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
1710 Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
1711 whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
1712 secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
1713 Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
1714 his ignorance. And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
1715 possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
1716 skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
1717 by your own bluster.
1718 -- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
1720 Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
1723 What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed
1724 of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly --
1725 that is the first law of nature.
1728 It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
1729 he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
1732 I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
1733 decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
1734 medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us --
1735 a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole
1736 normal evolution of society.
1737 -- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
1739 The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be.... The
1740 natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience
1741 only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
1744 I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
1745 socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think
1746 you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a
1747 very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days,
1748 though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
1750 -- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
1752 However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise.
1753 There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
1754 beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
1755 Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
1756 But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf
1757 should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing
1758 throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.
1759 They are trying to force government leaders into following their position
1760 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a
1761 particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of
1762 money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political
1763 preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
1764 a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D." Just who do
1765 they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the
1766 right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as
1767 a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
1768 thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
1769 call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every
1770 step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
1771 Americans in the name of "conservatism."
1772 -- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record,
1775 "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
1776 -- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry
1777 Falwell's suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra
1778 Day O'Connor's nomination to the Supreme Court
1780 ...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured
1781 we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
1782 inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as
1783 it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive.
1784 As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
1785 advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the
1786 same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their
1787 protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
1788 that they are easily disposed to resort to the sword. My own belief in
1789 God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect
1790 for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
1791 most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians
1792 are frustrated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
1793 of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
1794 Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
1795 recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas,
1796 resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
1797 -- Steve Allen, comedian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
1798 Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
1800 ...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
1801 existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
1802 systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
1803 hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
1806 A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
1807 -- Winston Churchill
1809 We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...
1810 we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
1811 our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.
1814 They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
1815 of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
1816 of the duperies on which they live.
1819 Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
1822 As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
1823 of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
1824 in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
1825 conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and
1826 has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The
1827 problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
1828 a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
1829 is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
1830 irrational -- the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in
1831 changing the believer's mind.
1832 -- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
1833 Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
1835 Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
1836 than to understand him.
1837 -- Fyodor Dostoevski
1839 We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
1840 govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
1841 center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
1842 prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual
1843 concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
1844 Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.
1845 But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
1846 resources. If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
1847 proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
1848 the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
1849 they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
1850 think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
1851 much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
1852 -- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
1854 The Messiah will come. There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
1855 the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
1856 -- Rabbi Meir Kahane
1858 The world is no nursery.
1861 If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
1862 connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
1863 religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
1864 superficial answer is not far to seek....
1865 The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
1866 denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
1867 it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
1868 if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
1869 denomination would get an unfair advantage.
1870 -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
1871 from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
1873 Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
1874 every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
1875 submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered
1876 samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
1877 common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
1878 any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic
1879 of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
1880 secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known;
1881 authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
1882 ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
1883 conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
1884 there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
1885 religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
1886 where the method of free inquiry has made its way. The "religious"
1887 would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
1888 content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
1889 to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
1890 but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
1891 its being taught in any other spirit.
1892 -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
1893 from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
1895 In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
1896 sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
1897 and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality...Whether this
1898 educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-
1899 democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance
1900 not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
1901 interests and activities of a society that is committed to the democratic
1903 -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
1905 History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
1906 periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts
1907 them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing
1908 grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another...
1909 Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every
1910 moult is a step gained.
1911 -- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
1913 ...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
1914 concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our
1915 family, the Hominidae.
1918 It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
1919 would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
1920 wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
1921 Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us
1922 as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.
1923 -- Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species",
1924 Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
1926 "Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature. It's a piss-poor
1927 reptile and not very much of a bird."
1928 -- Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
1929 studied the archaeopteryx and found it "very much like people"
1931 "You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape."
1934 "It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
1938 "Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
1941 "There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things
1945 "Plan to throw one away. You will anyway."
1946 -- Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
1948 You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape.
1951 "It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
1955 "Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
1958 "There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things
1962 The Middle East is certainly the nexus of turmoil for a long time to come --
1963 with shifting players, but the same game: upheaval. I think we will be
1964 confronting militant Islam -- particularly fallout from the Iranian
1965 revolution -- and religion will once more, as it has in our own more
1966 distant past -- play a role at least as standard-bearer in death and mayhem.
1967 -- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval
1968 Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA,
1969 deputy director of Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of
1972 ...One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of,
1973 this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of
1974 government. We are constituted not for efficient operation of government,
1975 but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power. It took the events
1976 of the Roosevelt era -- a catastrophic economic collapse and a world war --
1977 to introduce the strong central government that we now know. But in most
1978 parts of the country today, the reluctance to have government is still
1979 strong. I think, barring a series of catastrophic events, that we can
1980 look to at least another decade during which many of the big problems
1981 around this country will have to be addressed by institutions other than
1983 -- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval
1984 Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA,
1985 deputy director of Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of
1987 [the statist opinions expressed herein are not those of the cookie editor -ed.]
1989 "I have just one word for you, my boy...plastics."
1990 -- from "The Graduate"
1992 "There is such a fine line between genius and stupidity."
1993 -- David St. Hubbins, "Spinal Tap"
1995 "If Diet Coke did not exist it would have been necessary to invent it."
1998 I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who
1999 are equally certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure that
2000 either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some
2003 I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that
2004 God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty,
2005 it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.
2008 In space, no one can hear you fart.
2010 Brain damage is all in your head.
2013 Wish and hope succeed in discerning signs of paranormality where reason and
2014 careful scientific procedure fail.
2015 -- James E. Alcock, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12
2017 "It is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, but
2018 the result's the same."
2021 "Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
2022 and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
2023 because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be
2024 more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
2025 entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
2026 honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
2027 to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
2028 general understanding of science as an enterprise?
2029 -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
2031 It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
2034 "Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
2035 speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."
2036 -- 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
2038 "Your attitude determines your attitude."
2039 -- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
2041 In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
2042 psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
2043 the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
2044 use only 10 percent of our brains...
2046 This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
2047 "pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes. As
2048 a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
2049 deny it? As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
2050 it leaves much to be desired.
2051 -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
2052 Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
2054 Thufir's a Harkonnen now.
2056 "By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
2057 designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
2058 -- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's
2061 "If you want to eat hippopotamus, you've got to pay the freight."
2062 -- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory
2064 Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time alloted it.
2066 Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time alloted it.
2068 It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and
2070 -- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
2072 "Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
2073 hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
2074 aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension."
2075 -- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression
2076 Revisited", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
2078 "...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products,
2079 if they are built at all, are dogs!"
2080 -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
2082 "To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite
2084 -- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors
2089 "Now here's something you're really going to like!"
2090 -- Rocket J. Squirrel
2092 "How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars."
2095 "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."
2098 The language provides a programmer with a set of conceptual tools; if these are
2099 inadequate for the task, they will simply be ignored. For example, seriously
2100 restricting the concept of a pointer simply forces the programmer to use a
2101 vector plus integer arithmetic to implement structures, pointer, etc. Good
2102 design and the absence of errors cannot be guaranteed by mere language
2104 -- Bjarne Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language"
2106 "For the love of phlegm...a stupid wall of death rays. How tacky can ya get?"
2107 -- Post Brothers comics
2109 "Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation."
2110 -- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
2112 "An organization dries up if you don't challenge it with growth."
2113 -- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
2115 "I've seen it. It's rubbish."
2116 -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
2118 Our business is run on trust. We trust you will pay in advance.
2120 "Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times
2121 been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice."
2122 -- Robert Green Ingersoll
2124 The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics,
2125 culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation
2126 of events. Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two
2127 millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there
2128 are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more
2129 nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined.
2130 -- John K. Naland, "The First Easter", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2
2132 I find you lack of faith in the forth dithturbing.
2133 -- Darse ("Darth") Vader
2135 "All Bibles are man-made."
2138 "Spock, did you see the looks on their faces?"
2139 "Yes, Captain, a sort of vacant contentment."
2141 "The triumph of libertarian anarchy is nearly (in historical terms) at
2142 hand... *if* we can keep the Left from selling us into slavery and the
2143 Right from blowing us up for, say, the next twenty years."
2144 -- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
2146 "Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love."
2149 "I think Michael is like litmus paper - he's always trying to learn."
2150 -- Elizabeth Taylor, absurd non-sequitur about Michael Jackson
2152 While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession,
2153 conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge,
2154 we must ask how one differentiates "real transcendence" from neuropathies
2155 that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense
2156 of cosmic unity. When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs
2157 [temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of
2158 the religious tradition, the parallels are striking. The same is true of the
2159 recent spate of alleged UFO abductees. Parsimony alone argues against invoking
2160 spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.
2161 -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
2162 Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
2164 "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on."
2167 "We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement."
2170 "With molasses you catch flies, with vinegar you catch nobody."
2171 -- Baltimore City Councilman Dominic DiPietro
2173 "Lead us in a few words of silent prayer."
2174 -- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
2176 "I couldn't remember things until I took that Sam Carnegie course."
2177 -- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
2179 "Right now I feel that I've got my feet on the ground as far as my head
2181 -- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky
2183 "Ninety percent of baseball is half mental."
2186 Two things are certain about science. It does not stand still for long,
2187 and it is never boring. Oh, among some poor souls, including even
2188 intellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequently
2189 misperceived. Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated from
2190 on high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchanging
2191 precepts defended with authoritarian vigor. Others view it as nothing
2192 but a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process -- the scientific
2193 method: hidebound, linear, and left brained.
2195 These people are the victims of their own stereotypes. They are
2196 destined to view the world of science with a set of blinders. They
2197 know nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, and
2198 tendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone the
2199 creativity, passion, and joy of discovery. And they are likely to
2200 know little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveries
2201 that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the
2204 -- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in
2205 1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
2207 "jackpot: you may have an unnecessary change record"
2208 -- message from "diff"
2210 "One lawyer can steal more than a hundred men with guns."
2213 What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?
2215 A used car salesman knows when he's lying.
2217 "Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the
2219 -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
2221 "There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent
2222 to a gang bent on destruction."
2223 -- John Cage, composer
2225 "I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a
2226 music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make
2227 available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
2228 -- composer John Cage, 1937
2230 I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
2231 that they didn't rehearse at all. And so the first time when I found that out,
2232 I rehearsed the orchestra myself in front of the audience of 3,000 people and
2233 the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
2234 _Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed. The Dutch people were ashamed
2235 and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
2236 rehearse. And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
2237 again, they hadn't rehearsed. So they were no more prepared the second time
2238 than they had been the first. I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
2239 the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
2240 cancelling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."
2242 -- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
2244 "One day I woke up and discovered that I was in love with tripe."
2247 "Most people would like to be delivered from
2248 temptation but would like it to keep in touch."
2251 The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or
2252 give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
2254 An optimist believes we live in the best world possible;
2255 a pessimist fears this is true.
2257 "If John Madden steps outside on February 2, looks down, and doesn't see his
2258 feet, we'll have 6 more weeks of Pro football."
2261 Dead? No excuse for laying off work.
2263 Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself.
2265 "When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic."
2266 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
2268 "Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries."
2269 -- William George Jordan
2271 "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
2272 -- George Bernard Shaw
2274 "Flattery is all right -- if you don't inhale."
2277 "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
2280 "Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings. The expectations are always
2281 high, and the results usually disappointing."
2284 "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging
2288 "Tell the truth and run."
2291 "The best index to a person's character is a) how he treats people who can't
2292 do him any good and b) how he treats people who can't fight back."
2293 -- Abigail Van Buren
2295 "Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the morning."
2298 "Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit."
2301 "The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children
2305 "It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
2308 "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is
2309 either a daring adventure or nothing."
2312 "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is
2313 shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
2316 "Success covers a multitude of blunders."
2317 -- George Bernard Shaw
2319 "The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while
2320 the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
2323 "Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..."
2326 "Is it really you, Fuzz, or is it Memorex, or is it radiation sickness?"
2327 -- Sonic Disruptors comics
2329 "Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons
2331 -- Soren F. Petersen
2333 "You're a creature of the night, Michael. Wait'll Mom hears about this."
2334 -- from the movie "The Lost Boys"
2336 "Plastic gun. Ingenious. More coffee, please."
2337 -- The Phantom comics
2339 The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words
2340 return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
2342 If at first you don't succeed, you are running about average.
2344 "A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a
2345 perfectly good kitten."
2348 "The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
2349 appreciates how difficult it was."
2352 "Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone."
2355 "In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with
2359 The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to
2362 "But this one goes to eleven."
2365 "Been through Hell? Whaddya bring back for me?"
2368 "I don't know what their
2369 gripe is. A critic is
2370 simply someone paid to
2371 render opinions glibly."
2372 "Critics are grinks and
2374 -- Baron and Badger, from Badger comics
2376 "I've got some amyls. We could either party later or, like, start his heart."
2377 -- "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"
2379 "Israel today announced that it is giving up. The Zionist state will dissolve
2380 in two weeks time, and its citizens will disperse to various resort communities
2381 around the world. Said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, 'Who needs the
2383 -- Dennis Miller, "Satuday Night Live" News
2385 "And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead
2386 by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business
2387 product: a really sharp-looking report."
2390 SHOP OR DIE, people of Earth!
2391 [offer void where prohibited]
2392 -- Capitalists from outer space, from Justice League Int'l comics
2394 "Roman Polanski makes his own blood. He's smart -- that's why his movies work."
2395 -- A brilliant director at "Frank's Place"
2397 "The following is not for the weak of heart or Fundamentalists."
2400 "I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain'"
2403 Gary Hart: living proof that you *can* screw your brains out.
2405 Blessed be those who initiate lively discussions with the hopelessly mute,
2406 for they shall be know as Dentists.
2408 "I don't believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person,
2409 unless he has an atomic weapon."
2412 "Ever free-climbed a thousand foot vertical cliff with 60 pounds of gear
2413 strapped to your butt?"
2415 "'Course you haven't, you fruit-loop little geek."
2416 -- The Mountain Man, one of Dana Carvey's SNL characters
2419 "I mean, like, I just read your article in the Yale law recipe, on search and
2420 seizure. Man, that was really Out There."
2421 "I was so WRECKED when I wrote that..."
2422 -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
2424 "Hi, I'm Professor Alan Ginsburg... But you can call me... Captain Toke."
2425 -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
2427 It's great to be smart 'cause then you know stuff.
2429 "Time is money and money can't buy you love and I love your outfit"
2430 -- T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1
2432 "Can't you just gesture hypnotically and make him disappear?"
2433 "It does not work that way. RUN!"
2434 -- Hadji on metaphyics and Mandrake in "Johnny Quest"
2436 "You shouldn't make my toaster angry."
2437 -- Household security explained in "Johnny Quest"
2439 "Someone's been mean to you! Tell me who it is, so I can punch him tastefully."
2440 -- Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
2442 "And kids... learn something from Susie and Eddie.
2443 If you think there's a maniacal psycho-geek in the
2445 1) Don't give him a chance to hit you on the
2447 2) Flee the premises... even if you're in your
2449 3) Warn the neighbors and call the police.
2450 But whatever else you do... DON'T GO DOWN IN THE DAMN BASEMENT!"
2451 -- Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
2455 "Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion."
2458 "It's curtains for you, Mighty Mouse! This gun is so futuristic that even
2459 *I* don't know how it works!"
2460 -- from Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
2462 "May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
2465 A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem.
2468 Santa Claus go away!"
2473 -- Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre
2475 "If it's not loud, it doesn't work!"
2476 -- Blank Reg, from "Max Headroom"
2478 "Remember kids, if there's a loaded gun in the room, be sure that you're the
2482 Delta: We never make the same mistake three times. -- David Letterman
2484 Delta: A real man lands where he wants to. -- David Letterman
2486 Delta: The kids will love our inflatable slides. -- David Letterman
2488 Delta: We're Amtrak with wings. -- David Letterman
2490 "Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is
2491 good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
2492 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
2494 "Hello again, Peabody here..."
2497 "It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes."
2500 "To your left is the marina where several senior cabinet officials keep luxury
2501 yachts for weekend cruises on the Potomac. Some of these ships are up to 100
2502 feet in length; the Presidential yacht is over 200 feet in length, and can
2503 remain submerged for up to 3 weeks."
2506 "Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance,
2510 "One of the problems I've always had with propaganda pamphlets is that they're
2511 real boring to look at. They're just badly designed. People from the left
2512 often are very well-intended, but they never had time to take basic design
2516 "If you took everyone who's ever been to a Dead
2517 show, and lined them up, they'd stretch halfway to
2518 the moon and back... and none of them would be
2520 -- a local Deadhead in the Seattle Times
2522 "And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb."
2525 Why are many scientists using lawyers for medical
2526 experiments instead of rats?
2528 a) There are more lawyers than rats.
2529 b) The scientist's don't become as
2530 emotionally attached to them.
2531 c) There are some things that even rats
2535 We may eat your dust,
2536 But when you graduate,
2537 You'll work for us."
2538 -- Reed College cheer
2541 Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
2543 Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the
2544 splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope,
2545 for it balks at pig.
2548 "We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand."
2551 "I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this
2552 country what it once was... an arctic wilderness."
2555 "To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
2558 Noncombatant: A dead Quaker.
2561 "There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it
2562 is I'll get married again."
2565 A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.
2566 I believe everything positively stinks.
2569 Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
2570 A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
2572 Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
2574 Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
2575 Experience is directly proportional to the
2576 amount of equipment ruined.
2578 Captain Penny's Law:
2579 You can fool all of the people some of the
2580 time, and some of the people all of the
2581 time, but you can't fool mom.
2583 "Because he's a character who's looking for his own identity, [He-Man is]
2584 an interesting role for an actor."
2585 -- Dolph Lundgren, "actor"
2587 "If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he'd never
2589 -- Max Von Sydow's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
2591 "Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again.
2592 God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again."
2593 -- Woody Allen's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
2595 "In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die unless he
2596 received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that their client has
2597 not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that
2598 "If I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago."
2599 -- Dennis Miller, SNL News
2601 "Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
2604 Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
2605 (What Jove may do, is not permitted to a cow.)
2607 "I distrust a man who says 'when.' If he's got to be careful not to drink too
2608 much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he does."
2609 -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
2611 "I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk
2612 and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously,
2613 unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell
2614 you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."
2615 -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
2617 All extremists should be taken out and shot.
2619 "The sixties were good to you, weren't they?"
2622 "You stay here, Audrey -- this is between me and the vegetable!"
2623 -- Seymour, from _Little Shop Of Horrors_
2625 From Sharp minds come... pointed heads.
2626 -- Bryan Sparrowhawk
2628 There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
2630 "The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen... The world's climates are changing,
2631 the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a
2633 -- some dinosaurs from The Far Side, by Gary Larson
2635 "We Americans, we're a simple people... but piss us off, and we'll bomb
2637 -- Robin Williams, _Good Morning Vietnam_
2639 Why won't sharks eat lawyers? Professional courtesy.
2641 "You know, we've won awards for this crap."
2644 It was pity stayed his hand.
2645 "Pity I don't have any more bullets," thought Frito.
2646 -- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein
2648 A good USENET motto would be:
2649 a. "Together, a strong community."
2650 b. "Computers R Us."
2651 c. "I'm sick of programming, I think I'll just screw around for a while on
2655 "He didn't run for reelection. `Politics brings you into contact with all the
2656 people you'd give anything to avoid,' he said. `I'm staying home.'"
2657 -- Garrison Keillor, _Lake_Wobegone_Days_
2659 "If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and
2660 fire them all off, wouldn't you?"
2663 "Mr. Spock succumbs to a powerful mating urge and nearly kills Captain Kirk."
2664 -- TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode _Amok_Time_
2666 "Poor man... he was like an employee to me."
2667 -- The police commissioner on "Sledge Hammer" laments the death of his
2670 "Trust me. I know what I'm doing."
2673 "Hi. This is Dan Cassidy's answering machine. Please leave your name and
2674 number... and after I've doctored the tape, your message will implicate you
2675 in a federal crime and be brought to the attention of the F.B.I... BEEEP"
2676 -- Blue Devil comics
2678 "All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact,
2679 barely presentable."
2682 "If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?"
2685 Whom the gods would destroy, they first teach BASIC.
2687 "Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!"
2690 "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid"
2691 -- the artificial person, from _Aliens_
2693 "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with a dead
2694 girl or a live boy."
2695 -- Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards
2697 David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans":
2698 * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO
2699 * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE"
2700 * Hourly motel rates
2701 * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here
2702 * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some
2703 countries we could mention
2704 * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies
2705 * Our well-behaved golf professionals
2706 * Fabulous babes coast to coast
2708 "Danger, you haven't seen the last of me!"
2709 "No, but the first of you turns my stomach!"
2710 -- The Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger
2712 Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.
2715 "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
2716 you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
2719 "When anyone says `theoretically,' they really mean `not really.'"
2722 "No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it."
2725 "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make
2726 empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made
2727 a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the
2731 "For the man who has everything... Penicillin."
2734 "I've finally learned what `upward compatible' means. It means we
2735 get to keep all our old mistakes."
2736 -- Dennie van Tassel
2738 "The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live ones."
2741 "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear."
2742 -- Norm, from _Cheers_
2744 Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that
2745 you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli replied,
2746 "That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your
2749 "He don't know me vewy well, DO he?" -- Bugs Bunny
2751 "I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
2752 That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood."
2753 -- Daffy Duck, Looney Tunes, _Robin Hood Daffy_
2755 "Would I turn on the gas if my pal Mugsy were in there?"
2756 "You might, rabbit, you might!"
2757 -- Looney Tunes, Bugs and Thugs (1954, Friz Freleng)
2759 "Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
2760 -- Looney Tunes, Ali Baba Bunny (1957, Chuck Jones)
2762 "And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?"
2763 -- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)
2765 "Now I've got the bead on you with MY disintegrating gun. And when it
2766 disintegrates, it disintegrates. (pulls trigger) Well, what you do know,
2768 -- Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century
2770 "Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!"
2771 -- Looney Tunes, "What's Opera Doc?" (1957, Chuck Jones)
2773 "I DO want your money, because god wants your money!"
2774 -- The Reverend Jimmy, from _Repo_Man_
2776 "The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The
2777 terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency."
2780 "You show me an American who can keep his mouth shut and I'll eat him."
2781 -- Newspaperman from Frank Capra's _Meet_John_Doe_
2783 "And we heard him exclaim
2784 As he started to roam:
2785 `I'm a hologram, kids,
2786 please don't try this at home!'"
2788 -- Howie Chaykin's little animated 3-dimensional darling, Bob Violence
2790 "The Soviet Union, which has complained recently about alleged anti-Soviet
2791 themes in American advertising, lodged an official protest this week against
2792 the Ford Motor Company's new campaign: `Hey you stinking fat Russian, get
2793 off my Ford Escort.'"
2794 -- Dennis Miller, Saturday Night Live
2796 "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
2799 "They ought to make butt-flavored cat food." --Gallagher
2801 "Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends."
2804 "It's ten o'clock... Do you know where your AI programs are?" -- Peter Oakley
2806 "Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks,
2807 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big,
2808 scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only
2809 reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
2810 -- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
2812 "Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York
2813 City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn't make any sudden moves
2814 around than any other city in the world."
2817 "Tourists -- have some fun with New york's hard-boiled cabbies. When you get
2818 to your destination, say to your driver, "Pay? I was hitchhiking."
2821 "An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
2822 Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
2823 new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax."
2826 "Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham
2827 Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
2828 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2829 2) Advising the President.
2830 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his
2834 "If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on
2835 television with pool cues, who would win?
2838 3) The television viewing public"
2841 "If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying, you are
2842 probably hallucinating."
2843 -- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
2845 What to do in case of an alien attack:
2847 1) Hide beneath the seat of your plane and look away.
2848 2) Avoid eye contact.
2849 3) If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.
2851 -- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
2853 "Nuclear war would really set back cable."
2856 "You tweachewous miscweant!"
2859 "I saw _Lassie_. It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid never
2860 spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that deserve a series?"
2861 -- the alien guy, in _Explorers_
2864 -- Napoleon Solo, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
2866 Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
2868 Support Mental Health. Or I'll kill you.
2870 "The pyramid is opening!"
2872 "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
2873 -- The Firesign Theatre
2875 "Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
2876 Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
2877 -- The Firesign Theatre movie, _J-Men Forever_
2879 "My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!"
2880 "Oh, my God... You've.. You've turned him into a DEMOCRAT!"
2883 "You are WRONG, you ol' brass-breasted fascist poop!"
2886 "Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *can*
2888 -- Bullwinkle J. Moose
2890 "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberrys!"
2891 -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
2893 "Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!"
2894 -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_
2896 "The voters have spoken, the bastards..."
2899 "I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk"
2903 -- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
2905 "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro..."
2906 -- Hunter S. Thompson
2908 "Say yur prayers, yuh flea-pickin' varmint!"
2911 "There... I've run rings 'round you logically"
2912 -- Monty Python's Flying Circus
2914 "Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!"
2917 ...Veloz is indistinguishable from hundreds of other electronics businesses
2918 in the Valley, run by eager young engineers poring over memory dumps late
2919 into the night. The difference is that a bunch of self-confessed "car nuts"
2920 are making money doing what they love: writing code and driving fast.
2921 -- "Electronics puts its foot on the gas", IEEE Spectrum, May 88
2923 "Just the facts, Ma'am"
2926 "I have five dollars for each of you."
2929 Mausoleum: The final and funniest folly of the rich.
2932 Riches: A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I
2934 -- John D. Rockefeller, (slander by Ambrose Bierce)
2936 All things are either sacred or profane.
2937 The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
2938 The latter to the devil appertain.
2941 Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
2946 Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
2949 Absolute: Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which
2950 the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not
2951 many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by
2952 limited monarchies, where the sovereign's power for evil (and for good) is
2953 greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
2956 Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
2957 pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but
2958 abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
2961 Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their
2962 hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately
2966 Disobedience: The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
2969 Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
2972 Administration: An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive
2973 the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.
2976 A penny saved is a penny to squander.
2979 Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man --
2983 Physician: One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
2986 Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
2989 Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
2990 The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
2993 Politician: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
2994 organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of
2995 his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman,
2996 he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
2999 Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single
3000 petitioner confessedly unworthy.
3003 Presidency: The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
3006 Proboscis: The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place
3007 of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes
3008 of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
3011 Inadmissible: Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of
3012 testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with,
3013 and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves
3014 alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was
3015 unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous
3016 actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are
3017 daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world
3018 that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay
3019 evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the
3020 testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and
3021 who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of
3022 evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the
3023 Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law...
3025 But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved
3026 that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to
3027 mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
3028 were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
3029 unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
3030 in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
3031 the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.
3032 If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike
3033 destitute of value. --Ambrose Bierce
3035 "Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few
3036 simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'."
3039 "In the fight between you and the world, back the world."
3042 Here is an Appalachian version of management's answer to those who are
3043 concerned with the fate of the project:
3044 "Don't worry about the mule. Just load the wagon."
3045 -- Mike Dennison's hillbilly uncle
3047 Ill-chosen abstraction is particularly evident in the design of the ADA
3048 runtime system. The interface to the ADA runtime system is so opaque that
3049 it is impossible to model or predict its performance, making it effectively
3050 useless for real-time systems. -- Marc D. Donner and David H. Jameson.
3052 "Being against torture ought to be sort of a bipartisan thing."
3055 "Here comes Mr. Bill's dog."
3056 -- Narrator, Saturday Night Live
3058 Sex is like air. It's only a big deal if you can't get any.
3060 "Maintain an awareness for contribution -- to your schedule, your project,
3062 -- A Group of Employees
3064 "Ask not what A Group of Employees can do for you. But ask what can
3065 All Employees do for A Group of Employees."
3068 One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
3069 alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
3070 "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is
3071 published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship.
3072 Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century.
3073 Do you think that fair criticism?"
3074 "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not
3075 occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
3078 Many alligators will be slain,
3079 but the swamp will remain.
3081 What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
3083 This is now. Later is later.
3085 "I will make no bargains with terrorist hardware."
3088 "If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go
3090 -- Jimmy Swaggart, 5/20/88
3092 "Dump the condiments. If we are to be eaten, we don't need to taste good."
3093 -- "Visionaries" cartoon
3095 "Aww, if you make me cry anymore, you'll fog up my helmet."
3096 -- "Visionaries" cartoon
3098 I don't want to be young again, I just don't want to get any older.
3100 Marriage Ceremony: An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the
3101 law being dragged into the affairs of your family.
3104 "Emergency!" Sgiggs screamed, ejecting himself from the tub like it was
3105 a burning car. "Dial 'one'! Get room service! Code red!" Stiggs was on
3106 the phone immediately, ordering more rose blossoms, because, according to
3107 him, the ones floating in the tub had suddenly lost their smell. "I demand
3108 smell," he shrilled. "I expecting total uninterrupted smell from these
3111 Unfortunately, the service captain didn't realize that the Stiggs situation
3112 involved fifty roses. "What am I going to do with this?" Stiggs sneered at
3113 the weaseling hotel goon when he appeared at our door holding a single flower
3114 floating in a brandy glass. Stiggs's tirade was great. "Do you see this
3115 bathtub? Do you notice any difference between the size of the tub and the
3116 size of that spindly wad of petals in your hand? I need total bath coverage.
3117 I need a completely solid layer of roses all around me like puffing factories
3118 of smell, attacking me with their smell and power-ramming big stinking
3119 concentrations of rose odor up my nostrils until I'm wasted with pleasure."
3120 It wasn't long before we got so dissatisfied with this incompetence that we
3122 -- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
3123 National Lampoon, October 1982
3125 When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect.
3126 -- Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy
3128 We decided it was night again, so we camped for twenty minutes and drank
3129 another six beers at a Young Life campsite. O.C. got into the supervisory
3130 adult's sleeping bag and ran around in it. "This is the judgment day and I'm
3131 a terrifying apparition," he screamed. Then the heat made O.C. ralph in the
3133 -- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
3134 National Lampoon, October 1982
3136 Voodoo Programming: Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but
3137 they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling
3141 This is, of course, totally uninformed speculation that I engage in to help
3142 support my bias against such meddling... but there you have it.
3143 -- Peter da Silva, speculating about why a computer program that had been
3144 changed to do something he didn't approve of, didn't work
3146 "This knowledge I pursue is the finest pleasure I have ever known. I could
3147 no sooner give it up that I could the very air that I breath."
3148 -- Paolo Uccello, Renaissance artist, discoverer of the laws of perspective
3150 "I got everybody to pay up front...then I blew up their planet."
3151 "Now why didn't I think of that?"
3152 -- Post Bros. Comics
3154 "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed."
3155 -- Robin, The Boy Wonder
3158 If it's up, we'll shoot it down. If it's down, we'll blow it up.
3159 -- A McDonnel-Douglas ad from a few years ago
3161 "The Amiga is the only personal computer where you can run a multitasking
3162 operating system and get realtime performance, out of the box."
3165 "It's my cookie file and if I come up with something that's lame and I like it,
3167 -- karl (Karl Lehenbauer)
3169 In recognizing AT&T Bell Laboratories for corporate innovation, for its
3170 invention of cellular mobile communications, IEEE President Russell C. Drew
3171 referred to the cellular telephone as a "basic necessity." How times have
3172 changed, one observer remarked: many in the room recalled the advent of
3174 -- The Institute, July 1988, pg. 11
3176 ...the Soviets have the capability to try big projects. If there is a goal,
3177 such as when Gorbachev states that they are going to have nuclear-powered
3178 aircraft carriers, the case is closed -- that is it. They will concentrate
3179 on the problem, do a bad job, and later pay the price. They really don't
3180 care what the price is.
3181 -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
3182 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
3184 There is something you must understand about the Soviet system. They have the
3185 ability to concentrate all their efforts on a given design, and develop all
3186 components simultaneously, but sometimes without proper testing. Then they end
3187 up with a technological disaster like the Tu-144. In a technology race at
3188 the time, that aircraft was two months ahead of the Concorde. Four Tu-144s
3189 were built; two have crashed, and two are in museums. The Concorde has been
3190 flying safely for over 10 years.
3191 -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
3192 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
3194 DE: The Soviets seem to have difficulty implementing modern technology.
3195 Would you comment on that?
3197 Belenko: Well, let's talk about aircraft engine lifetime. When I flew the
3198 MiG-25, its engines had a total lifetime of 250 hours.
3200 DE: Is that mean-time-between-failure?
3202 Belenko: No, the engine is finished; it is scrapped.
3204 DE: You mean they pull it out and throw it away, not even overhauling it?
3206 Belenko: That is correct. Overhaul is too expensive.
3208 DE: That is absurdly low by free world standards.
3211 -- an interview with Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected
3212 in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 102
3214 "I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people
3215 there are hungry for information about the West. He was asked about many
3216 things, but I will give you two examples that are very revealing about life in
3217 the Soviet Union. The first question he was asked was if we had exploding
3218 television sets. You see, they have a problem with the picture tubes on color
3219 television sets, and many are exploding. They assumed we must be having
3220 problems with them too. The other question he was asked often was why the
3221 CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a
3222 few years ago; their propaganda is very effective.
3223 -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
3224 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
3226 "...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
3227 to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
3228 Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet
3229 people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business
3230 there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press. But so far, the whole
3231 country is like a concentration camp. The barbed wire on the fence around
3232 the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark. This openness that
3233 you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed
3234 to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders. These
3235 leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or
3236 appease it. He will say: "Yes, we can do business!" This while his
3237 military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
3238 population of 17 million. Can you imagine that?
3239 -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
3240 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
3242 "Remember Kruschev: he tried to do too many things too fast, and he was
3243 removed in disgrace. If Gorbachev tries to destroy the system or make too
3244 many fundamental changes to it, I believe the system will get rid of him.
3245 I am not a political scientist, but I understand the system very well.
3246 I believe he will have a "heart attack" or retire or be removed. He is
3247 up against a brick wall. If you think they will change everything and
3248 become a free, open society, forget it!"
3249 -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
3250 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
3252 FORTRAN? The syntactically incorrect statement "DO 10 I = 1.10" will parse and
3253 generate code creating a variable, DO10I, as follows: "DO10I = 1.10" If that
3254 doesn't terrify you, it should.
3256 "I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as
3257 a house. So I reasoned that after college, I'd have to live cheaply in
3258 an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer."
3259 -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
3261 HP had a unique policy of allowing its engineers to take parts from stock as
3262 long as they built something. "They figured that with every design, they were
3263 getting a better engineer. It's a policy I urge all companies to adopt."
3264 -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "Will Wozniak's class give Apple
3265 to teacher?" EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
3267 "I just want to be a good engineer."
3268 -- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, concluding his keynote
3269 speech at the 1988 AppleFest
3271 "There's always been Tower of Babel sort of bickering inside Unix, but this
3272 is the most extreme form ever. This means at least several years of confusion."
3273 -- Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft,
3274 about the Open Systems Foundation
3276 "When in doubt, print 'em out."
3277 -- Karl's Programming Proverb 0x7
3279 "If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways
3280 to be hospitable to the unusual person. You don't get innovation as a
3281 democratic process. You almost get it as an anti-democratic process.
3282 Certainly you get it as an anthitetical process, so you have to have an
3283 environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can
3284 deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation."
3285 -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc.,
3286 "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity",
3287 The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
3289 "In corporate life, I think there are three important areas which contracts
3290 can't deal with, the area of conflict, the area of change and area of reaching
3291 potential. To me a covenant is a relationship that is based on such things
3292 as shared ideals and shared value systems and shared ideas and shared
3293 agreement as to the processes we are going to use for working together. In
3294 many cases they develop into real love relationships."
3295 -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
3296 Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
3298 Another goal is to establish a relationship "in which it is OK for everybody
3299 to do their best. There are an awful lot of people in management who really
3300 don't want subordinates to do their best, because it gets to be very
3301 threatening. But we have found that both internally and with outside
3302 designers if we are willing to have this kind of relationship and if we're
3303 willing to be vulnerable to what will come out of it, we get really good
3305 -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
3306 Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
3308 In his book, Mr. DePree tells the story of how designer George Nelson urged
3309 that the company also take on Charles Eames in the late 1940s. Max's father,
3310 J. DePree, co-founder of the company with herman Miller in 1923, asked Mr.
3311 Nelson if he really wanted to share the limited opportunities of a then-small
3312 company with another designer. "George's response was something like this:
3313 'Charles Eames is an unusual talent. He is very different from me. The
3314 company needs us both. I want very much to have Charles Eames share in
3315 whatever potential there is.'"
3316 -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
3317 Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
3319 Mr. DePree believes participative capitalism is the wave of the future. The
3320 U.S. work force, he believes, "more and more demands to be included in the
3321 capitalist system and if we don't find ways to get the capitalist system
3322 to be an inclusive system rather than the exclusive system it has been, we're
3323 all in deep trouble. If we don't find ways to begin to understand that
3324 capitalism's highest potential lies in the common good, not in the individual
3325 good, then we're risking the system itself."
3326 -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
3327 Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
3329 Mr. DePree also expects a "tremendous social change" in all workplaces. "When
3330 I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the
3331 product. Today it is drastically different, because of the social milieu.
3332 It isn't unusual for a worker to arrive on his shift and have some family
3333 problem that he doesn't know how to resolve. The example I like to use is a
3334 guy who comes in and says 'this isn't going to be a good day for me, my son
3335 is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don't know how to raise bail.'
3336 What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity, he has to know
3338 -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
3339 Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
3341 Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it.
3342 Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
3343 -- Perlis's Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept. 1982
3345 "What if" is a trademark of Hewlett Packard, so stop using it in your
3346 sentences without permission, or risk being sued.
3348 Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of
3349 political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or
3350 consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us
3351 over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
3352 suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
3354 -- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
3356 The essential ideas of Algol 68 were that the whole language should be
3357 precisely defined and that all the pieces should fit together smoothly.
3358 The basic idea behind Pascal was that it didn't matter how vague the
3359 language specification was (it took *years* to clarify) or how many rough
3360 edges there were, as long as the CDC Pascal compiler was fast.
3361 -- Richard A. O'Keefe
3363 "We came. We saw. We kicked its ass."
3364 -- Bill Murray, _Ghostbusters_
3366 "The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small
3367 topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the
3368 beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can
3369 see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
3370 The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel
3371 my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which
3372 I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
3373 is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
3374 apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
3375 What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?* It does not do harm to the
3376 mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than
3377 any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak
3378 of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
3379 if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
3380 -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
3382 If you permit yourself to read meanings into (rather than drawing meanings out
3383 of) the evidence, you can draw any conclusion you like.
3384 -- Michael Keith, "The Bar-Code Beast", The Skeptical Enquirer Vol 12
3387 "Pseudocode can be used to some extent to aid the maintenance
3388 process. However, pseudocode that is highly detailed -
3389 approaching the level of detail of the code itself - is not of
3390 much use as maintenance documentation. Such detailed
3391 documentation has to be maintained almost as much as the code,
3392 thus doubling the maintenance burden. Furthermore, since such
3393 voluminous pseudocode is too distracting to be kept in the
3394 listing itself, it must be kept in a separate folder. The
3395 result: Since pseudocode - unlike real code - doesn't have to be
3396 maintained, no one will maintain it. It will soon become out of
3397 date and everyone will ignore it. (Once, I did an informal
3398 survey of 42 shops that used pseudocode. Of those 42, 0 [zero!],
3399 found that it had any value as maintenance documentation."
3400 --Meilir Page-Jones, "The Practical Guide to Structured
3401 Design", Yourdon Press (c) 1988
3403 "Only a brain-damaged operating system would support task switching and not
3404 make the simple next step of supporting multitasking."
3407 Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said that in the last analysis the entire field
3408 of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
3410 The magician is seated in his high chair and looks upon the world with favor.
3411 He is at the height of his powers. If he closes his eyes, he causes the world
3412 to disappear. If he opens his eyes, he causes the world to come back. If
3413 there is harmony within him, the world is harmonious. If rage shatters his
3414 inner harmony, the unity of the world is shattered. If desire arises within
3415 him, he utters the magic syllables that causes the desired object to appear.
3416 His wishes, his thoughts, his gestures, his noises command the universe.
3417 -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 107
3419 An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is
3420 a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the
3421 duration of his stay on this planet. Since neither the mouse nor the chimp
3422 knows what is, he is spared all the vexing problems that follow this
3423 discovery. But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question
3424 emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt
3425 and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the
3426 centuries as relentlessly as hunger or sexual longing. The chimp that does
3427 not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared
3428 the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end. And even if the animal
3429 experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or
3430 to play chess, the chimp will develop no science and he will exhibit no
3431 appreciation of beauty, for the greatest part of man's wisdom may be traced
3432 back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give
3433 meaning to his existence, to life itself.
3434 -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
3436 A comment on schedules:
3437 Ok, how long will it take?
3438 For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month.
3439 For each manager who says "data flow analysis" add another month.
3440 For each unique end-user type add one month.
3441 For each unknown software package to be employed add two months.
3442 For each unknown hardware device add two months.
3443 For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month.
3444 For each type of communication channel add one month.
3445 If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on a non-IBM
3446 system add 6 months.
3447 If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on an IBM
3448 system add 9 months.
3449 Round up to the nearest half-year.
3451 By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative prototyping.
3452 Some companies call their prototypes "releases", that's all.
3454 UNIX Shell is the Best Fourth Generation Programming Language
3456 It is the UNIX shell that makes it possible to do applications in a small
3457 fraction of the code and time it takes in third generation languages. In
3458 the shell you process whole files at a time, instead of only a line at a
3459 time. And, a line of code in the UNIX shell is one or more programs,
3460 which do more than pages of instructions in a 3GL. Applications can be
3461 developed in hours and days, rather than months and years with traditional
3462 systems. Most of the other 4GLs available today look more like COBOL or
3463 RPG, the most tedious of the third generation lanaguages.
3465 "UNIX Relational Database Management: Application Development in the UNIX
3466 Environment" by Rod Manis, Evan Schaffer, and Robert Jorgensen. Prentice
3467 Hall Software Series. Brian Kerrighan, Advisor. 1988.
3469 "Laugh while you can, monkey-boy."
3470 -- Dr. Emilio Lizardo
3472 "Floggings will continue until morale improves."
3473 -- anonymous flyer being distributed at Exxon USA
3475 "Hey Ivan, check your six."
3476 -- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail
3479 "Free markets select for winning solutions."
3482 "I dislike companies that have a we-are-the-high-priests-of-hardware-so-you'll-
3483 like-what-we-give-you attitude. I like commodity markets in which iron-and-
3484 silicon hawkers know that they exist to provide fast toys for software types
3485 like me to play with..."
3488 "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."
3490 [ed. note - I would say: The urge to destroy may sometimes be a creative urge.]
3492 "A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
3493 last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
3494 or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
3495 sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
3496 premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
3497 lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
3498 than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
3499 a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
3500 selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
3501 ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
3502 been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
3503 this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
3504 apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
3505 give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
3506 nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
3508 -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
3509 published around 1850
3511 In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty
3512 of intention: the inventor produces a lock which he honestly thinks will
3513 possess such and such qualities; and he declares his belief to the world.
3514 If others differ from him in opinion concerning those qualities, it is open
3515 to them to say so; and the discussion, truthfully conducted, must lead to
3516 public advantage: the discussion stimulates curiosity, and curiosity stimu-
3517 lates invention. Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question
3518 could lead to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be
3519 much more than counterbalanced by good."
3520 -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
3521 published around 1850.
3523 "Wish not to seem, but to be, the best."
3527 -- Richard Dawson, weenie, on "Family Feud"
3529 "Paul Lynde to block..."
3530 -- a contestant on "Hollywood Squares"
3532 "Little else matters than to write good code."
3535 To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight.
3536 -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
3538 "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"
3539 -- William E. Davidsen
3541 "If a computer can't directly address all the RAM you can use, it's just a toy."
3542 -- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitur
3544 "Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became
3545 a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. "You aren't nearly
3546 through this adventure yet," he added, and that was pretty true as well.
3547 -- Bilbo Baggins, "The Hobbit" by J. R. R. Tolkien, Chapter XII
3549 "A dirty mind is a joy forever."
3552 "You can't teach seven foot."
3553 -- Frank Layton, Utah Jazz basketball coach, when asked why he had recruited
3554 a seven-foot tall auto mechanic
3556 "A car is just a big purse on wheels."
3559 "History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."
3562 "Gozer the Gozerian: As the duly appointed representative of the city,
3563 county and state of New York, I hereby order you to cease all supernatural
3564 activities at once and proceed immediately to your place of origin or
3565 the nearest parallel dimension, whichever is nearest."
3566 -- Ray (Dan Akyroyd), _Ghostbusters_
3568 It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
3569 doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
3570 new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
3571 the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in
3572 those who would gain by the new ones.
3575 God grant me the senility to accept the things I cannot change,
3576 The frustration to try to change things I cannot affect,
3577 and the wisdom to tell the difference.
3579 First as to speech. That privilege rests upon the premise that
3580 there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be
3581 lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated. It need not rest upon
3582 the further premise that there are no propositions that are not
3583 open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end it is
3584 worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy. Hence it
3585 has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are
3586 no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only the hearers'
3587 beliefs and not their conduct. The trouble is that conduct is almost
3588 always based upon some belief, and that to change the hearer's belief
3589 will generally to some extent change his conduct, and may even evoke
3590 conduct that the law forbids.
3592 [cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1952;
3593 The Art and Craft of Judging: The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand,
3594 edited and annotated by Hershel Shanks, The MacMillian Company, 1968.]
3596 The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it
3597 should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in 13 states in the course
3598 of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country
3599 should be so long without one.
3600 -- Thomas Jefferson in letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787
3602 "Nine years of ballet, asshole."
3603 -- Shelly Long, to the bad guy after making a jump over a gorge that he
3604 couldn't quite, in "Outrageous Fortune"
3606 You are in a maze of UUCP connections, all alike.
3608 "If that man in the PTL is such a healer, why can't he make his wife's
3612 8) Use common sense in routing cable. Avoid wrapping coax around sources of
3613 strong electric or magnetic fields. Do not wrap the cable around
3614 fluorescent light ballasts or cyclotrons, for example.
3615 -- Ethernet Headstart Product, Information and Installation Guide,
3616 Bell Technologies, pg. 11
3618 "What a wonder is USENET; such wholesale production of conjecture from
3619 such a trifling investment in fact."
3620 -- Carl S. Gutekunst
3630 Garbage In, Gospel Out
3632 "Being against torture ought to be sort of a multipartisan thing."
3633 -- Karl Lehenbauer, as amended by Jeff Daiell, a Libertarian
3635 "Facts are stupid things."
3636 -- President Ronald Reagan
3637 (a blooper from his speech at the '88 GOP convention)
3639 "The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science
3640 collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke
3641 miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into
3642 the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to
3643 abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all
3644 fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion,
3645 misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the
3646 ideas of their opponents."
3647 -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
3648 The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186
3650 "An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of code."
3651 -- an anonymous programmer
3653 "To IBM, 'open' means there is a modicum of interoperability among some of their
3657 "Just think of a computer as hardware you can program."
3658 -- Nigel de la Tierre
3660 "If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time
3662 -- Marion Zimmer Bradley, _The Forbidden Tower_
3664 "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
3667 "Card readers? We don't need no stinking card readers."
3668 -- Peter da Silva (at the National Academy of Sciences, 1965, in a
3669 particularly vivid fantasy)
3671 Your good nature will bring unbounded happiness.
3675 Excitement and danger await your induction to tracer duty! As a tracer,
3676 you must rid the computer networks of slimy, criminal data thieves.
3677 They are tricky and the action gets tough, so watch out! Utilizing all
3678 your skills, you'll either get your man or you'll get burned!
3679 -- advertising for the computer game "Tracers"
3681 "An entire fraternity of strapping Wall-Street-bound youth. Hell - this
3682 is going to be a blood bath!"
3683 -- Post Bros. Comics
3685 "Neighbors!! We got neighbors! We ain't supposed to have any neighbors, and
3686 I just had to shoot one."
3687 -- Post Bros. Comics
3689 "Gotcha, you snot-necked weenies!"
3690 -- Post Bros. Comics
3692 interlard - vt., to intersperse; diversify
3693 -- Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language
3695 "Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it."
3698 "How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
3699 "FIFTEEN!! YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?"
3701 "If you weren't my teacher, I'd think you just deleted all my files."
3702 -- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed
3703 "rm -i *" to get rid of a file named "-f" on a Unix system.
3705 "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral
3706 crisis, preserved their neutrality."
3709 "The medium is the message."
3712 "The medium is the massage."
3715 "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."
3716 -- Vince Lombardi, football coach
3718 "It might help if we ran the MBA's out of Washington."
3719 -- Admiral Grace Hopper
3721 Refreshed by a brief blackout, I got to my feet and went next door.
3722 -- Martin Amis, _Money_
3724 The sprung doors parted and I staggered out into the lobby's teak and flicker.
3725 Uniformed men stood by impassively like sentries in their trench. I slapped
3726 my key on the desk and nodded gravely. I was loaded enough to be unable to
3727 tell whether they could tell I was loaded. Would they mind? I was certainly
3728 too loaded to care. I moved to the door with boxy, schlep-shouldered strides.
3729 -- Martin Amis, _Money_
3731 I ask only one thing. I'm understanding. I'm mature. And it isn't much to
3732 ask. I want to get back to London, and track her down, and be alone with my
3733 Selina -- or not even alone, damn it, merely close to her, close enough to
3734 smell her skin, to see the flecked webbing of her lemony eyes, the moulding
3735 of her artful lips. Just for a few precious seconds. Just long enough to
3736 put in one good, clean punch. That's all I ask.
3737 -- Martin Amis, _Money_
3739 "Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail."
3740 -- A Kurt Vonnegut fan
3742 New York is a jungle, they tell you. You could go further, and say that
3743 New York is a jungle. New York *is a jungle.* Beneath the columns of
3744 the old rain forest, made of melting macadam, the mean Limpopo of swamped
3745 Ninth Avenue bears an angry argosy of crocs and dragons, tiger fish, noise
3746 machines, sweating rainmakers. On the corners stand witchdoctors and
3747 headhunters, babbling voodoo-men -- the natives, the jungle-smart natives.
3748 And at night, under the equatorial overgrowth and heat-holding cloud
3749 cover, you hear the ragged parrot-hoot and monkeysqueak of the sirens,
3750 and then fires flower to ward off monsters. Careful: the streets are
3751 sprung with pits and nets and traps. Hire a guide. Pack your snakebite
3752 gook and your blowdart serum. Take it seriously. You have to get a
3754 -- Martin Amis, _Money_
3756 Now I was heading, in my hot cage, down towards meat-market country on the
3757 tip of the West Village. Here the redbrick warehouses double as carcass
3758 galleries and rat hives, the Manhattan fauna seeking its necessary
3759 level, living or dead. Here too you find the heavy faggot hangouts,
3760 The Spike, the Water Closet, the Mother Load. Nobody knows what goes on
3761 in these places. Only the heavy faggots know. Even Fielding seems somewhat
3762 vague on the question. You get zapped and flogged and dumped on -- by
3763 almost anybody's standards, you have a really terrible time. The average
3764 patron arrives at the Spike in one taxi but needs to go back to his sock
3765 in two. And then the next night he shows up for more. They shackle
3766 themselves to racks, they bask in urinals. Their folks have a lot of
3767 explaining to do, if you want my opinion, particularly the mums. Sorry
3768 to single you ladies out like this but the story must start somewhere.
3769 A craving for hourly murder -- it can't be willed. In the meantime,
3770 Fielding tells me, Mother Nature looks on and taps her foot and clicks
3771 her tongue. Always a champion of monogamy, she is cooking up some fancy
3772 new diseases. She just isn't going to stand for it.
3773 -- Martin Amis, _Money_
3775 "You tried it just for once, found it alright for kicks,
3776 but now you find out you have a habit that sticks,
3777 you're an orgasm addict,
3778 you're always at it,
3779 and you're an orgasm addict."
3782 "There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
3785 "You'll pay to know what you really think."
3786 -- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
3788 "We live, in a very kooky time."
3791 "Pull the wool over your own eyes!"
3792 -- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
3794 "Okay," Bobby said, getting the hang of it, "then what's the matrix? If
3795 she's a deck, and Danbala's a program, what's cyberspace?"
3796 "The world," Lucas said.
3797 -- William Gibson, _Count Zero_
3799 "Our reruns are better than theirs."
3802 Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.
3805 "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
3808 "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
3809 -- Karl, as he stepped behind the computer to reboot it, during a FAT
3811 "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble. It's the
3812 things we know that ain't so."
3813 -- Artemus Ward aka Charles Farrar Brown
3815 "Don't discount flying pigs before you have good air defense."
3818 "In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble."
3821 "Pok pok pok, P'kok!"
3824 Live Free or Live in Massachusettes.
3826 "You can't get very far in this world without your dossier being there first."
3829 "Flight Reservation systems decide whether or not you exist. If your information
3830 isn't in their database, then you simply don't get to go anywhere."
3833 "What people have been reduced to are mere 3-D representations of their own
3837 "The Avis WIZARD decides if you get to drive a car. Your head won't touch the
3838 pillow of a Sheraton unless their computer says it's okay."
3841 "They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE
3842 is driving the car "for insurance", ... your driver's license number. In the
3843 state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social
3844 Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a
3845 number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give
3846 out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."
3849 "Data is a lot like humans: It is born. Matures. Gets married to other data,
3850 divorced. Gets old. One thing that it doesn't do is die. It has to be killed."
3853 "People should have access to the data which you have about them. There should
3854 be a process for them to challenge any inaccuracies."
3857 "Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret
3858 police and laws similar to those in the USSR, there are
3859 thousands of underground publications, a legal independent
3860 Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc's first and only
3861 independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is
3862 an affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free
3863 Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labor. There is
3864 literally a world of difference between Poland - even in its
3865 present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of
3866 its "glasnost." This difference has been maintained at great
3867 cost by the Poles since 1944.
3868 -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
3869 gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
3872 "There is also a thriving independent student movement in
3873 Poland, and thus there is a strong possibility (though no
3874 guarantee) of making an EARN-Poland link, should it ever come
3875 about, a genuine link - not a vacuum cleaner attachment for a
3876 Bloc information gathering apparatus rationed to trusted
3878 -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
3879 gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
3882 "Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture,
3883 an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads."
3884 -- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
3890 The bug starts here.
3892 "Why waste negative entropy on comments, when you could use the same
3893 entropy to create bugs instead?"
3896 "The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of
3897 course you never do."
3900 "Your butt is mine."
3901 -- Michael Jackson, Bad
3905 "Once they go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department."
3908 "When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if
3912 "Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
3913 -- The New Mighty Mouse
3915 "The lesser of two evils -- is evil."
3916 -- Seymour (Sy) Leon
3918 "It's no sweat, Henry. Russ made it back to Bugtown before he died. So he'll
3919 regenerate in a couple of days. It's just awful sloppy of him to get killed in
3920 the first place. Humph!"
3921 -- Ron Post, Post Brothers Comics
3923 "An honest god is the noblest work of man. ... God has always resembled his
3924 creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably
3925 found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with
3926 sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine
3928 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
3930 "We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. ... We are
3931 the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. ... It is grander to think
3932 and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. ... I look for the day
3933 when *reason*, throned upon the world's brains, shall be the King of Kings and
3935 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
3937 "I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes
3938 of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe
3939 it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts...
3940 I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it."
3941 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
3944 "No, this is Nuke Strike. Foreplay has lousy graphics. Beat me again."
3945 -- Duckert, in "Bad Rubber," Albedo #0 (comics)
3947 egrep patterns are full regular expressions; it uses a fast deterministic
3948 algorithm that sometimes needs exponential space.
3951 "A mind is a terrible thing to have leaking out your ears."
3952 -- The League of Sadistic Telepaths
3954 "Life sucks, but it's better than the alternative."
3957 If this is a service economy, why is the service so bad?
3959 "I shall expect a chemical cure for psychopathic behavior by 10 A.M. tomorrow,
3960 or I'll have your guts for spaghetti."
3961 -- a comic panel by Cotham
3963 "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
3966 "An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt."
3969 "The geeks shall inherit the earth."
3972 "Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers."
3975 "Elvis is my copilot."
3978 "The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
3979 sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment."
3980 -- Richard P. Feynman
3982 How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb?
3983 Let's see, can you use a shell script for that or does it need a C program?
3985 "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Hate me because I'm beautiful, smart
3989 "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
3990 certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
3993 Always look over your shoulder because everyone is watching and plotting
3996 "Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us."
3997 -- militant religionists everywhere
4001 "The net result is a system that is not only binary compatible with 4.3 BSD,
4002 but is even bug for bug compatible in almost all features."
4003 -- Avadit Tevanian, Jr., "Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory Management
4004 for Parallel and Distributed Environments: The Mach Approach"
4006 "The number of Unix installations has grown to 10, with more expected."
4007 -- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June, 1972
4009 "Engineering without management is art."
4012 "I'm not a god, I was misquoted."
4013 -- Lister, Red Dwarf
4015 Brain off-line, please wait.
4018 -- uunet!sugar!karl | "We've been following your progress with considerable
4019 -- karl@sugar.uu.net | interest, not to say contempt." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
4020 -- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018
4024 th-th-th-th-That's all, folks!
4026 ----------- cut here, don't forget to strip junk at the end, too -------------
4027 "Psychoanalysis?? I thought this was a nude rap session!!!"
4030 Are you having fun yet?
4032 "The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are
4033 perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust."
4036 "Perhaps I am flogging a straw herring in mid-stream, but in the light of
4037 what is known about the ubiquity of security vulnerabilities, it seems vastly
4038 too dangerous for university folks to run with their heads in the sand."
4039 -- Peter G. Neumann, RISKS moderator, about the Internet virus
4042 -- a random number generator meets the big green mother from outer space
4044 "Buy land. They've stopped making it."
4047 "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
4048 -- Dave Bowman, 2001
4050 "There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of
4052 -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
4054 ...Saure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papryomancy,
4055 the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll reefers -
4056 the shape, the licking pattern, the wrinkles and folds or absence thereof
4057 in the paper. "You will soon be in love," sez Saure, "see, this line here."
4058 "It's long, isn't it? Does that mean --" "Length is usually intensity.
4060 -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
4062 Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel
4063 less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with
4064 the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
4065 hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
4067 -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
4069 ...the prevailing Catholic odor - incense, wax, centuries of mild bleating
4070 from the lips of the flock.
4071 -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
4073 ...At that time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories scientists projected that
4074 computer speeds as high as 30 million floating-point calculations per
4075 second (megaflops) would be needed for the Army's ballistic missile
4076 defense system. Many computer experts -- including a National Academy
4077 of Sciences panel -- said achieving such speeds, even using multiple
4078 processors, was impossible. Today, new generation supercomputers operate
4079 at billions of operations per second (gigaflops).
4080 -- Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1988, "Washington Roundup", pg 13
4082 backups: always in season, never out of style.
4084 "There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearance; he somehow
4085 seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an
4086 actor, and clad in immaculate linen."
4087 -- H. L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan
4089 Work was impossible. The geeks had broken my spirit. They had done too
4090 many things wrong. It was never like this for Mencken. He lived like
4091 a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryan on some nights and drunker
4092 than Judas on others. It was all a dehumanized nightmare...and these
4093 raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines.
4094 -- Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_
4096 "This generation may be the one that will face Armageddon."
4097 -- Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985
4099 ... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually
4100 we were all forced to turn to it. By the summer of '85, the valley had more
4101 satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of
4104 Mine was one of the last to go in. I had been nervous from the start about
4105 the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these
4106 things. Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels
4107 all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
4108 into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
4109 -- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
4111 "Call immediately. Time is running out. We both need to do something
4112 monstrous before we die."
4113 -- Message from Ralph Steadman to Hunter Thompson
4115 "The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down."
4118 "You don't go out and kick a mad dog. If you have a mad dog with rabies, you
4119 take a gun and shoot him."
4120 -- Pat Robertson, TV Evangelist, about Muammar Kadhafy
4122 David Brinkley: The daily astrological charts are precisely where, in my
4123 judgment, they belong, and that is on the comic page.
4124 George Will: I don't think astrology belongs even on the comic pages.
4125 The comics are making no truth claim.
4126 Brinkley: Where would you put it?
4127 Will: I wouldn't put it in the newspaper. I think it's transparent rubbish.
4128 It's a reflection of an idea that we expelled from Western thought in the
4129 sixteenth century, that we are in the center of a caring universe. We are
4130 not the center of the universe, and it doesn't care. The star's alignment
4131 at the time of our birth -- that is absolute rubbish. It is not funny to
4132 have it intruded among people who have nuclear weapons.
4133 Sam Donaldson: This isn't something new. Governor Ronald Reagan was sworn
4134 in just after midnight in his first term in Sacramento because the stars
4135 said it was a propitious time.
4136 Will: They [horoscopes] are utter crashing banalities. They could apply to
4137 anyone and anything.
4138 Brinkley: When is the exact moment [of birth]? I don't think the nurse is
4139 standing there with a stopwatch and a notepad.
4140 Donaldson: If we're making decisions based on the stars -- that's a cockamamie
4141 thing. People want to know.
4142 -- "This Week" with David Brinkley, ABC Television, Sunday, May 8, 1988,
4143 excerpts from a discussion on Astrology and Reagan
4145 The reported resort to astrology in the White House has occasioned much
4146 merriment. It is not funny. Astrological gibberish, which means astrology
4147 generally, has no place in a newspaper, let alone government. Unlike comics,
4148 which are part of a newspaper's harmless pleasure and make no truth claims,
4149 astrology is a fraud. The idea that it gets a hearing in government is
4151 -- George Will, Washing Post Writers Group
4153 Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since
4154 the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology,
4155 phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice
4156 of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the
4157 notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of
4158 distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.
4159 -- James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate
4161 A serious public debate about the validity of astrology? A serious believer
4162 in the White House? Two of them? Give me a break. What stifled my laughter
4163 is that the image fits. Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward
4164 science. Facts, like numbers, roll off his back. And we've all come to
4165 accept it. This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not
4166 that long ago, it was Reagan's support of Creationism....Creationists actually
4167 got equal time with evolutionists. The public was supposed to be open-minded
4168 to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were
4169 scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president
4170 is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American
4171 turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns
4172 into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense. The same
4173 people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of
4174 laetrile to eye of newt to the movement of planets. We lose the capacity to
4175 make rational -- scientific -- judgments. It's all the same.
4176 -- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers
4179 The spectacle of astrology in the White House -- the governing center of
4180 the world's greatest scientific and military power -- is so appalling that
4181 it defies understanding and provides grounds for great fright. The easiest
4182 response is to laugh it off, and to indulge in wisecracks about Civil
4183 Service ratings for horoscope makers and palm readers and whether Reagan
4184 asked Mikhail Gorbachev for his sign. A contagious good cheer is the
4185 hallmark of this presidency, even when the most dismal matters are concerned.
4186 But this time, it isn't funny. It's plain scary.
4187 -- Daniel S. Greenberg, Editor, _Science and Government Report_, writing in
4188 "Newsday", May 5, 1988
4190 [Astrology is] 100 percent hokum, Ted. As a matter of fact, the first edition
4191 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written in 1771 -- 1771! -- said that this
4192 belief system is a subject long ago ridiculed and reviled. We're dealing with
4193 beliefs that go back to the ancient Babylonians. There's nothing there....
4194 It sounds a lot like science, it sounds like astronomy. It's got technical
4195 terms. It's got jargon. It confuses the public....The astrologer is quite
4196 glib, confuses the public, uses terms which come from science, come from
4197 metaphysics, come from a host of fields, but they really mean nothing. The
4198 fact is that astrological beliefs go back at least 2,500 years. Now that
4199 should be a sufficiently long time for astrologers to prove their case. They
4200 have not proved their case....It's just simply gibberish. The fact is, there's
4201 no theory for it, there are no observational data for it. It's been tested
4202 and tested over the centuries. Nobody's ever found any validity to it at
4203 all. It is not even close to a science. A science has to be repeatable, it
4204 has to have a logical foundation, and it has to be potentially vulnerable --
4205 you test it. And in that astrology is really quite something else.
4206 -- Astronomer Richard Berendzen, President, American University, on ABC
4207 News "Nightline," May 3, 1988
4209 Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about
4210 astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked.
4211 Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an
4212 effect on our characters, lives, or destinies? What force or influence,
4213 what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human
4214 beings and affect our development or fate? No amount of scientific-sounding
4215 jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central
4216 problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which
4217 celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . .
4218 Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents
4219 the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those
4220 of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always
4221 claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their
4222 efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have
4223 generously done such testing for them. There have been dozens of well-designed
4224 tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . .
4225 I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest
4226 in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them
4227 keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by
4228 the firelight, afraid of the night.
4229 -- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
4230 "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury
4233 With the news that Nancy Reagan has referred to an astrologer when planning
4234 her husband's schedule, and reports of Californians evacuating Los Angeles
4235 on the strength of a prediction from a sixteenth-century physician and
4236 astrologer Michel de Notredame, the image of the U.S. as a scientific and
4237 technological nation has taking a bit of a battering lately. Sadly, such
4238 happenings cannot be dismissed as passing fancies. They are manifestations
4239 of a well-established "anti-science" tendency in the U.S. which, ultimately,
4240 could threaten the country's position as a technological power. . . . The
4241 manifest widespread desire to reject rationality and substitute a series
4242 of quasirandom beliefs in order to understand the universe does not augur
4243 well for a nation deeply concerned about its ability to compete with its
4244 industrial equals. To the degree that it reflects the thinking of a
4245 significant section of the public, this point of view encourages ignorance
4246 of and, indeed, contempt for science and for rational methods of approaching
4247 truth. . . . It is becoming clear that if the U.S. does not pick itself up
4248 soon and devote some effort to educating the young effectively, its hope of
4249 maintaining a semblance of leadership in the world may rest, paradoxically,
4250 with a new wave of technically interested and trained immigrants who do not
4251 suffer from the anti-science disease rampant in an apparently decaying society.
4252 -- Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988
4254 miracle: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.
4255 -- Webster's Dictionary
4257 "The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone
4258 is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be
4259 created in the form of computer programs."
4260 -- Joseph Weizenbaum, _Computer Power and Human Reason_
4262 "If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong."
4265 "May your future be limited only by your dreams."
4266 -- Christa McAuliffe
4268 "It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
4272 "Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
4273 watching television."
4276 Eat shit -- billions of flies can't be wrong.
4278 "We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston. "That is
4279 the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell -- we *show*.
4280 We do not claim -- we *prove*."
4281 -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_
4283 "I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and
4284 my mother would get drunk and try to make pancakes."
4287 "My father? My father left when I was quite young. Well actually, he
4288 was asked to leave. He had trouble metabolizing alcohol."
4291 "I turn on my television set. I see a young lady who goes under the guise
4292 of being a Christian, known all over the nation, dressed in skin-tight
4293 leather pants, shaking and wiggling her hips to the beat and rhythm of the
4294 music as the strobe lights beat their patterns across the stage and the
4295 band plays the contemporary rock sound which cannot be differentiated from
4296 songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, or anyone else. And you may try
4297 to tell me this is of God and that it is leading people to Christ, but I
4299 -- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocritical sexual pervert and TV preacher, self-described
4300 pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.",
4301 The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
4303 "So-called Christian rock. . . . is a diabolical force undermining Christianity
4305 -- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite and TV preacher, self-described
4306 pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.",
4307 The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
4309 "Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of
4310 course, living in a state of sin."
4313 "You must have an IQ of at least half a million." -- Popeye
4315 "Freedom is still the most radical idea of all."
4316 -- Nathaniel Branden
4318 Aren't you glad you're not getting all the government you pay for now?
4320 "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."
4323 These screamingly hilarious gogs ensure owners of X Ray Gogs to be the life
4325 -- X-Ray Gogs Instructions
4327 A student asked the master for help... does this program run from the
4328 Workbench? The master grabbed the mouse and pointed to an icon. "What is
4329 this?" he asked. The student replied "That's the mouse". The master pressed
4330 control-Amiga-Amiga and hit the student on the head with the Amiga ROM Kernel
4332 -- Amiga Zen Master Peter da Silva
4334 "Thank heaven for startups; without them we'd never have any advances."
4337 "Out of register space (ugh)"
4340 "Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor
4341 of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated,
4342 it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."
4345 "Ada is PL/I trying to be Smalltalk.
4348 "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
4349 well-meaning but without understanding."
4350 -- Justice Louis O. Brandeis (Olmstead vs. United States)
4352 "'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true."
4353 -- Poloniouius, in Willie the Shake's _Hamlet, Prince of Darkness_
4355 "All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in. I'm glad they
4356 are a snowman with protective rubber skin"
4357 -- They Might Be Giants
4359 "Indecision is the basis of flexibility"
4360 -- button at a Science Fiction convention.
4362 "Sometimes insanity is the only alternative"
4363 -- button at a Science Fiction convention.
4365 "Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time."
4368 "The most important thing in a man is not what he knows, but what he is."
4371 "All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one thing or another."
4374 "We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in
4375 the idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking to
4376 know what we do not know."
4379 "To undertake a project, as the word's derivation indicates, means to cast an
4380 idea out ahead of oneself so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled not only
4381 by the efforts of its originator but, indeed, independently of him as well.
4384 "We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic
4385 of life is its coerciveness; it is always urgent, "here and now," without any
4386 possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank."
4389 "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."
4392 "When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest."
4395 Remember, an int is not always 16 bits. I'm not sure, but if the 80386 is one
4396 step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is asymptotically
4397 approaching a real machine, perhaps an int has been implemented as 32 bits by
4398 some Unix vendors...?
4401 "Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care
4402 what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything
4403 you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.
4404 Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to
4405 insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the
4406 destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be,
4407 be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to
4408 insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as
4409 your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be
4410 yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your
4411 receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this
4412 thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."
4414 Madrak, in _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, by Roger Zelazny
4416 "An Academic speculated whether a bather is beautiful
4417 if there is none in the forest to admire her. He hid
4418 in the bushes to find out, which vitiated his premise
4420 Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation."
4423 1 1 was a race-horse, 2 2 was 1 2. When 1 1 1 1 race, 2 2 1 1 2.
4425 "I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were
4426 Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers."
4427 -- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
4430 "Engineering meets art in the parking lot and things explode."
4431 -- Garry Peterson, about Survival Research Labs
4433 "Why can't we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having
4434 a 'War' on it?" -- Rich Thomson, talk.politics.misc
4436 ...and before I knew what I was doing, I had kicked the
4437 typewriter and threw it around the room and made it beg for
4438 mercy. At this point the typewriter pleaded for me to dress
4439 him in feminine attire but instead I pressed his margin release
4440 over and over again until the typewriter lost consciousness.
4441 Presently, I regained consciousness and realized with shame what
4442 I had done. My shame is gone and now I am looking for a
4443 submissive typewriter, any color, or model. No electric
4447 Professional wrestling: ballet for the common man.
4449 "An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
4450 cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."
4453 "Are those cocktail-waitress fingernail marks?" I asked Colletti as he
4454 showed us these scratches on his chest. "No, those are on my back," Colletti
4455 answered. "This is where a case of cocktail shrimp fell on me. I told her
4456 to slow down a little, but you know cocktail waitresses, they seem to have
4457 a mind of their own."
4458 -- The Incredibly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs
4459 National Lampoon, October 1982
4461 "Never give in. Never give in. Never. Never. Never."
4462 -- Winston Churchill
4464 "Never ascribe to malice that which is caused by greed and ignorance."
4467 "Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief
4468 or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is
4469 counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may
4470 be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in
4471 the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own
4472 allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
4473 -- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility,"
4474 New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988
4476 "If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead
4480 "After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United
4481 States. Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of
4482 the mentality of being open-minded, always positive. Everything you want to
4483 do in Europe is just, 'No way. No one has ever done it.' They haven't any
4484 more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much
4485 more the American spirit."
4486 -- Arnold Schwarzenegger
4488 "I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."
4489 -- Alexandre Dumas (fils)
4491 Well, punk is kind of anti-ethical, anyway. Its ethics, so to speak,
4492 include a disdain for ethics in general. If you have to think about some-
4493 thing so hard, then it's bullshit anyway; that's the idea. Punks are anti-
4494 ismists, to coin a term. But nonetheless, they have a pretty clearly defined
4495 stance and image, and THAT is what we hang the term `punk' on.
4498 I think for the most part that the readership here uses the c-word in
4499 a similar fashion. I don't think anybody really believes in a new, revolution-
4500 ary literature --- I think they use `cyberpunk' as a term of convenience to
4501 discuss the common stylistic elements in a small subset of recent sf books.
4504 So we get to my point. Surely people around here read things that
4505 aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*. Surely we
4506 don't (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and
4507 philosophical message in all this, do we? So if this `cyberpunk' thing is
4508 just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out? If cyberpunk is just a
4509 word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be
4510 dead? Where are the profound statements that the `Movement' is or was trying
4512 I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary
4513 (and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a
4514 rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no? Maybe there
4515 should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or something. Something less
4516 restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk.
4519 "Everyone's head is a cheap movie show."
4522 Life is full of concepts that are poorly defined. In fact, there are very few
4523 concepts that aren't. It's hard to think of any in non-technical fields.
4526 ...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable,
4527 challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self.
4528 That seems all the better reason to assume that cyberpunk art & music is
4529 essentially mindless garbagio. Willy certainly addressed this idea in
4530 "Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girl's
4531 observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself,
4532 rather than its output.
4535 It might be worth reflecting that this group was originally created
4536 back in September of 1987 and has exchanged over 1200 messages. The
4537 original announcement for the group called for an all inclusive
4538 discussion ranging from the writings of Gibson and Vinge and movies
4539 like Bladerunner to real world things like Brands' description of the
4540 work being done at the MIT Media Lab. It was meant as a haven for
4541 people with vision of this scope. If you want to create a haven for
4542 people with narrower visions, feel free. But I feel sad for anyone
4543 who thinks that alt.cyberpunk is such a monstrous group that it is in
4544 dire need of being subdivided. Heaven help them if they ever start
4545 reading comp.arch or rec.arts.sf-lovers.
4548 ...I don't care for the term 'mechanistic'. The word 'cybernetic' is a lot
4549 more apropos. The mechanistic world-view is falling further and further behind
4550 the real world where even simple systems can produce the most marvelous
4554 As for the basic assumptions about individuality and self, this is the core
4555 of what I like about cyberpunk. And it's the core of what I like about certain
4556 pre-gibson neophile techie SF writers that certain folks here like to put
4557 down. Not everyone makes the same assumptions. I haven't lost my mind... it's
4561 Who are the artists in the Computer Graphics Show? Wavefront's latest box, or
4562 the people who programmed it? Should Mandelbrot get all the credit for the
4563 output of programs like MandelVroom?
4566 Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following
4569 1) For a negotiated price (no quatloos accepted) one of our flaming
4570 representatives will flame the living shit out of the poster of
4571 your choice. The price is inversly proportional to how much of
4572 an asshole the target it. We cannot be convinced to flame Dennis
4573 Ritchie. Matt Crawford flames are free.
4575 2) For a negotiated price (same arrangement) the TETflame programme
4576 is offering ``flame insurence''. Under this arrangement, if
4577 one of our policy holders is flamed, we will cancel the offending
4578 article and flame the flamer, to a crisp.
4580 3) The TETflame flaming representatives include: Richard Sexton, Oleg
4581 Kisalev, Diane Holt, Trish O'Tauma, Dave Hill, Greg Nowak and our most
4582 recent acquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his
4583 kill file. Weemba by special arrangement.
4587 "As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of
4588 Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of
4589 their Proverbs..." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
4591 HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 1
4594 The author gives only the case n = 2 and suggests that it
4595 contains most of the ideas of the general proof.
4597 proof by intimidation:
4600 proof by vigorous handwaving:
4601 Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.
4603 HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 2
4605 proof by cumbersome notation:
4606 Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special
4609 proof by exhaustion:
4610 An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.
4613 'The reader may easily supply the details'
4614 'The other 253 cases are analogous'
4617 HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 3
4619 proof by obfuscation:
4620 A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless
4621 syntactically related statements.
4623 proof by wishful citation:
4624 The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization of
4625 a theorem from the literature to support his claims.
4628 How could three different government agencies be wrong?
4630 proof by eminent authority:
4631 'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-
4634 HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 4
4636 proof by personal communication:
4637 'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete
4638 [Karp, personal communication].'
4640 proof by reduction to the wrong problem:
4641 'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is
4642 decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.'
4644 proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
4645 The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found
4646 in a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian
4647 Philological Society, 1883.
4649 proof by importance:
4650 A large body of useful consequences all follow from the
4651 proposition in question.
4653 HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 5
4655 proof by accumulated evidence:
4656 Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.
4659 The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or
4660 meaningless. Popular for proofs of the existence of God.
4662 proof by mutual reference:
4663 In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3 in
4664 reference B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2 in
4665 reference C, which is an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in
4669 A method is given to construct the desired proof. The
4670 correctness of the method is proved by any of these
4673 HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 6
4676 A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well
4677 with proof by omission.
4679 proof by vehement assertion:
4680 It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the
4683 proof by ghost reference:
4684 Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears in
4685 the reference given.
4687 HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 7
4688 proof by forward reference:
4689 Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author,
4690 which is often not as forthcoming as at first.
4692 proof by semantic shift:
4693 Some of the standard but inconvenient definitions are changed
4694 for the statement of the result.
4696 proof by appeal to intuition:
4697 Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.
4699 [May one] doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated,
4700 or, if beetles and wasps, in cow-dung, or if butterflies, locusts,
4701 shellfish, snails, eels, and such life be procreated of putrefied
4702 matter, which is to receive the form of that creature to which it
4703 is by formative power disposed[?] To question this is to question
4704 reason, sense, and experience. If he doubts this, let him go to
4705 Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice begot
4706 of the mud of the Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants.
4707 A seventeenth century opinion quoted by L. L. Woodruff,
4708 in *The Evolution of Earth and Man*, 1929
4710 Seen on a button at an SF Convention:
4711 Veteran of the Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force. 1990-1951.
4713 "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
4714 then we are a sorry lot indeed."
4717 "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is
4718 the exact opposite."
4719 -- Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928
4721 "Were there no women, men might live like gods."
4724 "Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing."
4727 "It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is
4728 dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."
4731 "It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."
4734 "Let me guess, Ed. Pentescostal, right?"
4735 -- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu
4737 "Nope. Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels
4739 -- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com
4741 "Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain
4742 cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him. Good work!"
4743 -- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP
4745 "BTW, does Jesus know you flame?"
4746 -- Diane Holt, dianeh@binky.UUCP, to Ed Carp
4748 "I've seen the forgeries I've sent out."
4749 -- John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US), about forging net news articles
4751 "Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
4752 of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?"
4753 -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
4755 "Bite off, dirtball."
4756 Richard Sexton, richard@gryphon.COM
4758 "Oh my! An `inflammatory attitude' in alt.flame? Never heard of such
4760 -- Allen Gwinn, allen@sulaco.Sigma.COM
4762 (null cookie; hope that's ok)
4764 "In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality
4766 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
4768 "Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality? He who *suffers*
4770 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
4772 "You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?"
4773 -- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians
4775 "Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of
4776 nature are constantly broken for their sakes."
4777 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
4779 "Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes
4780 scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is
4781 forbidden. Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin. *This alone is
4782 morality.* ``Thou shalt not know'' -- the rest follows."
4783 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
4785 "Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true."
4786 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
4788 >One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative.
4790 Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
4791 The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
4792 -- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@Apple.COM
4794 "Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot.
4795 Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard
4796 to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and
4797 pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits."
4798 -- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet
4800 Backed up the system lately?
4802 "It doesn't much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next
4803 morning it was someone else."
4806 "If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry."
4809 "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
4810 the ideal never goes unpunished."
4813 "In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved."
4816 "The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, `What does
4820 "I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
4821 and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
4822 feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
4825 Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
4828 "The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence
4829 of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars. Verily, the
4830 learned men are the heirs of the Prophets."
4831 -- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
4833 "The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity;
4834 the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a
4835 military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and
4836 private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion;
4837 and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes
4838 who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity."
4839 -- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
4841 "The question is rather: if we ever succeed in making a mind 'of nuts and
4842 bolts', how will we know we have succeeded?
4848 "Inquiry is fatal to certainty."
4851 "The Mets were great in 'sixty eight,
4852 The Cards were fine in 'sixty nine,
4853 But the Cubs will be heavenly in nineteen and seventy."
4856 "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr.
4857 Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
4858 come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
4859 that could provoke such a question."
4862 "I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic
4863 depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient
4864 is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it
4865 the *one* mortal blemish of mankind."
4866 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
4868 "The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to
4869 safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster
4870 the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source
4871 of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity."
4873 "Religion is verily the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the
4874 world and of tranquillity amongst it's peoples...The greater the decline of
4875 religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but
4876 lead in the end to chaos and confusion."
4877 -- Baha'u'llah, a selection from the Baha'i scripture
4879 "Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."
4882 "...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
4883 lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
4887 Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What
4890 A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on believing
4891 that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be the only one to
4892 make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No time to lose, so
4893 certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the
4896 And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're the
4897 only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform
4898 the whole net right away!
4900 -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
4902 Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ...
4903 Q: How about an example?
4905 A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
4906 Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
4907 would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a
4908 big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
4909 as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
4910 news.admin. If not, use news.misc.
4912 The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is
4913 a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
4914 interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to
4915 soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
4916 news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of
4917 interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
4918 well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
4919 there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)
4921 You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
4922 If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
4923 only show the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this.
4924 -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
4926 Q: I cant spell worth a dam. I hope your going too tell me what to do?
4928 A: Don't worry about how your articles look. Remember it's the message
4929 that counts, not the way it's presented. Ignore the fact that sloppy
4930 spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that
4931 soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.
4933 -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
4935 Q: They just announced on the radio that Dan Quayle was picked as the
4936 Republican V.P. candidate. Should I post?
4938 A: Of course. The net can reach people in as few as 3 to 5 days. It's
4939 the perfect way to inform people about such news events long after the
4940 broadcast networks have covered them. As you are probably the only person
4941 to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post as soon as you can.
4943 -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
4945 What did Mickey Mouse get for Christmas?
4949 -- heard from a Mike Dukakis field worker
4951 Q: What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer
4954 A: The car salesman can probably drive!
4956 -- Joan McGalliard (jem@latcs1.oz.au)
4958 "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
4959 -- Dave Mack (mack@inco.UUCP)
4962 -- Allen Gwinn (allen@sulaco.sigma.com), in alt.flame
4964 A selection from the Taoist Writings:
4966 "Lao-Tan asked Confucius: `What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?'
4967 Confucius said: `To be in one's inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all
4968 things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature
4969 of benevolence and righteousness.'"
4972 "Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound!"
4973 -- Daniel Hinojosa (hinojosa@hp-sdd)
4975 "Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator."
4976 -- Claude Shouse (shouse@macomw.ARPA)
4978 "Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist."
4979 -- Joseph C. Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu)
4981 "Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will
4982 fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
4985 "Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his
4987 A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.
4988 He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto
4990 Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with
4992 Death and life are in the power of the tongue."
4993 -- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture
4995 "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
4996 I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
4997 This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
5000 Heisenberg might have been here.
5002 "Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
5005 "Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything."
5008 How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb?
5010 Two. One to change it and one not to change it.
5012 "I prefer the blunted cudgels of the followers of the Serpent God."
5013 -- Sean Doran the Younger
5015 "If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak."
5018 "my terminal is a lethal teaspoon."
5021 "I am ... a woman ... and ... technically a parasitic uterine growth"
5022 -- Sean Doran the Younger [allegedly]
5024 "Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time
5025 someone writes `bible thumpers?'
5026 -- Joel M. Snyder, jms@mis.arizona.edu
5028 "Money is the root of all money."
5029 -- the moving finger
5031 "...Greg Nowak: `Another flame from greg' - need I say more?"
5032 -- Jonathan D. Trudel, trudel@caip.rutgers.edu
5034 "No. You need to say less."
5035 -- Richard Sexton, richard@gryphon.COM
5037 "And it's my opinion, and that's only my opinion, you are a lunatic. Just
5038 because there are a few hundred other people sharing your lunacy with you
5039 does not make you any saner. Doomed, eh?"
5040 -- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU
5042 "Obedience. A religion of slaves. A religion of intellectual death. I like
5043 it. Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it
5044 has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex
5045 on his wrist. I like that job! Where can I sign up?"
5046 -- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU
5048 "Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a
5050 -- George Bernard Shaw
5052 "Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
5053 those inside desperate to get out."
5056 "For a male and female to live continuously together is... biologically
5057 speaking, an extremely unnatural condition."
5060 "Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it."
5063 A man is not complete until he is married -- then he is finished.
5065 Marriage is the sole cause of divorce.
5067 Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is
5068 the triumph of hope over experience.
5070 "The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
5073 "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
5076 "I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have
5077 included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products. This
5078 technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. My
5079 carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go by some more."
5080 -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM, in alt.conspiracy
5082 "If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in
5084 -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970
5086 "If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
5087 Lavoris in the toilet."
5088 -- Comedian Jay Leno
5090 "Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
5091 `Psychic Wins Lottery.'"
5092 -- Comedian Jay Leno
5094 "Well hello there Charlie Brown, you blockhead."
5097 "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
5098 -- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
5100 "Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows."
5101 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
5103 "Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable."
5104 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
5106 "I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'"
5107 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
5109 "It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius."
5110 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
5112 "Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul."
5113 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
5115 "The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray."
5116 -- Robert G. Ingersoll
5118 "It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating
5119 us in a stupid way."
5122 "No, no, I don't mind being called the smartest man in the world. I just wish
5123 it wasn't this one."
5124 -- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN
5126 "Be *excellent* to each other."
5127 -- Bill, or Ted, in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
5129 The Seventh Edition licensing procedures are, I suppose, still in effect,
5130 though I doubt that tapes are available from AT&T. At any rate, whatever
5131 restrictions the license imposes still exist. These restrictions were and
5132 are reasonable for places that just want to run the system, but don't allow
5133 many of the things that Minix was written for, like study of the source in
5134 classes, or by individuals not in a university or company.
5136 I've always thought that Minix was a fine idea, and competently done.
5138 As for the size of v7, wc -l /usr/sys/*/*.[chs] is 19271.
5140 -- Dennis Ritchie, 1989
5142 "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure
5144 "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips
5145 over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
5148 "I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
5151 "The Street finds its own uses for technology."
5154 "I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity
5155 when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such
5156 blasphemous nonsense!"
5157 -- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
5159 "You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but
5160 only for a limited period of time. Why should we think that collectively,
5161 as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"
5164 "He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort,
5165 he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion."
5166 -- Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_
5168 "Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts
5169 most subtly on the human will."
5170 -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"
5172 It's time to boot, do your boot ROMs know where your disk controllers are?
5174 "What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying."
5175 -- Nikita Khrushchev
5177 "...a most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"
5178 -- _Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure_
5180 "Pull the trigger and you're garbage."
5183 "Oh what wouldn't I give to be spat at in the face..."
5184 -- a prisoner in "Life of Brian"
5186 "Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy
5187 of him that brought her birth."
5190 "If you can't debate me, then there is no way in hell you'll out-insult me."
5191 -- Scott Legrand (Scott.Legrand@hogbbs.Fidonet.Org)
5193 "You may be wrong here, little one."
5194 -- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM)
5196 "Yes, I am a real piece of work. One thing we learn at Ulowell is
5197 how to flame useless hacking non-EE's like you. I am superior to you in
5198 every way by training and expertise in the technical field. Anyone can learn
5199 how to hack, but Engineering doesn't come nearly as easily. Actually, I'm
5200 not trying to offend all you CS majors out there, but I think EE is one of the
5201 hardest majors/grad majors to pass. Fortunately, I am making it."
5202 -- "Warrior Diagnostics" (wardiag@sky.COM)
5204 "Being both an EE and an asshole at the same time must be a terrible burden
5205 for you. This isn't really a flame, just a casual observation. Makes me
5206 glad I was a CS major, life is really pleasant for me. Have fun with your
5207 chosen mode of existence!"
5208 -- Jim Morrison (morrisj@mist.cs.orst.edu)
5210 "BYTE editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then
5212 -- Lionel Hummel (uiucdcs!hummel), derived from a quote by
5213 Adlai Stevenson, Sr.
5215 THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO
5216 Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other
5217 reader. Fun With Usenet postings are no exception. Since there are some who
5218 might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have
5219 written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these
5222 One. I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY
5223 good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses. For
5224 instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too
5225 mundane to bother with. "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become
5226 "I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it.
5228 Two. If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't
5229 put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized
5230 before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful
5231 place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place". Imagine
5232 the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts. If I can set
5233 up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing,
5234 I don't put ellipses in. And by the way, I love using this mechanism for
5235 turning things around. If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you
5236 don't think it's wonderful. ...
5237 -- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP)
5239 "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
5240 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
5241 -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
5243 "I am, therefore I am."
5246 "Stan and I thought that this experiment was so stupid, we decided to finance
5248 -- Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?)
5250 "I have more information in one place than anybody in the world."
5251 -- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS
5253 "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
5256 #define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
5257 #define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
5258 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
5259 - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
5261 -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
5263 "If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its
5264 laws. Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people
5268 "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
5269 in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on
5270 the unreasonable man."
5271 -- George Bernard Shaw
5273 "We want to create puppets that pull their own strings."
5276 "Would this make them Marionettes?"
5279 On the subject of C program indentation:
5280 "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented
5281 six feet downward and covered with dirt."
5282 -- Blair P. Houghton
5284 There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in
5285 one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that
5286 the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice --
5287 was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever
5288 was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family,
5289 hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if
5290 you had signed up too many times before).
5291 -- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_
5293 "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
5294 to suspect "Hungry."
5297 "But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual.
5298 The look in a face, the music of a violin. A Paris theater can be infused
5299 with the spiritual for all its solidity."
5300 -- Lestat, _The Vampire Lestat_, Anne Rice
5302 "Love your country but never trust its government."
5303 -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania
5305 I bought the latest computer;
5306 it came fully loaded.
5307 It was guaranteed for 90 days,
5308 but in 30 was outmoded!
5309 - The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT
5311 To update Voltaire, "I may kill all msgs from you, but I'll fight for
5312 your right to post it, and I'll let it reside on my disks".
5313 -- Doug Thompson (doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG)
5315 "Though a program be but three lines long,
5316 someday it will have to be maintained."
5317 -- The Tao of Programming
5319 "Turn on, tune up, rock out."
5325 soda water | tequila
5328 "Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power tools aren't
5329 soluble in alcohol..."
5332 "Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."
5335 n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
5336 n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
5337 n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
5338 n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
5339 n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
5341 -- Yet another mystical 'C' gem. This one reverses the bits in a word.
5343 "All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is
5344 constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role
5345 they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."
5348 "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
5349 system that worked."
5350 -- John Gall, _Systemantics_
5352 "In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it
5353 came up and bit him on his Internet."
5354 -- Ross M. Greenberg
5356 I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
5357 others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use
5358 of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion,
5359 such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I
5360 conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it
5361 appears to me at present".
5363 When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the
5364 pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some
5365 absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in
5366 certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
5367 case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.
5369 I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
5370 engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my
5371 opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had
5372 less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
5373 prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
5374 happened to be in the right.
5375 -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
5377 "If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change
5378 almost all occurrences of the word "paradigm" into "example" or "model."
5379 -- Herbie Blashtfalt
5381 "Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
5382 -- Marvin the paranoid android
5384 Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.
5385 -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
5387 "There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than
5388 the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
5390 "The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
5391 "A mere abacus. Mention it not."
5392 -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
5394 "But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic
5395 Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and
5398 "The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought,
5399 thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
5400 Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."
5401 -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
5403 If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola
5404 would be a Fortune-500 company.
5406 If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you'd be
5407 able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95.
5409 If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still
5410 be using autocoder and running compile decks.
5412 -- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective
5414 To err is human, to moo bovine.
5416 "America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort."
5417 -- President John F. Kennedy
5419 "The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not
5420 be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but
5421 living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil
5422 Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so."
5423 -- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
5425 "The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that
5426 from time to time threaten freedoms everywhere... Indeed, it is difficult
5427 to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
5428 Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights
5429 of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised
5430 by the majority they were at the time."
5431 -- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
5433 "The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each
5434 citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do
5435 his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."
5438 "Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many
5440 -- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
5442 "And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what
5443 the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions."
5444 -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation
5446 "Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser."
5447 -- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"
5449 "Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes
5450 America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we
5451 have tolerated the last eight years?"
5452 -- Frank Zappa, Feb 1, 1989
5454 "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
5455 three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
5456 Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
5457 "For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can
5458 we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by
5459 the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'"
5460 -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
5462 "Don't think; let the machine do it for you!"
5465 "It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
5466 which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
5467 insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
5468 than be the instrument of his army's downfall."
5469 -- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
5471 "(The Chief Programmer) personally defines the functional and performance
5472 specifications, designs the program, codes it, tests it, and writes its
5473 documentation... He needs great talent, ten years experience and
5474 considerable systems and applications knowledge, whether in applied
5475 mathematics, business data handling, or whatever."
5476 -- Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_
5478 "It ain't over until it's over."
5481 "If anything can go wrong, it will."
5484 "Yo baby yo baby yo."
5487 "You must learn to run your kayak by a sort of ju-jitsu. You must learn to
5488 tell what the river will do to you, and given those parameters see how you
5489 can live with it. You must absorb its force and convert it to your users
5490 as best you can. Even with the quickness and agility of a kayak, you are
5491 not faster than the river, nor stronger, and you can beat it only by
5493 -- Strung, Curtis and Perry, _Whitewater_
5495 Everyone who comes in here wants three things:
5496 1. They want it quick.
5497 2. They want it good.
5498 3. They want it cheap.
5499 I tell 'em to pick two and call me back.
5500 -- sign on the back wall of a small printing company in Delaware
5502 "More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all
5503 other causes combined."
5504 -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
5506 panic: kernel trap (ignored)
5508 "Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
5511 "Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue."
5512 -- Peter Neumann, about usenet
5514 "We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked
5515 power. There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation."
5516 -- Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart
5518 "What man has done, man can aspire to do."
5519 -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight
5521 "Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the shit."
5522 -- Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban
5524 "If you can, help others. If you can't, at least don't hurt others."
5527 To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a
5530 "Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!"
5533 "...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial
5534 technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain
5535 the world's democracies, not the world as a whole."
5538 "The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between a five-dollar bill
5539 and a whip deserves to learn the difference on his own back -- as, I think, he
5541 -- Francisco d'Anconia, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
5543 "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and
5544 the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will
5546 -- W. Somerset Maugham
5548 "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother
5549 to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed. Here's another of those self-satisfied
5550 doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life."
5551 -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
5553 One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
5554 Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
5555 to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
5556 be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
5557 to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't
5558 understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was
5559 renowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the
5560 time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be
5561 puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be
5562 genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
5563 -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
5565 Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
5566 former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.
5568 Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
5569 reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days, spirits
5570 were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
5571 and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
5572 from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
5573 deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
5574 was the Empire forged.
5575 -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
5577 "Gort, klaatu nikto barada."
5578 -- The Day the Earth Stood Still
5580 > From MAILER-DAEMON@Think.COM Thu Mar 2 13:59:11 1989
5581 > Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 255
5583 "Dale, your address no longer functions. Can you fix it at your end?"
5584 -- Bill Wolfe (wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu)
5586 "Bill, Your brain no longer functions. Can you fix it at your end?"
5587 -- Karl A. Nyberg (nyberg@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu)
5589 "Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!"
5590 -- Bryan Michael Wendt
5592 "I got a question for ya. Ya got a minute?"
5593 -- two programmers passing in the hall
5595 I took a fish head to the movies and I didn't have to pay.
5596 -- Fish Heads, Saturday Night Live, 1977.
5598 What hath Bob wrought?
5600 "I don't know where we come from,
5601 Don't know where we're going to,
5602 And if all this should have a reason,
5603 We would be the last to know.
5605 So let's just hope there is a promised land,
5607 ...as best as you can."
5608 -- Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby"
5613 "The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance.
5614 He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him.
5615 But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are
5616 given to administer we presently imagine we own."
5619 "Unlike most net.puritans, however, I feel that what OTHER consenting computers
5620 do in the privacy of their own phone connections is their own business."
5621 -- John Woods, jfw@eddie.mit.edu
5623 "Don't talk to me about disclaimers! I invented disclaimers!"
5624 -- The Censored Hacker
5626 'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do
5627 with equalizing. Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and
5628 consumption in accordance with the principle "From each according to his
5629 ability, to each according to his needs." This will be under communism.
5630 Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits:
5631 "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."'
5632 -- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_
5634 "Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."
5635 -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
5636 [apparently, good TV reception is a basic necessity -- at least in Tucson -kl]
5638 "All the system's paths must be topologically and circularly interrelated for
5639 conceptually definitive, locally transformable, polyhedronal understanding to
5640 be attained in our spontaneous -- ergo, most economical -- geodesiccally
5641 structured thoughts."
5642 -- R. Buckminster Fuller [...and a total nonsequitur as far as I can
5645 "One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
5646 sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
5650 "It's when they say 2 + 2 = 5 that I begin to argue."
5653 Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a
5654 pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
5657 "None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary
5658 to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
5659 ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a
5660 job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
5661 forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
5662 he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
5663 state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
5664 "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible."
5665 -- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):
5667 "The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post
5668 is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer
5669 is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..."
5670 -- Robert J Woodhead (trebor@biar.UUCP)
5672 "...'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not
5673 matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality
5674 and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his
5675 fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the
5676 world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon
5677 reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles
5678 as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming."
5679 -- Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny
5681 "Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient.
5682 It's called 'rain'."
5683 -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
5685 "The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people
5686 who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything."
5687 -- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California
5689 "We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of
5690 annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn
5691 and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from
5692 being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented."
5693 -- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948
5695 "You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
5698 We'll be more than happy to do so once Jim shows the slightest sign
5699 of interest in fixing his proposal to deal with the technical
5700 arguments that have *already* been made. Most engineers have
5701 learned there is little to be gained in fine-tuning the valve timing
5702 on a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine when the pistons
5703 and crankshaft are missing...
5704 -- Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu on NANOG
5706 It's always sad when the fleas leave, because that means your dog is dead.
5707 -- Wesley T. Williams
5709 It's always sad when the fleas leave, because that means your dog is dead.
5710 -- Wesley T. Williams