"You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are
now extinct."
-- M. Somerset Maugham
+ -- M. Somerset Maugham
%
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
-- Bert Lantz
+ -- Bert Lantz
%
-"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
-- Oscar Wilde
+"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a necessity."
+ -- Oscar Wilde
%
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
-- Voltaire
+ -- Voltaire
%
"IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique'
to destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the
OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all
this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor
approaches the pot, he falls into the pit"
-- John C. Dvorak
+ -- John C. Dvorak
%
"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them"
-- Heisenberg
+ -- Heisenberg
%
"It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
to my kind of fooling"
-- R. Frost
+ -- R. Frost
%
"Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!"
-- Ben Jonson
+ -- Ben Jonson
%
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
cometh out of man, in their sight...Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy
thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel
is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap
-of wheat set about with lillies.
+of wheat set about with lilies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
[Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
%
[Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
%
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
-- Cheech Marin
+ -- Cheech Marin
%
In the beginning, I was made. I didn't ask to be made. No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter. But if it brought some
%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
-- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
+ -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%
Wherever you go...There you are.
-- Buckaroo Banzai
+ -- Buckaroo Banzai
%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
+ -- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
-- Joey Ramone
+ -- Joey Ramone
%
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
-at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capabe of. ... And if he does
+at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
-- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
+ -- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
%
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
-- Seneca
+ -- Seneca
%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
-- General James Gavin
+ -- General James Gavin
%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
+ -- Edmund Burke
%
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
-- Nicklaus Wirth
+ -- Nicklaus Wirth
%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
-- Calvin Keegan
+ -- Calvin Keegan
%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
-- Niels Bohr
+ -- Niels Bohr
%
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact
mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
-- Frank Zappa
+ -- Frank Zappa
%
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
-- Edward Thorp
+ -- Edward Thorp
%
The main thing is the play itself. I swear that greed for money has nothing
to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
-- Feodor Dostoyevsky
+ -- Feodor Dostoyevsky
%
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
-- Robert Bly
+ -- Robert Bly
%
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
-- Alan Turing
+ -- Alan Turing
%
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
-- Blaise Pascal
+ -- Blaise Pascal
%
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
-- Freeman Dyson
+ -- Freema Dyson
%
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
-- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
+ -- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
%
Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
-- C. A. R. Hoare
+ -- C. A. R. Hoare
%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did. In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
-- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
+ -- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%
"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
+ -- Hunter S. Thompson
%
In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool --
programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
describe.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
...computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike. If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed. In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
-They hyave very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing,
+They have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard. Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
-- Ellyn Mustard
+ -- Ellyn Mustard
%
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
+ -- Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
%
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
-- Brian Kernighan
+ -- Brian Kernighan
%
Perfection is achieved only on the point of collapse.
-- C. N. Parkinson
+ -- C. N. Parkinson
%
There you go man,
Keep as cool as you can.
Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound. - Peanuts
%
Police up your spare rounds and frags. Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
-- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
+ -- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
%
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
specific."
--- Jane Wagner
+ -- Jane Wagner
%
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple
his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than
against them is to attain literacy."
--- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
+ -- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%
"Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make
computing a part of our lives?"
--- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
+ -- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%
"The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace."
--- Holly Near
+ -- Holly Near
%
"No matter where you go, there you are..."
--- Buckaroo Banzai
+ -- Buckaroo Banzai
%
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.
%
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN!
%
"I'm growing older, but not up."
--- Jimmy Buffett
+ -- Jimmy Buffett
%
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
%
Your own mileage may vary.
%
"Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again."
--- Marvin The Paranoid Android
+ -- Marvin The Paranoid Android
%
"Send lawyers, guns and money..."
--- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
+ -- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
%
"I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
-- H. L. Mencken
+ -- H. L. Mencken
%
"Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
--- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
+ -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no
us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
--- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
+ -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%
Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way
to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."
contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory. Because
of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
scientists must employ in their work.
--- Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
+ -- Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
%
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we
don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the
truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of
suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
--- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
+ -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade,
+ February 1, 1987
%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
%
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
+ -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece. Their
must. But the changes need to be quantized. Then each user has periods of
productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change. This seems
to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
+ -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
+ -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it
is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize
was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
added a year to debugging time.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
+ -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary
psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After
conducted over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is
now of little interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated
phenomenon that needs explanation.
--- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
+ -- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
%
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
--- Charles Galton Darwin
+ -- Charles Galton Darwin
%
Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as conscious
selection. We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we
can be. Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves
unrecognizably.
--- Greg Bear
+ -- Greg Bear
%
"Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin."
--- Michael O'Donohugh
+ -- Michael O'Donohugh
%
...though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage
from beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
"It's like deja vu all over again." -- Yogi Berra
%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
--- Blaise Pascal
+ -- Blaise Pascal
%
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked. "Begin at the
beginning," the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
%
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
--- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
To be awake is to be alive. -- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden"
%
of space and time. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
--- Benjamin Disraeli
+ -- Benjamin Disraeli
%
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. -- Edmund Burke
%
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
--- H. L. Mencken
+ -- H. L. Mencken
%
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
--- James J. Ling
+ -- James J. Ling
%
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with
propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning
processes, and make him something less than a man.
--- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
+ -- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
%
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance. -- James Bryant Conant
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." -- Alexander Graham Bell
%
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
--- J. C. R. Licklider
+ -- J. C. R. Licklider
%
It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
--- B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal System",
-Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980, pp. 7-20
+ -- B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal
+ System", Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980,
+ pp. 7-20
%
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
--- Ramsey Clark
+ -- Ramsey Clark
%
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side. -- James Baldwin
%
...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
--- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
+ -- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
%
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
--- Abraham Lincoln
+ -- Abraham Lincoln
%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
--- Jean Cocteau
+ -- Jean Cocteau
%
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more
would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you were
interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a
pinhead.
--- Christopher Evans
+ -- Christopher Evans
%
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
--- Robert Lucky
+ -- Robert Lucky
%
Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
%
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
-- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
+ -- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
%
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?
%
"Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal."
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hithiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
+ -- Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Uncompensated overtime? Just Say No.
%
Decaffeinated coffee? Just Say No.
%
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid."
-- Martin Mull
+ -- Martin Mull
%
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
-- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
"Morality is one thing. Ratings are everything."
-- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
+ -- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
%
Live free or die.
%
%
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
the Force.
-- Darth Vader
+ -- Darth Vader
%
-When I left you, I was but the pupil. Now, I am the master.
-- Darth Vader
+When I left you, I was but the learner. Now, I am the master.
+ -- Darth Vader
%
"Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come
and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!"
-- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
+ -- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%
"There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to
see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was."
-- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
+ -- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%
186,000 Miles per Second. It's not just a good idea. IT'S THE LAW.
%
%
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely,
if ever, do they forgive them.
-- Oscar Wilde
+ -- Oscar Wilde
%
Single tasking: Just Say No.
%
"Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world."
-- The Beach Boys
+ -- The Beach Boys
%
"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
seemed to come from Texas."
-- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
+ -- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
%
"I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
lifetime."
-- Johnny Legend
+ -- Johnny Legend
%
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials
(out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
but appeared "abruptly."
-- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
+ -- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
%
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
-- Hajime Karatsu
+ -- Hajime Karatsu
%
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient.
Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
the long run. I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary
challenging spirit today.
-- Hajime Karatsu
+ -- Hajime Karatsu
%
Memories of you remind me of you.
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Life. Don't talk to me about life.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android
+ -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
%
It is your destiny.
-- Darth Vader
+ -- Darth Vader
%
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
your side.
-- Han Solo
+ -- Han Solo
%
-How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
+How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
%
-How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
+How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
"That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
%
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange
surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and
Fortran programs, for example.
-- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
+ -- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
%
"I am your density."
- -- George McFly in "Back to the Future"
+ -- George McFly in "Back to the Future"
%
"So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here."
- -- Biff in "Back to the Future"
+ -- Biff in "Back to the Future"
%
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint."
--- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
+ -- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
%
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
%
"I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously."
-- Doctor Graper
+ -- Doctor Graper
%
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
-- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
+ -- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
%
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
-- Francis Bellamy, 1892
+ - Francis Bellamy, 1892
%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
ears. I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
--- Steven Wright
+ -- Steven Wright
%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
-- Steven Wright
%
You can't have everything... where would you put it?
--- Steven Wright
+ -- Steven Wright
%
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and
4 people died.
--- Steven Wright
+ -- Steven Wright
%
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
over? Well, that's how I feel all the time.
--- Steven Wright
+ -- Steven Wright
%
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and
the building started up. So I took it out for a drive. A cop pulled me over
for speeding. He asked me where I live... "Right here".
--- Steven Wright
+ -- Steven Wright
%
"Live or die, I'll make a million."
--- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth, Firesign Theater
+ -- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth,
+ Firesign Theater
%
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
%
There are bugs and then there are bugs. And then there are bugs.
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
My computer can beat up your computer.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures
-- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Kill Ugly Radio
-- Frank Zappa
+ -- Frank Zappa
%
"Just Say No." - Nancy Reagan
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
-- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
+ -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
+ Vol. 12, Fall 87
%
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind
system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that
may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
future.
-- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
+ -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
+ Vol. 12, Fall 87
%
"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And
in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
-- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
+ -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
+ Vol. 12, Fall 87
%
I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
gence?" I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but
what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's
okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
-- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
+ -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
+ Vol. 12, Fall 87
%
Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
-- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
+ -- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad
+ football team
%
If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
-- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
+ -- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
%
It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
-- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
+ -- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
%
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
-makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
+makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
-I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing materail aid
+I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
+ -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
nature and all of creation.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman
+ -- Dr. Albert Hoffman
%
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
+ -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability
-more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjution
+more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjuction
with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
child.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
+ -- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
prepared.
-- Louis Pasteur
+ -- Louis Pasteur
%
core error - bus dumped
%
use.
%
"Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you."
-- A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution, Firesign Theater
+ -- A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution,
+ Firesign Theater
%
"Ahead warp factor 1"
-- Captain Kirk
+ -- Captain Kirk
%
Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.
It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.
-- Startide Rising, by David Brin
+ -- Startide Rising, by David Brin
%
Harrison's Postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46
+ -- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer,
+ Vol. 12, pg. 46
%
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
-- Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
+ -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
%
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
-- Oscar Wilde
+ -- Oscar Wilde
%
Unix: Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
-- Joe Crowe
+ -- Joe Crowe
%
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-- Edmund Burke
+ -- Edmund Burke
%
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
-- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
+ -- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
%
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
-- Thomas Paine
+ -- Thomas Paine
%
"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
-- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
+ -- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
%
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
-- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
+ -- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%
"...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect."
-- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
+ -- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of
+ Manned Space Flight"
%
"Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth."
-- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
+ -- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%
"Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared
adventure and achievement to the society at large."
-- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
+ -- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon
represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race. Even
arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by
those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the
development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.
-- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
+ -- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and
landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination
endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out
except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead
can give.
-- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
+ -- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space
+ Flight"
%
Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of
productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly
working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and
the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied...to unparalleled
social accomplishment.
-- Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
+ -- Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while. Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
-- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
+ -- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself
to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon...
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
+ -- Lyndon B. Johnson
%
Life's the same, except for the shoes.
-- The Cars
+ -- The Cars
%
Purple hum
Assorted cars
All to prove
You're on the move
and vanishing
-- The Cars
+ -- The Cars
%
Could be you're crossing the fine line
A silly driver kind of...off the wall
You keep it cool when it's t-t-tight
...eyes wide open when you start to fall.
-- The Cars
+ -- The Cars
%
Adapt. Enjoy. Survive.
%
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
-- Anonymous
+ -- Anonymous
%
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
-- Isaac Asimov
+ -- Isaac Asimov
%
And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes! He is naked!"
-- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
+ -- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
%
"Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
Silly Putty."
-- Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
+ -- Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
%
To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated
present-day scientific knowledge; and
3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized
as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.
-- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from 1950
- to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
+ -- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from
+ 1950 to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
%
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only
in the God idea, not God Himself.
-- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
+ -- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
%
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
-- Kahlil Gibran
+ -- Kahlil Gibran
%
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
-- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
+ -- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
%
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
-- Voltaire
+ -- Voltaire
%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss Bank.
-- Woody Allen
+ -- Woody Allen
%
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both.
Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity
is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is
a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
-- Norman Cousins
+ -- Norman Cousins
%
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
-- C. K. Chesterton
+ -- C. K. Chesterton
%
...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
+ -- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
%
Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to
be solved.
-- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??)
+ -- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank
+ Herbert??)
%
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
our doubts serve to reassure us.
-- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
+ -- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable.
-- H. L. Mencken
+ -- H. L. Mencken
%
And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve? The judgement of God
upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of
criminal at the bar of justice.
-- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
+ -- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
%
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
become better people as a result of practicing it.
-- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
+ -- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
%
Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.
%
"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"
-- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11
+ -- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the
+ PDP-11
%
-How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
+How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored
power tools.
%
-How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
+How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
%
-How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?
+How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a light bulb?
It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
%
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.
-- Thomas Paine
+ -- Thomas Paine
%
God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
-- Roger Williams
+ -- Roger Williams
%
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
-- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
-- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
-- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity.
-- John Adams
+ -- John Adams
%
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could
never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-- Abraham Lincoln
+ -- Abraham Lincoln
%
As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
-- Benjamin Franklin
+ -- Benjamin Franklin
%
I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the
missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
-- Oliver North
+ -- Oliver North
%
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute --
where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
-how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom
+how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom
to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
people who might elect him.
-- from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
- September 12, 1960.
+ -- from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial
+ Association September 12, 1960.
%
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
-- H. L. Mencken
+ -- H. L. Mencken
%
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
+ -- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
beyond the grave. Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
-- H. L. Mencken
+ -- H. L. Mencken
%
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
+ -- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
-- Clarence Darrow
+ -- Clarence Darrow
%
We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
-- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
+ -- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
%
...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
-- George Jacob Holyoake
+ -- George Jacob Holyoake
%
"If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."
-- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston
- July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
+ -- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center,
+ Houston July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
%
The meek are contesting the will.
%
I'm sick of being trodden on! The Elder Gods say they can make me a man!
All it costs is my soul! I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!
-- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
+ -- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
%
On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins.
From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.
the artistry of it. These men are better than I'd thought. Their insults
are wordy and overblown, but they have talent. They deserve honorable, slow
deaths.
-- David Brin, Startide Rising
+ -- David Brin, Startide Rising
%
"I'm a mean green mother from outer space"
- -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
+ -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
%
Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer.
It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who
people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and
cruelty for that. On the other hand, I respect and envy the people
who get inspiration from their religions.
-- Benjamin Spock
+ -- Benjamin Spock
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
-- Andy Finkel, computer guy
+ -- Andy Finkel, computer guy
%
Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.
%
NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again.
-- The Firesign Theater
+ -- The Firesign Theater
%
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical
vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.
-- The Firesign Theater
+ -- The Firesign Theater
%
...this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
-- The Firesign Theater
+ -- The Firesign Theater
%
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
-- Ann Marion
+ -- Ann Marion
%
I know engineers. They love to change things.
-- Dr. McCoy
+ -- Dr. McCoy
%
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
-- John Lions (University of New South Wales)
+ -- John Lions (University of New South Wales)
%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
+ -- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
%
"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
States? Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
Here, there is no such mobility. If you have the slightest bit of intellectual
integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer
minds belong to the opposition."
-- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
+ -- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
%
"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is
bend a disk."
-- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
+ -- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain
%
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
-- Ed Bluestone
+ -- Ed Bluestone
%
He's dead, Jim.
%
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
-- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
-- Al Capone
+ -- Al Capone
%
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
character does not have fire resistance.
-- README file from the NetHack game
+ -- README file from the NetHack game
%
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
-- Frank Zappa
+ -- Frank Zappa
%
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm
sick and tired of being told that I am.
-- Monty Python
+ -- Monty Python
%
"There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."
--- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
+ -- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
%
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
-- T. K. Lawson
+ -- T. K. Lawson
%
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
-- William Cowper
+ -- William Cowper
%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
+ -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
%
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
-- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
- commenting on psi research
+ -- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
+ commenting on psi research
%
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
-- John Keats
+ -- John Keats
%
Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.
%
In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
in Apollo 11."
--- Michael Collins
- Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum
+ -- Michael Collins
+ Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space
+ Museum
%
Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the
peasantry." Don't lose what you've got. Don't change. Don't take a chance,
something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
the game as it must be played.
-- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988
+ -- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times,
+ January 18, 1988
%
"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting"
--Stanley Sutton
%
Weekends were made for programming.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
"Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards."
-- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters
- of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
-%
-...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
-observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of
-years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
-descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
-do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
-flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us some
-things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
-established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle
-to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
-cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
-into doubt.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer,
- Vol XII No. 2
+ -- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the
+ supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey
+ Trial" in 1925.
%
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
-- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
+ -- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
%
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
contrary to habit...
-- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
+ -- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
%
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function
are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other. There is
there is no real evidence opposed to it. Our failure to solve a problem so
far does not make it insoluble. One cannot logically be a determinist in
physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
-- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
+ -- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
%
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
- Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
+ -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
+ Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%
... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
the person making the claim, not the critic. It is not the responsibility
claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidence and to
provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...
-- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
+ -- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
%
"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."
-- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
+ -- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
%
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of
outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
- Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
+ -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
+ Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.
Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only
atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
-- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
+ -- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
%
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun. At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology. Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
+ -- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
%
...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
- The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
+ -- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
+ The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
%
... The book is worth attention for only two reasons: (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
-- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
- The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
+ -- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
+ The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I hear the sirens in the street
All my dreams are made of chrome
I have no way to get back home
-- Tom Waits
+ -- Tom Waits
%
I am here by the will of the people and I won't leave until I get my raincoat
back.
-- a slogan of the anarchists in Richard Kadrey's "Metrophage"
+ -- a slogan of the anarchists in Richard Kadrey's "Metrophage"
%
How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ?
marginal product of labor for any number of additional workers
equals zero until the acquisition of another cut-off saw.
Let's not even consider a chainsaw.
-- Mike Dennison
+ -- Mike Dennison
[You could always schedule the saw, though - ed.]
%
As long as we're going to reinvent the wheel again, we might as well try making
it round this time.
-- Mike Dennison
+ -- Mike Dennison
%
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is now in the American experience... We must not fail to
acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
+ -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
%
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered
french toast in the renaissance.
-- Steven Wright, comedian
+ -- Steven Wright, comedian
%
Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television.
-- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal.
The smallness of it is what's attractive. It's weird, 'cause it's so
intellectually lame. It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of
my life. But at the same time, it's what I do best.
-- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman"
+ -- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David
+ Letterman"
%
e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data
you're seeing is genuine rather than somebody's made-up crap.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde
+ -- Oscar Wilde
%
My mother is a fish.
-- William Faulkner
+ -- William Faulkner
%
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
-- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
+ -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
-- from "Our Sunday Visitor", an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949
+ -- from "Our Sunday Visitor", an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949
%
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
+ -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
+ -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
+ -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
%
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries...
-- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
+ -- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
%
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
-- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
+ -- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
%
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
-of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
+of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
-- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
+ -- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
-- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
+ -- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
+ -- Voltaire
%
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly --
that is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire
+ -- Voltaire
%
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
-- Voltaire
+ -- Voltaire
%
I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us --
a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole
normal evolution of society.
-- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
+ -- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
%
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be.... The
natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience
only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
-- Adam Smith
+ -- Adam Smith
%
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think
very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
crudeness.
-- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
+ -- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
%
However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise.
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of "conservatism."
-- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
+ -- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record,
+ September 16, 1981
%
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
-- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's
-suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's
-nomination to the Supreme Court
+ -- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry
+ Falwell's suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra
+ Day O'Connor's nomination to the Supreme Court
%
...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians
-are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
+are frustrated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
-- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
- Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
+ -- Steve Allen, comedian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
+ Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
%
...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
-- Sidney Hook
+ -- Sidney Hook
%
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill
+ -- Winston Churchill
%
We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...
we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.
-- Jerry Falwell
+ -- Jerry Falwell
%
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
-- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
-- George Orwell
+ -- George Orwell
%
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
irrational -- the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer's mind.
-- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
- Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
+ -- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
+ Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
%
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
-- Fyodor Dostoevski
+ -- Fyodor Dostoevski
%
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
-- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
+ -- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
%
The Messiah will come. There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
-- Rabbi Meir Kahane
+ -- Rabbi Meir Kahane
%
The world is no nursery.
-- Sigmund Freud
+ -- Sigmund Freud
%
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
-- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
- from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
+ -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
+ from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
-secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generall known;
+secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known;
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
-- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
- from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
+ -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
+ from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
interests and activities of a society that is committed to the democratic
way of life.
-- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
+ -- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
%
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts
grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another...
Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every
moult is a step gained.
-- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
+ -- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
%
...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our
family, the Hominidae.
-- Richard Leakey
+ -- Richard Leakey
%
It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us
as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.
-- Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species",
- Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
+ -- Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species",
+ Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
%
"Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature. It's a piss-poor
reptile and not very much of a bird."
-- Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
-studied the archeopteryz and found it "very much like people"
+ -- Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
+ studied the archaeopteryx and found it "very much like people"
%
"You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape."
-- Ellyn Mustard
+ -- Ellyn Mustard
%
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
create him."
-Ambrose Bierce
%
"Plan to throw one away. You will anyway."
-- Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
+ -- Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%
You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape.
-- Ellyn Mustard
+ -- Ellyn Mustard
%
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
create him."
confronting militant Islam -- particularly fallout from the Iranian
revolution -- and religion will once more, as it has in our own more
distant past -- play a role at least as standard-bearer in death and mayhem.
-- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence,
- vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy director of
- Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
+ -- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval
+ Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA,
+ deputy director of Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of
+ MCC.
%
...One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of,
this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of
look to at least another decade during which many of the big problems
around this country will have to be addressed by institutions other than
federal government.
-- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence,
- vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy directory of
- Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
+ -- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval
+ Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA,
+ deputy director of Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of
+ MCC.
[the statist opinions expressed herein are not those of the cookie editor -ed.]
%
"I have just one word for you, my boy...plastics."
-- from "The Graduate"
+ -- from "The Graduate"
%
"There is such a fine line between genius and stupidity."
-- David St. Hubbins, "Spinal Tap"
+ -- David St. Hubbins, "Spinal Tap"
%
"If Diet Coke did not exist it would have been necessary to invent it."
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who
are equally certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure that
I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that
God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty,
it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.
-- Abraham Lincoln
+ -- Abraham Lincoln
%
In space, no one can hear you fart.
%
Brain damage is all in your head.
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Wish and hope succeed in discerning signs of paranormality where reason and
careful scientific procedure fail.
-- James E. Alcock, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12
+ -- James E. Alcock, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12
%
"It is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, but
the result's the same."
-- Mike Dennison
+ -- Mike Dennison
%
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
-entire intellectualy heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
+entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
--- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
+ -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
%
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
%
"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."
--- 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
+ -- 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
%
"Your attitude determines your attitude."
--- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
+ -- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
%
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it? As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
--- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
- Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
+ -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
+ Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
%
Thufir's a Harkonnen now.
%
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
--- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language"
+ -- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's
+ "Computer Language"
%
-"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight."
--- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory
+"If you want to eat hippopotamus, you've got to pay the freight."
+ -- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory
%
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time alloted it.
%
%
It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and
failed.
-- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
+ -- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
%
"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension."
--- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited",
- The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
+ -- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression
+ Revisited", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
%
"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products,
if they are built at all, are dogs!"
--- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
+ -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
%
"To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite
improvements."
--- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors
+ -- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors
%
"We will bury you."
--- Nikita Kruschev
+ -- Nikita Kruschev
%
"Now here's something you're really going to like!"
--- Rocket J. Squirrel
+ -- Rocket J. Squirrel
%
"How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars."
--- Steve Martin
+ -- Steve Martin
%
"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."
--- B. L. Whorf
+ -- B. L. Whorf
%
The language provides a programmer with a set of conceptual tools; if these are
inadequate for the task, they will simply be ignored. For example, seriously
vector plus integer arithmetic to implement structures, pointer, etc. Good
design and the absence of errors cannot be guaranteed by mere language
features.
--- Bjarne Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language"
+ -- Bjarne Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language"
%
"For the love of phlegm...a stupid wall of death rays. How tacky can ya get?"
-- Post Brothers comics
+ -- Post Brothers comics
%
"Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation."
--- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
+ -- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
%
"An organization dries up if you don't challenge it with growth."
--- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
+ -- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
%
"I've seen it. It's rubbish."
--- Marvin the Paranoid Android
+ -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%
Our business is run on trust. We trust you will pay in advance.
%
"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times
been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice."
--- Robert Green Ingersoll
+ -- Robert Green Ingersoll
%
The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics,
culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation
millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there
are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more
nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined.
--- John K. Naland, "The First Easter", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2
+ -- John K. Naland, "The First Easter", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2
%
I find you lack of faith in the forth dithturbing.
-- Darse ("Darth") Vader
+ -- Darse ("Darth") Vader
%
"All Bibles are man-made."
--- Thomas Edison
+ -- Thomas Edison
%
"Spock, did you see the looks on their faces?"
"Yes, Captain, a sort of vacant contentment."
"The triumph of libertarian anarchy is nearly (in historical terms) at
hand... *if* we can keep the Left from selling us into slavery and the
Right from blowing us up for, say, the next twenty years."
--- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
+ -- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
%
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love."
--- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
"I think Michael is like litmus paper - he's always trying to learn."
--- Elizabeth Taylor, absurd non-sequitur about Michael Jackson
+ -- Elizabeth Taylor, absurd non-sequitur about Michael Jackson
%
While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession,
conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge,
the religious tradition, the parallels are striking. The same is true of the
recent spate of alleged UFO abductees. Parsimony alone argues against invoking
spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.
--- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
- Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
+ -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
+ Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
%
"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on."
-- Samuel Goldwyn
+ -- Samuel Goldwyn
%
"We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement."
--- Richard J. Daley
+ -- Richard J. Daley
%
"With molasses you catch flies, with vinegar you catch nobody."
--- Baltimore City Councilman Dominic DiPietro
+ -- Baltimore City Councilman Dominic DiPietro
%
"Lead us in a few words of silent prayer."
--- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
+ -- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
%
"I couldn't remember things until I took that Sam Carnegie course."
--- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
+ -- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
%
"Right now I feel that I've got my feet on the ground as far as my head
is concerned."
--- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky
+ -- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky
%
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental."
--- Yogi Berra
+ -- Yogi Berra
%
Two things are certain about science. It does not stand still for long,
and it is never boring. Oh, among some poor souls, including even
that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the
natural world.
--- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in
- 1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
+ -- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in
+ 1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
%
"jackpot: you may have an unnecessary change record"
--- message from "diff"
+ -- message from "diff"
%
"One lawyer can steal more than a hundred men with guns."
--- The Godfather
+ -- The Godfather
%
What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?
%
"Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the
world."
--- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
+ -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
%
"There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent
to a gang bent on destruction."
--- John Cage, composer
+ -- John Cage, composer
%
"I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a
music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make
available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
--- composer John Cage, 1937
+ -- composer John Cage, 1937
%
I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
that they didn't rehearse at all. And so the first time when I found that out,
the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
cancelling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."
Can you believe it?
--- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
+ -- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
%
"One day I woke up and discovered that I was in love with tripe."
--- Tom Anderson
+ -- Tom Anderson
%
"Most people would like to be delivered from
temptation but would like it to keep in touch."
--- Robert Orben
+ -- Robert Orben
%
The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
%
"If John Madden steps outside on February 2, looks down, and doesn't see his
feet, we'll have 6 more weeks of Pro football."
--- Chuck Newcombe
+ -- Chuck Newcombe
%
Dead? No excuse for laying off work.
%
Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself.
%
"When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic."
--- John Kenneth Galbraith
+ -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
"Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries."
--- William George Jordan
+ -- William George Jordan
%
"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
--- George Bernard Shaw
+ -- George Bernard Shaw
%
"Flattery is all right -- if you don't inhale."
--- Adlai Stevenson
+ -- Adlai Stevenson
%
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
--- Bernard Berenson
+ -- Bernard Berenson
%
"Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings. The expectations are always
high, and the results usually disappointing."
--- Robert Orben
+ -- Robert Orben
%
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging
their prejudices."
--- William James
+ -- William James
%
"Tell the truth and run."
--- Yugoslav proverb
+ -- Yugoslav proverb
%
"The best index to a person's character is a) how he treats people who can't
do him any good and b) how he treats people who can't fight back."
--- Abigail Van Buren
+ -- Abigail Van Buren
%
"Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the morning."
--- Marlo Thomas
+ -- Marlo Thomas
%
"Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit."
--- David McCord
+ -- David McCord
%
"The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children
produce adults."
--- Peter De Vries
+ -- Peter De Vries
%
"It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
--- Alfred Adler
+ -- Alfred Adler
%
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is
either a daring adventure or nothing."
--- Helen Keller
+ -- Helen Keller
%
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is
shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
--- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
"Success covers a multitude of blunders."
--- George Bernard Shaw
+ -- George Bernard Shaw
%
"The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while
the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
--- William Stekel
+ -- William Stekel
%
"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..."
--- Badger comics
+ -- Badger comics
%
"Is it really you, Fuzz, or is it Memorex, or is it radiation sickness?"
--- Sonic Disruptors comics
+ -- Sonic Disruptors comics
%
"Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons
for it afterwards."
--- Soren F. Petersen
+ -- Soren F. Petersen
%
"You're a creature of the night, Michael. Wait'll Mom hears about this."
--- from the movie "The Lost Boys"
+ -- from the movie "The Lost Boys"
%
"Plastic gun. Ingenious. More coffee, please."
--- The Phantom comics
+ -- The Phantom comics
%
The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words
return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
%
"A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a
perfectly good kitten."
--- Doug Larson
+ -- Doug Larson
%
"The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was."
--- Walt West
+ -- Walt West
%
"Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone."
--- G. B. Stearn
+ -- G. B. Stearn
%
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with
the current."
--- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to
the left.
%
"But this one goes to eleven."
--- Nigel Tufnel
+ -- Nigel Tufnel
%
"Been through Hell? Whaddya bring back for me?"
--- A. Brilliant
+ -- A. Brilliant
%
"I don't know what their
gripe is. A critic is
render opinions glibly."
"Critics are grinks and
groinks."
--- Baron and Badger, from Badger comics
+ -- Baron and Badger, from Badger comics
%
"I've got some amyls. We could either party later or, like, start his heart."
--- "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"
+ -- "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"
%
"Israel today announced that it is giving up. The Zionist state will dissolve
in two weeks time, and its citizens will disperse to various resort communities
around the world. Said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, 'Who needs the
aggravation?'"
--- Dennis Miller, "Satuday Night Live" News
+ -- Dennis Miller, "Satuday Night Live" News
%
"And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead
by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business
product: a really sharp-looking report."
--- Dave Barry
+ -- Dave Barry
%
SHOP OR DIE, people of Earth!
[offer void where prohibited]
--- Capitalists from outer space, from Justice League Int'l comics
+ -- Capitalists from outer space, from Justice League Int'l comics
%
"Roman Polanski makes his own blood. He's smart -- that's why his movies work."
--- A brilliant director at "Frank's Place"
+ -- A brilliant director at "Frank's Place"
%
"The following is not for the weak of heart or Fundamentalists."
--- Dave Barry
+ -- Dave Barry
%
"I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain'"
--Tammy Faye Bakker
%
"I don't believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person,
unless he has an atomic weapon."
--- Howard Chaykin
+ -- Howard Chaykin
%
"Ever free-climbed a thousand foot vertical cliff with 60 pounds of gear
strapped to your butt?"
"No."
"'Course you haven't, you fruit-loop little geek."
--- The Mountain Man, one of Dana Carvey's SNL characters
+ -- The Mountain Man, one of Dana Carvey's SNL characters
[ditto]
%
"I mean, like, I just read your article in the Yale law recipe, on search and
seizure. Man, that was really Out There."
"I was so WRECKED when I wrote that..."
--- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
+ -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
%
"Hi, I'm Professor Alan Ginsburg... But you can call me... Captain Toke."
--- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
+ -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
%
It's great to be smart 'cause then you know stuff.
%
"Time is money and money can't buy you love and I love your outfit"
-- T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1
+ -- T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1
%
"Can't you just gesture hypnotically and make him disappear?"
"It does not work that way. RUN!"
--- Hadji on metaphyics and Mandrake in "Johnny Quest"
+ -- Hadji on metaphyics and Mandrake in "Jonny Quest"
%
"You shouldn't make my toaster angry."
--- Household security explained in "Johnny Quest"
+ -- Household security explained in "Jonny Quest"
%
"Someone's been mean to you! Tell me who it is, so I can punch him tastefully."
--- Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
+ -- Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
%
"And kids... learn something from Susie and Eddie.
If you think there's a maniacal psycho-geek in the
underwear.
3) Warn the neighbors and call the police.
But whatever else you do... DON'T GO DOWN IN THE DAMN BASEMENT!"
--- Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
+ -- Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
%
Victory or defeat!
%
"Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion."
--- Harlan Ellison
+ -- Harlan Ellison
%
"It's curtains for you, Mighty Mouse! This gun is so futuristic that even
*I* don't know how it works!"
--- from Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
+ -- from Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
%
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
--- George Carlin
+ -- George Carlin
%
A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem.
%
he's grown too
powerful."
"HO HO HO!"
--- Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre
+ -- Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre
%
"If it's not loud, it doesn't work!"
--- Blank Reg, from "Max Headroom"
+ -- Blank Reg, from "Max Headroom"
%
"Remember kids, if there's a loaded gun in the room, be sure that you're the
one holding it"
--- Captain Combat
+ -- Captain Combat
%
Delta: We never make the same mistake three times. -- David Letterman
%
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
"Hello again, Peabody here..."
--- Mister Peabody
+ -- Mister Peabody
%
"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes."
--- Rick Obidiah
+ -- Rick Obidiah
%
"To your left is the marina where several senior cabinet officials keep luxury
yachts for weekend cruises on the Potomac. Some of these ships are up to 100
feet in length; the Presidential yacht is over 200 feet in length, and can
remain submerged for up to 3 weeks."
--- Garrison Keillor
+ -- Garrison Keillor
%
"Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance,
science fiction..."
--- Art Spiegelman
+ -- Art Spiegelman
%
"One of the problems I've always had with propaganda pamphlets is that they're
real boring to look at. They're just badly designed. People from the left
often are very well-intended, but they never had time to take basic design
classes, you know?"
--- Art Spiegelman
+ -- Art Spiegelman
%
"If you took everyone who's ever been to a Dead
show, and lined them up, they'd stretch halfway to
the moon and back... and none of them would be
complaining."
--- a local Deadhead in the Seattle Times
+ -- a local Deadhead in the Seattle Times
%
"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb."
--- Spaceballs
+ -- Spaceballs
%
Why are many scientists using lawyers for medical
experiments instead of rats?
a) There are more lawyers than rats.
- b) The scientist's don't become as
- emotionally attached to them.
+ b) The scientists don't become as
+ emotionally attached to them.
c) There are some things that even rats
won't do for money.
%
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the
splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope,
for it balks at pig.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
"We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand."
--- James Watt
+ -- James Watt
%
"I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this
country what it once was... an arctic wilderness."
--- Steve Martin
+ -- Steve Martin
%
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
--- Woody Allen
+ -- Woody Allen
%
Noncombatant: A dead Quaker.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
"There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it
is I'll get married again."
--- Clint Eastwood
+ -- Clint Eastwood
%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.
I believe everything positively stinks.
--- Lew Col
+ -- Lew Col
%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%
"Because he's a character who's looking for his own identity, [He-Man is]
an interesting role for an actor."
--- Dolph Lundgren, "actor"
+ -- Dolph Lundgren, "actor"
%
"If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he'd never
stop throwing up."
--- Max Von Sydow's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
+ -- Max Von Sydow's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
%
"Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again.
God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again."
--- Woody Allen's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
+ -- Woody Allen's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
%
"In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die unless he
received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that their client has
not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that
"If I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago."
--- Dennis Miller, SNL News
+ -- Dennis Miller, SNL News
%
"Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
--- Hannah Arendt.
+ -- Hannah Arendt.
%
Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
(What Jove may do, is not permitted to a cow.)
%
"I distrust a man who says 'when.' If he's got to be careful not to drink too
much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he does."
--- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
+ -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
%
"I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk
and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously,
unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell
you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."
--- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
+ -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
%
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
%
"The sixties were good to you, weren't they?"
--- George Carlin
+ -- George Carlin
%
"You stay here, Audrey -- this is between me and the vegetable!"
--- Seymour, from _Little Shop Of Horrors_
+ -- Seymour, from _Little Shop Of Horrors_
%
From Sharp minds come... pointed heads.
--- Bryan Sparrowhawk
+ -- Bryan Sparrowhawk
%
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
%
"The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen... The world's climates are changing,
the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a
walnut."
--- some dinosaurs from The Far Side, by Gary Larson
+ -- some dinosaurs from The Far Side, by Gary Larson
%
"We Americans, we're a simple people... but piss us off, and we'll bomb
your cities."
--- Robin Williams, _Good Morning Vietnam_
+ -- Robin Williams, _Good Morning Vietnam_
%
Why won't sharks eat lawyers? Professional courtesy.
%
"You know, we've won awards for this crap."
--- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
It was pity stayed his hand.
"Pity I don't have any more bullets," thought Frito.
--- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein
+ -- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein
%
A good USENET motto would be:
a. "Together, a strong community."
b. "Computers R Us."
c. "I'm sick of programming, I think I'll just screw around for a while on
company time."
--- A Sane Man
+ -- A Sane Man
%
"He didn't run for reelection. `Politics brings you into contact with all the
people you'd give anything to avoid,' he said. `I'm staying home.'"
--- Garrison Keillor, _Lake_Wobegone_Days_
+ -- Garrison Keillor, _Lake_Wobegone_Days_
%
"If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and
fire them all off, wouldn't you?"
--- Garrison Keillor
+ -- Garrison Keillor
%
"Mr. Spock succumbs to a powerful mating urge and nearly kills Captain Kirk."
--- TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode _Amok_Time_
+ -- TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode _Amok_Time_
%
"Poor man... he was like an employee to me."
--- The police commissioner on "Sledge Hammer" laments the death of his
-bodyguard
+ -- The police commissioner on "Sledge Hammer" laments the death of his
+ bodyguard
%
"Trust me. I know what I'm doing."
--- Sledge Hammer
+ -- Sledge Hammer
%
"Hi. This is Dan Cassidy's answering machine. Please leave your name and
number... and after I've doctored the tape, your message will implicate you
%
"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable."
--- Fran Lebowitz
+ -- Fran Lebowitz
%
"If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?"
--- Lily Tomlin
+ -- Lily Tomlin
%
Whom the gods would destroy, they first teach BASIC.
%
"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!"
--- Buckaroo Banzai
+ -- Buckaroo Banzai
%
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid"
--- the artificial person, from _Aliens_
+ -- the artificial person, from _Aliens_
%
"The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with a dead
girl or a live boy."
--- Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards
+ -- Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards
%
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans":
* Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO
%
"Danger, you haven't seen the last of me!"
"No, but the first of you turns my stomach!"
--- The Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger
+ -- The Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger
%
Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.
-- Russian Proverb
-- Nathaniel Howe
%
"It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear."
--- Norm, from _Cheers_
+ -- Norm, from _Cheers_
%
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that
you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli replied,
%
"I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood."
--- Daffy Duck, Looney Tunes, _Robin Hood Daffy_
+ -- Daffy Duck, Looney Tunes, _Robin Hood Daffy_
%
"Would I turn on the gas if my pal Mugsy were in there?"
"You might, rabbit, you might!"
--- Looney Tunes, Bugs and Thugs (1954, Friz Freleng)
+ -- Looney Tunes, Bugs and Thugs (1954, Friz Freleng)
%
"Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
--- Looney Tunes, Ali Baba Bunny (1957, Chuck Jones)
+ -- Looney Tunes, Ali Baba Bunny (1957, Chuck Jones)
%
"And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?"
--- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)
+ -- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)
%
"Now I've got the bead on you with MY disintegrating gun. And when it
disintegrates, it disintegrates. (pulls trigger) Well, what you do know,
it disintegrated."
--- Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century
+ -- Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century
%
"Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!"
--- Looney Tunes, "What's Opera Doc?" (1957, Chuck Jones)
+ -- Looney Tunes, "What's Opera Doc?" (1957, Chuck Jones)
%
"I DO want your money, because god wants your money!"
--- The Reverend Jimmy, from _Repo_Man_
+ -- The Reverend Jimmy, from _Repo_Man_
%
"The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The
terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency."
--- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
"You show me an American who can keep his mouth shut and I'll eat him."
--- Newspaperman from Frank Capra's _Meet_John_Doe_
+ -- Newspaperman from Frank Capra's _Meet_John_Doe_
%
"And we heard him exclaim
As he started to roam:
`I'm a hologram, kids,
please don't try this at home!'"
-- Bob Violence
--- Howie Chaykin's little animated 3-dimensional darling, Bob Violence
+ -- Howie Chaykin's little animated 3-dimensional darling, Bob Violence
%
"The Soviet Union, which has complained recently about alleged anti-Soviet
themes in American advertising, lodged an official protest this week against
the Ford Motor Company's new campaign: `Hey you stinking fat Russian, get
off my Ford Escort.'"
--- Dennis Miller, Saturday Night Live
+ -- Dennis Miller, Saturday Night Live
%
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
--Arthur C. Clarke
'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big,
scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only
reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
--- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
+ -- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
%
"Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York
City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn't make any sudden moves
around than any other city in the world."
--- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
"Tourists -- have some fun with New york's hard-boiled cabbies. When you get
to your destination, say to your driver, "Pay? I was hitchhiking."
--- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
"An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax."
--- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
"Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham
Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
2) Advising the President.
3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his
coffin."
--- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
"If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on
television with pool cues, who would win?
1) Ricky Schroder
2) Gary Coleman
3) The television viewing public"
--- David Letterman
+ -- David Letterman
%
"If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying, you are
probably hallucinating."
--- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
+ -- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
%
What to do in case of an alien attack:
2) Avoid eye contact.
3) If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.
--- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
+ -- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
%
"Nuclear war would really set back cable."
-- Ted Turner
+ -- Ted Turner
%
"You tweachewous miscweant!"
--- Elmer Fudd
+ -- Elmer Fudd
%
"I saw _Lassie_. It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid never
spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that deserve a series?"
--- the alien guy, in _Explorers_
+ -- the alien guy, in _Explorers_
%
"Open Channel D..."
--- Napoleon Solo, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
+ -- Napoleon Solo, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
%
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
%
"The pyramid is opening!"
"Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
--- The Firesign Theatre
+ -- The Firesign Theatre
%
"Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
--- The Firesign Theatre movie, _J-Men Forever_
+ -- The Firesign Theatre movie, _J-Men Forever_
%
"My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!"
"Oh, my God... You've.. You've turned him into a DEMOCRAT!"
--- Doonesbury
+ -- Doonesbury
%
"You are WRONG, you ol' brass-breasted fascist poop!"
--- Bloom County
+ -- Bloom County
%
"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *can*
you believe?!"
--- Bullwinkle J. Moose
+ -- Bullwinkle J. Moose
%
"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberrys!"
--- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
+ -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
%
"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!"
--- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_
+ -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_
%
"The voters have spoken, the bastards..."
--- unknown
+ -- unknown
%
"I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk"
--- John Huston
+ -- John Huston
%
"Be there. Aloha."
--- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
+ -- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
%
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro..."
--- Hunter S. Thompson
+ -- Hunter S. Thompson
%
"Say yur prayers, yuh flea-pickin' varmint!"
--- Yosemite Sam
+ -- Yosemite Sam
%
"There... I've run rings 'round you logically"
--- Monty Python's Flying Circus
+ -- Monty Python's Flying Circus
%
"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!"
--- The Ghostbusters
+ -- The Ghostbusters
%
...Veloz is indistinguishable from hundreds of other electronics businesses
in the Valley, run by eager young engineers poring over memory dumps late
into the night. The difference is that a bunch of self-confessed "car nuts"
are making money doing what they love: writing code and driving fast.
--- "Electronics puts its foot on the gas", IEEE Spectrum, May 88
+ -- "Electronics puts its foot on the gas", IEEE Spectrum, May 88
%
"Just the facts, Ma'am"
--- Joe Friday
+ -- Joe Friday
%
"I have five dollars for each of you."
--- Bernhard Goetz
+ -- Bernhard Goetz
%
Mausoleum: The final and funniest folly of the rich.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Riches: A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I
am well pleased."
--- John D. Rockefeller, (slander by Ambrose Bierce)
+ -- John D. Rockefeller, (slander by Ambrose Bierce)
%
All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.
--- Dumbo Omohundro
+ -- Dumbo Omohundro
%
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Forty two.
%
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Absolute: Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which
the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not
many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by
-limited monarchies, where the soverign's power for evil (and for good) is
+limited monarchies, where the sovereign's power for evil (and for good) is
greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but
abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their
hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately
plunder a third.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Disobedience: The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Administration: An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive
the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
A penny saved is a penny to squander.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man --
who has no gills.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Physician: One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Politician: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of
his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman,
he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single
petitioner confessedly unworthy.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Presidency: The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Proboscis: The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place
of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes
of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
Inadmissible: Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of
testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with,
daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world
that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay
evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the
-testimony of men long dead whose identy is not clearly established and
+testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and
who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of
evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the
Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law...
%
"Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few
simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'."
- --John Sladek
+ -- John Sladek
%
"In the fight between you and the world, back the world."
- --Frank Zappa
+ -- Frank Zappa
%
Here is an Appalachian version of management's answer to those who are
concerned with the fate of the project:
"Don't worry about the mule. Just load the wagon."
--- Mike Dennison's hillbilly uncle
+ -- Mike Dennison's hillbilly uncle
%
Ill-chosen abstraction is particularly evident in the design of the ADA
runtime system. The interface to the ADA runtime system is so opaque that
useless for real-time systems. -- Marc D. Donner and David H. Jameson.
%
"Being against torture ought to be sort of a bipartisan thing."
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
"Here comes Mr. Bill's dog."
--- Narrator, Saturday Night Live
+ -- Narrator, Saturday Night Live
%
Sex is like air. It's only a big deal if you can't get any.
%
"Maintain an awareness for contribution -- to your schedule, your project,
our company."
--- A Group of Employees
+ -- A Group of Employees
%
"Ask not what A Group of Employees can do for you. But ask what can
All Employees do for A Group of Employees."
--- Mike Dennison
+ -- Mike Dennison
%
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
Do you think that fair criticism?"
"I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not
occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
--- Ambrose Bierce
+ -- Ambrose Bierce
%
-Many aligators will be slain,
+Many alligators will be slain,
but the swamp will remain.
%
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
This is now. Later is later.
%
"I will make no bargains with terrorist hardware."
--- Peter da Silva
+ -- Peter da Silva
%
"If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go
to hell."
--- Jimmy Swaggart, 5/20/88
+ -- Jimmy Swaggart, 5/20/88
%
"Dump the condiments. If we are to be eaten, we don't need to taste good."
--- "Visionaries" cartoon
+ -- "Visionaries" cartoon
%
"Aww, if you make me cry anymore, you'll fog up my helmet."
--- "Visionaries" cartoon
+ -- "Visionaries" cartoon
%
I don't want to be young again, I just don't want to get any older.
%
Marriage Ceremony: An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the
law being dragged into the affairs of your family.
--- O. C. Ogilvie
+ -- O. C. Ogilvie
%
"Emergency!" Sgiggs screamed, ejecting himself from the tub like it was
a burning car. "Dial 'one'! Get room service! Code red!" Stiggs was on
concentrations of rose odor up my nostrils until I'm wasted with pleasure."
It wasn't long before we got so dissatisfied with this incompetence that we
bolted.
--- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
+ -- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
National Lampoon, October 1982
%
When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect.
--- Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy
+ -- Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy
%
We decided it was night again, so we camped for twenty minutes and drank
another six beers at a Young Life campsite. O.C. got into the supervisory
adult's sleeping bag and ran around in it. "This is the judgment day and I'm
a terrifying apparition," he screamed. Then the heat made O.C. ralph in the
bag.
--- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
+ -- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
National Lampoon, October 1982
%
Voodoo Programming: Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but
they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling
everything.
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
-This is, of course, totally uninformed specualation that I engage in to help
+This is, of course, totally uninformed speculation that I engage in to help
support my bias against such meddling... but there you have it.
--- Peter da Silva, speculating about why a computer program that had been
+ -- Peter da Silva, speculating about why a computer program that had been
changed to do something he didn't approve of, didn't work
%
-"This knowledge I pursure is the finest pleasure I have ever known. I could
+"This knowledge I pursue is the finest pleasure I have ever known. I could
no sooner give it up that I could the very air that I breath."
--- Paolo Uccello, Renaissance artist, discoverer of the laws of perspective
+ -- Paolo Uccello, Renaissance artist, discoverer of the laws of perspective
%
"I got everybody to pay up front...then I blew up their planet."
"Now why didn't I think of that?"
--- Post Bros. Comics
+ -- Post Bros. Comics
%
"Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed."
--- Robin, The Boy Wonder
+ -- Robin, The Boy Wonder
%
The F-15 Eagle:
If it's up, we'll shoot it down. If it's down, we'll blow it up.
--- A McDonnel-Douglas ad from a few years ago
+ -- A McDonnel-Douglas ad from a few years ago
%
"The Amiga is the only personal computer where you can run a multitasking
operating system and get realtime performance, out of the box."
--- Peter da Silva
+ -- Peter da Silva
%
"It's my cookie file and if I come up with something that's lame and I like it,
it goes in."
--- karl (Karl Lehenbauer)
+ -- karl (Karl Lehenbauer)
%
In recognizing AT&T Bell Laboratories for corporate innovation, for its
invention of cellular mobile communications, IEEE President Russell C. Drew
referred to the cellular telephone as a "basic necessity." How times have
changed, one observer remarked: many in the room recalled the advent of
direct dialing.
--- The Institute, July 1988, pg. 11
+ -- The Institute, July 1988, pg. 11
%
...the Soviets have the capability to try big projects. If there is a goal,
such as when Gorbachev states that they are going to have nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers, the case is closed -- that is it. They will concentrate
on the problem, do a bad job, and later pay the price. They really don't
care what the price is.
--- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
+ -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
"Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%
There is something you must understand about the Soviet system. They have the
ability to concentrate all their efforts on a given design, and develop all
-components simulateously, but sometimes without proper testing. Then they end
+components simultaneously, but sometimes without proper testing. Then they end
up with a technological disaster like the Tu-144. In a technology race at
the time, that aircraft was two months ahead of the Concorde. Four Tu-144s
were built; two have crashed, and two are in museums. The Concorde has been
flying safely for over 10 years.
--- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
+ -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
"Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%
DE: The Soviets seem to have difficulty implementing modern technology.
DE: That is absurdly low by free world standards.
Belenko: I know.
--- an interview with Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
- "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 102
+ -- an interview with Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected
+ in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 102
%
"I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people
there are hungry for information about the West. He was asked about many
problems with them too. The other question he was asked often was why the
CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a
few years ago; their propaganda is very effective.
--- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
- "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
+ -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
+ "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%
"...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
appease it. He will say: "Yes, we can do business!" This while his
military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
population of 17 million. Can you imagine that?
--- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
- "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
+ -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
+ "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
%
"Remember Kruschev: he tried to do too many things too fast, and he was
removed in disgrace. If Gorbachev tries to destroy the system or make too
I believe he will have a "heart attack" or retire or be removed. He is
up against a brick wall. If you think they will change everything and
become a free, open society, forget it!"
--- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
- "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
+ -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
+ "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
%
FORTRAN? The syntactically incorrect statement "DO 10 I = 1.10" will parse and
generate code creating a variable, DO10I, as follows: "DO10I = 1.10" If that
"I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as
a house. So I reasoned that after college, I'd have to live cheaply in
an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer."
--- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
+ -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
%
HP had a unique policy of allowing its engineers to take parts from stock as
long as they built something. "They figured that with every design, they were
getting a better engineer. It's a policy I urge all companies to adopt."
--- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "Will Wozniak's class give Apple to teacher?"
- EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
+ -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "Will Wozniak's class give Apple
+ to teacher?" EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
%
"I just want to be a good engineer."
--- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, concluding his keynote speech
- at the 1988 AppleFest
+ -- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, concluding his keynote
+ speech at the 1988 AppleFest
%
"There's always been Tower of Babel sort of bickering inside Unix, but this
is the most extreme form ever. This means at least several years of confusion."
--- Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft,
- about the Open Systems Foundation
+ -- Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft,
+ about the Open Systems Foundation
%
"When in doubt, print 'em out."
--- Karl's Programming Proverb 0x7
+ -- Karl's Programming Proverb 0x7
%
"If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways
to be hospitable to the unusual person. You don't get innovation as a
Certainly you get it as an anthitetical process, so you have to have an
environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can
deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation."
--- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc.,
- "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity",
- The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
+ -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc.,
+ "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity",
+ The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%
"In corporate life, I think there are three important areas which contracts
can't deal with, the area of conflict, the area of change and area of reaching
as shared ideals and shared value systems and shared ideas and shared
agreement as to the processes we are going to use for working together. In
many cases they develop into real love relationships."
--- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
- Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
+ -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
+ Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%
Another goal is to establish a relationship "in which it is OK for everybody
to do their best. There are an awful lot of people in management who really
designers if we are willing to have this kind of relationship and if we're
willing to be vulnerable to what will come out of it, we get really good
work."
--- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
- Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
+ -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
+ Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%
In his book, Mr. DePree tells the story of how designer George Nelson urged
that the company also take on Charles Eames in the late 1940s. Max's father,
'Charles Eames is an unusual talent. He is very different from me. The
company needs us both. I want very much to have Charles Eames share in
whatever potential there is.'"
--- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
- Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
+ -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
+ Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%
Mr. DePree believes participative capitalism is the wave of the future. The
U.S. work force, he believes, "more and more demands to be included in the
all in deep trouble. If we don't find ways to begin to understand that
capitalism's highest potential lies in the common good, not in the individual
good, then we're risking the system itself."
--- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
- Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
+ -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
+ Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%
Mr. DePree also expects a "tremendous social change" in all workplaces. "When
I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the
is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don't know how to raise bail.'
What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity, he has to know
how to raise bail."
--- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
- Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
+ -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
+ Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it.
Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
--- Perlis's Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept. 1982
+ -- Perlis's Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept. 1982
%
"What if" is a trademark of Hewlett Packard, so stop using it in your
sentences without permission, or risk being sued.
over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
1988.
--- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
+ -- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
%
The essential ideas of Algol 68 were that the whole language should be
precisely defined and that all the pieces should fit together smoothly.
The basic idea behind Pascal was that it didn't matter how vague the
language specification was (it took *years* to clarify) or how many rough
edges there were, as long as the CDC Pascal compiler was fast.
--- Richard A. O'Keefe
+ -- Richard A. O'Keefe
%
"We came. We saw. We kicked its ass."
--- Bill Murray, _Ghostbusters_
+ -- Bill Murray, _Ghostbusters_
%
"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small
topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the
any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak
of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
--- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
+ -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
%
If you permit yourself to read meanings into (rather than drawing meanings out
of) the evidence, you can draw any conclusion you like.
--- Michael Keith, "The Bar-Code Beast", The Skeptical Enquirer Vol 12 No 4 p 416
+ -- Michael Keith, "The Bar-Code Beast", The Skeptical Enquirer Vol 12
+ No 4 p 416
%
"Pseudocode can be used to some extent to aid the maintenance
process. However, pseudocode that is highly detailed -
%
"Only a brain-damaged operating system would support task switching and not
make the simple next step of supporting multitasking."
--- George McFry
+ -- George McFry
%
Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said that in the last analysis the entire field
of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
inner harmony, the unity of the world is shattered. If desire arises within
him, he utters the magic syllables that causes the desired object to appear.
His wishes, his thoughts, his gestures, his noises command the universe.
--- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 107
+ -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 107
%
An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is
a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the
discovery. But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question
emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt
and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the
-centures as reelentlessly as hunger or sexual longing. The chimp that does
+centuries as relentlessly as hunger or sexual longing. The chimp that does
not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared
the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end. And even if the animal
experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or
appreciation of beauty, for the greatest part of man's wisdom may be traced
back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give
meaning to his existence, to life itself.
--- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
+ -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
%
A comment on schedules:
Ok, how long will it take?
Hall Software Series. Brian Kerrighan, Advisor. 1988.
%
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy."
--- Dr. Emilio Lizardo
+ -- Dr. Emilio Lizardo
%
"Floggings will continue until morale improves."
--- anonymous flyer being distributed at Exxon USA
+ -- anonymous flyer being distributed at Exxon USA
%
"Hey Ivan, check your six."
--- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail
+ -- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail
of a Russian Su-27
%
"Free markets select for winning solutions."
--- Eric S. Raymond
+ -- Eric S. Raymond
%
"I dislike companies that have a we-are-the-high-priests-of-hardware-so-you'll-
like-what-we-give-you attitude. I like commodity markets in which iron-and-
silicon hawkers know that they exist to provide fast toys for software types
like me to play with..."
--- Eric S. Raymond
+ -- Eric S. Raymond
%
"The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."
--- Bakunin
+ -- Bakunin
[ed. note - I would say: The urge to destroy may sometimes be a creative urge.]
%
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
--- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
+ -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
%
In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty
lates invention. Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question
could lead to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be
much more than counterbalanced by good."
--- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
+ -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850.
%
"Wish not to seem, but to be, the best."
--- Aeschylus
+ -- Aeschylus
%
"Survey says..."
--- Richard Dawson, weenie, on "Family Feud"
+ -- Richard Dawson, weenie, on "Family Feud"
%
"Paul Lynde to block..."
--- a contestant on "Hollywood Squares"
+ -- a contestant on "Hollywood Squares"
%
"Little else matters than to write good code."
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight.
--- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
+ -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
%
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"
--- William E. Davidsen
+ -- William E. Davidsen
%
"If a computer can't directly address all the RAM you can use, it's just a toy."
--- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitur
+ -- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitur
%
"Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became
a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. "You aren't nearly
through this adventure yet," he added, and that was pretty true as well.
--- Bilbo Baggins, "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien, Chapter XII
+ -- Bilbo Baggins, "The Hobbit" by J. R. R. Tolkien, Chapter XII
%
"A dirty mind is a joy forever."
--- Randy Kunkee
+ -- Randy Kunkee
%
"You can't teach seven foot."
--- Frank Layton, Utah Jazz basketball coach, when asked why he had recruited
+ -- Frank Layton, Utah Jazz basketball coach, when asked why he had recruited
a seven-foot tall auto mechanic
%
"A car is just a big purse on wheels."
--- Johanna Reynolds
+ -- Johanna Reynolds
%
"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."
--- Ted Koppel
+ -- Ted Koppel
%
"Gozer the Gozerian: As the duly appointed representative of the city,
county and state of New York, I hereby order you to cease all supernatural
activities at once and proceed immediately to your place of origin or
the nearest parallel dimension, whichever is nearest."
--- Ray (Dan Akyroyd), _Ghostbusters_
+ -- Ray (Dan Akyroyd), _Ghostbusters_
%
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new ones.
--- Machiavelli
+ -- Machiavelli
%
God grant me the senility to accept the things I cannot change,
The frustration to try to change things I cannot affect,
should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in 13 states in the course
of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country
should be so long without one.
--- Thomas Jefferson in letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787
+ -- Thomas Jefferson in letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787
%
"Nine years of ballet, asshole."
--- Shelly Long, to the bad guy after making a jump over a gorge that he
- couldn't quite, in "Outrageous Fortune"
+ -- Shelly Long, to the bad guy after making a jump over a gorge that he
+ couldn't quite, in "Outrageous Fortune"
%
You are in a maze of UUCP connections, all alike.
%
"If that man in the PTL is such a healer, why can't he make his wife's
hairdo go down?"
--- Robin Williams
+ -- Robin Williams
%
8) Use common sense in routing cable. Avoid wrapping coax around sources of
strong electric or magnetic fields. Do not wrap the cable around
fluorescent light ballasts or cyclotrons, for example.
--- Ethernet Headstart Product, Information and Installation Guide,
- Bell Technologies, pg. 11
+ -- Ethernet Headstart Product, Information and Installation Guide,
+ Bell Technologies, pg. 11
%
"What a wonder is USENET; such wholesale production of conjecture from
such a trifling investment in fact."
--- Carl S. Gutekunst
+ -- Carl S. Gutekunst
%
VMS must die!
%
Garbage In, Gospel Out
%
"Being against torture ought to be sort of a multipartisan thing."
--- Karl Lehenbauer, as amended by Jeff Daiell, a Libertarian
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer, as amended by Jeff Daiell, a Libertarian
%
"Facts are stupid things."
--- President Ronald Reagan
- (a blooper from his speeach at the '88 GOP convention)
+ -- President Ronald Reagan
+ (a blooper from his speech at the '88 GOP convention)
%
"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science
collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke
fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion,
misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the
ideas of their opponents."
--- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
- The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186
+ -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
+ The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186
%
"An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of code."
--- an anonymous programmer
+ -- an anonymous programmer
%
"To IBM, 'open' means there is a modicum of interoperability among some of their
equipment."
--- Harv Masterson
+ -- Harv Masterson
%
"Just think of a computer as hardware you can program."
--- Nigel de la Tierre
+ -- Nigel de la Tierre
%
"If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time
serving it..."
--- Marion Zimmer Bradley, _The Forbidden Tower_
+ -- Marion Zimmer Bradley, _The Forbidden Tower_
%
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
--- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
"Card readers? We don't need no stinking card readers."
--- Peter da Silva (at the National Academy of Sciencies, 1965, in a
- particularly vivid fantasy)
+ -- Peter da Silva (at the National Academy of Sciences, 1965, in a
+ particularly vivid fantasy)
%
Your good nature will bring unbounded happiness.
%
you must rid the computer networks of slimy, criminal data thieves.
They are tricky and the action gets tough, so watch out! Utilizing all
your skills, you'll either get your man or you'll get burned!
--- advertising for the computer game "Tracers"
+ -- advertising for the computer game "Tracers"
%
"An entire fraternity of strapping Wall-Street-bound youth. Hell - this
is going to be a blood bath!"
--- Post Bros. Comics
+ -- Post Bros. Comics
%
"Neighbors!! We got neighbors! We ain't supposed to have any neighbors, and
I just had to shoot one."
--- Post Bros. Comics
+ -- Post Bros. Comics
%
"Gotcha, you snot-necked weenies!"
--- Post Bros. Comics
+ -- Post Bros. Comics
%
interlard - vt., to intersperse; diversify
--- Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language
+ -- Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language
%
"Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it."
--- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain
%
"How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
"FIFTEEN!! YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?"
%
"If you weren't my teacher, I'd think you just deleted all my files."
--- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed "rm -i *" to
- get rid of a file named "-f" on a Unix system.
+ -- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed
+ "rm -i *" to get rid of a file named "-f" on a Unix system.
%
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral
crisis, preserved their neutrality."
--- Dante
+ -- Dante
%
"The medium is the message."
--- Marshall McLuhan
+ -- Marshall McLuhan
%
"The medium is the massage."
--- Crazy Nigel
+ -- Crazy Nigel
%
"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."
--- Vince Lombardi, football coach
+ -- Vince Lombardi, football coach
%
"It might help if we ran the MBA's out of Washington."
--- Admiral Grace Hopper
+ -- Admiral Grace Hopper
%
Refreshed by a brief blackout, I got to my feet and went next door.
--- Martin Amis, _Money_
+ -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%
The sprung doors parted and I staggered out into the lobby's teak and flicker.
Uniformed men stood by impassively like sentries in their trench. I slapped
my key on the desk and nodded gravely. I was loaded enough to be unable to
tell whether they could tell I was loaded. Would they mind? I was certainly
too loaded to care. I moved to the door with boxy, schlep-shouldered strides.
--- Martin Amis, _Money_
+ -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%
I ask only one thing. I'm understanding. I'm mature. And it isn't much to
ask. I want to get back to London, and track her down, and be alone with my
smell her skin, to see the flecked webbing of her lemony eyes, the moulding
of her artful lips. Just for a few precious seconds. Just long enough to
put in one good, clean punch. That's all I ask.
--- Martin Amis, _Money_
+ -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%
-"Love may fail, but courtesy will previal."
--- A Kurt Vonnegut fan
+"Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail."
+ -- A Kurt Vonnegut fan
%
New York is a jungle, they tell you. You could go further, and say that
New York is a jungle. New York *is a jungle.* Beneath the columns of
sprung with pits and nets and traps. Hire a guide. Pack your snakebite
gook and your blowdart serum. Take it seriously. You have to get a
bit jungle-wise.
--- Martin Amis, _Money_
+ -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%
Now I was heading, in my hot cage, down towards meat-market country on the
tip of the West Village. Here the redbrick warehouses double as carcass
Fielding tells me, Mother Nature looks on and taps her foot and clicks
her tongue. Always a champion of monogamy, she is cooking up some fancy
new diseases. She just isn't going to stand for it.
--- Martin Amis, _Money_
+ -- Martin Amis, _Money_
%
"You tried it just for once, found it alright for kicks,
but now you find out you have a habit that sticks,
you're an orgasm addict,
you're always at it,
and you're an orgasm addict."
--- The Buzzcocks
+ -- The Buzzcocks
%
"There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
--- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain
%
"You'll pay to know what you really think."
--- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
+ -- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
%
"We live, in a very kooky time."
--- Herb Blashtfalt
+ -- Herb Blashtfalt
%
"Pull the wool over your own eyes!"
--- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
+ -- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
%
"Okay," Bobby said, getting the hang of it, "then what's the matrix? If
she's a deck, and Danbala's a program, what's cyberspace?"
"The world," Lucas said.
--- William Gibson, _Count Zero_
+ -- William Gibson, _Count Zero_
%
"Our reruns are better than theirs."
--- Nick at Nite
+ -- Nick at Nite
%
Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.
--- Ted Turner
+ -- Ted Turner
%
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
--- The Wizard Of Oz
+ -- The Wizard Of Oz
%
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
--- Karl, as he stepped behind the computer to reboot it, during a FAT
+ -- Karl, as he stepped behind the computer to reboot it, during a FAT
%
"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble. It's the
things we know that ain't so."
--- Artemus Ward aka Charles Farrar Brown
+ -- Artemus Ward aka Charles Farrar Brown
%
"Don't discount flying pigs before you have good air defense."
--- jvh@clinet.FI
+ -- jvh@clinet.FI
%
"In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble."
--- Alan Perlis
+ -- Alan Perlis
%
"Pok pok pok, P'kok!"
--- Superchicken
+ -- Superchicken
%
Live Free or Live in Massachusettes.
%
"You can't get very far in this world without your dossier being there first."
--- Arthur Miller
+ -- Arthur Miller
%
"Flight Reservation systems decide whether or not you exist. If your information
isn't in their database, then you simply don't get to go anywhere."
--- Arthur Miller
+ -- Arthur Miller
%
"What people have been reduced to are mere 3-D representations of their own
data."
--- Arthur Miller
+ -- Arthur Miller
%
"The Avis WIZARD decides if you get to drive a car. Your head won't touch the
pillow of a Sheraton unless their computer says it's okay."
--- Arthur Miller
+ -- Arthur Miller
%
"They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE
is driving the car "for insurance", ... your driver's license number. In the
Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a
number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give
out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."
--- Arthur Miller
+ -- Arthur Miller
%
"Data is a lot like humans: It is born. Matures. Gets married to other data,
divorced. Gets old. One thing that it doesn't do is die. It has to be killed."
--- Arthur Miller
+ -- Arthur Miller
%
"People should have access to the data which you have about them. There should
be a process for them to challenge any inaccuracies."
--- Arthur Miller
+ -- Arthur Miller
%
"Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret
police and laws similar to those in the USSR, there are
present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of
its "glasnost." This difference has been maintained at great
cost by the Poles since 1944.
--- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
- gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
- to Poland
+ -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
+ gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
+ to Poland
%
"There is also a thriving independent student movement in
Poland, and thus there is a strong possibility (though no
about, a genuine link - not a vacuum cleaner attachment for a
Bloc information gathering apparatus rationed to trusted
apparatchiks."
--- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
- gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
- to Poland
+ -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
+ gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network)
+ to Poland
%
"Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture,
an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads."
--- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
+ -- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
%
Don't panic.
%
%
"Why waste negative entropy on comments, when you could use the same
entropy to create bugs instead?"
--- Steve Elias
+ -- Steve Elias
%
"The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of
course you never do."
--- Gregory Bateson
+ -- Gregory Bateson
%
"Your butt is mine."
--- Michael Jackson, Bad
+ -- Michael Jackson, Bad
%
Ship it.
%
"Once they go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department."
--- Werner von Braun
+ -- Werner von Braun
%
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if
it were a nail."
--- Abraham Maslow
+ -- Abraham Maslow
%
"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
--- The New Mighty Mouse
+ -- The New Mighty Mouse
%
"The lesser of two evils -- is evil."
--- Seymour (Sy) Leon
+ -- Seymour (Sy) Leon
%
"It's no sweat, Henry. Russ made it back to Bugtown before he died. So he'll
regenerate in a couple of days. It's just awful sloppy of him to get killed in
the first place. Humph!"
--- Ron Post, Post Brothers Comics
+ -- Ron Post, Post Brothers Comics
%
"An honest god is the noblest work of man. ... God has always resembled his
creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably
found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with
sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine
perfume."
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. ... We are
the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. ... It is grander to think
and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. ... I look for the day
when *reason*, throned upon the world's brains, shall be the King of Kings and
the God of Gods.
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes
of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe
it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts...
I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it."
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"Is this foreplay?"
"No, this is Nuke Strike. Foreplay has lousy graphics. Beat me again."
--- Duckert, in "Bad Rubber," Albedo #0 (comics)
+ -- Duckert, in "Bad Rubber," Albedo #0 (comics)
%
egrep patterns are full regular expressions; it uses a fast deterministic
algorithm that sometimes needs exponential space.
--- unix manuals
+ -- unix manuals
%
"A mind is a terrible thing to have leaking out your ears."
--- The League of Sadistic Telepaths
+ -- The League of Sadistic Telepaths
%
"Life sucks, but it's better than the alternative."
--- Peter da Silva
+ -- Peter da Silva
%
If this is a service economy, why is the service so bad?
%
"I shall expect a chemical cure for psychopathic behavior by 10 A.M. tomorrow,
or I'll have your guts for spaghetti."
--- a comic panel by Cotham
+ -- a comic panel by Cotham
%
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
--- Will Rogers
+ -- Will Rogers
%
"An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt."
--- a saying at RPI
+ -- a saying at RPI
%
"The geeks shall inherit the earth."
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
"Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers."
--- Chip Salzenberg
+ -- Chip Salzenberg
%
"Elvis is my copilot."
--- Cal Keegan
+ -- Cal Keegan
%
"The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment."
--- Richard P. Feynman
+ -- Richard P. Feynman
%
How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb?
Let's see, can you use a shell script for that or does it need a C program?
%
"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Hate me because I'm beautiful, smart
and rich."
--- Calvin Keegan
+ -- Calvin Keegan
%
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
--- Bertrand Russell
+ -- Bertrand Russell
%
Always look over your shoulder because everyone is watching and plotting
against you.
%
"Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us."
--- militant religionists everywhere
+ -- militant religionists everywhere
%
Baby On Board.
%
"The net result is a system that is not only binary compatible with 4.3 BSD,
but is even bug for bug compatible in almost all features."
--- Avadit Tevanian, Jr., "Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory Management
+ -- Avadit Tevanian, Jr., "Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory Management
for Parallel and Distributed Environments: The Mach Approach"
%
"The number of Unix installations has grown to 10, with more expected."
--- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June, 1972
+ -- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June, 1972
%
"Engineering without management is art."
--- Jeff Johnson
+ -- Jeff Johnson
%
"I'm not a god, I was misquoted."
--- Lister, Red Dwarf
+ -- Lister, Red Dwarf
%
Brain off-line, please wait.
%
----------- cut here, don't forget to strip junk at the end, too -------------
"Psychoanalysis?? I thought this was a nude rap session!!!"
--- Zippy
+ -- Zippy
%
Are you having fun yet?
%
"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are
perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust."
--- Lawrence Dalzell
+ -- Lawrence Dalzell
%
"Perhaps I am flogging a straw herring in mid-stream, but in the light of
what is known about the ubiquity of security vulnerabilities, it seems vastly
too dangerous for university folks to run with their heads in the sand."
--- Peter G. Neumann, RISKS moderator, about the Internet virus
+ -- Peter G. Neumann, RISKS moderator, about the Internet virus
%
"Seed me, Seymour"
--- a random number generator meets the big green mother from outer space
+ -- a random number generator meets the big green mother from outer space
%
"Buy land. They've stopped making it."
--- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain
%
"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
--- Dave Bowman, 2001
+ -- Dave Bowman, 2001
%
"There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of
pure chance..."
--- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
+ -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%
...Saure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papryomancy,
the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll reefers -
in the paper. "You will soon be in love," sez Saure, "see, this line here."
"It's long, isn't it? Does that mean --" "Length is usually intensity.
Not time."
--- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
+ -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%
Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel
less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with
the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are --"
--- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
+ -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%
...the prevailing Catholic odor - incense, wax, centuries of mild bleating
from the lips of the flock.
--- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
+ -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%
...At that time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories scientists projected that
computer speeds as high as 30 million floating-point calculations per
of Sciences panel -- said achieving such speeds, even using multiple
processors, was impossible. Today, new generation supercomputers operate
at billions of operations per second (gigaflops).
--- Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1988, "Washington Roundup", pg 13
+ -- Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1988, "Washington Roundup", pg 13
%
backups: always in season, never out of style.
%
"There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearance; he somehow
seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an
actor, and clad in immaculate linen."
--- H.L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan
+ -- H. L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan
%
Work was impossible. The geeks had broken my spirit. They had done too
many things wrong. It was never like this for Mencken. He lived like
a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryan on some nights and drunker
than Judas on others. It was all a dehumanized nightmare...and these
raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines.
--- Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_
+ -- Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_
%
"This generation may be the one that will face Armageddon."
--- Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985
+ -- Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985
%
... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually
we were all forced to turn to it. By the summer of '85, the valley had more
things. Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels
all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
--- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
+ -- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
%
"Call immediately. Time is running out. We both need to do something
monstrous before we die."
--- Message from Ralph Steadman to Hunter Thompson
+ -- Message from Ralph Steadman to Hunter Thompson
%
"The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down."
--- H.L. Mencken
+ -- H. L. Mencken
%
"You don't go out and kick a mad dog. If you have a mad dog with rabies, you
take a gun and shoot him."
--- Pat Robertson, TV Evangelist, about Muammar Kadhafy
+ -- Pat Robertson, TV Evangelist, about Muammar Kadhafy
%
David Brinkley: The daily astrological charts are precisely where, in my
judgment, they belong, and that is on the comic page.
standing there with a stopwatch and a notepad.
Donaldson: If we're making decisions based on the stars -- that's a cockamamie
thing. People want to know.
--- "This Week" with David Brinkley, ABC Television, Sunday, May 8, 1988,
- excerpts from a discussion on Astrology and Reagan
+ -- "This Week" with David Brinkley, ABC Television, Sunday, May 8, 1988,
+ excerpts from a discussion on Astrology and Reagan
%
The reported resort to astrology in the White House has occasioned much
merriment. It is not funny. Astrological gibberish, which means astrology
which are part of a newspaper's harmless pleasure and make no truth claims,
astrology is a fraud. The idea that it gets a hearing in government is
dismaying.
--- George Will, Washing Post Writers Group
+ -- George Will, Washing Post Writers Group
%
Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since
the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology,
of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the
notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of
distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.
--- James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate
+ -- James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate
%
A serious public debate about the validity of astrology? A serious believer
in the White House? Two of them? Give me a break. What stifled my laughter
people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of
laetrile to eye of newt to the movement of planets. We lose the capacity to
make rational -- scientific -- judgments. It's all the same.
--- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers
+ -- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers
Group
%
The spectacle of astrology in the White House -- the governing center of
asked Mikhail Gorbachev for his sign. A contagious good cheer is the
hallmark of this presidency, even when the most dismal matters are concerned.
But this time, it isn't funny. It's plain scary.
--- Daniel S. Greenberg, Editor, _Science and Government Report_, writing in
+ -- Daniel S. Greenberg, Editor, _Science and Government Report_, writing in
"Newsday", May 5, 1988
%
[Astrology is] 100 percent hokum, Ted. As a matter of fact, the first edition
all. It is not even close to a science. A science has to be repeatable, it
has to have a logical foundation, and it has to be potentially vulnerable --
you test it. And in that astrology is really quite something else.
--- Astronomer Richard Berendzen, President, American University, on ABC
+ -- Astronomer Richard Berendzen, President, American University, on ABC
News "Nightline," May 3, 1988
%
Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about
in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them
keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by
the firelight, afraid of the night.
--- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
+ -- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
"Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury
News, May 8, 1988
%
maintaining a semblance of leadership in the world may rest, paradoxically,
with a new wave of technically interested and trained immigrants who do not
suffer from the anti-science disease rampant in an apparently decaying society.
--- Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988
+ -- Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988
%
miracle: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.
--- Webster's Dictionary
+ -- Webster's Dictionary
%
"The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone
is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be
created in the form of computer programs."
--- Joseph Weizenbaum, _Computer Power and Human Reason_
+ -- Joseph Weizenbaum, _Computer Power and Human Reason_
%
"If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong."
--- Norm Schryer
+ -- Norm Schryer
%
"May your future be limited only by your dreams."
--- Christa McAuliffe
+ -- Christa McAuliffe
%
"It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
coming up it."
--- Henry Allen
+ -- Henry Allen
%
"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
watching television."
--- Cal Keegan
+ -- Cal Keegan
%
Eat shit -- billions of flies can't be wrong.
%
"We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston. "That is
the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell -- we *show*.
We do not claim -- we *prove*."
--- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_
+ -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_
%
"I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and
my mother would get drunk and try to make pancakes."
--- George Carlin
+ -- George Carlin
%
"My father? My father left when I was quite young. Well actually, he
was asked to leave. He had trouble metabolizing alcohol."
songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, or anyone else. And you may try
to tell me this is of God and that it is leading people to Christ, but I
know better.
--- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocritical sexual pervert and TV preacher, self-described
+ -- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocritical sexual pervert and TV preacher, self-described
pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.",
The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
%
"So-called Christian rock. . . . is a diabolical force undermining Christianity
from within."
--- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite and TV preacher, self-described pornography addict,
- "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.", The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
+ -- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite and TV preacher, self-described
+ pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.",
+ The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
%
"Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of
course, living in a state of sin."
--- John Von Neumann
+ -- John Von Neumann
%
"You must have an IQ of at least half a million." -- Popeye
%
"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all."
--- Nathaniel Branden
+ -- Nathaniel Branden
%
Aren't you glad you're not getting all the government you pay for now?
%
"I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."
--- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain
%
These screamingly hilarious gogs ensure owners of X Ray Gogs to be the life
of any party.
--- X-Ray Gogs Instructions
+ -- X-Ray Gogs Instructions
%
A student asked the master for help... does this program run from the
Workbench? The master grabbed the mouse and pointed to an icon. "What is
this?" he asked. The student replied "That's the mouse". The master pressed
control-Amiga-Amiga and hit the student on the head with the Amiga ROM Kernel
Manual.
--- Amiga Zen Master Peter da Silva
+ -- Amiga Zen Master Peter da Silva
%
"Thank heaven for startups; without them we'd never have any advances."
--- Seymour Cray
+ -- Seymour Cray
%
"Out of register space (ugh)"
--- vi
+ -- vi
%
"Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor
of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated,
- Oscar Wilde
%
"Ada is PL/I trying to be Smalltalk.
--- Codoso diBlini
+ -- Codoso diBlini
%
-"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by mean of zeal,
+"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding."
--- Justice Louis O. Brandeis (Olmstead vs. United States)
+ -- Justice Louis O. Brandeis (Olmstead vs. United States)
%
"'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true."
--- Poloniouius, in Willie the Shake's _Hamlet, Prince of Darkness_
-
+ -- Poloniouius, in Willie the Shake's _Hamlet, Prince of Darkness_
%
"All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in. I'm glad they
are a snowman with protective rubber skin"
--- They Might Be Giants
+ -- They Might Be Giants
%
"Indecision is the basis of flexibility"
--- button at a Science Fiction convention.
+ -- button at a Science Fiction convention.
%
"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative"
--- button at a Science Fiction convention.
+ -- button at a Science Fiction convention.
%
"Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time."
--- a coffee cup
+ -- a coffee cup
%
"The most important thing in a man is not what he knows, but what he is."
--- Narciso Yepes
+ -- Narciso Yepes
%
"All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one thing or another."
--- Ortega y Gasset
+ -- Ortega y Gasset
%
"We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in
the idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking to
know what we do not know."
--- Plato
+ -- Plato
%
"To undertake a project, as the word's derivation indicates, means to cast an
idea out ahead of oneself so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled not only
by the efforts of its originator but, indeed, independently of him as well.
--- Czeslaw Milosz
+ -- Czeslaw Milosz
%
"We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic
of life is its coerciveness; it is always urgent, "here and now," without any
possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank."
--- Ortega y Gasset
+ -- Ortega y Gasset
%
"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."
--- Dr. Seuss
+ -- Dr. Seuss
%
"When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest."
--- Bullwinkle Moose
-
+ -- Bullwinkle Moose
%
Remember, an int is not always 16 bits. I'm not sure, but if the 80386 is one
-step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is aymptotically
+step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is asymptotically
approaching a real machine, perhaps an int has been implemented as 32 bits by
some Unix vendors...?
--- Derek Terveer
+ -- Derek Terveer
%
"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care
what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything
in the bushes to find out, which vitiated his premise
but made him happy.
Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation."
--- Sam Weber
+ -- Sam Weber
%
1 1 was a race-horse, 2 2 was 1 2. When 1 1 1 1 race, 2 2 1 1 2.
%
"I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were
Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers."
--- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
+ -- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
is so nice
%
"Engineering meets art in the parking lot and things explode."
--- Garry Peterson, about Survival Research Labs
+ -- Garry Peterson, about Survival Research Labs
%
"Why can't we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having
a 'War' on it?" -- Rich Thomson, talk.politics.misc
I had done. My shame is gone and now I am looking for a
submissive typewriter, any color, or model. No electric
typewriters please!
- --Rick Kleiner
+ -- Rick Kleiner
%
Professional wrestling: ballet for the common man.
%
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
-cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - H.L. Mencken
+cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."
+ -- H. L. Mencken
%
"Are those cocktail-waitress fingernail marks?" I asked Colletti as he
showed us these scratches on his chest. "No, those are on my back," Colletti
answered. "This is where a case of cocktail shrimp fell on me. I told her
to slow down a little, but you know cocktail waitresses, they seem to have
a mind of their own."
--- The Incredibly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs
+ -- The Incredibly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs
National Lampoon, October 1982
%
"Never give in. Never give in. Never. Never. Never."
--- Winston Churchill
+ -- Winston Churchill
%
"Never ascribe to malice that which is caused by greed and ignorance."
--- Cal Keegan
+ -- Cal Keegan
%
"Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief
or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is
be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in
the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own
allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
--- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility,"
+ -- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility,"
New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988
%
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead
stuff."
--- Dave Enyeart
+ -- Dave Enyeart
%
"After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United
States. Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of
do in Europe is just, 'No way. No one has ever done it.' They haven't any
more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much
more the American spirit."
--- Arnold Schwarzenegger
+ -- Arnold Schwarzenegger
%
"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."
--- Alexandre Dumas (fils)
+ -- Alexandre Dumas (fils)
%
Well, punk is kind of anti-ethical, anyway. Its ethics, so to speak,
include a disdain for ethics in general. If you have to think about some-
thing so hard, then it's bullshit anyway; that's the idea. Punks are anti-
ismists, to coin a term. But nonetheless, they have a pretty clearly defined
stance and image, and THAT is what we hang the term `punk' on.
--- Jeff G. Bone
+ -- Jeff G. Bone
%
I think for the most part that the readership here uses the c-word in
a similar fashion. I don't think anybody really believes in a new, revolution-
ary literature --- I think they use `cyberpunk' as a term of convenience to
discuss the common stylistic elements in a small subset of recent sf books.
--- Jeff G. Bone
+ -- Jeff G. Bone
%
So we get to my point. Surely people around here read things that
aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*. Surely we
I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary
(and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a
rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no? Maybe there
-should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or somthing. Something less
+should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or something. Something less
restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk.
--- Jeff G. Bone
+ -- Jeff G. Bone
%
"Everyone's head is a cheap movie show."
--- Jeff G. Bone
+ -- Jeff G. Bone
%
Life is full of concepts that are poorly defined. In fact, there are very few
concepts that aren't. It's hard to think of any in non-technical fields.
--- Daniel Kimberg
+ -- Daniel Kimberg
%
...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable,
challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self.
"Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girl's
observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself,
rather than its output.
--- Eliot Handelman
+ -- Eliot Handelman
%
It might be worth reflecting that this group was originally created
back in September of 1987 and has exchanged over 1200 messages. The
who thinks that alt.cyberpunk is such a monstrous group that it is in
dire need of being subdivided. Heaven help them if they ever start
reading comp.arch or rec.arts.sf-lovers.
--- Bob Webber
+ -- Bob Webber
%
...I don't care for the term 'mechanistic'. The word 'cybernetic' is a lot
more apropos. The mechanistic world-view is falling further and further behind
-the real world where even simple systems can produce the most marvellous
+the real world where even simple systems can produce the most marvelous
chaos.
--- Peter da Silva
+ -- Peter da Silva
%
As for the basic assumptions about individuality and self, this is the core
of what I like about cyberpunk. And it's the core of what I like about certain
pre-gibson neophile techie SF writers that certain folks here like to put
down. Not everyone makes the same assumptions. I haven't lost my mind... it's
backed up on tape.
--- Peter da Silva
+ -- Peter da Silva
%
Who are the artists in the Computer Graphics Show? Wavefront's latest box, or
the people who programmed it? Should Mandelbrot get all the credit for the
output of programs like MandelVroom?
--- Peter da Silva
+ -- Peter da Silva
%
Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following
TETflame programme:
recent acquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his
kill file. Weemba by special arrangement.
--- Richard Sexton
+ -- Richard Sexton
%
"As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of
Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of
their Proverbs..." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
-
%
HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 1
'The reader may easily supply the details'
'The other 253 cases are analogous'
'...'
-
%
HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 3
proof by eminent authority:
'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-
complete.'
-
%
HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 4
proof by ghost reference:
Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears in
the reference given.
-
%
HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 7
proof by forward reference:
%
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed."
--- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is
the exact opposite."
--- Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928
+ -- Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928
%
"Were there no women, men might live like gods."
--- Thomas Dekker
+ -- Thomas Dekker
%
"Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing."
--- G. Steinem
+ -- G. Steinem
%
"It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is
dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."
--- Frank Zappa
+ -- Frank Zappa
%
"It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."
--- Cal Keegan
+ -- Cal Keegan
%
"Let me guess, Ed. Pentescostal, right?"
--- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu
+ -- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu
"Nope. Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels
mean)."
--- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com
+ -- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com
"Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain
cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him. Good work!"
--- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP
+ -- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP
%
"BTW, does Jesus know you flame?"
--- Diane Holt, dianeh@binky.UUCP, to Ed Carp
+ -- Diane Holt, dianeh@binky.UUCP, to Ed Carp
%
"I've seen the forgeries I've sent out."
--- John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US), about forging net news articles
+ -- John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US), about forging net news articles
%
"Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?"
--- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
+ -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
%
"Bite off, dirtball."
Richard Sexton, richard@gryphon.COM
%
"Oh my! An `inflammatory attitude' in alt.flame? Never heard of such
a thing..."
--- Allen Gwinn, allen@sulaco.Sigma.COM
+ -- Allen Gwinn, allen@sulaco.Sigma.COM
%
(null cookie; hope that's ok)
%
"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality
at any point."
--- Friedrich Nietzsche
+ -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
"Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality? He who *suffers*
from it."
--- Friedrich Nietzsche
+ -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
"You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?"
--- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians
+ -- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians
%
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of
nature are constantly broken for their sakes."
--- Friedrich Nietzsche
+ -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
"Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes
scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is
forbidden. Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin. *This alone is
morality.* ``Thou shalt not know'' -- the rest follows."
--- Friedrich Nietzsche
+ -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
"Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true."
--- Friedrich Nietzsche
+ -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
>One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative.
Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
--- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@Apple.COM
+ -- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@Apple.COM
%
"Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot.
Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard
to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and
pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits."
--- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet
+ -- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet
%
Backed up the system lately?
%
"It doesn't much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next
morning it was someone else."
--- Rogers
+ -- Rogers
%
"If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry."
--- Chekhov
+ -- Chekhov
%
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
the ideal never goes unpunished."
--- Goethe
+ -- Goethe
%
"In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved."
--- Butler
+ -- Butler
%
"The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, `What does
woman want?'"
--- Sigmund Freud
+ -- Sigmund Freud
%
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
--- Thomas Jefferson
+ -- Thomas Jefferson
%
Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
--- Dave Butler
+ -- Dave Butler
%
"The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence
of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars. Verily, the
learned men are the heirs of the Prophets."
--- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
+ -- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
%
"The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity;
the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a
private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion;
and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes
who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity."
--- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
+ -- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
%
"The question is rather: if we ever succeed in making a mind 'of nuts and
bolts', how will we know we have succeeded?
--- Fergal Toomey
+ -- Fergal Toomey
"It will tell us."
--- Barry Kort
+ -- Barry Kort
%
"Inquiry is fatal to certainty."
--- Will Durant
+ -- Will Durant
%
"The Mets were great in 'sixty eight,
The Cards were fine in 'sixty nine,
But the Cubs will be heavenly in nineteen and seventy."
--- Ernie Banks
+ -- Ernie Banks
%
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
that could provoke such a question."
--- Charles Babbage
+ -- Charles Babbage
%
"I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic
depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient
is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it
the *one* mortal blemish of mankind."
--- Friedrich Nietzsche
+ -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
"The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to
safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster
world and of tranquillity amongst it's peoples...The greater the decline of
religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but
lead in the end to chaos and confusion."
--- Baha'u'llah, a selection from the Baha'i scripture
+ -- Baha'u'llah, a selection from the Baha'i scripture
%
"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."
--- Blair Houghton
+ -- Blair Houghton
%
"...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs."
--- Robert Firth
+ -- Robert Firth
%
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What
should I do?
only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform
the whole net right away!
--- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
+ -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ...
Q: How about an example?
You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this.
--- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
+ -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%
Q: I cant spell worth a dam. I hope your going too tell me what to do?
spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that
soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.
--- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
+ -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%
Q: They just announced on the radio that Dan Quayle was picked as the
Republican V.P. candidate. Should I post?
broadcast networks have covered them. As you are probably the only person
to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post as soon as you can.
--- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
+ -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%
What did Mickey Mouse get for Christmas?
A Dan Quayle watch.
--- heard from a Mike Dukakis field worker
+ -- heard from a Mike Dukakis field worker
%
Q: What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer
salesman?
A: The car salesman can probably drive!
--- Joan McGalliard (jem@latcs1.oz.au)
+ -- Joan McGalliard (jem@latcs1.oz.au)
%
"Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
--- Dave Mack (mack@inco.UUCP)
+ -- Dave Mack (mack@inco.UUCP)
"Yours is."
--- Allen Gwinn (allen@sulaco.sigma.com), in alt.flame
+ -- Allen Gwinn (allen@sulaco.sigma.com), in alt.flame
%
A selection from the Taoist Writings:
Confucius said: `To be in one's inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all
things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature
of benevolence and righteousness.'"
--- Kwang-tzu
+ -- Kwang-tzu
%
"Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound!"
--- Daniel Hinojosa (hinojosa@hp-sdd)
+ -- Daniel Hinojosa (hinojosa@hp-sdd)
%
"Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator."
--- Claude Shouse (shouse@macomw.ARPA)
+ -- Claude Shouse (shouse@macomw.ARPA)
"Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist."
--- Joseph C. Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu)
+ -- Joseph C. Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu)
%
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will
fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
--- Bertrand Russell
+ -- Bertrand Russell
%
"Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his
delight.
Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with
thy lips.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue."
--- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture
+ -- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture
%
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
--- Matt Cartmill
+ -- Matt Cartmill
%
Heisenberg might have been here.
%
"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
--- Aesop
+ -- Aesop
%
"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything."
--- Russell Baker
+ -- Russell Baker
%
How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change it and one not to change it.
%
"I prefer the blunted cudgels of the followers of the Serpent God."
--- Sean Doran the Younger
+ -- Sean Doran the Younger
%
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak."
--- Phil Wayne
+ -- Phil Wayne
%
"my terminal is a lethal teaspoon."
--- Patricia O Tuama
+ -- Patricia O Tuama
%
"I am ... a woman ... and ... technically a parasitic uterine growth"
--- Sean Doran the Younger [allegedly]
+ -- Sean Doran the Younger [allegedly]
%
"Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time
someone writes `bible thumpers?'
--- Joel M. Snyder, jms@mis.arizona.edu
+ -- Joel M. Snyder, jms@mis.arizona.edu
%
"Money is the root of all money."
--- the moving finger
+ -- the moving finger
%
"...Greg Nowak: `Another flame from greg' - need I say more?"
--- Jonathan D. Trudel, trudel@caip.rutgers.edu
+ -- Jonathan D. Trudel, trudel@caip.rutgers.edu
"No. You need to say less."
--- Richard Sexton, richard@gryphon.COM
+ -- Richard Sexton, richard@gryphon.COM
%
"And it's my opinion, and that's only my opinion, you are a lunatic. Just
-because there are a few hunderd other people sharing your lunacy with you
+because there are a few hundred other people sharing your lunacy with you
does not make you any saner. Doomed, eh?"
--- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU
+ -- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU
%
"Obedience. A religion of slaves. A religion of intellectual death. I like
it. Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it
has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex
on his wrist. I like that job! Where can I sign up?"
--- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU
+ -- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU
%
"Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a
cockatoo."
--- George Bernard Shaw
+ -- George Bernard Shaw
%
"Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
those inside desperate to get out."
--- Montaigne
+ -- Montaigne
%
"For a male and female to live continuously together is... biologically
speaking, an extremely unnatural condition."
--- Robert Briffault
+ -- Robert Briffault
%
"Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it."
--- Baskins
+ -- Baskins
%
A man is not complete until he is married -- then he is finished.
%
the triumph of hope over experience.
%
"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
--- G. Fitch
+ -- G. Fitch
%
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
--- Mark Twain
+ -- Mark Twain
%
"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have
included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products. This
technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. My
carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go by some more."
--- timw@zeb.USWest.COM, in alt.conspiracy
+ -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM, in alt.conspiracy
%
"If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in
the cigarettes?"
--- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970
+ -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970
%
"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
Lavoris in the toilet."
--- Comedian Jay Leno
+ -- Comedian Jay Leno
%
"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
`Psychic Wins Lottery.'"
--- Comedian Jay Leno
+ -- Comedian Jay Leno
%
"Well hello there Charlie Brown, you blockhead."
--- Lucy Van Pelt
+ -- Lucy Van Pelt
%
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
--- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
+ -- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
%
"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows."
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable."
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'"
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius."
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul."
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray."
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
+ -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
"It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating
us in a stupid way."
--- J. W. Nienhuys
+ -- J. W. Nienhuys
%
"No, no, I don't mind being called the smartest man in the world. I just wish
it wasn't this one."
--- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN
+ -- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN
%
"Be *excellent* to each other."
--- Bill, or Ted, in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
+ -- Bill, or Ted, in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
%
The Seventh Edition licensing procedures are, I suppose, still in effect,
though I doubt that tapes are available from AT&T. At any rate, whatever
As for the size of v7, wc -l /usr/sys/*/*.[chs] is 19271.
--- Dennis Ritchie, 1989
+ -- Dennis Ritchie, 1989
%
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure
%
--Matt Groening
%
"I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
--- Woody Allen
+ -- Woody Allen
%
"The Street finds its own uses for technology."
--- William Gibson
+ -- William Gibson
%
"I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity
when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such
blasphemous nonsense!"
--- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
+ -- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
%
"You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but
only for a limited period of time. Why should we think that collectively,
as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"
--- Ronald Reagan
+ -- Ronald Reagan
%
"He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort,
he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion."
--- Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_
+ -- Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_
%
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts
most subtly on the human will."
--- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"
+ -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"
%
It's time to boot, do your boot ROMs know where your disk controllers are?
%
"What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying."
--- Nikita Khrushchev
+ -- Nikita Khrushchev
%
-"...a most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"
--- _Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure_
+"...a most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Khan!"
+ -- _Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure_
%
"Pull the trigger and you're garbage."
--- Lady Blue
+ -- Lady Blue
%
"Oh what wouldn't I give to be spat at in the face..."
--- a prisoner in "Life of Brian"
+ -- a prisoner in "Life of Brian"
%
"Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy
of him that brought her birth."
--- Milton
+ -- Milton
%
"If you can't debate me, then there is no way in hell you'll out-insult me."
--- Scott Legrand (Scott.Legrand@hogbbs.Fidonet.Org)
+ -- Scott Legrand (Scott.Legrand@hogbbs.Fidonet.Org)
"You may be wrong here, little one."
--- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM)
+ -- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM)
%
"Yes, I am a real piece of work. One thing we learn at Ulowell is
how to flame useless hacking non-EE's like you. I am superior to you in
how to hack, but Engineering doesn't come nearly as easily. Actually, I'm
not trying to offend all you CS majors out there, but I think EE is one of the
hardest majors/grad majors to pass. Fortunately, I am making it."
--- "Warrior Diagnostics" (wardiag@sky.COM)
+ -- "Warrior Diagnostics" (wardiag@sky.COM)
"Being both an EE and an asshole at the same time must be a terrible burden
for you. This isn't really a flame, just a casual observation. Makes me
glad I was a CS major, life is really pleasant for me. Have fun with your
chosen mode of existence!"
--- Jim Morrison (morrisj@mist.cs.orst.edu)
+ -- Jim Morrison (morrisj@mist.cs.orst.edu)
%
"BYTE editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then
print the chaff."
--- Lionel Hummel (uiucdcs!hummel), derived from a quote by Adlai Stevenson, Sr.
+ -- Lionel Hummel (uiucdcs!hummel), derived from a quote by
+ Adlai Stevenson, Sr.
%
THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO
Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other
I don't put ellipses in. And by the way, I love using this mechanism for
turning things around. If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you
don't think it's wonderful. ...
--- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP)
+ -- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP)
%
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
+ -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
%
"I am, therefore I am."
--- Akira
+ -- Akira
%
"Stan and I thought that this experiment was so stupid, we decided to finance
it ourselves."
--- Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?)
+ -- Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?)
%
"I have more information in one place than anybody in the world."
--- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS
+ -- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS
%
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
--- John Wooden
+ -- John Wooden
%
#define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
#define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
- (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
- (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
--- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
+ -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
%
"If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its
laws. Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people
most of the time."
--- George Gerbner
+ -- George Gerbner
%
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man."
--- George Bernard Shaw
+ -- George Bernard Shaw
%
"We want to create puppets that pull their own strings."
--- Ann Marion
+ -- Ann Marion
"Would this make them Marionettes?"
--- Jeff Daiell
+ -- Jeff Daiell
%
On the subject of C program indentation:
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented
six feet downward and covered with dirt."
--- Blair P. Houghton
+ -- Blair P. Houghton
%
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in
one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that
was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family,
hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if
you had signed up too many times before).
--- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_
+ -- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_
%
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
to suspect "Hungry."
--- a Larson cartoon
+ -- a Larson cartoon
%
"But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual.
The look in a face, the music of a violin. A Paris theater can be infused
-- Lestat, _The Vampire Lestat_, Anne Rice
%
"Love your country but never trust its government."
--- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania
+ -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania
%
I bought the latest computer;
it came fully loaded.
%
To update Voltaire, "I may kill all msgs from you, but I'll fight for
your right to post it, and I'll let it reside on my disks".
--- Doug Thompson (doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG)
+ -- Doug Thompson (doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG)
%
"Though a program be but three lines long,
someday it will have to be maintained."
--- The Tao of Programming
+ -- The Tao of Programming
%
"Turn on, tune up, rock out."
--- Billy Gibbons
+ -- Billy Gibbons
%
EARTH
smog | bricks
%
"Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power tools aren't
soluble in alcohol..."
--- Crazy Nigel
+ -- Crazy Nigel
%
"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."
--- Thomas J. Kopp
+ -- Thomas J. Kopp
%
n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
--- Yet another mystical 'C' gem. This one reverses the bits in a word.
+ -- Yet another mystical 'C' gem. This one reverses the bits in a word.
%
"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is
constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role
they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."
--- Noam Chomsky
+ -- Noam Chomsky
%
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
system that worked."
--- John Gall, _Systemantics_
+ -- John Gall, _Systemantics_
%
"In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it
came up and bit him on his Internet."
--- Ross M. Greenberg
+ -- Ross M. Greenberg
%
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some
absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
-case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.
+case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.
I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
--- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
+ -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
%
"If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change
almost all occurrences of the word "paradigm" into "example" or "model."
--- Herbie Blashtfalt
+ -- Herbie Blashtfalt
%
"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
--- Marvin the paranoid android
+ -- Marvin the paranoid android
%
Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.
--- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+ -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than
the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
millisecond?"
"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
"A mere abacus. Mention it not."
--- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+ -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic
Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and
"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought,
thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."
--- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+ -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola
would be a Fortune-500 company.
If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still
be using autocoder and running compile decks.
--- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective
+ -- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective
%
To err is human, to moo bovine.
%
"America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort."
--- President John F. Kennedy
+ -- President John F. Kennedy
%
"The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not
be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but
living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil
Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so."
--- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
+ -- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
%
"The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that
->from time to time threaten freedoms everyhere... Indeed, it is difficult
+from time to time threaten freedoms everywhere... Indeed, it is difficult
to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights
of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised
by the majority they were at the time."
--- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
+ -- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
%
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each
citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do
his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."
--- Albert Einstein
+ -- Albert Einstein
%
"Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many
men happy."
--- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
+ -- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
%
"And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what
the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions."
--- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation
+ -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation
%
"Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser."
--- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"
+ -- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"
%
"Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes
America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we
have tolerated the last eight years?"
--- Frank Zappa, Feb 1, 1989
+ -- Frank Zappa, Feb 1, 1989
%
"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
"For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can
we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by
the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'"
--- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
+ -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"Don't think; let the machine do it for you!"
--- E. C. Berkeley
+ -- E. C. Berkeley
%
"It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
than be the instrument of his army's downfall."
--- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
+ -- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
%
"(The Chief Programmer) personally defines the functional and performance
specifications, designs the program, codes it, tests it, and writes its
documentation... He needs great talent, ten years experience and
considerable systems and applications knowledge, whether in applied
mathematics, business data handling, or whatever."
--- Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_
+ -- Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_
%
"It ain't over until it's over."
--- Casey Stengel
+ -- Casey Stengel
%
"If anything can go wrong, it will."
--- Edsel Murphy
+ -- Edsel Murphy
%
"Yo baby yo baby yo."
--- Eddie Murphy
+ -- Eddie Murphy
%
"You must learn to run your kayak by a sort of ju-jitsu. You must learn to
tell what the river will do to you, and given those parameters see how you
as best you can. Even with the quickness and agility of a kayak, you are
not faster than the river, nor stronger, and you can beat it only by
understanding it."
--- Strung, Curtis and Perry, _Whitewater_
+ -- Strung, Curtis and Perry, _Whitewater_
%
Everyone who comes in here wants three things:
1. They want it quick.
2. They want it good.
3. They want it cheap.
I tell 'em to pick two and call me back.
--- sign on the back wall of a small printing company in Delaware
+ -- sign on the back wall of a small printing company in Delaware
%
"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all
other causes combined."
--- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
+ -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%
panic: kernel trap (ignored)
%
"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
--- Karl Lehenbauer
+ -- Karl Lehenbauer
%
"Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue."
--- Peter Neumann, about usenet
+ -- Peter Neumann, about usenet
%
"We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked
power. There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation."
--- Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart
+ -- Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart
%
"What man has done, man can aspire to do."
--- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight
+ -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight
%
"Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the shit."
--- Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban
+ -- Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban
%
"If you can, help others. If you can't, at least don't hurt others."
--- the Dalai Lama
+ -- the Dalai Lama
%
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a
test load.
%
"Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!"
--- Alan Perlis
+ -- Alan Perlis
%
"...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial
technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain
the world's democracies, not the world as a whole."
--- K. Eric Drexler
+ -- K. Eric Drexler
%
"The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between a five-dollar bill
and a whip deserves to learn the difference on his own back -- as, I think, he
will."
--- Francisco d'Anconia, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
+ -- Francisco d'Anconia, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
%
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and
the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will
lose that, too."
--- W. Somerset Maugham
+ -- W. Somerset Maugham
%
"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother
to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed. Here's another of those self-satisfied
doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life."
--- Marvin the Paranoid Android
+ -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be
puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
--- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
+ -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
%
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.
from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
--- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
+ -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
%
"Gort, klaatu nikto barada."
--- The Day the Earth Stood Still
+ -- The Day the Earth Stood Still
%
> From MAILER-DAEMON@Think.COM Thu Mar 2 13:59:11 1989
> Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 255
"Dale, your address no longer functions. Can you fix it at your end?"
--- Bill Wolfe (wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu)
+ -- Bill Wolfe (wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu)
"Bill, Your brain no longer functions. Can you fix it at your end?"
--- Karl A. Nyberg (nyberg@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu)
+ -- Karl A. Nyberg (nyberg@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu)
%
"Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!"
--- Bryan Michael Wendt
+ -- Bryan Michael Wendt
%
"I got a question for ya. Ya got a minute?"
--- two programmers passing in the hall
+ -- two programmers passing in the hall
%
I took a fish head to the movies and I didn't have to pay.
--- Fish Heads, Saturday Night Live, 1977.
+ -- Fish Heads, Saturday Night Live, 1977.
%
What hath Bob wrought?
%
So let's just hope there is a promised land,
And until then,
...as best as you can."
--- Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby"
+ -- Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby"
%
"Help Mr. Wizard!"
--- Tennessee Tuxedo
+ -- Tennessee Tuxedo
%
"The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance.
He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him.
But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are
given to administer we presently imagine we own."
--- H.G. Wells
+ -- H. G. Wells
%
"Unlike most net.puritans, however, I feel that what OTHER consenting computers
do in the privacy of their own phone connections is their own business."
--- John Woods, jfw@eddie.mit.edu
+ -- John Woods, jfw@eddie.mit.edu
%
"Don't talk to me about disclaimers! I invented disclaimers!"
--- The Censored Hacker
+ -- The Censored Hacker
%
'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do
with equalizing. Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and
ability, to each according to his needs." This will be under communism.
Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits:
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."'
--- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_
+ -- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_
%
"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."
--- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
+ -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
[apparently, good TV reception is a basic necessity -- at least in Tucson -kl]
%
"All the system's paths must be topologically and circularly interrelated for
conceptually definitive, locally transformable, polyhedronal understanding to
be attained in our spontaneous -- ergo, most economical -- geodesiccally
structured thoughts."
--- R. Buckminster Fuller [...and a total nonsequitur as far as I can tell. -kl]
+ -- R. Buckminster Fuller [...and a total nonsequitur as far as I can
+ tell. -kl]
%
"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror."
--- W. K. Hartmann
+ -- W. K. Hartmann
%
"It's when they say 2 + 2 = 5 that I begin to argue."
--- Eric Pepke
-%
-Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a
-pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
--- David Guaspari
+ -- Eric Pepke
%
"None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible."
--- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):
+ -- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):
%
"The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post
is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer
is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..."
--- Robert J Woodhead (trebor@biar.UUCP)
+ -- Robert J Woodhead (trebor@biar.UUCP)
%
"...'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not
matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality
world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon
reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles
as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming."
--- Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny
+ -- Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny
%
-"Irrigation of the land with sewater desalinated by fusion power is ancient.
+"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient.
It's called 'rain'."
--- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
+ -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
%
"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people
who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything."
--- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California
+ -- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California
%
"We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of
annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn
and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from
being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented."
--- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948
+ -- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948
%
"You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
--- Cal Keegan
+ -- Cal Keegan
%
We'll be more than happy to do so once Jim shows the slightest sign
of interest in fixing his proposal to deal with the technical
and crankshaft are missing...
-- Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu on NANOG
%
+It's always sad when the fleas leave, because that means your dog is dead.
+ -- Wesley T. Williams
+%
+It's always sad when the fleas leave, because that means your dog is dead.
+ -- Wesley T. Williams
+%
+You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common:
+they don’t alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit
+their views.
+ -- Doctor Who: The fourth Doctor
+%
+A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points,
+but it is by no means the most interesting.
+ -- Doctor Who: The third Doctor
+%
projects / fortune-mod / blobdiff