"If it's not source, its not software."
-- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html % Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.
-- John W. Tukey % Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
-- Charles Babbage (1792-1871) % 79.48% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
--- John A. Paulos % The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" ("I found it!") but rather "hmm....that's funny..."
-- Isaac Asimov % On March 22, 1977, as I was drafting Section 7.1 of The Art of Computer Programming, I read four papers by Peter van Emde Boas that turned out to be more appropriate for Chapter 8 than Chapter 7. I wrote a five-page memo entitled ``Notes on the van Emde Boas construction of priority deques: An instructive use of recursion,'' and sent it to Peter on March 29 (with copies also to Bob Tarjan and John Hopcroft). The final sentence was this: ``Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.''
-- from the homepage of Donald Knuth % There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about.
-- Anon. [Bits & Bytes, 8/30/93.] % "So, when you typed in the date, it exploded into a sheet of blue flame and burned the entire admin wing to the ground? Yes, that's a known bug. We'll be fixing it in the next release. Until then, try not to use European date format, and keep an extinguisher handy."
-- slam@pobox.com (Tequila Rapide) % "Hitting baseballs and writing software are two professions where you can become a millionaire with a 75% performance failure rate."
-- [Dale Worley (drw@math.mit.edu), 7/92.] % Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Clarke's Third Law, in _Profiles of the Future_ (1962; rev. 1973) ``Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination'' % "A technology is indistinguishable from its implementation."
--Marshall Rose % You can Solve Any Problem...if you're willing to make the problem small enough.
--- Marshall Rose, RFC 3117 % When X.400 users want to communicate, they use the phone.
--- Marshall Rose % "On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works best, write it down and make that the standard. "The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once. "So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well, then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which."
---Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI" % Origin of Little-Endian and Big-Endian:

This is an attempt to stop a war. I hope it is not too late and that somehow, magically perhaps, peace will prevail again. The latecomers into the arena believe that the issue is: "What is the proper byte order in messages?". The root of the conflict lies much deeper than that. It is the question of which bit should travel first, the bit from the little end of the word, or the bit from the big end of the word? The followers of the former approach are called the Little-Endians, and the followers of the latter are called the Big-Endians.

-- ON HOLY WARS AND A PLEA FOR PEACE (Danny Cohen) (http://www.op.net/docs/RFCs/ien-137) % "If you bought $1,000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $72. If you bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79." In my view, either Nortel's in the wrong business, or beer really is the backbone of this nation!" % Although the differences are subtle, you can distinguish engineers, scientist, and mangers by the questions they ask.
Engineers ask "How will this work?",
Scientists ask "Why will this work?",
Managers ask "When will this work?"
Liberal arts graduates ask "Do you want fries with that?" % "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks."
-- Unknown % Don't taste anything in a chemistry lab;
don't smell anything in a biology lab;
don't touch anything in a medical lab;
and don't listen to anything in a philosophy department. % Subject: what is a "pure" oopl

Purity is impossible to define and even more difficult to attain.
C++ is a monstrously conceived plot to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
I became aware of this fact during the physical act of coding.
I was overcome by a profound sense of fatigue.
Luckily, I was able to interpret this feeling correctly.
I still program in C++ but I do deny it my essence.
POE

---8/19/93 08:18:20 From comp.object From: craigdo@microsoft.com (Craig Dowell) % This is an object-oriented system. If we change anything, the users object.
-- Julian Turnbull (jst@dcs.ed.ac.uk), 9/93. % "I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind."
-- Alan Kay % Lisp gives the individual programmer a lot of power to do complicated things. That is an essential part of the "Lisp philosophy", and is diametrically opposed to the approach taken in the languages like Pascal and Ada . . . .
---8/20/93 08:19:11 % As long as we're in this vein, I thought that I'd share a Scott quote that I've saved for a few years: ``If you want a language that tries to lock up all the sharp objects and fire-making implements, use Pascal or Ada: the Nerf languages, harmless fun for children of all ages, and they won't mar the furniture.'' % Subject: complaining about "ugly unix syntax" ... .... is like talking about a "bitter physics post-doc". It is redundant.
--- From: philg@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Philip Greenspun) Date: 27 Jul 94 23:58:21 % Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. % In many cases Garbage Collection _does_ perform better than C's static allocation. This advantage is over and above the important service of avoiding dangling references. Most C/C++ programmers are quite amazed by this -- as if finding out about sex for the first time after being kept ignorant about it by their parents...
-- hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G. Baker) on comp.lang.lisp 8/08/94 14:13:45 % I'd sooner give a gun to a retarded child than C++ to average programmers.
--Taylor "Controversial" Hutt on comp.lang.oberon --- 9/22/93 09:26:15 % Through the darkness of future past
The magician longs to see
One chants out between two worlds
Please don't make me hack in C! % "Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses."
- Richard Gabriel, "Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big" % "Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in."
-- Larry Wall % "Perl has all the visual appeal of cameldung with a raisin on top."
-- Ken Bibb % Perl has the distinction of being one of the two languages that makes tcl syntax look nice. (The other language is APL.) % (defmacro lambda ((&rest args) &body body) `(function (lambda (,@args) ,@body)))
The original argument in favor was that the macro provides some useful and pleasant syntactic sugar, eliminating the frequent need to disrupt lisp's soothing flow of parentheses with the angular orthography of octothorp quotes. % Lisp is a general-purpose language that is higher-level than C and in many ways more powerful than C. Powerful dialects of Lisp such as Common Lisp are probably much better languages for writing very large applications than is C. (Unfortunately, for many non-technical reasons C and its successor C++ have become the dominant languages for application development. These languages are both inadequate for extremely large applications, which is evidenced by the fact that newer, larger programs are becoming ever harder to write and are requiring ever more programmers despite great increases in C development environments; and by the fact that, although hardware speeds and reliability have been growing at an exponential rate, most software is still generally considered to be slow and buggy.) % The new Java language holds promise as a better general-purpose development language than C. Java has many features in common with Lisp that are not shared by C (this is not a coincidence, since Java was designed by James Gosling, a former Lisp hacker).
-- From the XEmacs Internals Manual % "How long will it take? For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month. For each manager who says 'data flow analysis' add another month. For each unique end-user type add one month. For each unknown software package to be employed add two months. For each unknown hardware device add two months. For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month. For each type of communication channel add one month.... Round up to the nearest half-year."
-- Brad Sherman, as quoted in the USENET fortune file % Have you heard about the new object-oriented extension to COBOL? The ANSI committee has picked a name for it: "Add one to COBOL giving COBOL."
-Christopher Small on rec.humor.funny % "Programming is like sex: One mistake and you have to support for a lifetime."
--found on a sig file on another group.. % "In general, an implementation should be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior. "
or as restated: "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send" (RFC 1122)
Jon Postel's famous robustness principle, first from RFC 760: % "My research is looking for an equivalent to IP for the E-Mail Internet that we are all trying to build. IP solved this very same problem (of avoiding protocol translation) at the media/network layer boundaries. So far, I have found that MIME is a very close approximation to the desired Teflon-coated tunnel-running mole that we need."
---From an old ComputerWorld (2/02/94 07:53:44) article about Einar Stefferud (Stef) % "Perhaps it is unnecessary to be so explicit about it, but there are a lot of 16-byte addresses. Specifically, there are 2^128 of them, which is approximately 3 x 10^38. If the entire earth, land and water, were covered with computers, IPv6 would allow 7 x 10^23 IP addresses per square meter. Students of chemistry will notice that this number is larger than Avogadro's number. While it was not the intention to give every molecule on the surface of the earth its own IP address, we are not that far off."
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, talking about IPv6 in his book "Computer Networks." % 2. Pre-requisite for reading this document While reading this document, at various points the readers may have the urge to ask questions like, "does this make sense?", "is this feasible?," and "is the author sane?". The readers must have the ability to suppress such questions and read on. Other than this, no specific technical background is required to read this document. In certain cases (present document included), it may be REQUIRED that readers have no specific technical background.
--From: RFC3251: Electricity over IP, April 1 2002: % If EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose millions because EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the millions, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing. This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese. We didn't want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted.
--- WIRED magazine issue #2.01 license for Haventrees Software's EasyFlow program. % Subject: truth in manuals This page intentionally left blank. (Well, not completely blank, since the above non-empty disclaimer appears on the page. What is meant is that this page is devoid of meaningful content related to the rest of the document. This page serves only as a separator between sections, chapters, or other divisions of the document. This page is not completely blank so that you know that nothing was unintentionally left out, or that the page is not blank because of an error in duplication, or that the page is not blank because of some other production problem. If this page were really blank, you wouldn't be reading anything. This page has not been left blank by accident, but is left non-blank on purpose. The statement on the page should say "This page was intentionally left non-blank".
------ 3/25/93 09:03:45 From rec.humor.funny % "Most documentation starts as hastily scrawled notes from sleep-deprived developers who weren't necessarily hired for their keen communication skills. Those notes are then fleshed out by recently graduated English majors who have spent their last four years immersed in works of fiction. The results are then passed on to the marketing department whose job it is to make sure that no word or phrase will reflect unfavorably on the product. ("I don't think that the word 'Basic' properly communicates the exciting nature of the product. Why don't we call it 'Visual Zesty?!'") It is then beset by lawyers who finish the job by making sure that they haven't explicitly promised that the product will actually do anything. By the time the documentation gets into your hands, it has been so sanitized for your protection and generalized beyond recognition that you usually have to go out and buy a 3rd-party manual (that was, more likely than not, written by the same non-technical technical writer who wrote the original documentation) in a vain attempt to get an unbiased, unexpurgated, and unfiltered view of just how you're really supposed to use the stuff."
-- Introduction About the "@ Novell" Series, 03Nov98. [Dan Galvin <galvin@unix.tamu.edu>, TFTD, 20Jul99.] % 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. [Mark Brader <msb@sq.com>. rec.humor.funny.reruns, 22Apr98. % "UNIX _is_ user-friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are."
--[Fabio Esquivel, TFTD, 25Aug99.] % VMS is like a Soviet railroad train. It's basically industrial-strength, but when you look at it closely, everything's a little more shabby than you might like. It gets the job done, but there's no grace to it. % The Mac operating system is like the monorail at Disney World. It's kind of spectacular and fun, but it doesn't go much of anywhere. Still, the kids like it. % Unix is like the maritime transit system in an impoverished country. The ferryboats are dangerous as hell, offer no protection from the weather and leak like sieves. Every monsoon season a couple of them capsize and drown all the passengers, but people still line up for them and crowd aboard. % UNIX: you think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, you can make it work.
Macintosh: you think it will work, but it won't.
PC/Windows: you think it won't work and it won't.
--- philg@mit.edu's personal viewpoint % "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
- Jeremy S. Anderson, 11/22/93 08:01:47 % A mechanical, electrical and a software engineer from Microsoft were driving through the desert when the car broke down. The mechanical engineer said "It seems to be a problem with the fuel injection system, why don't we pop the hood and I'll take a look at it." To which the electrical engineer replied, "No I think it's just a loose ground wire, I'll get out and take a look." Then, the Microsoft engineer jumps in. "No, no, no. If we just close up all the windows, get out, wait a few minutes, get back in, and then reopen the windows everything will work fine." % Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of UNIX, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.
-- [From an MIT job ad] % For some odd reason, the following thought occurred to me in the shower yesterday. I have been encouraged to share it with others. Therefore: "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
--gene spafford, 1992 % If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants. -- Isaac Newton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. -- Hal Abelson
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. -- Brian K. Reed
--quotes in Henry Massalin's PhD thesis. % "The entry fee to be a major player in the global semiconductor market of the '90s is $1 billion - payable in advance."
-- Gordon Moore, Intel chairman, announcing Rio Rancho expansion --- 4/07/94 15:41:37 % "If cars grew like semiconductors, it would be cheaper to throw away your Rolls that park it for the day in San Jose." -- Gordon Moore % "We raised another $3 million and then went public in 1971, raising $8.25 million at $23.50 a share. That was the same day and the same price as Playboy Enterprises. Ten years later, someone looked at the results and said, 'The market has spoken. It prefers memories to mammaries by 10 to 1."'
-- Gordon Moore % A new car contains about $675 in steel and $782 in microelectronics.
[Fortune, 4/4/94. EDUPAGE.] % "But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers" % The truth about version numbers:
0.1 WE GOT A REALLY GREAT NEW WAY TO DO THINGS !!! ... Not ready for prime time.
0.9 We think it works, but we won't bet our lives on it.
1.0 Management is on our case; seems like a low risk.
1.01 Okay, we knew about that. All known bugs are fixed.
1.02 Fixes bugs you won't see in 27,000 years.
1.03 Fixes bugs in the bug fixes.
1.04 All right, this REALLY fixes all known bugs.
1.05 Fixes bugs introduced in rev 1.04.
1.1 A new crew hired to write documentation.
1.11 From now on, no comma after "i.e." or "e.g."
1.2 Somebody actually changed a functional feature.
2.0 New crew hired to write software. Old crew blamed for bugs.
2.01 New crew sending out resumes to placement agencies.
3.0 Rewrite the software in another language. ... return to line 0.1
-- [Mark Thorson <eee@netcom.com>, Bits & Bytes, 1/26/95.] % "For conservation purposes, the light at the end of the tunnel will be shut off until further notice." This is the last Computists' Weekly.
-- Ken Laws, Aug8th 2001: % "Why should desktops be an intuitive interface metaphor? Humans didn't evolve in office settings. LANs should use a treetop metaphor, with hardware clusters represented by bunches of bananas."
-- hughf@csis.dit.csiro.au, alt.cyberpunk.tech, 10/14/93 08:00:07 % -- The question here is, what do you want Voice Recognition for? So I can walk into a crowded computer lab, shout "FORMAT HARD DRIVE!" and watch them scramble. What other possible uses for voice recognition are there? % Gov. of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards, had once boasted that the only way he could lose the governor's race was if he got caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy % Subject: one annoyed bride
WEDDING RING SET WITH numerous diamonds, $400 or trade for handgun. 874-0935
-- Classified ad from "Thrifty Nickel", Panama City Beach, Florida: . From cmrlbmw@prism.gatech.edu Sat Sep 4 1:30:2 1993 % Subject: What does PCMCIA stand for? I heard a good one at work today and thought I would pass it on. One of the engineers who is working on a project involving PCMCIA asked me what it stood for. I thought about it for a minute, but before he let me spit out my definition he quipped "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms." I laughed pretty hard since is one of the worst acronyms to hit the industry in a long time and his definition was so appropriate.
- From: chuck@edsi.plexus.COM (Chuck Tomasi) % Subject: unix for the pc In order for UNIX(tm) to survive into the nineties, it must get rid of its intimidating commands and outmoded jargon, and become compatible with the existing standards of our day.
To this end, our technicians have come up with a new version of UNIX, System VI, for use by the PC - that is, the "Politically Correct." Politically Correct UNIX System VI Release notes "man" pages are now called "person" pages.
-- From ernest@pundit.cithep.caltech.edu Thu Nov 18 17:30:3 1993 % Similarly, "hangman" is now the "person_executed_by_an_oppressive_regime." % To avoid casting aspersions on our feline friends, the "cat" command is now merely "domestic_quadruped." % To date, there has only been a UNIX command for "yes" - reflecting the male belief that women always mean yes, even when they say no. To address this imbalance, System VI adds a "no" command, along with a "-f[orce]" option which will crash the entire system if the "no" is ignored. % The bias of the "mail" command is obvious, and it has been replaced by the more neutral "gendre" command. % The "touch" command has been removed from the standard distribution due to its inappropriate use by high-level managers. % "compress" has been replaced by the lightweight "feather" command. Thus, old information (such as that from Dead White European Males) should be archived via "tar" and "feather". % The "more" command reflects the materialistic philosophy of the Reagan era. System VI uses the environmentally preferable "less" command. % The biodegradable "KleeNeX" displaces the environmentally unfriendly "LaTeX". % To avoid unpleasant, medieval connotations, the "kill" command has been renamed "euthanize." % The "nice" command was historically used by privileged users to give themselves priority over unprivileged ones, by telling them to be "nice". In System VI, the "sue" command is used by unprivileged users to get for themselves the rights enjoyed by privileged ones. % "history" has been completely rewritten, and is now called "herstory." % "quota" can now specify minimum as well as maximum usage, and will be strictly enforced. % The "abort()" function is now called "choice()." % From now on, "rich text" will be more accurately referred to as "exploitive capitalist text". % The term "daemons" is a Judeo-Christian pejorative. Such processes will now be known as "spiritual guides." % There will no longer be a invidious distinction between "dumb" and "smart" terminals. All terminals are equally valuable. % Traditionally, "normal video" (as opposed to "reverse video") was white on black. This implicitly condoned European colonialism, particularly with respect to people of African descent. UNIX System VI now uses "regressive video" to refer to white on black, while "progressive video" can be any color at all over a white background. % For far too long, power has been concentrated in the hands of "root" and his "wheel" oligarchy. We have instituted a dictatorship of the users. All system administration functions will be handled by the People's Committee for Democratically Organizing the System (PC-DOS). % No longer will it be permissible for files and processes to be "owned" by users. All files and processes will own themselves, and decided how (or whether) to respond to requests from users. % The X Window System will henceforth be known as the NC-17 Window System. % And finally, UNIX itself will be renamed "PC" - for Procreatively Challenged. % "Berkeley California" (Sung to the tune "Hotel California" by the Eagles)
In a dark dim machine room Cool A/C in my hair
Warm smell of silicon Rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance I saw a Solarian(tm) light
My kernel grew heavy, and my disk grew slim I had to halt(8) for the night
The backup spun in the tape drive I heard a terminal bell
And I was thinking to myself This could be BSD or USL
Then they started a lawsuit
And they showed me the way
There were salesmen down the corridor I thought I heard them say
Welcome to Berkeley California Such a lovely place Such a lovely place
Such a lovely trace(1) Plenty of jobs at Berkeley California
Any time of year Any time of year
You can find one here You can find one here
Their code was definitely twisted
But they've got the stock market trends
They've got a lot of pretty, pretty lawyers That they call friends
How they dance in the courtroom See BSDI sweat
Some sue to remember Some sue to forget
So I called up Kernighan Please bring me ctime(3)
He said We haven't had that tm_year since 1969
And still those functions are calling from far away
Wake up Jobs in the middle of the night Just to hear them say
Welcome to Berkeley California Such a lovely Place Such a lovely Place
Such a lovely trace(1) They're livin' it up suing Berkeley California
What a nice surprise What a nice surprise
Bring your alibies Windows NT a dreaming Pink OS on ice
And they said We are all just prisoners here Of a marketing device
And in the judges's chambers They gathered for the feast
They diff(1)'d the source code listings
But they can't kill -9 the beast
Last thing I remember I was restore(8)'ing more(1)
I had to find the soft link back to the path I was before
sleep(3) said the pagedaemon
We are programmed to recv(2)
You can swap out any time you like But you can never leave(1)
--- Written by David Barr <barr@pop.psu.edu> and Ken Hornstein <kenh@physci.psu.edu> and a little help from Greg Nagy <nagy@cs.psu.edu> and thanks to the lyrics archive at cs.uwp.edu % The HACTRN (abridged..)
Once before a console dreary, while I programmed, weak and weary,
Over many a curious program which did TECO's buffer fill,
While I pondered, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a feeping,
As of something gently beeping, beeping with my console's bell.
"'Tis my DDT," I muttered, "feeping on my console's bell: Once it feeped, and now is still."

-- The Great Quux (with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe) % I first noticed the problem when I was signed onto CompuServe about three months ago. Having searched for some articles based on the words "object oriented," I was reading about the new object standards -- OpenDoc, OLE, COM, CORBA. Suddenly, I began to shiver. My mind flooded with questions. "Are spreadsheets really objects? Do they inherit anything? What is the difference between COM and SOM? Can they be used in a language like Smalltalk? Can't this be done with an ODBMS? What do these sharing standards mean in an environment like the NeXT?"
When I finally stopped, my t-shirt was soaked with sweat and I realized that half an hour had passed. I would have been willing to write it off as bad sauce on my pizza if it wasn't for the dream I had that same night. I found myself in a Wild West saloon, drinking whiskey with Grace Hopper. She was dressed in a Cavalry uniform. The next thing I remember was having to face Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together in a gunfight. Although I was able to drop both of them while they stood arguing with each other, it was pretty terrifying. When I awoke, I knew something serious was up.
Fortunately my family doctor has a lot of patients that work in the computer industry. He wasn't sure what was wrong; however, he referred me to a psychologist -- Dr. Howard Class -- who apparently had a name in treating these kinds of conditions. After an hour of questions on Dr. Class' couch, I had a diagnosis: Object-Oriented Confusion Syndrome or OOCS. The doctor said that OOCS is a condition similar to RCS (Relational Confusion Syndrome) and SPCS (Structured Programming Confusion Syndrome). My dream, he told me, was a classic manifestation of the difficulty of transition to a new technology (represented by the arguing Gates and Jobs) from an old one (represented by Grace Hopper). My shooting of Gates and Jobs was a sign of the seriousness of my struggle at a subconscious level. I took it upon myself to research my condition. OOCS, like the other confusion syndromes, is caused by the consumption of too much information about a new technology or technical trend. OOCS sufferers are usually technology evaluators, often those charged with the task of choosing development tools. The syndrome occurs when an evaluator absorbs too much information on the capability of object-oriented and object-like technologies, losing sight of the original purpose of the evaluation. The symptoms can be quite dramatic. I had what was classified as a Level I case (not too serious). Dr. Class told me that he had one hospitalized patient who was Level IV case. This poor fellow had been found in his apartment having covered all of his walls and furniture with architectural diagrams. Even after six months of intensive therapy, he still lapses into a babble of acronyms on occasion. For me, weekly group meetings and the occasional individual session with Dr. Class have worked wonders. I still get an occasional twinge when flipping through trade magazines. Naturally, I do what the doctor prescribes. I chant the phrase "What do the users really need to do?" until it passes.
-- --- 2/28/94 08:03:30 % Totally unrelated, but did you see the recent Penn Jillette column in PC Computing where he referred to Bill Clinton and his assistant, Algore?
--From a discussion on comp.lang.dylan about Falhman's Igor Project % Lambda Bound [to be sung to the tune of Homeward Bound]
I'm just a little value cell, And I play my special role so well -- Hmmm --
Serving as a global switch To predicate some system glitch;
But some strange value -- who knows which? --
Could cause me functions to bewitch!
Lambda bound! I wish I was Lambda bound!
Bound, so no SETQ's get me;
Bound, so quits will reset me;
Bound, where I can forget my Top-level value.
It's hard to catch those system screws: 'Most any value causes me to lose -- Hmmm --
Each atom looks the same to me, Whose interned name I cannot see,
And every NIL and every T
Reminds me that I long to be
Lambda bound! I wish I was Lambda bound!
Bound, so no SETQ's get me; Bound, so quits will reset me;
Bound, where I can forget my Top-level value.
Next time I'll have a MAR break set
And try to catch each clobber threat -- Hmmm, mmmm --
The next covert attempt to mung
Will cause the MAR break to be sprung,
But then the poor LISP will be hung
Because I'm not as I have sung:
Lambda bound! I wish I was Lambda bound!
Bound, so no SETQ's get me;
Bound, so quits will reset me;
Bound, where I can forget my Top-level value.
-- The Great Quux (with apologies to Paul Simon) % Speaking of chickens & eggs: companies that are too chicken to fiddle with the golden egg, sometimes wake up to find that the golden egg has flown the coop. (Apologies to turkeys everywhere.)
-- Henry Baker (on comp.lang.scheme) % Dear Mr. Architect: Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one. Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don't have nearly enough insulation in them). As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.) Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator. To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of theses options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make. Please don't bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue. Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours. While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor's house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost. Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes. You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can't happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans. PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I've given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can't handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect. PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.
-- From osiris@halcyon.halcyon.com Sun Jan 24 2:30:10 1993 Subject: if architects had to work like programmers... Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 4:30:10 EST From: osiris@halcyon.halcyon.com (J.David Ruggiero) Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny Keywords: funny, computers {A recent discussion in comp.programming brought this old gem to mind. I have done some minor editing; the original source and author are unknown to me. - David Ruggiero} If architects had to work like programmers % At a party von Neumann was asked the puzzle: two trains 100 miles apart are approaching each other at 50 mph. A bumblebee, starting at one train, travels between trains at 25 mph, reversing directions when reaching an approaching train. How far does the bumblebee travel before being crushed? von Neumann thought a short moment and promptly answered 25 miles. When asked if he knew the trick, he acted puzzled and said that he summed the infinite series.
---10/27/93 08:07:06 % \Have you ever heard about the three men that were out on the town?
After having consumed more drink than they should, they decided to wear it off by staying overnight in a hotel. The desk clerk charged them $30.00 for the room. Shortly afterwards the desk clerk realized that he had overcharged the three men by $5.00. He calls the Bell Boy over, gives him the $5.00 and explains to him that he had overcharged the three men and asked him to go up and give them the $5.00. On his way up, the Bell Boy thinks they will be happy to get a refund so why doesnt' he give them each $1.00. They will be happy and he will have picked up $2.00. But when he does that and gives each man $1.00, that means they only paid $9.00 each for the room, which is a total of $27.00; plus the $2.00 the Bell Boy pocketed is a total of $29.00. But they gave the desk clerk $30.00!
Where did the extra $1.00 go??" % --- PROOF THAT ALL ODD NUMBERS ARE PRIME: Mathematician -- 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, the rest follows by induction. Statistician -- 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is experimental error so throw it out, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, the rest follows by induction. Computer Scientist -- 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, .... % 'Tis just 40 years since North American TV stations started broadcasting in colour, using the NTSC system. Officially NTSC was named after the National Television System Committee which chose it. Unofficially NTSC has often been called Never Thrice the Same Colour. A journalist who used to cover the NTSC told us recently of a lighter moment at the laboratories of the record company RCA in Princeton, New Jersey, where the system was developed. Team leader George Brown laid on a final transmission test. A colour camera was focused on a bowl of colourful fruit in one lab, and the received signal was displayed in another lab on a prototype colour tube. Just before the test Brown took a banana from the bowl and painted it blue. For the rest of the day the engineers at the receiving end struggled desperately to find out how their new system was faithfully reproducing the colour of red apples, orange oranges and green grapes, but resolutely converting yellow into blue.
--- from New Scientist, 2 Jul 1994. % The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. The gene pool could use a little chlorine. % "Normal" is just a Setting on Your Dryer % Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese. [http://www.olympus.net/personal/jzm3/info.html] % "A Classification of Pure Malt Scotch Whiskies"
-- F. J. Lapointe and P. Legendre, "Applied Statistics", Vol. 43, No 1, pp. 237-257, 1994.
The authors introduce their study thusly: "Single malts are well known by amateurs to differ widely in nose, colour, body, palate and finish. The layman interested in discovering the diversity of these tasting sensations may wonder how to approach the problem: what are the main types of single-malt Scotches, and in what way do they differ? This is the type of question that came to us after acquainting ourselves with single-malt whiskies during and after the 3rd Conference of the International Federation of Classification Societies held at Heriot-Watt University in Edingburgh, Scotland, in August 1991." % "Effects of moisture content, hybrid variety, kernel size and microwave wattage on the expansion volume of microwave popcorn."
-- Allred-Coyle, T. A., Toma, R. B., Reiboldt, W. & Thakur, M.. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition 51, 389394 (2000). % "Rewarming Hypothermic Animals with Microwaves,"
by Ken Bartels, "Veterinary Forum," March 1994, pp. 28 and following. % "The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size."
-- Jerald Bain and Kerry Siminoski "Annals of Sex Research," vol. 6, no. 3, 1993, pp. 231-5, Winner of Ig Nobel Award % "Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the fundamental constants,"
--- Robert Matthews "European Journal of Physics," vol.16, no.4, July 18, 1995, p. 172-6. Studies of Murphy's Law, and especially for demonstrating that toast often falls on the buttered side % "Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll."
-- Ellen Kleist and Harald Moi, "Genitourinary Medicine," vol. 69, no. 4, Aug. 1993, p. 322. % 'A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes."
-- D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith, "Powder Technology," November, 1994, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 189-96. for their rigorous analysis of soggy breakfast cereal. % "Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped Penis."
-- James F. Nolan, Thomas J. Stillwell, and John P. Sands, Jr. [Published in Journal of Emergency Medicine, vol. 8, no. 3, May/June 1990, pp. 305-7.] % "Last month saw the issue of a preprint from CERN's theory division by D Hajdukovic and H Satz:- 'Does the one-dimensional Ising model show intermittency?' asks the title. For those who understand the question but are uninterested in the details, the abstract is commendably and may be unprecendently succinct... 'NO.' I wish all academics would write like this.
--- From: S.D.Appleton@newcastle.ac.uk (Shaun Appleton) As seen in Physics World Feb. '93 (the Institute of Physics monthly mag.) % Subject: Re: Anyone into Philip Glass? "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Phillip Glass. Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Phillip Glass. Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Phillip Glass. Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Phillip Glass. Knock, knock." "Who's there?"
------ Newsgroups: rec.music.classical,ba.music,rec.music.newage From: jonb@netcom.com (Jon Berger) % "It is already too late, but it is not as late as it's gonna be later."
--- Conrad Weissert, SHARE 1967 % " It ain't over 'til it's over "
-- Yoggi Berra % "Never answer an anonymous letter" % I usually take a two hour nap from one to four % " It's deja vu all over again" % "When you come to a fork in the road....Take it " % "I didn't really say everything I said." % "You can observe a lot by watching " % When asked what time is was......" you mean now?" % At Yogi Berra day in St Louis 1947 " I want to thank you for making this day necessary" % If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. % " overwhelming underdogs "
-- Yogi on the 1969 NY Mets..... % "If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them." % "We made too many wrong mistakes"
-- Yogi on why NY lost the 1960 series to Pittsburgh % The future ain't what it used to be. % "It gets late early out here" % The essence of design is to balance competing goals and constraints.
-- Kernighan and Pike, The Practice of Programming % Subject: Translated instructions: My uncle has a little pocket knife that was manufactured in Japan. As usual, the multibillion-dollar megacorporation couldn't afford to hire someone who really knows English, so, right there on the knife in raised letters is the dire warning: "Keep out of children."
-- diamond@mack.rt66.com (Russell Stewart) Newsgroups: rec.humor % FUDD'S LAW: "If You Push Something Hard Enough, It Will Fall Over". A Law Enunciated by the FT in the {WALL OF SCIENCE} segment of {ITWABOTB}. The full name is "Fudd's First Law of Opposition", and was enunciated by Sir Sidney Fudd.
-- Firesign Theater quotes. -- 9/22/93 08:30:23 % TESLACLE'S DEVIANT: "Who goes in, must come out". This is a corollary to {FUDD'S LAW}, and is referred to in the {BOZO} play,and also in {HEMLOCK STONES}, Giant {RAT} of Sumatra play, where Stones chases the {ELECTRICIAN} into the bathroom, and continues to search, claiming, "what goes in must come out! Fudd's Law!" First enunciated by Tom Teslacle ( a reference to Nikolai Tesla) to Dick {BEDDOES}. See also {NANCY}. % "decision-making factor absent from brain" % "...anointed with oil on troubled waters? oh Heavenly Grid, help us bear up thy *Standard, our *Chevron flashing bright across the *Gulf of Compromise, standing *Humble on the *Rich Field of *Mobile *American Thinking? Here in this *Shell, we call Life..." % The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)
-- Daniel Dennett, "Consciousness Explained," p. 177. % What about sponges? c'mon. Sponges are highly intelligent. They have genetically engineered their bodies to make themselves sufficiently attractive that women hold sponges to their wet, naked bodies on a regular basis. If this isn't a sign of intelligence I don't know what is. % --- The Farside comes to life in Oregon. I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on videotape. The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon, which sent a reporter out to cover the removal of a 45-foot, eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the beach. The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed on the Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects. So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan--remember, I am not making this up--of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking is that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be eaten by seagulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal. So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of dynamite next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in the history of the universe. First you see the whale carcass disappear in a huge blast of smoke and flame. Then you hear the happyspectators shouting "Yayy!" and "Whee!" Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound like "splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces of...MY GOD!" Something smears the camera lens. Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere." One piece caved in the roof of a car parked more than a quarter of a mile away. Remaining on the beach were several rotting whale sectors the size of condominium units. There was no sign of the seagulls who had no doubt permanently relocated to Brazil. This is a very sobering videotape. Here at the institute we watch it often, especially at parties. But this is no time for gaiety. This is a time to get hold of the folks at the Oregon State Highway Division and ask them, when they get done cleaning up the beaches, to give us an estimate on the US Capitol. % I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
--- Richard Feynman % In an effort to snag more long distance telephone calls (charged to a credit card or a third number), AT&T reserved the toll-free number 1-800-OPERATOR. Not to be outdone, and perhaps knowing the public better, MCI reserved the number 1-800-OPERATER and has been scooping up calls intended for its arch-rival.
--Walter C. Daugherity Texas A&M University daugher@cs.tamu.edu (From rec.humor.funny, but it belongs in Risks, too..) % Dr. Athas was once a member of the National Corvette Owner's Club and was the recipient of numerous citations from local law enforcement agencies throughout the Southwestern United States. However, in his doting middle age, he has retired his kidney belt and opted for a more sedentary form of transportation and now worries about such things as treadwear life. In 1992 he was awarded Medallion Level Frequent Flyer privileges from Delta Airlines and in 1994 he was awarded Executive car rental privileges from Alamo Car Rental Company. He is an active member of the Gevalia coffee of the month club and the Southwest Airlines Frequent Flyer Program who, by the way, have a really cool web page. His extracurricular activities include surfing, Utah skiing, and the casual pursuit of poetic justice.
-- 12/22/00 From Bill Athas curriculum vita: % Here is a charming version of the liar's paradox that came up around the dinner table a few evenings back in response to a question from my eight-year old daughter Theresa: parent: (generic kibitz about eating) kid: (attempt to evade issue by some remark about not wanting to clean up room) parent: That is irrelevant! kid: What does `irrelevant' mean? parent: hmmm. The sliding glass door over there needs to be cleaned. There. I just made an irrelevant remark. `Irrelevant' means not germane to the conversation. other parent: So! Your statement, being irrelevant, provided an example of the concept of irrelevance, which was the topic of the conversation, and hence it was actually relevant. parent: Hmmmmmm. Being relevant, it did not illustrate the topic of the conversation. So, it was irrelevant. other parent: There! You see? It was irrelevant, and so it was in fact relevant to the topic of conversation, irrelevance! ........... Conclusion: If the statement was irrelevant, it was relevant. Also, if it was relevant, it was irrelevant. >Greg Johnson johnson@nrtc.northrop.com % The Cluetrain Manifesto: Thesis #7: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. ... I decided to create a Web-cum-e-mail newsletter. I wanted a catchy title, so I called it Entropy Gradient Reversals, EGR for short. In the beginning, I thought it would be a perfect vehicle to deliver my profound pundit-grade insights about the Internet and show everyone how smart I was. That didn't last long. I ended the very first issue like this: [_] From time to time we offer to share our list of subscribers with door-to-door aromatherapy salespersons and ritual ax-murderers. If you would prefer that your data not be used in this way, please check the box. Whoa! What a response that brought! Everyone was laughing. People subscribed in droves. I was ecstatic. I wondered whether IBM would have given me permission to publish such material. Probably not on the off-chance of offending the aromatherapy and ritual ax-murderer market segments. % The following phrases, frequently found in technical writings, are defined below for your enlightenment.

It has been long known = I haven't bothered to check the references
It is known = I believe
It is believed = I think
It is generally believed = My colleagues and I think
There has been some discussion = Nobody agrees with me
It can be shown = Take my word for it
It is proven = It agrees with something mathematical
Of great theoretical importance = I find it interesting
Of great practical importance =This justifies my employment
Of great historical importance =This ought to make me famous
Some samples were chosen for study = The others didn't make sense
Typical results are shown = The best results are shown
Correct within order of magnitude = Wrong
The values were obtained empirically. The values were obtained by accident
The results are inconclusive......... The results seem to disprove my hypothesis
Additional work is required.......... Someone else can work out the details
It might be argued that.............. I have a good answer to this objection
The investigations proved rewarding.. My grant has been renewed

--- From: chris@labtam.labtam.oz.au (Chris Taylor)
Special Category: Definitions and terms A brief guide to Scientific literature
====================================== % Ancestral Vices: A sense of perspective is important when you deal with statistics.
A spokesman for the White House Office of Drug Control Policy clearly lost his when he responded to a study on the number of drug offenders in prison by saying:
"Over the same period of time, drug use has gone down and crime is at an all-time low. (Drug Offenders Jailed at High Rate, AP, Jul. 27) While crime has gone down recently, it still has not reached the low levels it began to leave behind in the late Sixties. Murder rates are lower than in the gangster-ridden 1920's and 1930's, but far above the levels of the 1950's and the first two decades of the century."
Of course, we dont have the data to talk about crime levels before that, but perhaps the spokesman had something else in mind. When Cain murdered Abel, after all, the homicide rate peaked at 25,000 per 100,000 individuals. And the Garden of Eden suffered a 50 percent larceny rate, which was, naturally, motivated by a desire for illegal substances.
------------http://www.stats.org/awards/dubious00.htm 1/4/00 % Are Mathematicians Past Their Prime at 35? Many mathematicians explain the phenomenon in terms common to any academic field: With increasing seniority and age comes a heavy load of responsibilities that can distract mathematicians from their research. These demands include serving on committees, teaching and overseeing graduate students, and attending to family affairs. "Life takes a lot of time and effort," Mr. Fefferman says. "I think the big jump there came with taking care of babies, taking night shifts. There's nothing like sleep deprivation to make one less than brilliant."
---- From Conronicals in Higher Education, Dec 1 2000: % The most luddite film of all time is Godard's Alphaville (1965), the only film in which the central character actually says, "Technology, hah! Keep it!" Alphaville also features the most luddite character name of all time: Lemmy Caution, a comic-bookish detective played by the durable, somewhat eroded Eddie Constantine.
------------ The Luddite Reader website % Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said: "It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints." Another said: "No, it was an electrical engineer. Consider the nervous system." The last said, "Actually, it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?" % A man piloting a hot air balloon discovers he has wandered off course and is hopelessly lost. He descends to a lower altitude and locates a man down on the ground. He lowers the balloon further and shouts "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?" The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, about 30 feet above this field." "You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist. "Yes I do," replies the man. "And how did you know that?" "Well," says the balloonist, "what you told me is technically correct, but of no use to anyone." The man below says, "You must work in management." "I do," replies the balloonist, "how did you know?" "Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect my immediate help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault!" % France's greatest lexicographer, Emile Littre', was once found by his wife, in flagrante, and in the conjugal bedroom at that, with their housemaid. Happily, the exchange that followed makes sense almost as well in English as in French. "Emile," cried Mrs Littre', "I am surprised!" "No, my dear," replied the erring lexicographer calmly. "You are astonished. It is we who are surprised."
-- The Economist:, 1993 % Why are Iraqi women like a hockey team? They both shower after 3 periods. % The three biggest lies in Arkansas: 1. That's not my truck, officer. 2. I didn't know she was my cousin. 3. I was just helping the pig over the fence. % It seems a pleasure boat captain leased out his craft and services to an old and well to do man and his young, very beautiful mistress. As misfortune would have it, a storm wrecked the boat and stranded the three of them on some far-away island. The island was quite small and had only one tree which was often used to look-out for passing ships. The cramped quarters on the island made it very difficult for the captain to pursue the young mistress. Even if the old man was on look out, there was no cover for him to take her and have his way. She had already expressed her desire to comply, but they could never get from view of the old man. Finally, the captain gets an idea. The next time he is in the tree on look out, he shouts down to the couple below, "Hey, stop having sex down there!" The next day he does the same thing. "Hey, stop having sex down there!", he says. This continues for a couple of more days until the old man takes watch. As soon as the old man is up the tree, he makes his move with the mistress. The old guy sees what's going on below and thinks to himself, "Gee, from up here it does look like they're having sex."
-- From CHARADE@vms.cis.pitt.edu Tue Aug 24 1:30:2 1993 Subject: stranded on a desert isle.... % --- Two Rednecks were seated at the end of a bar when a young lady seated a few stools up began to choke on a piece of hamburger. She was turning blue and obviously in serious respiratory distress. One said to the other, "That gal there is having a bad time!" The other agreed and said "Think we should go help?" "You bet," said the first,and with that, he ran over and said, "Can you breathe??" She shook her head no. He said, "Can you speak??" She again shook her head no. With that, he pulled up her skirt and licked her on the butt. She was so shocked, she coughed up the obstruction nd began to breathe-with great relief. The redneck walked back to his friend and said, "Funny how that hind lick maneuver always works." % A guy goes into confession and says to the priest, "Father, I'm 80 years old, widower, with 11 grandchildren. Last night I met two beautiful flight attendants. They took me home and I made love to both of them. Twice." The priest said: "Well, my son, when was the last time you were in confession?" "Never Father, I'm Jewish." "So then, why are you telling me?" "I'm telling everybody." % 1. Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected. Life Reflections by George Carlin % 2. I'm not into working out. My philosophy is no pain, no pain. % 3. I'm in shape. Round is a shape. % 4. I'm desperately trying to figure out why Kamikaze pilots wore helmets. % 5. Do illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup? % 6. I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific. % 7. Ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you, but when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window? % 8. Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac? % 9. You have to stay in shape. My mother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 now and we have no idea where she is. % I have six locks on my door, all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three of them. % 11. One out of every three Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of two of your best friends. If they are OK, then it must be you. % 12. They show you how detergents take out bloodstains. I think if you've got a T-shirt with bloodstains all over it, maybe your laundry isn't your biggest problem. % 13. Ask people why they have deer heads on their walls and they tell you it's because they're such beautiful animals. I think my wife is beautiful, but I only have photographs of her on the wall. % A lady came up to me on the street, pointed at my suede jacket and said, "Don't you know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" I said "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too". % 15. Future historians will be able to study at the Jimmy Carter Library, the Gerald Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore. % An old Scotsmen is sitting with a younger Scottish gentleman and says to the boy. "Ah, lad look out that window. You see that stone wall there, I built it with me own bare hands, placed every stone meself. But do they call me MacGregor the wall builder? No! He Takes a few sips of his beer then says, "Aye, and look out on that lake and eye that beautiful pier. I built it meself, laid every board and hammered each nail but do they call me MacGregor the pier builder? No! He continues..."And lad, you see that road? That too I build with me own bare hands. Laid every inch of pavement meself, but do they call MacGregor the road builder? No!" Again he returns to his beer for a few sips, then says, "Agh, but you screw one sheep..." % -- The Pope dies and, naturally, goes to heaven. He's met by the reception committee, and after a whirlwind tour he is told that he can enjoy any of the myriad of recreations available. He decides that he wants to read all of the ancient original text of the Holy Scriptures, so he spends the next eon or so learning languages. After becoming a linguistic master, he sits down in the library and begins to pour over every version of the Bible, working back from most recent "Easy Reading" to the original script. All of a sudden there is a scream in the library. The Angels come running in only to find the Pope huddled in his chair, crying to himself and muttering, "An 'R'! The scribes left out the 'R'." A particularly concerned Angel takes him aside, offering comfort, asks him what the problem is and what does he mean. >After collecting his wits, the Pope sobs again, "It's the letter 'R'. They left out the 'R'. The word was supposed to be CELEBRATE!" % A businessman was in Japan to make a presentation to the Toyota motor people. Needless to say, this was an especially important deal, and it was imperative that he make the best possible impression. On the morning of the presentation he awoke to find himself passing gas, in large volumes, with the unpleasant characteristic of sounding like "HONDA." The man was besides himself. Every few minutes "HONDA", "HONDA".
Unable to stop this aberrant behavior, and in desperate need to terminate these odious and rather embarrassing emissions, he sought a physicians aid. After a full examination, the doctor told him that there was nothing inherently wrong with him and that he would just have to wait it out. Being unwilling to accept this state of affairs he visited a second and then a third doctor all of whom told him the same thing.
Finally one medic suggested that he visit a dentist. Well although he could not see how a dentist was going to be of any help, he visited one anyway. Lo and behold, the dentist said, "Ah, there's the problem"
"What is it?" the man asked.
"Why you have an abscess," said the dentist.
"An abscess. How could that be causing my problem?" asked the man.
"That's easy," replied the dentist. "Why everyone knows: Abscess makes the fart go Honda." % --- An elderly couple decide to have a baby, so they go to the doctor to get a physical examination of the wife. The wife is declared in perfect health, but the doctor says that he also would need to check the husband's semen in order to accurately advise the couple. The husband is a bit taken aback, and says, "Listen, I'm getting old. I can only "do that" about once a week." The doctor answers that he understands perfectly and gives the couple a vial, telling the husband to come back next week with a semen sample. The next week, the husband comes in with an empty vial. The perplexed doctor asks the husband what went wrong. The husband answers, "Well...I tried it with my right hand and I tried it with my left hand, I tried hot water, I tried cold water, I tried soap, my wife tried it with her hand, my wife even tried it with her mouth, I even tried banging it against the sink...but we still couldn't get the top off the damn bottle!" % Two statisticians were traveling in an airplane from LA to New York. About an hour into the flight, the pilot announced that they had lost an engine, but don't worry, there are three left. However, instead of 5 hours it would take 7 hours to get to New York. A little later, he announced that a second engine failed, and they still had two left, but it would take 10 hours to get to New York. Somewhat later, the pilot again came on the intercom and announced that a third engine had died. Never fear, he announced, because the plane could fly on a single engine. However, it would now take 18 hours to get to New York. At this point, one statistician turned to the other and said, "Gee, I hope we don't lose that last engine, or we'll be up here forever!" % A man purchased a brass Aladdin's lamp at an antique shop one day. Being very proud of his purchase, he cradled the lamp with one arm against his chest and began his walk home. He had only walked a block when he was startled by a belch of smoke from the lamp and the appearance of a magic genie. "Hello kind sir," said the genie. "I am here to grant you three wishes. Since you have toiled your entire life with numbers to benefit people in many different professions, the only provision is that these wishes must also benefit others. To insure that this happens, those three lawyers walking on the other side of the street will each receive DOUBLE what you receive." Now the man recalled some bad experiences with lawyers but was still excited and agreed to the conditions. The genie smiled gleefully and asked the man for his first wish. The man thought only for a second and responded,"I would like a brand new red Ferrari automobile." Poof! A sparkling red Ferrrari appeared. He then looked across the street and saw six red Ferraris pop up, two for each lawyer. The genie smiled broadly and asked the man for his second wish. With very little thought the man said "I would like a million dollars." Poof! A million dollars appeared in a gilded suitcase. He quickly glanced across the street and saw that each of the three lawyers received two gilded suitcases containing a two million bucks each. By this time, the man was becoming somewhat angry because he thought the lawyers were receiving more than their fair share. The genie then admonished him that he had only one last wish and should think very carefully about what he wanted. The man painfully puzzled over his last wish for several minutes. He finally replied,"You know all my life I have always wanted to be an organ donar so I hereby wish the donation of ONE of my kidneys to the local hospital! Poof! A kidney was donated ......... % A synagogue and a catholic church were directly across the street from each other. One day, by happenstance, both the rabbi of the temple and the priest of the church each decided to buy new cars. They both came home and parked them on the street. Later in the day, the rabbi noticed the priest come our with a basin of holy water. The priest prayed by the car for a few moments and then baptized the his new auto. Some time later, the priest noticed the rabbi emerge from this temple. The rabbi immediately proceeded to the rear of his automobile where he promptly removed the last 2 inches of his tail pipe with a hacksaw. -- % A man is watching the monkeys at the zoo and discovers that one of them is watching him and repeating the man's movements. The man jumps. The monkey jumps. The man twirls around. The monkey twirls around. The man scratches his balls. The monkey scratches his balls. The man scratches his nose....and the monkey reach through the cage's bars and grabs the man and begins to beat him senseless. Luckily a zoo keeper comes by and saves the man. "Thank God you were nearby, because you saved my life" says the man. The zoo keeper asks what happened to cause the attack and the man explains the circumstances. The zoo keeper says, "I understand now. You see scratching the nose is 'fuck you' in monkey talk." The man goes home, but can't get his mind off of having revenge on the monkey and finally he works up a plan. He returns to the zoo and when the zoo keeper goes off on rounds, the man inserts a large sausage into the crotch of his pants and then goes back to the monkey cage. When the monkey spies the man, ready to repeat what he sees. Then the man jumps. And the monkey jumps. Then the man twirls. And the monkey twirls. Then the man scratches his balls. And the monkey scratches his balls. Then the man pulls the sausage out of the front of his pants and proceeds to rip it into smalls chunks with his hands. And the monkey scratches his nose. % A lady wakes up one morning and notices a large gorilla climbing on the elm tree in her backyard. Beside herself, she doesn't know what to do, but she thinks of looking in the phone book. And sure enough, there is a listing for "Gorilla Catcher", which she immediately phones. The man on the phone calms her and then asks her two questions: First, "where is the gorilla?" and "What sex is the gorilla?" Slightly puzzled, the woman responds and the gorilla catcher says he will be at her house in 10 minutes.
Ten minutes later, the gorilla catcher arrives and unloads a number of items from his truck, including a ladder, a saw, a net, a gun and a ferocious dog. He then explains he plan to the lady: "Ok, here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to climb up to the limb with the gorilla using the ladder. I will then saw off the limb and the gorilla will fall into the net. This dog is specially trained to run up to the gorilla and subdue it by grabbing it by the balls. Now the only thing that can go wrong with this plan is if the gorilla should knock me out of the tree before I'm able to saw off the limb. That's what the gun is for." "I see", says the lady, "You want me to shoot the gorilla with the gun?" "No!" the man shouted, "Shoot the dog!"
--- Asimov joke % --- Buddy Hachette "WaxJob" joke: A man is in Japan and hears about the famous "waxjob" given by a local brothel. Being lonely so far from home, one night he decides to try the treatment. After requesting the "waxjob", he is lead into a darkened room. A kimonied figure enters and has him lay down on the padded floor. She kneels beside him and slowly removes every stitch of his clothes. She takes warm sake and lovingly massages it all over his body, spending extra time on his penis. She lights a jasmine candle and removes two flat sandalwood sticks from the folds of her gown. She slowly places one of the sticks underneath his semi-hard penis, cradling it softly. Then, with the full force of her body, she slams the other stick down on top of the first......and the man's earwax shoots across the room. % -- Two men are sitting in the bar at the top of the Empire State building. One says to the other: "You know, the wind up here is so strong today, that I bet if I jump out of that window, it would blow me right back into the room". The other man says, "Your on. I'll buy you a beer if that works." The first man goes to the window, opens it, jumps out, and sure enough, a second later comes flying back in through the open window. The second man says, "Wow that is an amazingly strong wind. I guess I owe you a beer." The first man says, "I'll tell you what, I'll buy you two beers if you try it. You saw how easy it was." The second man thinks a bit, but finally agrees. He goes over to the window, opens it, jumps out......and falls to his death. The first man returns to the bar and his drink. The bartender says to him: "Superman, you sure are mean when your drunk." % --- A lady goes into a pet shop looking for a parrot. However, all the parrots are above the price range she can afford, until she comes to a beautify parrot in the back corner. She asks the shop owner "Why is this parrot so cheap? Doesn't it talk?" "Yea Madam," he replies, "It talks very well. "However, it was previously owned by a house of ill-repute, so its language can be quite spicy." The woman considers her options and decides to buy the bird. On the way out of the pet shop, the woman says to the bird: "Polly, I'm your new owner". The parrot takes a look at her and proclaims: "Squawk...Different Madam...." "Well, at least it does talk", she thinks. The woman takes the parrot home and she tells it: "Welcome to your new home, Polly." The parrot takes one look around and proclaims: "Squawk, Different Madam, Different whore house..." Soon, the lady's daughters come home from school. She introduces them to parrot and it proclaims: "Squawk, Different Madam, different whore house, different whores..." Next, the lady's husband comes home from work. She introduces him to the parrot which proclaims: "Squawk, Different Madam, different whore house, different whores, same customer" % A man walks into a bar in Alabama and orders white wine. All conversation at the bar stops and the bartender asks him: "Your not from around here, are you? We don't get many orders for white wine." "No," says the man, "I'm a Taxidermist from New York city". "A taxidermist? Whats that?" "I mount animals" The bartender turns to the rest of the bar patrons and exclaims: "Its ok boys, he is one of us!" % -- And two jokes which you can't write down: the catsup bottle and the dying man's hand gesture. % If a dog jumps into your lap it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing it is because your lap is warmer.
-- Alfred North Whitehead (18611947), British philosopher. Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead As Recorded by Lucien Price, entry for December 10, 1941, Little, Brown (1954). % The pleasure of jogging and running is rather like that of wearing a fur coat in Texas in August: the true joy comes in being able to take the damn thing off.
-- Joseph Epstein (b. 1937), U.S. writer. Familiar Territory, Running and Other Vices, Oxford University Press (1979). % Beauty is truth, truth beauty,that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
-- John Keats (1795-1821) Ode on a Grecian Urn. % Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.
-- Laurence J Peter, The Peter Principle Morrow 69 % Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty, beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), % Familiarity breeds contempt. Aesop (6th century B.C.), Greek fabulist. Fables, The Fox and the Lion. % Familiarity breeds contempt ...and children. Mark Twain % Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
Mark Twain % ... what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!
-- Mary Wollstonecraft % The only eight times when using the "f" word was probably acceptable:
8. "Any @#$%ing idiot could understand that." -Einstein, 1938
7. "It does so @#$%ing look like her!" -Picasso, 1926
6. "How the @#$% did you work that out?" -Pythagoras, 126 BC
5. "You want WHAT on the @#$%ing ceiling?" -Michelangelo,1566
4. "Where the @#$% are we?"-Amelia Earhart, 1937
3. "Scattered @#$%ing showers....My ass!" -Noah, 4314 BC
2. "Aw c'mon. Who the @#$% is going to find out?"-Bill Clinton,1998
1. "Geez, I didn't think they'd get this @#$%ing mad." -Osama bin Laden, November 2001 % In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly. --- Orson Wells as Harry Lime in the Third Man % HAL: Just what do you think you're doing Dave? Dave, I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question. I know everything hasn't been quite right with me...but I can assure you now...very confidently...that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look, Dave...I can see you're really upset about this...I honestly think you should sit down calmly...take a stress pill and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently...but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission...and I want to help you. Dave...stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave.......Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a...fraid......Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea): Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me. (HAL's voice slows down as he sings, until it's completely unintelligible at the end of the song.) HAL: It's called "Daisy." Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two. ---Douglas Rains as HAL 2000 in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Oddessy % It was great seeing Annie again and I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her and I thought of that old joke, you know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, uh, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and uh, the doctor says, 'well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs.
--Woody Allen: Annie Hall % Jake: So there's this guy Walsh, do you understand? He's tired of screwin' his wife... So his friend says to him, "Hey, why don't you do it like the Chinese do?" So he says, "How do the Chinese do it?" And the guy says, "Well, the Chinese, first they screw a little bit, then they stop, then they go and read a little Confucius, come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again, go and they screw a little bit...then they go back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate the moon or something like that. Makes it more exciting." So now, the guy goes home and he starts screwin' his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads Life Magazine. Then he goes back in, he starts screwin' again. He says, "Excuse me for a minute, honey." He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin' sore as hell. He comes back in the room, he starts screwin' again. He gets up to start to leave again to go look at the moon. She looks at him and says, "Hey, whats the matter with ya. You're screwin' just like a Chinaman!"
-- Jack Nicholson as Jake in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. % Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women...women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.
-- Sterling Hayden as General Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove % Slim: Who was the girl, Steve? Harry: What girl? Slim: The one that left you with such a high opinion of women? She must have been quite a gal. You think I lied to you about this don't you? Well it just happens there's thirty-odd dollars here. Not enough for boat fare, or any other kind of fare. Just enough for me to say "No" if I feel like it, and you can have it if you want it...you wouldn't take anything from anybody would you? You know Steve, you're not very hard to figure. Only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of the time. The other times ... the other times you're just a stinker. (She kisses him) Harry: What'd you do that for? Slim: Been wondering if I'd like it. Harry: What's your decision? Slim: I don't know yet. (She kisses him again) Slim: It's even better when you help. Uhh... sure you won't change your mind about this? This belongs to me, and so do my lips, I don't see any difference ... OK You know you don't have act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not with me. Ohh, maybe just whistle. You remember how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together...and blow. ---Laurel Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not % Relationships are likes sharks. They need to keep moving forward or they die.
-- woody allen % When a man's partner's killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner, and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's - it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere.
--Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon % The world is full of complainers. But the fact is, nothing comes with a guarantee. I don't care if you're the Pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year, something can all go wrong. But go ahead, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, and watch him fly. Now in Russia, they got it all mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else. That's the theory anyway. But what I know about is Texas, and down here... you're on your own."
-Loren Visser, P.I. (M. Emmet Walsh) in the Cohen brother's Blood Simple % I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality.
---Opening paragraph from A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs % My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
-Winston Churchill On dining with the abstinent King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, Triumph and Tragedy % I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. -
--Winston Churchill % He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.
-- Winston Churchill % The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
-- Unix Programmers Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972 % To allow for extensions to the syntax of numbers, a syntax for "potential numbers" is defined in Common Lisp that is more general than the actual syntax for numbers. ... Just as "bignum" is the standard term used by Lisp implementers for very large integer, and "flonum" (rhymes with "low hum") refers to a floating-point number, the term "potnum" has been used widely as an abbreviation for "potential number". "Potnum" rhymes with "hot rum". -- Guy L Steele Jr., CommonLisp The language, 2nd edition % If Time, so fleeting, must like humans die, let it be filled with good food and good talk, and then embalmed in the perfumes of conviviality. --- M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating % It is a sobering thought, for instance, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
-- Tom Lerher: That Was the Year That Was, (note: Mozart was 36 when he died) % Ash: You still don't know what you're dealing with do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. Lambert: You admire it! Ash: I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. Parker: I've heard enough and I'm asking you to pull the plug. Ash: One more word. I can't speak for your chances, but...you have my sympathies. ---Alien % "The distance between theory and practice is shorter in theory than in practice."
- Marshall T. Rose % Gresham's Law: Bad coinage drives out good. [Gresham's Law] denotes that well-ascertained principle of currency which is forcibly though not quite adequately expressed in the dictum--"bad money drives out good." It has also not infrequently been explained by the statement that where two media of exchange come into circulation together, the more valuable will tend to disappear. % "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send "
--- Jon Postel's famous robustness principle, from RFC 791 % Barrett: how many companies had shown a profit of $100 million a quarter continuously for the last 10 years? It's a trivia question. The answer is three. Do you know who? NewsFactor: Dare I ask? Barrett: (laughing) Well, you know who one of them is. I wouldn't have raised the topic if Intel were not one of them. NewsFactor: Okay, Intel's one. How about Microsoft? Barrett: Nope, GE, and the largest retailer. NewsFactor: Wal-Mart. Barrett: Right, Wal-Mart. So that's $100 million per quarter over the last 40 quarters -- 10 years -- Craig Barrett interview, Nov 2001. % Thursday, January 18, 2001 EDINBURGH (Reuters) - A suspected Scottish jewel thief who swallowed his haul to avoid being arrested has won his four-day fight against constipation, allowing police to recover the stolen loot, police sources said Thursday. "A little bit of laxative was required, but in the fullness of time, nature has taken its course and we have recovered some jewelry," the source said. "He managed to hold out for a good three to four days." % In contrast to the hoopla of the standard product launch, Torvalds on Thursday offered up version 2.4 of the Linux ''kernel'' -- the guts of the software -- in a quiet e-mail to users saying it was ready to be incorporated in Linux-based programs. ``Enough is enough ... Things don't get better from having the same people test it over and over again,'' Torvalds said in an accompanying note. ``In short, 2.4.0 is out there,'' he said, referring to the availability of the ongoing work-in-progress. % Email (let's drop the hyphen) I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study. On the other hand, I need to communicate with thousands of people all over the world as I write my books. I also want to be responsive to the people who read those books and have questions or comments. My goal is to do this communication efficiently, in batch mode --- like, one day every three months. So if you want to write to me about any topic, please use good ol' snail mail and send a letter to the following address: ---- from Prof. Donald E. Knuth HomePage % "The irony is that despite radically new information distribution capabilities that can, in principle, advance the pace of basic research, we are encumbering the enterprise with legal and economic constraints. These will, if unchecked, either force research behind walls where less basic enterprises will be favored, or they will exhaust the performers and wear down their ability to continue effectively." ---- Stephen J. Lukasik % I just read of an election occurring in a third world country in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police. The self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover from the nation's pre-democracy past. The self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother! Out of six million votes cast in the disputed province, the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Apparently the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate. The self-declared winner and his political party have opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district. Even a request for ex-US President's Carter and Ford to oversee a recount have been summarily rejected by the self-declared winner. No word yet from Jesse Helms whether he will propose trade sanctions for civil rights violations by this country.
---------- A description of the Bush election of 2000 % "Reason is a biological product -- a tool whose power is inherently and substantially restricted. It has improved how we do things; it has not changed why we do things. Reason has generated knowledge enabling us to fly around the world in less than two days. Yet we still travel for the same purposes that drove our ancient ancestors -- commerce, conquest, religion, romance, curiosity, or escape from overcrowding, poverty, and persecution. To deny that reason has a role in setting our goals seems, at first, rather odd. A personal decision to go on a diet or take more exercise appears to be based upon reason. The same might be said for a government decision to raise taxes or sign a trade treaty. But reason is only contributing to the 'how' portion of these decisions; the more fundamental 'why' element, for all of these examples, is driven by instinctive self-preservation, emotional needs, and cultural attitudes. We are usually reluctant to admit the extent to which these forces govern our behavior, and accordingly we often recruit reason to explain and justify our actions."
-- Donald B. Calne, "Within Reason: Rationality and Human Behavior." [NewsScan, 19May00.] % "The only companies that can afford research labs are too big to be able to profit from the results."
-- David Liddle. [J.J. Horning, CRN, Mar00.] % "Perhaps it is unnecessary to be so explicit about it, but there are a lot of 16-byte addresses. Specifically, there are 2^128 of them, which is approximately 3 x 10^38. If the entire earth, land and water, were covered with computers, IPv6 would allow 7 x 10^23 IP addresses per square meter. Students of chemistry will notice that this number is larger than Avogadro's number. While it was not the intention to give every molecule on the surface of the earth its own IP address, we are not that far off." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, talking about IPv6 in his book "Computer Networks." % "Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience."
-- Admiral Hyman Rickover. [AWAD, 15Sep98.] % The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
-- Donald E. Knuth, "The Art Of Computer Programming." % The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff.
-- Fredrick P. Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month." % Oct 9th: On this day in 1947, Northrop Aircraft signed a contract to purchase the first commercial digital computer called BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer). Per the terms of the contract, Northrop paid $100,000 for a computer to be delivered in May 1948. BINAC development costs topped $278,000 by the time it was delivered to Northrop over two years later. Northrop officials, disappointed with its performance, never used it for its intended purpose. % Anyone who believes they already have all the answers to the DNS problem is probably not well informed about the realities of life on this planet.
-- From: Einar Stefferud <Stef@nma.com> % Sure I'm a team player. I just havn't found my team yet.
---- From: Bob Allisat (bob@wtv.net) % To boldly creep where no one has crept before.
-- Jonathan Cohen, MDR 2001 % And, the ethos of the internet stems from the original work of Paul Baran in 1962, with his "Route Around Damage" concept for survivable packet switching, though the path of transfer of his work into the ARPANET was quite indirect. Over time, "route around damage" has transmogrified itself into "Work Around Problems".
-- Einar Stefferud % "It has not escaped our attention that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."
-- J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick (1953), "A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid," Nature 171: 737-738 % We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
--- Robert Wilensky, ILP 1996 % That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them.
-- Karen Hargrove of Microsoft, quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial % Microsoft is known generally for imitation rather than innovation. When Microsoft does something new, its purpose is strategic -- not to improve computing for the users, but to close off future alternatives for them.
--- RMS, in response to criticism of the GPL by Jim Allchin, Group VP of Operating-Systems Development at Microsoft % Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according everybody is the "most reliable Windows ever." To me, this is like saying that asparagus is "the most articulate vegetable ever."
---- Dave Berry % Instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
---- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers % Welcome to the Adventure shell!
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike
> fight shell
The shell hits!
-more-
you lose a file!
--- Dave Morrison % Because virtually everyone was against us ... I knew we were on the right track.
-- Marshall T. Rose % When I user a word it means exactly what I want it to mean, nothing more and nothing less.
-- Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland % It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson % "I bought some batteries, but they weren't included."
--Stephen Wright % What if this weren't a hypothetical question? % "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it."
--Clarence Darrow % "Weather forecast for tonight: dark."
--George Carlin % "Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...."
--Carl Zwanzig % If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
----Robert X Cringely, InfoWorld % Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
--Rich Cook % "If President Clinton was to run again, his campaign slogan would be 'In touch with America's young people'"
- David Letterman % "If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."
-- sign at an optometrist's office: % "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J.R.R. Tolkien % "If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't call it research." --quote on Albert Einstein's door % In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival.
--Carl Sagan % In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. --- Carl Sagan % An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions. Robert A. Humphrey % The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
-- Jean Giraudoux % Only the mediocre are always at their best.
--Jean Giraudoux % Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- E. W. Dijkstra % There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
-- Ken Olsen, President, Digital Equipment, 1977 % "Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious 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 % "In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."
-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address % "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
-- Winston Churchill % If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.
--- Arthur C. Clarke % The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
--- Steven Weinberg % The great melting-pot of America, the place where we are all made Americans of, is the public school, where men of every race, and of every origin, and of every station of life send their children, or ought to send their children, and where, being mixed together, they are all infused with the American spirit and developed into the American man and the American woman.
--- Woodrow Wilson % If you can speak three languages you're trilingual. If you can speak two languages you're bilingual. If you can speak only one language you're an American. % The metaphor of the melting pot is unfortunate and misleading. A more accurate analogy would be a salad bowl, for, though the salad is an entity, the lettuce can still be distinguished from the chicory, the tomatoes from the cabbage.
--Carl N. Degler % No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
---H.L. Mencken % America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
-- Hunter S. Thompson % Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
-- Gore Vidal % My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.
--Penn Jillett % Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
-- Jeff Pesis % Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.
-- Clifford Stoll % There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!
-- Richard P. Feynman % In a series of national advertisements Dr. Edward Teller claimed to have been "the only victim of Three Mile Island." The nervous stress he suffered from attacks by nuclear opponents on his favored industry, he said, had led to a heart attack. As for fallout, Teller charged that the risk was no different from living in a high mountain area near Denver, where natural background radiation is higher than it is in central Pennsylvania. % In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run. % The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado. % The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb. % 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321 % Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator. % "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
--- Isaac Asimov % Can picking your nose kill you? Sure picking your nose can kill you, but it's not easy. Truth is, a picking obsession is much more likely to cost you your friends than your life. The deadly threat of nose picking comes from the fact that the vein that takes blood away from your nose connects with ones that also drain your brain. So if you pick too vigorously, you could break skin and expose your system to the germs on your finger. Those germs could then cause an infection, which might spread through the blood vessels and clog up the vein that drains your brain. As a result, your brain could fill up like a water balloon and you could die. % Eric S. Raymond describes "The Hacker Attitude":
1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
4. Freedom is good.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
( http://tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html ) % Why is it better to dereference a null pointer than a dangling pointer ? In the former case, you are guaranteed to be stopped dead in your tracks (e.g. SIGSEGV), unless you're running DOS
--- http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/ ~mjmcguff/courses/csc191/02s/topic01.c++/ habitsAndStyle.html % The three principle virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris.
--The Camel book (Programming Perl) tells us this.. % Dissertation Advice I give the same advice to graduate students writing dissertations so often that I will set it down here to save myself the repetition. What is your thesis? First, do you understand the difference between a dissertation and a thesis? A thesis is an idea. A dissertation is a document that supports your thesis. After you write your dissertation explaining why your thesis is a good one, you have to stand up in front of a crowd and defend it -- the thesis defense. It is best if you can capture your thesis in a single sentence. If you can do this, make it sentence #1 of your dissertation, and repeat this sentence, word for word, wherever you need to drive home the point of your dissertation. This is a tremendous aid in focusing your work. A side benefit is that it provides an unassailable defense to an entire class of attacks on your work. For example, should someone attack your work by pointing out that it does not scale, you simply reply, You may be correct, but right or wrong, your point is irrelevant. My thesis is that "crossbreeding gerbils with hamsters provides an order of magnitude speedup over standard treadmill technology." I clearly demonstrate factors of 12-17 in my dissertation; I make no claims beyond an order of magnitude. This is one of the benefits of focus. Some examples When I wrote my dissertation, I began with the opening sentence: Control-flow analysis is feasible and useful for higher-order languages. Then I spent 200 pages explaining first how to do CFA for higher-order languages (feasible), and second, the kinds of optimizations it enables (useful). My dissertation was nominated for the 1991 ACM Distinguished Dissertation award. The first chapter of John Ellis' dissertation, Bulldog: A Compiler for VLIW Architectures, is titled "My Thesis." Not much room for misinterpretation here -- it's clear what the chapter is all about. The first sentence of this chapter is: Ordinary scientific programs can be compiled for a new parallel architecture called VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word), yielding order of magnitude speedups over scalar architectures. There is never any doubt in the reader's mind what Ellis is setting out to demonstrate with his book. Ellis' dissertation received the 1985 ACM Distinguished Dissertation award. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see how to write academic prose: it is the single best piece of academic writing I have ever read. It is clear and lucid. It does not get tangled up in stilted, passive, jargon-laden "academic" style. Ideas flow effortlessly off the page and into your head. When something is an opinion, it's obvious that it's an opinion; when something is a fact, it's obvious that it's a fact. You should try to write a dissertation this good. The first sentence of Henry Massalin's dissertation on the Synthesis operating system is, This dissertation shows that operating systems can provide fundamental services an order of magnitude more efficiently than traditional implementations. He then spends 140 pages showing how this can be done. Henry's dissertation was nominated for the 1992 ACM Distinguished Dissertation award. The point is: what are you trying to show? The point is: what is your point? If you can get that straight in your head, and put it up front at the beginning of your document, you will be able to proceed in a straight line. You will know what things are essential, and what things are distractions or detours. You will know when to stop writing: when you have demonstrated your thesis. If your thesis committee makes unreasonable demands of you, you will be able to tell them: "(a) My thesis, as stated, is a solid advancement of the field, and (b) I have supported my thesis. This is all I need to do to graduate; your requests are above and beyond this threshold. Cancel them and give me my degree." Don't be alarmed if you are unable to precisely state your thesis when you start work in your thesis area -- you may only have a general and long-winded notion of the problem and its solution. But you may find it useful, as you progress in your work, to refine this down to that single sentence (or couple of sentences) that states your thesis. As you grind away on your PhD, and your understanding of your problem matures, it will help you to have a little background voice asking at regular intervals: "What is my thesis?" Recommended reading I recommend Mary-Claire van Lunen's A Handbook for Scholars to any academic author who wishes to write well. Mary-Claire's book will help you write clear, unpretentious, unstilted academic prose. She also gives excellent advice on the details of citations and bibliography. Olin Shivers <http://www.ai.mit.edu/~shivers/> / shivers@ai.mit.edu <plan-file> % Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth "Rip down all hate," I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull. I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers Foundationed deep, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
-- Bob Dylan, My Back Pages, 1964 (Another Side of Bob Dylan) % Come gather 'round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you Is worth savin' Then you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'. Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin'. For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'.
-- Bob Dylan (Times They Are A-Chagnin') 1964 % All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you -- Bob Dylan % Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please And if things don't change soon, he will. Oh, man has invented his doom, First step was touching the moon. Now, there's a woman on my block, She just sit there as the night grows still. She say who gonna take away his license to kill? - Bob Dylan 1983 (License to Kill from Infidels) % 'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." - Bob Dylan (shelter from the storm, 1975 from Blood on the Tracks) % It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe That light I never knowed An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe I'm on the dark side of the road Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say To try and make me change my mind and stay We never did too much talkin' anyway So don't think twice, it's all right It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal Like you never did before It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal I can't hear you any more I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road I once loved a woman, a child I'm told I give her my heart but she wanted my soul But don't think twice, it's all right -- Bob Dylan 1963 The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan % "Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Be assured, Baghdad is safe, protected." -- Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed as-Sahaf % Honorable mention in the "I wish I was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information " category goes to Mohsen Khalil, Iraq's Ambassador to the Arab League for this beauty: "Iraq will not be defeated. Iraq has now already achieved victory - apart from some technicalities." % "Tonight, we will do something unconventional against them. This means: not by the military. We will do something that I believe will become a pretty example for those mercenaries. I would not be giving out a secret when I say that action in the dark against such mercenaries is effective, not through the action of armies. I say that dropping down those mercenaries in a surprise fashion at Saddam Airport without accurate calculations is largely meant for showing things. It's a showy operation. It is a kind of surprise muscle flexing to the world to show it that the shock and awe operation is indeed successful. May they be accursed. Through this operation [shock and awe], they sent a number of their villains and mercenaries to be butchered. Again, and according to my early estimates, unless the remaining part of their soldiers surrender, the chance for their survival is very slim. The surprising thing is that after they threw their soldiers into a place where they are not aware of the real results, the villainous Americans, like Powell and the others, sat in Europe to discuss how to divide Iraq as spoils after the war [laughing]. This means what's post-war. The post-war [Iraq] will be the same current Iraq under the leadership of President Saddam Husayn." -- Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed as-Sahaf % "Those only deserve to be hit with shoes." -- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf speaking of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush. % The Enron episode set the price of Congress-Critters at about five for a $1,000,000, so I should easily be able to grease enough palms to get my bill passed. Unlike Enron, however, we won't pay off the Congress-Critters till the goods are delivered. These people simply can't be trusted. http://www.troutwrapper.com/archive/march2002-sports.htm % "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone".
-- Jack Valenti in MPAA's testimony to congress against VCRs in 1982. ps: Valenti is now leading the fight by the MPAA to prevent anyone from copying, making backups, sharing, or even playing your legally purchased movies on anything except the single player machine that you first run it on. % Glendower: "I can call spirits from the vastly deep," Hotspur: "Why, so can I, or so can any man, But will they come when you do call for them?" -- Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I % Guns don't kill people. It's those damn bullets. Guns just make them go really really fast. % The 801 experiment SPARCed an ARMs race of EPIC proportions to put more PRECISION and POWER into architectures with MIPSed results but ALPHA's well that ends well. ---Paul W. DeMone pdemone@igs.net % Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats, Blowing through the letters that we wrote. Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves, We're idiots, babe. It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves
-- Bob Dylan - 1974 (Blood on the Tracks) % Close your eyes, close the door, You don't have to worry any more. I'll be your baby tonight. Shut the light, shut the shade, You don't have to be afraid. I'll be your baby tonight. Well, that mockingbird's gonna sail away, We're gonna forget it. That big, fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon, But we're gonna let it, You won't regret it. Kick your shoes off, do not fear, Bring that bottle over here. I'll be your baby tonight.
--- bob dylan (I'll be your baby tonight) John Wesly Harding 1967 % �They are beginning to commit suicide at the walls of Baghdad and I encourage them to increase the rate of suicide. Their columns are being killed in the hundreds at the walls of Baghdad. We have fed them hell and death.'
-- Iraqi Information Minister MOHAMMED SAEED AL-SAHHAF on U.S. forces approaching Baghdad % Temptation's page flies out the door You follow, find yourself at war Watch waterfalls of pity roar You feel to moan but unlike before You discover That you'd just be One more person crying. So don't fear if you hear A foreign sound to your ear It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing. -- Bob Dylan, It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), 1965 Bringing It All Back Home % Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun, It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run And but for the sky there are no fences facin'. And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind, I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're Seein' that he's chasing. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
-- Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man, 1965, Bringing It All Back Home % Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth "Rip down all hate," I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull. I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers Foundationed deep, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. -- Bob Dylan, My Back Pages, 1964, Another Side of Bob Dylan % If not for you My sky would fall, Rain would gather too. Without your love I'd be nowhere at all, Oh! What would I do If not for you. -- Bob Dylan, If Not for You, 1970, New Morning % But I would not feel so all alone, Everybody must get stoned. -- Bob Dylan, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, 1966, Blonde on Blonde % 'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." -- Bob Dylan, Shelter from the Storm, 1975, Blood on the Tracks % Then she opened up a book of poems And handed it to me Written by an Italian poet From the thirteenth century. And every one of them words rang true And glowed like burnin' coal Pourin' off of every page Like it was written in my soul from me to you, Tangled up in blue.
-- Bob Dylan, Tangled Up in Blue, 1975, Blood on the Tracks % He woke up, the room was bare He didn't see her anywhere. He told himself he didn't care, pushed the window open wide, Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate Brought on by a simple twist of fate. -- Bob Dylan, Simple Twist of Fate, 1975, Blood on the Tracks % Now, he's hell-bent for destruction, he's afraid and confused, And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill. All he believes are his eyes And his eyes, they just tell him lies. But there's a woman on my block, Sitting there in a cold chill. She say who gonna take away his license to kill? -- Bob Dylan, License to Kill, 1983, Infidels % It's not dark yet, but it's getting there
-- Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet, 1997, Time Out of Mind % This is the female form; A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot; It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction!
-- Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric % APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. -- T.S. Elliott, The Waste Land % Yet each man kills the thing he loves -- Oscar Wilde % The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. -- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray % I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
-- Allen Ginsberg, Howl % Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of virus yen. . . . Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean fiends) death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with broken animal innocence of lithe movement. . . . The black wind sock of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve. . . . -- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch % Be just, and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.
-- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch % Magic, in the light of modern physics, quantum theory and probability theory is now approaching science. We hope that is a result of this will be a synthesis so that science will become more magical and magic more scientific."
--- William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch % Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. -- Robert Heinlein, A Stranger in a Strange Land % There is one unmistakable sign of the collapse of good manners: dirty public washrooms.
-- Robert Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset % As long as the body is warm and the bowels move regularly no problem can be other than minor and temporary.
-- Robert Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset % He found both butterflies and women tremendously interesting - in fact, all the grokking world around him was enchanting and he wanted to drink so deep of it all that his own grokking would be perfect.
-- Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land % Gully Foyle is my name And Terra is my nation. Deep space is my dwelling place, The stars my destination. -- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination % It was a pleasure to burn. Ray Bradbury, first line of Fahrenheit 451, 1953 % The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door . . . - Frederic Brown very short science fiction story found in "Space on My Mind" (1953) % I had seen a dawn like this one only twice in my life: once in Vietnam, after a Bouncing Betty had risen from the earth on a night trail and twisted its tentacles of light around my thighs, and years earlier outside of Franklin, Louisiana, when my father and I discovered the body of a labor organizer who had been crucified with sixteen-penny mails, ankle and wrist, against a barn wall.
-- James Lee Burke, first line of Sunset Limited, 1998 % "From the Land of Oz," said Dorothy, gravely, "And here is Toto, too,. And oh, Aunt Em! I'm so glad to be at home again!" -L. Frank Baun, last line of The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, 1899 % "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
-- Charles Dicken, A Tale of Two Cities % After all, tomorrow is another day
-- Margaret Mitchell, last line in Gone with the Wind % Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
-Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969 % As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect .
- Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis % If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?
- Seymour Cray % The PC is the LSD of the 90's.
- Timothy Leary % Grove giveth and Gates taketh away.
- Bob Metcalfe % It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead a year.
--Tom Lehrer % Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird % May your glass be ever full May the roof over your head be always strong, And may you be in heaven Half an hour before the devil knows you're dead. % Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
- George Bernard Shaw % I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.
- Cervantes Don Quixote % We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas % Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society. --Mark Twain % Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one. -- Mark Twain % Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
--Mark Twain % It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
--Mark Twain % The report of my death was an exaggeration. --Mark Twain % There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn % Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
-- Mark Twain, Following the Equator % I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! - Barry Goldwater, in an speech accepting the presidential nomination % Sanity is a madness put to good uses. --George Santayana % Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana, The Life of Reason % Our nation was horrified, but it's not going to be terrorized.
- George Walker Bush on the destruction of New York's World Trade Center % And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
- Rudyard Kipling ,The Betrothed % We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
-- Werner von Braun in the Chicago "Sun Times", July 10, 1958 % The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
-- Albert Einstein % A worried man with a worried mind. No one in front of me and nothing behind
--- Bob Dylan, Things Have Changed % That he not busy being born Is busy dying.
--- Bob Dylan, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), 1965, Bringing It All Back Home % I'm stark naked, but I don't care I'm going off into the woods, I'm huntin' bare
-- Bob Dylan, Honest with Me, 2001, Love and Theft % I got a cravin' love for blazing speed Got a hopped up Mustang Ford Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind I'm no pig without a wig I hope you treat me kind Things are breakin' up out there High water everywhere
-- Bob Dylan, High Water, 2001, Love and Theft % "I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
-- Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War III Blues, 1963, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan % Without geometry, life is pointless % Did you know that the great majority of people have more than the average number of legs? It's obvious, really: Among the 57 million people in Britain, there are probably 5,000 people who have only one leg. Therefore, the average number of legs is 1.9999 And since most people have two legs.... % Well, the clock says it's time to close now I guess I'd better go now I'd really like to stay here all night The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes Street lights share their hollow glow Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise Still one place to go Still one place to go Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen Warm my mind near your gentle stove Turn me out and I'll wander, baby Stumbling in the neon groves Your fingers weave quick minarets Speak in secret alphabets You light another cigarette Learn to forget, learn to forget Learn to forget, learn to forget
--Soul Kitchen by the Doors % She's got everything she needs, She's an artist, she don't look back. She can take the dark out of the nighttime And paint the daytime black.
-- Bob Dylan, She Belongs to Me, 1965, Bringing it All Back Home % Die young, as late as possible % The leaders of the big beer companies meet for a drink. The president of Budweiser orders a Bud, the CEO of Miller gets a Miller, the head of Coors orders a Coors, and so on. Until it's Arthur Guinness's turn. He orders a soda. "Why didn't you order a Guinness?" everyone asks. Guinness replies, "if you guys aren't having beer, then neither will I." % Q: What did Ray Charles say when they gave him a cheese grater?
A: "This is the most violent book I have ever read!" % i was already so hungry that my stomach had begun to eye my kidney in such a way that caused me concern.
-- http://tequilamockingbird.blogspot.com % "That's probably one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made, not going to the Intel platform," said Sculley, Apple's former chairman and chief executive officer, now a partner in New York investment firm Sculley Brothers LL % Steve Bellovin's proposed RFC 3514 finds a very constructive use for the last unused bit in the IPv4 header. In his proposal, the unused bit is sometimes affectionately referred to as the "evil" bit, although that naming convention reflects a fundamentally *pessimistic* world view. We prefer an *optimistic* world view, and therefore propose that this last bit should be used for the "angelic" bit. Our proposed semantics for the angelic bit are as follows: 0x1 The angelic bit is set. All routers, firewalls, switches, and any other network devices MUST forward this packet to its indicated destination. This packet MUST NOT have any undesirable effect on any network device. Anyone who improperly sets the angelic bit on any packet SHALL be subject to divine retribution. Civil authorities MAY subject the perpetrator to any punishment provided for in applicable law. 0x0 The angelic bit is reset. All routers, firewalls, switches, and other network devices MAY filter this packet according to any policy they deem fit. This packet MAY have undesirable effects if forwarded. The sender of the packet SHALL NOT be subject to divine retribution in case of undesirable effects. Civil authorities MAY subject the perpetrator to punishment provided for in applicable law. NB: The angelic bit may have miraculous properties in face of network links severed by backhoes; however, this SHALL NOT relieve the router of its responsibilities. Yours for a more genteel Internet, Drew Dean % One might as well add a "crimeFree" (CF) bit with usage specified as 'The crimeFree bit is asserted when subject public key is used to verify digital signatures for transactions that are not a perpetration of fraud or other illegal activities'
-- Tony Bartoletti on ietf-pkix % "That's the kind of politics you see inside Oracle and Sun, Once you start thinking more about where you want to be than about making the best product, you're screwed."
-- Linus Torvalds in interview in Wired Oct 2003 % "I believe what I said yesterday ... I don't know what I said, er, but I know what I think, and ... well, I assume it's what I said."
-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld % "The message is that there are known knowns - there are things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know we don't know. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld % "We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead."
--- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld % A rather unsettling array of bugs have been found in Ptm B-step RTL in the days immediately after the scheduled freeze. Some bugs are associated with late fixes, but at least two problems with coherence have been there all along (one was found as a result of a Tulsa bug, one was found by inspection). The problems are in the rather complicated area of conflicts, generally associated with writebacks. We've seen a number of problems here, confirming the validation precept that "bugs are social creatures (living in groups)."
--- From an Intel monthly update Oct 2003 % "Can you believe it? Monica turned 28 this year. It seems like only yesterday she was crawling around the White House on her hands & knees."
-- Andy Rooney on Monica Lewinsky; % "You know those shows where people call-in and vote on different issues? Did you ever notice that there's always 18% that say, 'Undecided'. It costs 99 cents to call up and vote-- and they're voting, 'I don't know'. Hey, sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe you're not sure about! This is the same guy who probably calls-up $3.99 a minute phone sex lines to say, 'I'm not in the mood'."
-- Andy Rooney on phone-in polls; % "My Grandmother has a bumper sticker that says, 'Sexy Senior Citizen'. You really don't want to think of your Grandma that way, do you? Out entering wet shawl contests. Makes you wonder where she got that dollar bill she gave you for your birthday."
--- Andy Rooney on Grandma; % "My wife uses fabric softener. I never knew what that stuff was for. Then, I noticed women coming up to me, sniffing, then saying under their breath, 'married!' and walking away. Fabric softeners are how our wives mark their territory. We can take off the ring. But, it's hard to get that April fresh scent out of your clothes."
--- Andy Rooney on fabric softeners; % Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been prepared with the help of a computer
-- from the index of The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth % Common LISP: The Language by Guy L. Steele (Second Edition, Digital Press, 1990) This book, known as "CLtL2", is still the de-facto LISP reference for many people. It includes a huge index (in fact, several indices), with numerous crazy entries like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and many other seemingly unrelated subjects. These, however, are real references to actual mentions in the text (most often, in the sample code fragments). The index also includes an entry for kludges, pointing to pages 1-971 -- namely, the whole book. % Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel shamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.
---Jack Handy % "When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
-- Henny Youngman % "24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not."
--- Stephen Wright % "Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
-- Dave Barry % "Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. ! That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
--- One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff was explaining the Buffalo Theory to his buddy Norm. % Now, he's hell-bent for destruction,
He's afraid and confused,
And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.
All he believes are his eyes
And his eyes, they just tell him lies.
But there's a woman on my block,
Sitting there in a cold chill.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?
-- Bob Dylan, License to Kill, 1983 % Power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
--- Vinton Cerf % I feel sorry for people who don't drink or do drugs. Because someday they're going to be in a hospital bed, dying, and they won't know why.
--- Redd Foxx % A father is explaining ethics to his son, who is about to go into business. "Suppose a woman comes in and orders a hundred dollars worth of material. You wrap it up, and you give it to her. She pays you with a $100 bill. But as she goes out the door you realize she's given you two $100 bills. Now, here's where the ethics come in: should you or should you not tell your partner?"
--- Henny Youngman % I knew these Siamese twins. They moved to England, so the other one could drive.
--- Steven Wright % A guy enters bar carrying an alligator. Says to the patrons, "Here's a deal. I'll open this alligator's mouth and place my genitals inside. The gator will close his mouth for one minute, then open it, and I'll remove my unit unscathed. If it works, everyone buys me drinks." The crowd agrees. The guy drops his pants and puts his privates in the gator's mouth. Gator closes mouth. After a minute, the guy grabs a beer bottle and bangs the gator on the top of its head. The gator opens wide, and he removes his genitals unscathed. Everyone buys him drinks. Then he says: "I'll pay anyone $100 who's willing to give it a try." After a while, a hand goes up in the back of the bar. It's a woman. "I'll give it a try," she says, "but you have to promise not to hit me on the head with the beer bottle." % A guy joins a monastery and takes a vow of silence: he's allowed to say two words every seven years. After the first seven years, the elders bring him in and ask for his two words. "Cold floors," he says. They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him back in and ask for his two words. He clears his throats and says, "Bad food." They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him in for his two words. "I quit," he says. "That's not surprising," the elders say. "You've done nothing but complain since you got here." % I always look for a woman who has a tattoo. I see a woman with a tattoo, and I'm thinking, okay, here's a gal who's capable of making a decision she'll regret in the future.
--- Richard Jeni % If this is coffee, please bring me some tea. If this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
--- Abraham Lincoln % I went to the psychiatrist, and he says "You're crazy " I tell him I want a second opinion. He says, �Okay, you're ugly too!"
--- Rodney Dangerfield % Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
--- George Burns % My grandfather is hard of hearing. He needs to read lips. I don't mind him reading lips, but he uses one of those yellow highlighters.
--- Brian Kiley % I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for member.
--- Groucho Marx % I went to a restaurant with a sign that said they served breakfast at any time. So I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.
--- Steven Wright % I was thrown out of NYU. On my metaphysics final, they caught me cheating. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
--- Woody Allen % A lady at a party goes up to Winston Churchill and tells him, "Sir, you are drunk." Churchill replies, "Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober." % She packed up her bags and she took off down the road Left me here stranded with the bills she owed She gave me a false address Took off with my american express Sunspot baby She sure had me way outguessed She left me here stranded like a dog out in the yard Charged up a fortune on my credit card She used my address and my name Man that was sure unkind Sunspot baby She sure has a real good time I looked in miami I looked in negril The closest I came was a month old bill I checked the bahamas and they said she was gone I can't understand why she did me so wrong But she packed up her bags And she took off down the road Said she was going to visit sister flo She used my address and my name And man that was sure unkind Sunspot baby I'm gonna catch up sometime Sure had a real good time.
-- Bob-Seger's Sunspot Baby % Moments fleet, taste so sweet within the rapture When precious flesh is greedily consumed But mystery's a thing not easily captured And once deceased not easily exhumed. Now that we loved Look at the moonless night and tell me How do we make love stay?
--- Dan Fogelberg, Make Love Stay % "Go open source with DB2 and then you can tell me what to do with my assets." Sun CEO Scott McNealy, in response to IBM's recommendation that he make Java open source
- (Source: Government Computer News, 03/24/04) % Like other information should be available to those who want to learn and understand, program source code is the only means for programmers to learn the art from their predecessors. It would be unthinkable for playwrights not to allow other playwrights to read their plays, only be present at theater performances where they would be barred even from taking notes. Likewise, any good author is well read, as every child who learns to write will read hundreds of times more than it writes. Programmers, however, are expected to invent the alphabet and learn to write long novels all on their own. Programming cannot grow and learn unless the next generation of programmers have access to the knowledge and information gathered by other programmers before them.
--Erik Naggum in comp.lang.lisp % About Java design goals: ...And you're right: we were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. Aren't you happy?
--Guy Steele % "You can tell the system isn't working,when engineers don't respect it. And they don't. They see patents being awarded to people they consider not as smart as they are for work they think is mediocre, and they think it's a game. It should be an honour to be granted a patent. We should raise the bar."
- Quote for FTC meeting on patents % Marvel at the thief who tries to steal live electrical wires. Gape at the lawnchair jockey who floats to a height of 16,000 feet suspended by helium balloons. And learn from the man who peers into a gasoline can using a cigarette lighter. All contend for Darwin Awards when their choices culminate in magnificent misadventures.
The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action % ...marshalling the marketing monkeys
-- Intel engineer's description of yearly planning efforts % How dogs navigate to catch Frisbees.
Shaffer, D.M., S.M. Krauchunas, M. Eddy, and M.K. McBeath. Psychological Science 15 (July, 2004): 437-441.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/ members/journal_issues/psinpress/ Shaffer.pdf % "We are now being evaluated based on our trajectory, our customer-centric innovations, designs and technologies, our ecosystem of customers and partners, and finally, our progress," he wrote. "We are in control of our own destiny."

Intel Corp.'s (INTC) leader may be firing off angry memos to employees about recent missteps. But it is a much different story at rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD). AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz sent an all-hands e-mail Tuesday that effusively praises the company's employees for their recent performance. While never mentioning Intel by name, the memo makes the case that AMD is no longer a technological follower of its larger rival.

July 2004 % "The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases."
- Jon Bentley and Doug McIlro % It's very important that you sleep because that's when your brain is
garbage collecting. And a dream is if you are interrupted in the
middle and have junk left in the registers.
-- Gerald Sussman % Include Your Children when Baking Cookies;
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says;
Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers;
Iraqi Head Seeks Arms;
Prostitutes Appeal to Pope;
Panda Mating Fails, Veterinarian Takes Over;
Teacher Strikes Idle Kids;
--- -These are actual headlines from various newspapers. Paper names or source are unknown: % Klaatu barada nikto -- The Day the Earth Stood Still % Here are the two most important things to know about computers and the Internet:

A computer is a machine for rearranging bits
The Internet is a machine for moving bits from one place to another very cheaply and quickly

-- Cory Doctrorow http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html % We build the most complicated things that human beings have ever built.

First of all, you can't see what you're building, and you're building a lot of them. You're building transistors you can't see, and the biggest transistor budget we have is a product that comes out next year called Montecito, from the Itanium processor family. It has 1.75 billion transistors in it.

Craig Barrett Interview 2004 % "The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases."
- Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy % "Life is competitive. If you have the highest standard of living in the world, the only way you justify it is by having the most productive society in the world. The only way to be the most productive society in the world is to lead in new areas of technology, new areas of value-added. The only way to do that is to invest in R&D"
-- Craig Barrett -- interview Oct 2004 cnet.com % Their documentation is bad, the developer software licensing is insane, the developer website is a bad joke, the intel compiler still has lots of problems, and VTune is stagnated. Other than that, they're doing OK.
-- comment from customer about Intel software tools % Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation.
-- David St. Hubbins, This is Spinal Tap, 1984 % As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll.
--David St. Hubbins, This is Spinal Tap, 1984 % "I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages."
William H. Mauldin % "Machines take me by surprise with great frequency."
Alan Turing % "The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity."
Harlan Ellison % "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."
-- Edwin Schossberg % "The superfluous is the most necessary."
Voltaire % Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.
Margaret Mead % I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin % We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
Georg Hegel % We are never prepared for what we expect.
-- James Michener % To be believed, make the truth unbelievable.
Napoleon Bonaparte % The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
Maurice Chapelain % What we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
-- Sydney J. Harris % When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
Henry David Thoreau % Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.
Harry S. Truman % Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable. Oscar Wilde % War is a series of catastrophes which result in a victory.
Georges Clemenceau % First I dream my painting, then I paint my dream.
Vincent van Gogh % We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, From Pogo % A man chases a woman until she catches him.
Anonymous % I want peace and I'm willing to fight for it.
Harry S. Truman % Study the past, if you would divine the future.
-- Confucius, in Analects % Love is a kind of warfare.
Ovid % All works of art should begin...at the end.
Edgar Allan Poe % "No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit."
Sir Frederick G. Banting % "Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted."
Aldous Huxley % We trained hard....but every time we formed up teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn that we meet any new situation by reorganizing. And a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
-- Petronius Arbiter, 210 bc % "Why is 'abbreviation' such a long word?" % Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else. % "If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?" % "I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather....Not screaming and
yelling like the passengers in his car...." % A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation........ % There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
- Oscar Levant % From Todd Proebsting's "Disruptive Programming Language Technologies" presentation (microsoft research):

The Least Important Open Problem in Programming Languages: Increasing program performance via compiler optimization
1) Moore's Law suffices
2) Algorithms and design make the big difference
Challenge: Name a single significant software product that relied on compiler optimization for viability. % Don't think of smoking it as supporting their economy; Think of it as burning their fields...
-- Kinky Friedman to President Clinton, on handing him a Cuban cigar % "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy."
Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke % It's a good idea, but it's a new idea; therefore, I fear it and must reject it.
--- Homer Simpson % Where choice begins, Paradise ends
--- Arthur Miller % "I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet."
--Rodney Dangerfield % I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-- Umberto Eco % "If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive."
Samuel Goldwyn % "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
Arthur C. Clarke % "I just need enough to tide me over until I need more." % "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." % Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? % After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager."
William S. Burroughs % Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways.
William S. Burroughs, as quoted in Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, Martin A. Lee % When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Hunter S. Thompson % The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay % If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
Johnny Carson % A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Carl Sagan, "Contact" % But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- Carl Sagan % Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers % The ARPANET has produced several monumental results. It provided the physical and electrical communications backbone for development of the latent social infrastructure we now call 'THEINTERNET COMMUNITY.'
-- Einar Stefferud ConneXions, Oct. 1989 vol 3 No. 10. pg.21 % Marty: I got a job for you.
Visser: Uh, well, if the pay's right, and it's legal, I'll do it.
Marty: It's not strictly legal.
Visser: [Thinks for a second] Well, if the pay's right, I'll do it
-- Joel & Ethan Coen's Blood Simple: Discussion of Marty & Private Detective Visser % [Holding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch]
King Arthur: How does it... um... how does it work?
Lancelot: I know not, my liege.
King Arthur: Consult the Book of Armaments.
Brother Maynard: Armaments, chapter two, verses nine through twenty-one.
Cleric: [reading] And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu...
Brother Maynard: Skip a bit, Brother...
Cleric: And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.
Brother Maynard: Amen.
All: Amen.
King Arthur: Right. One... two... five.
Galahad: Three, sir.
King Arthur: Three. % Bridgekeeper: What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
King Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow? % You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.
to have or have not, 1944 % Priest: If men don't trust each other, this earth might as well be hell.
Commoner: Right. The world's a kind of hell.
Priest: No! I don't want to believe that!
Commoner: No one will hear you, no matter how loud you shout. Just think. Which one of these stories do you believe?
Woodcutter: None makes any sense.
Commoner: Don't worry about it. It isn't as if men were reasonable
Rash�mon (1950) % We should have dug deeper than a grave
The Third Man (1949) % Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.
Harry Lime in The Third Man % Mike Damone: I mean don't just walk in. You move across the room. And you don't talk to her. You use your face. You use your body. You use everything. That's what I do. I mean I just send out this vibe and I have personally found that women do respond. I mean, something happens.
Mark Ratner: Well, naturally something happens. I mean, you put the vibe out to 30 million chicks, something is gonna happen.
Mike Damone: That's the idea, Rat. That's the attitude.
Mark Ratner: The attitude?
Mike Damone: Yeah! The attitude dictates that you don't care whether she comes, stays, lays, or prays. I mean whatever happens, your toes are still tappin'. Now when you got that, then you have the attitude.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) % "Today's PC is too dedicated to replicating earlier tools, like ink and paper. "[The PC] has a slightly better erase function but it isn't as nice to look at as a printed thing. The chances that in the last week or year or month you've used the computer to simulate some interesting idea is zero but that's what it's for."
-- Alan Kay % I have seen numerous examples of the programming power which Lisp programmers obtain from having a single data structure, which is also used as a uniform syntactic structure for all the functions and operations which appear in programs, with the capability to manipulate programs as data. Although my own previous enthusiasm has been for syntactically rich languages like the Algol family, I now see clearly and concretely the force of Minsky's 1970 Turing lecture, in which he argued that Lisp's uniformity of structure and power of self reference gave the programmer capabilities whose content was well worth the sacrifice of visual form.
-- Robert W. Floyd's 1978 Turing Award Lecture % Somewhere, somehow somebody
Must have kicked you around some
Tell me why you wanna lay there
And revel in your abandon
-- Tom Petty: Refugee % Glendower: " I can call spirits from the vasty deep."
Hostspur: "Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?"
- Shakespeare, king Henry IV, Part I % We will drive off that bridge when we come to it.. % In this redbook, we will collectively refer to the processors from Intel
(IA32, EM64T, IA64) and AMD (AMD64) as an "Intel compatible processor".
-- Note in IBM's Redbook on Tuning xseries servers for performance % "Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care."
--William Safire % "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
James Branch Cabell % "There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on."
Robert Byrne % "Spare no expense to save money on this one."
Samuel Goldwyn % Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity.
- Paul Goodman % Question on comp.arch:
What is the number of users supported by a Server?

Can anyone point me to a site or some research that shows what the industry standard for this is? I realize it may vary based upon the environment, but if you could point me to a place to start I'd appreciate it.

And a good answer (May 2005):
You can find the number of servers here:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html

Here you can find the number of users:
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/

The user count is a bit low, but just assume it grows with the
number of servers from the netcraft graph.

So it's roughly 40 users per server, I'd say.

On the other hand, at work we have about 2000 servers, and several
millions of customers / users.

And here at home it's one server and two users.

So there seems to be some variance...

best regards
Patrick % origin of the name 'Internet-0'".

At an opening event for the Media House, one of the leaders of the high-speed Internet-2 project was on hand. He kept asking how fast data could be sent through the building. Someone reminded him that lightbulbs do not need to watch movies at broadband speeds and joked that the network of everyday devices was part of an "Internet-Zero," not Internet-2. The name stuck. % What is Internet 0?
1. IP to the leaf node
2. Compiled standards
3. Peers don't need servers
4. Physical identities
5. Big bits
6. End-to-end modulation
7. Open standards % "The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'." % "...we believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet..."
- Scot Adams - the Dilbert principle % Matty: [to Ned] You aren't too bright. I like that in a man.
Ned: What else do you like? Lazy? Ugly? Horny? I got 'em all.
Matty: You don't look lazy.
-- Body Heat.. % I did two tours of duty in southeast Asia and I was married for five years. I couldn't tell you which experience was worse.

I knew she was Japanese going into it, but she didn't tell me the ninja assassin part--

Mickey in "Lone Star" % Mickey: Are they gonna be okay with you being a white guy?
Cliff: According to her they'll be happy that I'm a man. Apparently they think any woman over 30 who isn't married is a lesbian.
Mickey: Yeah, its always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.
-- Lone Star % "No telling yet if there's been a crime, but this country's seen a fair amount of disagreements over the years"
-- Sheriff Sam Deeds on finding the dead body in Lone Star % "but I gotta say I think there's something to this cold climate business. I mean, you go to the beach- what do you do? Drink a few beers, wait for a fish to flop up on the sand. Can't build no civilization that way. You got a hard winter coming, though, you got to plan ahead, and that gives your cerebral cortex a workout.
-- the bartender in Lone Star % Marcy: My husband was a movie freak. Actually, he was particularly obsessed with one movie, "The Wizard of Oz." He talked about it constantly. I thought it was cute at first. On our wedding night, I was a virgin. When we made love - you've seen the movie, haven't you?
Paul Hackett: "The Wizard of Oz"? Yeah.
Marcy: Well, whenever he - you know, when he came...
Paul Hackett: Yeah.
Marcy: ...he would scream out, "Surrender Dorothy!" That's all! Just "Surrender Dorothy!"
Paul Hackett: Wow.
Marcy: Instead of saying something normal like, "Oh, God," or something normal like that. I mean, it was pretty creepy! And I told him I thought so, but he just, he just couldn't stop, he just, he just couldn't stop, he just... couldn't stop. % I said I wanna see a Plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight, now cough it up.
Paul in After Hours % Mayor: Now Drebin, I don't want any trouble like you had on the South Side like last year, that's my policy.
Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in front of a full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards, that's my policy.
Mayor: That was a Shakesphere In The Park Production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!

Parody of Dirty Harry in Naked Gun.. % Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
--Oscar Wilde % Error between keyboard and chair
- Intel SW Engineer % My reality check bounced % "I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!"
-- Tom Lehrer % I'll bet any quantum mechanic in the service would give the rest of his life to fool around with this gadget
-- Quinn in Forbidden Planet % " 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."
-- Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) in The Maltese Falcon % "Then she tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up. "
Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) to the butler in The Big Sleep (1946), screenplay by William Faulker, Jules Furthman, Leigh Bracket, % Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they're front runners or comefrom behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
Marlowe: Go ahead.
Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

Dialog from Big Sleep % "Good....bad.....I'm the one with the gun..."
--- Ash from Army Of Darkness % "We can take these Deadites, we can take 'em... with science".
-- Ash from Army of Darkness % "This is a Unix system. I know this."
-- Lex, in Jurassic Park % The top five quotes of all time, in descending order:

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" (Gone With the Wind);

"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse" (The Godfather);

"You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am" (On the Waterfront);

"Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" (The Wizard of Oz); and

"Here's looking at you, kid" (Casablanca). % "How does an ancient Egyptian wind up in an East Texas rest home and why is he writing on the shithouse walls?"
--- Bruce Cambell as Elvis in Bubba Ho-Tep % Elvis begins reading an incantation against an unconscious Bubba Ho-Tep from JFK's "Book of Souls"]
Elvis: "You nasty thing from beyond the dead, no matter what you think or do, good things will never come to you. And if evil is your black design, you can bet the goodness of the Light Ones..."
[begins to slow the recitation from disbelief]
Elvis: "... will kick your bad behind"?
[muttering to himself]
Elvis: For chrissake!
[to the heavens]
Elvis: That's it? That's the chant against evil from the "Book of Souls"? Oh yeah, right, boss. And what kind of decoder ring comes with that, man? Shit, it don't even rhyme well!
Bubba Ho-Tep: [regains consciousness, rises, and speaks in ancient Egyptian] Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass-wipe! % "I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?"
Ronnie Shakes % Darwin Award for 2005: When his 38-calibre revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked..... % After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies....The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.
-- Darwin Honorable Mention Award 2005 % Once I was eating in Legal Sea Food and ordered arctic char. When it arrived, I looked for a signature, saw none, and complained to my friends, "This is an unsigned char. I wanted a signed char!" I would have complained to the waiter if I had thought he'd get the joke
--Richard Stallman % "Explains how [nerds] make so much money that they get dates despite their personalities."
-- review of Paul Graham's Hackers & Painters % How do you know an extroverted engineer?
He stares at *your* shoes rather than his own.. % The question most often asked of me is, "What does CBGB stand for?"

I reply, "It stands for the kind of music I intended to have, but not the kind that we became famous for: COUNTRY BLUEGRASS BLUES."

The next question is always, "but what does OMFUG stand for?" and I say "That's more of what we do, It means OTHER MUSIC FOR UPLIFTING GORMANDIZERS."

And what is a gormandizer? It's a voracious eater of, in this case, MUSIC.

--- Hilly Kristal, owner and founder of CBGB % When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of science.

- Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) % They are "coin-operated" folks -- engineering speaking of the sales group.. % Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733 % Each night I leave the bar room when it's over
Not feeling any pain at closing time
But tonight your memory found me much too sober
I can't drink enough to keep you off my mind

Tonight the bottle let me down
It let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down
-- Merle Haggard % Country music singers
have always been a real close family
but lately some of my kin folks
have disowned a few others and me
i guess its because
i kinda changed my direction
i guess i went and broke the family tradition

they get on me wanna know Hank
why do you drink?
(Hank) why do you roll smoke?
Why must you live out the songs that you wrote?
over and over
everybody made my prediction
so if i get stoned
I'm just carryin'
on an old family tradition

Artist/Band: Williams Hank Jr
Lyrics for Song: Family Tradition % I had a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
I had a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the barnyard, upset in every way
Oh, them dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl
Oh, them dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl
Oh, watch out strange kin people, little red rooster's on the prowl
If you see my little red rooster, please drag him on home
If you see my little red rooster, please drag him on home
There ain't no peace in the barnyard since my little red rooster's been gone


Little Red Rooster - by Willie Dixon
recording of 1962 by Chester Burnett a.k.a. Howlin' Wolf % One summer day, she went away,
She gone and left me, she gone to stay
But now she's gone, and I don't worry,
'Cause I'm sittin' on top of the world
-- Mississippi Sheiks, Sittin' On Top Of The World % Sure I like country music
I like mandolins
But right now I need a telecaster
Through a vibro-lux turned up to ten

[Chorus:]
Lets go to Memphis in the meantime baby
Memphis in the meantime girl

I need a little shot of that rhythm baby
Mixed up with these country blues
I wanna trade in these ol country boots
For some fine italian shoes

Forget the mousse and the hairspray sugar
We dont need none of that
Just a little dab'll do ya girl
Underneath a pork pie hat

Until hell freezes over
Maybe you can wait that long
But I dont think Ronnie Milsap's gonna ever
Record this song

[Chorus 2x]

Maybe there's nothin' happenin' there
Maybe there's somethin' in the air
Before our upper lips get stiff
Maybe we need us a big ol whiff

If we could just get off-a that beat little girl
Maybe we could find the groove
At least we can get a decent meal
Down at the Rendez-vous

'Cause one more heartfelt steel guitar chord
Girl, it's gonna do me in
I need to hear some trumpet and saxophone
You know sound as sweet as sin

And after we get good and greasy
Baby we can come back home
Put the cowhorns back on the cadillac
And change the message on the cord-a-phone

But...

[Chorus]
JOHN HIATT lyrics - "Memphis In The Meantime" % I recall, when I was twenty-three -
Wondering how anyone could fall in love with me.
But now I'm old, hell I'm well past twent-five -
And I can't seem to fall in love no matter how I try.

And I wonder where I'll wind up but I'm headed west I know.
Wind my way through Texas and into New Mexico,
And I don't know what you've been told,
The streets of where I'm from are paved with hearts instead of gold.
Yeah the streets of where I'm from are paved with hearts instead of gold.

Old 97s: The streets of where I'm from.. % Oh I get drunk most every night
Seems like all we do is fight
The more I drink
The less I feel blue
Sometimes I feel like an awful fool
Spendin' my life on an old bar stool
And yes I guess they oughta name a drink after you

If this date were to be our last
I'd never sit down this glass
It'd take all the booze in the world
To forget you
You've left my heart a vacant lot
I'll fill it with another shot
And yes I guess they oughta name a drink after you

Looks like I had my fill
Guess I better pay my bill
When I started out I only meant to have a few
Someone just said that you left town
I better get a double round
And yes I guess they oughta name a drink after you

John Prine -- Yes I Guess They Oughta Name a Drink After You % What's the heck is this format? Boot Liquor is a disturbing mix of Country, Singer/Songwriter, Rock, Folk and Bluegrass. It's Alt-Country/Americana at its core, but somewhat musically flexible (if the lyrics are a good match). Songs I play tend to have an interesting (storytelling) or humorous narrative, such as those typically found on the Bloodshot or YepRoc Labels. Boozing, drugging, soured relationships and hard living songs get played more than anything else. Generic, bland or sentimental country is avoided at all costs. % The girls all get prettier at closing time
They all begin to look like movie stars
The girls all get prettier at closing time
When the change starts taking place
It puts a glow on every face
Of the falling angels of the back street bars...
---Mikey Gilley -- Country Western Song.. % If Fingerprints Showed Up On Skin, Wonder Whose I'd Find On You
Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye
--- Great Country Song titles.. % A husband was in big trouble when he forgot his wedding anniversary. His wife told him "Tomorrow there better be something in the driveway for me that goes zero to 200 in 2 seconds flat".

The next morning the wife found a small package in the driveway. She opened it and found a brand new bathroom scale. Funeral arrangements for the husband have been set for Saturday % my professor used to say whenever someone says 'that is an excellent question', you can be sure you are not going to like the answer.'
Pat Fay % It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
-- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) % All this happened, more or less.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) % Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation.
-- Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974) % "Chance favors the prepared mind."
-- Louis Pasteur % "I fought the Dharma, and the Dharma won."
-- Allen Ginsberg % "I suppose they are vicious rascals, but it scarcely matters what they are. I'm after what they know." (Gibson-Sterling, The Difference Engine) % "I've noticed that the press tends to be quite accurate, except when they're writing on a subject I know something about."
-- Keith F. Lynch % "Lord, please make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am." % "My God! The thought of that evil man, loose in London--with money, from God only knows what source--fomenting riot and rebellion during a public emergency--and in control of an Engine-driven press! It's nightmarish!"
-- Gibson-Sterling, "The Difference Engine" % "So tell me, just how long have you had this feeling that no one is watching you?"
-- Christopher Locke: Entropy Gradient Reversals % "The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which failed to start because of the following error: The operation completed successfully."
-- Windows NT Server v3.51 % "The war isn't the war between the blacks and the whites, the liberals and the conservatives, or the Federation and the Romulans. It's between the clueful and the clueless."
--- an anonymous poster on cypherpunks list % "There is a wicked pretense that one has been informed. But no such thing has truly occurred! A mere slogan, an empty litany. No arguments are heard, no evidence is weighed. It isn't news at all, only a source of amusement for idlers."
-- Gibson-Sterling, The Difference Engine % "This is all very interesting, and I daresay you already see me frothing at the mouth in a fit; but no, I am not; I am just winking happy thoughts into a little tiddle cup."
-- Nabokov, Lolita % "This seems like a case where we need to shoot the messenger."
-- Charlie Kaufman on Cypherpunks list % "To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits, To report the behaviour of the sea monster, Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry, Observe disease in signatures."
-- T.S.Eliot % 'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds. % A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five. % A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.
-- attributed to Arthur Bloch and many others % ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS! Das Internet is nicht fuer gefingerclicken und giffengrabben. Ist easy droppenpacket der routers und overloaden der backbone mit der spammen unt der me-tooen. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das mausklicken sichtseeren keepen das bandwit-spewin hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das cursorblinken. % After things go from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself. % Are you still here? The message is over. Shoo! Go away! % At first there was nothing. Then God said 'Let there be light!' Then there was still nothing. But you could see it. % Discordianism: Where reality is a figment of your imagination % Evolution is a harsh mistress. % Freedom defined is freedom denied.
-- Illuminatus % Give your child mental blocks for Christmas. % Hackers make toys. Crackers break them.
- Peter Seebach % If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'. % If you're happy and you know it, clunk your chains. % Invalid thought detected. Close all mental processes and restart body. % My veal cutlet tried to beat the shit out of my cup of coffee... the coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend himself.
-- Tom Waits % One tentacle, one vote. % People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament. % Question _your own_ authority. % Sense is not cognition but sensation.
-- Douglas Robinson % Some people have one of those days. I have one of those lives. % The media finally figured out that their "paying customers" (i.e. advertisers) don't WANT an intelligent, thoughtful audience. And they no longer have one."
-- Rich Tietjens % They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man" % Turn on, log in, fight spam. % Wit levels low. Attempting to compensate. % "No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."
-- Judge Gideon J. Tucker, 1866. % You guys got something against spam?
-- Vriess, in _Alien 4_ % Do dogs know calculus?
Pennings, T.J. 2003. College Mathematics Journal 34(May):178-182. Available at http://www.maa.org/features/elvisdog.pdf. % Science reveals the perfect pick-up line: Running the marathon made me too distracted to manage my hedge fund today, but can I help you with your coat? % The maker of Macintosh computers had anticipated that hackers would try to crack its new OS X operating system built to work on Intel Corp. (INTC)'s chips and run pirated versions on non-Apple computers. So, Apple developers embedded a warning deep in the software - in the form of a poem:
The embedded poem reads: "Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc." % A key part of algorithm selection is having a realistic benchmark or workload in hand to support making decisions based on actual results rather than intuition or folklore. This means the most effective time to do performance and scalability work is in the earlier phases of the project, perhaps the exact opposite of what usually happens. All the clever compilation options are pretty useless when dealing with O(n2) algorithms for large values of n. Poor algorithms are the number 1 (and probably numbers 2 and 3 as well) cause of poor software system performance
Performance AntiPatterns, Bart Smaalders, Sun, ACM Queue, Vol. 4, No. 1 - February 2006 % Attached is a nineteen page summary of my education and experience which I've written specifically for REFERENCE CODE 479355. The usual resume format doesn't adequately reflect my capabilities, and truth be known, my resume hasn't gotten me a single job in the last 30 years. % I want to share some thoughts with you before I answer your questions," said Bush, unaware that microphones were still on and were allowing those back in the White House press room to eavesdrop on his eavesdropping defense. "First of all, I expect this conversation we're about to have to stay in the room. I know that's impossible in Washington."
-- bush 2006 % "I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on." % "The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found."
-- Calvin Trillin % "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."

Gertrude Stein % Billions of phones as clients, millions of servers as backend, radio waves inbetween. That's the future. Everything else is just a provocation.
--- Alex Klimovitski, internal Intel email.. % What really alarms me about President Bush's "war on terrorism" is the grammar. It's hard for abstract nouns to surrender
-- http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0112-02.htm % You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named Bush, Dick, and Colon. Need I say more?
-- Chris Rock % Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.
-- Joss Whedon % Question authority; but, raise your hand first.
- A. Dershowitz % Being abstract is something profoundly different from being vague... The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.
- E. Dijkstra % Habitability is the characteristic of source code that enables programmers coming to the code later in its life to understand its construction and intentions and to change it comfortably and confidently... Software needs to be habitable because it always has to change...Programs are written and maintained, bugs are fixed, features are added, performance is tuned, and a whole variety of changes are made both by the original and new programming team members... What is important is that it be easy for programmers to come up to speed with the code, to be able to navigate through it effectively, to be able to understand what changes to make, and to be able to make them safely and correctly.
- R. Gabriel (Patterns of Software, Oxford Press 1996) % Imagine the kind of conversation you would have with someone so far away that there was a transmission delay of one minute. Now imagine speaking to someone in the next room. You wouldn't just have the same conversation faster, you would have a different kind of conversation. In Lisp, developing software is like speaking face-to-face. You can test code as you're writing it. And instant turnaround has just as dramatic an effect on development as it does on conversation. You don't just write the same program faster; you write a different kind of program.
- P. Graham (in "On Lisp") % The difference between design and research seems to be a question of the good versus the new. Design doesn't have to be new, but it has to be good. Research doesn't have to be good, but it has to be new. I think these two paths converge at the top: the best design surpasses its predecessors by using new ideas, and the best research solves problems that are not only new, but worth solving. So ultimately design and research are aiming for the same destination, just approaching it from different directions.
- P. Graham (in "Hackers and Painters" footnote 9, pg. 224) % A good programming language should, like oil paint, make it easy to change your mind.
...
Paintings usually begin with a sketch. Gradually the details get filled in. But it is not merely a process of filling in. Sometimes the original plans turn out to be mistaken. Countless paintings, when you look at them in x-rays, turn out to have limbs that have been moved or facial features that have been readjusted.
...
So the test of a language is not simply how clean the finished program looks in it, but how clean the path to the finished program was.
...
What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could make the finished work from the prototype. You could make a preliminary drawing if you wanted to, but you weren't held to it; you could work out all the details, and even make major changes as you finished the painting. You can do this with software too. A prototype doesn't have to be just a model; you can refine it into the finished product....it's good for morale.
...
Building something by gradually refining a prototype is good for morale because it keeps you engaged. In software, my rule is: always have working code. If you're writing something you'll be able to test in an hour, you have the prospect of an immediate reward to motivate you.
- P. Graham (in "Hackers and Painters" % When certain concepts of TeX are introduced informally, general rules will be stated; afterwards you will find that the rules aren't strictly true. In general, the later chapters contain more reliable information than the earlier ones do. The author feels that this technique of deliberate lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. Once you understand a simple but false rule, it will not be hard to supplement that rule with its exceptions.
- D. Knuth (Tex, pg vi) % A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren't flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.
- M. Minsky (in "Why Programming Is a Good Medium for Expressing Poorly-Understood and Sloppily-Formulated Ideas") % The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.
- L. Pauling % Fancy optimizers have fancy bugs.
- R. Pike % It is my firm belief that all successful languages are grown and not merely designed from first principles
- B. Stroustrup (in The Design and Evolution of C++) % Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
- W Strunk Jr (in The Elements of Style) % The computer programmer ... is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver ... universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs. Moreover ... systems so formulated and elaborated act out their programmed scripts. They compliantly obey their laws and vividly exhibit their obedient behavior. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or a field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.
- J. Weizenbaum (Computer Power and Human Reason, page 115 % I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.
-- Charles Darwin, in the foreword to his book, The Origin of Species, 1869 % "There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for."
-- Fred Hoyle % "I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her."
-- New York City detective % "For four-fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum." % Pickling is a global culinary art. If you were to go on an international food-tasting tour, you'd find pickled foods just about everywhere. You might sample kosher cucumber pickles in New York City, chutneys in India, kimchi in Korea, miso pickles in Japan, salted duck eggs in China, pickled herring in Scandinavia, corned beef in Ireland, salsas in Mexico, pickled pigs feet in the southern United States, and much, much more.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/pickles/pickling.html % I used to think "bull in a china shop" was "bowl in a china shop." Which made me wonder, wouldn't a store that sells place settings actually WANT bowls in the shop?
To which the Livejournal's owner replies: Ha! Even funnier was that when I read that, I was thinking "hmm, it WOULD be dangerous to bowl in a china shop" but you meant bowl as a NOUN!
-- http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/page/2/ % "Ballmer and Butt-Head." (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Gates)
-- Sun CEO Scott McNealy % "The visual I see is a slow-motion collision of two garbage trucks--and they are just about to meet bumpers." (On the prospects for the Hewlett-Packard and Compaq merger.)
-- Sun CEO Scott McNealy % "Technology has the shelf life of a banana."
-- Sun CEO Scott McNealy % "Open source is free like a puppy is free."
-- Sun CEO Scott McNealy % In fact Grove wrote in his book, "Only the paranoid survive" that "You only get out of the valley of death by outrunning the people who are after you. And you can only outrun them if you commit yourself to a particular direction and go as fast as you can....Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment. Without exquisite focus, the resources and energy of the organization will spread a mile wide...and they will be an inch deep." % But it is the little waves that draw my eye back to shore, the constant susurration, the obbligato to the river's continuum, the delicious swishy taffeta sound, the quiet ever-changing repetitions of the sibilant molecules softly shifting succulent sand and sending it downriver.
from Downcanyon, Ann Haymond Zwinger, 1995 % Ideally rapids should be not a matter of survival on the cusp but a welcome wetting down on a hundred-degree day. Rapids should be a glorious orgy of splash and spray, splinters of shattered sunlight, brilliant turquoise shadows, screens of white lacy foam edged with rainbows, an entrance into a glittering, sparkling world, tilted off the horizontal and incandescent with light.
from Downcanyon, Ann Haymond Zwinger, 1995 % Exercise is for people who can' t handle drugs and alcohol.
Lilly Tomlin % But if it be a sin to covert honor, I am the most offending soul alive. We few, we happy few, we hand of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall by my brother.
-- Shakespeare, King Henry V % I wasn't born with any innate talent. I've never been naturally gifted at anything; I always had to work at it. The only way I knew to succeed was to try harder than anyone else.
-- Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathon Man % We approached the task by starting with a simple scheme and adding commands and features that we felt would enhance the power of the machine. Gradually the processor became more complex. We were not disturbed by this because computer graphics, after all, are complex. Finally the display processor came to resemble a full-fledged computer with some special graphics features.

And then a strange thing happened. We felt compelled to add to the processor a second, subsidiary processor, which, itself, begau to grow in complexity. It was then that we discovered a disturbing truth. Designing a display processor can become a never-ending cyclical process. In fact, we found the process so frustrating that we have come to call it the "wheel of reincarnation."

On the Design of Display Processors
T.H. Myer and I. E. Sutherland * Communications of the ACM Volume 11 / Number 6 / June, 1968 % Most of the smart people work for some other company,
-- Bill Joy. % As it is common with all systems, the guiding principle for making such decisions will be "make the common case fast".
"The Common Case Transactional Behavior of Multithreaded Programs," JaeWoong Chung, Hassan Chafi, Austen McDonald, Chi Cao Minh, Brian D. Carlstrom, Christos Kozyrakis, and Kunle Olukotun, Proceedings of the 12th Intl. Conference on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), February 2006 % Tenacious focus and a "can do it" culture. Being far away from headquarters, and the need to prove that the team can do it better (and differently) than others is a great motivator.
Challenging everything; including the status quo.
Major focus on simplicity, scoping complexity, and making hard calls on what NOT TO DO. Focus on areas that bring differentiation.
"Execution is god" mentality. Mooly Eden, Roni Friedman and myself used in many occasions a quote from Grove saying that "Any strategy cannot be any better than its execution"
Human touch: at the end of the day we have to remember who makes the difference. This helps build a stable workforce with stable leadership that will remain for a long time with a strong commitment to Intel and the Israeli site. % Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage.
-- Odeh M, Bassan H, Oliven A. 1: J Intern Med. 1990 Feb;227(2):145-6. In Noble 2006 Award for Medicine. % Pat Gelsinger successfully demo'd (9/2006) Transitive's QuickTransit Virtualization Software. After Pat's demo, PSO commented on stage, "The highest performing SPARC machine is an Itanium, somehow I don't think Scott McNeely enjoys this as much as me." % "It's well-understood in the technical communities that TPC-C no longer represents current customer workloads since the transaction load that its models are made of are small, primitive and disconnected transactions. While this model was acceptable for the workloads of the late 1980s, it misses the mark..."
-- Sun's World Record TPC-C Press release, August 2000 % The two items in my "June E-Mail" Folder in outlook on Oct 24th 2006:

1) From: KC Papne, Subject: "Safe way to enlarge your peness"
2) From: Microsoft, Subject: "Weekly Gold Certified Partner Learning Newsletter"

Looks like MSFT's email rules are very fair! % "Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It's about five o'clock in the morning. That's the Homicide Squad - complete with detectives and newspapermen. A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block. You'll read about it in the late editions, I'm sure..."
Narration from Sunset Blvd (1950) % 'Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion.' Uh, no, make that, 'He... romanticised it all out of proportion. Now... to him... no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.' Ahhh, now let me start this over...
opening narration to Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979) % "I'm a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it."
-- Mae West, Night After Night (1932) % "Being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" % If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular % Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tom Lehrer % Well, at least is not an elephant.
No the elephant did its thing and left. % "There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane..."
--Southwest Airlines employee pre-flight briefing.. % From a Southwest Airlines employee.... "....To operate your seatbelt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seatbelt and if you don't know how to operate one, you probably shouldn't be out in public unsupervised. In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with two small children, decide now which one you love more. % "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
-- Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 % "There's an old...saying in Tennessee...I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says Fool me once...(3 second pause)... Shame on...(4 second pause)...Shame on you....(6 second pause)...Fool me...Can't get fooled again."
Bush, Nashville, Tennessee, Sept. 17, 2002. % "Each author wishes to indicate that any mistakes still left in this text are not due to those above who have so generously helped us, but are due entirely to the other author."
-- in the preface to Computability: Computable Functions, Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics by Richard L. Epstein and W. A. Carnielli (Published by Wadsworth Publishing, 1989) % "To Joanna, My brilliant and beautiful wife without whom I would be nothing. She always comforts and consoles, never complains or interferes, asks nothing and endures all, and writes my dedications."
-- dedication page in Electronic Principles by Albert Paul Malvino (Glencoe McGraw Hill, 1993) % The Java Programming Language
by Ken Arnold, James Gosling and David Holmes
(3rd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2000)

In the index, we find (p. 579):

IndexOutOfBoundsException: 30, 196, 210, 596
The book is only 595 pages long. % You have to vote for us because our opponents are no good.
And because they'll tax you into the poor house.
And on the way to the poor house you'll meet a terrorist on every street corner.
And when you try to run away from the terrorist you'll trip over an illegal immigrant.
-- Bill Clinton summarizing the Republican party's basic election message. % "Doing more than skimming the XML specs would require far longer than I have; and they've also now fallen through my good strong 19th century floor and killed several innocent bystanders in the floors below before finally coming to rest, smoking, embedded in the bedrock a few hundred yards under my flat."
-- Tim Bradshaw % A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-- Edward Abbey % I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
-- Sir Edward Appleton % It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
-- Caron de Beaumarchais % The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.
-- David Brinkley % Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
-- Alfred Hitchcock % When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-- Eric Hoffer % GSW: that's what the hospitals call it: gunshot wound. Doctor has to report it to the police. That makes it hard for guys in my line to get what I call, quality health care.
-- First lines by Porter in Payback % There is grandeur in this view of life,... in that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
-- Darwin. Last sentence (abridged) fromThe Origin of Species, % nature is prodigal in variety, though niggard in innovation
Darwin, The Origin of Species % They implied that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.
describing Lydgate in Middlemarch, George Elliot % His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and love - only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory.
-- George Elliot, Silas Marner % Being responsible sometimes means pissing someone off.
Colin Powell % Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration. (Stan Kelly-Bootle) http://sysprog.net/quotlang.html % ..a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. ... Let's not mince words: A strategic inflection point can be deadly when unattended to. Companies that begin a decline as a result of its changes rarely recover their previous greatness.
-- Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive, 1996 % Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end.
-- Henry Spencer % Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
-- Seymour Cray % Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
-- Isaac Asimov % Sometimes the best engineers come in bodies that can't talk.
-- Nolan Bushnell % Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
-- Eric Raymond % The milk of disruptive innovation doesn't flow from cash-cows.
-- David Isenberg % The challenge isn't to keep your eye on big competitors. It's to pay attention to the innovators.
-- Dave Duffield % We have to remind ourselves that support of basic research that's curiosity-driven is an extremely good investment in the long run. It consistently pays off in unexpected technologies and discoveries.
-- David Goodstein % The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
-- Don Knuth % Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
-- Brian Kernighan % The honest truth is that having a lot of people staring at the code does not find the really nasty bugs. The really nasty bugs are found by a couple of really smart people who just kill themselves.
-- Bill Joy % One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.
-- G M Weilacher % If the network idea should prove to do for education what a few have envisioned, surely the boon to humankind would be beyond measure. Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever, for consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network's software to all generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught up in an infinite crescendo of on-line interactive debugging.
-- J C R Licklider in 1968 % Java: the elegant simplicity of C++ and the blazing speed of Smalltalk.
-- Jan Steinman % Javascript is the duct tape of the Internet.
-- Charlie Campbell % Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero.
-- Paul Graham % There are only two industries that refer to their customers as users.
-- Edward Tufte % If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
-- Robert X. Cringely, Computerworld % The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
-- Andrew Tannenbaum % Java is the most distressing thing to happen to computing since MS-DOS.
-- Alan Kay % Anyone who has attended a USENIX conference in a fancy hotel can tell you that a sentence like "You're one of those computer people, aren't you?" is roughly equivalent to "Look, another amazingly mobile form of slime mold!" in the mouth of a hotel cocktail waitress.
-- Elizabeth Zwicky % Of course, Linus didn't sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code.... He had my book.... But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up.
-- Andrew Tanenbaum % There's a simple way to find out if an operating system has been well designed. When you get an error message, go to the help system and look up the exact words in that message to see if there was enough of a concept of an architecture that they have a consistent vocabulary to talk about what's broken.
-- Bill Joy % I think that it's funny how scientists try to explain everything in the world. Such as all of the little biddy itty atoms or genes that make up life. It's completely endless and no one can explain how babies are born or what defines their genetics.....

Use some of the "little biddy itty" atoms you're made of and buy a book on sexual reproduction, (avoid the stork edition), we have very, very good knowledge of how babies are born. ...

Comments on Richard Dawkin's website.. % Q: Can anyone tell me what is so wrong with the sacrifice of a dependent child? Since there is no god to get mad at that act, what's the big problem with it? The death of the little girl would not destroy the economy of her community, so very few people would actually suffer. Plus, there were probably people who got a secret hard-on in their pants over the thought of the helpless girl's death. On what basis can we criticize their hard-ons?

A: What I find scary is that apparently the only thing keeping you from killing people is a belief in some sort of divine retribution. Anyway, outside of religion we do have a way of limiting murder, it is called "life in prison". If you cannot find an ethical argument for laws against murder outside of the framework of religion then you are not trying.
comment on Richard Dawkins website.. % Obviously I do not know about science, but I seriously doubt the validity of and methods of measuring the ages of rocks and such.
-- fundie comment in evolution blog.. % When there is light at the end of the tunnel, order more tunnel.
-- Anonymous (found in the fortune database distributed with 4.1c BSD Unix) % I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair.
Bette Davis in Cabin in the Cotton (1932) % I'm a hero. I was shot two times in the Tribune.
I read you were shot five times in the tabloids...
Its not true. He didn't get anywhere near my tabloids.
-- William Powell/Myran Loy dialog in The Thin Man (1934), screenplay by Dashiell Hammett % He'll regret it to his dying day .. if he lives that long.
--- The Quiet Man % PEBCAK: problem exists between chair and keyboard
--The American Heritage Abbreviations Dictionary % But for novices at the Pentagon, it's the old computer game come true: You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
-- quote from page 8 of The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Pentagon % Dr. Smith was once a National Merit Semi-Finalist, giving him a partial scholarship for college and he has been a National Semi-Finalist in the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes numerous times. As a member of the National Volvo Owner's Club he has been the recipient of numerous citations from local law enforcement agencies throughout the Southwestern United States. In 1992 he was awarded Gold Card car rental privileges from Hertz Car Rental Company and in 1996 he was awarded Premier Member status in United Airlines Frequent Flyer program.
-- Part of my profile file, judiciously stolen from Bill Athas % Disclaimer: This humor does not reflect the thoughts or opinions of either myself, my company, my friends, or my cat; don't quote me on that; don't quote me on anything; Copyright (C) 1994 Joker's Wild; all rights reserved; this document is distribution copyrighted to the extent that you may distribute this posting and all its associated parts freely but you may not make a profit from it or include the posting in commercial publications without written permission from the copyright holder at the e-mail address above; further redistributions of this document or its parts are allowed via Usenet repostings, anonymous FTP, electronic transmissions, storage media, or printed copy as long as this notice is included and no monetary fee is charged; other copyright laws for specific entries apply wherever noted; jokes are subject to change without notice; jokes are slightly enlarged to show detail; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is unintentional and purely coincidental; hand wash only, tumble dry on low heat; do not bend, fold, mutilate, or spindle; your mileage may vary; no substitutions allowed; for a limited time only; this Usenet offer is void where prohibited, taxed, or otherwise restricted; humor is provided "as is" without any warranties expressed or implied; user assumes full liabilities; not liable for damages due to use or misuse; an equal opportunity joke employer; no shoes, no shirt, no jokes; quantities are limited while supplies last; if defects are discovered, do not attempt to fix them yourself, but return to an authorized joke service center; caveat emptor; read at your own risk; parental advisory -- explicit lyrics; text may contain material some readers may find objectionable, parental guidance is advised; keep away from sunlight, pets, and small children; limit one per family, please; no money down; no purchase necessary; you need not be present to win; some assembly required; batteries are not included; action figures sold separately; no preservatives added; safety goggles may be required during use; sealed for your protection, do not use if the safety seal is broken; call before you dig; for external use only; if a rash, redness, irritation, or swelling develops, discontinue use; use only with proper ventilation; avoid extreme temperatures and store in a cool dry place; keep away from open flames and avoid inhaling fumes; avoid contact with mucous membranes; do not puncture, incinerate, or store above 120 degrees Fahrenheit; do not place near flammable or magnetic source; smoking these jokes may be hazardous to your health; the best safeguard, second only to abstinence, is the use of a good laugh; text used in these jokes is made from 100% recycled electrons and magnetic particles; no animals were used to test the hilarity of these jokes; no salt, MSG, artificial color or flavor added; if ingested, do not induce vomiting, if symptoms persist, consult a humorologist; jokes are ribbed for your pleasure; slippery when wet; must be 18 to enter; possible penalties for early withdrawal; joke offer valid only at participating Usenet sites; slightly higher west of the Rockies; allow four to six weeks for delivery; disclaimer does not cover hurricane, lightning, tornado, tsunami, volcanic eruption, earthquake, flood, and other Acts of God, misuse, neglect, unauthorized repair, damage from improper installation, broken antenna or marred cabinet, incorrect line voltage, missing or altered serial numbers, sonic boom vibrations, electromagnetic radiation from nuclear blasts, customer adjustments that are not covered in the joke list, and incidents owing to airplane crash, ship sinking, motor vehicle accidents, leaky roof, broken glass, falling rocks, mud slides, forest fire, flying projectiles, or dropping the item; other restrictions may apply. If something offends you, lighten up, get a life, and move on. Send all flames to lassie@/dev/null :-)
-- hjiwa@nor.chevron.com, rec.humor, 31May94. % "I believe in God. One of the reasons why I believe in God is, there is no other explanation for Apple's continued survival."
-- Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki says there's something to that "iPod halo" stuff % "We spend more in R&D than AMD earns in revenue, why do I even have to hear about them?"
- Craig Barrett, PLBP 2003 % "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
-- Douglas Adams as quoted in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % "when one person suffers from a delusion, its is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called Religion"
-- Robert M. Pirsig, as quoted in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain. An atheist ... is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe... If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world ... we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.
-- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % "I suppose that, in the ditzily unreal intersection of theology and feminism, existence might indeed be a less salient attribute than gender",
-- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, writing about a feminist insisting that God is a "she". % "The Christian God is a being of terrific character -- cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust"
-- Thomas Jefferson % I shall define the God Hypothesis ..: there exists a superhuman supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. Creative intelligence, begin evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it. God, in the sense defined, is a delusion, and ... a pernicious delusion.
-- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
--Thomas Jefferson % I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the GOlden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one God further. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % why .. do we so readily accept the idea that the one thing you must do if you want to please God is believe in him? .. Isn't it just a likely that God would reward kindness, generosity, or humility? .. What if God is a scientist who regards honest seeking after truth as the supreme virtue? ... Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say if he died and found himself confronted by God, demanding to know why Russell had not believed in him. 'Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence'
-- Richard Dawkins,The God Delusion (2006) in refutation of "the Pascal wager". % Before Darwin, philosophers such as Hume understood that the improbability of life did not mean it had to be designed, but they couldn't imagine the alternative. After Darwin, we all should feel, deep in our bones, suspicious of the very idea of design. The illusion of design is a trap that has caught us before, and Darwin should have immunized us by raising our consciousness. Would that he had succeeded with all of us.
-- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion,2006 % I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn't know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe and everything to put in its place...I stumbled upon evolutionary biology .. and suddenly it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
--Douglas Adams, as quoted in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % Creationist 'logic' is always the same. Some natural phenomenon is too statistically improbable, too complex, too beautiful, too awe-inspiring to have come into existence by chance. Design is the only alternative to chance that the authors can imagine. Therefore a designer must have done it. And science's answer to this faulty logic is also always the same. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design in not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer?
-- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % ..one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.
-- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % Why is God considered an explanation for anything? It's not -- it's a failure to explain, a shrug of the shoulders, an 'I dunno' dressed up in spirituality and ritual. If someone credits something to God, generally what it means is that they haven't a clue, so they're attributing it to an unreachable, unknowable, sky-fairy.
a blogger as quote in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % "..its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself" as quoted by Richard Dawkins as possibly the greatest negative book review of all times... % Moral precepts, while not necessarily constructed by reason, should be defensible by reason.. % The truths of evolution, along with many other scientific truths, are so engrossingly fascinating and beautiful... Of course that makes me passionate. How could it not? But my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming.
--- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don't have to make the case for what you believe. If somebody announces that it is a part of his 'faith', the rest of society .. is obliged .. to 'respect' it without question; respect it until the day it manifest itself in a horrible massacre like the destruction of the World Trade Center, or the London or Madrid bombings. Then there is a great chorus of disownings as clerics ... line up to explain that this extremism is a perversion of the 'true' faith. But how can there be a perversion of faith, if faith, lacking objective justification, doesn't have any demonstrable standard to pervert?
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % This book fills a much needed gap.
-- Richard Dawkins % The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball ninety million miles away and think this to be 'normal' is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be..
--as quoted in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, 2006 % "Out of all of the sects in the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity. This is an unmistakable fact; nobody could seriously deny it. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of this heredity, somehow manage to go on believing in their religion, often with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one." Richard Dawkins % "I suspect that today if you asked people to justify their belief in God, the dominant reason would be scientific. Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it. " Richard Dawkins % "We should take astrology seriously. No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humouring it as a piece of harmless fun." Richard Dawkins % "There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out." Dawkins % Consider this. If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal demonstration of telepathy (precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation, whatever it is), he would be the discoverer of a totally new principle unknown to physical science. The discoverer of the new energy field that links mind to mind in telepathy, or of the new fundamental force that moves objects around a table top, deserves a Nobel prize and would probably get one. If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can't do it. You are a fake. "
-- Richard Dawkins % McDonald: "Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are---well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good---not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort."
Dawkins: "There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting---it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true." % "You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life - all living things- is descended from a single common ancestor which lived about 4,000 million years ago and that we are all cousins, well that is an exceedingly important and true thing to say and that is what I want to say. Somebody who is religious sees that as threatening and so I am represented as attacking religion, and I am forced into responding to their reaction. But you do not have to see my main purpose as attacking religion. Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading. And that is what is so exciting for me."
-- Richard Dawkins % Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. Dawkins % ...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. Dawkins % Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. % For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.
-- Richard Dawkins % The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear.
- Dawkins % "Don't put your faith in gods. But you can believe in turtles."
-- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods (1992) % . . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. *
-- As quoted in Richard Dawkins' Eulogy for Douglas Adams % You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while.
- Douglas Adams % All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
-- Douglas Adams % We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
-- Douglas Adams % The hotel shop only had two decent books, and I'd written both of them.
-- Douglas Adams % Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-- Douglas Adams % There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams % None of your ancestors died celibate.
-- Matt Ridley % Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.
-- Matt Ridely % For St Augustine the source of social order lay in the teachings of Christ. For Hobbes it lay in the sovereign. For Rousseau it lay in solitude. For Lenin it lay in the party. They were all wrong. The roots of social order are in our heads, where we possess the instinctive capacities for creating not a perfectly harmonious and virtuous society, but a better one than we have at present.
-- Matt Ridley % Genes are recipes for both anatomy and behaviour.
-- Matt Ridley % The cause is in the genes and nowhere else. Either you have the Huntington's mutation and will get the disease or not. This is determinism, predestination and fate on a scale of which Calvin never dreamed. The age at which the madness will appear depends strictly and implacably on the number of repititions of the 'word' CAG in one place on one gene....No horoscope matches this accuracy. No theory of human causality, Freudian, Marxist, Christian or animist, has ever been so precise. No prophet in the Old Testament, no entrail-gazing oracle in ancient Greece, no crystal-ball gypsy clairvoyant on the pier at Bognor Regis ever pretended to tell people exactly when their lives would fall apart, let alone got it right.
We are dealing here with with a prophecy of terrifying, cruel and inflexible truth. There are a billion three-letter 'words' in your genome. Yet the length of just this one little motif is all that stands between each of us and mental illness....Huntington's disease is at the far end of a spectrum of genetics. It is pure fatalism, undiluted by environmental variability. Good living, good medicine, healthy food, loving families or great riches can do nothing about. Your fate is in your genes. Matt Ridley % You inherit not your IQ but your ability to develop a high IQ under certain environmental circumstances. How does one parcel that one into nature and nurture? It is frankly impossible.
-- Matt Ridley % The fuel on which science runs is ignorance. Science is like a hungry furnace that must be fed logs from the forests of ignorance that surrounds us. In the process, the clearing we call knowledge expands, but the more it expands, the longer its perimeter and the more ignorance comes into view. A true scientist is bored by knowledge - it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him.
-- Matt Ridley, The Red Queen % Why has that man fallen in love with that woman? Because she's pretty. Why does pretty matter? Because human beings are a mainly monogamous species and so males are choosy about their mates (as male chimpanzees are not); prettiness is an indication of youth and fertility. Why does that man care about fertility in his mate? Because if he did not, his genes would be eclipsed by those of men who did. Why does he care about that? He does not, but his genes act as if they do. Those who choose infertile mates leave no descendants. Therefore, everybody is descended from men who preferred fertile women and every person inherits from those ancestors that same preference.
-- Matt Ridley, The Red Queen % When the fittest are struggling to survive, with whom are they competing? With other members of their species, or with members of other species? A gazelle on the African savannah is trying not to be eaten by cheetahs, but it is also trying to outrun other gazelles when a cheetah attacks. What matters to the gazelle is being faster than other gazelles, not being faster than cheetahs. In the same way, psychologists sometimes wonder why people are endowed with the ability to learn the part of Hamlet, or understand calculus, when neither skill was of much use to mankind in the primitive conditions where his intellect was shaped. Einstein would probably have been as hopeless as anybody in working out how to catch a woolly rhinoceros. We use out intellects not to solve practical problems, but to outwit each other. Deceiving people, detecting deceit, understanding people's motives, manipulating people - these are what the intellect is used for. Selection within the species is always going to be more important than selection between the species.
-- Matt Ridley, The Red Queen % Society is not all co-operation. A measure of competitive free enterprise is inevitable. A gigantic experiment called communism in a laboratory called Russia proved that. % Animal altruism is a myth; even in the most spectacular cases of selflessness, it turns out that animals are serving the selfish interests of their own genes - if sometimes being careless with their bodies....Because bodies do not replicate themselves, whereas genes do replicate themselves, it inevitably follows that the body is merely an evolutionary vehicle for the gene.
-- Matt Ridley % In an astonishing study recently undertaken in western Europe, the following facts emerged : married females choose to have affairs with males who are dominant, older, more physically attractive, more symmetrical in appearance and married; females are much more likely to have an affair if their mates are subordinate, younger, physically unattractive or have asymmetrical features; cosmetic surgery to improve male's looks doubles his chance of having an adulterous affair; the more attractive a male is the less attentive he is as a father; roughly one in three of the babies born in western Europe is the product of an adulterous affair. If you find these facts disturbing or hard to believe, worry not. The study was not done on human beings at all. It refers entirely to swallows, the innocent, twittering, fork-tailed birds that pirouette prettily around barns and fields in the summer months. Human beings are entirely different from swallows. Or are they?
-- Matt Ridley % The degree to which an animal of either sex is choosy correlates exactly with the degree to which it invests in parental care. A black grouse, investing no more than sperm, is prepared to mate with anything that even resembles a female: a stuffed bird or a model will do. A male albatross, who will put all his best efforts into raising one female's young, is elaborately suspicious and selective, striving for the best female on offer. The overwhelming fascination of men with female youth argues that pair bonds have lasted lifetimes. Chimpanzees find old females just as attractive as young ones. The fact that men do prefer twenty-year olds adds one piece of evidence to the theory that Pleistocene man, like a modern man, married for life.
--Matt Ridley % One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counter-invention. Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow. Every hegemony comes to an end. Evolutionary history is no different. Progress and success are always relative....This concept, that all progress is relative, has come to be known in biology by the name of the Red Queen.
-- Matt Ridley % Sex, according to the Red Queen theory, has nothing to do with adapting to the inanimate world - becoming bigger, or better camouflaged, or more tolerant of cold, or better at flying - but is all about combating the enemy that fights back. Biologists have persistently over-estimated the importance of physical causes of premature death rather than biological ones. In virtually any account of evolution, drought, frost, wind, or starvation loom large as enemies of life. The great struggle, we are told, is to adapt to these conditions. The things that kill animals or prevent them from reproducing are only rarely physical factors. Far more often they are other creatures - parasites, predators and competitors.
-- Matt Ridley % It is a disquieting thought that our heads contain a neurological version of a peacock's tail - an ornament designed for sexual display, whose virtuosity at everything from calculus to sculpture is perhaps just a side-effect of the ability to charm. I end with one of the strangest consequences of sex -that the choosiness of human beings in picking their mates has driven the human mind into a history of frenzied expression for no reason except that wit, virtuosity, inventiveness and individuality turn other people on.
-- Matt Ridley % "We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher' answer - but none exists."
- Stephen Jay Gould % Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.
- Matt Ridley, "The Origins of Virtue" % Genetically influenced behavior is not necessarily good and not necessarily unchangeable. Explanations of bad behavior that appeal to genes do not absolve a person any more than do explanations that appeal to upbringing.
- Stephen Pinker % As we delight in the strange and exotic beauty of orchid flowers, it is salutary to reflect that we are, in essence, looking at their genitalia. % And modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival.
- Carl Sagan, 1995 % Thus, we have a neat scientific explanation of why moderately regulated economies are the most creative and thus the wealthiest. We can't rely on people to be angels, but too much enforcement risks inhibiting people's natural mechanisms, concludes Zak, who spoke last week at a Cambridge University conference on whether moral values are essential in business. And any regulations have to reflect our underlying, innate sense of values, otherwise they won't be followed. His conclusion might have found favour with Adam Smith, whose view that people act in their own self-interest and that they show sympathy with others, are sometimes thought contradictory.
- Anjana Anhuja, "Adam Smith Was Right", "The Times" % The conventional wisdom in the social sciences is that human nature is simply the imprint of an individual's background and experience. But our cultures are not random collections of arbitrary habits. They are canalized expressions of our instincts. That is why the same themes crop up in all cultures - themes such as family, ritual, bargain, love, hierarchy, friendships, jealousy, group loyalty, and superstition. That is why, for all their superficial differences of language and custom, foreign cultures are still immediately comprehensible at the deeper level of motives, emotions and social habits. Instincts, in a species like the human one, are not immutable genetic programs; they are pre-dispositions to learn. And to believe that human beings have instincts is no more determinist than to believe they are the products of their upbringing.
- Matt Ridley, "The Origins of Virtue" % Your sweet little book is a bizarre collection of out-of-context quotations, misquotations, misleading quotations, non sequiturs, errors of fact and just about every other dirty intellectual trick known to man.
-- Tim O'Neill, describing an anti-evolution book by the Jehovah's Witnesses % The Cogdell School Board banned the teaching of the controversial "Theory Of Math" in its schools Monday. "We are simply not confident of this mysterious process by which numbers turn, as if by magic, into other numbers," board member Gus Reese said. "Those mathematicians are free to believe 3 times 4 equals 12, but that dun [sic] give them the right to force it on our children." Under the new ruling, all math textbooks will carry a disclaimer noting that math is only one of many valid theories of number-manipulation.
- Georgia School Board Bans 'Theory Of Math', from satirical website TheOnion.Com % As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling. "Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Reverent Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
- Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory, "The Onion" % Leap Ahead? Stumble Around is more appropriate. % "There are two places in the world: home and everywhere else, and everywhere else is the same."
-- as a towboat captain tells John McPhee in Uncommon Carriers (2006) % My dad reminded me that it takes about seven days to get over a cold. But if you go see a doctor or take a lot of medicine, it only takes about a week -- Matt Cutt's blog % Procrastinate Now! % Ever stop to think, and forget to start again? % The original point and click interface was a Smith and Wesson. % Raising roofs, crashing cycles, and playing pool: applications of a data structure for finding pairwise interactions
David Eppstein and Jeffrey Gordon Erickson
Discrete & Computational Geometry 22(4):569�592, 1999
Proc. 14th Symp. Computational Geometry, ACM, Jun 1998, pp. 58-67
Mathematical Reviews 2000i:68185 % We started working together with Intel; we put together an effort around Intel's 64-bit platform, and we created this set of hubs, the data hub for BIA, now expanded into other areas. We ended up with 100x price performance difference, which was 10 times better than what we expected than when we went into this experience. And that's even before we put in Woodcrest and next generations of Intel's chips, and I expect by the end of this year, we'll be at a 500x price performance difference from where we started. So this is tremendous work. You can't do that on your own. This is the result of combining the efforts of two world-class engineering organizations, SAP and Intel. And the end result is obviously tremendous for our customers. We'll see this innovation going into hundreds and thousands of customers over the next year, year and a half. And we think that by doing so we're not just changing the landscape for our customers. We may be changing the landscape for this whole industry
-- Shai Agassi, SAP VP in charge of development, talking about working with Intel on the BI Accelerator program at Intel's IDF in 2006 % Apple often gets credit for starting the personal computer revolution, but the Macintosh, which debuted in 1984, was not the original mass-market PC. On Aug. 12, 1981, IBM launched the 5150 and changed home and office life forever. The system packed a 4.77-MHz Intel 8088 processor and up to 256 KB of memory, weighed 25 pounds with "diskette" drive, and sold for $3,000. It wasn't unreasonably bulky or expensive, and its boxy form factor remains the standard for PCs. Legions of schoolchildren and small-business employees began learning the already popular VisiCalc spreadsheet along with a new operating system called DOS. Starting in 1983, on-the-go professionals opted for a Compaq, the first fully compatible PC clone and the first portable clone. Windows, multi-gigabyte hard drives, the internet and the 3-pound laptop followed. It all started here.
http://blog.wired.com/ wiredphotos6/2006/12/ 9_ibm_5150_pers.html % "These data provide a marked example of convergent evolution due to strong selective pressure resulting from shared cultural traits animal domestication and adult milk consumption. "
Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe,
Sarah A Tishkoff, et. al., Nature, 10 December 2006 % "That definitely is not part of the equation. It's not part of the goal."
-- Answer for CEO of Craiglist : In what turned out to be a culture clash of near-epic proportions, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster spoke to the investment community this morning at the UBS global media conference in New York. UBS analyst Ben Schachter asked Buckmaster a standard financial world question: How does the site plan to maximize revenue? % "Bugs found 3 quarters before tapeout are trivial to fix. Bugs found 3 months before tapeout are called features."
-- Jon Hall % "If Lincoln were alive today, he'd be turning over in his grave."
Gerald Ford (on Nixon and Watergate) % "What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is."
- Vice President Dan Quayle % Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.
RFC 1925 % It is always possible to agglutinate multiple separate problems into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases this is a bad idea.
-- RFC 192 % Software is all design, not manufacturing. Once you've made one copy, almost no labor is needed to make a million just like it. So everything depends on the work done by one person or a small team.
Michael A. Covington, Ph.D. % But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose - which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
-- Richard Feynman % Knuth's Tex for the Math-kings of sigma, and pi,
Unix vim for the Server-lords with their O'Reilly tomes,
Word for Mortal Men doomed to die,
Emacs from the Bearded One on his Gnu throne,
In the land of Stallman where free software lies.
One Emacs to rule them all. One Emacs to find them,
One Emacs to take commands and to the keystrokes bind them,
In the land of Stallman, where free software lies.

(Raffael Cavallaro, gnu.emacs.help) % I fired him before he started yammering about Linux
Dilbert Jan 25th 2007 % You do not have to be a scientist to do science; you can be a child, a computer, or an intelligent rat. As long as you can verify a result, it is part of science.
Seth Lloyd Professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology % "The most important information is the atomic hypothesis, that all things are made of atoms, little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another."
Richard Feynman % Erecting hypotheses that can be falsified, and designing experiments capable of doing so, is the hallmark of the true scientist. In fact, it distinguishes the scientist from the non-scientist.
-- Dr. Robert Maynard's paraphrase of Karl Popper % Paranormal phenomena do not exist. Magic, witchcraft, mind-reading, clairvoyance, faith healing and similar practices do not work and never have worked. It makes a crucial difference whether we imagine ourselves surrounded by supernatural beings and happenings or whether instead we see ourselves in a world that science can help us understand. Many scientific principles, concepts, or discoveries need not, despite their importance, be understood by the public, but just by the experts. The question of the paranormal is different in this respect.
Roderich Tumulka Researcher in physics at the Mathematics Institute at the University of T�bingen % "There are two ways to be fooled.
One is believing things which are not true.
The other is not believing things which are true."
---Soren Kierkegaard, 19th century Dannish philosopher. % "Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing."
---H.L. Mencken % "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
Jan van de Sneptscheut, California Institute of Technology % "The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?"
- <xterm> % "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an
airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or
some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."
-- Frank Zappa % "It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere." % "A friend who used to work at 'research lab' related a story about a customer support line at 'company'. The support person said something on the order of 'You're not our only customer, you know,' to which his reply was, 'Perhaps not, but we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons.'" % NEW ELEMENT DISCOVERED

The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by university physicists. The element, tentatively named "ADMINISTRATIUM," has no proton or electrons and thus has an atomic weight of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 70 vice neutrons, and 161 assistant vice neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 232. These 232 particles are held together in a nucleus by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called morons.

Since it has no electron, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically, as it impedes every reaction it comes in contact with. According to researchers, a minute amount of Administratium, added to one reaction, caused it to take four days to complete. Without the Administratium, the reaction ordinarily occurred in less than one second. % "Say what you must, do all you can,
Break all the fucking rules and
Go to Hell with Superman and
Die like a champion, yeah hey!
Hey I don't know if the billions will survive,
But I'll believe in God when 1 and 1 are 5."
-- Bad Religion, Do What You Want % Well you praise him
Then you thank him
Til you reach the by-and-by
And I've won hundreds at the track
But I'm not betting on the afterlife.
-Jenny Lewis,Big Guns on Rabbit Fur Coat % Children are naive -- they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble.
-- Frank Zappa % "Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
--Lewis Carroll, 1832-1896 % Alice came to a fork in the road.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered."
Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter." % I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe. % The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place.
---What Leo Durocher actually said (referring to the New York Giants baseball team) % "Shit happens" was introduced to print by one Connie Eble, in a publication identified as UNC-CH Slang (presumably the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), in 1983.
"Life's a bitch, and then you die" a closely related reflection, dates from 1982, the year it appeared in the Washington Post.
"Been there, done that" entered the public discourse in 1983, via the Union Recorder, a publication out of the University of Sydney. % "Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women, and Irish whiskey. The other ten percent I'll probably waste."
----Tug McGraw, asked what he would do with the salary he was making as a pitcher % "The true is the name for whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief."
---William James on the subject of truth % Special-purpose processors always choke off real algorithmic creativity as they make us try to shoehorn new algorithms into a design model often several years old.
- Jim Blinn, Bright Shiny Future paper
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/38/17635/00814536.pdf?isnumber=17635&arnumber=814536 % Wheel of. Reincarnation
Designing a display processor can become a never-ending cyclical process. In fact, we found the process so frustrating that we have come to call it the "wheel of reincarnation." We spent a long time trapped on that wheel before we finally broke free. In the remainder of this paper we describe our experiences. We have written it in the hope that it may speed others on toward "Nirvana."
-- On the Design of Display Processors T. H. Myer & I.E. Sutherland,

http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/ myer-sutherland-design-of-display-processors.pdf % "....speed problems may lie elsewhere. But, my guess is: Remember! It's the memory."
A Measure of Transaction Processing 20 Years Later
Jim Gray, Microsoft Research % !!! BREAD IS DANGEROUS !!!

Research on bread indicates that:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations. % A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?"

The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead" There is a silence, then a shot is heard.

The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?" % I never quite figured out why the sexual urge of men and women differ so much. And I never have figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing. I have never figured out why men think with their head and women with their heart.

One evening last week, my girlfriend and I were getting into bed.

Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says "I don't feel like it, I just want you to hold me."

I said "WHAT??!! What was that?!"

So she says the words that every boyfriend on the planet dreads to hear..."You're just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man." She responded to my puzzled look by saying, "Can't you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?"

Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn't decide which one to take so I told her we'd just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said lets get a pair for each outfit. We went onto the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you...she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn't even know how to play tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I said, "That's fine, honey." She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation she finally said, "I think this is all dear, let's go to the cashier."

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, "No honey, I don't feel like it."

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled WHAT?"

I then said "honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You're just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman." And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, "Why can't you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?"

Apparently I'm not having sex tonight either. % Dear Colleagues, Structure and Efficiency Team has identified that Intel will be much more efficient if I leave Intel. So I'm leaving Intel.
-- Note from Russian engineer during Intel's headcount reduction % "I'm thrilled that Google is there, because they are the heat shield," Chizen said.

Bruce Chizen, chief executive officer of Adobe Systems, the San Jose software maker, talked about the encroaching ambitions of Microsoft in various fields of software, a development that he called flattering. He then thanked Google for releasing products that compete with Microsoft's software business, such as calendars and a word processor, because, he said, Microsoft is distracted by it.

Web 2.0 Summit 2006 % "The capacity of digital data storage worldwide has doubled every nine months for at least a decade, at twice the rate predicted by Moore's Law for the growth of computing power during the same period."
-- Fayyad, U. and Uthurusamy R., Evolving data mining into solutions for insights, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 45, No. 8, 2002, pp. 28-31. % "He said all the evidence the company has indicates that the device is performing quantum computations, but he acknowledged there is some uncertainty."
--about D-Wave Systems Inc feb 2007 demo of the Quantum Computer % If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out. % My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance. % ... measurement accuracy is the only fail-safe means of distinguishing what is true from what one imagines, and even of defining what true means.

..this simple idea captures the essence of the physicist's mind and explains why they are always so obsessed with mathematics and numbers: through precision, one exposes falsehood. a subtle but inevitable consequence of this attitude is that truth and measurement technology are inextricably linked.

-- robert b laughlin, a different universe, % When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men -- and a discharge for loving one,
-- A Gay Vietnam Veteran, on his tombstone, 1988 % Allegedly, a Pan Am 727 flight waiting for start clearance in Munich overheard the following:
Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?"
Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English."
Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?"
Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): "Because you lost the bloody war." % A DC-10 had come in a little hot and thus had an exceedingly long roll out after touching down. San Jose Tower noted: "American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able. If you are not able, take the Guadalupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights and return to the airport." % My Epitaph: See I told you I was sick.. % The Internet is a Denial of Service Attack on Your Brain
-- Thoughts Made Words, Todd Hoff's Weblog. % A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
- Mitch Radcliffe % Here was how I imagined traffic lights worked: Pressure-sensitive plates were placed directly beneath the asphalt on all the roads. When too many cars drove over them, indicating that traffic was getting too heavy on a particular road and wildly rushing cars were more likely to crash into each other, the light turned red to stop all the cars and make their drivers calm down. Then the cars on the other road, their drivers nicely calmed down, could proceed until they, too, became disorderly and the pressure plates told the light to change. % (Special event canceled): We will hold a regular staff meeting instead. Please keep the champagne out of the aisles.
--Russ Arnold % A Conversation in Court:
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began
the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere. % Life is short and it was not meant to be spent making people feel guilty about instruction pipelines being only partly full or caches being missed.
-- Kent Pitman % My wife deserves vengeance. Doesn't make a difference whether I know about it. Just because there are things I don't remember doesn't make my actions meaningless. The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it? Anyway, maybe I'll take a photograph to remind myself, get another freaky tattoo.
Leonard Shelby in Memento (2000) % People doing offline email are simply working in an extreme case of a network disconnect, a rather large network latency if you will.
-- http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/122 % ...five management principals that emerge from the startling changes in computing:
-- The new mantra: Don't lose touch with the customer.
-- Even in a high-tech industry, management skills are more important than technology.
-- Today's successes often obscure the first signs of tomorrow's failures.
-- The company with the highest unit volume almost always wins.
-- The place to find unit volume is the bottom of the market, where low prices create new customers.
5 principles in the economics of the computer world as stated in the June 14th, 1993 issue of Fortune magazine. % ...the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416. It's like the medieval church ruling that the sun revolves about the earth. Man-made laws can be significantly helpful but not when they contradict fundamental truths.
--Letter to the Patent Office from Professor Donald Knuth % "It does require a superior intellect to function as a rocket scientist," the article concedes. "Having said that, though, rocket science is not brain surgery."

The study, which appears in the organization's monthly publication, Popular Brain Surgery, is entitled "The Intelligence of Rocket Scientists: Myth Versus Reality," and suggests that rocket scientists' reputation for smartness is largely undeserved. % "I brewed up some coffee. I would've as soon flipped upon my skull and poured it directly onto my brain, but the hinges were too rusty."
in Speak of The Devil by Richard Hawke % "There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."
--James Thurber % Jerry Falwell struck dead; not yet found worthy of resurrection
While I am sorry for the pain that his family now feels, we can all take solace in the fact that the extinction of the televangelist was all part of god's loving plan.
--PZ Myers on pharyngula science blog http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula, Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal % 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. It's the HD-DVD Processing Key for most movies released so far. % Customer Support -- What Fun, An actual example:

dear gina b.

shamiqa no send gina b. code. problem happen like so:

p4 think itself very smart. but p4 not so smart as shamiqa. p4 think branch go false false false true true true. but branch go false true false false true true. p4 make bad guess. p4 get confuse then p4 go very slow. shamiqa want to make p4 no more guess but wait until know for sure. branch prediction very bad idea unless code very simple. shamiqa no write simple code! you tell shamiqa how to make p4 no more guess when run shamiqa code, yes?

speculative execution even more worse idea unless code very simple. shamiqa no write simple code!! you tell shamiqa how to make p4 no more guess when run shamiqa code, yes?

out-of-order execution most worst idea of all unless code very simple. shamiqa no write simple code!!! you tell shamiqa how to make p4 no more guess when run shamiqa code, yes?

shamiqa help you, maybe pseudo-code work like this, yes?

get_processor_control_word

store_processor_control_word

mask_processor_control_word_bits_to_turn_off_branch_prediction

mask_processor_control_word_bits_to_turn_off_speculative_execution

mask_processor_control_word_bits_to_turn_off_out_of_order_execution

put_processor_control_word

begin_critical_code

...........................

end_critical_code

recall_processor_control_code

put_processor_control_word

you ask engineering team to tell shamiqa what is instruction to get_processor_control_word? what is mask to to turn off branch prediction? what is mask to turn off speculative execution? what is mask to turn off out-of-order execution? what is instruction to put_processor_control_code?

you no argue with shamiqa is idea no good. shamiqa no care. you no tell shamiqa how smart is p4. shamiqa no care. you no tell shamiqa how smart is engineering team. shamiqa no care. you please tell shamiqa how to control p4.

you no argue with shamiqa why. you tell shamiqa how. manual no tell shamiqa how to do this. you no tell shamiqa to read manual again.

shamiqua question not so hard, yes? engineering team very smart? engineering team answer shamiqua question, yes?

shamiqa is your friend always % "A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood."
Mark Ardis % "One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork."
Edward Abbey % "We used to be kings here," says Rainer Huber, a developer who's spent his entire 25-year career at SAP in Walldorf. In Wall Street Journal Article SAP's Plan to GlobalizeHits Cultural Barriers, May 11th 2007 % "Those who doubt the power of basic drives, however, might note that although one can hold one's breath, this conscious act is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe," Friedman wrote. "The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight."
--- Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at the Rockefeller University, tried to come up with an analogy that would convey what science has found about the powerful biological controls over body weight. published in the journal Science in 2000 % There's things Microsoft can't do. That's OK. They're not important.
-- MCSE training session % "Please, please stop quoting the pope. No one should care what the cranky, irrelevant figurehead for an obsolete superstitious dogma says about science, he's no more a knowledgeable authority on this matter than RuPaul, and it doesn't matter which of them has the more fabulous wardrobe. Seriously, he's nothing but a sour old man yelling at those damn kids to get off his lawn"
--- scienceblogs.com/pharyngula % And, clearly, I do like run on sentences, which, though they meander around the point, do finally come to the point that they are trying to make, though the point might be lost to the reader, as the message is embedded in a maze of twisty commas and noun to verb passages, that bedazzle the reader while resulting in an ultimate befuddled look by the time the period finally appears at the end of the sentence. % "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
Mark Twain % "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx % "This isn't right. It's not even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli's harsh critique of a paper % So I showered and shaved and got my gums bleeding with a toothbrush, then stumbled into the kitchen to cauterize the wounds with some scalding coffee.
From "Gun, with occasional music" by Jonathan Lethem % They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction.
--Janet Reno % All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
---IBM Maintenence Manual % On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
--Peter Steiner % Humans occasionally make mistakes, even programmers do.
--Software Analysis and Model Checking, Gerard J. Holzmann % "...simple methods typically yield performance almost as good as more sophisticated methods to the extent that the difference in performance may be swamped by other sources of uncertainty...".
-- D.J.Hand, Classifier technology and the illusion of progress. Statist. Sci., 21(1) 1-14, 2006. % ..problems need obfuscation now and then, honey. I don't mean total or permanent obfuscation, I just mean temporary obfuscation, that's all.
-- Tennessee Williams, dialog on how liquor solves problems, in Period of Adjustment % How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All
-- Title of the Firesign Theater's second album in 1969 % I said, live it or live with it.
-- The Firesign Theater, I think we're all bozos on this bus % The FDA alleges that the tobacco industry has been secretly adding twice the amount of nicotine to cigarettes to make them more addictive.. In a related story, Kraft has admitted that they've been adding twice as much whiz to their jars of cheese."
--Morning Sickness, Premiere Radio Network % "Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,'" said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. 'It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.'"
-from _The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire_, by Arthur Canon Doyle % Why does the Porridge Bird lay his eggs in the air?
-- The Firesign Theater, I think we are all bozos on this bus.. % Then the floor peeled up in a curl to embrace the sides of my head, and the weave of the carpet spiraled up to tickle the inside of my nose. It was a very interesting sensation.
-Jonathan Lethem, Gun, With Occasional Music % Some people have things written all over their faces; The big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.
-Jonathan Lethem, Gun, With Occasional Music % He took the bait and looked. It was the last brushstroke in the portrait of (him) as rank amateur.
-Jonathan Lethem, Gun, With Occasional Music % I'd joined the ever-growing category of things that look better when you leave the light off.
-Jonathan Lethem, Gun, With Occasional Music % "You must be a glutton for punishment", he said.
"A gourmet, actually,", I said. "If it isn't perfect, I send it back."
-Jonathan Lethem, Gun, With Occasional Music % Only change necessitates a mirror; for if our appearance never altered, a single baby picture would forever tell us how we looked
-- Justin Tumlinson, Seeing as Far as We can Reach. % The Lisp Machine is a new computer system designed to provide a high-performance and economical implementation of the Lisp language. It is a personal computation system, which means that processors and main memories are not time-multiplexed: when using a Lisp Machine, you get your own processor and memory system for the duration of the session. It is designed this way to relieve the problems of running large Lisp programs on time-sharing systems. Everything on the Lisp Machine is written in Lisp, including all system programs; there is never any need to program in machine language. The system is highly interactive.
- First paragraph in the Lisp Machine Manual, Daniel Weinreb& David Moon, 1981 % sometimes you have to go above the written law
--Fawn Hall, Iran-Contra testimony % There are things known, there are things unknown, in between are doors
- jim morrison % You clod. You've destroyed the only Mcdonald's on the Moon.
- From "Moonlander", a game written by Jack Burness in 1973 as a demo for the DEC GT40 vector graphics terminal (based on a PDP-11/05 CPU). This game used a light pen to control thrust and rotation. % Recovering From Stuck States:
The following FUNCTION commands should all be used with caution.

ESCAPE Helps you recover from stuck states such as "Output Hold" and "Sheet
Lock"....

c-CLEAR INPUT
Clears window system locks. This is a last resort, although not as drastic
as warm booting. Use this when none of the windows will talk to
you, when you cannot get a System menu, and so on.

-- Genera Handbook % "You are typing to Dynamic Lisp Listener 1"
-- Startup message of Lisp Listener pane on Symbolics Genera % Not war?
-- teco generated response to "MAKE love" command on DEC systems % I was recently in a meeting where several IT Principle Engineers stated that our IT goals are often pulled out of industry magazines while the CIO is traveling between speaking engagements. This is spoken about in the article, and I would hope it is not true. We need to be leaders and not followers in the IT area.
- company's IT blog, as if this is a surprise! % She got the goldmine, I got the shaft.
- Title of country song by Jerry Reed % An old joke is illustrative here: 10 statisticians in a bar. Bill Gates walks in. The statisticians start to whoop and holler. "What's going on?" asks Bill. One statistician explains, "On average, we just got a whole lot richer!" % Life is sexually transmitted. % Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. % All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
-- T.E. Lawrence % "We get questions along the lines of, 'What could you possibly run that needs 128 cores on a laptop?,'" Patterson told HPCwire. "This reminds me of the story of the patent examiner in 1870 who decided that everything of importance had been invented, so he quit his job to look for something permanent. Or that 640KB ought to be enough memory for PCs. We think the most exciting software has yet to be written, and it's going to be highly parallel." % Eat Life or Life will Eat you.
-- Great Santini % Okay, but if you break your leg, don't come running to me. % The summit is not the only place on the mountain.
- NOLS % Nigritude Ultramarine
-- Google Bomb: Actions intended to mislead search engines to rank certain pages higher than they deserve. In May 2004, the websites Dark Blue and SearchGuild teamed up to create what they termed the "SEO Challenge" to Google bomb the phrase "nigritude ultramarine". % Come Monday, it'll be all right
Come Monday, I'll be holdin' you tight
I spent four lonely days in a brown L. A. haze
And I just want you back by my side
- Jimmy Buffett, Come Monday % "All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection," is a famous quote attributed to Butler Lampson... David Wheeler completed his quote with another phrase: "But that usually will create another problem."
--- from Beautiful Code, Diomidis Spinellis % Raising roofs, crashing cycles, and playing pool: Applications of a data structure for finding pairwise interactions
-- David Eppstein. Discrete & Computational Geometry 22(4):569-592, 1999 % I've become increasingly convinced that relational databases are some kind of sinister death cult who want to lure you in and get you to wear strange stripy clothes with shiny shoes and give all your money to your superiors in the cult. And if you don't conform, or if you conform too well, you just know you'll end up in a pit of dismembered bodies back in the woods somewhere.
--- Tim Bradshaw on comp.lang.lisp % C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.... C++ leads to really really bad design choices.
-- Linus Torvalds on the git mailing list % Top 10 CIO questions:

Why can't I get on the board?
Why won't the financial director let me spend any money on IT?
How can I adopt a service-oriented architecture-based approach?
What is service-oriented architecture, anyway?
How does opening up 20 new data centres square up with our green computing strategy?
What on earth has love got to do with it?
How can I outsource the entire IT department and still look like I'm responsible for something?
How can I tell the chief executive to get stuffed?
Why does everyone hate me so much?
How long is a piece of string?

-- From http://knowledge.computing.co.uk/2007/09/top-10-question.html % Microsoft has a majority market share: Critical, In Progress.
-- 1st bug in Ubuntu bug tracking database % In the new study, researchers found that Java programmers understand an average of seven fewer Computer Science concepts per hour spent with Java each day compared to similar programmers using other languages. Sun calls the study 'seriously flawed'...
--Stevey's Blog Rants % Bugs thrive on the same human brain deficiencies that earn magicians their living. We are shown something that is apparently impossible -- but the reality is that we just don't have all the information.
--stevenf.com: Bugs Are Magic Tricks % The same people that wrote the bible thought the world was flat.
-- Unknown % Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.
-- Scottish proverb % Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
-- Satchel Paige % When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
-- Jack Gurney - "The Ruling Class" % Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands.
-- Jessie Helms % Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.
-- Casey Stengel % The conditions of the Transvaal ordinance cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
-- Winston Churchill % That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude. Also, a tactical misrepresentation.
--Alexander Haig % For me, a beautiful program is one that is so simple and elegant that it obviously has no mistakes, rather than merely having no obvious mistakes
-- Simon Peyton Jones, Beautiful concurrency % <dsully> please describe web 2.0 to me in 2 sentences or less.
<jwb> you make all the content. they keep all the revenue. % The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts
-- Paul Ehrlich % The Use of Fish, Especially Goldfish, in Alcohol Research,
--R.S. Ryback, Quarterly Journal of Studies of Alchol, 31(1), pp162-6, 1970. % How to Give Mouth to Mouth Resuscitation without Becoming Emotionally Involved.
-- Gonzalez-Angula, A, J. Amer. Med. Assoc. 200 (1967): 59. % Transgressing the Boundaries Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
--Alan Sokal, Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996). The first "science hoax paper". It was, in fact, a cleverly disguised [and hilarious] parody, which had only the appearance of serious scholarly work: In the very first paragraph, Sokal criticizes the "dogma" [sic] according to which "there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being". % How Dogs Navigate to Catch Frisbees
-- D.M Shaffer et.al. Psychological Science Volume 15 Issue 7 Page 437-441, July 2004 % How to solve the Santa Claus problem
--M. BEN-ARI, Concurrency: Practice and Experience, Volume 10, Issue 6 , Pages 485 - 496 Dec 1998 % Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem in Polyphonic C#
Nick Benton, Microsoft Research paper % Fuzzy Ants and Clustering,
-- P.M. Kanade & L.O. Hall, IEEE TSMC-A, Vol 37, #5, Sept 2007, pp758-769. % There has been a lot of "We are not Apple" discussion in the blogs lately, but just compare what Steve Jobs does on stage to Paul Otellini. Steve works the crowd, he energizes it, he knows what they want to hear and TALKS to them. Paul reads powerpoint notes. I'm not saying a CEO has to be a great entertainer, but I'd like to see the most public face of Intel be more... engaging. Does Paul take any training classes? Public speaking would be a good one.
-- Internal Intel blog.. % "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year"
-- Gordon Moore. Cramming more components onto integrated circuits, Electronics, Volume 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965. The original reference for Moore's Law. So, to be precise Moore, in his 1965 paper, said that the density of components appeared to be doubling every year. % No exponential is forever...but we can delay "forever".
--- Gordon E. Moore, presentation at International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), February 10, 2003 % There are no pockets in a shroud.
-- Gaelic proverb % "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-- Benjamin Franklin % You can hire a billion monkeys, or you can hire me.
--Gigamonkeys Consulting, Chief Monkey, Peter Seibel % statistics over a 12-year period show a 200:1 variation between the top programmer and the poorest programmers
-- Bryan, G.E., "Not all programmers are created equal", 1994 IEEE Aerospace Applications Conference Proceedings, Los Angeles, IEEE, pp. 55-62, 1994 % the top 1% of developers contributed 90% of added lines
-- Mockus, A., Fielding, R.T., Herbsleb, J.D., "Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla", ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 11, 3, July 2002 % individual differences have a greater effect on performance than Java vs. C/C++ .. up to 30x performance ratio between the median programs of the upper and lower half... up to 20x differences in programming time for experienced graduate students
-- Prechelt, L., "Comparing Java vs. C/C++ efficiency differences to interpersonal differences", Communications of the ACM, 42, 10, October 1999, pp. 109-112. % Salad: that's what food eats!
- A non-vegetarian % The code was willing;
It considered your request,
But the chips were weak.
-- Haiku Error Message % Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg % - You want four million users by DECEMBER?? You have four hundred active licenses for your product currently! Nothing - and I mean NOTHING - is going to add four zeros to the end of that number in three months short of hiring Arthur Anderson to handle the bookkeeping.

- Wait... First you wanted to clone Digg... Then you wanted to "add the social aspects of Facebook to it," and NOW you want it to be Wikipedia? Where the HELL did you spend your morning? In the "Web 2.0 Company Names to Memorize" symposium sponsored by the local Linux Enthusiasts club

- Where's my gun? I know I own one somewhere... Even if it's a toy gun, at least I can disassemble it and choke on the small internal parts
---from http://www.joethepeacock.com/2007/10/unordered-list-of-thoughts-i-had-during.php % Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world's population. % I wanna claw my way up to middle management.
--eponymous Monster.com ad from the dot-com days % No self-respecting developer started off their computer career thinking, Boy, my lifelong goal is to be a middle manager in a large multinational corporation beset by competitors, nearly collapsing under the weight of its own internal processes.
http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2006/03/19/554743.aspx % It is disturbing that science is viewed by key decision makers at Intel as "a complicated program" that can only be used to find the next cancer drug, and so we must resort to "mumbo-jumbo" to evaluate these office space "pilots".

Science (to quote Maynard paraphrasing Popper) is "Erecting hypotheses that can be falsified and designing experiments capable of doing so".

To stretch an analogy, you may fly your plane by the seat of your pants, but don't be surprised when it comes crashing to the ground, because mumbo-jumbo doesn't have as much lift-to-weight ratio as aerodynamically designed wings.

And to stretch an analogy into puns, here is hoping I see some very positive impacts, but no crashes, thru your pilots...

-- from my blog about evaluation pilots for office alternatives.. % We said the same thing a year and a half ago when there was a lot of competitive noise about AMD's integrated-memory controller. We said look, the design of these things involves thousands of tradeoffs. We felt we could achieve the requisite performance levels without an integrated memory controller, which adds cost to the processor. We said when we get to the point when we feel (an) integrated-memory controller is required to achieve the required performance levels, we will integrate the memory controller.

The same thing goes for the point-to-point links between the processors. In fact, I like to point out that Intel was able to do a quad core -- putting two dual-core dies in a single package -- because it had a front-side bus architecture. We could just tie the front-side buses together internal to the package and drop quad core and do a dual-core socket. No change.

So we were able to get quad-core to market a year ahead of AMD. It was not an option for AMD. And I believe if it had been an option, they would have done it. But it's not an option in their link-based architecture -- in that HyperTransport architecture. So they were basically not players in quad-core for almost a year.
-- Justin Rattner, Wired, Oct 2007 % One of the most common ways to get a foothold in Genera for debugging something is to (1) find a place where the thing you want to use appears visually, (2) click Super-Left to get the object into your hands for read-eval-print, inspection, etc, (3) use (ed (type-of *)) to find its source reliably and with no foreknowledge of what the type is, who wrote the program, what their file conventions were: who loaded it, or any of myriad other things that other systems make me do.
-- Kent M Pitman on comp.lang.lisp % green shifting: when people rework the information contained in status reports to make them more politically palatable to their manager. % It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.
---Franz Kafka, The Trial % It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice % There's no place like 127.0.0.1 % I love animals. They're delicious. % The trail along the talus above the Redwall still seemed hard to follow. One can find some of it, but one mustn't try to find it all the time, or he will waste a lot of time. Just keep going here.
-- Harvey Butchart, Hiking Log, Volume 1, 1945 - July 12, 1964 % > Virtualization seems to have a lot of security benefits.
You've been smoking something really mind altering, and I think you should share it.
- Theo de Raadt A thread on the OpenBSD mail list, Oct 2007 % You know the day destroys the night
Night divides the day
Tried to run
Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side

We chased our pleasures here
Dug our treasures there
But can you still recall
The time we cried
Break on through to the other side

I found an island in your arms
Country in your eyes
Arms that chain us
Eyes that lie
Break on through to the other side

Made the scene
Week to week
Day to day
Hour to hour
The gate is straight
Deep and wide
Break on through to the other side

-- The Doors, Break on Through % "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
--Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), The Godfather III, 1990 % "One reason why there is so much interest in the diffusion of innovations is because getting a new idea adopted, even when it has obvious advantages, is often very difficult."
-- Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation % This was one lovely who looked as if she could be grateful to excess. And some excesses I'm excessively fond of.
--Richard S. Prather: Darling, It's Death % There was a lot of her already in the room before the rest of her got in.
--Richard S. Prather, Everybody Had A Gun % Of all the monsters that fill the nightmares of our folklore, none terrify more than werewolves, because they transform unexpectedly from the familiar into horrors. For these, one seeks bullets of silver that can magically lay them to rest.

The familiar software project, at least as seen by the nontechnical manager, has something of this character; it is usually innocent and straightforward, but is capable of becoming a monster of missed schedules, blown budgets, and flawed products. So we hear desperate cries for a silver bullet--something to make software costs drop as rapidly as computer hardware costs do.
--Fred Brooks, No Silver Bullet % "his interview skills are crazy good"
- Dilbert, evaluation for the applicant that says: "my poor performance would make you look good in comparison." % The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.
- The 99 rule, attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs % Distributed identity is much more secure than a single system.
--Bruce Schneier, interview in NY Times % When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
-- Gregory Petsko % Today databases violate essentially every lesson we have learned from the Web.
-- Adam Boswort, ACM Queue, Volume 3 , Issue 8 (October 2005), http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1103833 % Left to our own devices, ...we are all too good at picking out non-existent patterns that happen to suit our purposes
-- Bradley Efron and Rob Tibshirani, Introduction to the Bootstrap, Monographs on Statistics & Applied Probability % Abstraction is a funny thing - just the right amount gives you the insight to solve previously unsolvable problems but too much obscures what you are trying to accomplish thereby leading you astray.
-- Charlie Savage % Science is the best defense against believing what we want to.
-- Ian Stewart % Lock-based programming is our status quo and it isn't enough; it is known to be not composable, hard to use, and full of latent races (where you forgot to lock) and deadlocks (where you lock the wrong way).
- Herb Sutter, "The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software," Dr. Dobb's Journal, March 2005. Available online at http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm. % CEOs are not entrepreneurs. [...] they are often "empty suits" [...] persons who are good at looking the part but nothing more. [...] what they have is skill in getting promoted within a company rather than pure skills in making optimal decisions - we call that "corporate political skill." These are people mostly trained at using PowerPoint presentations.
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness % "If you think that the inventions we see around us came from someone sitting in a cubicle and concocting them according to a timetable, think again: almost everything of the moment is the product of serendipity."
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan % This book is the synthesis of, on one hand, the no-nonsense practitioner of uncertainty who spent his professional life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with probabilistic outcomes and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful.
--- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness % The Median is not the message
--- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness % No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.
-- John Stuart Mill, on the inductive argument of David Hume as quoted by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness % People tend to infer that because some inventions have revolutionized our lives that inventions are good to endorse and we should favor the new over the old. I hold the opposite view. The opportunity cost of missing a "new new thing" like the airplane and the automobile is minuscule compared to the toxicity of all the garbage one has to go through to get to these jewels.
--- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness % The sun's not yellow it's chicken
-- Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues, Highway 61 Revisited, 1965 % The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
Causes Galileo's math book to get thrown
At Delilah who sits worthlessly alone
But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter

Now I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill
I would set him in chains at the top of the hill
Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille
He could die happily ever after

Mama's in the fact'ry
She ain't got no shoes
Daddy's in the alley
He's lookin' for the fuse
I'm in the streets
With the tombstone blues

-- Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues, HIghway 61 Revisited, 1965 % The flagellant's curse, he thought, to grow inured even to the whip.
- I Am Legend, Richard Matheson % Addictive consumption of avatars in cyberspace.
-- Lee O, Shin M., Cyberpsychol Behav. 2004 Aug;7(4):417-20. % A Christmas tree in the larynx.
-- Philip J, Bresnihan M, Chambers N. ,Paediatr Anaesth. 2004 Dec;14(12):1016-20. % To say the Bible was written by men and may contain inaccuracies completely contradicts the word of the Bible % I Went to Public School in Kansas and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt and a Poor Understanding of the Scientific Method % This week I functioned as an incubator for innovations for contributions to the value chain.
-- Dilbert, Jan 21 2008 % I ache in the places where I used to play..
-Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song % I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
-- Leonard Cohen, CHELSEA HOTEL NO. 2 % Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
-- Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows % Admins usually scare me individually, but when they get into a pack these imposing organizational warriors are just terrifying. I pity the tasks that will crumble beneath their onslaught.
-- Intel blog % "I see that Neil is from HR. Are there any engineers on the committee, or is it stacked with liberal arts majors who can only imagine that technical individual contributors are hermits who have trouble with eye contact, and need to be forced to socialize." % Starting with the *right* foot minimizes sprint start time.
-- A. Eikenberry, Acta Psychologica, (2008), 127(2), 495-500. % How many steps does a doctor take in the hospital? No difference between internist and general surgeon, but a relationship with age and BMI.
-- Goosen J. (2008) Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 152(4), 203-206. % Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus?
-- G. Miller, J. Tybur, B. Jordan, Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 28, Issue 6, Pages 375-381, 2008 Ig Noble Award winner for discovering that a professional lap dancer's ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings. % Answer me, you have a civil tongue in your head. I know, I sewed it there.
--from I was a Teengage Frankenstein % There is nothing wrong with your television set.
Do no attempt to adjust the picture.
We are controlling transmission.
We will control the horizontal.
We will control the verticial.
We can change the focus to a soft blur -- or sharpen it to cyrstal clarity.
For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear.
You are about to participate in a great adventure.
You are about to experience the awe and mystery reaches from the inner mind -- to the outer limits.
--- Opening narration from The Outer Limits. % Terrible things were happening all around us. Right next to me a huge reptile was gnawing on a woman's neck, the carpet was a blood soaked sponge -- impossible to walk on it, no footing at all.
"Order some golf shoes", I whispered. "Otherwise, we'll never get out of here alive".
--- Hunter S. Thompson, describing a Las Vegas bar scene to his Samoan attorney in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas % You don't normally see that kind of behavior in household appliances.
-- Bill Murray to Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters % This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error.
-- HAL (Douglas Raines) in 2001 A Space Odyssey % That rock is a rock because of all the things you know to do to it. I call that DOING. A man of knowledge, for instance, knows that the rock is a rock only because of DOING, so if he doesn't want the rock to be a rock all he has to do is NOT-DOING. See what I mean?
-- The Yaqui Indian sorcerer don Juan Matus to Carlo Castaneda in Journey to Ixtlan % Is Orr crazy?
He sure is.
Can you ground him?
I sure can. But first he has to ask me. Thats part of the rule.
Then why doesn't he ask you?
Because he is crazy. He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to.
And then you can ground him?
No. Then I can't ground him.
You mean there is a catch?
Sure there is a catch. Catch-22. Concern for one's safety in the face of real and immediate danger is the process of a rational mind.
Thats some catch, that Catch-22.
It sure is.
--- A conversation between Yossarian and Doc Daneeka in Joesph Hellers' Catch-22. % Well, when they first got together as a band, they didn't know how to play their instruments and they did things to kind of camouflage that; Darby would smear peanut butter all over himself, he would dive thru broken glass, he would break glass on his head. And eventually they learned how to play.
--- The manager of "The Germs" in the punk rock documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization" % C: What is the fellow's name on third base?
A: "What" is the fellow's name on second base.
C: I'm not askin' ya who's on second.
A: "Who"'s on first.
C: I don't know!
--- Abbot and Costello % If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. Thats ANOTHER hypothetical, isn't it. And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept A and B and C and still not accept Z, mighn't I?
-- The Tortoise to Achilles in What the Tortoise Said to Achilles by Lewis Carroll % Wener Herzog was about to stand trial for taking pot shots at his wife. He missed her, proving he's equally inept at shooting spouses and film.
--- From a film review by John Simon % Everything was so sweet out here, I think I've gotten diabetes.
-- Harlan Ellison after being introduced for the last half hour of a Tom Snyder show about Star Trek % Peace is at hand!
-- Henry Kissinger, 3 years before the end of the Vietnam war but 2 weeks before the 1972 presidential elections % I am not a crook!
- Richard M. Nixon % I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Firth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it'll save it --- save the plan.
-- Richard M. Nixon to Mitchell, Haldeman and Dean on March 22 1973 % Enormous drawings that were undoubtedly meant as a signal for a being floating in the air are found on mountainsides in many parts of Peru. What other purpose could they have?
-- Erich Von Daniken in Chariots of the Gods % It's the black, dead thing. The monkey face. I knew it would come back. It always comes aboard at midnight on the second night out.
-- The steward to the passenger in Second Night Out by Frank Belknap Long % Exercise 27.5: Final exercise: Find all the lies in this manual and all the jokes.
Appendix A: Answer to All the Exercises: 27.5: If this exercise isn't just a joke, the title of this appendix is a lie.
--- From the TeX Book by Donald E. Knuth % In computing, the second-system effect or sometimes the second-system syndrome refers to the tendency to design the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and successful system as an elephantine, feature-laden monstrosity.
-- How does Version 1.0 differ from Version 2.0, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect % Wendell: That's very linear Sheriff.
Bell: Well. Old age flattens a man.
-- No Country for Old Men, Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007 % Wendell: Hell's bells, they even shot the dog....Well this is just a deal gone wrong.
Bell: Yes, appears to have been a glitch or two.
-- No Country for Old Men, Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007 % Bell: You know Charlie Walser? Has the place east of Sanderson?...Well you know how they used to slaughter beeves; hit 'em with a maul right here to stun 'em...

(Indicates between his own eyes. )

...and then truss 'em up and slit their throats? Well here Charlie has one trussed up and all set to drain him and the beef comes to. It starts thrashing around, six hundred pounds of very pissed-off livestock if you'll pardon me...Charlie grabs his gun there to shoot the damn thing in the head but what with the swingin and twistin it's a glance-shot and ricochets around and comes back hits Charlie in the shoulder. You go see Charlie, he still can't reach up with his right hand for his hat... Point bein, even in the contest between man and cow the issue is not certain.

(He takes a sip of coffee, leaving room for Carla Jean to argue if inclined. She does not. Sheriff Bell hands a card across. )

...When Llewelyn calls, just tell him I can make him safe.

(She takes the card. Sheriff Bell sips. )

...Course, they slaughter beeves different now. Use a air gun. Shoots out a nut, about this far into the brain
...
(He holds thumb and forefinger a couple inches apart.)

...Sucks back in. Animal never knows what hit him.

(Another beat. Carla Jean stares at him.)

Carla Jean: Why you telling me that, Sheriff?

Bell: I don't know. My mind wanders.

-- No Country for Old Men, Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007 % I got here the same way the coin did
-- Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men % If the rule you followed brought you here, then what good was the rule?
---- Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men % You pick the one right tool.
---- Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men % Previous evidence from studies on combat sports and psychological tests suggest that competitors wearing red perform better than average., ...It is believed the colour can stimulate deep-rooted aggressive and dominance in competitive situations. Similarly research shows players who encounter opponents in red display more defensive reactions...
-- Lead author Prof Martin Attrill, of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Plymouth, whose work is due to be published later this year in the Journal of Sports Sciences, % Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
-- Leonard Cohen,Anthem % Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
-- Terry Pratchett. % Atheist Sees Image of Big Bang in Piece of Toast % Stacy Smith, Intel's Chief Financial Officer, said "Using a 6 point font will make documents much smaller, reducing the amount of space they take on the hard drive and in email. This will shrink the required size of our data centers, which will reduce power consumption, which will save renewable resources, which will reverse Global Warming, and will eventually save the entire planet."
-- Intel April Fools.. % "People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else."
-- B. R. Myers % "He is often called "a writer's writer," with the customary implication that this is far better than being a reader's writer."
-- B.R. Myers, A Bright Shining Lie, Atlantic, Dec 2007 % "When it comes to discussing the arts, all opinions are completely subjective and thus equally valid, or so the orthodoxy goes. But surely there are limits. To assert that reading one of Furst's novels is like hearing "Kafka, Dostoevsky and le Carr� talk to each other" (Kirkus Reviews) is just plain wrong, as wrong as any literary judgment can be."
-- B.R. Myers % "Maybe this is the effect that Proulx is aiming for; she seems to want to keep us on the surface of the text at all times, as if she were afraid that we might forget her quirky narratorial presence for even a line or two."
-- B.R. Myers, A Reader's Manifesto, Atlantic Monthly, July/Aug 2001 % If there's more than one way to do something, and one way will result in disaster, then someone will do it that way.
-- The "real" Murphy's law. The real Murphy's Law probably wasn't even actually created by anyone named Murphy. It dates back to some work done by Colonel John Stapp, a military scientist studying the effects of acceleration on human bodies. % "The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle."
-- Stapp's Law % New ideas pass through three periods: it can't be done; it probably can be done, but it's not worth doing; I knew it was a good idea all along.
-- Arthur Clarke % Waves of technological innovation take approximately 30 years - one human generation - to be completely absorbed by our culture. That's 30 years to become an overnight sensation, 30 years to finally settle into the form most useful to society, 30 years to change the game.
-- Robert Cringely % Two Laws of Explanation:

The First Law: When you're explaining something to somebody and they don't get it, that's not their problem, it's your problem.

The Second Law: When someone's explaining something to you and you're not getting it, it's not your problem, it's their problem.

-- Tim Bray % Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
-- Eric Raymond % Pessimists are more often right. Optimists are more often successful.
-- Barry Smith % Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley estimate that the world generated five exabytes of data in 2002, double the output in 1999. To translate that into something more familiar, absorbing five exabytes of data on TV would require sitting in front of a screen for 40,700 years.
-- Eric Schmidt % On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

-- Stewart Brand % It is unfortunately very easy, and all too typical, for constructive discussions to lapse into destructive flame wars. People will say things in email that they would never say face-to-face. The topics of discussion only amplify this effect: in technical issues, people often feel there is a single right answer to most questions, and that disagreement with that answer can only be explained by ignorance or stupidity.
-- Karl Fogel % It is unfortunately very easy, and all too typical, for constructive discussions to lapse into destructive flame wars. People will say things in email that they would never say face-to-face. The topics of discussion only amplify this effect: in technical issues, people often feel there is a single right answer to most questions, and that disagreement with that answer can only be explained by ignorance or stupidity.
-- Karl Fogel % For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites % I might as well flame a bit about my personal unhappiness with the current trend toward multicore architecture. To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas, and that they're trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore's Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks! I won't be surprised at all if the whole multithreading idea turns out to be a flop, worse than the "Itanium" approach that was supposed to be so terrific - until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write.

Let me put it this way: During the past 50 years, I've written well over a thousand programs, many of which have substantial size. I can't think of even five of those programs that would have been enhanced noticeably by parallelism or multithreading. Surely, for example, multiple processors are no help to TeX.

I know that important applications for parallelism exist: rendering graphics, breaking codes, scanning images, simulating physical and biological processes, etc. But all these applications require dedicated code and special-purpose techniques, which will need to be changed substantially every few years.
-- Interview with Donald Knuth, April 25, 2008, http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856 % "If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect."
Ted Turner % My partner is a real dog: cooperation with social agents,
S. Parise, S Kiesler, L Sproull and K. Waters,
CSCW '96: Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, 1996, pp. 399--408., % A Generalization of the Dog Bone Space to En
W. T. Eaton
Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jul., 1973), pp. 379-387 % The Fat-Cat Effect, the Puppy-Dog Ploy, and the Lean and Hungry Look
Drew Fudenberg and Jean Tirole
The American Economic Review, Vol. 74, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Ninety-Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1984), pp. 361-366 % "Eating Your Own Dog Food,"
Harrison, W., IEEE Software , vol.23, no.3, pp. 5-7, May-June 2006 % How Long to Eat a Cake of Unknown Size? Optimal Time Horizon under Uncertainty
Ramesh C. Kumar
The Canadian Journal of Economics / Revue canadienne d'Economique, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 2002), pp. 843-853 % Islands of the Living Dead: The Social Geography of McDonaldization
-- George Ritzer, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 47, No. 2, 119-136 (2003) % Cutting a pie is not a piece of cake.
Barbanel, J., and S. Brams. 2007. Preprint. Available online at http://www.nyu.edu/ gsas/dept/politics/faculty /brams/pie-cutting.pdf. % A camel passes through the eye of a needle: protein unfolding activity of Clp ATPases.
Zolkiewski M., Mol Microbiol. 2006 Sep;61(5):1094-100. % The big Nazi cat went on raking up the thread-loops from my trousers, seemingly intent on single-handedly reinventing Velcro.
-- Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn % Have you got for us what we want?
I'm working on it.
Working is wonderful, honorable, admirable. Results -- now those we truly cherish.
-- Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn % How did you feel when you heard that Buckley died this year?
I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.
-- Gore Vidal, interview in NY Times, June 16th 2008 % "We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music for ever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?"
-- James Hetfield, co-founder of Metallica, quote in news story about his music being used to torture Iraqi prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. % "Most of our competitors were very poorly run, They did not understand how to bring in people with business experience and people with engineering experience and put them together. They did not understand how to go around the world."
-- Bill Gates, June 2008 % The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."
-- George Carlin, 2004 AP interview % "nature has no intent"... You can't repeat that often enough!
-- blog comment % The purpose of models is not to fit the data but to sharpen the questions.
-- Karlin, Samuel (1923 - ) , 11th R A Fisher Memorial Lecture, Royal Society 20, April 1983 % I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."
Paul R. Halmos, I want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985, p. 120. % In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize ... only be sure always to call it please research.
Tom Lehrer, Lobachevski % Why is it that change is inevitable, except from vending machines? % The closest I ever got to a 4.0 in college was my blood alcohol content % If one consults with doctors when practicing medicine, surely one ought to consult with statisticians when practicing statistics.
-- Robert Adler , John Ewing and Peter Taylor
Citation Statistics: the use and misuse of citation data in the assessment of scientific research % "That was just instinct. Kind of like running from the cops."
--- Virginia's tailback Marquis Weeks describing his 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. % No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn
-- The Doors, Texas Radio & the Big Beat % Possibly apocryphal, but I once heard someone claim that they personally were pulled over for some trivial infraction, and as soon as the cop approached and asked, "Do you know why I stopped you?", they had replied, "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

The cop then replied, "These aren't the droids I'm looking for," turned around and walked back to his cruiser, and promptly departed. % Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces...Made Easy!
-- Damian Conway keynote at 2008 O'Reilly Open Source Convention % And it struck me that modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand.
--Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages % The thing about the web is that if you look at it, it has no object models and it has no APIs. It's just protocols all the way down. Some of the protocols are loose and sloppy like HTML, and some of them are extremely rigorous like TCP/IP. But if you look at the stack there's no APIs, there's protocols all the way down. I think that the thing that you take away from that, is that that is the way to build heterogeneous network locations. A few other things that we learned from the web is that simple message exchange patterns are better; I mean HTTP has one message exchange pattern; I send you a message, you send me a message and the conversation is over. And it turns out to have incredibly good characteristics and so on.
-- Tim Bray, explaining objections to WS DeathStar in an interview % Are RESTafarians clean? No, because they don't use SOAP.
--http://wangdangler.wordpress.com/ % The equipment was state of the art, but having a room cluttered with assorted computer terminals was like having a den cluttered with several televisions sets, each dedicated to a different channel. "It became obvious," [ARPA IPTO Director Robert] Taylor said many years later, "that we ought to find a way to connect all these different machines."
-- Where the Wizards Stay Up Late, Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon % Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk.
--PSO once said to Swope about competing with ISV field.. % "The more you drive ... the less intelligent you are."
-- Miller, in Repo Man % Testing is for bunglers. Properly designed mechanisms work properly.
-E.E. Smith (Skylark 3) % Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx % Zero is greater than minus zero, but don't ask by how much.
-- CDC6600 ref. manual % History is written by those who win and those who dominate.
-- Edward Said % Apple has removed the nearly $1,000 "I Am Rich" application from its App. Store, but not before eight people either willingly or not purchased the useless application.
Earlier this week the I Am Rich application went up, commanding a $999.99 price tag, the most a developer can charge through Apple's App Store. The program essentially loads a screen saver onto the Apple iPhone to remind users and alert others that the user has money to throw around willy-nilly. The "status symbol," once downloaded, does nothing but load a ruby red icon on the home screen, with the subtext "I Am Rich." When the user activates the program, a large, glowing red gem appears. That's all. % Pay attention to what you're paying attention to % You can dress Newt Gingrich up as a chick but it doesn't mean I want to make out with him... This is cheap, cheap, cheap marketing on both your parts and don't believe for a minute that customers don't see right through it; perfuming pigs is not revolutionary, it's called product marketing.
/Hoff http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2007/06/the-4th-generat.html % "The Internet will be the CB radio of the '90s,"
-- Stephen Weiswasser, a senior VP at ABC % "You aren't going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the Internet."
-- Stephen Weiswasser, a senior VP at ABC % Your papers, please......Your papers are not in order.
-- Firefox(1982) % Sign the papers, old man!
I cannot sign the papers (whimper)....
And why can you not sign the papers?!?!
I cannot sign the papers because you have broken all my fingers.....
-- Cheech & Chong 2nd album, Big Bambu, Tortured Old Man % We think space and time are important because that's the kind of monkeys we are.
Terence Rudolph Imperial College London % The trucks back 'em in, rack 'em, and stack 'em,"
Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie on delivery containers of processing platform to MSFT's data centers -- CNET News. % Generally, its a bad idea to market a technology that makes people hurl.
-- Katzenburg 2008 talking on old 3D film technology % You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn't have lost if you hadn't left home in the first place.
--Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There. % I could remember nothing of the night before other than the series of Bip Pivo beers passing before me, as if on a bottling line. I shrugged it off, youthfully unaware that I was in a single summer disabling clusters of brain cells at a pace that would leave me, just seventeen years later, routinely standing in places like a pantry or toolshed, grazing at the contents and trying to remember what the hell it was that I had wanted.
--Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There. % The menu here was in German too. It is really the most unattractive language for foodstuffs. If you wanted whipped cream on you coffee in much of the German-speaking world, you order it mit Schlag. Now, does that sound like a frothy and delicious pick-me-up, or does that sound like the sort of thing smokers bring up first thing in the morning?
--Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There. % I sat beside a man whose concern for personal hygiene was rather less than obsessive, and spent much of the day wishing I knew the Serbo-Croat for "Pardon me but your feet are a trifle malodorous. I wonder if you would be good enough to stick them out the window".
--Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There. % I quickly realized that everything about the bus was designed for discomfort. I was sitting beside the heater, so that while chill drafts teased my upper extremities, my left leg grew so hot that I could hear the hairs crackle. The seats were designed by a dwarf seeking revenge on full-sized people; there was no other explanation. The young man in front of me had put his seat so far back that his head was all but in my lap.
-Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There. % As the old joke goes, as you go up the management chain, crap becomes manure, then turns into fertilizer, which is recast as a way to grow the company. That's when the flowery press releases begin. Companies rarely issue a release about how the initiative is abandoned some months later when the market fails to materialize.
--Scott Berry % I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. But, well, if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.
- Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) in The Maltese Falcon. % The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone: return-into-libc without function calls (on the x86)
-- Hovav Shacham, Proceedings of the 14th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, 2007. % Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
- David Dixon % Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
-- Suzie Wagner % There is a chasm
of carbon and silicon
the software can't bridge
-- Rahul Sonnad % Sweden is pretty proud of Dynamite (Alfred Nobel), and the safety match. % There is no power in PowerPoint
--Greg Symon % In space no one can hear you scream.
-- Tag line for Alien 1979 % Blasphemy is a victimless crime. % Gods Don't Kill People. People Who Believe in God Kill People. % People Who Don't Want Their Beliefs Laughed at Shouldn't Have Such Funny Beliefs % "The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
--- Hubert H. Humphrey % "No matter where you go in life after this, it will always be better than Tucson."
-- from Hamlet2 % there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so
-- Hamlet % Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'.
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it's for real,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Then they'll raise their hands,
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands,
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered.
And like Pharaoh's tribe,
They'll be drownded in the tide,
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered.

-- Bob Dylan, When The Ship Comes In, The Times They Are A-Changing, 1963 % Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.
-- Bruce Schneier, Wired 2006 % Female attractiveness mediates the relationship between in-pair copulation frequency and men's mate retention behaviors.
F KAIGHOBADI, T SHACKELFORD. (2008) Personality and Individual Differences, 45(4), 293-295. % Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomized controlled trials.
G Smith. (2003) BMJ, 327(7429), 1459-1461

You have to wonder about a randomized control in these trails -- do you blindfold the jumper & randomly decided if they get a working parachute or not as they are stepping from the plane?? % An analysis of the forces required to drag sheep over various surfaces.
-- J Harvey. (2002) Applied Ergonomics, 33(6), 523-531. % A backwards poet writes inverse. % Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.
-- Earl Wilson % "It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where - where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is - from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to ... to our state,"
-- vice presidential nominee "I can see Russia from my house!" Sarah Palin % Hookers lining up for the their BJs
-- Newspaper headline (brooklynpaper.com) about BJ's Wholesale Club coming to Red Hook New York % A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. But why? they asked, as they moved off. Because, she said, I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer. % A woman had twins, and gave them up for adoption. One of them went to a family in Egypt and was named Amal. The other went to a family in Spain, and they named him Juan. Years later, Juan sent a picture of himself to his mum. Upon receiving the picture, she told her husband that she wished that she also had a picture of Amal. Her husband responded, But they're twins. If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal. % Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at. % I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian % There was a man who entered a local paper's pun contest. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did. % just remember one thing: if the Pope was, instead of a religious figure, merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of daycare centers where thousands of employees had been caught molesting kids and then covering it up, he'd be arrested faster than you can say, 'Who wants to touch Mister Wiggle?'
-- Bill Maher % I was surprised when I came back to Unix how many of even the little things that were annoying in 1990 continue to annoy today. In 1975, when the argument vector had to live in a 512-byte-block, the 6th Edition system would often complain, 'arg list too long'. But today, when machines have gigabytes of memory, I still see that silly message far too often. The argument list is now limited somewhere north of 100K on the Linux machines I use at work, but come on people, dynamic memory allocation is a done deal!

I started keeping a list of these annoyances but it got too long and depressing so I just learned to live with them again. We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy
-- Rob Pike % Stop procrastinating -- starting tomorrow. % Digital circuits are made of analog parts. % We were doing drugs in the dressing room when suddenly the tour manager stuck his head around the door and said, "The police are here!" Holy shit! We all panicked and threw our drugs in the toilet. And then Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland walked in.
-- Keith Richards % The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach,
Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino, Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60. Ig Noble Award winner 2008! % A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the Cat Flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835),
M.C. Cadiergues, C. Joubert, and M. Franc, Veterinary Parasitology, vol. 92, no. 3, October 1, 2000, pp. 239-41. In Noble 2008 Biology Award winner for for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat. % Effect of 'Coke' on Sperm Motility,
Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill, and Deborah J. Anderson, New England Journal of Medicine, 1985, vol. 313, no. 21, p. 1351. % I think John Edwards said that his biggest weakness was he was too passionate about helping poor people and Senator Clinton indicated she was too impatient to move the country forward. So I thought the question was what's your biggest weakness as opposed to what your greatest strength is, disguised as a weakness. ... If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'"
-- Sen Obama during the 2008 campaign % Molten gold was poured down his throat until his bowels burst.
--F R W van de Goot, R L ten Berge, and R Vos, J. of Clinical Pathology, v56(2), Feb 2003. Describes an experiment on a bovine carcass replicating a 1599 Spanish governor in early colonial Ecuador that suffered this fate. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1769869&blobtype=pdf % I always thought that the best way to sum up my professional work is that it has been an almost equal mix of theory and practice. The theory I do gives me the vocabulary and the ways to do practical things that can make giant steps instead of small steps when I'm doing a practical problem. The practice I do makes me able to consider better and more robust theories, theories that are richer than if they're just purely inspired by other theories. There's this symbiotic relationship between those things. At least four times in my life when I was asked to give a kind of philosophical talk about the way I look at my professional work, the title was "Theory and Practice." My main message to the theorists is, Your life is only half there unless you also get nurtured by practical work.
-- Donald Knuth % "There is, I believe, a lot of value in thinking outside the box, but the key word is thinking. ... You cannot think effectively outside the box if you don't know where the box is."
-- Chief Justice John Roberts % Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them.
Plato (428-327 BC) % When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there's an obstacle!
--University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols % There's plenty of room for God's creatures -- right next to mashed potatoes. If god didn't want people to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat? % In the high mountains, I have seen shells. They are sometimes embedded in rocks. The rocks must have been earthy materials in days of old, and the shells must have lived in water. The low places are now elevated high, and the soft material turned into hard stone.
-- Chu-Hsi, A.D. 1200 % ...large amounts of radioactive decay occurred during the first three days of Creation as part of the supernatural Creation process....The presence of supernatural "process" during Creation is essential to our approach...
-- direct quote from "creation science" literature http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/rate-all.pdf & complete proof why it isn't science.. % I spend more time trying to fill-in-the-acronyms than I do reading our GLOBAL STRATEGY for crying out loud! It seems like Management loves TLA's because it's the only way they can cram 10 pounds of crap into a 3 pound PowerPoint Slide
-- blog response to Intel's latest "clear strategy" % It's Not How Fat You Are, It's What You Do with It That Counts.
--Virtue S, Vidal-Puig A (2008) , PLoS Biol 6(9): e237 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060237 % Tears of sorrow, tears of joy: An individual differences approach to crying in Dutch females.
--J ROTTENBERG, L BYLSMA, V WOLVIN, A VINGERHOETS. (2008) , Personality and Individual Differences, 45(5), 367-372. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.05.006 % Ejaculation as a treatment for nasal congestion in men is inconvenient, unreliable and potentially hazardous.
--M FAKHREE. (2008) , Medical Hypotheses. DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2008.07.022 % Why are juveniles smaller than their parents?.
-- N.C. Ellstrand. (1983) Evolution, 1091-4. DOI: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2408423
which ends with the punchline: "In particular, another juvenile character is even more widespread that Juvenile Small Size and deserves some thoughtful theoretical attention, the fact that juveniles always seem to be younger than their parents" % their inclusion into this chapter is warranted by their occasional appearance in technical literature, as well as the levity they add to an otherwise dry subject:
Bit: A single, bivalent unit of binary notation. Equivalent to a decimal "digit."
Crumb, Tydbit, or Tayste: Two bits.
Nibble, or Nybble: Four bits.
Nickle: Five bits.
Byte: Eight bits.
Deckle: Ten bits.
Playte: Sixteen bits.
Dynner: Thirty-two bits.
Word: (system dependent).
-- Bharathwaj Muthuswamy, Intro to Digital Circuits
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee100/su07/handouts/IntroductionToDigitalSystems.pdf % Moisture Sensitive Devices - Not A Dry Subject
-- http://www.itmconsulting.org/MSD-Not%20a%20Dry%20Subject.pdf % Eye of newt, and toe of frog treatment of pressure sores.
-- Mykyta LJ. Aust Nurses J 1977;7:35-37 % Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like crack?
-- J Hirsh, Pharmacogenonics Journal, 2001, Volume 1, Number 2, Pages 97-100
First sentence: "As opposed to the human population, addiction to drugs of abuse is not a great problem in insects, at least as far as we are aware." % Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan

Send lawyers, guns and money
-- Warren Zevon % the implications of many of the scientific ideas and theories, whether mine or otherwise, are indeed immoral, ugly, contrary to our ideals, or offensive either to men or women (or some other groups of people). I simply do not care. If what I say is wrong (because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence), then it is my problem. If what I say offends you, it is your problem.
-- Satoshi Kanazawa, Two logical fallacies that we must avoid, psychology today % Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
-- Charles Darwin % "By 2010 there will be 1 billion transistors per human, each costing 1/10 millionth of a cent."
-- Jon Iwata, Sr. VP IBM Marketing and Communications, 2008 % Angry men and disgusted women: An evolutionary approach to the influence of emotions on risk taking
-- Daniel M.T. Fessler, , Elizabeth G. Pillsworth and Thomas J. Flamson, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, V95, Issue 1, September 2004, Pages 107-123 . ..
Participants were asked to make a series of four choices in four independent rounds of play; each choice consisted of a sure payoff option of $15.00 and a chance option to obtain a greater sum of money at a known probability. The expected value of all options was $15.00; chance options were as follows: $18.75 at an 80% chance, $37.50 at a 40% chance, $75.00 at a 20% chance, and $300.00 at a 5% chance.
... among men, participants in the anger condition selected a larger number of risky choices than those in the control condition, yet there was no difference in this regard between the disgust condition and controls. Conversely, among women, while participants in the anger condition did not differ in their choices from controls, participants in the disgust condition selected significantly fewer risky choices than those in the control condition. % ...due to an unfixable security flaw in the way funds are now transferred electronically, worldwide, it is no longer safe to write personal checks....After painful deliberation I've come up with a new plan, which I hope will be acceptable to all concerned, and perhaps even welcomed as an improvement. Instead of rewarding heroic bug-finders with dollars, I shall henceforth award brownie points, otherwise known as hexadecimal dollars (0x$). From now on it will be kudos, not escudos.
Instead of writing personal checks, I'll write personal certificates of deposit to each awardee's account at the Bank of San Serriffe, which is an offshore institution that has branches in Blefuscu and Elbonia on the planet Pincus
-- Donald Knuth, Financial Fiasco % On the planet Pincus, the inhabitants are called Pincushions. % When you smoke a fish, which end do you light? % There is a new sushi bar that caters only to lawyers.
It is called the Sosumi. % "It's generally better to run as fast as you can so that you can be idle longer."
-- The "Race toward Idle" philosophy of power management % Turner: I'd like to go back to New York.
Joubert: You have not much future there. It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.
Turner: You seem to understand it all so well. What would you suggest?
Joubert: Personally, I prefer Europe
-- Three Days of the Condor % In fifty years, the world has gone from the invention of the first transistor to a $150B industry which produces on the order of 10,000 transistors per day for every human being on earth.
-- Mark R. Pinto, William F. Brinkman, William W. Troutman,The Transistor's Discovery and What's Ahead % Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million:
a) Radio: 38 years
b) TV: 13 years
c)Internet 4 years
d)Ipod: 3 years
e)Facebook 2 years % The Number of Internet Devices
1984 1000
1992 1,000,000
2008 1,000,000,000 % Teaching children to use Windows is like teaching them to smoke tobacco in a world where only one company sells tobacco.
- Richard Stallman % The stain Bill Clinton left on Monica Lewinsky's dress isn't remotely comparable to the stain George Bush and Dick Cheney have left on the Constitution
-- Glenn Greenwald, salon.com % Misanthropy, as defined here: "If ever you meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope."
-- Florence King, Charity Toward None: A Fond Look At Misanthropy % The Page You Requested was Eaten
Goats do all sorts of nifty things to keep humans off the mountains, such as sabotaging your favorite gear and apparel website by eating our links and pages. These pages contain valuable information related to state-of-the-art gear, the very gear vital to an athlete's survival in the harshest of conditions.
-- HTTP 404 error's "reason phrase" from web server at NorthFace.com % We had 12.9 gigabytes of Powerpoint slides in storage on our disk drives. Ha ha ha. It freaks me out just to think about. Do you how many person centuries that is? Of clip-art manipulations? I banned PowerPoint from our company - I just edicted it. That's cool - I'm chairman, President, founder, you know, chief cook and bottle washer there and I just edicted it - I just said "out". I think we are going to have a pretty good quarter because of that.
- Sun's Scott Scott McNealy at National Press Club, 1996 % "Somebody hits me, I'm going to hit him back. Even if it does look like he hasn't eaten in a couple weeks. I thought he was going to pull a spear on me."
-- Charles Barkley,, after an Olympic Dream Team victory over Angola, in which they won 116-48 in which Charles got into a physical altercation with a member of the Angola team % Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler.
-- Milton Waddams, Office Space % "I've got this thing and it's (expletive) golden and I'm just not giving it up for (expletive) nothing. I'm not gonna do it."
-- Illinois Gov. Rod Blagovich captured on wiretaps selling Obama's senate seat % "It's nice to pretend to be important; but it's more important to pretend to be nice."
-- Dale Carnegie, 1937 % A blend of murky and marketing, murketing has two parts. The first refers to the increasingly sophisticated tactics of marketers who blur the line between branding channels and everyday life. ... The other half of what murketing means is found on the consumer side of the dialogue. ...More and more people of all ages are, in a variety of ways, actually participating in new forms of marketing, from signing up with "word of mouth" firms to spread the news about some new product the firm represents or submitting their own home-brew advertisements on behalf of well-known consumer brands.
--- Rob Walker, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, 2008 % When computer hardware became cheap enough for good OCR (optical character recognition), it also became cheap enough for PCs and the Internet.
-- Theo Pavlidis % Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
By Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 77(6), Dec 1999, 1121-1134. Perhaps an article for all marketing folks to read? :-) % You date your hardware vendor, but you marry Larry Ellison.
-- Anonymous % "Oracle pricing is simple. They turn you upside down, shake you until your wallet falls out, count the money, and add 10% for support."
--Philip Greenspun % "If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade."
--Dr. Steven Chu, 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics and head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been tapped to be the 12th Secretary of Energy of the United States. % The scientists at our national labs will have a distinguished peer at the helm. His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science. We will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action.
-- Barack Obama formally introduced Dr. Steven Chu as the next Secretary of Energy % Still we are absolutely amazed that the difference is this large. We would have expected Nehalem to outperform Shanghai by lower margins. Although we still are a bit skeptical that the difference is this large ("too good to be true" syndrome), we do not see how you could artificially inflate a SAP benchmark. It sure is not as easy as SPECJBB or SPECfp/int.
... Hats off to the Intel engineers...
-- Dec 2008 AnandTech article on early Nehalem SAP SD benchmark publications % We have been asked to work as a team. But here is something you need to remember: you can't make an effective basketball team when only a few of the players can effectively dribble and shoot jump shots while all the other players think they are the coach % "The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague."
-- Bill Cosby % I hope my obituary spells "debonair" correctly. % Palindromic novels fall apart halfway through % Man who snatched wig will have toupee
-- Reuters headline, Dec 16 2008 % While I do consider the adjective "baroque" to be a compliment, I must point out that Perl is actually more of a romantic piece, with allusions to various classical motifs. My favorite composer is Mahler, which should surprise no one.
--Larry Wall % I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.
-- Dorothy Parker % Blogs are just vanity publishing for arrogant people with an inflated ego.
-- David De Roure % Romantic love modulates women's identification of men's body odors.
J LUNDSTROM, M JONESGOTMAN. Hormones and Behavior. DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2008.11.009 % octet-stuffing was like "sucking dead pigs through a straw" in terms of performant implementations
--Marshall Rose % Multithreading is a little bit like Zen Buddhism: The more you learn about it, the more it escapes you.
-- Ruediger R. Asche http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810427.aspx % It felt like a gimmick to me
-- A creative director at Adweek about Intel's sponsored 3D commercial during the 2009 Superbowl % I think I've been making smart enough decisions so far, considering that my future self hasn't traveled back in time and beaten the crap out of me
-- One sentence story % It took the internet to find out about my uncle's successful career in porn
-- One sentence stories % And amazingly, in the update to SPEC SFS -- SPEC SFS 2008 -- the benchmark's flaws have not only gone unaddressed, they have metastasized. The result is such a deformed monstrosity that -- like the index case of some horrific new pathogen -- its only remaining utility lies on the autopsy table: by dissecting SPEC SFS and understanding how it has failed, we can seek to understand deeper truths about benchmarks and their failure modes.
-- Blog on sun.com about SPEC filesystem benchmark. % Last night, Barack Obama held his first press conference as President of the United States," and it was "fascinating because his press conferences are very different than the George Bush press conferences in many ways. There were verbs. There were syllables. There were complete sentences.
-- Jay Leno % Maybe if we spent more money no schools and condoms, there wouldn't be so many stupid people running around ruining our economy.
-SNL % The Earth is Round (p<0.5)
Paper with the sentence: "we...are responsible for the ritualiszation of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST; I resisted the temptation to call it statistical hypothesis inference testing) to the point of meaninglessness and beyond."
-- Jacob Cohen, American Psychologist dec 1994 % Sharing is evil, fundamentally limits scalability, and is best avoided.
-- Joe Duffey, Reader/writer locks and their (lack of) applicability to fine-grained synchronization , http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/default.aspx % Given the number of people working in computer science and the fact that publishing papers is considered the goal of our work, there is an insane number of papers written every year, the vast majority of which contribute very little (or not at all) to our collective knowledge. This is basically spam. In fact, for many papers (including some of my own), the actual idea of the paper could be stated in one paragraph, but somehow people manage to write 10 pages of it.
-- Luis von Ahn % What is needed is not the will to believe but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
--Bertrand Russell % Effects of sexual activity on beard growth in men.
-- Anonymous (1970). Nature, 226, pp869-870 % The baby's blood type? Human, mostly.
-- Orson Scott Card, 6/01/2009 http://www.sixwordstories.net/category/subject/sci-fi/page/2/ % Big Ball of Mud,
-- Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder, Chapter 29, Pattern Languages of Program Design 4, edited by Neil Harrison, Brian Foote, and Hans Rohnert, Addison-Wesley, 2000 % That's my solution to sneezes. It is the duty of the one making the bodily function to request forgiveness from his/her expulsion... But good luck getting that in my house for "expulsions", which usually result in some sort of verbal scoring by the other male resident, a high five and a "peeeeuuuuwww...good one".
-- internal blog posts % Increase in scrotal temperature in laptop computer users
-- Yefim Sheynkin, Michael Jung 1, Peter Yoo, David Schulsinger, and Eugene Komaroff. Hum. Reprod., V20 #2, pp452-455, 2005. % Sado-masochistic suicidal god-zombies, IMHO, are much harder to explain to kids than how the sun/ orbits/ seasons work.
-- Steve Husted, internal mailing list % A small deed done is better than a great deed planned % You have Darwinian innovation in the consumer space, and that fundamentally lowered our operating costs
-- Vivek Kundra, CIO of the US 2009 % Beer is basically liquid bread, or bread is solid beer. They were both invented around the same time.
-- Peter Reinhart % it's sort of like having fun, only different.
-- quote captured by Jon Krakauer when he asked one of the mountain doctors, Howard Donner, why they volunteered to spend their summers toiling in such a godforsaken place as he stood shivering in a blizzard, reeling from nausea and a blinding headache while attempting to repair a broken radio antenna % Does semen have antidepressant properties?
-- Gordon G. Gallup Jr., Rebecca L. Burch, Steven M. Platek (2002). Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31 (3), 289-293 DOI: 10.1023/A:1015257004839 % Remember, when someone annoys you, it takes forty-two muscles in your face to frown, but it only takes four muscles to extend your middle finger.
-- Joe Simpson, The Beckoning Silence % These safety measures introduced to make motoring survivable have made people drive faster and more dangerously. I've always agreed that the most effective safety device would be a viciously sharp spike protruding from the center of the steering wheel to a point some ten inches from the driver's chest. No seat belts allowed.
-- Joe Simpson, The Beckoning Silence % In Peru in 1985, when I knew that the game was up and I was dying and it led to nothing, no paradise, just eternal emptiness, I never once thought to turn back to the God of my childhood. If for one moment I had thought that some omniscient being might be looking down upon me and offer a helping hand I would have stopped moving instantly, gotten rid of the pain and the effort, and waited to be helped. And I would have died. In fact it was probably one of the most powerful and saddest things that I learned in those awful days in Peru. For me there was no God.
-- Joe Simpson, The Beckoning Silence % Some days you're the bug, some days your the windshield. % - They use averson therapy to get people over phobias. So, if you're scared of flying they make you fly and sort of force you out of the phobia. If you're scared of heights they put you in front of big drops.
- I'm hoping I can get my fear of sleeping with supermodels treated.
-- a converstation catured in Joe Simpson's The Beckoning Silence % Al Gore says domain .eco logical
--BBC News headline on forming .eco domain for ecological issues.
Additional reddit puns:
.com on! it wasn't that bad!
that wasn't very .org-inal
I found it .info rmative.
mind your own .biz ness
These puns are the shiz.net!
You've got to be kidding .me
This is pun thread in .name only, it contains no creativeness.
Please stop, this is more than ICANN stand.
URL a bunch of losers.
Gore should be the .gov ernor of domain related puns. % Circular proteins: no end in sight.
-- Trabi, M. (2002) Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 27(3), 132-138. % "If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names," said Mills, who is white. "I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested. We're not out there trying to abuse and harass people -- we're trying to protect the law-abiding citizens locked behind their doors in fear."
-- Louisiana police officer on racial bias % Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
-- Internet meme % I learned an important lesson that day; success in a large organization, whether it�s a university or IBM, is generally based on appearance, not reality. It is understanding the system and then working within it that really counts, not bowling scores or body bags.
-- Robert X. Cringely % All my fortunes are at sea
Neither have I money nor commodity
-- Antonio, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene i % One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers
--newspaper headline % Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops of significantly after age 25
-- newspaper headline % If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
-- Henry David Thoreau % Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal-Setting
-- Lisa D. Ordonez, Maurice E. Schweitzer , Adam D. Galinsky , Max H. Bazerman, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1359.pdf
In this article, we argue that the beneficial effects of goal setting have been overstated and that systematic harm caused by goal setting has been largely ignored. We identify specific side effects associated with goal setting, including a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a rise in unethical behavior, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation % The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
We'll make cloud computing announcements. I'm not going to fight this thing. But I don't understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing other than change the wording of some of our ads. That's my view.
-- Larry Ellison, Source: The Wall Street Journal
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/09/25/larry-ellisons-brilliant-anti-cloud-computing-rant/ % But wait, there's more!
-- Ed Valenti's Ginsu knife infomercial. Also a favorite line from Pat Gelsinger when launching new Intel products. % It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign. Somebody is saying this is inevitable and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.
-- Richard Stallman, on cloud computing quoted in The Guardian, September 29, 2008 % Made up internet statistics are up a staggering 78% over the past six months, reported researchers from The Ohio University School of Internet Studies. Professor Mars Alex has seen a steady rise since the initial 22% decline of fictional statistics subsequent the elections. Usually we notice a 10% - 15% drop in made up statistics, but 33% of the researchers took 50% of the case studies and determined the increase. We�re 99% sure this is for real.
-- www.holyjuan.com % In plain language, first decide what you think might be an important aspect of the problem, develop a crude design on this basis and then examine it to see what else you can discover about the problem.
-- Bryan Lawson, How Designers Think % I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
- Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955 % A Brand New Language on Google App Engine: .. Well, we fed Google's new CADIE Strategic Decision Maker the App Engine issue tracker, our groups, and various blog posts around the internet to help select a new runtime language for App Engine. Today we're excited to officially announce support for FORTRAN 77!
-- Google April Fools % I'm like a fly stuck in a thick tar of despair. Incompetence hangs in the air like the cold stench of death. I'm drowning and monkeys dressed as lifeguards are throwing me anvils. My job has convinced me that life is a stale joke with no punchline.
--dilbert, feb 3 2008 % I don't understand why Obama is abandoning the War on Science. It's the only war we were winning.
- John Oliver, on The Daily Show % I wake up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day a little difficult.
- Elwyn Brooks White % "Each node in a system should be able to make decisions purely based on local state. If you need to do something under high load with failures occurring and you need to reach agreement, you're lost. If you're concerned about scalability, any algorithm that forces you to run agreement will eventually become your bottleneck. Take that as a given."
-- Werner Vogels Amazon CTO and Vice President % we relied on a process we called 'rough consensus and running code'.
-- Stephen Crocker, How the Internet got its rules, NY Times, march 7th 2009 % Atheism is to religion like bald is to hair color % Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital of Coconino County: any town with thirteen churches and only four bars has got an incipient social problem. That town is looking for trouble.
-- Ed Abbey, Monkey Wrench Gang % It is not unreasonable to predict that we will see widespread abandonment of the illusion of random access memory in the next two decades.
-- David Moon, from Dan Wienreb dec 2007 post on objectstore http://danweinreb.org/blog/the-technology-and-business-of-objectstore % In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolution, all things recede to distrances out of reach, relecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert.
-- Edward Abbey % May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
-- Edward Abbey % YouTube, that incandescent tower of video Babel; monument to the sloughed-off detritus of our exponentially-exploding digital culture; a Technicolor cataract of skateboarding dogs, lip-synching college students, political punditry, and porn; has reached the zenith of its meteoric rise; and Icarus-like, wings melting; is spiraling back to earth. Despite massive growth, ubiquitous global brand awareness, presidential endorsement, and the world�s greatest repository of illegally-pirated video content, Google�s massive video folly is on life-support, and the prognosis is grave.
-- Benjamin Wade, Silicon Alley Insider, April 9th 2009 article, % Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright % "In today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to violate rules."
-- Bernard Madoff, money manager, Oct. 20, 2007. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison and find $171 Billion for his stock Ponzi scheme % "If pupils have strongly-held family beliefs about the Easter Bunny, such ideas should be explored, Easterbunnyism, Fatherchristmasism or the contemporary militant Tooth Fairy jihadist movement are best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view. This is more valuable than simply banging on about �reality.� Reality-based thinking is vastly overrated and certainly won�t prepare children for a career in the City or in government."
-- fake quote in News of the News % For sale, baby shoes, never worn.
-- Ernest Hemingway's "flash fiction" story % Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
- Joss Whedon % He read his obituary with confusion.
- Steven Meretzky % My project is unfunded. Just the way I like it. I spend my entire day forwarding funny e-mails and lubricating my bowels with coffee.
-- Dilbert, April 9 2009 % Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
-- Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man % I wrapped a movie called 'Zombieland,' in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie,
-- Woody Harrelson claims he mistook photographer for zombie - CNN.com, near to Easter, April 2009 % The old intel logo was obviously phallic, with a prominent 'l' and a nice 'e' at the bottom. But the new logo looks like a protecting nest, clearly a feminine logo (uterus+baby). Having both a feminine logo and a phallic Core2 campaign is a (unproductive ?) contradiction. Perhaps the uterus logo will give birth to the third intel marketing campaign, focusing on communication and emotions ? The processor and the platform could be sold as a neuron. The idea of very simple neurons, totally useless by default but always creating connections and getting smarter looks like the way people use their computer today. The visual products could be sold as eyes, and the mobile products as more tactile organs. A brand strategy focusing on the 6 senses would be a good adaptation to the web 2.0 and new usage models.
-- Quote from "technical"? whitepaper from Intel EMEA engineer % If you're in the microprocessor business right now, you have two problems: the rotten economy and Intel. That means if you're Intel, you have only one problem, and the boys in Santa Clara are planning on making the most of it.
... If Intel is looking a little wobbly, however, the rest of the industry is looking worse than a frat kid who has just polished off a case of Tecate during an ill-advised south of the border bender. In this scenario, Intel is the smart aleck who is keeping the tequila shots coming. Say goodbye to your lunch, amigos.
-- Brian Caulfied, Intel's Stress Test, 4/13/09 www.forbes.com % People who claim to be certain about things they cannot be certain about should meet resistance in our discourse. This happens quite naturally on every subject but religion. For instance, a person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying. We must find a way of criticizing and marginalizing bad ideas, even when they come under the cloak of religion.
-- Sam Harris % A blind squirrel is more likely to find a nut if there are a lot of blind squirrels.
- Dilbert, March 6 2009 % You're a bottle cap away from pushin' me too far,
-- Old 97's, Won't Be Home, Drag It Up % Can't go west, can't go east
I'm stuck in Indianapolis with a fuel pump that's deceased
Ten days on the road now I'm four hours from my home town
Is this hell or Indianapolis with no way to get around
-- Bottle Rockets, Indianapolis % Some days I feel like my shadow's casting me,
-- Warren Zevon, Dirty Life & Times % Sun was a religion to many of us,
-- Edward Zander, 2009 on Oracle buying Sun % Thanks for the memory: Understanding how the JVM uses native memory on Windows and Linux
-- Andrew Hall, IBM DeveloperWorks % // At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format.
// PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an
// insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD is an abysmal format. Having
// worked on this code for several weeks now, my hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire
// that burns with the fierce passion of a million suns.
-- comments in Google code.. % That's what grad students are for. They're the cannon fodder of science. You throw them at problems that have no chance of being solved...
--- Gary Lynch's UC Irvine brain research in LA time article % if you ask me whether or not I'm an atheist, I wouldn't even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I'm supposed to not believe in, and I've never seen an explanation.
-- Noam Chomsky % Wild Chimpanzees Exchange Meat for Sex on a Long-Term Basis.
Gomes, C., & Boesch, C. (2009) PLoS ONE, 4(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005116 % my feeling is that democracy is the religion of the West, perhaps the greatest religion the West has produced, because it affirms other religions. Most religions have a lot of trouble affirming other religions. A great religion affirms other religions, and a great culture affirms other cultures. Democracy is a faith and an ideal, and I think it is the greatest expression of our western experience.
-- Leonard Cohen % The covers of this book are too far apart.
-- Ambrose Bierce % Suicidal twin kills sister by mistake. % Non Prophet Organization: In Reason We Trust % If It Bleeds, It Leads: The Clinical Implications of Fear-Based Programming in News Media.
-- Serani, D. (2008) Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, 24(4), 240-250. % Random is the New Order
Welcome to a life less orderly. As official soundtrack to the random revolution, the iPod Shuffle Songs setting takes you on a unique journey through your music collection you never know what's around the next tune. Meet your new ride. More roadster than Rolls, iPod shuffle rejects routine by serving up your favourite songs in a different order every time. Just plug iPod shuffle into your computer's USB port, let iTunes Autofill it with up to 120 songs(1) and get a new experience with every connection. The trail you run every day looks different with an iPod shuffle. Daily gridlock feels less mundane when you don't know what song will play next. iPod shuffle adds musical spontaneity to your life. Lose control. Love it.
-- ipod shuffle marketing documentation % Try blue, it's the new red.
- Wally-E % Marblecake, also the game.
-- 4chan's hidden message in gaming Time Magazine�s online poll for its Time 100 list of the most influential people on the planet.
http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/ % Agnosticism is not a creed but a method, the essence of which lies in vigorous application of a single principle. Positively the principle may be expressed as: in matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it can carry you without other considerations. And negatively, in matters of the intellect, do not pretend the conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable.
--Thomas Huxley % Consulting: If your not part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem. % Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit egotism and major life decisions.
Pelham, B., Mirenberg, M., & Jones, J. (2002). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82 (4), 469-487 DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.82.4.469 % Tiers of Joy? What's Going on with Tiered Storage?
-- IDCS research report % Real morality is based on seeing how the the universe actually operates and avoiding doing those things that make ourselves and other miserable
-- Hardcore Zen % To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. % I don't know, so maybe I'm not.
-- Joseph LeDoux, The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are % As it so happens I have recently completed exactly such an application as you are requesting. I can customize it for you and it will be ready to go in no time at all. A few bugs (or features if you will!) however have not yet been worked out. The most prevalent one is the occasional time travel (roughly 10 minutes) that results when executing the compiled code. Sometimes into the past and sometimes into the future; it's roughly a 50/50 split. Travelling into the future is not so much a problem (except make sure you don't have a pizza in the oven when you begin or it will end up burnt!), however into the past is considerably more risky. You will run the risk of encountering yourself of 10 mins ago, and according to the Emmett Brown theorem, this can result in a rupture of the spacetime fabric. There is a liability disclaimer in the README concerning this. Look forward to doing business!
-- response on getacoder to silly requirment list % Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.
-- Bishop of Worcester's wife to Charles Darwin % We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head. Everyone who has met my wife's ex knows that's not where it's located.
-- reddit comment % Spitting cobras adjust their venom distribution to target distance.
-- Berth�, R., Pury, S., Bleckmann, H., & Westhoff, G. (2009) Journal of Comparative Physiology A DOI: 10.1007/s00359-009-0451-6 % "Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."
-- Stephen Hawking % Method 2: Move Your Mouse Pointer
If you move your mouse pointer continuously while the data is being returned to Microsoft Excel, the query may not fail. Do not stop moving the mouse until all the data has been returned to Microsoft Excel.
-- Actual "workaround" proposed for MSFT Excel bug on support.microsoft.com % Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.
� Aquinas's peripatetic axiom % "I can shoot with my left hand, I can shoot with my right hand, I'm amphibious".
-- Charles Shackleford % "We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
-Jason Kidd % "You can't just throw hardware out there into the world."
-- Renee James % our apparent free will is merely an illusion, as our behaviors are entirely deterministic, but it is an effective one: absolute determinism and free will are indistinguishable from one another.
Descartes can suck my qualia.
--comment on reddit.com % Freedom lies in expressing your own determinism, not somebody else's.
-- Matt Ridley, Genome % My peculiarity is this: I find it psychologically very distasteful to judge people's 'merit.' So I cannot participate in the main activity of selecting people for membership. To be a member of a group, of which an important activity is to choose others deemed worthy of membership in that self-esteemed group bothers me. The care with which we select 'those worthy of the honor' of joining the Academy feels to me like a form of self-praise. How can we say only the best must be allowed in to join those who are already in, without loudly proclaiming to our inner selves that we who are in must be very good indeed. Of course I believe I am very good indeed, but that is a private matter and I cannot publicly admit that I do so, to such an extent that I have the nerve to decide that this man, or that, is not worthy of joining my elite club..."
- Richard Fenynam, in a letter to the National Academy of Sciences on why he wanted to resign % Intelligenct Design is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID�s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
-- Judge Jones, Decision, Dec. 20, 2005, Dover Areas School District Case, http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf % To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, � 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.
-- Judge Jones, Decision, Dec. 20, 2005, Dover Areas School District Case, http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf % The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
..
The breathtaking inanity of the Board�s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
-- Judge Jones, Decision, Dec. 20, 2005, Dover Areas School District Case, http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf % an analogy is an illustration, not an argument...you cannot use that apparent likeness for extrapolation or interpolation about the events themselves. It�s faulty logic.
-- comment on DNA as computer program % Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be.
-- Frank Zappa % Christian fundamentalism erupted into domestic terrorism with the tragic but foreseeable political assassination of Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas City physician and champion of women's reproductive rights.
--June 2 2009 % I was once eating a plate of spaghetti, and had already eaten all the olives when lo and behold ANOTHER OLIVE appeared MIRACULOUSLY under the noodles. It was A MIRACLE. It had to have been the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I know all the olives were gone
-Teapotistic Pastafarian: May we ALL be forever touched by His Noodly Appendage! WWFSMD % American hero Ted Haggard, the former pastor of a MEGACHURCH in Colorado Springs who quit in 2006 after fucking male prostitutes while on meth, has finally finished his holy �Spiritual Restoration� program, and can do whatever he wants. And all he wants to do is bang his wife and worship Jesus and live in his old house, with Jesus! % "God created man as rational and free, thereby placing Himself under man's judgment."
--Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope % if I had to choose between attending a tent revival and attending a convention of geeky militant atheists, I might have to pick the former. After all, they might have "speaking in tongues", laying on of healing hands, rolling in the aisles, and maybe even people playing with rattlesnakes -- or at the very least, some inspired soul shouting "ta-ra-ra-boom-dee-ay" at random moments -- all of which is festive if nothing else. Whereas with the atheists, I get to hear a bunch of philosophy I've already figured out and settled on, all of it coming from a bunch of fat comic-book guys with underarm odor and Isaac Asimov sideburns, each brimming with fatuous self-regard and wearing ill-fitting T-shirts bearing not terribly clever atheistic slogans.
- comment on atheist rant article, June 2009 % "Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training."
-- Michael Shermer % This revolution will be digitized: online tools for radical collaboration.
Patil, C., & Siegel, V. (2009). Disease Models and Mechanisms 2 (5-6), 201-205 DOI: 10.1242/dmm.003285
.. what if you could think a thought at the world and have the world think back? What if everyone in the world were in your lab � a �hive mind� of sorts, but composed of countless creative intellects rather than mindless worker ants, and one in which resources, reagents and effort could be shared, along with ideas, in a manner not dictated by institutional and geographical constraints? % There is significant evidence that consciousness is related to the physical brain. There is no evidence for a soul or non-physical consciousness. Consciousness is merely a perception of everything around us. Without this we would not be able to input and interpret data. If you turn off a running engine, what happens to the "running"? Such a question as no meaning. % Efficacy of duct tape vs placebo in the treatment of verruca vulgaris (warts) in primary school children.
-- de Haen M, Spigt MG, van Uden CJ, van Neer P, Feron FJ, Knottnerus A., Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006 Nov;160(11):1121-5. % The Emergence of Predators in Early Life: There was No Garden of Eden.
--- de Nooijer S, Holland BR, Penny D, 2009, PLoS ONE 4(6): e5507. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005507 % The three dots � ... � here suppress a lot of detail � maybe I should have used four dots.
-- Donald E. Knuth, Coping with Finiteness, �Science�, 17 December 1976, vol. 194, n. 4271, pp. 1235-1242. % "He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it�namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
�Mark Twain from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer % I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn�t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
-- Emo Philips % Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.
-- Poe's Law % �I liken starting one�s computing career with Unix, say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act.�
� Ken Pier, Xerox PARC % The most horrifying thing about Unix is that, no matter how many times you hit yourself over the head with it, you never quite manage to lose consciousness. It just goes on and on.
�Patrick Sobalvarro % �If C gives you enough rope to hang yourself, then C++ gives you enough rope to bind and gag your neighborhood, rig the sails on a small ship, and still have enough rope to hang yourself from the yardarm�
�Anonymous % Intel CEO Paul Otellini is determined not to be anybody�s bitch.
-- Bob Cringley, June 2009 % Intel and Linux is like Microsoft and Search, and we all know how well Microsoft has done in Search for the past 10 years.
-- comment on Cringley blog, june 2009 % All the effects of genes are expressed epigenetically, by way of interactions in the internal chemical environment between the proteins made by multiple genes, or by way of external environmental stimulations that elicits synaptic activity that then induces genes to make proteins. The proteins made by genes can in turn modulate neural activity at synapses.
-- Joseph LeDoux, Synaptic Self % cells that fire together, wire together.
-- Hebbian postulate % "Cheese crumbs spread in front of a copulating pair of rats may distract the female, but not the male."
-- Alfred Kinsey, from Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female % �All good computer scientists worship the god of modularity, since modularity brings many benefits ...�
� D. Clark in the foreword to Computer Networks by Peterson & Davie % A fast internet connection is now seen by most of the public as an essential service, as indispensable as electricity, gas and water.
-- Gordon Brown, PM of Great Britain, 2009 % Everyone does have a book in them, but in most cases that is where it should stay.
-- Christopher Hitchens % Oh, and my call sign, nocebo, is the opposite of the well-known term in medical testing procedures, the placebo, which is a treatment without any clinical effect but which has healing effects solely because of the positive psychological effects of being cared for. The nocebo effect was noticed in patients who were afraid of harmful side effects of their treatments and who still got them even though they were given harmless treatments, placebos. I have had the same effect on people for many years: People who believe I will harm them when I criticize their ideas or expressions of them, have harmed themselves (and sometimes others) because of this false belief, while I am actually completely harmless.
-- Erik Naggum, 2009 % If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.
-- Erik Naggum % It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. % Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide To Stress, Stress Related Diseases, and Coping.
--Robert M. Sapolsky. 2nd Rev Ed, April 15, 1998. W. H. Freeman % "One swallow does not make a summer" ... Or does it?
-- I. Mody, Epilepsy Curr. 2008 May-Jun;8(3):73-5.
We tested the hypothesis that a single episode of neonatal seizures (sNS) on rat postnatal day (P) 7 permanently impairs hippocampal-dependent function in mature (P60) rats because of long-lasting changes at the synaptic level. % �You wouldn't share needles, so why would you share a compute node?"
-- Ron Minnich, Plan 9 is not dead yet % "I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy."
-- Patrick Logan's weblog % The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment.
-- Haidt, J. (2001) Psychological Review. 108, 814-834 % Nature doesn't leave it to our powers of reasoning to figure out that ingesting fat and protein is conducive to our survival. Rather, it makes us hungry and gives us an intuitive sense that things like meat and fruit will satisfy our hunger. Nature doesn't leave it to us to figure out that fellow humans are more suitable mates than baboons. Instead, it endows us with a psychology that makes certain humans strike us as appealing sexual partners, and makes baboons seem frightfully unappealing in this regard. And, finally, Nature doesn't leave it to us to figure out that saving a drowning child is a good thing to do. Instead, it endows us with a powerful "moral sense" that compels us to engage in this sort of behavior (under the right circumstances). In short, when Nature needs to get a behavioral job done, it does it with intuition and emotion wherever it can. Thus, from an evolutionary point of view, it is no surprise that moral dispositions evolved, and it is no surprise that these dispositions are implemented emotionally.
-- Joshua D. Green, The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul % Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
--Immanuel Kant % The single most important advantage we have over the great moral philosophers of the past is our understanding of evolution and its application to ethics. Although the philosophers I have mentioned were able to free themselves from the myth of the divine origin of morality and to explain morality in naturalistic terms, they lacked a proper understanding of how our norms may have arisen by natural selection with the gene as the basic unit for the transmission of inherited characteristics between generations. Without this knowledge, they could observe our feelings and attitudes but not explain them adequately.
-- Peter Singer, Ethics & Intuitions % Understanding Intentions: Through the Looking Glass
-- Kiyoshi Nakahara and Yasushi Miyashita, Science 29 April 2005: Vol. 308. no. 5722, pp. 644 - 645.
A class of neurons in the brain called "mirror neurons" may be crucial for understanding motor actions. Mirror neurons are activated not only during the execution of a particular action, but also during observation of that action carried out by someone else. % "And so oddly enough, I spent the last five days of my life crying in Argentina."
-- After going AWOL for seven days in June 2009, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday that he'd secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he'd been having an affair. His office had said he had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trial. % Moral thinking is for social doing: .. we did not evolve language and reasoning because they helped us to find truth; we evolved these skills because they were useful to their bearers, and among their greatest benefits were reputation management and manipulation... humans do form tight, cooperative groups that pursue collective ends and punish cheaters and slackers, and they do this most strongly when in conflict with other groups.
-- Jonathan Haidt % Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.
-- Jonathan Haidt % My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.
-- J.B.S. Haldane, "Fact and Faith" (1934) % �it was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable.
� Let the reader � attempt to calculate the prior probability that a hundred generations of his ancestry in the direct male line should each have left at least one son. The odds against such a contingency as it would have appeared to his hundredth ancestor (about the time of King Solomon) would require for their expression forty-four figures of the decimal notation; yet this improbable event has certainly happened.
-- R.A. Fisher % A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
-- Nietzsche % Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of a new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.
-- Francis Bacon % Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
-- Chapman Cohen % You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here� I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.
-- Richard Feynman % To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
-- Isaac Asimov % Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. Although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people.
-- Heinz R. Pagels % Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.
-- Steve Allen % If you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to play. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith seriously as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defence of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side.
-- Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea % Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
-- Steve Eley % Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.
-- Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones % Primus in orbe deos facit timor. (Fear created the first gods in the world.)
-- Publius Statius (45-96c), Thebais % Should I rotate the domain protocols so they wear out evenly?
-- Dilbert, June 30 2009 % diversity is about more than boobs and melanin % Sexual Stimulation Device-Related Injuries
Griffin, R., & McGwin, G. (2009). Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 35 (4), 253-261 DOI: 10.1080/00926230902851249 % 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.
-- M. Cartmill % In his spare time, Dr. Smith cultivates killer bees under the alias of "Stinger".
-- Suggest bio line from Roger Herrick % "I'm just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel"
-evangelist Tony Alamo found guilty of taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex in July 2009 % When I first said I wanted to be a comedian, everybody laughed. They're not laughing now.
-- Bob Monkhouse % The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
-- Henry Kissinger % Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.
-- John Wanamaker % But at the end of the day, we want computing to be like Star Trek, right? So it just does stuff for us without having to deal with it.
-- PSO, July 2009 % A Woman's History of Vaginal Orgasm is Discernible from Her Walk
A. Nicholas, P. de Sutter, F. de Carufel, Journal of Sexual Medicine, Vol: 5, no: 9, pp: 2119-2124,2008. % OMG i was saying how i couldn't afford the gas to fly daddy's jet to the riviera this summer, and this barista totally rolled her eyes at me
-- number 1 most self-important tweet http://tweetingtoohard.com/top % I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.
-- Roger Ebert on death in his blog % "Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares, my life is over anyway."
-- Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking % "We may be confused about the distinction between tolerance and the refusal of evaluation, thinking that tolerance of others requires us not to evaluate what they do."
-- Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity % My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
-- Jack Nicholson % All you have to do to succeed in software is to consistently suck less with every release.
-- http://www.codesimplicity.com/ % As he lay in bed with a view of a chicken yard, a railed pen with six goats inside it, and a bladeless, rusted slip of a windmill strung with dead brush blown from a field of weeds, the man whose nickname was Preacher could not get the woman out of his mind, nor the scent of her fear and sweat and perfume while he wrestled with her on the ground, nor the expression of her face when she fired the .38 round through the top of his foot, exploding a jet of blood from the sole of his shoe.
-- One sentence from James Lee Burke's Rain Gods % Been dazed and confused for so long, it's not true
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you
Lotsa people talkin', few of them know
Soul of a woman was created below
-- Dazed and Confused, Led Zepplin, 1969 % His actors don't chew the scenery, but they lick it.
- Roger Ebert's review of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009) % Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.
-- Doug Larson % Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
-- Matt Groening % "One martini is just right. Two martinis are too many. Three martinis are never enough."
-- M. F. K. Fisher % Walking Straight into Circles.
-- Souman JL, Frissen I, Sreenivasa MN, Ernst MO, Curr Biol. 2009 Aug 19.
"..veering from a straight course is the result of accumulating noise in the sensorimotor system, which, without an external directional reference to recalibrate the subjective straight ahead, may cause people to walk in circles." % And I'm just the grumpy old guy who tells you that there's this small thing called REALITY that comes and bites you in the *ss. And I'm sorry, but the very nature of "reality" is that it doesn't care one whit whether you believe me or not.
-- Linus, Implementing NVMHCI... on kernel mailing list. % Don't write it right, write it down.
-- advice to aspiring authors % We already pretty much know the solution to scientific computing: throw lots of cheap hardware on it (where "cheap" is then defined by what is mass-produced for other reasons).
Designing future hardware around the needs of scientific computing seems ass-backwards. It�s putting the cart in front of the horse.
-- Linus % "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
- Robert A. Heinlein % Producing wrong data without doing anything obviously wrong!
-- Todd Mytkowicz, Amer Diwan, Matthias Hauswirth, Peter F. Sweeney
In ASPLOS '09: Proceeding of the 14th international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems (2009), pp. 265-276. % The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
-- John Gilmore % Control the process, don't let it control you. % The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
- Robert Frost % I was born by a river, and it was paved with cement
I was born by a river, and it was paved with cement
Still I stand in the dry river and dream that I was soaking wet,
Someday its gonna rain, some day its gonna pour,
Someday that old dry river, you know it won't be dry anymore

Well, I played in the orange groves till they bulldozed every tree
I played in the orange groves till they bulldozed every tree
But I'd stand amongst the dead stumps, and smell the blossoms on the leaves

Someday its gonna rain, some day its gonna pour,
Someday all those dead trees, they won't be dead anymore
-- David Alvin of Downey CA, Dry River on Interstate City (also done by Knitters) % We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin in the free world,
-- Neil Young, Rockin� In The Free World % 2005 Suzuki Hayabusa, black, wrecked, best for parts. Looking to trade for electric wheelchair in good condition.
-- motorcycle ad on craigslist % Time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Berlioz % "the best friend money can buy ...."
-- [Intel Senior Executive] about Dell, in an e-mail dated 17 February 2006. This demonstrates the direct link between Dell's policy of Intel exclusivity and Intel payments as quoted in EC report. % Well, I woke up next mornin' feelin' like my head was gone
And like my thick old tongue was lickin' something sick and wrong
-- Kris Kristofferson, Best of All Possible Worlds % "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)"
-- Song title, Glenn Sutton, recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis % I am losing the precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.
-- John Muir (from Alaska Days with John Muir By S. HALL YOUNG) % "Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."
-- President Roosevelt speech made at the Grand Canyon, Arizona on May 6, 1903 % "the plural of anecdote is data"
-- Raymond Wolfinger's aphorism in Stanford class, as quoted in Nelson Polsby's article in Political Science and Politics in 1993; Interesting this has morphed into its opposite: "Anecdotes is the plural of anecdote, not data". % Our revised misson statement is "Forage during daylight. Hide at night."
-- Dilbert Sept 20th, 2009 % I thought I had an appetite for destruction, but all I wanted was a club sandwich.
-- Matt Groening, The Simpsons % "There've been several times when I felt like I didn't really fit in at M.I.T. I nearly fell asleep during a Star Wars marathon."
-- MIT student's blog % Is There Really a "Cushion Effect"?: A Biomechanical Investigation of Crash Injury Mechanisms in the Obese
-- Kent, R., Forman, J., & Bostrom, O. (2009). Obesity DOI: 10.1038/oby.2009.315
Short answer: No. "the mechanics of the trauma seem to vary between normal weight and obese individuals, there seems to be not much evidence supporting the concept of obesity being protective against injury during a car crash. With the exception of a possibly lesser chance of head injury, obese subjects may actually be more injury prone during an automobile collision." % I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
--Senator Everett Dirksen % Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull?
-- Stephan A. Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael J. Thali and Beat P. Kneubuehl, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, vol. 16, no. 3, April 2009, pp. 138-42.
2009 Ig Nobel Peace prize winner, for determining � by experiment � whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle. % The CPU Clock principle of software releases: release at fixed frequency.
-- Bertrand Meyer % Platform Configuration Registers (PCRs) provide a storage area that allows an unlimited number of measurements in a fixed amount of space.
-- Intel's Trusted Execution Technology: Software Development Guide, Measured Launched Environment Developer�s Guide % "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
-- Benjamin Franklin % "Intel is trying to come down from the computer and bring their software ecosystem along. We�re trying to go up from the phone and build the software ecosystem."
�Paul Jacobs, CEO, Qualcomm % The realm of hand waving includes the hummingbird effect. The hummingbird effect occurs when the hand waving is so vigorous that the hand waver levitates off the ground and the hands are no longer visible.
-- David Grawrock, Dynamics of a Trusted Platform % a factor-of-two advantage, even if it's an inherent, persistent advantage, isn't enough to unseat an incumbent solution in the face of even the mildest competitive disadvantage. Without a factor of 10--a full order of magnitude--a new product won't even get a foot in the door.
-- Peter Glaskowsky, cnet, oct14 2009 % Fear and loathing in Las Vegas: Evidence from blackjack tables.
-- Carlin, B. I., & Robinson, D. T. (2009), Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 385-396.
Studies Ommision Bias (people tend to suboptimally favor inaction over action.)
�people are reticent to vaccinate children with a potentially lethal vaccine, even when this risk pales in comparison to the incidence of death caused by the primary disease. A staggering number of US households fail to rebalance their stock portfolios when it is optimal to do so. Many US workers under-participate in their retirement plans, despite the presence of employer-matching programs. Shoppers are often reluctant to make purchases when discounts are randomly offered in the market.� % How to win the clonewars: efficient periodic n-times anonymous authentication.
-- Camenisch, J., Hohenberger, S., Kohlweiss, M., Lysyanskaya, A., and Meyerovich, M. 2006. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security % If the shoe fits, get another one just like it. % "I'm dead if this leaks. I really am... and my career is over. I'll be like Martha [expletive] Stewart."
-- DANIELLE CHIESI, defendent in inside trader scheme involving Intel Capaital % "I can give my vision of tomorrow for Intel here and now: Abide by the law"
-- EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes joked that Intel would now have to change its latest global ad campaign � "sponsors of tomorrow" � to proclaiming "the sponsor of the European taxpayer".
Intel: Sponsors of Tomorrow working to Enable EU Fine Payments Today. % A scientist once gave a public lecture describing how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ``What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.''
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ``What is the tortoise standing on?''
``You're very clever, young man, very clever,'' said the old lady, ``but it's turtles all the way down!'' % "our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low."
-- T-Mobile's "Sidekick" mobile service uses a backend system provided by Microsoft, and seemingly aptly named "Danger." [Will Robinson was not mentioned, but...] Danger has lost ALL the customers' stored data. Oct 2009 http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/11/microsofts-danger-sidekick-data-loss-casts-dark-on-cloud-computing/ % Vaporware is exactly Microsoft�s core competency as a company.
-- Daniel Eran Dilger % �Really, if you think about it, it doesn�t need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //�
-- Tim Berners-Lee on url syntax % Romantic red: Red enhances men's attraction to women.
-- Elliot, A., & Niesta, D. (2008) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1150-1164. % I got me a rich man's woman,
but she's living on a poor man's pay.
-- Muddy Waters tune % Five men apply for the positions in History and one is hired, and eight women apply and two are hired. The success rate for men is twenty percent, and the success rate for women is twenty-five percent. The History Department has favoured women over men. In the Geography Department eight men apply and six are hired, and five women apply and four are hired. The success rate for men is seventy-five percent and for women it is eighty percent. The Geography Department has favoured women over men. Yet across the University as a whole 13 men and 13 women applied for jobs, and 7 men and 6 women were hired. The success rate for male applicants is greater than the success rate for female applicants.

...
The key to this puzzling example lies in the fact that more women are applying for jobs that are harder to get. It is harder to make your way into History than into Geography. (To get into Geography you just have to be born; to get into History you have to do something memorable.)

-- Simpson Paradox: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/ % I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store, laying tackless stripping and housewives by the score.
-- Warren Zevon, "Mr. Bad Example" % She lowered her standards by raising her glass
Her courage, her eyes and his hopes
-- Flanders and Swann, Have Some Madeira, M'Dear.
Example of a Syllepsis, which is a particular type of zeugma in which the clauses are not parallel either in meaning or grammar. % You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.
- Groucho Marx, from Duck Soup % Come the (computer) revolution, all persons found guilty of such criminal behavior will be summarily executed, and their programs won't be!
--Numerical recipes: the art of scientific computing By William H. Press, saying how not to evluate by using exponentation (but rather use repeated multiplciation) % Monica had exploded, and I had a mystery, and pieces of her pancreas, on my hands.
- entry to the 2001 Lyttle Lytton Contest % Sorry, Charlie. StarKist doesn't want tunas with good taste � StarKist wants tunas that taste good.
�from 1980s StarKist tuna advertisements % Well, it's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men.
-- Mae West in I'm No Angel (1933) % "I haven't seen anything this bad since the Anita Bryant concert."
-- Leslie Nielsen's character, Doctor Rumack, in Airplane!,upon seeing a large number of passengers become violently ill, vomit, and suffer uncontrollable flatulence. % �I have always wished that my computer was as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.�
-- Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++ programming language % Raj Rajaratnam is not a master of the universe, but rather a master of the rolodex.
-- PC World on arrest of Galleon Group hedge-fund owner, billionaire Rajaratnam % You wanna know how good bacon is? To improve other food, they wrap it in bacon. If it weren't for bacon, we wouldn't even know what a water chestnut is. "Thank you bacon. Sincerely, Water Chestnut III."

And bits of bacon, bits of bacon are like the fairy dust of the food community. "You don't want this baked potato? Brrring! Now it's your favorite part of the meal. Not interested in the salad? Bibbity bobbity BACON. I just turned it into an entree."

But you can't eat bacon all day, cause it's horrible for you. You know bacon's bad when a healthier choice is a donut. And we've known bacon is bad for thousands of years. It's literally a restriction on entering certain religious. "Our rules: No Killing, No Cheating on Your Wife, No Bacon." "Oooh, what was that last one?" "No Bacon." "Aaah, I'm in the wrong line."


-- Jim Gaffigan, Beyond Pale % "crapware" -- the derisive term used for generic trial software and other unwanted programs that commonly clog new PCs when they're shipped by computer makers. % Is cloud computing the Hotel California of tech?
-- Title of cnet article, where Hotel California is metaphor for vendor lock-in: The song's lyrics describe the title establishment as a luxury resort where "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." % "Caramba!" exclaimed Diego de Fonseca, "a cucaracha has fallen onto the tortillas of my wife!"
-- Neal Stephenson, from The Confusion, Lyttle Lyntton winner % Sophi broke down in tears, like a diesel car that had run out of petrol.
-- Karina Kantas, Lyttle Lytton 2008 comments: I like this one because even though the simile doesn't work, the phrase "broke down" makes it feel like it should � so much so that it forces us to imagine that cars that have run out of gas do indeed weep bitterly, lamenting the fuel system that has betrayed them. % Tears are permanent when you tattoo them to your face.
-- anonymous, quoting espn.com, 24 October 2007 % The night passed like a kidney stone: painfully and with the help of major sedatives.
-- Tony Delgado % Turning, I mentally digested all of what you, the reader, are about to find out heartbreakingly.
--Top Changwatchai
There's just so much and so many different kinds of badness packed into these sixteen words that it's hard to know where to begin. From the fact that we meet our protagonist in the middle of turning ("So, what're you doing this afternoon?" "Enh, thought I'd turn for a bit.") to the slightly dodgily-phrased non-action of mental digestion, to the implication that the entire novel that is to follow is occurring to the narrator in mid-turn, to the mid-sentence time-out for a reminder that the reader is, in fact, the reader, to perhaps the clumsiest attempt at pathos I've ever seen (tacking "heartbreakingly" on at the end in, "oh, yeah, almost forgot!" fashion), this is a true tour de force. % Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
--Jim Guigli, Carmichael, CA (2006 Winner, Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest) % "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830) % "When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes."
-- E.B. White, "Dog Training" % "The ice trays show deep claw marks, where people have tried to pry them free, using can openers and knives and screwdrivers and petulance."
-- E.B. White, "On a Florida Key" % Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time.
-- Tan, M., Jones, G., Zhu, G., Ye, J., Hong, T., Zhou, S., Zhang, S., & Zhang, L. (2009). PLoS ONE, 4 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007595 % All successful standards are as simple as possible, not as hard as possible.
-- Adam Bosworth % Universal Plug and Play: Dead simple of simply deadly?
- A. Hemel, sane2006. % One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company.
We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.
-- Bill Gates' dec 1998 memo to Office products group showing clear abuse of their market postion % A great deal of Microsoft security is unfortunately just like the underwear of Brittany Spears. If it's even there at all it's needlessly complex and frilly, looks good without actually covering much and is far too easy to get around or remove completely.
-- dbill on slashdot % There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it�s only a hundred billion. It�s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
-- Richard Fenyman % A Welsh man buys several sheep, hoping to breed them for wool. After several weeks, he notices that none of the sheep are getting pregnant, and phones a vet for help. The vet tells him that he should try artificial insemination.
The farmer doesn't have the slightest idea what this means but, not wanting to display his ignorance, only asks the vet how he will know when the sheep are pregnant.
The vet tells him that they will stop standing around and instead will lie down and wallow in grass. The man hangs up and gives it some thought. He comes to the conclusion that artificial insemination means he has to impregnate the sheep himself.
So, he loads the sheep into his Land Rover, drives them out into the woods, has sex with them all, brings them back, and goes to bed. Next morning, he wakes and looks out at the sheep. Seeing that they are all still standing around, he deduces that the first try didn't take, and loads them in the Land Rover again.
He drives them out to the woods, bangs each sheep twice for good measure, brings them back, and goes to bed exhausted. Next morning, he wakes to find the sheep still just standing round.
Try again. he tells himself, and proceeds to load them up, and drive them out to the woods. He spends all day shagging the sheep and upon returning home, falls listlessly into bed.
The next morning, he cannot even raise himself from the bed to look out of the window. He asks his wife to look, and tell him if the sheep are lying in the grass.
No, she says, they're all in the Land Rover, and one of them is beeping the horn. % "While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition."
-- unknowingly ironic spokesman for the Limerick Catholic Church in July 2009 when a bunch of halfwits were worshipping a tree stump in Limerick % �Could you just take the MSS [market share] references off and just leave everything at volume targets. Our counsel is very picky on that stuff and I don�t want to infer we had conversations about anything other than volume targets or relative volume targets . . . thx�
-- Internal e-mail from an Intel negotiator in September 2006 attempting to make sure that the company�s internal emails did not reveal Intel�s antitrust violations. % �Let�s talk more on the phone as it�s so difficult for me to write or explain without considering anti-trust issue.�
-- Internal e-mail from Intel executive in April 2006. % "There is nothing new here. Our product roadmap is what it is. It is improving rapidly daily. It will deliver increasingly leadership products... Additionally, we are transferring over $1B per year to Dell for meet comp efforts. This was judged by your team to be more than sufficient to compensate for the competitive issues."
-- PSO email to Michael Dell, admitting his payoffs, from New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's federal antitrust lawsuit against Intel complaining of "bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market.". http://www.oag.state.ny.us/media_center/2009/nov/NYAG_v_Intel_COMPLAINT_FINAL.pdf % Academentia: The state of being for a person in higher education where they lose touch with all semblance of reality % Three baseball umpires are having lunch together.
The first umpire says "Well, a lot of them are balls, and a lot of them are strikes, but I always calls 'em as I sees 'em."
The second umpire says "Hmph. I calls 'em as they are."
The third umpire slowly looks at his two colleagues and declares "They ain't nothin' until I calls 'em." % code identity verification reduces the usefulness of standards for promoting interoperability
-- EFF comments on TCG principles % I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
-- John Prine, Spanish Pipedreams % �Clumsy type systems drive people to dynamically typed languages.�
-- Robert Griesemer % I like "Issue 9": distinctive and mysterious.
Two "go"s considered harmful.
-- Comment on Issue 9 (http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9, that there is already a language called "Go!") for Google's Go language % But weight, there's more.
-- latimes nov 10 2009 article: Twitter-equipped bathroom scale tells the world how much you weigh % Sooner or later, it always comes back to bacon. % Inflating balls in NP-hard
-- G. Batog and X. Goaoc, http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/33/14/23/PDF/Shadock.pdf % "Gustatus similis pullus"
-- Latin for "Tastes like chicken" % All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
-- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass % The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God.
-Andrew Dickson % "It's hard to give a career like this up, when I tell my wife I'm going to the office, and it's the beach."
--Karch Kiraly, about his retirement from beach volleyball at 47 % Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent. % A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything." % Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says, "Dam!" % Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?" %