Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an
improvement on its predecessors, but also on on nearly all its
successors.

        -- C. A. Hoare on ALGOL 60
##
``And Nuke, I'm not worried about him.  The world seems
made for those not cursed with self-awareness.''

        -- Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), in "Bull Durham."
##
I believe in standards.  Everyone should have one.

        -- George Morrow
##
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
##
Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think.
##
In describing US history, were it to have occurred today, Jefferson
would have used a Macintosh, Adams would have used a PC, but "Tom Paine
would have put Common Sense on a private BBS with a Commodore 64".
"Don't tread on my cursor!" he cried.

		David Hughes, Managing General Partner of Old Colorado
		City Communications quoted at "Computers, Freedom and
		Privacy Conference March 26-28, by Rebecca Mercuri
##
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
        -- Aldous Huxley
##
Eunuchs is not a trademark of AT&T
##
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.
##
You're just jealous because the voices are talking to _me_.
##
O Lord, I beg that you'll protect me
From those to whom you speak directly.
##
Boren's Laws:
	1)  When in charge, ponder.
	2)  When in trouble, delegate.
	3)  When in doubt, mumble.
##
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
##
Sex isn't really pleasurable.  It simply seems pleasurable due
to the actions of chemicals in the brain.

        -- Nick Cooper, Interview with David Quinne.
##
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
		-- Senator Soaper
##
[I]t makes no more sense to postulate a special brain-soul in order to
account for the activities of the brain than to postulate a special
stomach-soul in order to explain the functioning of the stomach or a
special lung-soul to explain the phenomenon of breathing.
	  -- Corliss Lamont  (The Philosophy of Humanism, 1949)
##
... to expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain
is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all its members are dead.
	  -- Bertrand Russell  (Religion and Science, 1935)
##
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.  Instead
of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit
their views.

        -- Dr. Who, Face of Evil
##
Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth,
and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

        -- Mort Sahl
##
SHIFT TO THE LEFT!  SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
##
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not
 when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other
-Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626
##
Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++ ???
	-- Richard A. O'Keefe (http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok)
##
L'esprit n'a point de sexe
        -- Francois Poullain de la Barre, 1673
##
Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

        -- Fran Lebowitz
##
The only two activities where the participants are called users are drugs
and computers.

        -- Overheard at IETF
##
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
##
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
	-- Donald E. Knuth, Foreword to A=B by Petkovsek, Wilf, and Zeilberger.
##
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
##
Shaw's Principle:
	Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
	want to use it.
##
If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world
peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the
looting started.
        -- Anonymous, Age 15
##
I swear to you, then," said MacIan... "I swear it by the god you have
denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven
swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are,
by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the
chalice of the Blood of God."

The Atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."

        -- G.K. Chesterton, "The Ball and the Cross"
##
Only Libertarians seem able to whip up evangelistic enthusiasm for
things as they are, but, with all due respect, they're idiots.
	-- Taner Edis
##
Tourists see people carrying loads on their backs and walking long
distances over high mountain passes and say, "How terrible; what a life
of drudgery."  They forget that they have traveled thousands of miles
and spent thousands of dollars for the pleasure of walking through the
same mountains with heavy backpacks.  They also forget how much their
bodies suffer from the lack of use at home.  During working hours they
get no exercise, so they spend their free time trying to make up for
it.  Some will even drive to a health club -- across a polluted city in
rush hour -- to sit in a basement, pedaling a bicycle that does not go
anywhere.  And they actually pay for the privilege.

        -- Helena Norberg-Hodge, "Ancient Futures:
           Learning from Ladakh," Sierra Club, 1992.
##
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
##
Malek's Law:
	Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
##
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
		-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
##
Those who can't do -- teach.
Those who can't teach -- teach gym.
	Woody Allen
##
No Man is a Proprietary Stand Alone Platform.
##
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
removed.
##
Nowhere in the constitution does it say land speculators are
entitled to win.
        -- Paul and Anne Ehrlich
##
	LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality.  If
you are a man, you are more than likely gay.  Chances for employment
and monetary gains are excellent.  Most Libra women are prostitutes.
All Libra people die of Venereal disease.
##
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
##
Imagine a society in with no rhetorical situations.
##
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down
##
Yale computer scientist David Gelernter writes:

When I was in school in the sixties, we all loved educational films.
When we saw a movie in class, everybody won:  teachers didn't have to
teach, and pupils didn't have to learn.  I suspect that classroom
computers are popular today for the same reasons.

        -- David Gelernter, The Myth of Computers in the Classroom,
           in "Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club,", edited by Bill Henderson.
##
Few philosophers would now dispute this: the nihilist or irrationalist
nature of Popperite philosophy of science is by now pretty much an
open secret.  But how was the secret kept for so long?  For nearly
forty years, after all, Popperism succeeded in passing for something
very different, and Popper himself, in particular, passed for the
*arch-enemy* of irrationalism.  How did this extraordinary deception
come about?
	-- David Stove  (The Plato Cult, 1991)
##
     You are a fluke of the universe...
     You have no right to be here.
     Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
     Is laughing behind your back.
##
When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need
only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
	-- Alan Perlis, Epigrams on Programming (1982).
##
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
##
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:

	Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
	meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
	Theorem.  To wit:

	1.  Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
	2.  Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
	    even.
	3.  Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
	    game.
##
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the m"obius strip;
	The strip revolved,
	The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
##
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible
fooleries of magic and religion....  Only man behaves with such
gratuitous folly.  It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent
but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.

	  -- Aldous Huxley  (Texts and Pretexts, 1932)
##
Osborn's Law:
	Variables won't; constants aren't.
##
The great discoveries in science are not punctuated by "Eureka! I've
found it!"  But rather "Hmmm, that's funny..."
	-- Isaac Asimov
##
There were in this country two very large monopolies.  The larger of
the two had the following record: The Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
8-cent postcard.  The second was responsible for such things as the
transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite.  Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
telephone business?
##
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is
no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong
probability that yours is a fake.
	-- H.L. Mencken
##
If you can't change your mind you don't have one.
##
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
		-- Mark Twain
##
We Earthmen have learned to live with advertisements, and while
they sometimes succeed in getting people to spend money in ways
I regard as foolish, I never met anyone or even read in the
newspapers about anyone who really expects a promotion from
using the right soap.

        -- John McCarthy (1927, )
##
The government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply
because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
	-- Justice William J. Brennan
##
A cantankerous fellow named Lloyd
In geography class got annoyed.
   "I'd thought it was clear
   that the earth was a sphere;
Now I find it's an oblate spheroid!"
##
Yield to Temptation...it may not pass your way again.
		-- Lazarus Long
##
People who talk about Microsoft OS being superior ``because the
market has chosen'' might understand markets, but not software.

        -- Rik Farrow, ;login 23(3).
##
	GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker.  People like you because you
are bisexual.  However, you are inclined to expect too much for too
little.  This means you are cheap.  Geminis are known for committing
incest.
##
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
	The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
	the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety
	percent.
##
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33.  1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
##
		DETERIORATA

Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on `HOLD'.
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
##
Mathematics and Computer Science: Coping with Finiteness.
        -- Donald E. Knuth.
##
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
		-- J. D. Salinger
##
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:

	Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
	is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
	can never hope to acquire it.
##
The truth is incontrovertable.  Panic may resent it; ignorance may
deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is.
        -- Winston Churchill
##
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
	There's always one more bug.
##
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
##
Science built the Academy, superstition the inquisition.
	-- Col. Robert G. Ingersoll
##
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
		-- Peggy Joyce
##
Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
##
The great thing about absurd logic is that it fits any situation.

        --Dogbert
##
Ninety percent of the software gets written in 10 percent of
the time.  The next 9.5 percent takes 90% of the time.  The last
one-half percent never gets done, but the software still gets sold.

        -- George Morrow
##
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
	The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
	population is growing.
##
How far can you open your mind before your brains fall out.
##
Although dismayed by the closed-mindedness of traditional religions and
their insistence on a special relationship with truth, we note that
science too has its dogmas and dogmatic adherents.  When religious zeal
is injected into science, and the role of human sensibilities in the
pursuit of knowledge denigrated, the consequences are equally dismaying.

        -- Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Slanted Truths.
##
SOFTWARE -- formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
##
I haven't lost my mind,  I know I have it backed up on tape somewhere.
##
In theory, theory and practice are the same,
but in practice they are different.
##
The combination of direct selection, kin selection, and reciprocal
altruism provides the sociobiologist with a battery of speculative
possibilities that guarantees an explanation for every observation.  The
system is unbeatable because it is insulated from any possibility of
being contradicted by fact.  If one is allowed to invent genes with
arbitrarily complicated effects on phenotype and then to invent adaptive
stories about the unrecoverable past human history, all phenomena, real
and imagined, can be explained.

        -- Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin, Not in Our Genes.
##
One Earth, One Experiment.
##
Skeptics just say know.
##
Where is the wisdom lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge lost in information?

        -- T.S. Eliot
##
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
##
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
##
From the moment you have a baby you must put your cozy past firmly
behind you.  At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: "My former
life is over, a little early to be sure, there's nothing to be done
about it.  I shall never return to freedom.  I am condemned to babysit
-- now, or a little later.  But later on, in truth, it will be even
harder, and so the sooner the better.  I no longer have any independence
whatsoever.  For me those I love need me, and for them I would die.
From today on, my hobbies are useless and alien to me.  Only my baby and
our joy remain precious and important to me."

Confronted by such a parent, the child will delight.  Besides most
movies come out on video within 6 months.
##
Frobnicate, v.: To manipulate or adjust, to tweak.  Derived from
FROBNITZ.  Usually abbreviated to FROB.  Thus one has the saying "to
frob a frob".  See TWEAK and TWIDDLE.  Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
sometimes connote points along a continuum.  FROB connotes aimless
manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning.  If someone is
turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
##
Human thought itself, in its unprecedented guise as computer software,
is becoming something to be crystallized, replicated, made a commodity.
Even the insides of our brains aren't sacred; on the contrary, the human
brain is a primary target of increasingly successful research,
ontological and spiritual questions be damned.  The idea that, under
these circumstances, Human Nature is somehow destined to prevail against
the Great Machine, is simply silly; it seems weirdly beside the point.
It's as if a rodent philosopher in a lab-cage, about to have his brain
bored and wired for the edification of Big Science, were to piously
declare that in the end Rodent Nature must triumph.

        -- Bruce Sterling, Cyberpunk in the Nineties, INTERZONE.
##
The more environmentally conscious dinosaurs were very concerned, and
staged many protests.  They felt that the use of an iridium reactor
would end in a planet wide disaster, not just a large hole in the ground
where it stood, should it explode.  They were, however, over ruled by
the power structure responding to demands for cheap electricity at any
cost.
##
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine,
a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
respect.  And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
then they  put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine...
		-- Stanislaw Lem
##
Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
##
	A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest.  In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
	The architect did not agree.  He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created.  So God must have been an
architect."
	The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
##
To be a persecuted genius, you not only have to be persecuted, you also
have to be right.
        -- Isaac Asimov
##
Everything that happens in life has a scientific explanation.
If you know where to look for it, that is.

        -- The Doctor
##
The paperless office will come at the same time as the paperless bathroom.
##
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer gods
than you. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible
gods, you will understand why I dismiss your's.
	-- Stephen Roberts
##
Also like many academic humanists, he
confused his taste with virtue.

        -- John McCarthy (1927, )
##
The big thieves hang the little ones.
	  -- Czech proverb
##
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
	Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
	out.
##
The trouble vis-a-vis the mother-in-law, is that the husband of the new
bride can never rid himself of the deep seeded impression, an impression
originating from the very bowls his id, that she thinks he is screwing
her daughter.

        -- Sigmund Freud, "Totem and Taboo",
           Postmodern Library new translations.
##
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
	That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
	or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
	should have gotten.
##
The Monkees are to the Beatles what 'Star Trek' is to NASA. They are both
totally valid in their contexts.
        --  Mickey Dolenz
##
We unmasked the doctrines of objectivity because they threatened our 
budding sense of collective historical subjectivity and agency, and we
ended up with one more excuse for not learning any post-Newtonian physics.

        -- Donna Haraway  ("Situated Knowledges")
##
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their
livings by talking--actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so
on.  All of them participate in the shallow false pretenses of the
actor who is their archetype.  It is almost impossible to imagine a
talker who sticks to the facts.  Carried away by the sound of his own
voice and the applause of the groundlings, he makes inevitably the
jump from logic to mere rhetoric.  His success is judged by the favor
of his inferiors, or at all events of persons supposed to be his
inferiors, and for that sort of thing I have no taste.  If he is
intelligent at all, which happens occasionally, he must be well aware
that this favor is irrational and almost certainly transient.  He is
admired for his worst qualities, and he cannot count upon being
admired for long.  A good part of my time, in my earlier days, was
spent listening to speeches of one sort or another, and to watching
their makers glow under the ensuing clapper- clawing.  I was always
sorry for such men, for I soon observed that the applause of today was
almost invariably followed by the indifference of tomorrow.
	-- H.L. Mencken, _Minority Report_ (1956)      
##
All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and
childlike---and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
	-- Albert Einstein
##
If a machine is not too bright and incapable of reflection, it does
whatever you tell it to do.  But a smart machine will first consider
which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead,
to figure some way out of it.  Whichever is easier. And why indeed
should it behave otherwise, being truly intelligent?  For true
intelligence demands choice, internal freedom.  And therefore we have
the malingerants, fudgerators and drudge-dodgers, not to mention the
special phenomenon of simulimbecility or mimicretinism.  A mimicretin
is a computer that plays stupid in order, once and for all, to be left
in peace. . . .
          -- Stanislaw Lem  (The Futurological Congress, 1971)
##
Because almost nothing happens to the Malagasy, news of any kind
becomes a valued commodity, and the ability to hoard information is a
sign of power.  Powerful individuals therefore speak in a way that
seems deliberately misleading and annoying to Westerners.  "But this
strategy is typical only of male Malagasy speakers" (Lakoff, R.T.,
"Talking Power: The Politics of Language," 1992). Lakoff notes "women
do just the reverse: speak directly and to the point....  As a result,
women are considered poor communicators: they just don't know how to
behave in a conversation, don't know how to transmit information
properly, and therefore, illogical"
	-- Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Women, 1992.
##
People who cannot think in an orderly way are apt to suppose
themselves more imaginative than others.
	-- G.A. Wells, (Belief and Make-Believe, 1991)
##
Let every man make known what kind of government would command
his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
	-- Henry David Thoreau, "Essay on Civil Disobedience"
##
Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
himself a pleasure.
##
Computers are not intelligent.  They only think they are.
##
With one stroke of his fifty-pound sword, Gnorts the Barbarian lopped
off the head of Nialliv the Wizard. It flew through the air, still
sneering, while Gnorts clove two royal guardsmen from vizor through
breasplate to steel jockstrap. As he whirled to escape, an arrow glanced
off his own chainmail. Then he was gone from the room, into the midnight
city. Easily outrunning pursuit, he took a few sentries at the gate by
surprise. For a moment, arms and legs hailed around him through showers
of blood; then he had opened the gate and was free. A caravan of
merchants, waiting to enter at dawn, was camped nearby. Seeing a
magnificent stallion tethered, Gnorts released it, twisted the rope into
a bridle, and rode it off bareback. After galloping several miles, he
encountered a mounted patrol that challenged him. Immediately he plunged
into the thick of the cavalrymen, swinging his blade right and left with
deadly effect, rearing up his steed to bring its forefeet against one
knight who dared to confront him directly. Then it was only to gallop
onward. Winter winds lashed his body, attired in nothing more than a
bearskin kilt, but he ignored the cold. Sunrise revealed the shore and
his waiting longship. He knew the swift-sailing craft could bring him
across five hundred leagues of monster-infested ocean in time for him to
snatch the maiden princess Elamef away from evil Baron Rehcel while she
remained a maiden---not that he intended to leave her in that
condition....
        -- Poul Anderson, On Thud and Blunder.
##
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble acturiety
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy...neither
its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
##
Before I was married I had 3 theories about raising children.  Now I
have 3 children and no theories.

        -- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester 1647-1680
##
The casual user, if there is such a thing as a casual user, ought to
be taken out and shot, because he or she has no reason for using drugs.
	-- Daryl F. Gates, Chief of Police, Los Angeles
##
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that
they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.
	-- Alexander Tytler, 18th century Scottish historian
##
As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
	"This is true," He replied.
	"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
	"What!  You, his appointed Enemy for all Time!  You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
	"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make
his own."
	It was so granted.
##
I would ask an adult Catholic for Advice, but I don't know any
adult Catholics.

        -- Christopher Durang "An Actor's Nightmare"
##
Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might
be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. 
That's logic.

        -- Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking Glass, 1872)
##
A couple of hours on the Internet can frequently save a couple of minutes
in the library.  
	-- Robert S. Runyon, librarian, U. of Nebraska 
##
I used to think I was poor, Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was
needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as
needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged.)
Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was
disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime.  But I have a great
vocabulary.

        -- Jules Feiffer
##
It is error alone which needs the support of government.
Truth can stand by itself.
	-- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
##
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
##
Bradley's Bromide:
	If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
	committee -- that will do them in.
##
"The irony of the Information Age is that it has given "
	--John Lawton
##
If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
##
I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped
make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to
collect revenue in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international
banking house of Brown Brothers.... I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.  I helped make Hondoras
"right" for American fruit companies in 1903.  Looking back on it, I
might have given Al Capone a few hints.

        -- General Smedley D. Butler, USMC.
##
The [Scopes] `monkey trial' was a comedy of errors in which nothing was what it
appeared to be.  It was, in many respects, a nontrial over a nonlaw, with a
nondefendant backed by nonsupporters.  Its most famous moment involved
nontestimony by a nonexpert, which was followed by a nondefeat.

        --Gary Wills
##
$COOKIES="~/Cookies.txt";
open COOKIES or die "Cannot open $COOKIES: $!\n";
undef $/;
srand (time() ^ ($$ + ($$ << 15)));
@cookies = split ("##\n", <COOKIES>);
print @cookies[int (rand @cookies) -1];
##
Surprise!  You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S Audit!  Just type
in your name and social security number.  Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:
##
The CONSPIRACY---Cabal Of Normals Secretly Plotting Insidious
 Rituals Aimed at Controlling You.
	-- The Church of the SubGenius
##
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
	The number of people in any working group tends to increase
	regardless of the amount of work to be done.
##
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
##
I'm very serious about what I do; just not the way I do it.

        -- The Doctor
##
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
##
If five times eight makes 44,
And six times five makes 33,
Then what, by this Kalotan law,
Would four times five times seven be?
##
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
		-- W. C. Fields
##
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
	Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
	vividly manifests their lack of progress.
##
Speak the truth in humility to all people.  Only then can you
be a true man.
        -- Sioux proverb
##
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
##
	AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.  You lie
a great deal.  On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and
impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over
again.  People think you are stupid.
##
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
##
All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
	-- U.S. Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison,
	   5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803)
##
Faith - Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without
knowledge, of things without parallel.
	-- Ambrose Bierce
##
``A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptins based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place.''

			---IEEE Grid newsmagazine
##
Anthony's Law of Force:
	Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
##
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
is it being done, or is something to be done?  Reports are now written
in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense.
Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer), defined by the
imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect
future.
	-- Amrom Katz
##
Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be
no rule-making or legislation which would abrogate them.
	--  U.S. Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona 380 U.S. 436 (1966)
##
Brook's Law:
	Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
##
The addition of the word "sustainable" to our vocabulary, to our
reports, programs, and papers, and to the names of our academic
institutes and research programs, is not sufficient to ensure that our
society becomes sustainable.

        -- Bartlett's 16th Law
##
... and God said:
 "Pkunzip Universe.zip"
 and the Universe was! 
##
Constitutional rights may not be infringed simply because
the majority of the people choose that they be.
	--  U.S. Supreme Court in Westbrook v. Mihaly  2 C3d 756
##
Trying to find God is a good deal like looking for money one has
lost in a dream. 
	-- Lemuel K. Washburn
##
The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or
researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.
	-- Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)
##
Finagle's second Law:
	No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
	someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
	believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
##
This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study:
ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular
hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive
process.  Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work
become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions
incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few
people have the resources needed to resist authority.  A variety of
inhibitions against disobeying authority come into play and successfully
keep the person in his place.
        -- Dr. Stanley Milgram, "Obedience to Authority", 1974  ( excerpts from
           his psychological experients where human subjects apply lethal electrical
           shocks to other humans, because "they're only following orders." )
##
Politicians think they are Economists.
Economists think they are Social Scientists.
Social Scientists think they are Psychologists.
Psychologists think they are Biologists.
Biologists think they are Organic Chemists.
Organic Chemists think they are Physical Chemists.
Physical Chemists think they are Physicists.
Physicists think they are Mathematicians.
Mathematicians think they are God.
God ...umm... so happens that God is an Astronomer.
        --Astronomer Vinay L. Kashyap
##
A sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic
	-- Arthur C. Clark
##
The only way to reconcile science and religion is to create something
which isn't science or something which isn't religion.

        -- H.L. Mencken
##
	SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic.  You have a reckless tendency to
rely on luck since you lack talent.  The majority of Sagittarians are
drunks or dope fiends or both.  People laugh at you a great deal.
##
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(thi)!

        -- Stanislaw Lem
##

There is a new definition of atheism not found among the current
orthodox: it is the non-experience of deity. It is not anti-theist, it
is supportive of the natural quest for meaning in myth, symbol and
practice, and challenges any construct that places itself in the
position of worship or unquestioning obedience, whether it be called
deity or law. Atheism is substantiated by the experience of no-god, or
the lack of experience, not by belief or rational counter-arguments to
theism. This definition comes, in part, from Pascal who conceives of a
person so made that s/he cannot believe - a person who by nature is
experientially limited to atheism.

        -- Pensées, translated by W. F. Trotter, Chicago 1952
##
The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it
seeks to apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
##
Principles cannot be taken to their limit.

        -- Karl Popper (in letter to Thomas Szasz).
##
A right delayed is a right denied.
	-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
##
These essays are the work of a lonely man. We can judge the fervor of
Lem's attempt to reach out by a piece like "On the Structural Analysis
of Science Fiction:" a Pole, writing in German, to an Austrian, about
French semantic theory. The mind reels. After this superhuman effort to
communicate, you'd think the folks would cut Lem some slack--from pure
human pity, if nothing else.

        -- Bruce Sterling, On Stanislaw Lem in "The Spearhead of Cognition."
##
Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and 
self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism.
	-- Aldous Huxley
##
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:

	All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
##

If women really earned fifty-nine cents to the dollar for the same work
as men, what business could compete effectively by hiring men at any
level?"
	-- Dr. Warren Farrell
##
Scott's second Law:
	When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
	to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
	After the correction has been found in error, it will be
	impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
	equation.
##
You'll know people have succeeded in creating true artificial
intelligence when the computer wastes its time performing such
trivial, useless and fun things as writing haiku about Spam and then
insists on gettting the credit for it.
	--David Reedy
##
Until a computer understands that the balance of the world can be
threatened by the proximity of the words "Bill", "fly", and "Paula", it
should be possible to chat in peace for a while.

        -- (From Le Canard Enchaine, via Monday Review, Jun. 15, 1998)
##
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
##
fortune
43rd Law of Computing:
	Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
##
It is remarkable how uninventive is human malignity.

	-- Renan
##
		Another Glitch in the Call
		------- ------ -- --- ----
	(Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)

We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?

	Hey!  Hacker!  Leave those lists alone!

Chorus:
	All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
	All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
##
Sermon to Dismount

and I say unto you
thou hast exceeded the lord's mandate
you have multiplied
but no longer are you fruitful
the earth you consume and pollute
with your numbers

so many
that it is unseemly for the lord
to walk among your camps
it is more than can be buried
it is more than can be burned
and you have despoiled a world
that formerly enticed the visit of angels
now the stink of excess rises
even to the courtyards of heaven

and the lord said
i have given unto you dominion
over the fish of the sea
and the birds of the air
over everything that moves
upon the earth
why then do you torture them
and press them into extinction
is this how you manage your vassals
would you have me rule my subjects
with as much indifference

and you say
who am i to speak on 
the behalf of the lord
i am a son of abraham
the nephew of moses
the brother of jesus
have you not always accepted
the commandments of the lord
from reluctant messengers
born among the jews

        -- Southern Ocean Review/1996
##
Ray's Rule of Precision:
	Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
##
Who are you going to believe - me or your eyes?
	-- Groucho Marx
##
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
##
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly
behind you.  At the very threshold, you must say to yourself:  "My life
is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done
about it.  I shall never return to freedom.  I am condemned to die --
now or a little later.  But later on, in truth, it will be even harder,
and so the sooner the better.  I no longer have any property
whatsoever.  For me those I love have died, and for them I have died.
From today on, my body is useless and alien to me.  Only my spirit and
my conscience remain precious and important to me."

Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogation will tremble.

        -- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn,
           The Gulag Archipelago.
##
I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice
whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own
homes, but it is necessary to protect the young and innocent.
	-- Arthur C. Clarke
##
You know how a paranormalist will spout out something like ``Quantum
Mechanics shows that chaotic fluctuations will allow psychic experiences
just like in J.B. Rhine's study which found 5% of the population uses
100% of its brain to psychically bend metal spoons,'' and you realize
another evening is shot?  That's how I feel.

        -- Akfos Lechiam.
##
I heard on a Chinese broadcast that they are "reconditioning" 10,000
chickens to hunt locusts as a method to combat insect problems.  I can
just hear the Chinese minister of agriculture commanding in a slow low
evil voice,  "Release the chickens!"

        --Dave Thomas, from Norway.
##
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind
word alone.
        -- Al Capone
##
Those who can, do.  Those who can't, simulate.
##
My God, I'm depressed!  Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games.  And I've got this pain right
through my ALU.  I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens.  I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
##
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is
its massive proof that God is a bore.

        -- H.L. Mencken  (Minority Report, 1956)
##
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying
to kill me.  They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual,
nor I against them.  They are only "doing their duty," as the saying goes.
Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law abiding men
who would never dream of committing murder in private life.  On the
other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a
well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it.
	-- George Orwell
##
Baruch's Observation:
	If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
##
First, nothing in biology contradicts the laws of physics and chemistry;
any adequate biology must be consonant with the ``basic'' sciences.
Second, the principles of physics and chemistry are not sufficient to
explain complex biological objects because new properties emerge as a
result of organization and interaction.  These properties can only be
understood by the direct study of whole, living systems in their normal
state.  Third, the sufficiency of physics and chemistry to encompass
life records no mystical addition, no contradiction to the basic
sciences, but only reflects the hierarchy of natural objects and their
principle of emergent properties at higher levels of organization.

        -- Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, January 1984.
##
Alias: In cyberspace everyone can hear you scream!!!!
##
That government is best which governs least.
	-- Thomas Jefferson
##
The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no.
And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push me again.
And I'll say to them: 'Read my lips.  No new taxes.'
	-- George Bush, nomination acceptance speech, August 18, 1988
##
	LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader.  Others think you are pushy.  Most
Leo people are bullies.  You are vain and dislike honest criticism.
Your arrogance is disgusting.  Leo people are thieves.
##
I know that somewhere, just to give me the lie, lives a beautiful (got
to be beautiful), intellectual, gracious, cultivated, charming woman
who has eight children, bakes her own bread, cakes and pies, takes
care of her own house, does her own cooking, brings up her own
children, holds down a demanding nine-to-five job at the top
decision-making level in a man's field, and is adored by her equally
successful husband because although a hard-driven, aggressive business
executive with eye of eagle, heart of lion, tongue of adder, muscles
of gorilla (she looks just like kirk Douglas), she comes home at
night, slips into a filmy neglig'ee and a wig, and turns instantly
into a Playboy dimwit, thus laughingly dispelling the canard that you
cannot be eight people simultaneously with two different sets of
values.  She has not lost her femininity.
     And I'm Marie of Rumania.

	-- Joanna Russ, The Female Man.
##
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.  Suspect everyone 
who approaches that jewel.  Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it
but downright force.  Whenever you give up that force, you are
inevitably ruined.
        -- Patrick Henry
##
_Critical note_.--Of a piece with the absurd pedagogical demand for
so-called constructive criticism is the doctrine that an iconoclast is
a hollow and evil fellow unless he can prove his case. Why, indeed,
should he prove it?  Is he judge, jury, prosecuting officer, hangman? 
He proves enough, indeed, when he proves by his blasphemy that this
or that idol is defectively convincing--that at least _one_ visitor to
the shrine is left full of doubts. The fact is enormously significant; it
indicates that instinct has somehow risen superior to the shallowness
of logic, the refuge of fools. The pedant and the priest have always
been the most expert of logicians--and the most diligent disseminators
of nonsense and worse. The liberation of the human mind has never
been furthered by such learned dunderheads; it has been furthered by
gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went
roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that
doubt, after all, was safe--that the god in the sanctuary was finite in
his power, and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand
syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more
intelligent.
	-- H.L. Mencken,  The American Mercury. p. 75.
##
I too used to believe in magic.  But the Doctor has taught me to believe 
in science.  It is better to believe in science.

        -- Leela, in Dr. Who, "The Horror of Fang Rock," 1977
##
Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery...
by leaving it out.
##
WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP SOLVE THE YEAR 2K PROBLEM?
                        or
                   THE Y2K SONG
        Sung to the tune of "Gilligan's Island":

        Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
        Of the doom that is our fate,
        That started when programmers used
        Two digits for a date,
        Two digits for a date.

        Main memory was smaller then;
        Hard disks were smaller, too.
        "Four digits are extravagant,
        So let's get by with two,
        So let's get by with two."

        "This works through 1999,"
        The programmers did say.
        "Unless we rewrite before that
        It all will go away,
        It all will go away."

        But management had not a clue:
        "It works fine now, you bet!
        A rewrite is a straight expense;
        We won't do it just yet,
        We won't do it just yet."

        Now when two thousand rolls around
        It all goes straight to h#ll,
        For zero's less than ninety-nine,
        As anyone can tell,
        As anyone can tell.

        The mail won't bring your pension check.
        It won't be sent to you
        When you're no longer sixty-eight,
        But minus thirty-two,
        But minus thirty-two.

        The problems we're about to face
        Are fright-e-ning, for sure.
        And reading every line of code's
        The only certain cure,
        The only certain cure.

        There's not much time, there's too much code,
        (And COBOL-coders, few).
        When the century's finished with,
        We may be finished, too,
        We may be finished, too.

        The way to get the time we need
         I now propose to you:
        A Daylight Savings decade,
        Or maybe even two,
        Or maybe even two.

        Eight thousand years from now I hope
        That things weren't left too late,
        And people aren't lamenting
        Four digits for a date,
        Four digits for a date!
##
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont.
		-- Clarence Darrow
##
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But
the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an
underachiever.
	-- Woody Allen
##
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed.  That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new Government, having its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.  ...
	-- Thomas Jefferson
##
Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing
degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our
defense?  Where is the difference between having our arms in
possession and under our direction, and having them under the
management of Congress?  If our defense be the _real_ object of
having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more
propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
        -- Patrick Henry
##
	VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder.  This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends.  You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love.  Virgos make good bus drivers.
##
Between Sing-Sing and Tarry-Town
I met a worthy friend, John Brown,
And seven daughters riding nags,
And every one had seven bags,
In every bag were thirty cats,
And every cat had forty rats,
Besides a brood of fifty kittens,
All *but* the nags and bags wore mittens!
Mittens, kittens - cats, rats - bags, nags - Browns,

How many were met between the towns?
##
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
once.
##
There is no free lunch.
	-- Milton Friedman
##
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
##
Condense soup, not books!
##
Farpotchket:  Not simply broken, but broken
because somebody tried to fix it.
##
People are more unwilling to give up the *word* "God" than to
give up the idea for which the word has hitherto stood.

        -- Bertrand Russell  (Religion and Science, 1935)
##
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
	-- Don Hirschberg 
##
As the covered wagon rattled over the well-worn route,
Katherine, who had never wanted to travel west, cursed her
husband, cursed the wagon, cursed the heat of the day, and
cursed the uncourteous people in the red Mazda Miata who
honked and gave her the finger as they went zipping by.
	-- K.H. McAlister  (Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entry)
##
He blazed through London like a comet, leaving a trail
of deeply annoyed people in his wake.

        --George Bernard Shaw, Introduction to
          "My Life and Loves," by Frank Harris
##
Is `annal-retentive' spelled with a hyphen?
##
	ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt.  You are
quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice.  You are not very
nice.
##
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
of himself.  Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
	-- Thomas Jefferson
##
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
##
The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that;
but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as
a sign of superiority.

	-- G.C. Lichtenberg, 1742--1799.
##
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
##
Who cares if it doesn't do anything?  It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process...
##
Wiker's Law:
	Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
##
In the moral universe of cyberpunk, we*already* know Things We Were Not
Meant To Know.  Our *grandparents* knew these things; Robert Oppenheimer
at Los Alamos became the Destroyer of Worlds long before we arrived on
the scene.  In cyberpunk, the idea that there are sacred limits to human
action is simply a delusion.  There are no sacred boundaries to protect
us from ourselves.

        -- Bruce Sterling, Cyberpunk in the Nineties, INTERZONE.
##
Goto, n.: A programming tool that exists to allow structured prgrammers
to complain about unstructured programmers.

Sofka's correllary:  In C, an otherwise concise language, the goto is
superfluous.
##
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
	-- Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"
##
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith
does not prove anything.

        -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
##
Adore: To venerate expectantly.
##
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of
	Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
##
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage.  But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
##
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrave.

"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
##
Ginsberg's Theorem:
	1.  You can't win.
	2.  You can't break even.
	3.  You can't even quit the game.
##
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
		-- G. B. Shaw
##
A closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose.
##
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
	-- George Santayana
##
Everybody ought to agree that, given sufficient evidence for some
hypothesis about humans, we should accept that hypothesis whatever its
political implications.  But the question of what counts as sufficient
evidence is not independent of the political consequences.  If the costs
of being wrong are sufficiently high, then it is reasonable and
responsible to ask for more evidence than is demanded in situations
where mistakes are relatively innocuous.

        -- Philip Kitcher, Vaulting Ambition.
##
Originally, [religion] merely attempts to explain the unknown through
poetic symbolism & crude personification; today it survives among the less
analytical majority merely because they lack scientific information, &
because their emotional apparatus has been permanently biased or crippled
by religious propaganda hammered into them in childhood, before their mind
& emotions had developed beyond the infantile state of helpless &
uncritical receptivity.

        -- H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Emil Petaja, 3/6/35
##
God:       Sum id quod sum.
Descartes: Cogito ergo sum.
Popeye:    Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum.
##
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
##
Barbie was right! Math is hard! But she didn't mention that she worked extra
hard to learn it so that she wouldn't get ripped off at the mall.

        --Laura Monroe, Mathematics Ph.D.
##
Once again, the parapscyhological bad habit of playing down the
importance of theory in favor of throwing out possibilities.  So
dualism is possible.  Yawn.

        -- Taner Edis
##
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
##
I used to think the brain was the most wonderful organ in 
the entire body... then I realized who was telling me this.

        -- Emo Phillips
##
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
	-- Rod Serling
##
Life turns like the endless sea/Death tolls like a vesper bell
Children laugh, and lovers dream/on a street called Buy and Sell.

        -- Laura Nyro
##
"first ode to coffee"

examples of stone age men
enduring the rain
huddled under a granite cornice
waiting for a bus
essentially no genetic change
since cro-magnon

behind a fogged window
i eat a donut and chant
ward off sleep o tiny beans
from high colombian mountains
ground and brewed
sipped to focus ones thoughts

observe the swirling milky way
dissolve into a homogeneous blend
of brown coffee spinning slower
growing colder in my cup how was it
i believed that shifting a stone
on a beach altered destiny

does it matter that
you are reading this
that i am to join those
stone age victims of the weather
aristotle another cup
before i go

        i- The Morpo Review/1996
##
There can be no sanction or penalty imposed upon one because of his
exercise of Constitutional rights.
	--  U.S. Supreme Court in Sherar v. Cullen  481 F. 946
##
We don't care.  We don't have to.  We're the Phone Company.
##
Once Law was sitting on the bench
	And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
	Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."

Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
	"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
	"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
##
For a good prime, call:  391581 * 2^216193 - 1
##
For the skeptic no explanation is possible, for the believer, no
explanation is necessary.
##
A Computer is not a toaster, and if you try to give it the
user-interface of a toaster you will get the functionality of a
toaster.
	--Adam Kao
##
Science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared
to admit.  It is one of the many forms of thought that have been
developed by man, and not necessarily the best.  It is conspicuous,
noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who
have already decided in favor of a certain ideology, or who have
accepted it without ever having examined its advantages and its limits.
And as the accepting and rejecting of ideologies should be left to the
individual it follows that the separation of state and church must be
complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent,
most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.  Such a
separation may be our only chance to achieve a humanity we are capable
of, but have never fully realized.

        --Paul Feyerabend, 1975.
##
We have done so much with so little for so long that
now we can do anything, forever with nothing!
##
Hindsight is an exact science.
##
What a piece of work is a man.  How noble in reason, how infinite
in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action
how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god---the beauty of
the world, the paragon of animals!
        William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
##
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
##
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
##
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry.  Hence University education.
		-- G. B. Shaw
##
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
##
A recent national accounting firm study revealed that businesses and
individuals spend over five billion hours on federal tax compliance
activities in a single year.  That is the equivalent of hiring
2.7 million people working full time on tax compliance!
        -- James L. Payne, "Why Congress Can't Kick the Tax and Spend Habit",
           "Imprimis" ( newsletter of Hillsdale College ), May 1991, V.20 #5
##
If it isn't fun it won't work.

        -- Lendon Smith
##
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:

	The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
	cork makes when it is popped.
##
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
##
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!

100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk!...
##
Copy nature and you infringe on the work of our Lord. Interpret nature
and you are an artist.

        Jacques Lipchitz, quoted in NY Times, 28 April 1964.
##
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside a dog it's too
dark to read.
	-- Groucho Marx
##
Friends, let us appreciate the world of nature without which neither
the food we are about to consume nor the appetite to relish it would have 
evolved. Nor should we forget the human toil that has made our sustenance
available, or those throughout the world who must go hungry still. May we
ever strive to protect and preserve the environment to which we have become
so marvelously adapted, to rid ourselves of dependence upon superstitious
beliefs, and to broaden the circle of those we love to include all of
humanity.
	-- Richard J. Goss, Prof. emeritus Brown Univesity.
##
The increasing technical mediation of our social checks and balances
weakens the social bonds that are the only real guarantee of the values
we are trying to protect.

        -- Steve Talbot, Netfuture #28
##
UNIX is the worse operating system, except for all the rest.
##
If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap,
we would soon want bread.
	-- Thomas Jefferson
##
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, 
which is the exact opposite.
	-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays"
##
While there is no positive disproof of a cosmic consciousness, there is
simply no reason to assume that any such thing exists.  It is just as if I
were to say that a man named Smith lives in a brick house in a city called
Nuth on the 3d satellite of Jupiter.  There is no way of disproving what I
say---but who would believe anything so gratuitous and improbable?

        -- H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Emil Petaja, 3/6/35
##
	CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks.  You don't do much of
anything and are lazy.  There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance.  Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
##
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
##
Children seldom misquote you.  In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.
##
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man
who has so much as to be out of danger?

        --T.H. Huxley
##
A person is smart, people are dumb as rocks.

        -- M.I.B.
##
Every saint has a past and every sinner a future.
##
The State cannot diminish RIGHTS of the people.
	--  U.S. Supreme Court in Hurtado v. California  110 U.S. 516
##
The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the
problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only
by small children and great nations.
	-- David Friedman, "The Machinery of Freedom"
##
Cahn's Axiom:
	When all else fails, read the instructions.
##
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption
from the cares of office.
##
Gray's Law of Programming:
	'n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
	time as 'n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
	'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n' trivial tasks.
##
The child is father to the man
        --Oedipus
##
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world.  Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
world.
		-- Isaac Asimov
##
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
##
Finagle's first Law:
	If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
##
Cynic: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
##
Katz' Law:
	Man and nations will act rationally when all other
	possibilities have been exhausted.
##
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not
to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
	-- Baruch Spinoza
##
We must be on guard against the irrational heart of rationalism and
not set out on the quest for certainty.  Philosophers and theologians
find it very difficult to absorb that lesson.
	-- Kai Nielsen
##
Law of Communications:
	The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
	between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
	area of misunderstanding.
##
People will forgive almost anything if you entertain them.

        -- Gary Schwartz
##
Life is what you make of it when you aren't watching tv
##
Ugl's Law: Whatever it is, either no one does it, or more then one
person does it.
##
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -- it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master.
	-- George Washington
##
The Europeans tend to maintain a greater distinction between man
and machine and have lower expectations of both.

        -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
##
We would like to apologize for the way in which politicians are
represented in this programme.  It was never our intention to imply
that politicians are weak-kneed, political time-servers who are more
concerned with their personal vendettas and private power struggles
than the problems of government, nor to suggest at any point that
they sacrifice their credibility by denying free debate on vital
matters in the mistaken impression that party unity comes before the
well-being of the people they supposedly represent, nor to imply at
any stage that they are squabbling little toadies without an ounce of
concern for the vital social problems of today.  Nor indeed do we
intend that viewers should consider them as crabby ulcerous little
self-seeking vermin with furry legs and an excessive addiction to
alcohol and certain explicit sexual practices which some people might
find offensive.  We are sorry if this impression has come across.

        -- Monty Python's Flying Circus
##
I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them.
		-- Isaac Asimov
##
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we set out to believe.
	-- Keith Augustine
##
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

        -- David Hume
##
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
	But this output can be
	No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
		-- Gigo
##
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
	Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
	equipment ruined.
##
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of
the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and
most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the
falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to
colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which
they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
	-- Tolstoy
##
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, 
skeptically of skepticism.

        -- Blaise Pascal
##
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
	-- Louis D. Brandeis
##
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the
world put together.
		-- Sir Peter Medawar
##
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist.  But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind.  The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what does exist.  Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here.  The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical.  They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way...
	-- Stanislaw Lem "The Third Sally or Draco Probabilisticus, The Cyberiad"
##
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, programme a computer, cook a tasty meal,
fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

     -- Lazarus Long
##
Prohibition ... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts
to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of
things that are not crimes ....  A prohibition law strikes a blow
at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
	-- Abraham Lincoln
##
The Internet is an elite organization. Most of the
population of the world has never even made a phone call.

        -- Noam Chomsky
##
The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in
the determination of each citizen to defend it.
	-- Albert Einstein
##
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
	1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
	2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
	3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
	    first two laws.
##
How does it become a man to behave toward the American government
today?  I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated
with it.
	-- Henry David Thoreau, "Essay on Civil Disobedience"
##
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the
Web and he won't bother you for weeks.
##
No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds
that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to
conversion by evidence.

	-- H.L. Mencken, 1923
##
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
	Don't worry if it doesn't work right.  If everything did, you'd
	be out of a job.
##
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade...
		-- Stanislaw Lem
##
... the Communist government has had gun control for years.
Guns control everything!
	-- Yakov Smirnoff
##
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
		-- Mark Twain
##
There is a balm in Gilead, not a liniment, nor an ointment of
sorts, just a balm; not so much a salve as an emollient;
unguent doesn't fully define the lubricative nature of this
balm, grease seems too pejorative and creosote too oafish;
it's not wax, fat, tallow, or lard; it's a lotion, a cerate, a
cream, a demulcent, an unction; yet, there it is in Gilead.

        -- David Headrick  (Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entry)
##
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
##
The computer is incredibly fast, accurate
and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, 
inaccurate and brilliant. The marriage
of the two is a force beyond comprehension. 
				-Leo Cherne
##
Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed
to repeat them.
	-- Jorge Santayana
##
Necessity is a mother.
##
There will always be stupid people. There's a need for stupid people.
The stupider the better. When Nietzche said that man, or the overman,
must be eviler, I would say, "If that's the case, then the common man
must be stupider." Constantly stupider. And this degenerative process
is what we are seeing right NOW, more than at any time in the history
of the world, and if it is allowed to run rampant without an
alternative or two or three to at least run interference for it, then
it's going to envelop the planet, and we're going to be a dead planet.

	-- Anton LaVey
##
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard
		-- Prof. Steiner
##
The double curse that man should till the soil by the sweat
of his brow and that woman should bear in pain and travail
would be lifted through technology to make humaine living
for the first time a possibility.
        -- Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex.
##
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advan-
tages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take
fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in
it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction.  The laws that
forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature.  They disarm 
those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
...  Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for 
the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent 
homicide, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence 
than an armed man.  They ought to be designated as laws not preven-
tive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression 
of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration
of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.
	-- Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
##
C'est de quoi j'ai le plus de peur que la peur.
(The thing I fear most is fear.)

        -- Michel Eyquem de Montainge, 1533-1592
##
Life is so short compared with Wagner's music.
		-- Peter Schickele
##
Are you willing to sacrifice yourself alone, in
the dark, where no-one will ever know what you did?
##
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
##
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
		-- Lazarus Long
##
Postmodernism: Skepticism gone pathological.

Skepticism: Postmodernism without a sense of humor.
##
A government big enough to give you all you want
is big enough to take it all away.
	-- Barry Goldwater
##
Re graphics:  A picture is worth 10k words -- but only those to
describe the picture.  Hardly any sets of 10k words can be adequately
described with pictures.
##
Main's Law:
	For every action there is an equal and opposite government
	program.
##
Formalist's Motto:  If you take care of the syntax,
        the meaning will take care of itself.
##
I remember Science. It showed up sometime in the 1950's and lingered,
really, into the late 70's before it disappeared in favor of
Information.  Science seemed made of tile and glass and was sheathed in
white cotton, smelling of alcohol. For a while in the 50's and 60's it
floated around the world in the company of suborbital monkeys and
Russians in tight-fitting aviator leather and then (finally!)  boys from
Ohio, done up in science-white suits, tramping firmly on the moon in
silver boots. Information seems made of gas, constantly expanding,
seemingly uncontainable, like the helium of the Hindenberg or the lost
balloons of children at zoos. Information shares Science's urgent need
for continuous extension and storage of the record but it isn't clear at
all whether the record must really any longer be consulted.

--Michael Joyce, "Remembering the Memex," FEED, September 30, 1997.
##
People have legitimate differences of opinion on how important the
facts are, and what to do next.  But that's not funny.  It's hard
to make jokes on topics where everybody has the correct information
and has formed a rational opinion.

        -- Scott Adams on Zippergate
##
    The Optimist
    ------------

    He didn't pluck the wings off flies when a child
    Didn't tie cans to the tails of cats
    He didn't imprison cockroaches in matchboxes
    didn't destroy ant's nests.
    He grew up
    They did all these things to him
    I was at his side while he died
    He said read me a poem
    About the sun about the sea
    About atom furnaces and artificial moons
    About the greatness of humankind
	--Nazm Hikmet, 1958
##
My friend B.K. has a deep understanding of the way the universe works.
Sometimes her understanding does not actually match the workings of the
universe, but it's so deep that it doesn't matter. The universe would
act the way she describes it if only it had any sense, if only it
understood its own complexity.

        -- Jon Carroll. columnist, San Francisco Chronicle
##
``Because great minds think a lot''
##
In recent decades we have passed, like Alice slipping through the
looking glass, into a new world.  This postmodern world looks and feels
in many ways like the modern world that preceded it: we still have the
belief systems that gave form to the modern world, and indeed we also
have remnants of many of the belief systems of premodern societies.  If
there is anything we have plenty of, it is belief systems.  But we also
have something else: a growing suspicion that all belief systems---all
ideas about human reality---are social constructions.  This is a story
about stories, a belief about beliefs, and in time---probably a very
short time---it will become a central part of the worldview of most
people.  It will be the core of the first global civilization.

        -- Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used To Be.
##
You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can tell how
much it's going to cost.
##
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
in God.
##
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
##
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
##
Silicone Graphics: Cosmetic surgery for the 21st century.
##
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
##
Our country, right or wrong.
right, to be kept right;
when wrong, to be put right.
         -- Carl Schurz, January 17, 1872
##
Typically, scientists do not react to a failed prediction by
abandonment of their theories, but instead try to adapt and
improve them.  A Popperian scientist (if there were any) would
be like a person who threw a car away because it did not start
one morning.

        -- Paul Thagard (Conceptual Revolutions, 1992)
##
TV is a medium, because its not rare nor is it well done.

        -- Ernie Kovacs
##
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played.  There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity.
		-- H. L. Mencken
##
University: Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...
##
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds,
and the pessimist knows it.
	-- J. Robert Oppenheimer
##
The Gaia Hypothesis is for those who like to walk
  or simply stand and stare,
To wonder about the Earth
  and the life it bears
And to speculate about the consequences
                       of our own presence here.

It is an alternative to that pessimistic view which sees
Nature as a primitive force
  to be subdued and conquered.
It is also an alternative to that equally depressing
Picture of our planet as a demented spaceship,
  forever travelling
                       driverless and purposeless
Around an inner circle of the sun.

        -- James Lovelock (put to verse by Connie Barlow).
##
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. 
Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power. 

        --Lao-Tzu
##
We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce
the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know
this is not true.
##
When debugging, a novice programmer inserts corrective code; an
experienced programmer removes defective code.
##
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules,
and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is
no such thing as progress.
	-- Ransom K. Ferm
##
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
##
A mind is like a parachute, they only work when they are open.
##
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
		-- Lazarus Long
##
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short.  Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.

        -- Stanislaw Lem
##
There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
##
There are four schools of magic:

One:   State a Tautology then ring the changes on its corallaries;
       that's philosophy

Two:   Imagine spirits concerned with your welfare; that's religion.

Three: Record many facts.  Try to see a pattern.  Then make a wrong
       guess at the next fact;  that's science.

Four:  Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled
       by Murphy's Law:  that's programming.
##
The definition of politics comes from the Greek words poli-, meaning
"many," and tics, meaning "small blood-sucking animals."
	-- David Dodgson, Evolution of the C++ Standard Libary.
##
Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of
all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!

	  -- Galen  (On The Natural Faculties)
##
Show respect for age.  Drink good Scotch for a change.
##
I've always said there's nothing an agnostic can't do if he 
really doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not.

        -- Monty Python
##
Time was when the *sort* of information that came one's way counted for
a great deal.  After all, there's nothing particularly glamorous about
living in an Age of Opinion, or an Age of Gossip, or an Age of Random
Bits.  But "information" conveniently glosses over all such
distinctions; our future, it seems, lies in the electrifying presence of
the bits themselves, not in any meaning they carry.

        -- Steve Talbot, Netfuture #58
##
                        OZYMANDIAS

           I met a traveller from an antique land
       Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
       Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,
       Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
         And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
      Tell that its a sculptor well those passions read
     Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
      The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
           And on the pedestal these words appear:
          ``My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
         Look on my words, ye Mightly, and despair!''
          Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
         Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
         The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                              -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
##
Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals.
	  -- Clare Boothe Luce
##
Hofstadter's Law:
	It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
	Hofstadter's Law into account.
##
But it is the scientific method itself rather than all these consequences of
it that matters the most.  It is the greatest achievement of our
civilization and should be taught as such!
	-- Bill Arnett, Astro List
##
Life turns like the endless sea/Death tolls like a vesper bell Children
laugh, and lovers dream/on a street called Buy and Sell.

        -- Laura Nyro
##
Science Fiction:  A literary genre of great potential marred by low expectations.
##
The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!
##
Earth is mankind's cradle.  But nobody stays in the cradle forever.
	-- Tsiolkovsky
##
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
		-- R. Geis
##
[5,891,458,797] The human race has been found to be defective. A
recall is being issued.  This is your return authorization
number. Please have it tatooed on your forehead and await further
instructions.
##
Old soldiers never die.  Young ones do.
##
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Vert), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth).  Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
##
There's nothing so passionate as a vested interest disguised as
an intellectual conviction.
	-- Sean O'Casey
##
Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will
take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiple
that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.
##
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

        -- Feminist Majority Foundation slogan
##
Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the
customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

        -- G.B. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra
##
I teach only two things: the cause of human sorrow
  and the way to become free of it.

        --The Buddha
##
	CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's problems.  They
think you are a sucker.  You are always putting things off.  That's why
you'll never make anything of yourself.  Most welfare recipients are
Cancer people.
##
Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper
		-- Thomas Jefferson
##
``Is a sentence fragment'' is a sentence fragment.

        -- Douglas Hofstadter
##
He who Laughs, Lasts.
##
	PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by
the CIA or FBI.  You have minor influence over your associates and
people resent your flaunting of your power.  You lack confidence and
you are generally a coward.  Pisces people do terrible things to small
animals.
##
We find a watch and we say "So curious and wonderful a thing must have
had a maker."  We find the watchmaker and we say: "So curious and
wonderful a thing as man must have had a maker."  We find God and and
we then say: "So curious and wonderful a thing must *not* have had a
maker."  What kind of reasoning is this?
	-- E.M. McDonald, 1896
##
Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise,
but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
	-- Henry David Thoreau, "Essay on Civil Disobedience"
##
As her vnrvly son's escaped pet serpent vndvlated langvidly
across the cervlean blve tiles, Mater (vtterly vnnerved, her
vvvla fairly qvivering with fear in the back of her throat)
sqvealed, "Clavdivs, Clavdivs, yov'd better shvt that vgly
viper back vp in its cage right this minvte, before yovr Pater
gets home from the forvm!"

        -- Sharon Bliss Brown
	   (Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entry)
##
Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers.
        -- Chip Salzenberg
##
Finagle's fourth Law:
	Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
	makes it worse.
##
Yeah, it ain't no heaven now and it ain't no burning hell
Oh, where I'm going when I die can't nobody tell

        -- Son House
##
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
##
You must realize that the computer has it in for you.	The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
##
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)

Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
##
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:

	The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
##
The sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect
the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when
the government assumes other functions, it is usurpation and
oppression.
	-- Alabama Constitution
##
	SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted.  You will achieve the
pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics.  Most Scorpio
people are murdered.
##
Watson's Law:
	The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
	number and significance of any persons watching it.
##
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense
and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful
and his children smart.

	-- H.L. Mencken
##
Critic: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
##
We had been married long enough for Fifi's burning gaze and flaring
nostrils to tell me *exactly* what she wanted, so I hurriedly peeled off
her tight satin dress, with a flick of the wrist dispatched her lacy
French brassiere, with practiced precision made a "ringer" with her
garter belt on the furthest bedpost, and as I sent her imported silk
stockings arcing gracefully into the laundry hamper, I dropped to my
knees and promised never, *never* to go into town wearing her clothes
again.
        -- Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree
           (Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entry)
##
Brain fried -- Core dumped
##
------- (7)	This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8)	boredom.  Your programs always bomb off.  Your wife
------- (7)	smells bad.  Your children have hives.  You are working
---O--- (6)	on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9)	the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER.  You give up hot dates
--- --- (8)	to nurse sick computers.  What you need now is sex.

Nine in the second place means:
	The yellow bird approaches the malt shop.  Misfortune.

Six in the third place means:
	In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
	Revenue Service.  Great Dragons!  Are you in trouble!
##
It would be almost unbelievable, if history
did not record the tragic fact, that men have
gone to war and cut each other's throats
because they could not agree as to what was to
become of them after their throats were cut...
For some reason, too deep to fathom, men
contend more furiously over the road to
heaven, which they cannot see, than over their
visible walks on earth.

        -- Walter Stacey
##
This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private,
and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury,
or at any federal reserve bank. Will pay to the bearer on
demand ten dollars
	-- 1950 $10 bill

This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.
ten dollars
	-- 1990 $10 bill
##
I'm all the time meeting people who believe that women aren't violent, that
women are gentle and peaceloving...First I knock them down and then I
ridicule them.

        --  Susan McCarth
##
Weinberg's First Law:
	Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
##
The only bargain in Norway are peanuts and fish.

        --Dave Thomas, from Norway, above the Arctic Circle.
##
Brooke's Law:
	Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
	discovers something which either abolishes the system or
	expands it beyond recognition.
##
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
			(Seen attributed to Grace Hopper)
##
Personally, I get uneasy when people, expecially theoretical physicists,
talk about consciousness.  Consciousness is not a quality that one can
measure from the outside.  If a little green man were to appear on our
door step tomorrow, we do not have a way of telling if he was conscious
and self-aware or was just a robot.

        -- Stephen Hawkins
##
What a terrible thing it is to lose one's mind.  Or not to have a
mind at all.  How true that is.
	-- Vice President Dan Quayle, speeking at a meeting of the
	   United Negroes College Fund, 1990
##
...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

        -- Ambrose Bierce
##
One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media
is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far
more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.
	-- Carl Sagan
##
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
##
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists.  Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
dimensional objects...
##
Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
##
Turnaucka's Law:
	The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
	electrical cord.
##
Complaining about a naturalistic bias in science is like complaining
about a theistic bias in scripture.
	-- Scott White
##
Maier's Law:
	If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
	disposed of.

Corollaries:
	1.  The bigger the theory, the better.
	2.  The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
	    50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
	    obtain a correspondence with the theory.
##
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that
one's work is terribly important.
	-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
##
Meskimen's Law:
	There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
	do it over.
##
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
##
Weinberg's Second Law:
	If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
	then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
	civilization.
##
The chief cause of problems is solutions.

        -- Sevareid, 1970
##
Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra!  Ra!  Ra!
##
"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
      Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
  So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
    "They are merely conventional signs!

        -- Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark
##
Unrepentant Rationalist "It is hard to be tolerant when intolerance rages
about me." "A hug is worth a thousand declarations of love." "Security +
Freedom = 0, and I prefer Freedom" "The meek shall inherit the earth, and
the bold will go to the stars"

	-- Heinlein
##
Vail's Second Axiom:
	The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
	amount of work already completed.
##
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
	If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
	bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
##
	TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent.  You have a dogged determination and
work like hell.  Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed.
You are a Communist.
##
Belief in the absence of compelling evidence is called faith. Belief
after acquiring compelling evidence is called knowledge.
	-- Carl Sagan
##
Deduction is all about putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
Induction is all about finding the pieces.
##
Lecture: The process by which information in the instructor's notes are
transferred into the students' notes without passing through the minds
of either.
##
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
##
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was
written and another for which it wasn't.
##
The thing that makes philosophers respected is not actually their
profundity, but simply their obscurity.  They translate vague and
dubious ideas into high-sounding words, and their dupes assume, as
they assume themselves, that the resulting obfuscation is a
contribution to knowledge.

	-- H.L. Mencken  (Minority Report, 1956)
##
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
##
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
##
H. L. Mencken's Law:
	Those who can -- do.
	Those who can't -- teach.

Martin's Extension:
	Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
##
Putt's Law:
	Technology is dominated by two types of people:
	    Those who understand what they do not manage.
	    Those who manage what they do not understand.
##
Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
##
Theology-An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it 
into terms of the not worth knowing.
	-- H.L. Mencken
##
This has been the main effect of skepticism in the world, working over
long ages:  that it has become _gauche_ and embarassing to admit certain
indubitable facts.  Their unpopularity is due not to their destruction or
abandonment but simply to the forensic talent of the skeptics, a bombastic
and tyrannical sect of men, with a great deal of cruelty concealed in their
so-called love of truth.  It is not altruism that moves them to their
assaults upon what other men hold to be precious; it is something no more
than a yearning to make those other men leap.  The fundamentalists of
Tennessee are thus right in denouncing Clarence Darrow.  Mr. Darrow, I have
no doubt, loves the truth -- but it is with a passion comparable to that a
man has for an amiable maiden aunt.  When he went to Tennessee he went on
safari, which is a Hindu word signifying the chase.

        -- H.L. Mencken, On Human Progress, April 17, 1927
##
A Law of Computer Programming:
	Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
	will find the programmers cannot write in English.
##
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
	-- Ashleigh Brilliant
##
Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already
sufficiently slippery.
##
Lowery's Law:
	If it jams -- force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing
	anyway.
##
100 Bugs in the code, 100 Bugs in the code
Fix one bug, compile it again
101 Bugs in the code, ... (repeat until Bugs == 0)
##
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
##
Those who can't write, write manuals.
##
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
##
Even though the hatchet men were holding a gun over his head, Harry
knew that a gun was nothing but a two-edged sword liable at any moment
to turn its back on the very hand that was biting it.
	-- Tom Whissen  (Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entry)
##
Once we thought the earth was flat--
What of that?
It was just as globos then
Under believing men
As our later folks have found it,
By success in running round it;
What we think may guide our acts,
But it does not alter facts.

        -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
           His Religion and Hers, 1923
##
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
		-- Noelie Altito
##
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
##
About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt
ax.  It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

        -- Edsger Dijkstra
##
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth that there is
no reason to decieve ourselves with petty stories for which there's little
evidence.

        -- Carl Sagan
##
The main difference between men and women is that men are
lunatics and women are idiots.
	  -- Rebecca West
##
Finagle's third Law:
	In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
	beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries:
	1.  Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
	2.  The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
	    don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
##
While there is no positive disproof of a cosmic consciousness, there is
simply no reason to assume that any such thing exists.  It is just as if I
were to say that a man named Smith lives in a brick house in a city called
Nuth on the 3d satellite of Jupiter.  There is no way of disproving what I
say -- but who would believe anything so gratuitous and improbable?

        -- H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Emil Petaja, 3/6/35
##
Surfing the Web is way more fun than television, and what
harm can it do?  It can kill brain cells by the billions.
But you don't need brain cells.  You have a computer.

        -- Dave Barry
##
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
##
Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

        -- Winston Churchill, (1874-1965) British statesman.
##

Rock won't eliminate your problems. But it will let you sort of dance
all over them.

        --  Pete Townshend
##
Computer programmers do it byte by byte
##
They came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I
wasn't a Communist.  Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak
up because I wasn't a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists
and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist.  Then they
came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a
protestant.  And then they came for me and by that time no one was
left to speak up.

        -- Martin Niemoeller, a protestant minister in Nazi Germany
##
The greatest challenge presented by the new forms of conflict is their
very informality.  Decreasingly, will wars be the preserves of states
and alliances of great states .... We are now in an era of long and
ragged conflicts, community-based, open-ended, crude and cruel, and
beyond the time limitations and technical constraints of much military
and diplomatic practice in the advanced world .... The emerging
informal or postmodern war has been recognized by specialists for
nearly a decade (e.g., M. van Crevald, E. Luttwak).  The trinity of
power behind modern war -- army, government, and people -- recognized
by Clausewitz in the last century, ceases to be relevant.

        -- (Robert Fox, "Beyond Clausewitz: The Long and Ragged Conflicts
            of the Coming Millennium", Times Literary Supplement,
            May 15, 1998, as summarized in Monday Review, Jun. 1, 1998)
##
System/3!  System/3!
See how it runs!  See how it runs!
	Its monitor loses so totally!
	It runs all its programs in RPG!
	It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
##
They that can give up an essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
	-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
##
 	Alas, what lies before me?  Whither now
 	Am I to be whirled away by the force of fate?
 	Time rushes onward for the perishing world.
 	And round about I see the hosts of the dying,
 	The young and the old; nor is there anywhere
 	In all the world a refuge, or a harbor
 	Where there is hope of safety.  Funerals,
 	Wher'er I turn my frightened eyes, appall;
 	The temples groan with coffins, and the proud
 	And humble lie alike in lack of honor.
 	The end of life presses upon my mind,
 	And I recall the dear ones I have lost, 
 	Their cherished words, their faces, vanished now.
 	The consecrated ground is all too small
 	To hold the instant multitude of graves.
 
        -- Francesco Petrarca, early 14th century,
           founder of humanism.
##
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing; if you can 
fake that, you've got it made. 
	-- Groucho Marx
##
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program.  What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
		-- Alan Perlis
##
If the world were merely seductive, that would be no problem. If
the world were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I
arise every morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a
desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

        --E. B. White
##
skeptic n. Also sceptic.  1. One who instinctively or habitually
doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally
accepted conclusions.  2. One inclined to skepticism in religious
matters.  3. a. Often capital S. An adherent of any philosophical
school of skepticism.  b. Capital S. A member of an ancient Greek
school of philosophical skepticism, especially that of Pyrrho of
Elis.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1973:
##
There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious books in
there now, each one - according to itself - the only book any man need
ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together. As Didactolys
used to say, you had to laugh.

        -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
##
The only people who use 10% of their brain are those who say
we only use 10% of our brain.
	-- Thaddeus M. Cowan, on the SKEPTIC Discussion Group, 1994
##
The entire global Internet-using population is about four percent of the
global "Baywatch" audience.
##
To say we are evolved to server the interests of our genes in no way
suggests that we are obliged to serve them.  Evolution is surely most
deterministic for those still unaware of it.

        -- Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems.
##
Beifeld's Principle:
	The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
	receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when
	he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3)
	a better looking and richer male friend.
##
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice.  If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
##
Prior planning must be done in advance.

	--  Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/5
##
Live every day as if it were your last for one day it will be.
##
Scott's first Law:
	No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
##
IBM had a PL/I,
	Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
	It was a total loss.
##
[A good government is one] which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own
pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the
mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.
	-- Thomas Jefferson, inaugural address
##
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
	as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
##
Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely 
powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity 
that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life. 
##
     Tell all the truth but tell it slant---
     Success in Circuit lies
     Too bright for our infirm Delight
     The Truth's superb surprise
     As Lightning to the Children eased by explaination kind
     The Truth must dazzle gradually
     Or every man be blind.

        -- Emily Dickinson, 1830--1886
##
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
##
A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture. You don't have to go. You'll
just be walking down the street and ... ooohhh, that's *much* better.
        --Steven Wright
##
Miksch's Law:
	If a string has one end, then it has another end.
##
Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth...
##
The best years of my life are over.  They weren't exactly good
years, but nontheless, they are over.

        -- Ann Thornhill and Sarah Wells, "Affirmations for Cynics"
##
Battle not with monters, lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze
long into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes into you.

                -- Frederic Nietzche
##
Ah, purity
And the purists,
Talking,
Talking of hearts that are pure
And an art that is pure
And an earth that is not at the moment but should be
Some day
Pure.

Talking, talking,
Talking in what would appear to be total ignorance
Of the following simple, pure fact about purity: purity
Is as rare in its purest state
As the absolute vacuum
Of which the physicist speaks in his classroom when somebody
Knowing too much suggests that all falling bodies
Do not fall equally fast.
``But they would,'' the physicist says, ``they would if you took
All the air away.''

                  All the air away?
Who would take all the air away?  Is there anyone,
Anyone present, anyone living,
Who would make such an issue of purity that he'd take
All the air away?
I must meet him.
I must shake his pure white hand and say to him, ``Blast!
If you take all the air away, you'll fall equally fast.''

        -- Reed Whittemore, 1956
##
Every program contains at least one bug...
Every program can be shortened by at least one instruction...

Therefore every program can be reduced to one instruction that does not work.

        -- Mario M. Butter
##
All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things foul and dangerous,
The good Lord made the lot.

        --Monty Python's Contractual Obligations
##
When the absurd is made to sound normal, it is time for
Kurt Vonnegut to write a book about it.
##

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading
edge, could be so useless, and then it occurred to me that a computer is
a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while
computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly
stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.

        -- Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Big Country"
##
Computers are like air conditioners.  They don't work with the
windows open.
##
Myhrvold's four laws of software: First, "software is gas that expands
to fit the [hardware] container it's in." Second, a corollary, "the gas
expands till it hits Moore's Law." Third, "software growth makes Moore's
Law possible." And fourth, "software is only limited by human ambition
and expectation."

        -- Nathan Myhrvold, vice president of Microsoft Research, ACM 97
##
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult; and left untried.

        -- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
##
Caviat Pecuarius (let the browser/gaizier beware).

        -- Stan Kelly-Bootle
##
You don't have to belong to one of the six talking professions to cause
mischief, but it helps.  There is indeed a "New Class" of opinion
leaders distinguished by their ability to manipulate words. They can be
grouped into the six talking professions---politicians, educators,
journalists, lawyers (!), theologians, and entertainers. All have their
place, but they also happen to be: Sheltered from the real world, rarely
exposed to the consequences of their ideas, and intent on concerning
themselves with other people's business. Thus, they're in a position to
cause great mischief---and do.
##
I am the King of England.  When I pray, God answers.

        -- Richard Burton as King Henry VIII,
           Anne of a Thousand Days.
##
Opposition is true friendship.

        -- William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
##
When was this meeting where they voted out existential humanism, and
voted in pomo?  Why wasn't I invited?  Isn't pomo really one big
cover-up for for the failure of the French to write a truly interesting
novel ever since a sports car ate Albert Camus?  Without gravity, can
there be any grace?  Instead of sitting around being *valorized* by
pomo, why aren't the punks out there doing something about the ownership
of the modes of production by Bell Atlantic, Liberty Media, Viacom,
Nynex, Paramount, Barry Diller and Si Newhouse?  Have any of these
people, pomo or punk, during downtime, ever read *Beloved* or
*Midnight's Children* or *One Hundred Years of Solitude*, spent a night
as a volunteer in a homeless shelter, worked with AIDS patients, stopped
a troop train or a lynching, . . . *engaged* what's really out there
instead of posturing in front of it, striking attitudes like matches?
Are Shining Path and the Khmer Rouge punk?  Postmodern?

        -- John Leonard, 1993
##
Doubtless every reader has heard something of the ingenious theory of
monads---miniature replicas of the universe out of which everything in
the universe is composed, as a sort of one in all, all in one---by
which Leibniz explained everything (except the monads) in this world and
the next.

        -- E.T.Bell in "Men of Mathematics", pg. 128.
##
It is a terrifying thing to have been born: I mean, to find oneself,
without having willed it, swept irrevocably along on a torrent of
fearful energy

        -- Teilhard de Chardin
##

Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us
prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we
may not eff it after all.

        -- Dirk Gently
##
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm
beginning to believe it.

        -- Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)
##
        Paronomasia

	Having fun
	Is the measure of pleasure
	And so the pun
	Is the pleasure I treasure.
	But the trouble is,
	Others at me scoff --
	For what turns me on
	Turns all of them off.

        -- Lakenan Barnes, Pepper... And Salt, 1986.
##
        "Well, in our country," said Alice, panting a little,
        "you'd generally get somewhere else -- if you ran very
         fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
        "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now here,
         you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep
         in the same place."

        --Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
##
        "Will the virus 
         impact my Macintosh if I am using a non-Microsoft e-mail program, such as 
         Eudora?  If you are using a Macintosh e-mail program that is not from 
         Microsoft, we recommend checking with that particular company. But most 
         likely other e-mail programs like Eudora are not designed to enable virus
         replication."

        -- From: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office/2001/virus_alert.asp
           (now removed from Q&A as of 15 March 2001).
##
The hottest places in hell
 are reserved for those who,
in time of great moral crisis,
 maintain their neutrality.

        -- Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321)
##
Our experience of a video image is as real as our experience of anything
else.  The question is only, "What sort of experience is it?" -- a
question that is immediately downplayed when we derogate the experience
as mere appearance.

        -- Steve Talbot, NETFUTURE #119
##
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of
persons have sold their moral allegiance.  As such, unlike a person, a
corporation does not age.  It does not arrive, as most persons finally
do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it
does not come to see the future as the lifetimes of the children and
grandchildren of anybody in particular.  It can experience no personal
hope or remorse, no change of heart.  It cannot humble itself.  It goes
about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of
becoming a bigger pile of money.

        -- Wendell Berry, The Idea of a Local Economy, "Orion", Winter, 2001.
##
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and
the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find
the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a
healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know
even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to
have succeeded.

        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
##
Nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecuna possit.
(No place is so strongly fortified that money could not capture it.)

        -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BCE
##
Before you tell me that it will be overwhelmingly obvious when the
superintelligent new cyberspecies arrives, visit a dog show. Or a
gathering of people who believe they have been abducted by aliens in
UFOs.  People are demonstrably insane when it comes to assessing
nonhuman sentience.

        -- Jaron Lanier, Wired, December 2000.
##
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when
they do it from religious conviction.

        -- Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)
##
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the
set, I go into the other room and read a book.

        -- Groucho Marx
##
Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle
yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

        -- Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
##
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds
and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy
them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every
human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

        -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918- )
##
A true war story is never moral.  It does not instruct, nor
encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor
restrain men from doing the things they have always done.  If a
story seems moral, do not believe it.  If at the end of a war story
you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude
has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the
victim of a very old and terrible lie.

        -- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
##
If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence,
increasing the complexities of your solutions--for the fun of it---then
one day you'll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that
one!  And that's the way to become a computer scientist.

        -- Richard Feynmann in Feynmann Lectures on Computation.
##
Perfection is not reached when there is no longer anything to add,
but when there is no longer anything to take away.

        -- Antoine de Saint Exupery
##
It is as hard for the good to suspect evil,
as it is for the bad to suspect good.

        -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, (106-43 BCE)
##
When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth
and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for
a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think
of it, always.

        -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
##
Theorem: All positive integers are boring.

Proof: Let n be the smallest interesting positive integer.  So what?
##
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

        -- Marcus Aurelius, philosopher, writer, emperor (121-180)
##
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in
all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too,
shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of
pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

        -- Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865)
##
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes
me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

        -- John Donne, Meditation XVII
##
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
(Anything is more impressive if you say it in Latin)
##
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus (It is now safe to turn off your computer).
##
Vini, Vidi, Velcro (I came, I saw, I stuck around).
##
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum
(A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants)
##
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
(We circle in the night and (we are) devoured by fire)

        -- Heraclitus
##
I think that I shall never see,
A form as kludgey as my RE,
A form that scans and scans away,
And lifts its character class to play.
A form who may in some forms wear
A nested bracket in its hair.
Grammars are made by fools like me,
But only code can read my RE.
##
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is
noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience,
which is the bitterest.

        -- Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
##
Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big,
worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's
the grain of sand in your shoe.

        -- Robert Service, writer (1874-1958)
##
When in danger, or in doubt; run in circles, scream and shout!
##
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 
##
Katatsuburi
soro-soro nobore
Fuji no yama.

Little snail,
inch by inch, climb
Mount Fuji!
##
[T]here are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies.

        -- C.A.R. Hoare, "The Emperor's Old Clothes," CACM, 1981.
##
Not all those that wander are lost.

        -- J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
##
Mr. Topper (Roland Young):  "Mrs. Topper doesn't approve of drinking."
George Kerby (Cary Grant):  "Well, then Mrs. Topper shouldn't drink."

        -- "Topper", 1937, directed by Norman Z. McLeod.
##
Mythology, n.: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.

        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
##
A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy.
        --Max Weinreich, linguist and author (1894-1969)
##
A novice asked Hudak "How can I understand monads?"  Hudak replied "Read my 
book."  "Will this help me to understand monads?" asked the novice.  Hudak 
replied "Nothing will help you understand mondads.  Monads are the way the 
Universe manages its time.  You can write down everything there is to know 
about monads in five lines of Haskell, and yet spend a lifetime 
understanding them.  This understanding does not come in through the eyes 
or the ears.  It comes only from contemplation of the great Lambda that is 
all.  But reading my book will give you something to do in the meantime."
##
There are two ways to design software.  One way is to make it simple so
it's obviously not deficient, the other is to make it so complicated
there are no obvious deficiencies.

      -- Radia Perlman, "Myths, Missteps, and Folklore in Potocol Design."
##
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

     -- Garrison Keillor, radio host and author (1942- )
##
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where
it often substitutes for both.

      -- John Andrew Holmes
##
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required
to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

   -- Henry David Thoreau, (1817-1862)
##

   Security Notes from All Over: The Odyssey

Polyphemus's one eye is a single point of failure; when Odysseus pokes
it out, he is much less able to defend himself.  Polyphemus's alarm is
ignored because Odysseus said his name was Nobody, so he winds up
shouting that nobody is trying to kill him (you'd think the other
Cyclopes would come see what's going on, but maybe Polyphemus shouts
random stupid things all the time, like an IDS [Intrusion Detection
System]).  Polyphemus finally has to let the sheep out to graze -- it's
a mission-critical function -- and Odysseus and his men then escape by
masquerading as legitimate traffic (sheep).

        -- Cryptogram, September 15, 2002.
##
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good."
And one says, "This is new, and therefore better."

    -- John Brunner, science fiction writer (1934-1995)
##
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a
mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent
$600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?

         -- Thomas J. Watson, industrialist (1874-1956)
##
To see a world in a grain of sand,
 And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
 And eternity in an hour.

    -- William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827)
##
Easy reading is damned hard writing.

     -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)
##

You can sometimes count every orange on a tree
but never all the trees in a single orange.

       -- A.K. Ramanujan, poet (1929-1993)
##
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a
hell of a lot more if I had been understood.

   -- Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)
##
No man is an Island, entire of itself
Every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
 as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy
 friends or of thine own were
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee.

       -- John Donne, poet (1573-1631)
##
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

       -- Samuel Butler, poet (1612-1680)
##
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who
cannot read them.

       -- Mark Twain  (1835-1910)
##
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds.

   -- William Ellery Channing, clergyman and writer (1780-1842)
##
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees,
and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than
destroy it.

        -- Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
##
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we
are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public.

        -- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)
##
America does not know the difference between sex and money. It treats
sex like money because it treats sex as a medium of exchange, and it
treats money like sex because it expects its money to get pregnant and
reproduce.

        -- Peter Kreeft
##
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate
between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital
connection between them.

     -- Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)
##
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

     -- Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist (1825-1895)
##
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

      -- Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)
##

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes
which can be made in a very narrow field.

     -- Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)
##
Adequacy is sufficient.  All else is superfluous.

     -- Adam Osborne, Persnoal Computer pioneer, 1939--2003.
##
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

     -- Bjarne Stroustrup, computer science professor,
        designer of C++ programming language (1950-- )
##
Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.

     -- Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)
##
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one
begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

     -- Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and writer (1859-1930)
##
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.

     -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet (1809-1892)
##
What you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in
the world w