More fortunes gathered from around the place... %% Kent: "What is this??!?" Chris: "This is ice, this is what happens to water when it gets too cold." Mitch: "Who was that?" Chris: "That was Kent, that's what happens to a man when he gets too sexually frustrated." -- "Real Genius" %% Chris: "Have you ever seen a body like that?" Man: "She's my duaghter!" Chris: "Oh, then I guess you have." -- "Real Genius" %% "I was contemplating the immortal words of Socrates, who said... I drank what?" -- "Real Genius" %% A friend is someone who will help you move; a *good* friend is someone who will help you move a body. %% The best mirror is a friend's eye. %% A friend is a present you give to yourself. %% "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; and inside a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx %% "Pooh, will you always remember me, even when I'm a hundred?" asked Christopher Robin. Pooh thought for a minute. "How old will I be then?" Christopher Robin thought for a moment. "Ninety-nine." %% Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. %% A friend is someone who knows all about you but likes you anyway %% A true friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else -- Len Wein %% "True happiness/Consists not in the multitude of friends,/But in the worth and choice" -- Ben Jonson "Cynthia's Revels" act III, sc.ii %% "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity" -- Proverbs 17:17 %% Greater love has no one than this, than to lie down one's life for his friends -- John 15:26 %% "When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat." - Henry Miller %% "When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes." - Henry Miller %% "The word NOW is like a time bomb thrown through a window, and it ticks." - Henry Miller %% "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." - John Kenneth Galbraith %% "Mozart!- Spiteful, sniggering, conceited, infantile Mozart! who never spent one minute to help another man...s***-talking Mozart and his botty-smacking wife-him you have chosen to be your sole conduct. And my reward- my sublime privilege- is to be the only man alive in this time to clearly recognize Your Incarnation. Grazie e grazie ancora!!" -- "Amadeus" %% It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. - John Von Neumann (ca. 1949) %% Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether. -- H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" %% "Language is a virus from outer space" (WSB, inspired a Laurie Anderson song). %% "Every free citizen is an ENEMY of the STATE." - Kurt J. Robertson %% Arnie: "In my country, we lined all the drug dealers and drug addicts and shot them in the back of the head." Fellow cop: "Nah, that wouldn't work here. Too many politicians." Arnie: "Shoot them first." -- "Red Heat" %% We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife. -- Groucho Marx I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx, 1890-1977 Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. - Groucho Marx %% I'm going to Iowa for an award. Then I'm appearing at Carnegie Hall, it's sold out. Then I'm sailing to France to be honored by the French government -- I'd give it all up for one erection. - Groucho Marx %% If you want something done properly, kill Baldrick before you start. - Edmund Blackadder - Dish and Dishonesty %% 1) A strong belief is more important than a few facts. 2) The stronger the belief, the fewer the facts. 3) The fewer the facts, the more people killed. - Milton Rothman %% A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. - Edward Teller %% Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short. - Peter C. Newman %% My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future. - Ralph Abraham %% There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. - Charles Darwin %% All things are difficult before they are easy. - Thomas Fuller %% Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it. - Eric Nicol %% It is strange that we know so little about the properties of numbers. They are our handiwork, yet they baffle us; we can fathom only a few of their intricacies. Having defined their attributes and prescribed their behaviour, we are hard pressed to perceive the implications of our formulas. - James R. Newman %% And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. - H.L. Mencken %% Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent. - Pierre Trudeau %% The Cross is a gibbet-- rather an odd thing to make use of as a talisman against bad luck, if that is how we regard it. Or is it, instead, a cynical reminder that Virtue usually gets pilloried whenever it makes one of its occasional appearances in this world? - Denis Johnston - The Brazen Horn %% Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, / But Genius must be born; and can never be taught. - John Congreve %% The more efficient computers become at inducing new knowledge, the more widely that knowledge will be applied, even in matters of life and death. It is essential that such knowledge be open to inspection. This means that designers of learning systems have a public duty to use comprehensible description languages-- even if that means sacrificing performance. Otherwise we run the risk of generating truly "unknowable knowledge." - Richard Forsyth - Machine Learning for Expert Systems %% Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase "being born" is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while "dying" means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged. - Ovid - Metamorphoses %% You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it. - Charles Haddon Spurgeon %% It may be that a genius of the so-called universal type-- an Aristotle, for example, or a Leibniz or a Leonardo da Vinci-- is one whose mind has the group property. - Cassius J. Keyser %% Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up. - Farley Mowat %% "Doctor, we did good, didn't we?" "Perhaps. Time will tell. Always does." - Ace and The Doctor - Remembrance of the Daleks %% The true poet and the true scientist are not estranged. They go forth into nature like two friends. Behold them strolling through the summer fields and woods. The younger of the two is much the more active and inquiring; he is ever and anon stepping aside to examine some object more minutely, plucking a flower, treasuring a shell, pursuing a bird, watching a butterfly; now he turns over a stone, peers into the marshes, chips off a fragment of rock, and everywhere seems intent on some special and particular knowledge of the things about him. The elder man has more an air of leisurely contemplation and enjoyment, is less curious about special objects and features, and more desirous of putting himself in harmony with the spirit of the whole. But when his younger companion has any fresh and characteristic bit of information to impart to him, how attentively he listens, how sure and discriminating is his appreciation! The interests of the two in the universe are widely different, yet in no true sense are they hostile or mutually destructive. - John Burroughs %% Here's to me and here's to you, And here's to love and laughter; I'll be true as long as you, And not a minute after. -Irish Toast %% "Here's to bread, without which there would be no toast" %% "To the Czar: When the peple were penniless, the Czar was Nicholas" %% Here's to the Army and the Navy, And to the battles they've won. Here's to America's colors, The colors that never run. %% May the wings of liberty never lose a feather. -- Jack Burton's toast, in Big Trouble in Little China %% May you both be favored by the future of your choice! May you live to see a thousand reasons to rejoice! %% We'll raise a glass and sip a drop of Schnapps in honor of the great good luck that favored you - We know that when good fortune favors two such men it stands to reason we deserve it too! %% "You see, me and the Lord, we've got this understanding." "We're on a mission from God." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "Oh Lady of Blessed Acceleration don't fail me now!" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "No man, those lights are out on purpose." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "Wrong glass, sir." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "If you say no, my brother and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "What was I to do, take away your only hope? I took the liberty of bullshitting you." "You lied to me." "I didn't lie. I just bullshitted." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "You got us into this parking lot, so you get us out." "You want out of this parking lot? Ok..." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "Wow, this mall has everything." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "The use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers has been approved." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be." -- Simon Newcomb (in 1901) %% "All great truths begin life as blasphemies" -- George Bernard Shaw %% "Friendship is good, a strong stick; but when the hour comes to lean hard it gives. In the day of their bitterest need all souls are alone." - Olive Schreiner (The Story of An African Farm) %% "Lord, for give all my little jokes on Thee, And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me." - Robert Frost? %% Here's to you, here's to me Friends forever we will be But if we ever disagree, Well then... Fuck you. Here's to me. %% A historical toast, made by some politician to a successful wartime admiral at a Navy dinner. To you, gentlemen. I believe your victories were made on water. %% "Politically correct" means you continue to display the bumper sticker after your candidate or proposition has lost the election. %% "Ya can talk all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was!" "No it aint! But ya gotta know the territory!" Meredith Willson: "The Music Man" %% Hey Diddle Diddle the cat and the Fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see so much fun and... Dr Tobias... ummmm.... errr your really not going to believe this but.... my program documentation ran away with the spoon. - from "Orin's excuses why his programs lack documentation" %% There once was a man called Orin, who lacked some disk space to store in, So with a glee and a shout, he threw the DOCUMENTS out! Because orin thought that they were borin! %% A snip and a snap, a tip and a tap, we all just sit writing away. Programing in a tizzy, till we all are quite dizzy, and our brains feel ever so fizzy! So when it comes time, to put in a dime, and type out house to use it! We palm it all off, with a smile and a scoff, and say "we didnt mean to LOSE it!" %% Terry Pratchett has a hatchet, never even used once. Until a publisher came along, and called him a bit of a dunce. %% Any wire cut to length will be too short. %% Identical utits tested under identical conditions will not be identical in the field. %% The availability of a component is inversely proportional to the need for that component. %% If a project requires n components, there will be n -1 units in stock. %% A dropped tool will land where it can do the most damage. (Also known as the law of selective gravitation.) %% A device selected at random from a group having 99% reliability, will be a member of the 1% group. %% Interchangeable parts won't. %% Probability of failure of a component, assembly, subsystem or system is inversely proportional to ease of repair or replacement. %% Components that must not and cannot be assembled improperly, will be. %% The most delicate component will drop. %% A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first. %% A self-starting oscillator won't. %% A crystal oscillator will oscillate at the wrong frequency - if it oscillates. %% After an instrument has been fully assembled, extra components will be found on the bench. %% "We always have a solution... sometimes it does not fit the problem" %% Where ever you look there is a fault... %% The fault you find is not the one you were looking for. %% For every fault you find, two more are created. %% All electronic components have smoke inside them, once this is released they will cease to function. %% It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity, and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve one's sanity. -- Adam Dalgliesh, in Devices and Desires, by P.D. James. %% Hey! There's no government like no government !!! -- Graffitti seen around town %% May those who love us, love us, and those who don't love us, may God turn their ankles so that we'll know them by their limping. %% "You traded the Blues Mobile for a microphone? OK, I can see that." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "I hate Illinois nazis." "We did have a band pow'rfull 'nuff to turn goat piss into gasoline." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "How much for dee leetle girl?" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "...One soiled." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "I offered to help. You refused to take our money. Then I said, 'I guess you're really up shit creek.'" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "Shit!" --"What?" "Rollers." --"No!" "Yeah." --"Shit!" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "It's a 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." --"Hit it." "'Scuse me, but what type of music do you play here?" --"Oh we've got both kinds! Country, AND Western!" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "Breaks my heart. A kid that young goin' bad." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "Ya got mah cheese-whiz boah?!?" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "No way! I falsified my renewal. I put down 1060 West Addison." --"1060 West Addison? That's Wrigley Field." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "You're gonna look pretty funny trying to eat corn on the cob with NO FUCKIN TEETH." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "You guys know Minnie The Moocher?" --"I knew a hooker once named Minnie Mizola." -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "It wasn't my fault! Really it wasn't! An old friend came in out of town! The car ran out of gas! I got a flat tire! I didn't have enough money for cab fare! The tux didn't come back from the cleaners! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT I SWEAR TO GOD!!!" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% "Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut!" -- "The Blues Brothers" %% Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth. --John Milton %% We won't get caught. We're on a mission from God. -Elwood -- "The Blues Brothers" %% I hate Illinois Nazis. -Jake -- "The Blues Brothers" %% Got a full take of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. -Elwood -- "The Blues Brothers" %% Your women. We want to buy your women. -Jake -- "The Blues Brothers" %% I'll have some white toast. Dry, ma'am -Elwood -- "The Blues Brothers" %% I'll have four fried chickens and a coke. -Jake -- "The Blues Brothers" %% What kind of music do you usually have hear? -Elwood -- "The Blues Brothers" %% Oh, we have both kinds - country AND western. -the bar lady -- "The Blues Brothers" %% Hi, we're the good ol' blues brothers' boys band. from Chicago. -Elwood -- "The Blues Brothers" %% Oh god, now the mafia's after us! -Elwood -- "The Blues Brothers" %% It wasn't my fault. An old friend came in from out of town. My suit didn't come back from the cleaners. I got a flat tire. My cab didn't show. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locust!! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!!! -Jake -- "The Blues Brothers" %% Two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it. the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. -Thomas Love Peacock %% Drink, Drink, Drink, and be ill tonight. -Morrisey %% People often talk of my drinking, but they never speak of my thirst. -Scottish proverb %% "Why do I drink? I drink so I can write poetry." - James Douglas Morrison %% "I can see the time when every city will have one." -- An American mayor's reaction to the news of the invention of the telephone %% "No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping ..." -- Orville Wright (c. 1908) %% "What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches?" -- The Quarterly Review (England), March 1825 %% "Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development." -- Julius Frontinus, 1st century A.D. %% abusus non tollit usum - abuse does not pass with use, ie abuse is not a reason for giving up the legitimate use of a thing %% a capite ad calcem - from the head to the heel; this could be amended with a Latin dicky to 'from the head to the stomach', which seems apt %% ergo, bibamus - therefore let us drink %% hiatus valde deflendus - (pointing to the stomach) a gap, deeply to be deplored %% nunc est bibendum - now is the time to drink (Horace) %% poscimur non dicere sed bibere - we are called upon not to speak, but to drink %% sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus - without Ceres and Bacchus (food and drink), love is cold; good for weddings %% stet fortuna domus - may the fortune of the house last long %% vive, valeque - life and health to you %% I drink to make other people interesting -- Unknown %% I have a few good reasons for drinking And one has just entered my head If a man can't drink when he's living How the hell can he drink when he's dead? %% "I went up to the stage door, but it was locked. So I went around to the front door and came into the theatre. And the stage was all lit up, but the theatre was so dark, I couldn't see a thing. Is there anyone up front? So I go down, in this Stygian darkness, to the front row, and I take a seat. I am now sitting on....I can't think of his name." -- Groucho Marx %% 'Better to have loved and lost than listen to an album by Olivia Newton-John.' 'Why?' 'Well, anything's better than listening to an album by Olivia Newton-John.' -- Holly & Lister - Red Dwarf. %% "I prefer honest arrogance to hypocritical humility." aproximately quoted from Frank Lloyd Wright, who had just declared himself the world's greatest living architect. %% `Don't be modest. You are not good enough to be modest.' -- Einstein %% I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your entire body! %% "A little knowledge if a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow draughts intoxicated the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again." - Alexander Pope %% The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. %% Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. - Sir Thomas Browne %% Someone once said that the two most important things in developing taste were sensitivity and intelligence. I don't think this is so; I'd rather call them curiosity and courage. Curiosity to look for the new and the hidden; courage to develop your own tastes regardless of what others might say or think. - R. Murray Schafer %% The more we study mind and matter scientifically the more we see that all things follow a natural sequence, a sequence as liable to work for our disadvantage as for our advantage. It flows like the water of a river, it falls like rain, it is as impartial as the sea. It is as innocent of malice as it is of compassion. - Llewelyn Powys - The Pathetic Fallacy %% My house is small, but you are learned men / And by your arguments can make a place / Twenty foot broad as infinite as space. - Chaucer - The Reeve's Tale %% America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there. - Laurence J. Peter %% There's certainly a growing atmosphere of academic totalitarianism. It shows up in things like the attacks on the legitimacy of the more eclectic and interdisciplinary fields, or in the increasing constraints on student choice. - Tom Naylor %% Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. - Francis Bacon %% We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. - Stephen Jay Gould %% Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. - Marie Curie %% You have perhaps heard the story of the four students-- British, French, American, Canadian-- who were asked to write an essay on elephants. The British student entitled his essay "Elephants and the Empire." The French student called his "Love and the Elephant." The title of the American student's essay was "Bigger and Better Elephants," and the Canadian student called his "Elephants: A Federal or Provincial Responsibility?" - Robert H. Winters %% The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work. - John Von Neumann %% The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, / And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, / Awaits alike th' inevitable hour: / The paths of glory lead but to the grave. - Thomas Gray %% God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. - Paul Dirac %% Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student. - George Iles %% What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to science? . . . Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching. - Ivan Pavlov %% The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. - Ralph W. Sockman %% I imagine if you had built the Newton Memorial outside Paris . . . it would have undoubtedly shown the violence of 1870 and 1914 and 1942 and 1945 -- even 1968! Consider building a vast cube of stone merely to register the effects of violence -- marked and dated as an indictment. - Peter Greenaway - Dear Boullee %% Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. - Arnold Edinborough %% Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him. - Paul Eldridge %% There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. - C.A.R. Hoare %% A CONSULTANT - Any ordinary guy with a briefcase more than 50 miles from home. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% AN EXPERT - A person who avoids all small errors and sweeps toward the grand fallacy. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% A STATISTICIAN - One who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% A COLLEAGUE - Someone called in at the last minute to share the blame. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% A RELIABLE SOURCE - The guy you just met. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% AN INFORMED SOURCE - The guy who told the guy you just met. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% AN UNIMPEACHABLE SOURCE - The guy who started the rumor originally -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% A MEETING - A mass mulling of master-minds. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% A CONFERENCE - A place where conversation is substituted for the dreariness of labor and the loneliness of thought. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% A PROGRAM - Any assignment that can't be completed by one telephone call. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% CHANNELS - The guy who has a desk between two expeditors. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% TO ACTIVATE - To make copies and add more names to the memo. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% TO IMPLEMEMT A PROGRAM - Hire more people and expand the office. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% TO RESEARCH - Go looking for the jerk who moved the files. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% TO GIVE SOMEONE THE PICTURE - To present a long, confused and innaccurate statement to a newcomer. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% TO CLARIFY - To fill in the background with so many details that the foreground goes underground. -- THE ALL-PURPOSE BUSINESSMAN'S VOCABULARY %% It is better to have loved and lost than to have hated and won. %% "Being a ghost seems like the most wearying thing I can think of." "Have you ever studied Latin?" "Okay, the second most wearying." --Stephen Brust, _Agyar_ %% "If I touch a match to a mixture of chemicals and an explosion occurs, I don't set a second mixture aside to see if it will blow up without the help of the match. The effect of the match is obvious." -- "Walden Two" %% "The simple fact is, our civilization puts no value on rest" -- "Walden Two" %% "When a man gets a place in the sun, others are put in denser shade." -- "Walden Two" %% "Love is not an emotion, it's a decision." -Scott Peck %% "The love we hold back is the only pain that follows us here. And the memory of that love shouldn't make you unhappy for the rest of your life." -- "Always" %% "Oh and tell the cook that this is low-grade dog food alright? ...Jeez, my steak's still got marks where the jockey was hittin him!" -- "Caddyshack" %% "Can you make a [hot toddy]?" --"Can you make a shoe stink?" -- "Caddyshack" %% "...And, uh, I'm no slouch myself!" --"Don't sell yourself short, Judge. You're a tremendous slouch." -- "Caddyshack" %% "It's a hybrid of texas-state bluegrass, and a New York sensimillia. This stuff is great, cuz you can go play a good eighteen holes on it, take it home, and get stoned enough to play jesus bells on it." -- "Caddyshack" %% "Here, make yourself at home." --"Naw, that's OK. I don't want to stick to anything." -- "Caddyshack" %% "You're the lowest member of the food chain and you'll probably be replaced by the rat." -- "Caddyshack" %% "Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble, When you're perfect in ev-er-y way, I cain't wait to look iin the mirror, I git better lookin' each day. To know me is to love me, I must be a haaiil of a man, Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble, But Ah'm doin' the best that Ah cain." -- "The Muppet Show" %% Humility is a funny thing... the second you think you have got it, %% "A woman drove me to drink - and I never had the courtesy to thank her." %% " I always keep a little something handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy." %% "Quick! Bring me a beaker of wine so that I may wet my mind and say something clever! -Arastophanies (sp?) (he's an ancient Greek playright) %% To have, to love, and then to part, Is the saddest story of the Human Heart. %% Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us! It would frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion. -- Rob't Burns, _To a Louse_ %% here's to opening and to upward,to leaf and to sap and to your(in my arms flowering so new) self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain and here's to silent certainly mountains;and to a disappearing poet of always,snow and to morning;and to morning's beautiful friend twilight(and a first dream called ocean)and let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid down with ought with because with every brain which thinks it thinks,nor dares to feel(but up with joy;and up with laughing and drunkenness) here's to one undiscoverable guess of whose mad skill each world of blood is made (whose fatal songs are moving the moon %% Here's to our wives and girlfriends...may they never meet! %% Champagne to our real friends...and real pain to our sham friends. %% "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards. It makes them soggy and hard to light." %% I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake -- which I also keep handy. WCFields %% An old lady sold her house and lot. The house was pretty deteriorated. "They're going to tear it down and put in a modulator," she said. (she meant a modular house). %% HISTORY: Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially but not exclusively on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% MEDICINE: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been examined. You have 15 minutes. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% PUBLIC SPEAKING: 2,500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin and Greek. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate the difference in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% PSYCHOLOGY: Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability and repressed frustrations of the following: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ramses II, Gregory of Nicea, Hammurabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% SOCIOLOGY: Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% POLITICAL SCIENCE: There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report on its socio-political effects, if any. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% EPISTEMOLOGY: Take a position for or against truth. prove the validity of your position. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% PHYSICS: Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics on science. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% PHILOSOPHY: Sketch the development of human thought; estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% MANAGEMENT SCIENCE: Define Management. Define Science. How do they relate? Why? Great a generalized algorithm to optimize all managerial decisions. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% ENGINEERING: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes, a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% ECONOMICS: Develop a realistic plan to refinance the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist controversy, the wave theory of light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% EXTRA CREDIT: Define the universe; give three examples. -- Life Studies 101 (Bob Pasker ) %% On Monday, when the sun is hot, I wonder to myself a lot; 'Now is it true, or is it not, 'That what is which and which is what?' "On Tuesday, when it hails and snows, The feeling on me grows and grows That hardly anybody knows If those are these or these are those." "On Wednesday, when the sky is blue, And I have nothing else to do, I sometimes wonder if it's true That who is what and what is who." - A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh %% Where are the prophets ? Where are the visionaries ? Where are the poets to preach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary ? %% "Many a good hanging has prevented a bad marriage." %% "To sit silently, and look wise, is not to be compared to drinking sake and making a riotous shouting." -- Ono No Tabitu %% One spring morning Descartes was strolling in a suburb of Paris. A local tavern owner recognized him and asked, "Would you honor me by tasting the new excellent wine I just received." "I think not," said Descartes and disappeared. %% Ambition is a dream with a v8 engine. -- Elvis %% Just because you look good don't mean you feel good. Fools always look good in their coffins. -- Elvis %% I'd rather be angry than bored. -- Elvis %% I'd rather be unconsciense than miserable. -- Elvis %% 'only thing worse than watchin' a bad movie is being in one. -- Elvis %% Curiosity is the headlight that keeps us from losin' our way. -- Elvis %% I'm sort of getting tired of being elvis presley. -- Elvis %% I don't know if the death penalty ever stopped anyone from killin', but it stops 'em from killin' again. -- Elvis %% If your songs don't go over...do a medley of costumes. -- Elvis %% The ideal girl? Female, sir. -- Elvis %% And some other's that i saw on some e-mail chain letter deal. these highlight the similarities between the king and jesus. -- Elvis %% Jesus walked on water - Elvis surfed. Jesus said, "love thy neighbor." - Elvis said, "Don't be cruel." Jesus was a carpenter - Elvis's favorite high school class was wood shop. Jesus lived in a state of grace in the near east - Elvis lived in Graceland in a near eastern state. Mary, an important woman in Jesus's life, had an immaculate conception - Priscilla, an important woman in Elvis's life, went to immaculate conception high school. Jesus's father, God, is everywhere - Elvis's father was a drifter & moved around a lot. %% "New order!...That's another familiar name for the 'improvement' of people who get in your way." -- B.F. Skinner "Walden Two" %% "He was like a child who thinks he sees the outline of an animal in the pebbles on a beach and immediately rearranges them here and there until there can be no possible question." -- B.F. Skinner "Walden Two" %% In marriage, the bride gets a shower, but for the groom it's curtains! %% A self-made man will be amazed at the number of alterations made when he marries. %% Ah, Mozart! He was happily married, but his wife wasn't. -- Borge %% Bachelor: the only man who has never told his wife a lie. %% Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't, they would be married too. -- H.L. Mencken %% Do married people live longer, or does it just seem that way? %% I never knew what true happiness was till I got married. And then it was too late. %% I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. -- Groucho %% Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman. -- Herbert Spencer %% Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity. %% Marriage: the only sport in which the trapped animal has to buy the license. %% Of course I'm happily married. She's happy, and I'm married. %% The theory used to be that you marry an older man because they are more mature. The new theory is that men don't mature. So you might as well marry a younger one. %% "Before I go out to take a picture of someone, I just stop at the city desk and say, 'Do you want him gazing out toward the sunset or picking his nose?'" -- Calvin Trillin %% A photographer is like a fish, he lays thousands of eggs hoping that one will grow to maturity - Unknown %% "Women are enslaved by their own liberation" Susan Faludi %% "The women's movement. . . has proved women's own worst enemy." Susan Faludi %% "Everything to excess. To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks." --Lazarus Long %% "The 486 is to a modern CPU as a Jules Verne reprint is to a modern SF novel." --- Henry Spencer %% "I never drink water... fish fornicate in it." %% "My spelling is wobbly. It is good spelling but it wobbles." -- A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh) %% "Marriage is a wonderful institution. But who would want to live in an institution?" -- H.L. Menken %% "It is a wonderful thing to look a hotel detective in the eye." -- ibid. %% "Love is not so much staring at each other as it is looking ahead, together, in the same direction" - Antone de St.Exupery %% What I lack in humility I more than make up for in honesty. %% When it comes to a choice between humility and honesty, sometimes honesty wins. %% The morning sun may kiss the grass, The clock may kiss the hours that pass, The flowing wine may kiss the glass, And you, my friends --- drink hearty! ANONYMOUS %% The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven. -- Mark Twain %% Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven. -- Mark Twain Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. -- Mark Twain %% ...[I]t seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals. -- Bertrand Russell %% If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow %% The thousand mysteries around us would not trouble but interest us, if only we had cheerful, healthy hearts. --Friedrich Nietzsche %% Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. --Ralph Waldo Emerson %% God created sex. Priests created marriage. --Voltaire %% When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. -- John Muir (1838-1914) %% Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. -- Kurt Vonnegut %% Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. -- Stella Adler %% The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards --Alexander Jablokov "The Place of No Shadows" %% It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. -- televangelist Marion "Pat" Robertson, speaking of the Equal Rights Amendment %% I think I'd probably put a bullet in my head if I had Robin Leach over to my house. -- actor Tim Robbins %% "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the relevation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" %% Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously! - Friedrich Nietzsche %% The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% For others do I wait...for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul: laughing lions must come. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% [W]e shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man. -- Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis", Science V. 155 No. 3767 (10 March 1967), pp. 1203-1207. %% What do they call a comedian who doesn't get any laughs? A philosopher. - Phil Proctor %% Insanity is the exception in individuals. In groups, parties, people, and times, it is the rule. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% ... the Earth hath skin, and the skin hath diseases. One of these... is called man. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% The masses seem to me worthy of notice in only three respects: first as blurred copies of great men, produced on bad paper with worn plates, further as a resistance to the great, and finally as the tools of the great; beyond that, may the devil and statistics take them. - Friedrich Nietzsche %% It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly! - Friedrich Nietzsche %% I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back. - Abraham Lincoln %% I hold that a little rebellion is a good thing. - Thomas Jefferson %% It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. - Thomas Jefferson %% The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson %% The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. - Thomas Jefferson %% The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live ones. - Nathaniel Howe %% It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe %% Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be! - Miguel de Cervantes, "Don Quixote" %% The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them. - William Clayton %% Beware the fury of a patient man. - John Dryden %% Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison %% When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. - Dom Helder Camara %% The country that draws a broad line between its fighting men and its thinking men will find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards. - Sir William F. Butler %% The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. - Sir Richard F. Burton %% Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work. - Clive Barker, "Jihad" %% What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. -- Ecclesiastes 1:9 %% In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences. -- Robert Ingersoll (Lectures and Essays, 3d Series, Some Reasons Why, iii) %% Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness... Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -- George Santayana %% No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman. -- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) %% The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. -- Joseph Conrad %% Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. -- Dorothy Parker %% Life always gets harder toward the summit -- the cold increases, the responsibility increases. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it. -- French philosopher Denis Diderot %% My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -- It gives a lovely light. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay %% What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. -- Sigmund Freud %% So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. -- Bertrand Russell %% Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -- Philo %% Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. -- Francis Bacon %% Do what is right, though the world may perish. -- Immanuel Kant %% There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it. -- Cicero %% How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% Love tells us many things that are not so. -- Krainian Proverb %% To be loved is very demoralizing. -- Katharine Hepburn %% Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin. -- Anatole France %% The greatest love is a mother's; then comes a dog's; then comes a sweetheart. -- Polish Proverb %% The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% Be humble for you are made of dung. Be noble for you are made of stars. -- Serbian proverb %% I would believe only in a god who could dance. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% God has no religion. -- Mahatma Gandhi %% In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. -- Ecclesiastes %% I live in my own place have never copied nobody even half, and at any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself -- I laugh. -- inscribed over the door to Friedrich Nietzsche's house %% Pope John Paul would be more popular if he called himself Pope John Paul George and Ringo. -- Paul Krassner %% God made man because he loves stories. -- Yiddish saying %% There are no facts, only interpretations. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top. -- Charlie King %% In heaven all the interesting people are missing. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out. -- from The Apocrypha %% Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.) -- Horace %% Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves. -- Carlyle %% Heavy the sorrow that bows the head When love is alive and hope is dead. -- W. S. Gilbert %% Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% Philosophy is the highest music. -- Plato %% It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true. -- George Santayana %% We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another. -- Jonathan Swift %% Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. -- Thomas Jefferson %% If there be a hell upon earth it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart. -- Burton %% Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad. -- Euripides %% His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (on Abraham Lincoln) %% Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. -- Tennyson, Lord Alfred %% Knowledge is power. -- Thomas Hobbes %% God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars. -- Elbert Hubbard %% So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell. -- Anonymous %% To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake. -- Schopenhauer %% Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria; (There is no greater sorrow than to recall, in misery, the time when we were happy.) -- Dante %% If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. -- Voltaire %% Must then Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination? -- Bernard Shaw %% If anything is sacred the human body is sacred. -- Walt Whitman from "I Sing The Body Electric" %% What is beautiful is good and who is good will soon also be beautiful. -- Sappho %% An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence. -- Honore de Balzac %% The American people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard. -- H.L. Mencken %% Our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand. -- George Santayana %% Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. -- Sylvia Plath %% It's just so uninteresting to live without love. Life has not risk. Love just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event. -- Toni Morrison %% Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth. -- Tennessee Williams %% Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast or of one thing too exclusively. -- Voltaire %% Whoever fights a monster should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain silent. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein %% No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied -- it speaks in silence to the very core of your being. -- Ansel Adams %% knowlege is a polite word for dead but unburied imagination....think twice before thinking. -- e.e. cummings %% At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein %% Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do. -- Voltaire %% Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. -- George Bernard Shaw %% Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. -- Fyodor Dostoevsky %% The nearer the Church the further from God. -- Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1556-1626) %% Be happy while y'er leevin, For y'er a lang time deid. -- Anonymous (Scottish motto) %% It is true, that a little Philosophy inclineth Man's Minde to Atheism; but depth in Philosophy bringeth Men's Mindes about to Religion. -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) %% Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell. -- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) %% Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'etre oblige de'en pleurer. (I make myself laugh at everything, in case I should have to weep.) -- Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) %% Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches. -- Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1898) %% Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself. -- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer %% So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and our doubts serve to reassure us. -- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest %% A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life. -- Ryunosuke Akutagawa %% Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain) %% In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high Are the graves of dreams allowed to die. -- ? %% Who is wise? He who learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He who governs his passions. Who is rich? He who is content. Who is that? Nobody. -- Ben Franklin %% Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. -- Thomas A. Kempis %% A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James %% We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there. -- Charles F. Kettering %% Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. -- Booker T. Washington %% To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity. -- Soren Kierkegaard %% We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. -- Dr. Albert Schweitzer %% Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few. -- Amos Bronson Alcott %% See the happy moron, He doesn't give a damn. I wish I were a moron, My God! Perhaps I am! -- anonymous %% Life is one long process of getting tired. -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902) %% All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. -- Samuel Butler %% We think as we do, mainly because other people think so. -- Samuel Butler %% The history of art is the history of revivals. -- Samuel Butler. %% I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy. -- Samuel Butler %% 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all. -- Samuel Butler %% If it has to choose who will be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas. -- Jean Cocteau (1891-1963) %% A man is as old as he's feeling, A woman as old as she looks. -- Mortimer Collins (1827-1876) %% He who allows himself to be insulted, deserves to be. -- Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) %% Salus populi suprema est lex. (The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.) -- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) %% Extraordinary how potent cheap music is. -- Sir Noel Coward %% Everybody worships me, it's nauseating. -- Sir Noel Coward %% But what is woman? -- only one of Nature's more agreeable blunders. -- Hannah Cowley (1743-1809) %% When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news. -- Charles Anderson Dana (1819-1897) %% Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. (Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.) -- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) %% Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation. -- Daniel Defoe (c. 1661-1731) %% Men are but children of a larger growth. -- John Dryden (1631-1700) %% The woman who runs will never lack followers. -- Ashley Dukes %% What we call "Progress" is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. -- Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) %% Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) %% Quem metuunt, oderunt. (They hate whom they fear.) -- Ennius (239-169 BC) %% Scitum est inter caecos luscum regnare posse. (It is well known, that among the blind the one-eyed man is king.) -- Gerard Didier Erasmus (c. 1465-1536) %% Dulce bellum inexpertis. (War is sweet to those who do not fight.) -- Gerard Didier Erasmus (c. 1465-1536) %% Je plie et ne romrs pas. (I bend and do not break.) -- Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695) %% De la peau de lion l'ane s'etant vetu Etoit craint partout a la ronde. (Dressed in the lion's skin, the ass spread terror far and wide.) -- Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695) %% The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault) (1844-1924) %% There never was a good war, or a bad peace. -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) %% Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage. -- Benjamin Franklin %% All would live long; but none would be old. -- Benjamin Franklin %% I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old. -- Robert Frost (1875-1963) %% Fear is the parent of cruelty. -- James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) %% It is always darkest just before the day dawneth. -- Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) %% In all the woes that curse our race There is a lady in the case. -- William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) %% All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes. -- William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) %% Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat. -- Hermann Goering (1893-1946) %% I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation. -- Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933) %% Life is just one damned thing after another. -- Elbert Hubbard (1959-1915) %% There is so much good in the worst of us, And so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly becomes any of us To talk about the rest of us. -- Edward Wallis Hoch (1849-1925) %% They who drink beer will think beer. -- Washington Irving (1783-1859) %% A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) %% Every man has three characters: that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. -- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) %% Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie. -- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) %% And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke. -- Rudyard Kipling %% On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine. (One is never so happy or so unhappy as one thinks.) -- Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld %% The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) %% Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. -- Abraham Lincoln %% It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it. -- William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) %% Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. -- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) %% Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But hating, my dear, is an art. -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971) %% I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race. -- Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) %% Scimus te prae litteras fatuum esse. (We know that you are mad with much learning.) -- Petronius (d. c.66 A.D) %% Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it. -- Logan Persall Smith (1865-1946) %% Education...has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. -- George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876-1962) %% Experience, the name men give to their mistakes. -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) %% Let us start a new religion with one commandment, "Enjoy thyself." -- Israel Zanguill (1864-1929) %% I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? -- Hermann Hesse %% When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same. -- James Madison %% Without music, life would be a mistake. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% No human thing is of serious importance. -- Plato %% Great wits are sure to madness near allied And thin partitions do their bounds divide. -- John Dryden %% Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. --- Henry David Thoreau %% When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind. --- Kahlil Gibran %% You are blind and I am deaf and dumb, so let us touch hands and understand. --- Kahlil Gibran %% You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept. --- Kahlil Gibran %% Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other. --- Kahlil Gibran %% Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself. --- Kahlil Gibran %% If that which does not kill me makes me stronger, I should be Arnold Schwarzenegger by now. %% That which does not kill me had better be able to run away damn fast. %% That which does not kill me makes me smarter, except for oxygen deprivation. %% "Is there a hell?" "No but I hear Los Angeles is getting pretty close." (from the movie _Defending your Life_) %% Q: How many Torontonians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One. He/she holds the bulb in the socket and waits for the world to revolve around him/her. %% "All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it -- an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view." --Peter Conrad, from the _Guardian_ (UK newspaper) %% I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. -- E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy %% Rien n'est si dangereux qu'un ignorant ami; Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi. (Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; better a wise enemy) -- Jean de la Fontaine %% "Silence is the space surrounding every action and every communion of people, Friendship needs no words..." Dag Hammarskjold %% "How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper "solitude is sweet". Willam Cowper %% The road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began Now far ahead the road has gone And I must follow if I can. Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way. Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. J.R.R. Tolkien _The Lord of the Rings_ series %% "One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small and the ones that mother give you don't do anything at all" - Jefferson Airplane %% "She used to love her heroin but now she's under ground" - Guns 'n Roses %% "There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face" - The Eagles %% "We're cookin' tonight, just keep on tokin'" - Boston %% "Everybody must get stoned" - Bob Dylan %% "No matter if it's heroin, cocaine, or hash ya got to carry weapons 'cuz you always carry cash" - Glenn Frey %% "Just a little pin prick..." - Pink Floyd %% "I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it so the little got more and more" - Guns 'n Roses %% "If you wanna get down, down on the ground, cocaine" - Eric Clapton %% "Question with boldness even the existance of God; because if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfold fear." -- Thomas Jefferson %% "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punshiment and hope of reward after death." -- Albert Einstein %% "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." -- Thomas Paine %% "In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him." -- "Aqualung", Jethro Tull %% "Heard a lot of talk about this Jesus A man of love, a man of strength But what a man was two thousand years ago Means nothing at all to me today." -- "Operation Spirit", Live %% Vique's Law: A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. %% "The major contribution of Protestant thought to the knowledge of mankind is its massive proof that God is a bore"-H.L. Mencken %% "The last Christian died on the cross"-Friedrich Nietzsche %% "If Christ were alive today there is one thing he would not be-a Christian" -Mark Twain %% "If God did not exist it would have been necessary to invent him"-Voltaire %% "Christ-an anarchist who succeeded, that's all"-Andre Malraux %% `Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts ... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...' -- William Gibson "Neuromancer" %% "We have come through a strange cycle in programming, starting with the creation of programming itself as a human activity. Executives with the tiniest smattering of knowledge assume that anyone can write a program, and only now are programmers beginning to win their battle for recognition as true professionals. Not just anyone, with any background, or any training, can do a fine job of programming. Programmers know this, but then why is it that they think that anyone picked off the street can do documentation? One has only to spend an hour looking at papers written by graduate students to realize the extent to which the ability to communicate is not universally held. And so, when we speak about computer program documentation, we are not speaking about the psychology of computer programming at all -- except insofar as programmers have the illusion that anyone can do a good job of documentation, provided he is not smart enough to be a programmer." Gerald Weinberg, "The Psychology of Computer Programming" %% Hell is a city much like London--A populous and smoky city. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY, 1819 %% Q: What's the difference between (enter city/state/country of choice here) and yogurt? A: Yogurt has a living culture %% "I don't know much about hell, but you probably have to fly though Atlanta to get there." - my mother %% Cogito, ergo cogito me esse: I think, therefore I think I am. %% The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell. -- Augustin %% The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. -- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World %% Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them? -- Jules Feiffer %% Der christliche Entschluss, die Welt h\"asslich und schlecht zu finden, hat die Walt h\"asslich und schlecht gemacht. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fr\"oliche Wissenschaft (The Christian determination to find the word hideous and bad, has made the world hideous and bad.) %% A Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to do on Monday. -- Thomas Ybarra %% Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary %% If Jesus Christ were to come to-day, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it. -- Thomas Carlyle: %% If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian. Mark Twain (1835-1910) %% Christendom is that part of the world where, if a man declare himself to be a Christian, his hearers laugh at him. -- H. L. Mencken %% "...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line." Tom Robbins, _Skinny Legs and All_, 1990, p. 305. %% A friend is someone who know everything about you and likes you in spite of it. %% I gobbled a dry martini and hurried back through the reed curtain to the dining room. The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail-bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits and bury me at sea in a barrel of comcrete for a dollar and a half plus sales tax. -- Raymond Chandler %% I went down to the drugstore and ate a chicken saled sandwhich and drank some coffee. The coffee was overstrained and the sandwhich was as full of rich flavour as a piece torn off an old shirt. Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has a lettuce sticking out of its sides, preferably a little wilted. -- Raymond Chandler %% Down at the drug-store lunch counter I had time to inhale two cups of coffee and a melted cheese sandwhich with two slivers of ersatz bacon embedded in it, like dead fish in the silt at the bottom of a drained pool. -- Raymond Chandler %% Cuisine is something like food but the portions are smaller and the prices are higher. If you happen to have French cuisine then the waiter will insult you as you are served. %% ONE MEATBALL There was a man walked up and down to find a place to eat in town He came upon a woundrous place and entered in with modest grace He put his hand his pocket hence and found he had but fifteen cents He scanned the menu through and through to see what fifteen cents would do The only thing would do at all was wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-one meatball The waiter bellowed down the hall, "This gentleman here wants wa-wa-one meatball" The wretched man fell ill at ease and softly wispered, "Bread, Sir, if you please" The waiter bellowed down the hall, "Yous gets no bread with wa-wa-one meatball" There is a moral to it all: "Yous gets no bread with wa-wa-one meatball" %% "The resaurant I ate in last night was terrible. The food was awful and the portions -- the portions were so small." %% "Life is uncertain - eat dessert first" %% "Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway" %% One paramount truth / our society smothers / in petty concern / with position and pelf: / It isn't enough / to exasperate others; / you've got to remember / to gladden yourself. - Piet Hein %% In order to solve this differential equation you look at it until a solution occurs to you. - Quoted by George Polya %% First, you must know what the thing is, and then after learn the use of the same. - Robert Recorde %% Nor is it very difficult to understand why a Canadian passport should be so popular. Part of the explanation is that with it one can travel easily almost anywhere. Another reason for the popularity of the little blue booklet stamped in gold is that one can speak English or French or Ukranian or Polish or Chinese and still be a Canadian. One can, in fact, be almost anyone and still be a Canadian; and to be a Canadian is to have a passport to the whole world. - Douglas Lepan %% Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything. - Henri Poincare %% When this grey world crumbles like a cake / I'll be hanging from the hope / That I'll never see that recipe again. - They Might Be Giants - It's Not My Birthday %% 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. - Leo Tolstoy %% When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him _whose_? - Don Marquis %% Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day. - Stephen Jay Gould %% Now, that the sovereign power and deity, whatsoever it is, should have regard of mankind, is a toy and vanity worthy to be laughed at. - Pliny The Elder %% . . .those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded . . . Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena-- care not to understand the architecture of the heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots! - Herbert Spencer %% A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad. - Bob Edwards %% If you sincerely desire a _truly_ well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and "nutty". You need the balance! Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, _no matter what_. Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket... even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the _telepathic pressure alone_ of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well- grounded in consensus reality. - Rev. Ivan Stang - High Weirdness By Mail %% There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. . . We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer. - Voltaire %% No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit. - Sir Frederick G. Banting %% Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion. - Robertson Davies %% Y is for Yggdrasil. The legendary Nordic ash tree with its three roots extending into the lands of mortals, giants, and Niflheim, the land of mist, grows in Wisconsin. Legend has it that when the tree falls, the universe will fall. Next Wednesday, the State Highway Commission comes through that empty pasture with a freeway. - Harlan Ellison - From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet %% This principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible. - Quoted by George Polya %% The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. - Steven Weinberg %% Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. - Albert Einstein %% If all the good people were clever; / And all clever people were good, / The world would be nicer than ever / We thought that it possibly could. - Elizabeth Wordsworth - Good and Clever %% An efficient organization is one in which the accounting department knows the exact cost of every useless administrative procedure which they themselves have initiated. - E.W.R. Steacie %% France has culture but no civilization. England has civilization but no culture. The United States has neither. Canada has both. - Robin Mathews %% There was never a great genius without a tincture of madness. - Aristotle %% A technique succeeds in mathematical physics, not by a clever trick, or a happy accident, but because it expresses some aspect of a physical truth. - O.G. Sutton %% In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is. - H.L. Mencken - A Popular Virtue %% Even when uttered by Democrats, "middle class" often sounds like a mealymouthed way of saying, "Us, and not them," where them includes poor people, snake handlers and those with pierced tongues. - Barbara Ehrenreich %% You see, our experts describe you as an appallingly dull fellow, unimaginative, timid, lacking in initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious company and irrepressibly drab and awful. And whereas in most professions these would be considerable drawbacks, in chartered accountancy they are a positive boon. - Monty Python %% By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat,they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science. - Jacob Bronowski %% Some compilers allow a check during execution that subscripts do not exceed array dimensions. This is a help, but not sufficient. First, many programmers do not use such compilers because "They're not efficient." (Presumably, this means that it is vital to get the wrong answers quickly.) - Kernighan & Plauger - The Elements of Programming Style %% If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on the human face-- forever . . . And remember that it is forever. - George Orwell - 1984 %% There are. . . scientific works-- star catalogues, for example-- which are not art; but the theoretical structures of Gauss, Einstein, or Maxwell are original, individual, "very personal" responses and expressions of exactly the same kind as the creative works of Beethoven or Dostoievski. - James R. Newman %% The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. - Henry David Thoreau - Walden %% Once you accept that the world is a giant computer run by white mice, all other movies fade into insignificance. - Mutsumi Takahashi %% Our advanced and fashionable thinkers are, naturally, out on a wide swing of the pendulum, away from the previous swing of the pendulum. If you want to reach dead center, you will do well to avoid the most advanced thinkers. - Anthony Standen %% We talk about the American way, the British way. If we had any sense, we would know that there is no American way, no British way. There is only one way-- the scientific way that cuts across racial lines with international boundaries. - M.M. Coady %% If we follow the advice of these people, we might as well go back into the cave. - Hans Bethe %% I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm. - James Thurber %% About the only people who don't quarrel over religion are the people who don't have any. - Bob Edwards %% As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate. - Sandra Boynton - Chocolate: The Consuming Passion %% Stand firm against all the powers that be, never yield, be strong, summon the arms of the gods to your aid. Goethe %% "The Baptists believe in The Right to Life before you're born. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it's over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end." -- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture" %% If they don't know what you're doing, they don't know what you're doing wrong. Sir Humphrey Appleby %% "It is necessary to get behind someone before you can stab them in the back." --- Sir Humphrey %% "Shallowness is a luxury, perhaps the ultimate luxury." %% "What is Good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is Bad? All that proceeds from weakness" -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche %% "Do drug companies fail to determine how their products affect women? After a report by the General Accounting Office in October 1993 claimed just that, Congress ... demanded that the drug industry and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stop shortchanging women. Now the FDA is taking action: Within the next few months, it will begin to monitor closely companies that fail to discriminate between the sexes." byline-less news story, *Science*, volume 260, page 743 (7 May 1993) %% Rosencrantz: We must be borne with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass there is but one direction, and time is it's only measure. %% My favorite: Love is not so much looking at each other as it is looking in the same dirction. - from a greeting card %% "May you want to as long as you live, and live as long as you want to" Mike Quan esq. %% Jimmy Stewart played the father on a southern plantation when a young man came to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. The father asked, "Well, do you like her?" The young man responded " - I love her!" The father replied, "Love is easy. There's no thinking involved. It's just feelings dragging you around. But your friends, who you like, you choose. When you learn to like her, then you can marry her." %% "If I want to hit a grounder, I hit the bottom third of the ball. If I want to hit a line drive, I hit the middle third, and if I want to hit a pop fly I hit the top third." -Stan Musial, explaining his hitting philosophy to a rookie %% "Luck is the residue of design." -Branch Rickey, Hall of Fame-er %% "There was almost no desire, as there sometimes was on occasions like this, to replay the game. ...no one wanted to talk about how they had made up the eleven games on the Yankees. No one wanted to talk about what if..." -about the Boston Red Sox' pennant race, _The Summer of '49_, %% "You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat." -_The Boys of Summer_ %% Now, when there are billions of people and not so many trees, it is sustaining to imagine what it might be like to open one's flowers on a spring afternoon, or to stand silently, making food out to sunlight, for a thousand years. -- David Rains Wallace - "The Klamath Knot" %% If people destroy something replaceable made my mankind, they are called vandals. If they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers. -- Joseph Wood Krutch %% If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? Maybe we would if they screamed all the time for no good reason. -- J. Handey %% "The white man is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land what he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste." -- Chief Sealth in a letter to President Franklin Pierce in 1855 %% The Biosphere II, which is supposed to represent a balanced sampling of life on Earth, contains over 3500 species of plants, animals, birds, and insects. And eight white people. %% The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year that the human race has in its entire history. -- Ray Bradbury %% No man steps into the same river twice. For the second time, it is not the same river, and he is not the same man. %% A developer is someone who wants to build a cabin in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who just did. %% "Oh! What timber,"...."These trees...these forests of trees... so enchain the sense of the beautiful that I linger on the theme and am loth to depart. Forests in which you cannot ride a horse...in which you cannot possibly recover game you have shot without the help of a good retriever...forests into which you cannot see, and which are almost dark under a bright midday sun...such forests, containing firs, cedars, pine, spruce and hemlock, envelop Puget Sound and cover a large part of the Washington Territory, surpassing the woods of all the rest of globe in the size, quantity and quality of the timber."... "...monarchs to whom all worshipful men inevitably lift their hats." -- Samuel Wilkeson.....1869 %% They can call me a preservationist as long as I can call them devastationists. -- Environmental activist Andy Kerr, referring to the forest industry's characterization of him. %% HUMAN NATURE Once I shot a bird, When I was very young. I watched it fall, and die. And I thought that it was fun. - W.C. Mackie %% "We can do no great things; only small things with great love." --Mother Teresa %% "Mother Theresa epitomizes for me the blinkered charitableness upon which we pride ourselves and for which we expect reward in this world and the next. There is very little on earth that I hate more than that." -- Feminist Germaine Greer %% Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. -Douglas Adams _Life, the Universe and Everything_ %% Maturity is having the self-confidence and courage to slay dragons no matter how much they look like Barney the Dinosaur. %% "But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they know of what they create by their demands. Leaders make mistakes. And these mistakes, amplified by the numbers who follow without questioning, move inevitably towards great disaster." %% "It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad -- to know that in a little minute you would be here physically and yet all the real essence would be dead and drowned in the black madness." %% Practice safe government. Use kingdoms. %% "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer." -- Sir William Blackstone (1723-80.) %% Reality is a moving target, and our job is to keep it moving. %% "I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough." -- M.C.Escher %% "A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?" Sacramento Bee, 3/12/66 -- Ronald Reagan %% "...115,000 acres of trees in the state park system is a lot to look at. How long can you look?" Sacramento Bee, 4/28/66 -- Ronald Reagan %% "I'm a fellow who bleeds every time a tree is cut down." Fresno Bee, 4/28/66 -- Ronald Reagan %% "I don't believe a tree is a tree and if you've seen one you've seen them all." Sacramento Bee, 9/14/66 -- Ronald Reagan %% "I just didn't say it." Associated Press, 10/5/66 -- Ronald Reagan %% "Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources." Sierra magazine, 9/10/80 -- Ronald Reagan %% "ERROR: No caffeine found, programmer halted" %% "He who lives by the sword, will eventually be wiped out by some bastard with a sawn off shotgun"-Steaddie Eddy %% "She really wasn't my type -- a hard-looking, untalented reporter for the local cat-box liner; but the first second that that third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and while humming The Twelfth of Never, I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth." --- William "Buddy" Ocheltree, Georgia %% "The long narrow road stretched out before her like a string of cheese from a hot pepperoni pizza (you know, the kind that is just out of the oven and much too hot to eat but you bite into it anyway and it burns you and leaves little bits of seared flesh dangling from the roof of your mouth that you tongue gingerly for the next week) in the early morning light." --- James Sanderson, Oregon %% "Those alarm things that make a real loud honking kind of noise were going off as Captain James Hurley stared at the screen that showed him the stuff outside in space, while he sat in the chair that the captain sits in and slowly reached for the control panel for the thing that makes the ship go real fast." --- Tom Butler, Florida %% "As the finely honed points of the magnificent bull elk's antlers perforated his spleen, lungs, and lower colon, Lenny the Grifter wished he had stayed working the street in Times Square, instead of going up to the Rockies where this dumb animal had figured out that three-card monte was a con, and gored him." --- Richard Patching, Alberta %% "After working the crowd, the autograph hound lacked only the signature of the vice-president's wife, so when he spotted her at the far edge of the field, he called to his friend, 'Come on, it's a long way to Tipper, Harry!'" --- Barbara Stegman, California %% Activation Energy: The useful quantity of energy available in one cup of coffee. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Atomic Theory: A mythological explanation of the nature of matter, first proposed by the ancient Greeks, and now thoroughly discredited by modern computer simulation. Attempts to verify the theory by modern computer simulation have failed. Instead, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that computer outputs depend upon the color of the programmer's eyes, or occasionally upon the month of his or her birth. This apparent astrological connection, at last, vindicates the alchemist's view of astrology as the mother of all science. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Bacon, Roger: An English friar who dabbled in science and made experimentation fashionable. Bacon was the first science popularizer to make it big on the banquet and talk-show circuit, and his books even outsold the fad diets of the period. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Biological Science: A contradiction in terms. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Bunsen Burner: A device invented by Robert Bunsen (1811-1899) for brewing coffee in the laboratory, thereby enabling the chemist to be poisoned without having to go all the way to the company cafeteria. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Butyl: An unpleasant-sounding word denoting an unpleasant- smelling alcohol. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% CAI: Acronym for "Computer-Aided Instruction". The modern system of training professional scientists without ever exposing them to the hazards and expense of laboratory work. Graduates of CAI-based programs are very good at simulated research. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Cavendish: A variety of pipe tobacco that is reputed to produce remarkably clear thought processes, and thereby leads to major scientific discoveries; hence, the name of a British research laboratory where the tobacco is smoked in abundance. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Chemical: A substance that: 1) An organic chemist turns into a foul odor; 2) an analytical chemist turns into a procedure; 3) a physical chemist turns into a straight line; 4) a biochemist turns into a helix; 5) a chemical engineer turns into a profit. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Chemical Engineering: The practice of doing for a profit what an organic chemist only does for fun. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Chromatography: (From Gr. chromo [color] + graphos [writing]) The practice of submitting manuscripts for publication with the original figures drawn in non-reproducing blue ink. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Clinical Testing: The use of humans as guinea pigs. (See also PHAR- MACOLOGY and TOXICOLOGY) -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Compound: To make worse, as in: 1) A fracture; 2) the mutual adulteration of two or more elements. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Computer Resources: The major item of any budget, allowing for the acquisition of any capital equipment that is obsolete before the purchase request is released. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Eigen Function: The use to which an eigen is put. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% En: The universal bidentate ligand used by coordination chemists. For years, efforts were made to use ethylene- diamine for this purpose, but chemists were unable to squeeze all the letters between the corners of the octahedron diagram. The timely invention of en in 1947 revolutionized the science. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Evaporation Allowance: The volume of alcohol that the graduate students can drink in a year's time. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Exhaustive Methylation: A marathon event in which the participants methylate until they drop from exhaustion. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% First Order Reaction: The reaction that occurs first, not always the one desired. For example, the formation of brown gunk in an organic prep. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Flame Test: Trial by fire. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Genetic Engineering: A recent attempt to formalize what engineers have been doing informally all along. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Grignard: A fictitious class of compounds often found on organic exams and never in real life. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Inorganic Chemistry: That which is left over after the organic, analytical, and physical chemists get through picking over the periodic table. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Mercury: (From L. Mercurius, the swift messenger of the gods) Element No. 80, so named because of the speed of which one of its compounds (calomel, Hg2Cl2) goes through the human digestive tract. The element is perhaps misnamed, because the gods probably would not be pleased by the physiological message so delivered. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Monomer: One mer. (Compare POLYMER). -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Natural Product: A substance that earns organic chemists fame and glory when they manage to systhesize it with great difficulty, while Nature gets no credit for making it with great ease. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Organic Chemistry: The practice of transmuting vile substances into publications. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Partition Function: The function of a partition is to protect the lab supervisor from shrapnel produced in laboratory explosions. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Pass/Fail: An attempt by professional educators to replace the traditional academic grading system with a binary one that can be handled by a large digital computer. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Pharmacology: The use of rabbits and dogs as guinea pigs. (See also CLINICAL TESTING, TOXICOLOGY). -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Physical Chemistry: The pitiful attempt to apply y=mx+b to everything in the universe. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Pilot Plant: A modest facility used for confirming design errors before they are built into a costly, full-scale production facility. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Polymer: Many mers. (Compare MONOMERS). -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Prelims: (From L. pre [before] + limbo [oblivion]) An obligatory ritual practiced by graduate students just before the granting of a Ph.D. (if the gods are appeased) or an M.S. (if they aren't). -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Publish or Perish: The imposed, involuntary choice between fame and oblivion, neither of which is handled gracefully by most faculty members. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Purple Passion: A deadly libation prepared by mixing equal volumes of grape juice and lab alcohol. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Quantum Mechanics: A crew kept on the payroll to repair quantums, which decay frequently to the ground state. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Rate Equations: (Verb phrase) To give a grade or a ranking to a formula based on its utility and applicability. H=E, for example, applies to everything everywhere, and therefore rates an A. pV=nRT, on the other hand, is good only for nonexistent gases and thus receives only a D+, but this grade can be changed to a B- if enough empirical virial coefficients are added. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Research: (Irregular noun) That which I do for the benefit of humanity, you do for the money, he does to hog all the glory. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Sagan: The international unit of humility. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Scientific Method: The widely held philosophy that a theory can never be proved, only disproved, and that all attempts to explain anything are therefore futile. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% SI: Acronym for "Systeme Infernelle". -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Spectrophotometry: A long word used mainly to intimidate freshman nonmajors. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Spectroscope: A disgusting-looking instrument used by medical specialists to probe and examine the spectrum. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Toxicology: The wholesale slaughter of white rats bred especially for that purpose. (See also CLINICAL TESTING, PHARMACOLOGY). -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% X-Ray Diffraction: An occupational disorder common among physicians, caused by reading X-ray pictures in darkened rooms for prolonged periods. The condition is readily cured by a greater reliance on blood chemistries; the lab results are just as inconclusive as the X-rays, but are easier to read. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% Ytterbium: A rare and inconsequential element, named after the village of Ytterby, Sweden (not to be confused with Iturbi, the late pianist and film personality, who was actually Spanish, not Swedish). Ytterbium is used mainly to fill block 70 in the periodic table. Iturbi was used mainly to play Jane Powell's father. -- The Ultimate Scientific Dictionary %% If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them. - Isaac Asimov %% Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God. - Herbert Westren Turnbull %% I am a sociologist, God help me. - John O'Neill %% Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't. - Sir Arthur Eddington %% Think until it hurts. - Roy Thomson %% The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity-- and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand. - Richard P. Feynman %% The Social Sciences are good at accounting for disasters once they have taken place. - Claude T. Bissell %% The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future anybody's guess. It was fun back there with the Rover Boys, the Little Colonel, Pollyanna, and Peg-o'-my-Heart, but we don't want to be caught in the past while the Russians are shaking hands with the Martians. Let us then be up and doing. - James Thurber %% Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology. - Rebecca West %% There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians. - Georges Pompidou %% This is th' original contract; these the laws / Impos'd by nature, and by nature's cause. - John Dryden %% . . . it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art. - John W.N. Sullivan %% It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil, . . . that all politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it's not terribly useful to prescribe death as a cure. - George McGovern %% There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. - Francis Bacon - Of Beauty %% He saw the crowd and thought of the waves moving through them, breaking into white, swallowing foam. The small figures dimly sensed the eddies of the waves as paradox, as riddle, and heard the tick of time without knowing what they sensed, and clung to their linear illusions of past and future, of progression, of their opening births and yawning deaths to come... And he thought of Markham and his mother and all these uncountable people, never loosening their grip on their hopes, and their strange human sense, their last illusion, that no matter how the days moved through them, there always remained the pulse of things coming, the sense that even now there was yet still time. - Gregory Benford - Timescape %% They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. - Confucius %% The most dreadful thing of all is that many millions of people in the poor countries are going to starve to death before our eyes. We shall see them doing so upon our television sets. - C.P. Snow %% Reverend Belling (Graham) You know, there are many people in the country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane. Some of them were born sane. Some of them became sane later in their lives. It is up to people like you and me who are out of our tiny little minds to try and help these people overcome their sanity. You can start in small ways with ping- pong ball eyes and a funny voice and then you can paint half of your body red and the other half green and then you can jump up and down in a bowl of treacle going "squawk, squawk, squawk ..." And then you can go "Neurhhh! Neurhhh!" and then you can roll around on the floor going "pting pting pting"... - Monty Python %% But is such a thing fit to be discovered to the people? shall I do such an unworthy Act? Ah! my pen falls out of my hand. Yet my desire to help posterity, overcomes; for perhaps from this gleaning as it were, greater and more admirable inventions may be produced. - Giambattista Della Porta - Natural Magick %% A little learning is a dangerous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; / There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, / And drinking largely sobers us again. - Alexander Pope %% All the secrets we may be able to keep from any and every god and human being do not in the least absolve us from the obligation to refrain from whatever actions are greedy, unjust, sensual, or otherwise immoderate. - Cicero - On Duties %% Thought alone is eternal. - Owen Meredith %% The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life. - James Joseph Sylvester %% Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so. - Lord Chesterfield %% If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence, then we will have achieved something so unprecedented in the history of life that we should be willing to sing our swansong with joy-- _sic transit gloria mundi_. - Stephen Jay Gould %% In the world of human thought generally, and in physical science particularly, the most important and fruitful concepts are those to which it is impossible to attach a well-defined meaning. - H.A. Kramers %% Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it. - Samuel Johnson %% Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought. - Ernst Mach %% How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] . . . Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals. - Clifford Truesdell %% Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. - William Ellery Channing %% One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion. - Anatol Rapoport %% The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty, yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may I die if I would change places with the Persian King. - Johann Becher %% Since when was genius found respectable? - Elizabeth Barrett Browning %% Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. - Charles Darwin %% To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age). - Robert Graves %% For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. - Richard P. Feynman %% Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines-- not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality. - Robertson Davies - Tempest-Tost %% You are right on target when you say that mad scientists have a total disregard for the wellbeing of others. We don't want to spread evil; we just see no point in bothering to spread good. - Richard M. Mathews %% Maybe we're just lucky to live in a universe composed by a divine Bach. Perhaps next door, the inhabitants of a John Cage universe muddle along in chaos... - Michael Weiss, in sci.physics %% Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives. - Anonymous %% I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them. - Alfred Hitchcock %% The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. - Eden Phillpotts %% Sentimental or not, I confess that the predicament of poor Valentino touched me. It provided grist for my mill, but I couldn't quite enjoy it. Here was a young man who was living daily the dream of millions of other young men. Here was one who was catnip to women. Here was one who had wealth and fame. And here was one who was very unhappy. - H.L. Mencken %% I didn't think; I experimented. - Wilhelm Roentgen %% [John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. - Isaac Asimov %% You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it. - Charles Babbage %% I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint-- no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided. . . - Richard M. Nixon %% You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality. - Hermann Weyl %% Ambition has but one reward for all: / A little power, a little transient fame, A grave to rest in, and a fading name. - William Winter %% So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain, namely, that nothing is certain. . . - Pliny The Elder %% There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are _not_ part of "Nature"-- but beavers and their dams _are_. - Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough For Love %% They [corporations] cannot commit trespass nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls. - Sir Edward Coke %% In political discussion heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge. - J.G.C. Minchin %% All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance. - Edward Gibbon %% I saw Eternity the other night, / Like a great ring of pure and endless light, / All calm, as it was bright; / And round beneath it, / Time in hours, days, years, / Driv'n by the spheres / Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world / And all her train were hurl'd. - Henry Vaughan - The World %% The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think. - Horace Walpole %% War is just to those to whom war is necessary. - Titus Livius %% One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude. - Goethe %% It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to think. - Rene Descartes - Discourse I %% The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone. - Harriet Beecher Stowe %% The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. - Anatole France %% Real-world problems are often "high-dimensional", that is, are described by large numbers of dependent variables. Algorithms must be specifically designed to function well in such high-dimensional spaces. - David Rogers - Weather Prediction Using a Genetic Memory %% God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board. - Mark Twain %% The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood. - Alexander Haig %% Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. - R. Buckminster Fuller %% If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door. - Paul Beatty %% The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." - Isaac Asimov %% What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? - Ursula K. LeGuin %% There is scarcely an occurrence in nature which, happening at a certain time, is not looked upon by some persons as a prognosticator either of good or evil. The latter are in the greatest number, so much more ingenious are we in tormenting ourselves than in discovering reasons for enjoyment in the things that surround us. - Charles Mackay - Extraordinary Popular Delusions. . . %% We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read. - Mark Twain %% Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat. - Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London %% The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action. - Frank Herbert %% No doubt, a scientist isn't necessarily penalized for being a complex, versatile, eccentric individual with lots of extra-scientific interests. But it certainly doesn't help him a bit. - Stephen Toulmin %% Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes). - Walt Whitman - Song of Myself %% One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations. - Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. - The Mythical Man-Month %% We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look. - Aldous Huxley - The Devils of Loudun %% Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible-- or even sinful-- that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes! - Dr. Paul MacCready Jr. %% Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. - Neil Gaiman - The Sandman #20: Facade %% We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap. - Kurt Vonnegut %% Then the Lord himself spoke and said: "If you can grasp what is meant by this, you will be delivered from the fear of Endings. So do not cease from searching. Yet, remember this; when you find that for which you are looking, you will at first be struck with horror and amazement. But after the horror will come understanding; and in the end you will find yourself to be set apart, and honoured above them all." - The Gospel of St. Thomas (Apocryphal) %% Now is the time for everyone who believes in the rule of reason to speak up against pathological science and its purveyors. - John A. Wheeler %% Most reformers wore rubber boots and stood on glass when God sent a current of Commonsense through the Universe. - Elbert Hubbard %% The progress of science is often affected more by the frailties of humans and their institutions than by the limitations of scientific measuring devices. The scientific method is only as effective as the humans using it. It does not automatically lead to progress. - Steven S. Zumdahl %% What is the difference between method and device? A method is a device which you use twice. - Quoted by George Polya %% If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. - Charles Darwin %% Those who will not reason / Perish in the act: / Those who will not act / Perish for that reason. - W.H. Auden - Shorts %% Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. - H.G. Wells %% Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight: there will always be a bending downwards. - William Whewell %% Those cave paintings are wonderful, but like everything we know, they are not too wonderful to be true. It is their reality that gives them wonder, and while there will never come a time when some of us will not wish for more than we can have, the happiest of us will wait confidently for other tangible finds. We treasure the cave at Altamira where a century ago a little girl first saw the great painted bison. New caves will be found, year after year, in lab or clinic or sky or ocean depth, or even in ancient markings. That is the promise of real science, which cannot allow wish to rule mind, but nonetheless finds unendingly wonderful things. - Philip Morrison %% "En la boca cerratha, no enterran moscas" ("If you keep your mouth closed, flies won't fly in...") %% honesty is a good thing but it is not profitable to its posessor unless it is kept under control -- Don Marquis, "archys life of mehitabel" %% "Honesty is hardly ever heard, but mostly what I need from you..." -- Billy Joel %% Language exists only on the surface of our consciousness. The great human struggles are played out in silence and in the ability to express oneself. - Franz Xavier Kroetz %% Meaning is the play, or interplay, of light. -A. Storch %% Every thought is a feat of association. -Robert Frost %% There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly. --Annie Dillard, _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_ %% "It's only words . . . unless they're true." -- David Mamet %% "The 10 Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincon's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words." -- The Atlanta Journal %% "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." --Harriet Beecher Stowe %% "Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts..." -- Robert Fulghum %% "Don't make me speak in a New Language, Just let me tell you the way that I feel about you. I sure don't want to offend anyone, But if you take away my words, how can I tell you the truth?" -- Moe Berg of TPOH %% "O words of love, O words divine! The silver thought, the golden line! Of all men's words, there's none so fine, As these three words: 'I've got mine!'" -- Hagar the Horrible %% "For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and big words Bother me." --Winnie-the-Pooh %% "The words `I am...' are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you." --A. K. Kitselman %% "All last year we tried to teach him English, and the only word he learned was million." --- Tommy Lasorda, on pitcher Fernando Valenzuela %% "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920) %% "Eros and language mesh at every point. Intercourse and discourse, copula and copulation, are sub-classes of the dominant fact of communication." --George Steiner %% "It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear" -- Douglas Adams %% "Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe %% "The language of the Oracle is Truth, and his accent is ASCII." -- The USENET Oracle %% "If it is true that words have meanings, why don't we throw away words and keep just the meanings?" Ludwig Wittgenstein via Anatol Holt %% "Basically a dog person. I certainly, though, wouldn't want to offend my constituents who are cat people, and I should say that being, I hope, a sensitive person, that I have nothing against cats, and had cats when I was a boy, and if we didn't have the two dogs might very well be interested in having a cat now." Incoming Missouri Congressman James Talent, responding to the question "Are you a dog or a cat person?" %% "I can see stopping a car for a dog. But a cat? You squish a cat and go on. I think we're overcomplicating life." --Iowa Democratic State Sen. James Gallagher %% i think that the team that wins game five will win the series. unless we lose game five." -charles barkeley %% "Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds...he said: `Do you not think it lamentable that with such a vast multitude of worlds, we have not yet conquerrd one?'" Plutarch c. AD 46 - 120 On the Tranquility of the Mind %% "The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things..." Richard Feynman %% "Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy." John Dewey %% "Knowledge is expensive." Hanna Gray, current president of the University of Chicago %% "Education is the best provision for old age." Aristotle ILives of Eminent Pholosophers, book 21) %% "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave." Baron Henry Peter Brougham %% If shit was worth something, poor people would be born without arseholes. -- Eddie Murphy, Another 48 Hours %% We finally got a McDonald's in Bangladesh. They serve McNothings. [Gary Bednor] %% I remember going into McDonald's when they had some promotional giveaway, and their sign read: "Offer available to McDonald's customers only." Now there's an exclusive group! I went into McDonald's yesterday and said, "I'd like some fries." The girl at the counter said, "Would you like some fries with that?" They're highly intelligent... [Jay Leno] The French fries are great. You can eat them, or use them as dental floss. And the triple-thick milk shakes. Which you can drink or take home - pave the new driveway in front of your house ... They have home delivery now. They'll bring those *big* juicy delicious hamburgers right to your house. And if you're not home, don't worry about it. 'Cause they'll slip 'em right under the door. [Mike Preminger] %% Have you seen the fast-food version of a liquid? A triple-thick shake? You need an industrial strength suction pump to get it up the straw. There's people wandering around with bleeding ear holes because they've been sucking too hard. Everybody sucks together - and the windows of the shop cave in! Big Macs. Fast food. Fast food? Why don't you flush it straight down the toilet and cut out the middle-man? [Ben Elton] %% The Moscow McDonald's has lines two and a half hours long. That's fast food in Russia. But everyone loves McDonald's there. A man came out of McDonald's, he took the wrapper off his hamburger, and he said, "They not only give you food - but free toilet paper with it!" [Yakov Smirnoff] %% I started a grease fire at McDonald's - I threw a match at the cook's hair. [Steve Martin] %% The first time I opened a Big Mac I thought: It's bee eaten already. [Jasper Carrot] %% "And to think that only this morning I mistook you for an idiot only because your views were different to mine. One could have a real talk with you, though perhaps it would be wiser not to." "The Idiot" - Fydor Dotstoyesky %% Capability maturity model a method of determining to what extent the developer can reasonably be blamed for the inevitable failure -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Cleanroom a management technique that applies to horizontal interfaces what the mushroom technique applies to vertical interfaces -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Compiler a tool for adding an exciting amount of uncertainty to the size, speed and correctness of a program -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Computer human interface the means by which the program conditions the user into never trying all the things that don't work -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Cost modelling a means of convincing the customer to pay for whomever you need to keep employed this year -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Customer a primitive life form at the bottom of the food chain -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Debugger a tool that substitutes afterthought for forethought -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Design the activity of preparing for a design review -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Design review a process for ensuring you know exactly what it is you won't build -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Documentary hypothesis the discredited notion that software is the outcome of a systematic and rational process of development, rather than the result of divine inspiration -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Documentation a process for converting trees into entropy, usually applied to provide busywork for the people whose employment cannot be justified by cost modelling -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Domain a class of applications where failure on one project gives you an advantage in bidding on the next -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Enhancement breaking what you did right and getting paid for it [see also: maintenance] -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Formal verification the construction of an incorrect proof isomorphic to an incorrect program -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Function point analysis cost modelling a program by what it won't do, rather than by how big it won't be -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Incremental implementation delivering several partial products each for the price of a complete one -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Maintenance fixing what you did wrong and getting paid for it [see also: enhancement] -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Programs what software used to be, back when we knew how to write it -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Programmer one who is too lacking in people skills to be a software engineer -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Project management the art of always knowing how badly you're doing your work and how late you're doing it -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Quality assurance a way to ensure you never deliver shoddy goods accidentally -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Real time an attribute applied to software that's even more expensive than can be justified by cost modelling -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Requirements analysis determining what it is you can't do before failing to do it -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Requirements engineering convincing the customer to want what you think you can build -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Requirements review explaining what the customer won't get in language they don't understand -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Reuse using an existing product in a new context; especially as applied to proposals, resumes, disclaimers and excuses -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Software engineer one who engineers others into writing the code for him/her -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Spiral model a development model that allows you to fail in a small way several times over [see also: waterfall model] -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% State-of-the-art what we could do with enough money -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% State-of-the-practice what we can do with the money you have -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Structured walkthrough the process whereby the false assumptions of one member become shared by an entire team -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Technology transition helping people replace old useless processes, methods and tools with new useless processes, methods and tools -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Testing a process for ensuring that the product will work in all circumstances that anybody other than the user can imagine -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Total quality management a way of teaching your managers five words of Japanese, without any risk that they will acquire an equivalent amount of competence -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% User a harmless drudge -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Waterfall model a development model that allows you to fail in a big way just once -- Glossary of Software Engineering Terms %% Rambo is a pussy. -- Stalone: Tango & Cash. %% "The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us." -- Thomas Henry Huxley %% "In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star." -- Arthur Machen %% "The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are and the Old Ones will be... not in the spaces we know of, but _between_ them ... Yog-Sothoth is the Gate." -- Abd al-Hazred, _Al Azif_ %% "All perception is inferential; all inference uncertain; all theory, a combination of perception an inference, is therefore educated guessing." -- de Selby, _Golden Hours_, I, 93 %% One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eight grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cul- tivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote liter- ature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Vir- gin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be- fore her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Mac- beth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained." -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post with- out stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented elec- tricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a sup- posedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are flaling off the trees. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolu- tion, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history. -- The World According to Student Bloopers: Richard Lederer %% Hi. Would somebody with the appropriate equipment please convert this to binary and broadcast it to the stars. Thanks. "Whoever has been mutilating cattle and making crop circles, cut it out! We don't think it's funny anymore!" -- mwtilden@math.uwaterloo.ca (Mark W. Tilden) %% ALL NEW ............ The software is not compatible with previous versions -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% ADVANCED DESIGN ............ Upper management doesn't understand it -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% BREAKTHROUGH ............... It nearly booted on the first try -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% NEW ........................ Different colours from previous version -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% DESIGN SIMPLICITY .......... Developed on a shoe string budget -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% EXCLUSIVE .................. We're the only ones who have the documentation -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% FIELD TESTED ............... Manufacturing doesn't have a test system -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% FOOLPROOF OPERATION ........ All parameters are hard coded -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% FUTURISTIC .......... It will only run on the next generation super-computer -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% HIGH ACCURACY .............. All the directories compare -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% IT'S HERE AT LAST .......... We've released a 26 week project in 48 weeks -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% MAINTENANCE FREE ........... Impossible to fix -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% MEETS QUALITY STANDARDS .... It compiles without errors -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% PERFORMANCE PROVEN ......... Works through Beta Test -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% REVOLUTIONARY .............. Disk drives go round and round -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% SATISFACTION GUARANTEED .... We'll send you another copy if it fails -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% STOCK ITEM .... We shipped it once before, and we can do it again, probably -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% UNMATCHED .................. Almost as good as the competition -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% UNPRECEDENTED PERFORMANCE .. Nothing ever ran this slow before -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT ....... We finally got one to work -- computer terms as seen from a Marketing point of view %% - UFO expert %% ENEMY WANTED Mature, North American Superpower seeks hostile nation for arms racing, third world conflicts, and general antagonism. Must be sufficiently menacing to convince Congress to fund us. Nuclear capability preferred, near-nuclear considered. Earth, anywhere. Send note and picture of tank battalions to General C. Powell, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. %% Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today -- I think he's from the CIA. %% From: roddi [To: karl] Monogamy: "you can't have your kate and edith too." %% AVERAGE: Not too bright. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% EXCEPTIONALLY WELL QUALIFIED: Has committed no major blunders to date. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% ACTIVE SOCIALLY: Drinks heavily. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% ZEALOUS ATTITUDE: Opinionated. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% CHARACTER ABOVE REPROACH: Still one step ahead of the law. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% UNLIMITED POTENTIAL: Will stick with us until retirement. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% QUICK THINKING: Offers plausible excuses for errors. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% TAKES PRIDE IN WORK: Conceited. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% TAKES ADVANTAGE OF EVERY OPPERTUNITY TO PROGRESS: Buys drinks for superiors. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% INDIFFERENT TO INSTRUCTION: Knows more than superiors. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% STERN DISCIPLINARIAN: A real jerk. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% TACTFUL IN DEALING WITH SUPERIORS: Knows when to keep mouth shut. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% APPROACHES DIFFICULT PROBLEMS WITH LOGIC: Finds someone else to do the job. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% A KEEN ANALYST: Thoroughly confused. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% NOT A DESK PERSON: Did not go to college. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% EXPRESSES SELF WELL: Can string two sentences together. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% SPENDS EXTRA HOURS ON THE JOB: Miserable home life. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% CONSCIENTIOUS AND CAREFUL: Scared. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% METICULOUS IN ATTENTION TO DETAIL: A nitpicker. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% DEMONSTRATES QUALITIES OF LEADERSHIP: Has a loud voice. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% JUDGEMENT IS USUALLY SOUND: Lucky. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% MAINTAINS PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDE: A snob. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% KEEN SENSE OF HUMOR: Knows lots of dirty jokes. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% STRONG ADHERENCE TO PRINCIPLES: Stubborn. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% GETS ALONG EXTREMELY WELL WITH SUPERIORS AND SUBORDINATES ALIKE: A coward. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% SLIGHTLY BELOW AVERAGE: Stupid. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% OF GREAT VALUE TO THE ORGANIZATION: Turns in work on time. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% IS UNUSUALLY LOYAL: Wanted by no-one else. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% ALERT TO COMPANY DEVELOPMENTS: An office gossip. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% REQUIRES WORK-VALUE ATTITUDINAL READJUSTMENT: Lazy and hard-headed. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% HARD WORKER: Usually does it the hard way. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% ENJOYS JOB: Needs more to do. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% HAPPY: Paid too much. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% WELL ORGANIZED: Does too much busywork. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% COMPETENT: Is still able to get work done if supervisor helps. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% CONSULTS WITH SUPERVISOR OFTEN: Pain in the ass. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% WILL GO FAR: Relative of management. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% SHOULD GO FAR: Please. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% USES TIME EFFECTIVELY: Clock watcher. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% VERY CREATIVE: Finds 22 reasons to do anything except original work. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% USES RESOURSES WELL: Delagates everything. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %% DESERVES PROMOTION: Create new title to make h/h feel appreciated. -- Interpreting supervisors comments... %%