karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) (03/21/90)
Here are some fortune cookies that I've collected over the past few months. I think this is the ninth cookie file, third update after the original six, but I've lost count, so let's just call it the first file of the new series... P.S. Send me email if you need the cookie program. ------------------------- cut here ---------------------- %% "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." -- Santayana %% "Life is full of surprises when you're up th' stream of consciousness without a paddle..." -- Zippy the Pinhead %% "I woudn't recommend sex, drugs, or Unix for everyone, but they work for me." Jim Thompson (jthomp@central.sun.com), paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson %% "This one's got a lot more, uh, 640K that it can memorize." -- CVN cable TV shopping channel %% "Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then." -- Katherine Hepburn %% "We're the weirdest monkeys ever." -- Karl Lehenbauer %% Uh-oh. Atarians can't hold a candle to the insecurity of Mac owners. You rankled Mac owners who feel the need defend yourself, please do so by flaming in private. And don't start something you can't finish. I'm sure Apple's OS for the 68000-based Macintoshs will support multitasking just as soon as Jean Louis-Gasse invents it. In the meantime, do whatever you need to do to make sure other systems that have advanced the state of personal computers don't enter your peripheral vision. You'll be a lot happier, we'll be a lot happier. --Chuck McManis (cmcmanis@sun.com) %% We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. %% "It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine some of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very sharp, probably not someone here on campus." -- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, quoted in "The Technique," Georgia Tech's newspaper, after the computer worm hit the Internet %% Personally, should I ever form a globe spanning comglomerate, I intend to do it fairly and without malice or dirty politics. I hope you fellows don't make that too difficult a task; I would have to have to have you all killed. -- David Neal (abbadon@nuchat.uucp) %% The notion of ideas as infectious diseases is one to which most authoritarian religions and governments subscribe, and they hold massive "hygienic" burnings of the "viral DNA" behind the ideas. Promulgators of these "diseased" ideas are called "carriers of spiritual impurity" (to use one phrase now popular in China) and attempts are made to prevent the spread of these diseases. This is a naive and dangerous view of how ideas work and it is disturbing to see it rationalized into Western pop psychology. -- Tim Maroney (tim@toad.com) %% "Every institution I've ever been associated with has tried to screw me." -- Stephen Wolfram %% Fraternities have no SLACK, no matter how slack-jawed they may appear. I taught elementary calculus here at the University of SLACK for several years, and have observed these folks carefully. Although some of them looked like they had SLACK, it's clear to me that this was just the result of not getting enough sleep after the puking contest. I mean, those guys don't watch enough television to have real SLACK. -- William K Glunt (bud@ms.uky.edu) %% "I'll put an end to the idea that a woman's body belongs to her . . . the practice of abortion shall be exterminated with a strong hand." -- Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_ %% When asked, "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?" Mencken replied, "Why do men go to zoos?" %% "Is it just me, or does there seem to be an inordinate number of lurkers whose heads are imploding lately? Maybe all these alternative viewpoints are too much for them to handle." -- Trent Wohlschlaeger (jtw@wuee1.wustl.edu) %% "If projectile vomiting ever becomes an Olympic event, you'll do your country proud." -- Hobson, "Arthur II" %% "Oh honey, this is just the beginning. Stick with me and we'll claw our way to the top." -- John Water's "Hairspray" %% "The script had been written by this legendary dead guy that we know and there were about fifty-eleven-hundred pages of it. Of this eight words were completely readable. These were "oranges" in the title and "Close the curtains, Geoffrey, I'm amphibious", which was right at the end. To be perfectly frank man, I wasn't even 100% sure about amphibious." -- Waldo "D.R." Dobbs, "D.R. and Quinch go to Hollywood". %% "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- stolen from Brian Gollum %% "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; yeah, right. To paraphrase, the net finds its own uses for garbage." -- Eric Hughes (hughes@math.berkeley.edu) %% "[Leslie Stahl was] a pussy compared to Rather." -- George Bush %% "Failing to get them to do it your way might mean they're stupid, but it also means you failed to get them to do it your way." -- Cal Keegan %% "Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest." -- Jimmy Swaggart, TV preacher, self-described pornography addict who paid prostitutes to commit "pornographic acts", hypocrite %% "I think contraception is disgusting -- people using each other for pleasure." -- Joseph Scheidler, Director, Pro-Life Action League %% "We are ... opposed to all forms of birth control with the exception of natural family planning [the rhythm method.]" -- Judie Brown, President, American Life Lobby %% "I don't think Christians should use birth control. You consummate your marriage as often as you like and if you have babies, you have babies." -- Randall Terry, one of the people behind the current campaign to blockade health clinics and publicly harass and humiliate women %% "We are starting a movement in the state legislatures...to forbid the installation of clinics that dispense contraceptives." -- Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum %% "I listen to feminists and all these radical gals -- most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men -- that's their problem." -- Reverend Jerry Falwell %% "Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way we're made you've got to take it up with God." -- Phyllis Schlafly, hypocrite who has had a successful business career and run for public office, who would apparently deny that to other women %% "Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions." -- Phyllis Schlafly %% "Incest is a voluntary act on the woman's part." -- Charles Rice, Professor of Law, Notre Dame University, in a pamphlet published by the American Life League %% "It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage [sic] baby even ten years later when she may be happily married." -- Phyllis Schlafly %% "Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost." -- Ivan Chtcheglov %% "I've brought Gatsby to life. I've accounted for his money. I've fixed up the two weak chapters (VI and VII). I've improved his first party. I've broken up his long narrative in Chapter VIII." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, on revising his galley proofs %% The Law of Software Envelopment Every program at MIT attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot expand are replaced by ones which can. %% "The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain." -- Cal Keegan %% "Slime is the agony of water." -- Jean-Paul Sartre %% "I have discovered the heart of bushido: to die!" -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo %% "...an animal loses not only its life but also its third dimension." -- Roger M. Knutson, in _Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets,and Highways_ %% "... and I realized, we did not live in a scientific society." -- R. P. Feynman, "Cargo cult science" %% I think the problem isn't the amount of knowledge we have to assimilate in our world, but the rate at which we can assimiliate it. Science, engineering, and technology do not yield the "whys" of truth. only the "hows." In fact, they are not truths, but opinions from the current reigning theories of how we think the physical world works. -- eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov %% "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world." -- Calvin %% "These patriots don't mince words... Okay, sure, they *are* dangerous, hopelessly ignorant, inbred, retarded borderline lunatics with an insatiable lust for the blood of sinners -- but at least they're *honest* about it." -- Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the Subgenius, about a group known as Free Love Ministries, in his book _High Weirdness By Mail_ %% "Once you've had real champagne, you can never go back to Asti Spimanti." -- Georgette Lundberg %% "Life is a pinball machine. You bounce around for a while, and then you drain." -- Joe Bak %% My aura can beat up your aura. %% "Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe." -- Frank Zappa %% "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission." Grace Murray Hopper. %% Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country's been doing to you. - Avengers %% >Try staring at someone from a substantial distance. >(Eventually they will turn around.) ASTOUNDING! We all know that without* telepathy staring at the back of a person's head would freeze them into helpless immobility! Corollary: try staring at a cloud. eventually it will MOVE! This parapsychology stuff is the GINCHIEST!! -- Tim Mitchell, (swordfis@pnet51.orb.mn.org) %% "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." -- Mark Twain %% "...I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." -- Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C. %% "Politics is for the moment. An equation is for eternity." -- Albert Einstein %% POZZO: He used to dance the farandole, the fling, the brawl, the jig, the fandango and even the hornpipe. He capered. For joy. Now that's the best he can do. Do you know what he calls it? ESTRAGON: The Scapegoat's Agony. VLADIMIR: The Hard Stool. POZZO: The Net. He thinks he's entangled in a net. -- Samuel Beckett, _Waiting for Godot_ %% "It takes a smart man to know when he's stupid." -- Barney Rubble %% "Hah. I know Tim Maroney. I've smoked pot with Tim Maroney. And K*nt Paul Dolan is no Tim Maroney!" -- Gary Strand (gary@cgdra.ucar.edu) %% "They smell, they snarl and they scratch; they have a singular aptitude for shredding rugs, drapes and upholstery; they're sneaky, selfish and not at all smart; they are disloyal, condescending and totally useless in any rodent-free environment." -- Jean-Michel Chapereau, on cats %% "If my film makes one more person miserable, I've done my job." -- Woody Allen %% "I don't believe in god because I don't believe in Mother Goose." -- Clarence Darrow %% "S.F.'S NO GOOD!!" They bellow till we're deaf. "But this looks good." "WELL THEN IT'S NOT S.F.!!" -- Kingsley Amis %% "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -- Albert Einstein %% "And remember, rebooting your brain can be tricky." -- Eric Townsend (erict@flatline) %% "It still brings to mind the question of what (if anything) can be done to show the media that 'cyberpunks' aren't just a bunch of pimple-faced geeks who sit around trying to break into bank computers or whatever." -- James Hartman (phaedrus@flatline.UUCP) But cyberpunks *are* a bunch of pimple-faced geeks who sit around trying to break into bank computers or whatever. Re-read _Neuromancer_ and apply the inverse James Bond transformation to Case and his cohorts. They're all supposed to be totally out of shape, with their disdain for the "meat". -- Peter da Silva (peter@sugar.hackercorp.com) %% "You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you realise that?" -- Peter Da Silva (sugar!peter) %% "A bit of tolerance is worth a megabyte of flaming." -- Henry Spencer %% "How can a man of integrity get along in Washington?" -- Richard Feynman %% "Oh dear, now I've made a terrible mess of things. And all I wanted to do was rule the universe." -- Dr. Zachary Smith %% "It took no computation to dance to the rock 'n roll station." -- VU %% "???" -- DEC's RSTS/E operating system %% "IT'S THE TWO GODDAMNED CULTURES AGAIN !*! Bit-brained nerdery on one side, effete fin-de-siecle malaise on the other. And kingdoms of hybrid delight abandoned in the middle." -- Jonathan Burns, burns@latcs1.oz %% "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." -- Albert Einstein %% "Using an IBM PC is like juggling straight razors. Using a Mac is like shaving with a bowling pin." -- Ted Nelson, _Computer Lib_ %% **ROG** writes > ...who have no clue about reality. Nothing could compare with > the beauty of the real world around us and you should work as hard > at preserving the environment and making the world safe for our progeny as > you do at hiding in your computer screens. I bet you couldn't > read a story from alt.sex.bondage without getting an erection. Could someone please tell me how to access the "alt.sex.bondage" newsgroup? -- Robert Ward (rw23+@andrew.cmu.edu) %% The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972 %% "Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself." -- Peter da Silva, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com %% Now I lay me down to sheep I pray the Lord the sheep's asleep If, perchance, the sheep should wake Simple friendship shall I fake. -- Frances Grimble %% "All I ask of my body is that it carry around my head." -- Thomas Alva Edison %% "Sudden de-compression Sucks!" -- Dennis Robert Gorrie, GORRIEDE@UREGINA1.BITNET %% "You cannot really know anything." -- William Payne (wpayne@digi.UUCP) "How do you know?" -- Dan'l DanehyOakes (djo@PacBell.COM) %% "I believe in a God which doesn't need heavy financing." -- Fletch %% "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." -- George Bernard Shaw %% "... You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't." "But that's not *fair*!" "Of course it's not fair. We're *evil*. Look it up." %% "When people aren't stupid Usenet is even more useful. Too bad this happens so rarely." -- Jef Poskanzer <jef@well.sf.ca.us> %% "Xerox sues somebody for copying?" -- David Letterman %% If you're not part of the solution, you must be part of the precipitate. %% "And if You exist, why do you let your Evil churchs exist????" -- Michael S. Schechter "Maybe because He is a libertarian?" -- Mike Van Pelt %% "...Or, I may not feel that my belief-system needs to be self-consistent in a post-Goedelian epoch." -- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes %% "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." -- Patti Smith %% "It is not possible to convey sarcasm to certain members of the net without using a 2x4. The smiley face merely reminds them of why their head is being dented." -- John Woods %% "Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy." -- John Dewey %% "There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man, with the possible exception of the sword." -- Benjamin Dana %% "Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?" -- Kelvin Throop, III %% "It does not pay a prophet to be too specific." -- L. Sprague de Camp %% "One macine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -- Elbert Hubbard ...yet. -- Karl Lehenbauer %% "The important thing is never to stop questioning." -- Albert Einstein %% "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." -- Albert Einstein %% "What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable." -- Albert Einstein %% "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." -- Arthur C. Clarke %% "When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fevor and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right." --Isaac Asimov %% Poverty: An unhappy state that persists as long as anyone lacks anything he would like to have. %% Statistics: A system for expressing your political prejudices in convincing scientific guise. %% Unfair competition: Selling cheaper than we do. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% Zero defects: The result of shutting down a production line. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% Conference: A place where conversation is substituted for the dreariness of work and the loneliness of thought. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% "A survey is being made of this": We need more time to think of an answer. --Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% "Note and initial": Let's spread the responsibility of this. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% Program: Any assignment that cannot be completed with one telephone call. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% Status quo: The mess we're in. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% "Under consideration": We never heard of it. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% "Under active consideration": We're searching the files for it. -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary" %% Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up. -- G.K. Chesterton %% When you don't have an education, you've got to use your brains. -- Anonymous %% Why explore the Universe? It is almost ironic that we should have to ask this question because it is almost as though we have to apologize for our highest attributes... we went to Mars, not because of our technology, but because of our imagination. -- Norman Cousins %% OLTION'S COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE Bang! ...crumple. -- Jery Oltion %% "Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better." -- Andre Gide %% "Freedom" has no meaning of itself. There are always restrictions, be they legal, genetic, or physical. If you don't believe me, try to chew a radio signal. -- Kelvin Throop, III %% "There are two was to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking." -- Alfred Korzybski %% "It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." -- J.R.R. Tolkien %% "I'm a self-made man, but I think if I had to do it over again, I'd call in someone else." -- Roland Young %% "It is a faith (not alwaays justified) of theoretical physics that if man proposes what is sufficiently elegant, nature, pleased and flattered, will say yes." -- Leon N. Cooper, "Introduction To The Meaning & Structure Of Physics" %% "Better late than before anybody has invited you." -- Ambrose Bierce %% "The difference between a rabbit and a rock is the information content, and the difference between a living and a dead rabbit is in the availability or usability of the information." -- Dr. John A. Ball %% "To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social estab- lishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it." -- Isaac Asimov %% "If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has conferred on mankind the power not only to create but also to annihilate, it has at the same time provided humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing." -- John F. Kennedy %% "Even if the propeller had the power of propelling a vessel, it would be found altogether useless in practice, because the power being applied in the stern would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer." -- Sir William Symonds - British Royal Navy, 1837 %% "Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training." -- Anna Freud Well, sometimes, anyway. -- Mark Brader, utzoo!sq!msb %% "A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup." -- Old Mongolian Saying %% "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose." -- J.B.S. Haldane %% "There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for." -- Fred Hoyle %% "Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it." -- Aubrey Eben %% "There is no knowledge that is not power." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% "It is important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." -- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr. %% Hugh Downs' Four Rules for Investigating the Universe: Rule #1-- When confronted with an apparent infinite or infinitely repeating pattern, expect some variant that keeps it from being infinite. Rule #2-- When all investigation supports Rule 1, look for a situation which violates it. Rule #3-- Be prepared for an infinite oscillation between Rules 1 and 2. Rule #4-- Apply Rule 1. %% "Although plastic was brought into industrial use in 1909 by L.H. Baekeland of Yonkers, it was not until after World War II that the modern miracle substance was used in a wide variety of consumer goods, among them speedboats, dentures and flamingos. Previously flamingos were made of cement. Before that they were made by other flamingos." -- William E. Geist, The New York Times %% "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." -- David Brower %% "The mass media is supported and sustained by commercial entities. And corn flakes and Shakespeare are simply not kissing cousins. Leonard Bernstein and living bras are incompatible. And you cannot sustain adult, probing, meaningful drama when the proceedings are interrupted every twelve minutes by a dozen dancing rabbits with toilet paper." -- Rod Serling %% "If people behaved like governments, you'd call the cops." -- Kelvin Throop %% "Put all your eggs in one basket, and WATCH THAT BASKET!" -- Jerry Buchmeyer %% "Any fully matured science of ecology will have to grapple with the fact that from the ecological point of view, man is one of those animals which is in danger from its too successful participation in the struggle for existence." -- Joseph Wood Krutch %% "All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value." -- Carl Sagan %% "The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." -- Eden Phillpots %% "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games which it is most attached is called, "Keep tomorrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun." -- G.K. Chesterton %% "You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus." -- Mark Twain %% "The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact." -- Thomas Henry Huxley %% "The religion that is afraid of science dishoners God and commits suicide." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% "Judging a piece of fiction by the quality of its writing without considering its subject matter is like buying a car because it has a pretty paint job, without considering the state of its engine and transmission." -- Kelvin Throop %% "If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy." -- Kurt Vonnegut %% "It's better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." -- Abraham Lincoln %% "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." -- H. G. Wells %% "Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies." -- Honore de Balzac %% "I have a perfect cure for a sore throat. Cut it." -- Alfred Hitchcock %% "Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier." -- Stanislaw Lem %% "We will rediscover a [New York City] river so extravagantly polluted that new life forms will emerge from it spontaneously, demanding welfare and voting rights." -- Douglas Adams %% "The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever." -- Anatole France %% "My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn." -- Louis Adamic %% "Pessimists have already begun to worry about what is going to replace automation." -- John Tudor %% "The totality is present even in the broken pieces." -- Aldous Huxley %% "Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth." -- Lillian Hellman %% "Behind every successful man is a surprised woman." -- Maryon Pearson %% "We are on a threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from nonlife to life." -- Hans Moravec (on artificial intelligence) %% "Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it." -- Max Frisch %% "A stitch in time would have confused Einstein." -- Anonymous %% "The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing." -- William J. Broad %% "Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room." -- Blaise Pascal %% "I've gone to hundreds of fortune-tellers' parlors, and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her." -- New York City Detective %% "The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds." -- Claude Bernard %% "Is not the whole world a vast house of assignaion to which the filing system has been lost?" -- Quentin Crisp %% "I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us." -- Konrad Lorenz %% "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion." -- George Benard Shaw %% "If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." -- James Thurber %% "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." -- Aneurin Bevan %% "Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every day, like those of a baseball player." -- Anonymous %% "It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off." -- Woody Allen %% "In ecology, as in economics, TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost. Failure to recognize the "no free lunch" law causes the buffalo-hunter mentality syndrome -- the unthinking assumption that there will always be plenty because there alwayss has been plenty." -- Dr. Robert W. Prehoda %% "Only a mediocre person is always at his best." -- W. Somerset Maugham %% "No one can forbid us the future." -- Inscription on the base of Paris's monument to Leon Gambetta %% "Perhaps the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time." -- Dean Acheson %% "Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it's one of the most charming things about them." -- Germaine Greer %% "Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology." -- John Tudor %% "New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in them?'" -- H. G. Wells %% "There is considerable evidence that great empires and civilizations have been undone not by barbarian invaders but by climatic change." -- 1977 CIA report %% "We all worry about the population explosion -- but we don't worry about it at the right time." -- Arthur Hoppe %% "Hold still while I flame you." -- Karl Lehenbauer %% "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" -- The Joker %% "A book is the product of a contract with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins." -- Salman Rushdie, _The Satanic Verses_ %% "...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..." -- Plato, _Phaedrus_ %% There are two ways to improve on human factors in computing: Make the programmers less stupid and/or make the users less stupid. Both are necessary, neither are likely. -- Digital Teddy Bear (dlarson@blake.acs.washington.edu) %% "If I didn't have a Unix machine, I'd feel naked." -- Guess Who %% "I love you for your beauty; love me although I am ugly." -- Miguel Cervantes, _Don_Quixote_ %% "May the Lord open your eyes and heart so that you may understand him more clearer." -- Patrick Harubin, pgh@cs.duke.edu, soc.religion.islam %% 'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.' -- Goethe %% "...The Universe is thronged with fire and light, And we but smaller suns, which, skinned, trapped and kept Enshrined in blood and precious bones, hold back the night." -- Ray Bradbury %% "Keep the wind in your solar sails..." -- Glenn Clapp %% "Nothing can stop him. Not even common sense." -- Mark Komarinski %% "The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics." -- Plato %% "I believe in eight of the ten commandments; and I believe in going to church every Sunday unless there's a game on." -- Steve Martin -- -- uunet!sugar!karl "As long as there is a legion of superheros, all else -- can surely be made right." -- Sensor Girl -- Usenet access: (713) 438-5018