The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whiskey.
By diligent effort, I learned to like it.
-- Winston Churchill
|
( .login haiku )
You have mail.
The Moon is Full
-----
This fortune is false.
-----
|
HELP! Man trapped in a human body!
|
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about
whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they
got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The
medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's
rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden
itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that the Garden
and the world were created. So God must have been an architect."
The computer scientist, who'd listened carefully to all of this, then
commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
|
Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.
-- Baba Ram Dass
|
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life, you
would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.
|
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- J.S. Bach
|
To everything there is a season, a time for every pupose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-9
|
To write a sonnet you must ruthlessly
strip down your words to naked, willing flesh.
Then bind them to a metaphor or three,
and take by force a satisfying mesh.
Arrange them to your will, each foot in place.
You are the master here, and they the slaves.
Now whip them to maintain a constant pace
and rhythm as they stand in even staves.
A word that strikes no pleasure? Cast it out!
What use are words that drive not to the heart?
A lazy phrase? Discard it, shrug off doubt,
and choose more docile words to take its part.
A well-trained sonnet lives to entertain,
by making love directly to the brain.
|
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
|
Immanuel Kant but Kubla Khan.
|
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
combination is locked up in the safe.
-- Peter DeVries
|
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
-- Benjamin Franklin
|
Lamonte Cranston once hired a new Chinese manservant. While describing his
duties to the new man, Lamonte pointed to a bowl of candy on the coffee
table and warned him that he was not to take any. Some days later, the new
manservant was cleaning up, with no one at home, and decided to sample some
of the candy. Just than, Cranston walked in, spied the manservant at the
candy, and said:
"Pardon me Choy, is that the Shadow's nugate you chew?"
|
A boy scout troop went on a hike. Crossing over a stream, one of
the boys dropped his wallet into the water. Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed
the wallet and tossed it to another carp. Then that carp passed it to
another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet
back and forth. "Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a
rare case of carp-to-carp walleting."
|
The scum also rises.
-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
|
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ...
Q: How about an example?
A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a
big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin. If not, use news.misc.
The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is
a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to
soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)
You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this.
-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
|
What happens when you cut back the jungle? It recedes.
|
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
- Frank Zappa
|
Sank heaven for leetle curls.
|
A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing steam does not grow stagnant.
Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.
Software rots if not used.
These are great mysteries.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
|
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
Corollary:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
|
Rhode's Law:
When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance,
or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or
circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted,
estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose
of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or
personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the
above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and
adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably,
and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to
assume otherwise, maybe.
|
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
|
[District Attorneys] learn in District Attorney School that there are
two sure-fire ways to get a lot of favorable publicity:
(1) Go down and raid all the lockers in the local high school and
confiscate 53 marijuana cigarettes and put them in a pile and hold
a press conference where you announce that they have a street value
of $850 million. These raids never fail, because ALL high schools,
including brand-new, never-used ones, have at least 53 marijuana
cigarettes in the lockers. As far as anyone can tell, the locker
factory puts them there.
(2) Raid an "adult book store" and hold a press conference where you
announce you are charging the owner with 850 counts of being a
piece of human sleaze. This also never fails, because you always
get a conviction. A juror at a pornography trial is not about to
state for the record that he finds nothing obscene about a movie
where actors engage in sexual activities with live snakes and a
fire extinguisher. He is going to convict the bookstore owner, and
vote for the death penalty just to make sure nobody gets the wrong
impression.
-- Dave Barry, "Pornography"
|
When you overesteem great hackers,
more users become cretins.
When you develop encryption,
more users become crackers.
The Guru leads
by emptying user's minds
and increasing their quotas,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
When users lack knowledge and desire,
management will not try to interfere.
Practice not-looping,
and everything will fall into place.
|
Roses are red;
Violets are blue.
I'm schizophrenic,
And so am I.
|
What passes for womens' intuition is often no more than man's
transparency.
-- George Nathan
|
We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful
new world. We will see it when we believe it.
-- Saul Alinsky
|
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do
it.
-- Gandhi
|
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, which suddenly flips
over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come.
-- Matt Groening, "Love is Hell"
|
The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.
-- Stanley Kubrick
|
I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
-- Florence Henderson
|
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't,
and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
|
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
-- Alan Watts
|
Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.
-- Titus Maccius Plautus
|
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
|
To be is to be related.
-- C.J. Keyser.
|
If you threw a party, the worst thing you could have done was throw the
kind of party where your guests wake up today and call you up to say
they had a nice time. Now you'll be expected to throw another party next
year.
What you should have done was throw the kind of party where your guests
wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if
they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so
anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start
planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you
from having another one
So next time, make sure your party reaches the correct Festivity Level:
Festivity Level One: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other,
admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the
upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling at hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level Two: Your guests are talking loudly - sometimes to each
other and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree
ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping
their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level Three: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate
objects, singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," gulping other people's
drinks, wolfing down Christmas-tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres
in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike.
Festivity Level Four: Your guests have hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies, are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
You want to keep your party somewhere around Level Three, unless you
rent your home and own firearms, in which case you can go to Level Four.
The best way to get to Level Three is eggnog. Eggnog is a traditional
holiday drink invented by the English. Many people wonder where the word
"eggnog" comes from. The first syllable comes from the English word
"egg," meaning, "egg." I don't know where the "nog" comes from.
To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine, gin and, if they are in
season, eggs. Combine all ingredients in a large, festive bowl. Then
induce your guests to drink this mixture. If your party is successful,
the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very
successful, in which case they wil lob tear gas through your living-room
window. As host, your job is to make sure they don't arrest anybody. Or
if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it
isn't you. The best way to do this is to show a lot of respect for their
uniforms and assure them you're not doing anything illegal. Here's how
to handle it:
Police: Good evening. Are you the host?
You: No.
Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
You: About the drugs?
Police: No.
You: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the
guns?
Police: No, the noise.
You: Oh, the noise. Well, that makes sense, because there
are no guns or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is
heard in the background.) Or fireworks. Who's
complaining about the noise? The neighbors?
Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the
recent complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think
you could ask the host to quiet things down?
You: No problem. (At this point, a Volkswagen bug with
primitive religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges
from the living room and roars down the hall, past the
police and out the front door onto the lawn, where it
smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out onto the
grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind down.
-- Dave Barry
|
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon
to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde
|
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
|
There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
-- Walt Disney
|
You will be successful in love.
|
1925 With a drink so good, 'tis folly to be thirsty
1929 The high sign of refreshment
1929 The pause that refreshes
1930 It had to be good to get where it is
1932 The drink that makes a pause refreshing
1935 The pause that brings friends together
1937 STOP for a pause... GO refreshed
1938 The best friend thirst ever had
1939 Thirst stops here
1942 It's the real thing
1947 Have a Coke
1961 Zing! what a REFRESHING NEW FEELING
1963 Things go better with Coke
1969 Face Uncle Sam with a Coke in your hand
1979 Have a Coke and a smile
1982 Coke is it!
-- Coca-Cola slogans
|
A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
|
On ability:
A dwarf is small, even if he stands on a mountain top;
a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4BC - 65AD
|
Joshu: What is the true Way?
Nansen: Every way is the true Way.
J: Can I study it?
N: The more you study, the further from the Way.
J: If I don't study it, how can I know it?
N: The Way does not belong to things seen: nor to things unseen.
It does not belong to things known: nor to things unknown. Do
not seek it, study it, or name it. To find yourself on it, open
yourself as wide as the sky.
|
I consider a new device or technology to have been culturally accepted when
it has been used to commit a murder.
-- M. Gallaher
|
Nothing lasts forever.
Where do I find nothing?
|
A day without orange juice is like a day without orange juice.
|
Premenstrual Syndrome:
Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.
|
To thine own self be true. (If not that, at least make some money.)
|
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
-- Wm. Shakespeare
|
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
|
The meek will inherit the earth -- if that's OK with you.
|
THE POINT
by Bryan O'Sullivan ( cDc )
you could spend an hour counting the petals in a flower
it might take you a year to count the veins in each petal
if you spent ten lifetimes, maybe you could count its cells
but you'd have completely missed the point
you fuckhead
|
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
|
When all else fails, pour a pint of Guinness in the gas tank, advance
the spark 20 degrees, cry "God Save the Queen!", and pull the starter
knob.
-- MG "Series MGA" Workshop Manual
|
Fortune suggests uses for YOUR favorite UNIX commands!
Try:
[Where is Jimmy Hoffa? (C shell)
^How did the^sex change operation go? (C shell)
"How would you rate BSD vs. System V?
%blow (C shell)
'thou shalt not mow thy grass at 8am' (C shell)
got a light? (C shell)
!!:Say, what do you think of margarine? (C shell)
PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense (Bourne shell)
make love
make "the perfect dry martini"
man -kisses dog (anything up to 4.3BSD)
i=Hoffa ; >$i; $i; rm $i; rm $i (Bourne shell)
|
The Public is merely a multiplied "me."
-- Mark Twain
|
All this time I've been VIEWING a RUSSIAN MIDGET SODOMIZE a HOUSECAT!
|
The only easy way to tell a hamster from a gerbil is that the
gerbil has more dark meat.
|
I believe in sex and death -- two experiences that come once in a lifetime.
-- Woody Allen
|
There's been no top authority saying what marijuana does to you. I really
don't know that much about it. I tried it once but it didn't do anything
to me.
-- John Wayne
|
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds,
and the pessimist knows it.
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists"
Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking
almost gently. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
-- James Cabell, "The Silver Stallion"
|
Everything should be built from the top-down, except for the first time.
|
Handsome woman. -- Lovely bust.
Fine young fellow. -- Stirred-up lust. --
Babies' diapers. --
Bottom wipers. --
Years of struggle. -- Coffin. -- Dust.
|
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of
IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there
be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they
carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called
the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was
evening and there was morning, one interrupt.
-- Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk"
|
The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of
whether submarines can swim.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
|
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie;
and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head
into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently
married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand
Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all
fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran
out at the heels of their boots.
-- Samuel Foote
|
Stop! There was first a game of blindman's buff. Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The
way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
on the credulity of human nature.
|
You're at the end of the road again.
|
Coincidence, n.:
You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
going on.
|
A beat schizophrenic said, "Me?
I am not I, I'm a tree."
But another, more sane,
Shouted, "I'm a great dane "
And covered his pants leg with pee.
|
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
|
There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life
is the process of discovering them over and over and over.
-- David Nichols
|
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should
therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could
hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to
declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war,
then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press.
Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
-- William Ellery Channing
|
Once, there was NO fun ... This was before MENU planning, FASHION
statements or NAUTILUS equipment ... Then, in 1985 ... FUN was
completely encoded in this tiny MICROCHIP ... It contains 14,768 vaguely
amusing SIT-COM pilots!! We had to wait FOUR BILLION years but we
finally got JERRY LEWIS, MTV and a large selection of creme-filled
snack cakes!
|
LIKE:
When being alive at the same time is a wonderful coincidence.
|
Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
notify you if the record has pornographics material or
material glorifying violence?"
Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
legs on the album cover is good indication that it's
not for little Johnny."
-- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock
lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985
|
/* Haley */
(Haley's comment.)
|
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith
And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
(woo woo, woo woo)
I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me
(who who, who who)
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay
(woo woo, who who)
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
(who who)
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
(who who, who who)
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
(woo woo, who who)
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
(who who, who who)
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
(woo woo)
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
(who who)
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down
(woo woo, woo woo)
Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!
(woo woo)
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame
Oh, who
woo, woo
Woo, who
Woo, woo
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah
What's my name
Tell me, baby, what's my name
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah
Woo woo
Woo woo
|
Gravity is an unforgiving motherfucker.
|
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
|
Taj Mahal's version of Corrina, Corrina
Got a bird that whistles, baby got a bird,
honey got a birdie would sing
Baby got a bird, honey got a birdie would sing
Without m' Corrina, sure don't mean,
sure don't mean a natural thing
I learned to love you, baby 'fo I call,
honey 'fo I call your name
Baby 'fo I call, honey 'fo I call your name
I wouldn' trade your love for money, honey you're my warm heart,
baby you're my love light thang
Have mercy, have mercy, baby on my hard luck,
honey on my hard luck soul
Baby on my hard luck, honey on my hard luck soul
I got a rainbow roun' my shoulder,
look like silver, baby shine like Klondike gold
|
There seems no plan because it is all plan.
-- C.S. Lewis
|
The knowledge that makes us cherish
innocence makes innocence unattainable.
-- Irving Howe
|
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
I muck with indices and structs all day
And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
|
"I hate quotations."
-- Ralph Waldon Emerson
|
You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who
points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get
attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra
chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a
gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a
rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy
trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a
vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyranosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch
long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is
dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your
head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves
are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to
transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem
to have gotten yourself killed, as well.
You scored 0 out of 250 possible points.
That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer.
To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.
|
We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support
of the earth, contrived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support
the elephant, a huge tortoise. If we will candidly confess the truth, we
know as little of the operation of the nerves, as he did of the manner in
which the earth is supported: and our hypothesis about animal spirits, or
about the tension and vibrations of the nerves, are as like to be true, as
his about the support of the earth. His elephant was a hypothesis, and our
hypotheses are elephants. Every theory in philosophy, which is built on
pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly
by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose
feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.
-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
|
In the begining, God created the Earth and he said, "Let there be
mud."
And there was mud.
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud
can see what we have done."
And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was
man. Mud-as-man alone could speak.
"What is the purpose of all this?" man asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all of this," said God.
And He went away.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Between Time and Timbuktu"
|
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
-- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
|
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
-- Kingfish
|
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #14 -- VALGOL
VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the
industry. VALGOL commands include REALLY, LIKE, WELL, and Y*KNOW.
Variables are assigned with the =LIKE and =TOTALLY operators. Other
operators include the "California booleans", AX and NOWAY. Loops are
accomplished with the FOR SURE construct. A simple example:
LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
IF PIZZA =LIKE BITCHEN AND
GUY =LIKE TUBULAR AND
VALLEY GIRL =LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2
THEN
FOR I =LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
DO*WAH - (DITTY**2); BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
SURE
LIKE, BAG THIS PROGRAM; REALLY; LIKE TOTALLY(Y*KNOW); IM*SURE
GOTO THE MALL
VALGOL is also characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For
example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the
message GAG ME WITH A SPOON! A successful compile may be termed MAXIMALLY
AWESOME!
|
tales of great ulysses
e. clapton / cream
You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.
And the colours of the sea bind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses,
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.
And you see a girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.
The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.
Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses, how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.
The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.
|
"If I was gonna go out, I wouldn't do it like [Kurt Cobain]. I wanna do
something more dramatic. I'd do it driving a '67 Stingray off the Grand
Canyon, on fire, dressed as Spider-Man, screaming 'Mom!' at the top of
my lungs, and have somebody videotape it."
-- Charlie Sheen
|
"Heisenberg may have slept here"
|
Q: How do you shoot a blue elephant?
A: With a blue-elephant gun.
Q: How do you shoot a pink elephant?
A: Twist its trunk until it turns blue, then shoot it with
a blue-elephant gun.
|
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
-- The Books of Bokonon
|
There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the
warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design:
an accounting package or an operating system?"
"An operating system," replied the programmer.
The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an
accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating
system," he said.
"Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package,
the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas:
how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to
the tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited my outside
appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the
simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system
is easier to design."
The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well, but
which is easier to debug?"
The programmer made no reply.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
|
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages
whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits
LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
|
A little word of doubtful number,
A foe to rest and peaceful slumber.
If you add an "s" to this,
Great is the metamorphosis.
Plural is plural now no more,
And sweet what bitter was before.
What am I?
|
sir duke -- stevie wonder
Music is a world within itself
With a language we all understand
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands
But just because a record has a groove
Don't make it in the groove
But you can tell right away at letter A
When the people start to move
They can feel it all over
They can feel it all over people
They can feel it all over
They can feel it all over people
Music knows it is and always will
Be one of the things that life just won't quit
But here are some of music's pioneers
That time will not allow us to forget
For there's Basie, Miller, Schimo
And the king of all Sir Duke
And with a voice like Ella's ringing out
There's no way the band can lose
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
You can feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
I can feel it all over-all over now people
Can't you feel it all over
Come on let's feel it all over people
You can feel it all over
Everybody-all over people
|
CLONE OF MY OWN (to Home on the Range)
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With the Y chromosome changed to X.
And when she is grown,
My very own clone,
We'll be of the opposite sex.
Chorus:
Clone, clone of my own,
With the Y chromosome changed to X.
And when we're alone,
Since her mind is my own,
She'll be thinking of nothing but sex.
-- Randall Garrett
|
(1/2)
/ 3
| 2 3 x 3.14 (1/3)
| z dz cos (--------) = ln(e )
/ 1 9
The integral, from one to root three,
Of z to the second dz,
Times the cosine
Of 3 pi over nine
Is the log of the third root of e.
|
HIGH TECHNOLOGY:
A California innovation composed
of equal parts of silicon and marijuana.
|
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
-- Albert Einstein
|
The man who understands one woman is
qualified to understand pretty well everything.
-- Yeats
|
crosseyed and painless
d. byrne (talking heads)
Lost my shape-Trying to act casual!
Can't stop-I might end up in the hospital
I'm changing my shape-I feel like an accident
They're back!-To explain their experience
Isn't it weird/Looks too obscure to me
Wasting away/And that was their policy
I'm ready to leave-I push the fact in front of me
Facts lost-Facts are never what they seem to be
Nothing there!-No information left of any kind
Lifting my head-Looking for danger signs
There was a line/There was a formula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us
There was a line/There was a forula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
The feeling returns/Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/looking around inside
The island of doubt-It's like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight-Got the message from the oxygen
Making a list-Find the cost of opportunity
Doing it right-Facts are useless in emergencies
The feeling returns/Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/Looking around inside.
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
|
eyes of the world (garcia)
Right outside this lazy summer home
you ain't got time to call your soul a critic no.
Right outside the lazy gate of winter's summer home,
wond'rin' where the nut-thatch winters,
wings a mile long just carried the bird away.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
the heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenin's and songs of it's own.
There comes a redeemer, and he slowly too fades away,
And there follows his wagon behind him that's loaded with clay.
And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay,
and night comes so quiet, it's close on the heels of the day.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
the heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenin's and songs of it's own.
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own,
And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home,
sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone,
sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
the heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin' brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenin's and songs of it's own.
|
Galbraith's Law of Human Nature:
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that
there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.
|
After 35 years, I have finished a comprehensive study of European
comparative law. In Germany, under the law, everything is prohibited,
except that which is permitted. In France, under the law, everything
is permitted, except that which is prohibited. In the Soviet Union,
under the law, everything is prohibited, including that which is
permitted. And in Italy, under the law, everything is permitted,
especially that which is prohibited.
-- Newton Minow,
Speech to the Association of American Law Schools, 1985
|
NO OPIUM-SMOKING IN THE ELEVATORS
-- sign in the Rand Hotel, New York, 1907
|
Lobster:
Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only
proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your
guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're cooked.
The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on the sea
floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs. Grasp the lobster
behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say,
"Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a
scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural
apparatus you call a memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may
even take a swipe at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into
the pot. Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will
be, too.
-- Dave Barry
|
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
of the way.
|
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
|
If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
-- Woody Allen
|
Be cheerful while you are alive.
-- Phathotep, 24th Century B.C.
|
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
|
A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.
I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.
-- THE ABC'S OF UNIX
|
The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize it
is your move.
-- Frank Crane
|
"Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?"
"Good afternoon. I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please."
"A--? Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I
mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I
say they have a right to. But I think... I might... Let's have a look
down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are!
Look at that, isn't it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well,
but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call
them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't
spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a
tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories,
including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I
got to do the fitting for that! Ha -- just my little joke. And
there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun,
charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster
with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your
next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free
lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there's the *special*
presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two*
charged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that -- don't
worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat? Feel how light it is?
Smooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and*
beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's
no recoil. Because it's shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun,
beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That's not a line, she
really has. Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free
charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special
offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for
one-forty-nine."
"I'll take the special."
"Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice. Now, do--?"
"And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three
six-five AP/wire-flechettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a
Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding
rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is
compatible?"
"Aah... yes, And how does madam wish to pay?"
She slapped her credit card on the counter. "Eventually."
-- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background"
|
Ginsberg's Theorem:
(1) You can't win.
(2) You can't break even.
(3) You can't even quit the game.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
Theorem. To wit:
(1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
(2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
(3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
|
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard
And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
Finding some code
That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Hacker MacKensie
Writing the code for a program that no one will run
It's nearly done
Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's
nobody there.
What does he care?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
|
you can't blame the youth
peter tosh
Your teacher used to learn in school how a cow flies over the moon.
Your teacher used to learn in school how a dish runs away with a spoon.
So.
You can't blame the youth.
And you can't fool the youth.
You can't blame the youth of today.
You teacher used teach about Christopher Colombus and you said he was a very great man.
You used to teach about Marco Polo and you said he was a very great man.
So.
You can't blame the youth.
And you can't fool the youth.
You can't blame the youth of today.
When every Christmas comes around you buy the youth a fancy toy --.
When every Christmas comes around you buy the youth a fancy toy --.
So.
You can't blame the youth.
And you can't fool the youth.
You can't blame the youth, not at all.
Your teacher used teach about Pirate Hawkins and you said he was a very great man.
Your teacher used teach about Pirate Morgan and you said he was a great man.
You teacher used teach about Christopher Colombus and you said he was a very great man.
You teacher used teach about Marco Polo, you said he was a very great man.
So.
You can't blame the youth.
You can't fool the youth.
You can't blame the youth --.
You can't blame the youth.
And you can't fool the youth.
Oh, you can't blame the youth of today.
Oh, not at all.
--.
The youth.
The youth.
|
Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
|
Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids,
we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and
listening to repetitive electronic music.
--Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc. 1989
|
Chemistry is applied theology.
-- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
|
Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
come back.
Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
although their insurance rates went way up.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
|
And as we stand on the edge of darkness
Let our chant fill the void
That others may know
In the land of the night
The ship of the sun
Is drawn by
The grateful dead.
-- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
|
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
They usually have virgins,
And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
|
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
universe.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
|
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
-- Hofstadter
|
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be
discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in
my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
|
What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
|
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
|
It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
the ground.
-- Daniel B. Luten
|
You had some happiness once, but your parents moved away, and you had to
leave it behind.
|
When taxes are due, Americans tend to feel quite bled-white and blue.
|
Dear Miss Manners:
Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from your face.
Gentle Reader:
Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on your face [...]
|
I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20
years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors
would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they
all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!"
Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had
been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors.
There was a computer in every doorknob.
-- Danny Hillis
|
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #2
What to do...
if you get a phone call from Mars:
Speak slowly and be sure to enunciate your words properly. Limit
your vocabulary to simple words. Try to determine if you are
speaking to someone in a leadership capacity, or an ordinary citizen.
if he, she or it doesn't speak English?
Hang up. There's no sense in trying to learn Martian over the phone.
If your Martian really had something important to say to you, he, she
or it would have taken the trouble to learn the language before
calling.
if you get a phone call from Jupiter?
Explain to your caller, politely but firmly, that being from Jupiter,
he, she or it is not "life as we know it". Try to terminate the
conversation as soon as possible. It will not profit you, and the
charges may have been reversed.
|
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.
|
The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says
it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
-- E. Hubbard
|
It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
|
There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when
the boss asks for a lift home from office.
|
I understand why you're confused. You're thinking too much.
-- Carole Wallach.
|
(1) Office employees will daily sweep the floors, dust the
furniture, shelves, and showcases.
(2) Each day fill lamps, clean chimneys, and trim wicks.
Wash the windows once a week.
(3) Each clerk will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of
coal for the day's business.
(4) Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to your
individual taste.
(5) This office will open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. except
on the Sabbath, on which day we will remain closed. Each
employee is expected to spend the Sabbath by attending
church and contributing liberally to the cause of the Lord.
-- "Office Worker's Guide", New England Carriage
Works, 1872
|
***** Special AI Seminar (abstract)
It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge
in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not
sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly,
we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call
"wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a
wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought.
IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom
about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so
forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic
rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL
succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed
in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those
underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory
of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe
IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly
discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.
|
One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
[...]
sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
|
You can never trust a woman; she may be true to you.
|
Don't remember what you can infer.
-- Harry Tennant
|
About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt
ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
|
Expect the worst. It's the least you can do.
|
I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
-- Monty Python
|
If Mr. Edison had thought more about what he was doing, he wouldn't sweat
as much.
--Nicola Tesla
|
Hi! How are things going?
(just fine, thank you...)
Great! Say, could I bother you for a question?
(you just asked one...)
Well, how about one more?
(one more than the first one?)
Yes.
(you already asked that...)
[at this point, Alphonso gets smart... ]
May I ask two questions, sir?
(no.)
May I ask ONE then?
(nope...)
Then may I ask, sir, how I may ask you a question?
(yes, you may.)
Sir, how may I ask you a question?
(you must ask for retroactive question asking privileges for
the number of questions you have asked, then ask for that
number plus two, one for the current question, and one for the
next one)
Sir, may I ask nine questions?
(go right ahead...)
|
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
-- Sean O'Casey
|
What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations
involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will
be pretty bad.
-- Dave Barry
|
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
|
When in panic, fear and doubt,
Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
|
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
|
I remember once being on a station platform in Cleveland at four in the
morning. A black porter was carrying my bags, and as we were waiting for
the train to come in, he said to me: "Excuse me, Mr. Cooke, I don't want to
invade your privacy, but I have a bet with a friend of mine. Who composed
the opening theme music of 'Omnibus'? My friend said Virgil Thomson." I
asked him, "What do you say?" He replied, "I say Aaron Copeland." I said,
"You're right." The porter said, "I knew Thomson doesn't write counterpoint
that way." I told that to a network president, and he was deeply unimpressed.
-- Alistair Cooke
|
Love your neighbour, yet don't pull down your hedge.
-- Benjamin Franklin
|
Then there was LSD, which was supposed to make you think you could fly.
I remember it made you think you couldn't stand up, and mostly it was
right.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
|
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
-- turkish proverb
|
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and bold as love.
-- jlph's take
|
An adequate bootstrap is a condradiction of terms.
|
As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
Feeling worse and worser,
There I met a C.R.T.
And it drop't me a cursor.
C.R.T., C.R.T.,
Phosphors light on you!
If I had fifty hours a day
I'd spend them all at you.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
|
The Rules:
1: Thou shalt not worship other computer systems.
2: Thou shalt not impersonate Liberace or eat watermelon while sitting at
the console keyboard.
3: Thou shalt not slap users on the face, nor staple their silly little
card decks together.
4: Thou shalt not get physically involved with the computer system,
especially if you're already married.
5: Thou shalt not use magnetic tapes as frisbees, nor use a disk pack as
a stool to reach another disk pack.
6: Thou shalt not stare at the blinking lights for more than one 8 hour
shift.
7: Thou shalt not tell users that you accidentally destroyed their
files/backup just to see the look on their little faces.
8: Thou shalt not enjoy cancelling a job.
9: Thou shalt not display firearms in the computer room.
10: Thou shalt not push buttons "just to see what happens".
|
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
-- Lenny Bruce
|
"Space travel is utter bilge" -- common misquote of UK Astronomer Royal
Richard Woolley's remarks of 1956
"All this writing about space travel is utter bilge. To go to the
moon would cost as much as a major war." -- what he actually said
|
Gravity is a myth: the Earth sucks.
|
Cthulhu Cthucks!
|
Nobody rewards the guy who keeps the dog quiet before it ever starts barking.
|
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
-- Stanley Garn
|
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
A new system, the CIRCULATORY system, has been added.
The long-experimental CIRCULATORY system has been released to users. The
Lisp Machine uses Type B fluid, the L machine uses Type A fluid. When the
switch to Common Lisp occurs both machines will, of course, be Type O.
Please check fluid level by using the DIP stick which is located in the
back of VMI monitors. Unchecked low fluid levels can cause poor paging
performance.
|
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
|
The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
-- Lenny Bruce
|
Garter, n.:
An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one.
-- Dave "First Strike" Pare
|
I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
A bit or byte to read or write,
I/O, I/O, I/O...
|
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
-- Vroomfondel
|
I've always felt sorry for people that don't drink -- remember,
when they wake up, that's as good as they're gonna feel all day!
|
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
which identifies errors in the original program.
|
My father taught me three things:
1: Never mix whiskey with anything but water.
2: Never try to draw to an inside straight.
3: Never discuss business with anyone who refuses to give his name.
|
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
can with just a kind word.
-- Bumper Sticker
|
Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.
-- Miyamoto Musashi, 1645
|
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
|
Ah, sweet Springtime, when a young man lightly turns his fancy over!
|
LOVE:
When, if asked to choose between your lover
and happiness, you'd skip happiness in a heartbeat.
|
I truly wish I could be a great surgeon or philosopher or author or anything
constructive, but in all honesty I'd rather turn up my amplifier full blast
and drown myself in the noise.
-- Charles Schmid, the "Tucson Murderer"
|
Not drinking, chasing women, or doing drugs won't
make you live longer -- it just seems that way.
|
It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like
the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
|
After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
|
The `loner' may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues,
for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be
simply making a limiting statement about himself.
-- Sidney Harris
|
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
|
Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real
disasters in life begin when you get what you want.
|
How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows.
|
TACKY:
Serving grape kool-aid at religious functions.
|
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade
themselves that they have a better idea.
-- John Ciardi
|
Serfs up!
-- Spartacus
|
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
-- Lily Tomlin
|
INNUENDO:
Italian enema.
|
Do you suffer painful elimination?
-- Don Knuth, "Structured Programming with Gotos"
Do you suffer painful recrimination?
-- Nancy Boxer, "Structured Programming with Come-froms"
Do you suffer painful illumination?
-- Isaac Newton, "Optics"
Do you suffer painful hallucination?
-- Don Juan, cited by Carlos Casteneda
|
You might have mail.
|
Dark and lonely on a summer night
Kill my landlord,
Kill my landlord.
The watchdog barkin'
Do he bite?
Kill my landlord,
Kill my landlord.
Slip in his window.
Break his neck.
Then his house I start to wreck
Got no reason,
What the heck?
Kill my landlord,
Kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L my landlord!
-- "Images" by Tyrone Green, SNL
|
There is a new anti-communist organization that advocates the use of
wooden toilet seats.
It's called the Birch John Society.
|
In 1967, the Soviet Government minted a beautiful silver ruble with Lenin
in a very familiar pose -- arms raised above him, leading the country to
revolution. But, it was clear to everybody, that if you looked at it from
behind, it was clear that Lenin was pointing to 11:00, when the Vodka
shops opened, and was actually saying, "Comrades, forward to the Vodka shops.
|
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
|
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
|
Omnibiblious, adj.:
Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything.
I'm omnibiblious."
|
Showing up is 80% of life.
-- Woody Allen
|
Stalin was dying, and summoned Khruschev to his bedside. Wheezing his last
words with difficulty, Stalin tells Khruschev, "The reins of the country are
now in your hands. But before I go, I want to give you some advice."
"Yes, yes, what is it?" says Khruschev, impatiently. Reaching under
his pillow, Stalin produced two envelopes labeled #1 and #2.
"Take these letters," he tells Khruschev. "Keep them safely -- don't
open them. Only if the country is in turmoil and things aren't going well,
open the first one. That'll give you some advice on what to do. And, if
after that, if things start getting REALLY bad, open the second one." And
with a gasp Stalin breathed his last.
Well, within a few years Khruschev started having problems --
unemployment increased, crops failed, people became restless. He decided it
was time to open the first letter. All it said was: "Blame everything on me!"
So Khruschev launched a massive deStalinization campaign, and blamed Stalin
for all the excesses and purges and ills of the present system.
But things continued on the downslide, and, finally, after much
deliberation, Khruschev opened the second letter.
All it said was: "Write two letters."
|
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
|
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all
real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
-- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
|
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
-- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
|
Men aren't attracted to me by my mind.
They're attracted by what I don't mind...
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
|
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
|
When you go into court, you are putting your fate into the hands
of people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
|
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our
lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
-- Robert Orben
|
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.
It lies behind starts and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.
|
Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
|
jeremiah [to gib]: ass coffee is a broken promise from god
|
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
CAR and CDR now return extra values.
The function CAR now returns two values. Since it has to go to the trouble
to figure out if the object is carcdr-able anyway, we figured you might as
well get both halves at once. For example, the following code shows how to
destructure a cons (SOME-CONS) into its two slots (THE-CAR and THE-CDR):
(MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND (THE-CAR THE-CDR) (CAR SOME-CONS) ...)
For symmetry with CAR, CDR returns a second value which is the CAR of the
object. In a related change, the functions MAKE-ARRAY and CONS have been
fixed so they don't allocate any storage except on the stack. This should
hopefully help people who don't like using the garbage collector because
it cold boots the machine so often.
|
My mother once said to me, "Elwood," (she always called me Elwood)
"Elwood, in this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant."
For years I tried smart. I recommend pleasant.
-- Elwood P. Dowde, "Harvey"
|
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic
is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago.
Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our
VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand,
easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual
users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines.
And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run
out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end
up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly
check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter
what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if
you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX
is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
|
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence
is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
-- William Bragg
|
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
|
it may be that your sole purpose in life
is to serve as a warning to others
|
Build a fire for a man, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
- Terry Pratchett
|
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
suitable application of high explosives.
|
New systems generate new problems.
|
jrrs says, "; but especially with how he's in a body=sux0r state now, if one
is to sink a bit into depression, one ought to be configuring a whupass unix
PC rather than perfecting one's rocket jump"
|
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
|
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
-- Steven Wright
|
A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his
novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how
insignificant," said the master.
"Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The
lesson is over for today," he said.
-- "The Tao of Programming"
|
If you think nobody cares if you're alive,
try missing a couple of car payments.
-- Earl Wilson
|
A new koan:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
It is an ice cream koan.
|
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do
the work.
-- John G. Pollard
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nobody got rich selling their time. the money is in reselling the time
of others.
-- Jeremiah's Corollary
|
The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
"100 percent American"...
-- U. S. Army (1945)
|
Abstainer, n.:
A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.
|
Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
|
if you're doing anything for money there is no coincidence
|
I doubt, therefore I might be.
|
What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?
-- Bertolt Brecht
|
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
-- Alfred Jarry
|
I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it.
-- Steven Wright
|
To be is to do.
-- I. Kant
To do is to be.
-- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
-- F. Flintstone
|
"Romeo wasn't bilked in a day."
-- Walt Kelly
|
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
Would you kindly direct me to hell?
-- Dorothy Parker
|
"Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
sincerely, extremely dangerously.
They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They
used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used
finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used
fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints.
They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile.
They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help.
They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And
what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
|
It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
icepacks.
-- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
|
When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
|
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #19
A: To be or not to be.
Q: What is the square root of 4b^2?
|
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
I saw at the airport... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all
the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are
they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current
rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be
impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying
goes, giving away the store?
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
|
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
|
The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
everybody and still nobody likes him.
-- Jim Samuels
|
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
|
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
|
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
time.
-- Merrick Furst
|
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:
"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
because it is impossible."
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
(Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
|
I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
true.
-- Harry Truman
|
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
quavering voice.
"No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
|
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
|
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
-- Albert Einstein
|
spieg says, "; thank you screen, for helping me work less on more projects"
|
Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
|
Double Bucky
(Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and Meta side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh, I sure wish that I,
Had a couple of bits more!
Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four.
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
-- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
(to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit
be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use
by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"])
|
All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for
fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
-- Henry Tyroon
|
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
|
Q: What do Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common?
A: The same middle name.
|
We're only in it for the volume.
-- Black Sabbath
|
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
-- Elizabeth Taylor
|
There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
than 100.
-- Steele's Law
|
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein
|
Entropy requires no maintenance.
-- Markoff Chaney
|
Gimmie That Old Time Religion
We will follow Zarathustra, We will worship like the Druids,
Zarathustra like we use to, Dancing naked in the woods,
I'm a Zarathustra booster, Drinking strange fermented
fluids,
And he's good enough for me! And it's good enough for me!
(chorus) (chorus)
In the church of Aphrodite,
The priestess wears a see-through nightie,
She's a mighty righteous sightie,
And she's good enough for me!
(chorus)
CHORUS: Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
'Cause it's good enough for me!
|
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
when you make it again.
-- Franklin P. Jones
|
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Stael;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me Recamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
-- Dorothy Parker
|
She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way a midget is
good at being short.
-- Clive James, on Marilyn Monroe
|
Jenkinson's Law:
It won't work.
|
Acid absorbs 47 times its own weight in excess Reality.
|
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of
sheer terror.
-- W. K. Hartmann
|
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
to cringe.
|
OUTCONERR
Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
Did logzerneg the ifthen block
All kludgy were the function flows
And subroutines adhoc.
Beware the runtime-bug my friend
squrooneg, the false goto
Beware the infiniteloop
And shun the inprectoo.
|
Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe
we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown:
No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
better.
|
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power
off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly:
"You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off
and on. The machine worked.
|
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterson
|
77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop the
---X--- (9) GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates to
--- --- (8) nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
Nine in the second place means:
The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
Six in the third place means:
In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue
Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
|
This is a beautiful feeling, when you can get it:
rory says, "hehe"
rory says, "omg"
rory says, "lord could you buy me a diamong ring"
rory says, "omfg"
rory says, "i spazzed out"
rory says, "i grabbed the guy next to me i dont know he was big"
rory says, "img like NO NO HE DID NOT DO THAT OMFG WTF"
rory says, "im telling you if he was leading the to certain death
charge, i would have been there"
rory says, "UP FRONT"
spieg says, "; CERTAIN DEATH HO!!"
|
"A horrible little boy came up to me and said, `You know in your book
The Martian Chronicles?' I said, `Yes?' He said, `You know where you
talk about Deimos rising in the East?' I said, `Yes?' He said `No.'
-- So I hit him."
-- attributed to Ray Bradbury
|
Stay the curse.
|
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
-- Frank Moore Colby
|
[on the internet]
mdz says, "it's like a bulletin board and a conversation and a
conference call and graffiti and postcards and constellations of stars"
|
We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later.
|
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
-- Brian W. Kernighan
|
Don Ameche: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she
pretty?
W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia.
Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
W. C.: It's almost impossible.
-- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
|
Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix
hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week --
but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game.
People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the
world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers.
-- E. Post
|
"Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal",
Datamation, 7/83
|
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
|
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
|
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
DC Divide and Conquer
DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key
DO Divide and Overflow
EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator
EPI Execute Programmer Immediately
EROS Erase Read Only Storage
EXCE Execute Customer Engineer
HCF Halt and Catch Fire
IBP Insert Bug and Proceed
INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out])
PBC Print and Break Chain
PDSK Punch Disk
|
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
|
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
-- Philip K. Dick
|
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do.
-- R. A. Heinlein
|
"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place."
-- IEEE Grid news magazine
|
Do not go to the barber after you go to the bar.
-- Bobby Kirchner
|
When making your one phone call from jail on thanksgiving, do not call
your wife.
-- Bobby Kirchner
|
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
-- Bobby Kirchner
|
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and you screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you have to flash your memory, and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom.
Copyright # Gene Ziegler
Email: Gene_Ziegler@Cornell.edu
|
'Twas the Night before Crisis
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
|
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, "Resume", 1926
|
I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.
-- Charles Schulz
|
The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
-- Nicol Williamson
|
The steady state of disks is full.
-- Ken Thompson
|
The goose shits on the commons.
|
I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
-- Emile Henry Gauvreay
|
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
|
"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
nothing whatever to do with it."
-- W. Somerset Maugham (last words)
|
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority,
it is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain
|
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
|
Chumba wumba gobbledy goo
life isn't fair, it's sad but it's true
Chumba wumba gobbledy gee
When your poor legs are stiff as a tree
What do you do when your stuck in a chair?
Finding it hard to go up and down stairs
What do you think of the one you call God?
Isn't his absence slight-ly odd? (maybe he's forgotten you)
Chumba wumba gobbledy gorse
Count yourself you're not a horse
They would turn you into dog food
or to chumba wumba gobbledy glue.
|
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
-- Bill Murray
|
rambling, gambling willie
bob dylan
Come around you rovin' gamblers and a story I will tell
About the greatest gambler, you all should know him well.
His name was Will O' Conley and he gambled all his life,
He had twenty-seven children, yet he never had a wife.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
He gambled in the White House and in the railroad yards,
Wherever there was people, there was Willie and his cards.
He had a reputation as the gamblin'est man around,
Wives would keep their husbands home when Willie came to town.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
Sailin' down the Mississippi to a town called New Orleans,
They're still talkin' about their card game on that Jackson River Queen.
"I've come to win some money," Gamblin' Willie says,
When the game finally ended up, the whole damn boat was his.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
Up in the Rocky Mountains in a town called Cripple Creek,
There was an all-night poker game, lasted about a week.
Nine hundred miners had laid their money down,
When Willie finally left the room, he owned the whole damn town.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
But Willie had a heart of gold and this I know is true,
He supported all his children, and all their mothers too.
He wore no rings or fancy things, like other gamblers wore,
He spread his money far and wide, to help the sick and the poor.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
When you played your cards with Willie, you never really knew
Whether he was bluffin' or whether he was true.
He won a fortune from a man who folded in his chair.
The man, he left a diamond flush, Willie didn't even have a pair.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
It was late one evenin' during a poker game,
A man lost all his money, he said Willie was to blame.
He shot poor Willie through the head, which was a tragic fate,
When Willie's cards fell on the floor, they were aces backed with
eights.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
So all you rovin' gamblers, wherever you might be,
The moral of this story is very plain to see.
Make your money while you can, before you have to stop,
For when you pull that dead man's hand, your gamblin' days are up.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
|
Sean says, "when you live in a lighthouse you get used to bright lights."
|
excuses are depreciated.
-- jrrs
|
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer
|
Think honk if you're a telepath.
|
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
-- Professor Charles P. Issawi
|
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
-- Dorothy Parker
|
Oregon, n.:
Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday night.
|
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Supplement:
A .44 magnum beats four aces.
|
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
|
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
And I wish he were in Asia.
-- Dorothy Parker
|
I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
any time!
|
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
|
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only
one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what
wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a
lot of things there are to learn."
-- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
|
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
(1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
bomb; use the stairs.
(2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
the ground.
(3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
(4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
psychological problems.
(5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to
recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed
potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
(6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs
will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
(7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
(8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
staggering illegally.
(9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
sanitary due to limited circulation.
(10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
D-Day.
|
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
(and nobody cares about it).
-- Bill Joy 6/21/85
|
F: When into a room I plunge, I
Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI.
Then I linger, darkly brooding
On the poison they're exuding.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
|
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
Don't do it.
The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
Don't do it yet.
-- Michael A. Jackson
|
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
-- Dykstra
|
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop
|
And in the heartbreak years that lie ahead, Be true to yourself and the Grateful Dead. -- Joan Baez
|
God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
days and then pulled an all-nighter.
|
New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
|
I'd been seeing a lot of Bucky those days, and here was Irving and here
was I, and Isamu, who cant keep his hands off anything, you know- it
is a marvelous, itchy thing hes got- he saw we were working on clocks
and he started making doodles.
Then Bucky sort of brushed Isamu aside. He said, This is a good way
to do a clock, and he made some utterly absurd thing. Everybody was
taking a crack at this,pushing each other aside and making
scribbles.
-- George Nelson
|
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful.
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
|
Boren's Laws:
(1) When in charge, ponder.
(2) When in trouble, delegate.
(3) When in doubt, mumble.
|
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
something out of you.
-- Muhammad Ali
|
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-- "The Second Coming" W.B. Yeats
|
Birth, n.:
The first and direst of all disasters.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
-- "Brazil"
|
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
-- Pete Seeger
|
"Never delay in kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey"
- Ernest Hemingway
|
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood."
-- Alexander Haig
|
Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
|
To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
precision and flexibility may be just as dysfunctional in novel,
uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
secure ecological niche.
-- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
|
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
-- Dorothy Parker
|
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only
common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal
after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the
cosmos.
- Stephen Jay Gould
|
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
- Ray Bradbury
|
Pure mathematics consists entirely of such asservations as that, if
such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such
another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to
discuss whether the first proposition is really true.... If our
hypothesis is about anything and not about some one or more particular
things, then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus mathematics
may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are
talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
- Bertrand Russel
|
You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
|
Fairy Tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons
exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
G.K. Chesterton
|
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
-- Ashley Montague
|
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient. It's called 'rain'."
-- Michael McClary
|
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
|
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
-- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
|
"... The name of the song is called `Haddocks' Eyes'!"
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, `The Aged
Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
called `Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time
completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
|
Hacker's Law:
The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
|
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?
|
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
-- Don Marquis
|
Blore's Razor:
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
funnier.
|
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
|
Commitment, n.:
Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
|
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Everything else causes cancer in rats.
|
Quantum Pessimism:
The firm belief that if Schrodinger bought cat food, opening the
box would always reveal a dead feline.
The Honest Madman's Corollary:
When buying cat food for Schrodinger's cat, make sure you have a
shovel.
Weaver's Real-Life Corollary:
When travelling with formal dress, you will unexpectedly need to
attend a funeral.
|
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find
outside an advertising agency.
- Raymond Chandler
|
Consience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.
- Evan Esar
|
Count the day lost whose low, descending sun is not, in part, obscured
by the powder from my gun.
- Burton L. Spiller
|
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
-- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
|
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
-- Bert Whitney
|
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrabe.
"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
|
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
|
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't
matter and those who matter don't mind."
- Dr. Seuss
|
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
|
MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians
0-0 last Saturday night. The match started with a long period of
silence while the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate
and the Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player
said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a
fight and the match was called by officials.
|
First, a few words about tools.
Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of
the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously
injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If
you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look
particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for
granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
|
Cynic, n.:
One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
|
We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
-- James E. Day, Postmaster General
|
"When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to
laugh at him."
-- Thomas Szasz
|
Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
|
''Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know
what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me,''
-- James Brown, to the associated press, 2003
|
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
|
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
-- Alan Perlis
|
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
(1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
direction.
(2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
(3) The energy required to change either one of these states
will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
much as to make the task totally impossible.
|
Brontosaurus Principle:
Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when
this occurs, they are an endangered species.
-- Thomas K. Connellan
|
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
|
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde
|
Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would.
The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.
-- Augustine
|
Telephone, n.:
An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
-- Ambrose Bierce
|
The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong,
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery!
Big fish alone escape from thee!
-- James Jeffrey Roche
|
Spouse, n.:
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
|
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
|
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.
|
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
admission to someone else.
|
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
-- Marvin Minsky
|
Collaboration, n.:
A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
other fellow can spell.
|
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
-- H. H. Munroe, "Saki"
|
Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
-- Candice Bergen
|
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every
class is unfit to govern.
-- Lord Acton
|
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things
for granted.
-- Aldous Huxley
|
When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?
-- Reuben Flagg
|
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
with brightly colored machine tools.
----------
ALTERNATE TAKE:
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fish.
|
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
|
Die, v.:
To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard
|
"I used to wanna change the world. Now I just wanna leave the room with
a little dignity."
-Lotus Weinstock
|
Labor, n.:
One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
|
I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry.
-- President Harry S Truman
|
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
|
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
message:
"i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
you find the time to try it again?"
|
Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
|
Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a
competent historian.
- Lee Simonson
|
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
|
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
Superiority is recessive.
|
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but
if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
|
Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
(1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
sawhorse.
(2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
(3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
perfectly balanced.
(4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
-- Robert Burns
|
The STAR WARS Song
Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
|
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
|
A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
power-down sequence.
An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
cool.
|
From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
|
mdz's maxim:
Nobody cares about security until it destroys their company.
|
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
|
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware
has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing
machines are so poor at I/O.
|
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
damn thing over and over.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
|
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
-- Plato
|
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;
One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.
|
"There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat.
"And yet just a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar
with an unanswerable question," said Nasrudin.
"I could have answered it if I had been there."
"Very well. He asked, `Why are you breaking into my house in
the middle of the night?'"
|
Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
than the sun."
"Why?", he was asked.
"Because at night we need the light more."
|
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
ones.
|
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
-- George Bernard Shaw
|
Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
out of it?
Jaka: Ugh!
Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
-- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
|
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.
-- R. A. Lafferty
|
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken
|
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
coming up it.
-- Henry Allen
|
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
-- Lin Yutang
|
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-- Poul Anderson
|
Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The
white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with
laughter, singing
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the chimney smokes
Pope Goestheveezl
The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of
laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for
hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
Hans Neizant Bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of Koln in 1653.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
|
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer,
and then you find there is nothing in it.
-- James Huneker
|
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has
already happened.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
|
It had been a military shipyard of some kind, before EMC moved to
their present location. Now it sprang back to life at dusk every day,
as big as a city quarter, in business for itself, self-governed,
self-policed, self-made, a sprawl of food stalls, flop houses, flea
markets, bookmakers, makeshift chopshops and tattoo booths around each
ring, trawled by every kind of cultivar and fetch. The voices of the
Radio Retro announcers, piped out the very air by sophisticated
entrained-wave techniques, shouted the odds. Monas worked the rickshaw
lines in giggling groups. Sexually aroused New Men staggered by,
bagged on Night Train and looking for a quiet corner in which to jack
off. All this under a mixed illumination of naphtha flame or blank
interrogatory halogen glare, and everything in between. In Preter
Coeur the shadow of a pillar fell on you with the weight of the pillar
itself; the next movement you were losing your sense of balance in the
unpredictable jump and turn of smoky flickers like shoaling fish.
Adstreams floated everywhere, their unbearable lightness of being --
their simple promise -- catching you up; until the crown of
butterflies round your head morphed into a crown of thorns and you
found you had surrended your intimate data to some twink-farmer forty
blocks away on Pierpoint Street.
-- M. John Harrison, "Nova Swing"
|
A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
|
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
------------
rory says, "that statement is incomplete"
rory says, "then a fifth way will promptly develop as a side effect of
your four circumventions."
|
Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
eat it nevertheless.
-- Flaubert
|
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
|
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to
be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Butler
|
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
-- W. C. Fields
|
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
|
I have made this letter longer than usual
because I lack the time to make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal
|
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
-- Brian K. Reid
Some have not seen farther than others, because they were standing in the
footprints of giants.
-- Alex Rousskov
|
Click! A piece of the universe falls into place. You feel smarter!--More--
spieg [to matt]: ; yeah, nice job on the brain wiring
matt [to spieg]: I gave up ten times that many links to win that one
spieg [to matt]: ; yeah, but you won one
spieg [to matt]: ; how many times have we just fuckin' given up ten
times that many links full stop? :p
|
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
-- Theodore Parker
|
"The arc of the moral universe doesn't bend enough."
-- matthew j weaver
|
"The arc of technology is long but tends towards species extinction."
-- Rory Kirchner
|
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain
|
Talking about a software development schedule more than a year out is
like talking about where we go after we die.
-- Kyle Wilson
|
Propaganda is the use of magic by those who no longer believe in it
against those who still do.
-- W.H. Auden
|
History, n.:
Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we
learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from
what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long
view.
-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
|
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
hope I don't get run over again.
|
Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy
would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it
hasn't.
-- Robert Orben
|
The faster we go, the rounder we get.
-- The Grateful Dead
|
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
|
[From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
Association, in Rome]:
The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria
and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not
spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods,
or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in
millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have
reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology
engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general,
president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social
schizophrenia in mass genocide.
|
If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y
is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein
|
One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
at the stake while the votes were being counted.
-- Thomas B. Reed
|
"You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's
really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do
it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take
either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three
people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out.
They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty
people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of
Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a
movement.
And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement,
and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around
on the guitar."
-- Arlo Guthrie, "Alice's Restaurant"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
receive Net Mail ..."
-- Leith (Casey) Leedom
|
"I don't think so," said Rene Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
|
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
|
Noncombatant, n.:
A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce
|
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something --
I believe I'll have another drink.
|
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
|
The makers may make
And the users may use,
But the fixers must fix
With but minimal clues
|
Renning's Maxim:
Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
|
Kinkler's First Law:
Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law:
All the easy problems have been solved.
|
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality
test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too."
|
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
everything else follows in the same way.
-- Alan J. Perlis
|
In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
-- Frank Mankiewicz
|
Long live the cutup method:
-----------------------------------Sean------------------------------------
A muddy mess dotted by choice in such isolation, having no insects
anywhere, but you can't make rapid, drastic changes in a wide glade.
---------------------------------finished----------------------------------
-----------------------------------Sean------------------------------------
The river moves too swiftly to freeze over,but the modern left is
oversocialized and covered with a thickblanket of truth
---------------------------------finished----------------------------------
|
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
|
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him
how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last
week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.
|
You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
about 10^12 to 1.
-- Ernest Rutherford
|
Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism
will do as it damn well pleases.
|
When life gives you turds, throw them at assholes.
-- The Honest Madman
|
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the
man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and
accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second,
there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by
locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of
the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of
something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last--the city
of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city
that accounts for New York's high strung disposition, its poetical
deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable
achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives
give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And
whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to
escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy
arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain
in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the
intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh
yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the
Consolidated Edison Company. . . .
-- E. B. White
|
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
-- Olivier
|
"Ingenuity may be the mother of invention, but poverty is definitely the
father."
-- Lewis Ziska
|
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
|
Don't borrow money from someone you can't bomb.
-- Matthew Ernisse
|
I regret that my own weirdness made me a fascist about people who were not weird.
--Lynda Barry
|
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
civilization.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the
Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million
three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years
from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.
... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
fact.
-- Mark Twain
|
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I
became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can
meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill
|
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
|
The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand
them.
-- Lenny Bruce
|
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
Q: What happened then?
A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify
me."
Q: Did he kill you?
A: No.
|
A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
She found a good way
To combine work and play:
She sells C shells by the seashore.
|
Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
|
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
-- R. Drabek
|
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
-- Vine Deloria, Jr.
|
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
|
Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche
-- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance,
my grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off
the fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was
undoubtedly true.
-- Solomon Short
|
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would
take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet
place and kill him.
-- Mark Twain
|
Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every
relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you
really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the
end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and
bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
his back.
-- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
|
If you can't fix it, you won't take it very far.
If you can't build it, you won't fix it very well.
|
Reality is that which, once you fill out an insurance claim, generates a
check.
-- jlph
|
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
|
Nothing says "YOU'RE NOT DEAD TOO" like a snowball.
-- jan
|
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterson
|
No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
CHORUS:
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
(chorus)
Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
(chorus)
|
Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
|
Communism is like one big phone company.
-- Lenny Bruce
|
Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's
lighter than you think.
-- John Cage
|
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And the Master answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
too.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
|
You learn something new you never wanted to know every day.
-- Rory Kirchner
|
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
|
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
|
Where the moralist would be filled with indignation and the tragic poet
with pity and terror, mythology breaks the whole of life into a vast,
horrendous Divine Comedy. Its Olympian laugh is not escapist in the
least, but hard, with the hardness of life itself -- which, we may take
it, is the hardness of God, the Creator. Mythology, in this respect,
makes the tragic attitude seem somewhat hysterical, and the merely moral
judgment shortsighted. Yet the hardness is balanced by an assurance that
all that we see is but the reflex of a power that endures, untouched by
the pain. Thus the tales are both pitiless and terrorless -- suffused
with the joy of a transcendent anonymity regarding itself in all of the
self-centered, battling egos that are born and die in time.
-- Joseph John Campbell
|
"Why do you want to be a hero?" I asked him.
"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND," he said.
-- John Wheelwright and Owen Meany, respectively, in John
Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany."
|
"GOD WORKS IN STRANGE WAYS!" Owen Meany might have said.
-- John Wheelwright, in John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany."
|
I don't believe in God, but I believe in Owen Meany.
-- matthew j weaver
|
ooh nice, this sucks!
-- jared rr spiegel
|
I think air conditioning is what makes us human.
-- Sean Graham
|
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.
|
It's hard to make wine without water.
-- Matthew Ernisse
|
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
-- Rich Kulawiec
|
Fuch's Warning:
If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well enough to travel.
|
Neurotic to necrotic in a matter of micrograms!
-- matthew j weaver, concerning feline pet care
|
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
|
The house is still burning. Corollary: Never get used to the smell.
-- Jeremiah Parry-Hill
|
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
|
I'm an optimist, my magazine is half full.
-- crim
|
And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one
song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and
to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is
both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to
dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly,
beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives
are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except
perhaps those songs - that song, endlesly reincarnated - born of that
truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue
moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless
black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane,
that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey,
same miracle, same end and endlessness.
-- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather
|
There's deathtime, too, and that's way longer than a lifetime.
-- George Eloise Hosein (on lifetimes)
|
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away
she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
-- Raymond Chandler
|
We're not encouraging that shit -- he can dance, or he can *fight*.
-- Jinnah Dylan Hosein, on capoeira
|
Don't adopt a dog from the ghetto; she'll only break your heart.
-- Astrid A. Atkinson
|
Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.
-- Ernest Hemingway, in a personal letter (1931)
|
If you talk about feelings on g-chat, somebody's gonna be apologizing later.
-- Clare Terni
|
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
world put together.
-- Sir Peter Medawar
|
Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
-- Italian Proverb
|
Never live with a Scorpio whom you won't fuck.
-- matthew j weaver
|
Turns out when you liberate the camp, the prisoners can't go right
into putting on a vaudeville show.
-- Jeremiah L. Parry-Hill
|
Corrupt, adj.:
In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
|
It's hard to argue against cynics. They always sound smarter than
optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
-- Molly Ivins
|
Just to be clear, cynics and optimists are both alright. The Devil's
Advocate just throws better parties.
-- JP
|
I've spent a lot of time learning empathy so I can more effectively hate
people.
-- Stephen Crim
|
Even in the cold void, you need to accessorize.
-- Cody Smith
|
Hugz for Algernon.
-- The Honest Madman, regarding the imminent passing of Harlan Ellison
|
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
|
This horse IS TOO WHITE to fail!
-- Stephen Crim
|
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in
order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the
substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young
and rob the old.
-- Lewis Lapham
|
You don't even have CHOLERA, for fuck's sake.
-- matthew j weaver
|
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom; for we never know what
is enough until we know what is more than enough.
-- William Blake
|
Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out of it alive.
|
I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating
-- Boss Tweed
|
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile
but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this
indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of
death -- however mutable man may be able to make them -- our existence as
a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the
darkness, we must supply our own light.
-- Stanley Kubrik, interviewed by Eric Mordern, Playboy (Sep 1968)
Later published in Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (2001)
|
Walk tall, kick ass... love music, and never forget you come from a long
line of truth seekers, lovers, and warriors.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
|
Oh my god. I think I just met the thing I'm gonna die on.
-- Bart Simpson
|
Birthdays are like christmas for people you actually believe in.
|
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
|
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
|
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
|
NOTHIN HITS HARDER THAN LIFE.
-- Rory Kirchner
|
You simply change Planck's constant, and the rest will follow.
-- Anthony Sciola
|
You've gotta know that you're going to like the work.
-- Astrid A. Atkinson, concerning the similarities between hunting
for a job, and a partner.
|
(to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
|
The problem with selling your soul is that it's always done on the
installment plan.
-- Christy Vannoy
|
The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the
shadow of cosmic boredom.
-- Guy de Maupassant
|
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
|
"It's Like This"
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk.
|
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
-- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
|
Never underestimate the power of the disco ball.
-- Dave Able
|
You absolutely can't do precision work with a meat cleaver on a frozen
loaf of hard crusty bread.
-- Allen Hemberger
|
Caveat Venditor.
-- AJ Hilchey, on oil men.
|
[It's] carvings all the way up, turtles all the way down.
-- Sean Graham
|
Nobody is worse than real god.
-- matthew j weaver
|
Not many people I know carry their end of the conversation when I want
to talk about water deliveries.
-- Joan Didion
|
Alden's Laws:
(1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
of pregnancy.
(2) Always be backlit.
(3) Sit down whenever possible.
|
California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekovian
loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some
buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here,
because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of
continent.
-- Joan Didion
|
101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
(1) Scarecrow for centipedes
(2) Dead cat brush
(3) Hair barrettes
(4) Cleats
(5) Self-piercing earrings
(6) Fungus trellis
(7) False eyelashes
(8) Prosthetic dog claws
.
.
.
(99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
(100) Killer velcro
(101) Currency
|
The shoes are the date, he is a talking accessory.
-- Sam Lipson
|
On-line, adj.:
The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.
|
You fool. You do not do such things to children. A child is like a
poison missile you aim at the Future. You encourage, fund and resource
their dreams to the fullest extent of your capability, knowing that your
reward will be the pain and misery of generations yet unborn.
-- Warren Ellis, regarding the age that a child's dreams should be
crushed.
|
After a few generations, everyone's an Original Gangster.
-- Jeremiah Parry-Hill
|
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
organization.
|
Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.
|
Nobody rules by culture. Those people get their gods stolen.
-- Rory Kirchner
|
Never pass up the strawberries.
-- lrolig
|
Hartley's Second Law:
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
|
Mishanski's first law of logs entropy:
It only gets worse from here.
|
Any sufficiently advanced catchphrase is indistinguishable from wisdom.
|
Says the proud Emperor Wu: "I've constructed dozens of Buddhist
temples, supported hundreds of monks and nuns, and sponsored
countless religious ceremonies. How great is my merit?"
"No merit at all," Daruma replied bluntly.
"Tell me then," the emperor wanted to know, "What is first principle
of Buddhism?"
"Vast emptiness, nothing holy!" Daruma shot back.
"Who are you?" the thoroughly perplexed emperor demanded.
"I don't know!" Daruma announced, departing as suddenly as he had
appeared.
|
If you have a good vise, a sharp ax, a big hammer and a shotgun, you can
fix anything.
-- Bill Wilkinson
|
The internet is like being locked in the coolest mall ever with credit
cards crazy-glued to your fingertips.
-- Jon Mayer
|
All hard problems stem from a lack of imagination.
-- The Honest Madman
|
My work environment can be a tad depressing.
-- The Honest Madman
|
What was absent from the ruin is often less marvelous than we imagine it
to have been. The abstract power of than the literal power of the
initial fact. Myth elevates.
-- Will Insley
|
Sometimes you need to commit some horseshit because you don't have the
time to do it right.
-- Sean Graham
|
It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
-- George Burns
|
Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
-- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
|
Another Glitch in the Call
------- ------ -- --- ----
(Sung to the tune of the classic Pink Floyd song.)
We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?
Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
Chorus:
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
|
I had a headlamp, no way I was going to die.
-- jesstess, on peril
|
Jones's First Law:
Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
importance of their original contribution.
|
Colvard's Logical Premises:
All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it
won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary
Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
|
Great minds run in great circles.
|
“Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person
you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a
man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never
seen a totally sane human being.”
- Robert Anton Wilson
|
It's one thing to cling to your peak accomplishments of youth, and quite
another to cling to the foam inside the puffy stickers on your resume.
-- jlph
|
A man always needs to remember one thing about a beautiful woman.
Somewhere, somebody's tired of her.
|
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
-- Michel de Montaigne, Essais
|
All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the gutter.
-- AJ Hilchey
|
Great perfection seems incomplete,
But does not decay;
Great abundance seems empty,
But does not fail.
Great truth seems contradictory;
Great cleverness seems stupid;
Great eloquence seems awkward.
As spring overcomes the cold,
And autumn overcomes the heat,
So calm and quiet overcome the world.
-- Lao Tse, "Tao Te Ching"
|
We’re in a free fall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are
changing so fast. And always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety
comes along. But all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to
turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of
perspective … Joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world and everything
changes.
-- Joseph Campbell, Sukhavati
|
Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have
drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
|
If you ever want to waste your life yak shaving, switch to emacs.
-- Rory Kirchner, emacs user
|
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain (Samuel Clements)
|
Real God is Turing complete.
-- Adam Fletcher
|
Be the Iain M. Banks galactic infrastructure exposition sequence you want to
wake from the machine intelligence simulation to discover.
-- m1k3y
|
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
|
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood.
|
Adulthood appears to consist primarily of not losing your temper in meetings.
-- Clare Terni
|
2 Factor Authentication: something you forgot, and something you lost.
-- Matt Blaze
|
Healers are Spiritual Warriors who have found the courage to defeat the
darkness of their souls. Awakening and rising from the depths of their
deepest fears, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. Reborn with a
wisdom and strength that creates a light that shines bright enough to
help, encourage, and inspire others out of their own darkness.
-- Melanie Koulouris
|
They also surf, those who only stand on waves.
|
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
management is that success equals skill.
-- Robert Heller
|
"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place."
-- IEEE Grid news magazine
|
The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are
extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
down anything he damn well pleases.
-- Sir Josiah Stamp
|