The quote of the day picker is out to lunch it seems:
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure % Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them. % Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be. % People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't. % Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny. % "Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..." % Pie are not square. Pie are round. Cornbread are square. % Polymer physicists are into chains. % Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth. % Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically. % Progress means replacing a theory that is wrong with one more subtly wrong. % Prototype designs always work. -- Don Vonada % "Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together." % Quantum Mechanics is a lovely introduction to Hilbert Spaces! -- Overheard at last year's Archimedeans' Garden Party % Quantum Mechanics is God's version of "Trust me." % Quark! Quark! Beware the quantum duck! % Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives. % Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled. -- R.P. Feynman % Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice. % Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and think what nobody else has thought. % Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun % Round Numbers are always false. -- Samuel Johnson % Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin % Science and religion are in full accord but science and faith are in complete discord. % Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. -- Jules Henri Poincare % Science is what happens when preconception meets verification. % Science may someday discover what faith has always known. % Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it. -- William Buckley % Sentient plasmoids are a gas. % Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it. % Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them over the horizon. -- K.A. Arsdall % Space is to place as eternity is to time. -- Joseph Joubert % Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to curve. -- Wheeler % Statistics are no substitute for judgement. -- Henry Clay % Statistics means never having to say you're certain. % Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter. % Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have! % Take an astronaut to launch. % Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley % Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand. % The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. Seek simplicity and distrust it. -- Whitehead. % The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the pavement is precisely 1 bananosecond. % The amount of weight an evangelist carries with the almighty is measured in billigrahams. % The best defense against logic is ignorance. % The bigger the theory the better. % The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst % The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives. -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project % The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom. % The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. -- John Muir % The devil finds work for idle circuits to do. % The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so little to recommend it. -- Allan Sherman % The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. -- Robert Heinlein % The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier. % The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann % The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be correct. -- William of Occam % The following statement is not true. The previous statement is true. % The Force is what holds everything together. It has its dark side, and it has its light side. It's sort of like cosmic duct tape. % "The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl." -- Dave Barry % The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons. -- Dr. David Butler, British psephologist % The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. % The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice. % The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers. % "The identical is equal to itself, since it is different." -- Franco Spisani % The instruments of science do not in themselves discover truth. And there are searchings that are not concluded by the coincidence of a pointer and a mark. -- Fred Saberhagen, "The Berserker Wars" % The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh % The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the moon. % The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years. % The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader. % The moon is made of green cheese. -- John Heywood % The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away. % The more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain. % The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov % The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe. -- Chester Gould/Dick Tracy % The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. -- John Kenneth Galbraith % The only perfect science is hind-sight. % The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe. % The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford % The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -- Niels Bohr % The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated by the fact that, when exposed to the same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft. % The rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field is a precise measurement of the speed of blight. % The reason that every major university maintains a department of mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people. % The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once. -- Jane Bryant Quinn % The Shuttle is now going five times the sound of speed. -- Dan Rather, first landing of Columbia % The solution of problems is the most characteristic and peculiar sort of voluntary thinking. -- William James % The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for the reader. % The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem. -- Peer % The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything. % The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology. % "The subspace W inherits the other 8 properties of V. And there aren't even any property taxes." -- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b % The sum of the Universe is zero. % The test of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. -- Aldo Leopold % The tree of research must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of bean counters. -- Alan Kay % The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa. % The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison % The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude. % The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken. % The universe is all a spin-off of the Big Bang. % The universe is an island, surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds universes. % The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the combination is locked up in the safe. -- Peter DeVries % The Universe is populated by stable things. -- Richard Dawkins % The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent. -- Sagan % The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness. -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" % The University of California Statistics Department; where mean is normal, and deviation standard. % 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 % The Wright Bothers weren't the first to fly. They were just the first not to crash. % Theory is gray, but the golden tree of life is green. -- Goethe % There *is* no such thing as a civil engineer. % There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis are chosen correctly. % "There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain." -- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800 % There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler" % There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule. -- R. W. Gerard % There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. -- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923 % There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares" % There is no royal road to geometry. -- Euclid % There's a whole WORLD in a mud puddle! -- Doug Clifford % There's no future in time travel. % There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann % Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other. % This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks. % This is the theory that Jack built. This is the flaw that lay in the theory that Jack built. This is the palpable verbal haze that hid the flaw that lay in... % This place just isn't big enough for all of us. We've got to find a way off this planet. % This universe shipped by weight, not by volume. Some expansion of the contents may have occurred during shipment. % Those who can, do; those who can't, simulate. % Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record. % ... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War" % 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 Russell % Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space. % Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. Space is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen to you. % To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence. -- Joseph Glanvill, 1661 % To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison % Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity? And where does it go after it leaves the toaster? -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" % Torque is cheap. % Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two. % Two percent of zero is almost nothing. % Two wrights don't make a rong, they make an airplane. Or bicycles. % UFOs are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist. % Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky % Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none. -- Doug Larson % We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan % We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved. % We can predict everything, except the future. % We cannot command nature except by obeying her. -- Sir Francis Bacon % "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company." % We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything. % We don't know who it was that discovered water, but we're pretty sure that it wasn't a fish. -- Marshall McLuhan % We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids? -- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission % We have a equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated. % 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 % We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a clever but highly unmotivated trick. -- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra" % We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. -- S.J. Gould % We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter. % We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week, but for some reason nobody's ever done it. -- Andy Rooney % Wernher von Braun settled for a V-2 when he coulda had a V-8. % "What I've done, of course, is total garbage." -- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a % What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things? -- J.M. Barrie % What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875 % What is now proved was once only imagin'd. -- William Blake % What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey % What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928 % What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go around the sun. If we went around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work. -- Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet" % What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying. -- Nikita Khruschev % What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener. % When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute -- and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. -- Albert Einstein % When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, the telephone people interrupted service for one minute in his honor. They've been honoring him intermittently ever since, I believe. -- The Grab Bag % When some people discover the truth, they just can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it. % When speculation has done its worst, two plus two still equals four. -- S. Johnson % "When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical." -- Jon Carroll % When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly. -- Donald Douglas % Where are the calculations that go with a calculated risk? % Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat. -- Christopher Morley % White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship. % Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle? -- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program % With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm? % Without life, Biology itself would be impossible. % Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some rays and became a tangent ? % "Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context." % You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat. -- The First Law Of Thermodynamics % What ever you want is going to cost a little more than it is worth. -- The Second Law Of Thermodynamics % You can not win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing. -- The Third Law Of Thermodynamics % You can't cheat the phone company. % You cannot have a science without measurement. -- R. W. Hamming % You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi. % You mean you didn't *know* she was off making lots of little phone companies? % You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10^12 to 1. -- Ernest Rutherford % You will never amount to much. -- Munich Schoolmaster, to Albert Einstein, age 10 %
ajlitt@serval:/tmp$ rot13 foo|less
hen some people discover the truth, they just can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it. % When speculation has done its worst, two plus two still equals four. -- S. Johnson % "When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical." -- Jon Carroll % When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly. -- Donald Douglas % Where are the calculations that go with a calculated risk? % Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat. -- Christopher Morley % White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship. % Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle? -- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program % With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm? % Without life, Biology itself would be impossible. % Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some rays and became a tangent ? % "Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context." % You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat. -- The First Law Of Thermodynamics % What ever you want is going to cost a little more than it is worth. -- The Second Law Of Thermodynamics % You can not win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing. -- The Third Law Of Thermodynamics % You can't cheat the phone company. % You cannot have a science without measurement. -- R. W. Hamming % You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi. % You mean you didn't *know* she was off making lots of little phone companies? % You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10^12 to 1. -- Ernest Rutherford % You will never amount to much. -- Munich Schoolmaster, to Albert Einstein, age 10 %
