Advice: Dance like nobody is watching.
        Love like you've never been hurt.

Calvin: Do you believe in the Devil?  A supreme evil being,
        dedicated to the corruption and destruction of man?
Hobbes: I'm not sure that man needs the help.
  -Calvin and Hobbes: The Adult Years

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains so much!

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
  -Anais Nin

Every day is the same length of time whether you're positive 
or negative - negative just makes it seem longer.
  -Alma

There is nobody at the CIA who can tell you more personally about
Kim Jong Un than Dennis Rodman, and that in itself is scary.
  -ABC News military analyst Col. Steve Ganyard

Apparently not even I am always like me.
  -Fern

You share the same birthday with someone? Not that special, 
  there are 365-366 days in a year in which you can be born, 
  and 7 billion people in the world. That means you share your
  birthday with on the order of 20 millon people.
You're one in a million? Taken literally, that means there 
 are 7,000 people like you on the planet.
Somebody's got to win the lottery? 1 in 175 million. 
 That means YOU'RE WASTING YOUR MONEY.
  -Reddit

If you hadn't ordered steak and replaced all of your sides 
with 'also steak,' the food would have been here by now.
  -cracked.com

A human is a system for converting dust billions of
years ago into dust billions of years from now via a
roundabout process which involves checking email a lot.
  -xkcd mouseover

It doesn't work [when a user curses at his computer] because he 
is a lay person. Curse words, as we know are literally words of
curse, and as such affect the intricate underpinnings of reality 
(lay lines and such).  Common folk are not powerful enough to 
affect these forces in any meaningful way. It takes an IT wizard 
to come in and apply the words in just the right manner to make a 
device work. As a side effect, all this tinkering with the ether 
leaves its trace on the Wizard, which is why sometimes his mere 
presence is enough to disrupt the balance and repair a device.
  -Read it on Reddit

They're like the kudzu of the animal kingdom!
  -Shirl on Florida pythons

Don't try to understand women.  Women understand women.
And they hate each other.
  -anonymous

Tales From Retail:
You know that feeling. You go to work, you're feeling great. 
Today's a good day, I can just feel it. Nothing or no one can 
get to you. But then little by little, as you deal with each 
person, little by little your spirit breaks. Slowly your 
genuine smile fades into what you'd imagine a Nazi sneer looks 
like before gassing another Jew. You finally get off, and you 
leave thinking, "There is no hope on this planet."

And then you wake up to do it again.
  -Reddit/r/TalesFromRetail

By the time I was old enough and became a pilot, things had changed. 
The great airplanes I had so revered as a boy were disappearing... 
The record-setting flights... across the oceans, over the poles, and to
the corners of Earth, had all been accomplished. And I resented that. 
All in all... I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had 
brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great 
times and adventures in flight.
  -Neil Armstrong, in 1947, having no idea what was to come
   Hansen, James R. (2005-10-18). First Man (Kindle Locations 969-975). 
   Simon & Schuster, Inc. Kindle Edition. 

If LaPierre gets pistol-packing schoolmarms, I want sidearms for 
copy editors. Then people will understand what "deadline" means.
  -John McIntyre

I have found that I am an iPhone snob.  You know I'm single.
When I start texting with someone new I seriously get so 
disappointed when I see the response in green and not blue.
  -This person is going to be so anonymous!

A politician thinks of the next election. 
A statesman, of the next generation. 
  -James Freeman Clarke

Violence procreates.  And the children your violence 
produces will return to you as savage, mindless things.  
You won't recognize them as yours, but they'll recognize you.
They'll mark you as deserving of their punishment.  
  -From Live By Night by Dennis Lehane p.30

General theories need not apply to particular people.
  -Ibid

Violence breeds violence.  It's an absolute.
But it never comes back in a way you can predict.
  -Ibid

The more I have to cram into my head, the stupider I get.
  -For a small price, this person will remain anonymous.

From the moment that men give themselves wholly up to a party,
they abandon their reason and are led captive by their passions.
The cause they espouse presents such bewitching charms as
dazzle the judgment; and the side they oppose such imaginary
deformity, that no opposition appears too violent; nor any arts
to blacken and ruin it, incapable of a specious varnish.  They
follow their leaders with an implicit faith, and, like a
company of dragoons, obey the word of command without hesitation.
  -William  Livingston, signer of the U.S. Constitution
   and the first Governor of New Jersey, 1753 

I'm bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than you.  Do you want to play?
  -Will, age 3.  With social skills like that, he'll surely grow up to be a geek!

From what I've heard from others, I'd like to hang in there with you.
In case it vomits all over our day I'd like to be here with a bucket.
  -A senior Apple support tech

I don't want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, 
our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up 
as the voting populace goes down.
  -Paul Weyrich

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, 
find a Unix user to show you how it's done.  
  -Scott Adams

Sometimes its impossible to protect users from 
their own stupidity, no matter how hard you try.
  -Pat Lieberg

We've bought into the idea that education is about training 
and "success", defined monetarily, rather than learning to 
think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that 
the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. 
A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between 
morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for 
wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a 
civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to 
consume, condemns itself to death.
  -Chris Hedges

When you're enjoined to do something for the greater good, maybe 
ask yourself the questions: "What is greater, and what is good?"
  --Radiolab

You have to understand, he didn't so much come out of the closet 
as he backflipped out of it with an accompanying marching band.
  -Texts From Last Night

"A song and an error" 
  -Ovid's explanation for his banishment

Most little children are afraid  of a great many things.  
As adults, we can learn to usually be courageous.  At least 
in the case of boys, this is accomplished by transitioning 
through an approximately seven year period of intense stupidity.  
I don't know how girls accomplish this.
  -Me

If there's so much of a hint of a whisper from somebody 
I didn't tell personally, I will cut off your balls with 
a chainsaw, cauterize the wound with a flaming rusty spoon, 
feed your balls to your dog, and feed them to you when he 
shits them out, capiche?
  -Texts From Last  Night

A hazmat suit, superman cape, batman undies, 
and no sanity are the requirements for this!
  -Jorden Larson 

Many people don't follow politics in order to find out who 
to vote for as part of their duty as citizens living in a 
democracy. They follow it purely as a form of entertainment. 
They're like sports fans, rooting for their "team" to win.  
Virtually all political news coverage is written to appeal 
to those people. They're the most rabid "consumers" of news, 
and their traffic is the most reliable, so the news is tailored 
to appeal to them.
  -Cracked

The key word here is "labor". People LABORED to have a good life. 
Nowadays the folks we call "poor" have been living on entitlements
for generations. They have no desire to labor because they don't 
have to. The concept of labor = reward is lost on them.  While 
everyone attacks the rich who are easy targets, no one wants to 
address the larger problem of the poor whose sponging while having 
no intention to contribute anything is woefully unsustainable and a 
far greater drain. A massive effort needs to be done to differentiate 
the poor from the needy for they are not one in the same. The needy 
should get all the benefits an advanced society can offer them, the 
poor on the other hand need to be reaquainted with the concept of labor.
  -How Swede It Was

The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out
the false idea occupying that niche.  As long as that niche
is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get
nowhere.  But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that
has been filling it--once you can honestly say 'I don't know,'
then it becomes possible to get at the trutn.
  -Robert Heinlein: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls p.228

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there
always has been.  The strain of anit-intellectualism has
been a constant thread winding its way through our political
and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy
means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'
  -Isaac Asimov

If you take a risk and you win it's "nice job, let's move on."  
If you take a risk and lose they walk you out the door. 
  -Unnamed by request

Claiming that someoe else's marriage is against your
religion is like being angry at someone for eating a
donut because you're on a diet.
  -Anonymous

As youth recedes into the rearview mirror, and your
face slides south in succumbing to time and gravity,
and your joints ache from decades of overuse, something
curious happens.  You get happier.  I don't mean the
ecstatic happiness you periodically feel amidst the
turbulence of your teens or 20s.  I'm talking about a
growing contentment and acceptance of yourself and of
life as it is, a grateful appreciation for each moment
that you continue to draw breath.
  -William Falk in "The Week" March 2, 2012 p.3

What if we thought of the human race as an "organism", 
instead of each human individual?  In that case, we 
could consider people as organs in the organism (heart, 
brain, liver, etc). When we, as people, are hungry, we 
feed ourselves. We don't feed our kidney and our spleen, 
we feed the whole body, because we need all parts of the 
body to function properly. If we, as the human race, cared 
about feeding all the parts of ourselves for maximum 
functionality, would that be a healthier approach?
  -Barb Kirchner

She thinks she's all that and a bag of Skittles, 
but I'm definitely not tasting the rainbow.
  -TFLN

In my country, we lock up the criminally insane.
In America, you let them debate on TV.  Right now,
you have people running for President I would not 
trust to take care of my plants.
  -Andy Borowitz

Human understanding cannot grasp the nature of God. Mathematics cannot
explain it. Science cannot isolate it. Jesus, a genius, understood all
this and tried to explain God's existence to us in terms we could
understand as the Bronze Age was morphing into the Iron Age. What do
you tell a people who think the sun revolves around the Earth? Being
filled with superstition and fear, too many of us have used Jesus'
enlightened word as another bloody tool to gain and keep power.
  -Bob Englehart

I've always found brilliance untempered by failure is 
purely arrogance but brilliance that has overcome failure 
can be truly useful to your fellow man.
  -Paul Zuckerman

Force is an argument to use when nothing else will do 
and the issue is that important.
  -Robert Heinlein

It just boggles my mind that, in a culture as advanced as ours,
you can get a double cheeseburger for a dollar, but you have to
pay extra to eat healthy food.
  -My son

If we become a country in which we all say [to the
government] "please tell me how to live," we're doomed.
  -From a Ken Burns documentary

My definition of a free society is a society 
where it is safe to be unpopular.
  -Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

Herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years. 
Indeed it has. And then we tested it all, and the stuff 
that worked became medicine. And the rest of it?  It just 
became a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri. 
  -Dara O'Briain

For decades, Americans have experienced a populist uprising that 
only benefits the people it is supposed to be targeting.The angry 
workers, mighty in their numbers, are marching irresistibly against 
the arrogant. They are shaking their fists at the sons of privilege. 
They are laughing at the dainty affectations of the Leawoof toffs. 
They are massing at the gates of Mission Hills, hoisting the black 
flag, and while the millionaires tremble in their mansions, they are 
bellowing out their terrifying demands. "We are here," they scream, 
"to cut your taxes!"
  -Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas?

Half a league half a league, 
Half a league onward, 
All in the valley of Death 
Rode the ten: 
'Forward, the UNIX Team! 
Charge for the guns' he said: 
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the noble ten. 
  -Geoff

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people
orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state
of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.
From out there on the moon, international politics look
so petty.  You want to grab a politician by the scruff
of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles 
out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."
  -Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut

If you don't think too good don't think too much.
  -Ted Williams

People will treat with disdain such phenomena as are proved
by the evidence of the senses, and commenly experienced, while
they will defend to the death the reality of a phenomenon which
they have neither seen nor experienced.  
  From Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

'Thomas Granger of Plymouth, a boy of seventeen or so, was indicted 
in 1642 for buggery "with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two 
calves and a turkey."'
  http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring03/branks.cfm

The best time to plant an oak tree was twenty-five years ago. 
The second best time is today. 
  -James Carvilee

Stand up, Chuck, let 'em see ya!
  -Joe Biden, to Missouri state Sen. Chuck Graham, who is in a wheelchair

Puzzles are "transmitter-dependent"; they turn on what we are told.
Mysteries are "receiver-dependent"; they turn on the skills of the listener.
  -Malcolm Gladwell What The Dog  Saw

Berlin is a skeleton which aches in the cold.  It is my own
skeleton aching.  I feel in my bones the sharp ache of the
frost in the girders of the overhead railway, in the ironwork
of balconies, in the bridges, tramlines, lamp-standards,
latrines.  The iron throbs and shrinks, the stone and the 
bricks ache dully, the plaster is numb.
  -Christopher Isherwood in In The Garden Of Beasts
   describing winter in Berlin, Germany in the 1930s

I am totally a dog person. Cats remind me too much of
my last boyfriend: aloof, only wants affection when they 
want it, and breath like tuna.
  -Darlene

My mom is almost all Irish.  I always say my mom has this little 
green man inside her and you never want to make him come out!
  -We'll just leave this person anonymous

This happens a lot, and there's nothing you can do about it. 
You might be screwed, but you'll basically be OK.
  -Bruce Schneier

I do not believe that [even] a majority can vote a man's life 
or property or freedom away from his.
  -Ayn Rand

We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.
  -Jeff Marder

Trust him?  I wouldn't trust him to pick me up at the airport!
He'd pull the plug on my life support in a minute, even if I 
was only getting a dental cleaning!
  -Scott

Even when working with a reading group of 6 to 8 students, 
teachers are overseeing the decoding skills, comprehension, 
word attack, performance, and engagement of those students 
while simultaneously keeping tabs on the learning of the 
other two dozen students in the room.  The only time a 
physician could possibly encounter a situation of comparable
complexity would be in the emergency room of a hospital 
during or after a natural disaster.
  -Psychologist Lee Shulman

If your main objective in a phone call is to convince 
someone that you're not crazy you've already lost.
  -This American Life

In cyberspace, the balance of power is on the side of the attacker. 
Attacking a network is *much* easier than defending a network.  
That may change eventually -- there might someday be the cyberspace 
equivalent of trench warfare, where the defender has the natural 
advantage -- but not any time soon.
  -Bruce Schneier

If you want people to stay at home and do nothing,
why don't you turn the Internet back on?
  -Conan O'Brien (regarding the revolution in Egypt)

More important than reason in shaping habits are
the stories we tell ourselves.
  -Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

You don't know what you can do until you wake up the next 
morning and realize how you feel from having done it.
  -Terry (about shoveling lots of snow)

Books to the ceiling, 
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them."
  -Arnold Lobel

Tradition is the scourge of endeavor.
  -Terry Pratchett Unseen Academicals

Anything that's the something of something
isn't the anything of anything.
  -Lisa Simpson

Much of the social history of the Western world 
over the past three decades has involved replacing 
what worked with what sounded good.
  -Thomas Sowell

I like living in England. One reason is because it's in Europe. 
Here I can take a train and in a few hours I'm in Paris. Back in
Massachusetts, I can take a train and in a few hours I'm in Newark,
New Jersey. Not that there's anything wrong with Newark, New Jersey.
Just saying.
  -Jerry Lerman

"People in Savannah don't say, 'Before leaving the room, 
Mrs. Jones put on her coat.'  Instead, they say, 'Before 
leaving the room, Mrs. Jones put on the coat that her third
husband gave her before he shot himself in the head.'"
  -John Berendt

Advice to aspiring writers:
"Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. 
Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, 
include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, 
middle and end -- as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. 
It's great practice.  Do this while figuring out what you want to write 
a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary."
  -ibid

"Elitism" is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
  -Sydney J. Harris

I feel used and unwanted, like the two pieces of an Oreo cookie 
after the cream filling has been licked out of them.
  -J.L.

The art of narrative consists in concealing from your audience 
everything that it wants to know until after you expose your 
favorite opinions on topics foreign to the subject.
  -O'Henry

You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you
if you realized how seldom they do.
  -Eleanor Roosevelt

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, 
shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar, 
and all great writers have had it.” 
  -Ernest Hemingway
 
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
  -Dale Carnegie

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.
  -Italian proverb

There is hardly a product of our culture that someone 
cannot make a little worse and sell for a little less, 
and the one who puts price above all other considerations 
is the natural prey of this man.
  -John Ruskin

This atrocious doctrine of allegiance to party
plays directly into the hands of politicians of
the baser sort--and doubtless that it was borrowed
or stolen--from the monarchial system.
  -Mark Twain

It is better to support schools than jails.
  -Ibid

The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any
other man in the earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.
  -Yep, Twain again

I didn't say it was your fault.  I said I was going to blame you.
  -Kaysee

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of how tings turn out.
  -John Wooden

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, 
a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, 
and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.
  -Hunter S Thompson

You only argue when you don't like the results.
  -Brian Glenn

Amid chaos of images, we value coherence.  We believe 
in the printed word; we believe in clarity; we believe in
immaculate syntax, and in the beauty of the English language.
  -Former 'New Yorker' editor William Shawn (Chon)

There are two ways of constructing a software design; 
one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no 
deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult.
  -C.A.R. Hoare

Writing programs is a bit like arranging the junk in your garage:
The organization makes perfect sense when you're stashing stuff 
away for the first time, but six months later you can't remember
why you put things where you did.
  -Paul Hoffman (about the importance of commenting your code)

I cannot do all the good the world needs, 
but the world needs all the good I can do. 
  -Jana Stanfield

The less you know, the more you believe.
  -Bono

Think for yourselves, and let others
enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
  -Voltaire

Every man should have a daughter, if only 
to provide his wife with a worthy opponent.
  - Ira Bloom

He would never admit this, but he's an investment banker,
so for him, admitting the truth is something to be done
only in the event of a plea bargain.
  -Augusten Burroughs, "Dry"

Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.
  -Herbert Hoover

The fact that an opinion has been widely held 
is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly 
absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the
majority of mankind, a widespread belief is  
more likely to be foolish than sensible.
  -Bertrand Russell

What does not exist ab initio is wealth; wealth must be 
created by sustained human effort. 
  -Richmond Times Dispatch 12/14/2008

Take what you want and pay for it, says God.
  -Spanish proverb

Everyone has their own brand of crazy.
That's what makes life fun and interesting.
  -Maritza

We will ourselves not to see--it is not the fact of
indigence that distresses us, just the spectacle.
  -Hilary Thayer Himann Anthropology of an American Girl

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. 
I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have
finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
  -Buckminster Fuller

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles
writers.  My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
  -Flannery O'Connor

Let me just say that if Lotus Notes was designed on a cocktail napkin, then 
Microsoft Office Communicator was surely designed on a sheet of toilet paper.
  -me (frustrated)

I'm not a bullshitter.   {pause}   OK, I bullshit sometimes,
but I'm not a liar!"
  -An assisted living center staff member, 
   prefacing a report about my mom

Today's best headline:
Man tells Steve Jobs to 'try Verizon!' as AT&T network fails during iPhone 4 debut
  -PC World

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
  -John Wooden  (Via Manny, thanks!)

Whoever invented the meeting must have had Hollywood in mind. 
I think they should consider giving Oscars for meetings: 
Best Meeting of the Year, Best Supporting Meeting, 
Best Meeting Based on Material from Another Meeting.
  -William Goldman

If they'd look up the court records they'd have more facts then I do.
  -Keith Richards, on working on an autobiography

Most of the change we think we see in life 
is due to truths being in and out of favor.
  -Robert Frost

It is only imperfection that complains of what is
imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle
and quiet we become toward the defects of others.
  -Joseph Addison maybe...

If I'd had more time I would have written a shorter letter.
  -Mark Twain

She was bewildered and excited.  Every day was filled 
with surprises.  Her new boss was an undead automaton 
from hell, true, but no job was perfect.
  -Daemon by Daniel Suarez

Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the 
marketplace of ideas, [but] reality has no advertising budget. 
Persistence and presence create truth online.
  -Freedom by Daniel Suarez

Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
  -H.L. Mencken (ouch)

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
  -William Shakespeare

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. 
I'm frightened of the old ones.
  -John Cage

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and 
outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and 
dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the 
same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
  -Albert Einstein

Earthquakes are caused by promiscuous women!
  -An Iranian cleric
Men can say "No!" to promiscuous women.  But they don't.  
That's what causes volcanoes.
  -Leslie

[My cousin back Indiana] sat in her kitchen and said, "I'm just scared to death." 
I asked of what. She lives in a small, safe town, knows everybody in it, is retired, 
financially secure, and her health is OK. She said, "I just am." There's a rich vein
 of gold in that statement, and miscreant TV and radio talk show hosts are mining it.
  -Bob Englehart

If it ain't broke, don't break it. If it's broke, 
fix it any way you can and to hell with the critics.
  -Bob Englehart

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats 
a strange protein; it rejects it.
  -P. B. Medawar

Most ball games are lost, not won.
  -Casey Stengel

No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
  --Nietzche

Amateurs hack systems.  Professionals hack people.
  -The title of an IT department memo

Drugs, cars, or cards: the dealer always wins.
  -me

I don't care who votes as long as I get to count the votes. 
  -Joseph Stalin
   
As long as I get to count the votes, what are you going to do about it?
  -William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed (1871)

I read Playboy for the same reason I read National Geographic.
I like to see pictures of places I'll never visit.
  -A friend of a friend

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
  -Oliver Wendell Holmes

In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.
  -Thomas Pickering

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
  Ralph Waldo Emerson

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself 
a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about 
repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in 
the struggle for independence.
  -Charles Austin Beard

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
  -William Hazlitt

If things go so badly that the S&P 500 becomes permanently worthless, 
I have a hard time believing that the people who own gold will rule the world. 
I think it's more likely that the people who own steel that is conveniently 
shaped like guns will control everything, including all of the shiny rocks. 
  -Scott Adams

Seems to me the real question is, should mentally 
defective people be allowed to serve as Senators or
Congresspeople.  Think about it.  The amount of harm 
one person can do with a gun pales in comparison.
  -B.R.

Sex.  Some people think it's not the answer.
OK, it's the question.  The answer is "yes".
  -Garrison Keillor

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together 
in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal 
system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it.
  -Frederic Bastiat

We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring of human nature. 
It must be clearly understood that this word is used here to designate 
a universal, incontestable fact, resulting from the nature of man, 
and not an adverse judgment, as would be the word selfishness. 
  -ibid

View Only access with write permission?  
Must be another company standard.
  -Shelby Nameless

In Europe, the collapse of socialism removed the main issue that
divided the political parties. In America, it removed the main issue
that united them. That is why European politics was more ideological
than US politics then, and US politics is more ideological than
European politics now.
  -John Kay

Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle 
and discovering a farmer's daughter.
  -Julius Comroe

What's the most common password among the 32 million people whose
accounts were hacked at RockYou late last year? According to a study
by Imperva, it's 123456, followed by 12345, 123456789 and Password, in
that order. iloveyou came in at no. 5.  Only 0.2% of users had what
would be considered a strong password.
  -Jack McKenna

In times of war the laws fall silent.  
  -Cicero

I gotta work out. I keep saying it all the time. 
I keep saying I gotta start working out. It's been 
about two months since I've worked out. And I just 
don't have the time. Which uh... is odd. Because I 
have the time to go out to dinner. And uh... and  
watch TV.  And get a bone density test.  And uh... 
try to figure out what my phone number spells in words.
  Ellen DeGeneres

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government 
to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people 
to restrain the government.
  -Patrick Henry

There's a fine line between good marketing and grand larceny. 
If you think you’re smart enough to tell the difference, you 
might be giving yourself too much credit.
  -Scott Adams again

Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him
best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he
then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his
for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This
is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and
the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. Each makes
this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional
life, in order to find in this way peace and security which
he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
  -Albert Einstein

   -----

I wonder, what would the birth experience be called if a man were 
delivering?  Rather than "in labor" it might be "in death's throes", 
"in torture", "in unbelievable pain", "in these circumstances, 
better dead than alive".  Hard to describe the birth experience, 
but somehow, "in labor" just doesn't quite cover it.
  -RMD
   Note to self: Must be more careful about what 
                 jokes we tell to whom, and when.
Someone sent me a response to this, that said:
  If men were delivering it would be a sporting event. 
  Medals, tournaments, the whole nine yards. 
  Oh, and they would only do it once!
    -KMD     
If you're now wondering what society would be like if
men got periods, Gloria Steinem wondered the same thing,
and her answer is reproduced here.

I seem to have touched a nerve.  Another woman responded:
  If men got a period, NOTHING would ever get done cause they'd all 
  be spending days in bed, whining about how bad they felt, how they 
  were too bloated to fit into their clothes, crying, and begging for 
  more Midol cause their cramps were so bad!  Oh, and there would be
  extensive research into what drugs could help alleviate the symptoms,
  and there would be telethons for research funds.  And, congress would
  enact a law requiring jail time up to and including the death penalty, 
  for a woman who said to a man "What's the problem, it's all in your head."

   -----

The martial arts isn't really about fighting, 
which is just dealing with the symptoms, but 
is more about curing the diseased frame of mind  
that got you into the fight in the first place.
  -Master Alex Ziwak

You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, 
en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is. 
  Mark Twain

You never change the existing reality by fighting it. 
Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete.
  -R. Buckminster Fuller

Captain Penny's Law:
    You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some
    of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.

America believes in education: the average professor 
earns more money in a year than a professional athlete 
earns in a whole week. 
  -Evan Esar

If archaeologists ever dig up my body and study it, they'll 
find that it was made of 2 substances: cheese, and burger.
  -George Foreman

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things 
you do, you regret if you have any sense, and if you don't regret 
them, maybe you're stupid. 
  -Katharine Hepburn

It'd be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind 
to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack. 
  -ibid

When your boyfriend asks "Hey, can I dye your cat?" 
The answer should never be "Sure . . . what?"
  -M.K.

I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions.
The curtain was up.
  -Groucho Marx

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me 
of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the 
line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking 
idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur
creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls 
insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is 
flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. 
  -H. L. Mencken, commenting on the writing style of Warren Harding

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.
  -Vince Lombardi

The teacher asked the kids how would you cook a turkey and for how 
long.  My son's response: "spin it around and roll it into a ball and 
squish it and put a lollipop in it - cook for 24 minutes."
  -Kaysee

The challenge of Thanksgiving is to gather among our kin who know us 
a little too well and have an amiable occasion enjoyed equally by all, 
at which nobody is stabbed through the heart with a carving knife.
  -Garrison Keillor

Despite the old adage, honesty is not always the best policy.
For example, when someone asks: "Do you want to hear about..."
"No, not really" is pretty much never the correct answer.
Another example is when you're asked: "How do you like my
new haircut?" The wise one will lie, and say somethig like:
"It makes you look at least 10 years younger!"  Trust me,
"It makes you look like a puppy!" is wrong, even if true.
Honesty is over-rated.
  -me

The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.
  -Mike Krzyzewski

I'm very pleased with each advancing year. 
It stems back to when I was forty. I was a 
bit upset about reaching that milestone, but 
an older friend consoled me. "Don't complain 
about growing old - many, many people do not 
have that privilege." 
  -Former Chief Justice Earl Warren

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.
  -Edward de Bono

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out 
of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
  -Frank Lloyd Wright

"Wrong" is one of those concepts that depends on witnesses.
  -Catbert

The problem is not that we are different. The problem is that people 
try to make out the fact that we are different as a bad thing.
  -Kimberly H.

We screwed up.  But luckily, we screwed up right.
  -Louie

Allow me to invent a new word to describe my feeling 
at this moment: Holyjeezamafuginkripes.
  -Scott Adams again

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
  -Paul Harvey

I deny nothing, but doubt everything.
  -Lord Byron

Be careful!  Or the anti-counter revolutionary negation crisis 
incident neutralization response and containment team will get YOU!
  -My son

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
  -Indira Gandhi

Why would you worry about spending a weekend with someone 
whose language you don't speak?  I've lived for 25 years 
with someone who speaks Woman!
  -I think I'll let him remain anonymous

TBA hears the sounds of the night waft in through 
the open window mixing with the relentless tapping 
of the keyboard and the tired whine of a hard drive 
limping towards end of life.
  -To Be Approved

I speak penguin!
  -A linux admin, coming to the rescue.

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
  -Charles Kettering

I just read this headline: "Hero dog saves 89 year old man from Cougar"
All I could think was "How the hell old was that woman?"
  -Darlene

I've never killed people at such a breakneck pace before!
  -The filmmaker Colin Theys

You're a SysAdmin, right?  I used to be a tech writer for XXXXXXXX support 
(Dear customer, here's what is going to go wrong and why it's not your fault).
  -Betsy who enlightened me to Ponarvs

We don't say "no", we say "not that way".
  -Mark Baker

There is no reason to say that I'm the illegitimate grandson 
of an alligator!
  -Us.S. Representative (and Birther) Bill Posey (R-FL)
   after Steven Colbert demanded a DNA test to determine
   once and for all if Posey is part alligator

If you don't believe in the power of advertising, 
just pick up any alumni magazine.  Observe how they 
make "an expert on the biology of mosses and lichens" 
look as if his life is much more exciting than yours.  
And marvel.  This is the power of advertising.
  -me

I swear, Connecticut has the second-most corrupt 
politicians in America. Thank God for New Jersey.
  -Bob Englehart

He noticed that his debt exceeded the world GDP while 
making a routine balance inquiry on his online Bank 
of America account.  ...  In a statement, Visa said 
the rogue [$23 quadrillion] charges affected fewer 
than 13,000 prepaid transactions...
  -CNN

When I was growing up we had only 3 T.V. channels, and they broadcast only     
one half hour of news, in the evening.  There is still only a half an hour   
of news, but they take all day to cover it.
  -me

The less you talk, the more you're listened to.
  -Abigail Van Buren

People are more important than objects. They have to be. 
Otherwise all sorts of atrocities are possible. 
  -Cary Tennis

In any news story of late I think that if you replace the name 
"Michael Jackson" with "Kim Jong-il" there's not a whole lot 
of difference.
  -Greg

Even when opportunity knocks, one must still 
get off his seat and open the door.
  -General Douglas MacArthur

In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus 
ended the world's first and only hot air baboon ride.
  2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest runner up

More harm has been done by people panicked over 
societal decline than societal decline ever did.
  xkcd

I feel like I've died and gone to Seattle.
  -Walt Josephson, commenting on all the rain we're getting

I hate computers!
We all hate computers.  That's why we're here -- this is Hell.
  -Tim Bunnell

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, 
misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
  -Groucho Marx

Dr. XXXXXXXX was my infectious disease doctor at XXXXXXXX Hospital. 
He was the infectious disease doc for the women with the swine flu. 
I completely understand why she died.
  -A colleague, expressing some disenchantment with his former physician

Understatement of the day:
"The downgrade of Great Britain by S&P certainly damped enthusiasm."
  -Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners reacting
   to news that S&P had lowered its outlook for the U.K. to "negative" 
   from "stable."

Stress is a job benefit.  It keeps you on your toes.
  -My manager

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
  -James Madison

[We seek to establish] a government of laws and not of men.
   -John Adams

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland 
and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am 
therefore excused from saving universes.
  -Douglas Adams, via my daughter, to whom I believe it applies

As institutions embrace automated services such as self-service
password reset for purposes of reducing costs and boosting
efficiency, these services are being targeted by attackers for the
relative ease with which they can be used to gain access to
registered accounts.
  -Thomas Varghese

Voters have seen many Republicans who have campaigned on the conservative 
themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom, and consistently 
failed to govern that way. Americans didn't turn away from conservatism; 
they instead turned away from those who faked it. 
  -Mark Sanford Such good words.  And then, look what he did!  Cripes!

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
  -Thomas Huxley

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. 
Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.
  -Eric Temple Bell

The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.

When you have a clock in the house you know the time.
Once you get two clocks you are no longer certain.
  -A traditional Danish proverb

I imagine that getting caught with your hand in the public till 
in China means death. Here it means reelection. 
  -Scott Adams

First, you have to charge your fratistat with some impossibilium 
to use it on your widget to get your widget back into whack. 
Then you have to smear some unobtanium on your doohickey to slide 
it into the thingamabob. This'll work 99% of the time unless your 
thingamabob is totally discombobulated, then you'll just have to 
buy a new one at Wal-Mart.
  -Mickey

Obstacles are those frightful things you see 
when you take your mind off your goals.
  -William Kennedy

The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.
  -Oswald Chambers

The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its 
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
  -fortune

Make no mistake -- auditors will find fault with your systems, your processes, 
and the people who operate them. They're auditors. It's their job.
  -Margaret Rouse

Computer Humor

Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?
I think so, Brain, but won't the American public catch on eventually?
  -me

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows
suggestively and and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.
  -xkcd, probably the best comic on the planet

If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most 
honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.
  -Cardinal Richelieu

This is a goat rodeo!
  -A co-worker's (accurate) description of a recent server migration

a(b+c)=(ab)+(ac)  Politicize THAT!
  xkcd

The dog to be scared of in the 2000s is the pit. In the 90s it was the rottie. 
In the 80s it was the Doberman. In the 70s, it was the German Shepherd.
Unfortunately, the media reports limited versions of almost everything, it seems.
  -Samantha Niemeyer

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

I have read your book and much like it.
  -Moses Hadas

When I was in my thirties I had these little square hips left over
from being pregnant and I just hated it.  I kept thinking "All those
years before, I had a perfect glamour-girl body, and I didn't spend
one minute appreciating it because I thought my nose had a bump in it."
And now that I'm old, my shoulder hurts and I don't sleep good and my
knuckles swell up, and I think, "All those years in my thirties and 
forties I had a body where everything worked perfect.  And I didn't
spend one minute appreciating it because I thought I had square hips."
  -Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs In Heaven

[You] can't understand a company's network security by looking at 
public events -- that's a bad metric.  All the public events tell 
you are, these are attacks that were successful enough to steal 
data, but were unsuccessful in covering their tracks.
  -Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for BT Group

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
  -fortune

The point of good writing is knowing when to stop.
  -Lucy Montgomery

   *****

I'm not a big fan of bailing out companies, but I'm even less of a fan of                                      
letting them fold.  Not only does it "punish" the CEOs, but the workers                                        
and suppliers.  If we have to give them a loan, I want to be darned sure                                       
that they're not taking the top dogs to Hawaii and letting them work off                                       
their stress in the Jacuzzi, while the "little people" have to pick up                                         
the slack with the layoffs.                                                                                    
                                                                                                               
I'm also tired of punishing the poor.  Reagan was the big one who pushed                                       
that idea with the "welfare Cadillacs".  Yes there are people who are on                                       
welfare and have Cadillacs.  They're usually a run down gas guzzler that                                       
someone gave them or sold them cheap to get rid of.  One thing Obama does                                      
is bring a remembrance of what it's like to live in poverty and may be                                         
more open to working to break that cycle rather than giving tax breaks to                                      
the wealthy and hoping that they'll shop at WalMart so the part time                                           
worker with the asthmatic kid gets more hours.                                                                 
  -D.K.

   *****

On January 1, 1900 do you know what the largest company in the United States was?  
It was the Pennsylvania Railroad.  They were responsible for moving more people 
and goods across this country than everyone else combined.  If you had told anyone 
back then that they wouldn't be around in 60 years they would have laughed you out 
of the room.  In the 1930's, Amelia Earhart spoke at a board luncheon and told 
them that someday airplanes would be moving goods and people across the country, 
and they did indeed laugh her out of the room.  What was their problem?  

The railroad never adapted to the changing times.  Their mission statement was 
basically that they moved people and goods across the country by train.  If they 
had just changed those last two words to by the fastest and most expedient way 
possible, they might still be around today.
  
Is it sad that the Penn is gone?  Yes, but now we're getting our packages shipped
overnight, and I can get to California in an afternoon instead of four days.  

If the Feds had tried to bail out the railroad, how much would they have had to spend 
to save it, or more fundamentally: could any amount of money have saved the railroad?  
Could anyone have saved the whaling industry?  Should we have?  Wall Street is constantly 
crying Laissez-faire, until they want a handout.  Then it becomes another story.
  -G.R.

   *****

That is pretty draconian -- $500,000 is not a lot of money, 
particularly if there is no bonus.
  -James F. Reda, founder and managing director of 
   James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm
That's right, fellow taxpayers, he wants your money, because he lost his, 
and he thinks that a half a million dollars per year is not enough of a 
reward for his clients, even when they lose their shareholders' money.  
Could you manage to scrape by on a half a mil a year?  
Do you expect your compensation to be linked to your performance?
Maybe you need a "compensation consultant".
  -me

Math is like love: a simple idea, but it can get complicated.
  -R. Drabek

There are a few things that are guaranteed to keep your computer 
and data safe. Don't connect to a network, ever. Keep the machine 
physically secure in a lead-lined room. Remove the hard drive and 
store it in a safe. Epoxy over the USB ports and pull out the DVD 
drive. Keep the keyboard locked in a drawer.  Guard the room with 
dragons. The PC itself should be kept behind the starting defensive 
lineup of the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers. 
  -A very disgruntled neighbor, referencing this.
Or, you could just buy a Mac.
  -Me

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of 
average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is 
separate from the way the car is driven.
  -Edward de Bono

I often wonder what is the color of the Sun on the planet these guys live on.
  -A fellow System Administrator, discussing Network Services

Illegitimis non carborundum
  -various, including General Joseph Stillwell, and Margaret Atwood

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.
  -Edward de Bono

One post-teen: But how do you know if you're
really in love?  What does it feel like?"

Another post-teen: "Okay, imagine you got dumped, 
and you're all depressed, and then you go home, 
and get food poisoning and are nauseous, barfing 
your guts out, and breaking out in hives.

It's the exact opposite of that."
  -anonymous duo

Confession is good for the soul only in the sense 
that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.
  -Peter de Vries

I like speaking truth to power, but I don't like when it speaks back.
  -Asok

The artist is nothing without the gift, 
but the gift is nothing without work.
  -Emile Zola

There is a delicious irony in seeing private jets flying into Washington D.C. 
and people coming off them with tin cups in their hands.
  -Gary Ackerman

I don't know about you, but I have totally stopped worrying about 
terrorist attacks. Now I'm only afraid of bankers with new ideas. 
  -Scott Adams

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
  -Abraham Lincoln

The police in our society do a good job, but unless a policeman is standing next to
you, you are pretty much on your own. Do this simple exercise: Go lie on your bed and 
look at the clock. Imagine that a couple of punks just kicked in your door.  Now, stare 
at the clock for a full five minutes. Even if you somehow manage to call 911 and get an 
operator, you will quickly realize that the best that any police department can do is to 
draw a chalk line around your body, unless you personally take action.
  -Jeff Quinn edited for impact

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
  -Rainer Rilke

Two types of people laugh at the law;
those who break it and those who make it.
  -Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

A 16 oz. Starbucks French Roast with a double shot of
espresso, a 20 oz. Mountain Dew, and a Red Bull Cola. 
Because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
  -Me

As a general rule, wherever you find a large group of people who 
are baffled by complexity, you will find a smaller group of people 
making a good living screwing them. It's true with all complex things:  
insurance, cell phone plans, legal stuff, technology, you name it. 
  -Scott Adams

Worrying comes from predicting the future on a straight line, imagining
trouble increasing at some established pace. But the real future comes in
leaps and bounces, with creative solutions expanding faster than problems.
I believe this is some sort of fundamental law of the universe, that
solutions will always outpace problems.

Take a deep breath. You're going to be fine. Someone, somewhere, just
thought of an idea that will fix everything. And you couldn't stop it if
you tried."
  Scott Adams

Age is not measured by years. Nature does not equally distribute energy. 
Some people are born old and tired while others are going strong at seventy. 
  -Babe Ruth

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election
on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument 
[of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend 
on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally 
American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Führer' or 
'Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike 
bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!
  -Dorothy Thompson

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, 
fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is 
good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and 
that there is always tomorrow." 
  -ibid

October is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. 
The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, 
June, December, August and February.
  -Mark Twain

US financial markets increasingly resemble those in China. In both Shanghai 
and New York, the rule is "Privatize the profits and socialize the losses."
  -Jim Jubak 

To understand our budget, you need to picture a handful of greedy people
with a really huge pie.  Everyone wants more than their share, so...
You need more pie.
  -Fred

Your Constitution will never fail you, but your leaders will. 
Be wary of anyone who tries to convince you that it's the other way around.
  -Glenn Beck

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing
is that you lose control. It's just as bad as using a proprietary
program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of
a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or
somebody else's web server, you're defenseless. You're putty in the
hands of whoever developed that software.
  -Richard Stallman

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
  -Eric Hoffer

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
  -Winston Curchill, On formal declarations of war

Warning: Flagrant waste, conspicuous consumption, and public 
displays of greed, promiscuity and substance abuse/dependence 
have become, not only socially acceptable, but fashionable.  
Social upheaval will follow soon.  Please save your assets now.

Beware politicians who peddle fables that cast themselves as the heroes.
  -A Mortgage Fable

If you do enough small things right, big things happen.
  -Coach John Wooden

Watching the way politicians act makes you long for 
the respect and self-control of the Sopranos. 
  -Glenn Beck

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely 
suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see 
an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
  -Dave Barry

It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
  -Alexander Korda

Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting.
  -Robert Frost

Wars are not made by generations and their special stupidities;
wars are made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.
  -John Knowles A Separate Peace
     slight paraphrase for clarification

Anybody can become angry; that is easy. But to be angry with the
right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, 
and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not 
within everybody's power; that is not easy. 
  -Aristotle.

Medicine is not science.  It's good guesswork, based on science.
  -Lauren Julian

If you must play, decide on three things at the start: 
the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time. 
  -Chinese Proverb

An amateur will train until they get it right. 
A professional will train until they can't get it wrong.
  -a cop

Yes, I am THAT person.  The person who keeps a red pen 
handy when reading a book.
  -my son

Oh, don't tell me, I know. A bunch of people get caught in a storm 
and everyone's wondering who's gonna be the first one murdered.
  -Martin

The sound system in the Arco Arena was like four winos farting in a steel drum.
  -Scott Adams

There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. 
Too bad it's not a fence.
  -fortune

Let no person say what they would or would not do, since 
we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances
call us to act.
  -Abigail Adams, May 25, 1784

Many men have been carried to the cemetery with honor
guards and rifle salutes who, if the truth be known, 
knew their missions were not worth the price but went 
anyway. Many, many of our honored dead were dissenters.
What makes no sense at all is when the [President] 
expects us civilians to support his ... policy as
a way of "supporting our troops."  The troops are not 
mercenaries, they are American soldiers in a long proud 
tradition... and what gives their mission dignity and 
meaning is that it comes from a constitutional government 
in which war is not a point of personal privilege but a 
matter to be openly debated, opposed, protested, reported. 
For the troops to fall into line is a noble thing; 
for civilians to fall into line is shameful.
  -Garrison Keillor

As far as I know, there will be no more unplanned surprises this week.
  -A project manager, probably best left nameless

I am so far behind on e-mail that I am declaring bankruptcy.
If you've sent me an e-mail (and you aren't my wife, partner, 
or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over.
  -Fred Wilson

My son's old department name: Information Security.
The new one: 
Enterprise Information Security Operational Incident Response Management Team

I know what I have given you.
I do not know what you have received.
  -Antonio Porchia

I've driven across a lot of bridges, but 
that doesn't mean I can build one.
  -Manny Durao

"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose 
we can say he stole a song. Copying a song you bought is a nice 
way of saying 'steals just one copy.' " 
  -Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser
   Arguing that loading songs that you bought legally onto your
   own computer, even if you don't share them, is stealing

They argue:
"It is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD 
to transfer that music into their computer." 
  -Ira Schwartz, industry lawyer

Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. 
My mother cleans them. 
  -Rita Rudner 

There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
Those who understand binary,
and those who don't.
  -Bruce

I live in my own little world but it's OK, everyone knows me here.
  -anonymous

If a sane dog fights a mad dog, it's the sane dog's ear
that is bitten off.
  -Burmese Proverb

That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely 
that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there 
were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you 
can say them, but you can't say "girl".
  -Tom Lehrer

There must be a deceased LISP programmer somewhere whose gravestone 
contains a series of closed parentheses. 
  -Bill Cheswick

Don't ever assume the government is afraid to tell the big lie, 
because no one will ever call them on it if it's big enough.
  -Tim

But sad to feel, when youth has left us,
That it was given us in vain,
That its unnoticed flight bereft us
And brought no harvest in its train.
  -Alexander Pushkin

The door of a bigoted mind swings outward; the only result of 
the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
  -Ogden Nash

Thought for the day, 1/23/2008:
I wouldn't say the ship is sinking, but the mast is broken, we're 
very low on food and water, sharks are circling the boat, and the 
captain is insane.
  -Funny Times, among others.  Describes today perfectly.

The West must be prepared to carry out pre-emptive nuclear strikes 
to halt the spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. 
  -See this article.  Also see this.

No need to have any controversy about how to feed toilet paper; 
we all know the proper way: over the roll.  Marriages may have 
ended over this controversy--because they didn't bother to ask 
me the correct way.  I can resolve many controversies as long 
as I am consulted before things get out of hand.
  -MK And they call me a control freak!

Chaos, pandemonium, confusion - my work here is done.
  -Skippy

This was the first holiday I had to enforce the "no texting at
the table" rule. The kids looked at me like I was out of my mind.
  -Anita Renfroe

To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty;
to be a poet at forty is to be a poet.
  -Eugene Delacroix

Well, I've heard MSFT people speak of Outlook's ability to execute 
the way scientists talk about how a bumble bee can fly. It does it, 
but they don't really know how.
  -Thor "Hammer of God"

As I've gotten older I've started thinking more about the hereafter.
Everywhere I go, when I get there, I think: "What did I come here after?"
  -Richard Starkins

I usually pick the data that works for me and point to 
the rest and say, "it's flawed".
  -Steven Wadsworth, president of Walt Disney Internet Group

In my opinion, explanations are overrated. Anything really
worth experiencing in life defies explanation and description.
Explain falling in love. Describe a fantastic steak dinner.
Even if you could find the words to do the experience justice,
the person you're explaining it to is left with the explanation,
not the experience. Even worse, they now 'understand' something,
and they're no longer curious or interested in the experience
itself.  Knowledge is a poor substitute for experience.
  -Dan Ray

It is a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party that government 
ought not intrude in the private lives of individuals where no 
state purpose is served, and there is nothing more private or 
intimate than who you live with and who you love.
  -Lee Sherman Dreyfus

I don't know how the world has gotten so big and tough and ugly,
and I don't think people really like it this way, but they don't
know how to change it or stop it from spinning so fast.
  -Elizabeth Brundage in From Daughters To Mothers

Why does everything I whip leave me?
  -Homer Simpson

What people do in the privacy of their own lives as adults 
is their business. If they bring it into the public square 
and ask me as a taxpayer to support it or to endorse it, 
then it becomes a matter of public discussion and discourse.
  -Mike Huckabee

Even if you have a million pieces of evidence, if all the
evidence is inconclusive, you can't count it all up to make
something conclusive.
  -James J. Daegling

Fortunately, anarchists don't need to apologize. Strangely 
enough though, we do feel compelled to pay parking tickets.
  -Scott Scheule

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
  -Auric Goldfinger (in "Goldfinger" by Ian Fleming)

I think that's what the White House Press Secretary should get:
barking orders.  The president: "Here are your barking orders."
  -Renate

Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to a creator of human intelligence.
  -Ben Franklin perhaps

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  
The world owes you nothing.  It was here first.
  -Mark Twain

I use cigar smoke as an idiot repellent.
  -An ad for Punch Cigars if only...

Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only the 
trifles that irritate my nerves.
  -Queen Victoria

Never download and install programs of unknown provenance no matter 
how tempting.  Always be suspicious of anything you receive in email 
and anything that comes unsolicited.  Even if it's from someone you 
trust...  If you didn't ask for it or you were unaware you needed it, 
don't download it and don't install it.
  -Paul Schmehl

You can change political parties. You can change your hair color. 
You can even change your gender, but in New Haven, you don't 
change sides in the Sally's-Pepe's rivalry.
  -John DeStefano

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work
and driving through traffic in a car you're still pahying 
for, in order to get to the job you need to pay for the 
clothes and the car and the house you leave vacant all day
so you can afford to live in it.
  -Ellen Goodman

The wise slavemaster always hires those with the lowest expectations. 
Hiring optimists is for fools; they invariably leave after the first beating.
  -Sam Thornton

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
  -Anatole France

Imagination is important. Arguably, every major problem on earth 
can be attributed to a lack of imagination, or an excess. 
Terrorists have too much imagination about the afterlife. 
Our leaders have too little imagination about everything 
from energy policy to health. And the economy works only 
to the extent it rewards imagination in the form of innovation. 
  -Scott Adams again

Everything I needed to know about reality I learned in high school physics:
1. f=ma
2. f=g*m1*m2/(r^2)
3. v/r=i
4. pv=k
Call me a fundamentalist, but I've yet to come across a situation 
that those couldn't get me out of.
  -jakesdad

Sometimes the best you can do is move the turd to another pocket.
  -Scott Adams

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one 
comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
  -Henry Ward Beecher

Who decides who's sane and not?
The sane ones, of course,
This explains a lot!
  -don't even ask

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without 
education than to have education without common sense.
  -Robert Green Ingersoll

In a marriage, turnabout might seem like fair play, 
but try it only at your mortal peril.
  -Roger The Shrubber

You are not superior just because you see 
the world in an odious light.
  -Vicomte de Chateaubriand

The lesser of two evils is still evil.
  -Jerry Garcia

Schapiro's Explanation:
  The grass is always greener on the other side,
  but that's because they use more manure.
    -Fortune

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. 
I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came 
in through the parking lot.  And you won't believe what 
happened.  I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. 
Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates 
in the state, what was the chance that I would see that 
particular one tonight? Amazing!
  -Richard Feynman

- Every philosophy is like looking for a black cat in a dark room; 
- Marxist philosophy is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, 
  but the cat isn't there; 
- Soviet philosophy is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, the 
  cat isn't there, but you keep shouting "I've found it! I've found it!" 
  -Amos Shapiro

If you found a way to make pollution cure cancer, and donated 
the proceeds of that discovery to feed the hungry, someone 
would claim to have found your "hidden sinister and selfish 
motivation" for doing that.
  -Robert Hamilton

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, 
China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating 
without government permission. 
  -Newsweek

The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
  -Anonymous

Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath 
and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying 
the flesh.  They then point with pride to these practices as 
the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being 
that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in 
spite of them.  The reason we find only robust persons doing this 
thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
  -Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Also see "The Devil's Dictionary 2000" 

Angels on the sideline 
Baffled and confused,
Father blessed them all with reason
And this is what they choose?
  -Tool, Right In Two
 
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people 
we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
  -Noam Chomsky

Anger gets a bad rap. It's the universal disguised denunciation 
("Why are feminists so angry?"), the wink-and-nudge code word to 
signal contempt while fronting as pity for the deranged. That 
label gives those at whom the anger is directed a get-out-of-
jail-free card to abandon the debate since anger is, in one fell 
swoop, deemed irrational. Neat trick that, changing the subject 
from the offense that provoked the response to a feigned disgust 
over the angry person's "unseemly" behavior. 
  -Debra Dickerson in Salon 7/5/2007

In the DQ today, a urinal cover with a little black section. 
Turns out when you pee on it, it goes clear and reveals the 
writing underneath: "Does that come in an ADULT SIZE?" Clever, 
sort of, but not really what you'd expect to find at Dairy Queen. 
  -Dan Cosley

I guess I wasn't going fast enough for her.  The last
thing I saw as she passed me was her one-finger salute
out the back window, and her "Jesus Loves You" bumper
sticker below the tailgate.
  -Heard on radio station WSHU 6/23/2007

I love gizmos to death... but I want my gizmos to do what 
I want them to do, to serve me faithfully, and to let me 
control them the way I want to.  Not that I'm a control 
freak or anything, it just bothers me that I can't stop 
people from saying that I am.
  -Uh, me, actually

Has the sword of Isildur been reforged," she said, 
"or are thou just glad to see me?
  -The name's Strider, with an 's', like the elfish poet.

Politicians are advocates. They minimize the other side of 
the argument and exaggerate the wisdom of their own side. 
This is a fancy way of saying they are liars. Thats how 
politics works. The best liar wins. As long as our choices 
are limited to liars, we'll keep electing them and wondering 
what went wrong.
  -Scott Adams

When the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?
  -John Maynard Keynes

If you've been in the game for 30 minutes, and you
don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.
  -Warren E. Buffet

If you can't learn from experience you can't learn.
  -Renate

People who are pushy but sensitive get their feelings hurt. 
You have to say no to them, because they don't get it when 
you scratch your chin and say you'll think about it or wonder 
aloud if there isn't a better idea.  They say there's no better 
idea than this, what's taking you so long, sign right here. 
You have to tell them no and that the word no you are using is 
the traditional word no and you are using it in the traditional 
sense of its meaning no. Or, as Albert Einstein replied when 
asked if he wanted some coffee: no. 
Know no, know peace. No no, no peace. 
  -Cary Tennis, in salon.com, May 21, 2007

On free will:
We would not consider it 'will' if it were completely random and 
we would not consider it 'free' if it were entirely determined.
  -Bjorn Brembs

Old English Majors never die, they just flail
away in service of correct grammar.
  -Pete McCabe

Let's face it: the average computer user
has the brain of a Spider Monkey.
  -Bill Gates, 2000

When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
Wretched, bored, dejected; only
Here's the rub, my darling dear
I feel the same when you are near.
  -Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"

My cousin Jonathan thinks he's God. He's not. But he did 
turn out to be a software programmer, though. So did all 
the other people I know who think they're God.
  -E.C.

There's no point in arguing with a fool. 
It only wastes your breath and annoys the fool.
  -JoNa

What if everyone did that?
Am I deceiving myself in some way?
Would someone whom I admire do such a thing?
 -Rick Miller

Programmers don't know what a computer user wants because 
they spend their days interacting with machines. They hunch 
over keyboards, pecking out individual lines of code in 
esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring 
over illustrated manuscripts.                                                                  
  -Jason Pontin

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich 
as well as the poor to sleep under the bridges, to 
beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
  -Anatole Francebread.

Information being power, he who has the information has the power.
  -James Lavelle, in 1968

A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for
the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president 
had shot someone.  Ah, those were the good ol' days.
  -George W. Bush, 3/28/2007

I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. 
You know you've botched it when people sympathize with lawyers.
  -ibid

The more things change, the more they stay insane.
  -Fortune

We made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, 
in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. 
We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, 
and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.
  -Robert E. Lee, probably

You get people who say "The government won't give me a 
grant and I can't do my art."  I say: "F--- you, you
expect the government to give you a hand?  Do what it
takes.  You do baby-sitting jobs, you work in a factory
or become a pickpocket, y'know?  Get a job."  Work is
really good for an artist.  ...  Artists should work.
  -Patti Smith

Networking:
What happens when, for a as long as a moment, billions 
of things simultaneously fail to go wrong. 
  -My son, 3/3/2007

For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
  -Justin Richardson

Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive, because your words become your actions.
Keep your actions positive, because your actions become your habits.
Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your lifestyle.
Keep your lifestyle positive, because your lifestyle becomes your destiny.
  -Mahatma Gandhi
[I think my destiny is in trouble.]

Oh, please! You're asking if guys would have sex with a robot? 
I wouldn't leave these guys alone with my toaster!
  -Bryan

More than half of the wireless LAN devices being used 
at this week's RSA Conference on information security 
are themselves unsecured.
  -Network World

Everything you do will eventually be wrong.  It's just a matter of when.                                   
  -Mike Connelly

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that 
"says something" about your personality, don't bother. 
You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, 
but not a personality.
  -Charlie Brooker 

Arguments don’t mean anything unless you first 
agree on the definitions. Semantics matter.
  -Scott Adams

Stay here long enough and we'll beat that logical thinking right out of you!
  -Richard Smith

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up, 
and the kind you make up.
  -Rex Stout

If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? 
Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?
  -Seymour Cray

Ireland was still Ireland, so we should not overemphasize the new unity of its 
culture. There was still plenty of tribal warfare: sometimes even monasteries
took the field against one another.  Tales of solitary ecstatics and madmen
remained as abundant as ever, whether of Sweeney, the king who thought he 
was a bird and lived his life in treetops, or of Kevin of Glendalough, a
sixth-century hermit who lived in a hole in the rock wall of a cliff,
emerging in winter to stand for hours stark naked in the icy waters of the 
lough [lake] or in summer to hurl himself--again naked--into a bush of 
poisonous nettles.
  -How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

That darn Venturi effect. It really sucks.
  -Aaron

I bitch because it works!
  -Linda Bodner

It's easier to get forgiveness than to get permission.
  Admiral Grace Hopper

For most people, the definition of smart is "Thinks exactly like 
me but even more so." If you think that disagreeing and offering 
excellent reasons for your thinking will change anyone’s mind, 
you might be new on this planet.
  -Scott Adams

Seat belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.
  -Ron Wasdo

Whatever happens on the Internet STAYS on the Internet.
  -User Friendly

Wiker's Law:
        Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
  -fortune

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. 
There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.
                -- Lyndon Johnson

> Through technical expertise, customer service skills,
> and leveraging XXX Service Americas, I provide effective
> and timely solutions to customers while consistently
> meeting commitment and exceeding expectation. An
> advocate for XXX's Customers enabling timely access to
> XXX Services.
  -The siggie on an e-mail from a representative of this TLA.
   His note was to inform me that he was shipping my part tomorrow 
   morning, instead of this afternoon, as he'd promised.   

Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.
  -Heinrich Heine

In West Michigan we actually have book burnings. The churches 
get together here and burn books like Harry Potter and other 
religions' bibles and anything the church deems not proper.
  -Jeff from Michigan, via This is True November 17, 2006

They say that one of the best ways to have a successful relationship is to
"forgive and forget".  You don't have to forgive what you can't remember.  
I can't remember anything for very long.  I should be a saint by now.
  -Me

Scientists have developed a powerful new weapon that destroys people 
but leaves buildings standing — it's called the 17% interest rate.
  -Johnny Carson

I don’t debate with advocates. An advocate says that everything is 
right about one position and everything is wrong about the other side. 
You might as well debate with a doorknob.
  -Scott Adams

Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
  -fortune

I am not surprised by anti-Americanism; but it is a foolish 
indulgence. For all their faults (and all nations have them) 
the US are a force for good; they have liberal and democratic 
traditions of which any nation can be proud. I sometimes think 
it is a good rule of thumb to ask of a country: are people 
trying to get into it or out of it? It's not a bad guide to 
what sort of country it is. 
  -Tony Blair

You won't get ahead if you don't plan ahead.
  -From a dream on 10-23-2006
   Jeez, even my dreams are geeky!

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity?  
If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune.  
But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity.
  -Benjamin Disraeli

Me:  You should have been a social worker.
Her: I am a social worker... in part... I live with you!
  -Renate 10-14-2006

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with facts 
for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
  -Ernet Renan

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
  -Bertrand Russell

You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
  -Doug Floyd

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders 
of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter 
to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, 
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people 
can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you 
have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists 
for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. 
  -Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Never turn your back on people who take their pretending seriously.
  -Roy (Roger The Shrubber)

Today's number: 355/113 
Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
  -fortune

I'll be out of the office today.  I twisted my back real good 
last week, either from the car accident, or from moving my son's 
huge bed downstairs, which actually put me through the drywall.
I'm guessing that's the one that did it; I wish I had a video of
that one.  Today's lesson: Never be on the bottom side of a huge 
piece of furniture going down the stairs.
  -A co-worker, who was clearly having a bad week

The perfect is the enemy of the good.
  -Voltaire

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, 
most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, 
they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, 
abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
  -George Bernard Shaw

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters
shaking hands.
  -H.L. Mencken

Is it possible that software is not like anything else,
that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point 
is to always see it as a soap bubble?
  -Fortune

I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, 
and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great 
respect, they don't even invite me.
  -Dave Barry

You can't fix a problem that's based on a hallucination 
until you're able to acknowledge the hallucination.
  -Scott Adams

Young Israelis dream of being inventors, and their role models are the
Israeli innovators who made it to the Nasdaq. Hezbollah youth dream of
being martyrs, and their role models are Islamic militants who made it to
the Next World. Israel spent the last six years preparing for Warren
Buffett, while Hezbollah spent the last six years preparing for this war.
...Once again, in the Arab world, the past buries the future.
  -Thomas L. Friedman

"Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?"
  -A British police officer stopping Stirling Moss (76) for speeding.
   Sir Stirling relates that the officer had difficulty believing him.

Cassingham's Law: the moment you compare yourself to Christ,
you've lost the high ground.
  -Randy Cassingham

Q: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
A: The NSA knows!

When problems cease, so do opportunities.
Solving problems was the reason you were hired. 
Jobs with few problems don't pay very much.
  -Buck Showalter, Manager, Texas Rangers

It is against the grain of modern education to teach children 
to program.  What fun is there in making plans, acquiring 
discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, 
and learning to be self-critical?
  -Alan Perlis

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for 
young men to die in.
  -George McGovern

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. 
But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, 
is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
  -unattributed fortune

Only the mediocre are always at their best.
  -Jean Giraudoux

The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between 
the ages of four and eighteen.  At four we know all the 
questions, at eighteen all the answers.
  -unattributed fortune

I really think the bear actually showed quite a bit of kindness 
in the way she mauled me.
  -As reported here

Shouldn't the Air and Space Museum be empty?
  -Dennis Miller

Buying a house is a process wherein you walk about holding your 
wallet open and people periodically come around, reach in, and 
take whatever they want.
  -Ralph Guzman

Big ideas cannot survive contact with politicians unbruised.
  -Bill Kristol

Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow 
behind the tree."
  -Russell Long

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead
of theories to suit facts.
  -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Some people see the hand of God operating in their lives.
Others see only the finger.
  -Atlantic Magazine

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
  -Philip K. Dick

The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry,
and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.
  -Aristotle

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention 
of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, 
but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand, 
chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally 
worn out and screaming "WOO HOO, What A Ride"!
  -Anonymous

It's not who you are inside that defines you, it's what you do.
  -Chris Gilbert, UnitedHealth Group

Milford, Mich. -- The most popular item on the menu at the Milford 
Baking Co. these days is the 95-cent "Hoffa cupcake," featuring a 
green plastic hand reaching up through chocolate icing and candy 
sprinkles designed to resemble earth. 
  -The San Francisco Chronicle 

The ability to make a backdoor once you've obtained full system access 
is not a vulnerability.  It is true that you shouldn't let untrusted 
people into your house unsupervised, but the reason why is not that 
they could then unlock the door from the inside and get in.
  -Eliah Kagan

It takes a particular kind of nerve to be filmed taking $US100,000 
($133,000) in alleged bribe money out of an FBI informant's car, 
have the FBI later find the very same money wrapped in foil in your 
freezer - and then adamantly claim that you have done nothing wrong.
  -The Sydney Morning Herald

They said I was the fighter who got knocked down the most, 
but I also got up the most.
  -Floyd Patterson

The San Jose Mercury News said, "The bald spot on the back 
of his head is marching toward the bald spot on the front 
of his head like Patton toward Montgomery."
  -Scott Adams

Men will research, speak with friends and co-workers, and research on
the Internet.  A woman will read the instructions.
  -Patricia "Morrowynd" Surrey

Seen on a wall of an Emergency Operations Center:
     First Action In An Emergency:  CALL 9-1-1.
 First Action In A Catastrophe: You're on your own!
   -W1WJB

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no
monument than why I have one.
  -Cato the Elder (aka Marcus Porcius Cato)

The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury.  Due north of the
center we find the South End.  This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End.  North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
  -Fortune

"Some scientists and legislators said the [WHITE HOUSE/FEDERAL AGENCY]'s
statement about [SUBJECT] demonstrated that politics had trumped 
science" ought to be a Word macro.
  -A Scientific American blog

Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
8 bits--byte, 4 bits--nybble, 2 bits--shayve and a hayrcut.
Jobs don't kill programmers.  Programmers kill jobs. 
What goes "Pieces of seven! Pieces of seven!"?  A parroty error.
  -Fortune (so don't blame me)

I've never seen anyone change his mind because of the power of
a superior argument or the acquisition of new facts. But I've
seen plenty of people change behavior to avoid being mocked.  
  -Scott Adams

Connecticut is a group of suburbs interconnected with 
winding roads that seemingly make no sense.
  -Jeff Reitan (who is from MN)

You tend to pick up a lot of colds when you work with 
little children or, as we call them, petri dishes.
  -My daughter

Planning is an unnatural process; it is more fun to do something. 
The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a 
complete surprise, rather than being preceded by worry & depression.
  -John Harvey-Jones, management consultant

Invading Iraq after 9/11 was like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor.
  -Richard Clarke

A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
  -Anonymous fortune

If you are going through hell, keep going.
  -Sir Winston Churchill

There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, 
fashion the tools to attain, nor any power so secure 
that the naked ape will not abuse it.  So it is written 
in the genetic cards -- only physics and war hold him in 
check.  And also the wife who wants him home by five,
of course.
  -Encyclopadia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that 
will last at least until we've finished building it.
  -Anonymous

Once upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected 
his neighbor's son.  The boy walked like a thief, 
looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief.  But the 
man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the 
next time he saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, 
looked and spoke like any other child. 
  -Lao-tzu

People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the
Constitution; they don't put their hand on the Constitution 
and swear to uphold the Bible.
  -Jamin Raskin

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power 
without conscience.  Ours is a world of nuclear giants 
and ethical infants.  We know more about war than we know 
about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
  -General Omar N. Bradley,
who also called war "A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of 
civilization." and asserted that: "Wars can be prevented just as 
surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, 
must share the guilt for the dead." and "With the monstrous 
weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped 
in this world by its moral adolescents."

Emergency conditions are NOT a good time for R&D.
  -Bill Barrett (W1WJB)

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned
my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since
for him the spinal cord would suffice.
  -Albert Einstein

It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.
  -Frank Perdue
It takes a pervert to make a chicken tender.
  -Me and, apparently, a billboard

A lot of problems can be chalked up to user error but we all need to
face the fact that users do not click No.  People are conditioned to
just click Yes/Ok/Next no matter what; even when they know better.
  -Steven Alexander Jr.

CBS presented him with a can of worms, then loaned him a can opener. 
  -Rick Aristotle Munarriz of The Motley Fool

You measure a Real Computer by weight and by current it draws. 
A Real Computer is measured in tons and amps. A Real Computer 
will weigh at least a ton and suck down enough juice to baroque 
a rhino. We're talking python cables, raised floors, haylon dumps, 
and explosive bolt firing power supplies. Real Computers are feared 
by mere mortals and even the experienced wizard approaches with respect.
Real Computers have disk drives the size of washing machines. When a Real 
Computer is plugged in the lights dim. Real Computers don't get turned 
off, just rebooted every few years. The docs for Real Computers come on 
palet jacks and have been known to kill whole forests.
  -Jeff Whyche (posting on alt.folklore.computers)

I'd expected this, but this wasn't what I'd expected.
  -Fellow programmers probably understand

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, 
just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine 
it run by a board of gods. 
  -H. L. Mencken

Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to
do something and when you decide how to respond.
  -Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein

It is true that at the ports run by the Dubai company, Customs 
officers would continue to do any inspection of cargo containers 
and the Coast Guard would remain "in charge" of port security. But, 
again, very few cargo inspections are conducted. And the Coast Guard
merely sets standards that ports are to follow and reviews their 
security plans. Meeting those standards each day is the job of the 
port operators: they are responsible for hiring security officers, 
guarding the cargo and overseeing its unloading. 
  -The New York Times

Countries that do not recognize Israel: Cuba, Indonesia, Kuwait, 
Lebanon, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, 
Syria and Yemen. 
  -Countries That Don't Recognize Israel
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan 
  -Countries that recognize The Taliban

Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time 
enough for love.
  -Robert Heinlein

I always wanted to meet the governor, but not like this.
  -A 19-year old woman (anonymous out of respect) whose
   car collided with one carrying CT Governer Jodi Rell

We [InfoSec professionals] are accused of being like the madman 
on the street corner who is waving a dead chicken around his 
head. "Why are you doing that?" people ask. "To keep the flying 
elephants away." "But," people protest, "there are no flying 
elephants." "See?" he responds in triumph. "It works!" 
  -M. E. Kabay (In InfoWeek Security News 2-22-2006)

I am going to fly fast jets, drive fast cars, and go out with fast men.
  -Alex (she is 8 years old)

If you understand it, it is not God.
  -Saint Augustine

I think a world-wide campaign to find a cure for lack of sense 
of humor would go a long way toward making the world safer.
  -Lydia Theys

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing 
random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. 
  -John von Neumann

90 (mph) is just a number!
  -Ron Wasdo

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
  -Mark Twain  I'm well-progressed along this road!

If you can't change the world, change your acronym.
  -My daughter

-----

Travis McGee lives.  I'm convinced of it.  

Moored forever at Slip F-18 in the Bahia Mar Marina 
is a 52-foot houseboat called The Busted Flush.  And 
if you drive Route A1A on a lonely night, and if the 
moon is just right and the road is quiet, you might 
get a glimpse of a blue Rolls Royce truck.  Its name 
is Miss Agnes, and behind the wheel, a tall determined 
man has got a packet of business cards in his pocket 
that say "Salvage Consultant".  He's headed out to 
salvage the last thread of hope for some worthy soul; 
he will recover what no one else can get.

Believe it.  Your world will be a better place if you do.

-----

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the
feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to
make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American
Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the finger in
their face and say you helped this [9/11] happen.
  -Jerry Falwell  September 13, 2001 on a "700 Club" broadcast
I totally concur.
  -Pat Robertson, responding to Falwell's statement above

The lonesome tones of Willie Nelson rise on the Texas air and roll off 
into the darkness, making the odd deer feel unaccountably maudlin and 
causing lone jackrabbits to be overcome by a sudden desire to sink a 
whiskey and cry into the empty glass.
  -John Connolly, "Irishman's Diary", Irish Times, September 6, 1997

I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" 
Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost 
track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful 
handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've 
got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky?  Well, do ya, punk?
  -Dirty Harry

Climate specialist Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today,
forecasting six more weeks of hacker attacks...
  -Jeff Caruso

This user has been locked in the trunk of a 1980 Cadillac along with his 
PC and has been driven up and down a very bumpy road for several hrs and 
we believe that the problem is now resolved. 
  -Fight Back anti-virus/maware site

Men who do things without being told draw the most wages.
  -Rodney Dangerfield

The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
  -Janis Ian

Spammers are God's creatures too, just like cockroaches and the HIV virus.
  -This person wants to remain anonymous

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed 
in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The 
very existence of our country was at risk. Yet in the teeth of 
those dangers, they insisted on establishing the full Bill of 
Rights. Is our Congress today in more danger than were their 
predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol?
  -Al Gore Of course, the Constitution was adopted after the Revolution...

A year ago, 19 Russian parliamentarians, mainly from the communist and 
nationalist Rodina [Motherland] parties, joined 500 scholars and public 
figures to sign an open letter calling on the public prosecutor to 
investigate all Jewish organizations as "extremist" groups based on the 
familiar argument that their conspiratorial activities are the main cause 
of anti-Semitism.
  -The Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 2006

Peter Fellgett's generic recipe: "Place the dry ingredients into a clean 
bowl. Add liquids as appropriate. Stir thoroughly and cook until done."

The likelihood that I will ever buy from you is inversely 
proportional to the amount of advertising from you.
  -siggie

That's always been one of my least favorite excuses: "Everybody does it." 
You can't find a mother who will let her 5-year-old get away with that, 
but politicians often whip it out as though it held moral water.
  -Molly Ivins

No human institution is ever going to remain perfect. They have to be 
watched and adjusted like any other mechanism. Why use that as a defeatist 
excuse for doing nothing at all?
  -ibid

There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this 
old dump of a world of ours.  I suppose these ginks who argue 
that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer 
and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even 
for both.  Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way.
  -Bat Masterson

Frugalhorn (n):
   An ancient, and very inexpensive, New England brass instrument.

She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but
remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. 
  -Sandra Henry-Stocker

1MB of RAM for the HP3000 Series III minicomputer cost $64,000 
in 1980 (roughly $180,000 in today's currency). As I write this 
article at the end of November [2005], a cost comparison on the 
Web shows 1MB RAM (in 1GB chipsets) costing about 12 cents or 
less. That's a 56% reduction in price per megabyte per year 
compounded over 25 years. Similarly, the 1980 HP7925 120MB disk 
drive cost $25,000 (about $75,000 in today's money). Today, if
you could find a 120MB drive at all (much too small to be useful), 
it would cost about 6 cents (based on the $200 price of a 400GB 
Western Digital internal hard drive). That's a 57% reduction in 
price per MB per year compounded over 25 years.
  -M. E. Kabay

The gift shop and museum at the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, 
has a display entitled "The Evolution of the Bowie Knife."  
I would have thought the Bowie knife was more the product of 
intelligent design.
  -Mike Anthis

The guy [Pat Ropbertson] is a fruit loop with a lot of little loops
right behind him thrilled to hear him say what they are thinking.
  -anonymous

British coffee is just toasted milk!
  -ibid

There is no proposition more dangerous to the health of a
constitutional democracy than the notion that an elected 
head of state is above the law and beyond the reach of 
judicial review.
  -U.S. v. Nixon, 1974

Boston, n.:
        Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports
fans for finishing second in the Irish jig competition.

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
  -Euripides

Mr. Cole's Axiom:
   The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
   the population is growing.

Patriotism means to stand by the country.
It does not mean to stand by the President.
  -Theodore Roosevelt

To Err is Human... 
To Forgive is not our Policy. 
  -Motto of the MIT Assassins' Guild

We all know what happened to early union organizers and 
the pioneers of the NAACP....sad to think of how much 
time and effort these people lost in having to battle 
that evil Roman named Status Quo.
  -Dave M.

Ankh if you love Isis.
  -Fortune

It is now pitch dark.  If you proceed, 
you will likely fall into a pit.

The FBI is letting everyone know that it is not a spammer, that
it is not the one sending out e-mail messages that say the FBI
is monitoring your Internet use. The FBI is not denying that
it's monitoring your Internet use - just denying that it would
actually tell you about it in e-mail.
  Jeff Caruso, Network World

To question your government is not unpatriotic
to not question your government is unpatriotic.
  -Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a decorated Veitnam War veteren

Heaven is where the police are British,
  the chefs, Italian,
  the mechanics German, 
  the lovers, French, 
  and it is all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the police are German,
  the chefs British,
  the mechanics French,
  the lovers Swiss,
  and it is all organized by the Italians.
  -Floating around for years

From my neighbor across the street from me:
"You know..... if it's got tires, tits, or a CPU 
you're going to have trouble."
  -Paul Can also be applied to guys, I'm sure, but would then
               be lacking in a certain amount of alliteration

The police are feeling somewhat upbeat because the 
rioting is now only in about 215 towns and only
1,173 cars were burned last night.
  -Christian Science Monitor correspondent Peter Ford
   being interviewed about the French riots on WSHU
   11/8/2005
Interestingly enough, this corresponds to the exact
number of cars that the Indian subsidiary of Hyundi Motor 
Company says were damaged by the 1994 tsunami.

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
  -Ursula K. LeGuin

Democrats are better lovers.  Who ever heard of getting 
a good peice of elephant?
  -Anonymous

Now is the time for all good men to come to.
  -Walt Kelly

As soon as your company starts using Outlook, you can see emergent, 
horrible, almost biological things start to happen. 
  -Bill Joy

Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
typed with the left hand?  Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
of both hands.  It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
  -Fortune

There are studies going on right now in the Congo demonstrating
that gorillas--Gorillas!--are making and using tools.  
And the boss can't figure out how to use his voicemail.
  -The Wigmaster 10-21-2005

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

I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared 
for everyday life.
  -Fortune amen!

If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
  -A possibly inadvertent koan from Fortune

Anderson claims she was contacted by the RIAA's Settlement Support 
Center, which acknowledged she was probably innocent. But they told 
her she should settle because the RIAA would proceed with a suit 
against her anyway "to discourage others from attempting to defend 
themselves against unwarranted litigation." 
   Backspin, 10/10/2005

There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, 
fast reflexes.
  -Fortune

I've put my foot in my mouth so many times I've got athletes tongue.
  -Tim D.M.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever 
from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil 
of Europe with blood for centuries.
  -James Madison, 1803

A modest proposal:
I suggest that Sun Microsystems be put in charge of all
Government secrets.  Nobody would ever get any useful 
information until long after it had ceased being relevant.  
  -Me

Brian Porter, embezzler, endorsed checks for $90,299.77 
last year . For nine months he played the daily double, 
sipped dry martinis, dallied with expensive prostitutes, 
flew first class from city to city, and spent 
the rest foolishly.
  -I have no clue

Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
  -Su Tung-p'o, 1036-1101

The more things change, the more they stay insane.
  -Fortune

There's nothing wrong with falling asleep at the keyboard.
Unless, of course, you happen to be the soloist.
  -Me, to an exhausted colleague

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians because they 
are not very Christ-like."
  -Ghandi

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.
  -Fortune
Farkas's corollary to Freeman's Commentary
        Religion postulates that you can understand or influence the game.
  -Me

When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
  -Laurie Anderson

Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
  -Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries

Love is blind, but divorce is an eye-opener!
  -A co-worker

I felt myself entering a strange place when I read a Reagan 
appointee using [Karl] Marx to critique free traders on Labor Day.
  -Robert Purvis

What President Bush really means when he extols "sacrifice," as it
manifests in his policies: Sacrifice is not to be asked of others, or 
shared for the common good; it is something that is endured by those 
who simply can't get out of the way.
  -ibid

After the massive deaths, the near-total destruction, the complete failure 
to provide security, the widespread looting, and snail-paced response by 
the Bush Administration, we could rebuild New Orleans. Or we can just 
rename it New Baghdad. 
  Simon S. Goldenberg

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, 
now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because 
so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious 
circle: the killing keeps justifying itself.
  -Maureen Dowd in the NY Times 8/24/2005

What is mind?  No matter.
What is matter?  Never mind.
  -Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875

Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe.  For example, there are no
solids in the universe.  There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums.  There are no surfaces.  There are no
straight lines.
  -R. Buckminster Fuller

"Like a frightened turtle..."
  -I'll leave the referent of this analogy to your imagination

Q: How many database programmers does it take to change a light bulb? 
A: Three: One to write the light bulb removal program, one to write 
   the light bulb insertion program, and one to write a program 
   insuring that no one else changes the bulb at the same time. 

"...and then the press comes in with their predeceived ideas..."
  -Fred D.

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant.  This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
  -FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers

Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster.  Allocate an array and free
the middle third?  Sure!  Why not?  Multiply a character string times a
bit string and assign the result to a float decimal?  Go ahead!  Free a
controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
passing it back?  Overlay three different types of variable on the same
memory location?  Anything you say!  Write a recursive macro?  Well,
no, but Real Men use rescan.  How could a language so obviously
designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
  -fortune

GOTO 216.162.199.117  !!!
  -me  I was annoyed, OK?  :-)

Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to practical use.
  -Anonymous

Weiner's Law of Libraries:
        There are no answers, only cross references.

Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry.  Hence University education.
  -G. B. Shaw

It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
  -Phil White

Everyone knows that dragons don't exist.  But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind.  The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what does exist.  Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here.  The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical.  They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way ...
  -Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

...an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar.
  -Mark Twain

Yinkel, n.:
        A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
will notice.
  -Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

If you can't be kind, at least be vague.
  -Miss Manners

A friend stopped by earlier today, and noticed my three cats sitting 
on the front stoop. He then remembered that I only have two cats. 
When he got closer, the rabbit ran away...  I've got strange cats!
  -Shirley

"Hello.  [Technician] speaking.  I read the manuals so you don't have to."
Later... "It's a little-known fact, but e-mail servers were the tenth plague
that God visited upon the Egyptians..."
  -Greg 

 
You've got this somewhat feared ruler of a nation of several million people, 
and he's sitting in a bunker somewhere in Iraq. After several direct strikes 
at bunkers where he was supposedly sitting at the time, he's either dead or 
alive. At the same time, if you talk to the right people, he's neither dead 
nor alive and both dead and alive.

At some point, US forces will open the bunker, and as of that moment he will 
suddenly have been either dead or alive the whole time.

It took billions of dollars, but the US Government has finally created a real 
life example that can be used to demonstrate the multiple states of Schroedinger's 
Cat. And the best part is that the experiment can be easily reproduced. 
With, say, Geraldo.
  -Jeremy M. Posner

Shame on Newsweek for accepting unverified information from dubious 
sources and acting on this misinformation.   Who do they think they 
are - Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld?
  -Jack Jamison  

Us Chinese have been known to be inscrutable, which a friend 
has defined as "cannot be screwed", but I digress...
  -Chet

We are arguing in a fact-free environment now.
  -Brian Fernandez 9/18/2001

The less we know the more they fabricate.
  -Sage-Francis, Makeshift Patriot

These people are so sure of the truth that they don't let the facts get in the way.
  -The Wigmaster

What possible reason could a government sponsored educational 
system have for nurturing political critical thinking?
  -Scott

Your life's not worth a taco dinner!
  -A dubious attempt at promoting safe driving

I have to go now!  It's almost 4:30, and I have
to debug a program and get dinner ready by 5:00!
  -A modern mom

When words fail and garbage dumped on the bed becomes your preferred 
medium of communication, it's usually a sign that you've reached a 
significant crisis in the relationship.
  -Cary Tennis

The combination of alcohol and roller skates, while 
amusing, is not very practical.
  -Jenny 4/15/2005

The Democrats' mistake was in thinking that a disastrous war, national                                                
bankruptcy, erosion of liberties, corporate takeover of government,                                                   
environmental destruction, squandering our economic and moral leadership                                              
in the world, and systematic Administration lying would be of concern to                                              
the electorate. The Republicans correctly saw that the chief concern of 
the electorate was to keep gay couples from having an abortion.
  -Nick Head

I've gotten more VIPs into tights and codpieces than anyone
else in this country.
  -Carol Adelman, leader of seminars on Shakesperian power strategies

Since I've stopped drinking, I can't find anything on T.V. worth watching.
  -Anonymous 1/29/2005

If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its 
headstone might well be: "It seemed a good idea at the time." 
  -Dame Rebecca West

You are much too young to remember the newsreel clips of Hitler's celebrations. 
They were just like the inauguration: grandiose stage setting with the national 
flag draped everywhere; adoring mobs shouting in unison; blood stirring speeches 
full of ideology but empty of any specific intent. We had it all except for goose
stepping troops. We used to laugh and make fun of Bush, but now I fear him. 
Otherwise all is well. Much love, Dad
  -Not my dad, but a dad that wishes to remain anonymous.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant 
goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that 
goal.  We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
  -Martin Luther King Jr.

I'm attracted to women
Like moths to the flame.
It's been my experience
The result is the same.
  -We'll just leave this one anonymous, OK?

Is there a book called "Reading For Dummies"?
  -Steve

Damn you!  And your lobster, too!
  -Maybe this woman had better remain anonymous

The best defense is not to fight at all. If a fight can be
avoided, everyone wins. That's the best fighting tip I can
give to anyone.
  -Michael Pace: karate instructor, 7th degree black belt

Noli turbare circulos meos!  ("Don't upset my calculations!")
  -Archimedes' words to a Roman soldier during the conquest of Syracuse. 
   The soldier responded by killing him. 

Just once, I'd like to go to a party and not be set on fire.
  -Dilbert

   The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a 
first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by 
force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged 
chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make 
itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious 
and mediocre, the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is 
a virtual vacuum.
   The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, 
the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move 
toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land 
will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a 
downright moron.
  -H. L. Mencken July 26, 1920

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
  - Winston Churchill

An old error is always more popular than a new truth.
  - German proverb.

Considering all the controversy likely to be generated 
this year over numerous voting-related issues, perhaps 
1996 was the last national election the U.S. has had 
that will not be decided by the courts.
  -Me  (OK, I was wrong.  Good. :-)

Kinky and kooky are sisters that always travel together.
You can't date kinky without getting kooky.
Kinky can be grand, but those are the rules.
  -Me

I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
  -W.H. Auden, in September 1, 1939

[The U.S. Presidential debate is] starting to look like the 
movie within the movie in Goldmember.  Bright and shiny 
people, with clever lines, pretending to be important.  
Too bad it's real.
   -Mark Miller, via WesChat

It isn't the Net that drives kids into isolation or creates
lonely kids; the Net attracts lonely and ignored kids and
puts them in touch with others like them. ... Such kids don't 
suffer alone anymore.  They tell their stories to one another
almost continuously... these kids go to school, do homework, 
and sleep in their beds every night.  But in their hearts and 
€souls they dwell in the geek nation.  And ignorance of that 
world is dangerous, sometimes putting both its citizens and 
society at peril.
  -Geeks by Jon Katz

No one seems to think that peer abuse [in schools] is real
or damaging.  I would like to see any adult report for work
and be taunted, humiliated, harassed, and degraded every
single day without going stark, raving mad.  Human beings
are not wired for abuse.
  -ibid

My children can best be described by their approach to laundry:
[Child One]   Will take care of his own laundry as needed.
[Child Two]   Will find a woman to do it for him.
[Child Three] Will wear dirty clothes.
[Child Four]  Will happily go naked.
  -Anonymous, for the sake of one of the children 
Reply from a friend:
Do not touch my laundry. NO ONE may do my laundry except for me. 
Everyone else does it wrong. Clotheslines rule, especially when 
the clothes get to dry in the sun. A small breeze is nice too.

As if my day weren't weird enough: "You have a lovely little uterus!"
  -"roz"

An unprotected PC tossed on the Internet will become infected by
a worm within 20 minutes, down from 40 minutes only a year ago.
  -SANS
  2/2/2007: According to my son, who works in a NOC, this time is down 
  to 12 minutes.  The average time for a typical PC to download Windows XP 
  SP2 is 15 minutes.  You will probably now get a malware infection faster 
  than you can download the fix for it.

As most animals rarely practice contraception, Catholicism would
seem a natural fit. Certainly parrots and other imitative birds 
would enjoy the constant repetition of the mass. And the crackers. 
But Catholicism is particularly well suited to dogs, as the laying 
on of hands, if played right, could often lead to an epiphanal 
scratch of the belly. Despite of the obvious word within a word-play, 
however, most cats make poor Catholics as they refuse to feel guilt 
and it's almost impossible to get them to kneel.
  -Chris

Of this I am quite sure, if we open a quarrel between the past
and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
  -Winston Churchill

Every anger covers a wound.
   -Joe Loyla

[We've got] a bitterly contested presidential election two months 
away and the all-too-real prospect that voters--especially those 
backing the eventual loser--will not trust the announced results.
If the Electoral College tally should come down to the margin of 
a single state that lacks the ability to conduct a full recount, 
we'll be fortunate if our democracy survives to sort it all out 
in time for 2008.
  -Paul McNamara

A real bottom-line analysis is that there are six statutes,
reviews and independent audits that Las Vegas [gaming] machines
must go through periodically, but not one for e-voting.   Wow.
  -Ron Radick

Of course, there's no technology perfect enough to prevent
its implementation under Windows from being really crummy.
  -Mark Gibbs

Garrison Keillor: What was that chord you just played?
Andy Stein:       That was a Spanish chord: a C, señior.

Where do we draw the line on this social engineering stuff? 
If I send an e-mail to someone telling them to flush their 
iPod down the crapper does that mean the iPod is vulnerable 
to a toilet attack?
  -Larry Seltzer, who also says: "May the source be with you!"

You know, back in 2000 a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted 
for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, 
and our military would be totally over stretched. You know what? I did vote for 
Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true.
  -James Carville

Turn that G*dda*ned lawn mower off, it's the Lord's day!
  -Um, maybe this one should remain anonymous?  :-)

I'm against the "liar" label for two reasons. First, it further polarizes 
the political cesspool, and this polarization is making America increasingly 
difficult to govern. Second, insults and rage impede understanding.
  -Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times 06/30/2004 (on "Calling Bush a Liar")

Break the mirrors!  Yes, indeed -- shatter the glass.  In our society that 
is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other.  
Learn more about the face of your neighbor and less about your own.  
  -Sargent Shriver

To have courage for whatever comes in life-everything lies in that.
  -Mother Teresa

It's not my fault I'm biologically hardwired to want to 
have sex all the time.
I will, however, take responsibility for wanting to have 
sex with cartoon characters all the time.
  -Adam

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice.  
  -William James

I can think of no president in my lifetime (including Clinton and Nixon) 
who struggles so much to say so little.
  -I'll just leave this person anonymous, OK, Mark?

There are people who reshape the world by force or argument, but 
the cat just lies there, dozing; and the world quietly reshapes 
itself to suit his comfort and convenience. 
  -Allen and Ivy Dodd

Maybe the past is like an anchor holding us back. Maybe you 
have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.
  -KitKatter (quoting SATC)

What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly
exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.
  -Anonymous

Vision without action is a daydream.  Action without vision is a nightmare.  
  -Japanese Proverb

The saying is that this country was founded by geniuses 
so it could be run by idiots and it often seems we've 
reached that pass.
  -Molly Ivins

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by 
little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers 
until they are literally 'being lived.' They are acting out scripts 
written by parents, associates, and society. 
  -Stephen R. Covey

An occupation of Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and 
political costs....there was no viable exit strategy....had we 
gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still 
be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. 
  -George Bush, Senior., c.1992

Listen, are we helpless?  Are we doomed to do it again and again 
and again?  Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending 
sequence of rise and fall?  Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage,
the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk.  Ground to dust and plowed
with salt.  Spain, France, Britain, America-- burned into the oblivion
of the centures.  And again and again and again.
Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad 
clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?
  -A Canticle For Leibowitz
A cry for sanity in our silent night of madness.

Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless 
the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no 
place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known 
without trying to make their views the only alternative. 
  -Barry Goldwater
 
USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four 
people make up 75 percent of the population. 
  -David Letterman

It turns out the evil we fight is the shadow of the evil we do.
  -Alan Keyes

Life is never so bad at its worst that it is impossible to live; 
it is never so good at its best that it is easy to live. 
  -Gabriel Heatter, American radio commentator (1890-1972)
 
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened 
the fiber of a free people.  A nation does not have to be 
cruel in order to be tough.  
  -Franklin D. Roosevelt

Torture?  Stripped naked and handcuffed to a bed with womens' 
panties over their heads?  I've been to parties like that!
  -The Wigmaster 5/7/2004
   NOTE: I do NOT condone the actions; 
         I just think the remark is funny!

Has it ever occurred to anyone else how much money could be saved
if we just let the Jehovah's Witnesses deliver the mail?
  -Dave M.

If fresh baked bread had eyes and lips I would ask it to marry me.
  -Dee

What experience and history teach is this: that people 
and governments have never learned anything from history.
  -Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.
  -Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest, 1886

Cruel words erode the self-esteem like the ocean eats away the shore.
  -Jeanne Phillips, daughter of Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
  -Japanese Proverb

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and 
happiness.  Just because they're not on your road 
doesn't mean they've gotten lost.  
  -H. Jackson Brown, Jr., author

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.  
  -Mark Twain 

Courage is rarely reckless or foolish.  Courage usually involves 
a highly realistic estimate of the odds that must be faced. 
  -Margaret Truman
 
Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them. 
  -Richard Strauss, on conducting

I am a nocturnal student who is happy and peppy and going to Germany!
  -My daughter, April 21, 2004

Types of Dancers:
  Beginning dancer:     Knows nothing.
  Intermediate dancer:  Knows everything, too good to dance with beginners.
  Hotshot dancer:       Too good to dance with anyone.
  Advanced dancer:      Dances everything, especially with beginners.
    -Attributed to Dick Crum, a U.S. folk dance teacher

Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army.
  -former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki

A massive casualty-producing event might cause our population to
question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country.
  -Tommy Franks

Secrecy – the first refuge of incompetents – must be at bare 
minimum in a democratic society, for a fully informed public 
is the basis of self-government. Those elected or appointed 
to positions of executive authority must recognize that 
government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than the people. 
  –House Committee on Government Operations

Don't be afraid to take a big step.  
You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.  
  -David Lloyd George

The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that 
the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
  -Bertrand Russell

If the world didn't suck we'd all fall off.
  -anonymous by request

We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, 
and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
  -Tom Robbins

You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never 
catch it.  But if you sit quietly in the grass it will 
come and sit on your shoulder. 
  -Anonymous

If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn't thinking.  
  -George Patton

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing
with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.  
  -Dale Carnegie

I believe that when a windshield wiper blade is designed, it 
is mandatory that the designer include a flaw in the blade.
This flaw must manifest itself no later than two weeks after 
the blade is purchased, and it must be located approximately
two-thirds of the way to the end of the blade.  The resulting 
streak must occur exactly at the driver's eye level, and be wide
enough to cause profound aggravation.  I have never had a set of
windshield wiper blades that did not contain this flaw.
  -Bill Staines, The Tour

Happy zombie Christ day!
  -John G.'s IM "away message", Easter, 2004

Poor Sharon: she just threw up on register 16!
  -Jenny

Everywhere in my odyssey through the world of body armor,
salesmen mentioned satisfied customers.  It was the
unsatisfied customers I worried about.
  -Robert d. Kaplan, writing in The Atlantic 
   monthly magazine May, 2004 pps. 40-41

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  -Lord Acton, on April 5, 1887    Acton also said:
"Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, 
and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance."  As well as: 
"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is 
really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."
And a lot of other great stuff.

Dotty could not be the thief. Her baby-conscience was rather tough 
and elastic, and I suppose she would have felt no more scruples 
about nibbling nice things, than an unprincipled little mouse.
  -This was the text of a SPAM I got today.  Of course, I did 
   not bother opening it; I have no idea what it was advertising,
   but I like the quote from here

"How can I ever thank you?" gushed a woman to Clarence Darrow, after 
he had solved her legal troubles.  "My dear woman," Darrow replied, 
"ever since the Phoenicians invented money there has been only one 
answer to that question."
  -Another e-mail

Is the best car a Toyota Prius, Motor Trend's 2004 car of the year, 
Jeff Gordon's NASCAR #24, the Thrust SSC (fastest wheeled vehicle) 
or the Toyota Corolla (best selling car of 2004)? 
(That was a trick question; it is in fact the 1953 Nash-Healey.)
  -Paul Bostwick

[Mike Mignola and I] both believe that anything you want to
learn about people, you can learn from monster movies, and
anything about monsters, you can learn from the evening news.
  -Guillermo del Toro on NPR 4/5/2004

The gal needs a checkup from the neck up!
  -The Wigmaster

How doth the VAX's C compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.
 
How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.
  -Fortune text on mars 4/2/2004

Our new goal is to "organize all the useful information in the 
universe and serve it to you on a lightly salted cracker."
  -an April First job posting from Google

For more April Foolery, click here.

Life is short. Live it up.
  -Nikita S. Khrushchev

Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; bribery and 
corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; 
and the end of the world is evidently approaching. 
  -Assyrian clay tablet 2800 B.C.

It's 4:37 am ... about the hour that 
inanimate objects become hostile... 
  -My very sleepy daughter
 
The wit makes fun of other persons; 
the satirist makes fun of the world; 
the humorist makes fun of himself.  
  -James Thurber

Stranger thing have happened... but not often.
  -My daughter (3/26/2004)

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit 
the future.  The learned usually find themselves equipped to 
live in a world that no longer exists.  
  -Eric Heifer, philosopher

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.  
  -Sir Winston Churchill

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the 
ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you 
can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
  -John Wesley

Governing the U.S. is like playing 200 simultaneous chess matches
while whiny columnists second-guess every move on every board. 
  -New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof 3/13/2004

"The United Nations peacekeeping force could hamper the war effort."
  -a CNN commentator

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse 
that progress requires them are not really progress at 
all, but just terrible things.
  -Russell Baker

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always 
tempted to ask, "Compared to what?" 
  -Sydney Harris  

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always 
that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence 
and due process of law. We will not be driven by fear into an age of 
unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, 
not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend 
causes which were, for the moment, unpopular.  ...  We proclaim ourselves, 
as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist 
in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
  -Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965) 
   on "See ItNow," on March 9, 1954 critically reviewing
   Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communism campaign
   McCarthy's Reply

The pessimist complains about the wind.  
The optimist expects it to change.  
The leader adjusts the sails.  
  -John Maxwell

It's funny that no one has brought up the fundamental reason for 
governments and laws: to prevent people causing harm to others 
and punish those who do.  Child marriage and incest cause obvious 
harm (polygamy could be argued, but I think that's a pretty strong 
case too).  Gay marriage harms no one and benefits some.  
Where are the libertarians?
  -Karl Magnacca

Mr. Bush continues to imply that we should be scared because 
we're not safe, so we need to keep him to protect our national 
security. Which seems like a weird contradiction. If he's so 
good at protecting us, why aren't we safe?
  -Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, March 4, 2004

Clause 8 of Yahoo's Original Terms of Service:
Yahoo does not own Content you submit, unless we specifically tell 
you otherwise before you submit it. You license the Content to Yahoo 
as set forth below for the purpose of displaying and distributing such 
Content on our network of properties and for the promotion and marketing 
of our services. By submitting Content to any Yahoo property, you auto-
matically grant, or warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly 
granted, Yahoo the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and 
fully sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, 
publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and 
display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it 
in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed.
  -ACAP

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
  -Austin Phelps
Keep the coat and go to the library.
  -Renate

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger 
than the causes of it.
  -Marcus Aurelius

The world needs anger. The world often continues to 
allow evil because it isn't angry enough.
  -Bede Jarrett, The House of Gold  

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.  
  -Abraham Lincoln

How evil are you?  Find out here:
IBM:                 42% evil, 58% good
AT&T:                48% evil, 52% good
Enron:               50% evil, 50% good
Comcast:             50% evil, 50% good
Microsoft:           60% evil, 40% good
The Democrats:       43% evil, 57% good
The Republicans:     29% evil, 71% good
The White House:     20% evil, 80% good
The Bible Gateway:   10% evil, 90% good
The Vatican:          1% evil, 99% good
The Gematriculator:  Sorry, an error occurred: Recursive gematriculation
                     messes with the fabric of the universe itself and
                     cannot be allowed.
The ratings above were obtained by having the Gematriculator evaluate
their primary web sites.  Kinda scary, huh?  Also, note that copying the 
entire contents of the Gematriculator into a buffer, pasting it into the 
text box, and then evaluating it results in a rating of 30% evil, 70% good.  
I have messed with the very fabric of the universe itself.  Go me!

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live.  
It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a
pacific station, that great characters are formed.
  -Abigail Adams

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain 
a thought without accepting it.
  -Aristotle

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold 
two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain 
the ability  to function.
  -F. Scott Fitzgerald

As night fall does not come at once, neither does oppression. 
In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains 
seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must
be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we 
become unwitting victims of the darkness.
  -Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, 1976

In an earlier post I said, "But science can't explain *why* we're here.
It just came to me that George Carlin *does* have the answer to why we're
here: to invent plastic. The earth couldn't make plastic on its own, so it
created us. Now that we've fulfilled our mission the earth can shake us off
like a bad case of fleas. Pack your bags, folks, we're leaving.
  -Bob

Okay, you're right, I went to the Dark
Side, but only to pick up a few things.
  -Andrew, to Buffy

Someone should give him a gift of a set of keys to a Corvair 
and let him drive off into the sunset.
  -a comment on Ralph Nader's possible 2004 presidential run

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
  -Gil Scott-Heron

The girls in body-form slacks wander the High Street with locked hands 
while small transistor radios sit on their shoulders and whine love songs 
in their ears. The younger boys, bleeding with sap, sit on the stools of 
Tanger's Drugstore ingesting future pimples through straws. They watch 
the girls with level goat-eyes and make disparaging remarks to one another 
while their insides whimper with longing.
  -John Steinbeck

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most 
was to find  that things were just as bad as we'd been saying.
  -John F. Kennedy 

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed 
contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
  -John Steinbeck

Mom, romance is dead. It was acquired in a hostile takeover by 
Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off piece by piece.
  -Lisa Simpson

When you're going through hell, keep going; it's a bad neighborhood 
to stop in.
  -Eric Anderson from People Stories

We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give 
a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary 
rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.
  -Thomas Jefferson

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
  -Confucius

Welcome to backstage, where
high tech collides with lowlifes.
  -Garrison Keillor

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods
are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
  -Agnes Repplier

Panic is my muse.
  -Pierce, 1/8/2004

Her> So, if you had your choice...
Me, interrupting> If I had my choice I'd spend the rest
                  of my life on a tropical island, with a
                  fast Internet connection, beautiful
                  women, and lots of books.  I'd spend my      
                  days reading, researching and making love.
Her> No you wouldn't!  I know you!  You'd make love for ten
     minutes, then spend the rest of your time reading!
Sigh.  I've been found out.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
  -Aldous Huxley

The test of out progress is not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide
enough for those who have little.
  -Franklin D. Roosevelt

 - A rich nation is a country that has pipes in the ground.
 - The reason we have so much political corruption
   is that we have a representative government.
     -Tom O'Dell

A Jason Rainbow Thought:
Many of us believe that wrongs aren't wrong
if it's done [sic] by nice people like ourselves.
  -1,001 Logical Laws

I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother 
Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.  
  -Wilbur Wright

Many an argument is won on the facts and lost on the cause.
  -Barbara

If you get a lot done but it's wrong, there wasn't much point in doing it.
  -From design values

There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a
stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.
  -From The Lost World by  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner 
in crime.
  -Mignon McLaughlin

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
  -Mignon McLaughlin

It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
  -Mignon McLaughlin

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.
  -Mignon McLaughlin

You can beat the rap, but not the ride.
  -Miami police officer to a protester. see article

It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of 
the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce 
the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.
  -William Safire, 1989

If your name isn't Mary, and you didn't have unprotected sex 
with a guy called James the other night, what on earth are you 
doing even thinking of opening the attachment?
  -Sophos security analyst Chris Belthoff
   (speaking about people who open attachments containing "trojan
    horses" and thus are infected by their own greed or voyeurism.)

The reality is that condoms no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain.
  -Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times

Security is easier to implement when it doesn't 
impact ease-of-use.
  -David Kearnes, Network World

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
  -Eleanor Roosevelt

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
  -Margaret Thatcher

No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the 
individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; 
for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion 
of reality, in the human community.
  -Sigmund Freud

But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul
of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been 
exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
  -Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers

Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
  -Albert Einstein

Whatever you do, don't give up.  Because all you can do once 
you've given up is bitch.  I've known some great bitchers in 
my time.  With some it's a passion, with others an art.
  -Molly Ivins
 
The truth is more important than the facts.
  -Frank Lloyd Wright

I wasn't alone!  I had my hamster with me!
  -"Tyler", 20, on driving cross country (Car Talk)

I'm sorry.  I got off on a rant.
I have no rant control.
  -Utah Phillips

Oceania is where I want to be,
Oligarchy is the gov for me!
Meeting Julia for carnal sin, 
Keep Eurasia... 
just give me that Victory Gin!
  -Lesser-Known Moments in the Lives of the Stars

Nobody's perfect.  Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him.
  -Christopher Moore, Lamb

To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
  -Fortune

I can't drive at night because my wife can't see.
  -Uncle Nat

The fact that some geniuses were laughed
at does not imply that all who are laughed
at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus,
they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at
the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed
at Bozo the Clown.
  -Carl Sagan

"A sea of Q-Tip heads."
  -A friend, describing the elderly patrons of
   Florida resteraunts at early-bird special time

What worries you, masters you.
  -Haddon W. Robinson

I love educators, but I hate teachers.
And only teachers go to the convention.
  -An educator, declining to go to a teachers' convention

This week has almost flattened me.  
Like Gumby meets steam roller.
  -My lovely daughter, Jen

President Bush came out with his Roadmap to Peace, 
and the Israelis took the first exit.
  -Molly Ivins

There is a substantial body of emerging fact here, 
none of it encouraging for optimists. 
  -Molly again

To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess 
up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.
  -Scott Granneman

If you don't want the genie to come out don't rub the lamp.
  -KitKatter

I am an underhung disco queen who lovers to corner lizards.
  -KitKatter

Do not do onto others as you would they should do onto you.  
Their tastes may not be the same.
  -George Bernard Shaw  

The proverb warns that "You should not bite the hand that 
feeds you."  But maybe you should, if it prevents you from 
feeding yourself.
  -Thomas Szasz

It is better to go into a corner slow and come out fast 
than to go into a corner fast and come out dead. 
  -Stirling Moss

If my daughter was raped and decapitated, I would be for the 
death penalty, but that doesn't make the death penalty right.
  -Mario Cuomo

Remember: you are not selling your soul or committing yourself to
a life of poverty. You already did that when you became a ham.
 -KA1WTS (trying to get hams to participate in a drill)

Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, a 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."

To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future 
be totally unlike your past.  Your history is not your destiny.  
  -Alan Cohen, author  

Network managers are reminded this week that Microsoft 
does not have a monopoly on security vulnerabilities 
(just a dominant market share). 
  -Network World Fusion

There by the grace of God stands a lump of stone so painstakingly 
and artfully rendered, its IQ is all but indistinguishable from 
its inspiration.
  -A parody site on the new Dan Quayle bust

Perhaps as an exercise in zero-tolerance they [schools] should dispense 
with  the alphabet entirely. Someone in possession of one can find all 
sorts of unprotected speech in it. 
  -An anonymous person commenting upon this situation.

I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its 
electoral votes to the President next year.
  -Wally O'Dell, CEO of Diebold Inc.
   Diebold is providing Ohio's voting machines.

Liberia

I scored a 47% on the "How Wes Are You?" Quizie. What about you?

Fun fact:
The Tang Dynasty empress Wu Hou (who ruled 683-705 AD) insisted that
all visiting dignitaries perform oral sex on her to pay homage.
  -The Utne Reader September/October, 2003 Issue 119 p. 76
   (Here's some Tang Poetry)

I tell you: It's taken me such a long time to discover that
I can know a lot of stuff for sure, without being right. 
  -Anne Lamott

According to ciac.org there are 31 [serious built-in security] 
vulnerabilities specific to Windows XP; 54 in Windows 2000 server; 
45 in Windows 98/95; 14 for WinME; 71 for NT since 1994; 100 for the
entire server systems since 2000; 37 problems specific to IE since
1997; 15 for Outlook; and 42 general problems (MySQL, Word, etc.). 

Just for another comparison, Linux has 54 serious exploitable 
vulnerabilities going back to 1994, while ancient Unix has 86 
known vulnerabilities going back to 1989 when the CIAC first 
begins tracking such things. 
   -Paul Ingram

In its default setup, Windows XP on the Internet amounts to a car 
parked in a bad part of town, with the doors unlocked, the key in 
the ignition and a Post-It note on the dashboard saying, "Please 
don't steal this." 
  -Rob Pegoraro

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
  -Plato

Quotes from the book "101 Reasons to be an Episcopalian" delivered
during a sermon on July 27, 2003, the eve of the Episcopal general 
convention of 2003, by The Rev. Dr. James G. Bradley

  The Episcopal Church taught me that Jesus came to challenge, not
  just comfort; to overturn, not maintain; to love, not judge; to 
  include, not cast aside.
    -Elizabeth Geitz, a Canon at the Cathedral of the Diocese of New Jersey

  We believe that love without justice is sentimentality.
    -Carter Heyward of Massachusetts, one of the first 7 women 
     ordained as a priest in the Episcopal denomination

  I love our church because we don't think unity means uniformity.
    -a lay person from New York

Today is my eleventy-first birthday!  I haven't done half of you half as
often as I should like, and I've done less than half of you half as well
as you deserve.  But don't worry; I don't have anything contagious.  So,
with that, goodbye!
  -Yeah, it's Bilbo all right, just not the Tolkien version!

There are philosophies which are unendurable not 
because men are cowards, but because they are men.
  -Ludwig Lewisohn, German-born novelist-critic

There are many levels of reality.  Each one more dangerous 
than the last, and each one more terrifying...
  -Sleepy Shirley

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as 
erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
  -Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo

As scarce as truth is, the supply is always greater than the demand.
  -Josh Billings, nom de plume of Henry Wheeler Shaw
                  American author (1818-1885)

See the happy moron, he doesn't give a damn.  
I wish I were  a moron... my God: perhaps I am!
  -Anonymous

The painting's created, and I'm just erasing 
A crystal-clear canvas is my masterpiece...
  -Barenaked Ladies, "Fly"

Cells in the human brains consume energy while processing (creating
software), by converting the chemical energy from food into electrical
and heat energy.  Even while you are reading this paragraph, the cells
in your brain are burning out the fuel and are using tiny amounts of
energy. So STOP READING NOW !
   -moselle

The Ten Commandments should be posted in all courtrooms. And the U.S.
Constitution should be glued onto Jesus' chest in every church in America.
  -Ibid

Death is not good. I reject death.
I will stay away from trucks today.
  -Ibid

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
  -Yup, Ibid

It was a battle of an American against a German on French soil, where 
the Russians came in third and the French were nowhere to be seen.
  -A friend, describing the 2003 Tour de France

I think the burden is on those people who think [Saddam Hussain] didn't 
have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are.
  -Ari Fleischer, official spokesman for George W. Bush 
     (from the New York Times)

I'm not against spontaneity!  It's just that
there's an appropriate time and a place for it!
  -Renate  7/20/2003

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.
  -Martyn Percy From The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. 
    Try the quest

In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. 
Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
  -Kitkatter

Never ask a man where he's from.  If he's from Texas, he'll 
tell you soon enough.  If not, there's no need to embarrass him.
   -KD5UJX, via N1RWE

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom 
for the one who thinks differently.
  -Rosa Luxemburg

I would sleep with it, but it's pointy!
I want to have its children!
  -I'll leave the "who" and "what" to your imagination.

Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only 
the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.
  -Theodore N. Vail

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
  -Katharine Hepburn

If you want to play in our revolution, 
you have to live by our rules.
  -Tom DeLay, currently the House majority leader
It never ceases to amaze me that people are so cynical they 
want to tie money to issues, money to bills, money to amendments.
  -also Mr. DeLay

A straight line is the shortest in morals as in mathematics. 
  -Maria Edgeworth

Bonehead award three, a "stupidest excuse in the world" bonehead
award, goes to the New York City Board of Elections which has said
they will not repair the city's 7,000 voting machines that were
responsible for some estimated 60,000 lost votes in the 2000
presidential election, most of which would have gone to Democratic
candidates, because, according to the Republican commissioner, most of
those people whose votes were not counted never intended to have their
votes count anyway but only came down to the polling places to make it
look like they were doing their civic duty.  And, says Republican
commissioner Stephen Weiner, fixing the machines would therefore be
tantamount to forcing people to vote against their will.
  -Newsday (Long Island, New York) 16-Apr-03
    -via the Bonehead Of The Day mailing list

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
  -Gustave Flaubert, French author

Hell is in your head.
   -Renate 6/15/2003

Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bullshit before.
  -Stephen, via Alma

Re: The name of the character that is behind bars in the 
    Monopoly board game is Jake the Jailbird.
Okay, I know it might just be my family, which is, in and of 
itself, extraordinarily WEIRD, but we have always called the guy 
on Monopoly in the jail Uncle Albert, and if you were visiting 
jail, you were visiting "poor ole Uncle Albert" who got there 
because of his drinking problem. If you were actually IN jail, 
you WERE Uncle Albert, and subsequently, laughed at. It 
traumatized me... I still bear deep emotional scars from 
being Uncle Albert... ;_;
-Katie
  -Amusing Facts

[A recent survey says that] orchestral musicians rated 
slightly below prison guards in job satisfaction.  ...
Orchestra musicians are an angry mob.
  -heard on NPR 6/6/2003

Buzz has bought this line of reasoning and as a result has cast 
a suspicious eye on the never-ending parade of vendors marching 
through here with filtering schemes.  All claim to minimize false 
positives and some -- the few, the proud, the full of it -- claim 
to eliminate the risk altogether.
  -Paul McNamara in Computerworld

Every day I leash 'er up and let 'er run for about 25 minutes.
  -My son, talking about his electric guitar 05/31/2003

To write or to speak is almost inevitably to lie a little.
It is an attempt to clothe an intangible in a tangible form;
to compress an immeasurable into a mold. And in the act of
compression, how Truth is mangled and torn!
  -Anne Morrow Lindbergh

He [White House press secretary Ari Fleischer] has started 
blurting out the truth, so maybe it is time for him to go.
  -Heard on public radio station WSHU 05/24/2003

There are a lot of things we wouldn't do if we'd just smell first.
  -Michael Feldman 05/24/2003

I never met a petition that had an effect on public policy, because 
the general sense when I was in the legislature was that people would 
sign any petition without reading it.  My favorite example was the time 
in the 80s when I was chairing the health committee and my staff organized 
a petition to convince then Governor O'Neill to put money into Lyme Disease 
(at the time a newly discovered condition).  Over 10,000 people signed the 
petition, and it wasn't until after we had submitted the copies that we 
found the mistake: instead of stating that Lyme Disease was caused by "the
bite of a deer tick," the petition declared that Lyme Disease was caused by 
"the bite of a deer." We decided to leave well enough alone, figuring the 
Governor's staff wouldn't notice it either (they didn't).
  -Paul Gionfriddo

It isn't about the ideas being expressed, it's about 
respect for others in the exchange of ideas.
  -Brian J. Glenn, re: The Wesleyan Chalkings Controversy

After much thought, prayer, and consultation, 
I have decided that I was being a horse's ass.
  -Um, me, on 5/7/2003  
   Dontcha' just hate it when you have to say stuff like this?

'RE: Jews for Jesus: I joined "Vegetartians for Hot Dogs" instead.'
  -YANG
[Actually, there's a better organization: Atheists For Jesus  No kidding!]

Will driving while stoned- "Oh God, is that a cop? 
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh wait, it's just a mailbox."
  -I'll let this person be anonymous, thanks

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
  -Carlos Fuentes, Mexican author

Wise men talk because they have something to say, 
fools talk because they have to say something.
  -Plato

Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. 
Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody."
  -Moms Mabley

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
   -Kitkatter

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
   -Noam Chomsky

Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light.
   -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You do not lead by hitting people over the head. 
That's assault, not leadership.
  -Dwight D. Eisenhower

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone 
was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some 
other causes for prejudice by noon.
  -George Aiken, U.S. senator (1892-1984)

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
  -Oliver Wendell Holmes

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities;
an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
  -Harry Truman

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege 
of doing so, too.
   -Voltaire, author and philosopher

They got rid of the Blue Screen of Death.
They replaced it with the desktop.
  -My son, commenting about Windows XP

Yes, but think of the plusses.  More kids could get away with 
making out by claiming "Oh, I was just giving her a Freedom Kiss! 
You wouldn't want to hinder her freedom, would you?" 

Ok, it's farfetched.. but I'd use it as an excuse if I were younger.
  -NuclearWinter

"We can chew gum and walk at the same time."
  -A Bush II spokesperson, apparently feeling 
   that this point needed to be clarified

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. 
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
  -William Pitt The Younger (1759-1806) British statesman

My relationship to sheep is a bit ambivalent now.  I like them, 
but not when they come flying through the air.
  -Kristian Hagen, whose skull was fractured by a  
   severed sheep's head at a Norway death metal concert.

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. 
No Americans have been more impoverished than these 
who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.
  -H.U. Westermayer
Yup, obvious statistical fallacy, but still, a good point (imo).

BUSINESS: Fed reports economy still sluggish; duct tape sales among few high points
   -A real headline from The Nando Times

Diplomacy at work:
"Shut up, you monkey! Curse be upon your mustache, you traitor!"
  -Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, firing off 
   a "traditional insult to a man's honor" to a Kuwaiti 
   diplomat during an emergency summit of Islamic nations
After this, Kuwaiti Information Minister Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed 
jumped up and waved a small Kuwaiti flag.  The Iraqi delegates left 
the room briefly until they were persuaded to return.  The meeting
broke up, with the delegates unable to agree upon a resolution.

NOTE: Should you fail to support this program and continue to use it, 
a leather winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood 
and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself 
into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and 
search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. 
Just thought you'd want to know that.
  -Registration notice in the evaluation copy of Graphics Workshop

"Police: Body Cavity Search Reveals Crack" 
   -quoted from a La Crosse (Wisc.) Tribune headline

As of this writing, 15 men in the history of organized 
baseball have ever thrown a perfect game. Only one of 
those men did it half-drunk, with bloodshot eyes, 
monster breath and a raging, skull-rattling hangover. 
That would be me. 
  -New York Yankees pitcher David Wells

The Bush administration has a plan (those are rapidly becoming 
the six most chilling words in the English language)...
  -Molly Ivins

Nature never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.
   -Joshua Billings

Re: "On average, an American home has 3-10 gallons of hazardous materials."
Come now, Gauher, no family drinks THAT much Mountain Dew. 
   -Curtis, USA

I think it's time for lamb's blood on the office door.
  -A colleague, on upcoming pending headcount reductions
     (see also Exodus 12:21-23)

You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again.
  -Bonnie Prudden

I heard on a news report of a pro-war demonstration the other 
day someone shouting something like "get Muslims!" Get Muslims? 
For what, introducing algebra to Europe?
   -Steve

Tthe world's longest work of non-fiction is "The Yongle Dadian", the
10,000-volume encyclopedia produced by 5,000 scholars over a period of 5
years during the Ming Dynasty in China.
   -Tricky Trivia

Quite a number of people also describe the German classical
author Shakespeare, as belonging to English literature,
because -- quite accidentally born at Stratford-on-Avon -- he
was forced by authorities of that country to write in English.
   -from the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, 1940

Regarding Teflon being the most slippery substance in the world, 
you've obviously never walked through a cow pasture in the rain.
   -Sheila

LemonEye: I need to find an icon that personifies me, 
          for a link to my webpage...but what?
Willi:    A flower with teeth? 

Any day you do not put your tongue on a [frozen] pump handle
is a good day. ... Happiness lies in the small things.
   -Garrison Keillor (on WNPR 2/15/2003)

Everyone knows no war goes as planned. 
Otherwise, both sides would always win.
   -Bonnie Erbe 

I don't get no more chances. Next time I die I'm out. 
My nine lives are over.
  -Boxer Johnny Tapia, who has been declared 
   clinically dead four times

Spiel Cheque is grate, but it's knot a cur awl.  Yew still knead 
too no how too yews the write word. 
   -a mailing list contributor, commenting 
     on the improper use of a homonym

The first rule of tinkering is to save all the parts.
   -Paul Erlich

A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to 
your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything 
out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be 
examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and
it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump 
on the pathway of life. 
   -Celia Luce, author 

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
   -Samuel Johnson

"[A fan will] scream from the 60th row of bleachers that you 
missed a marginal call in the center of the interior line," 
the ex-ref said of a heckler. "And then he won't be able to 
find his car in the parking lot." 
   -Erstwhile NFL referee Jim Tunney

Wind chill is if you're standing out there naked, and I don't 
see anyone out there naked.  It's something weathermen use to 
scare the general public with.
  -Cannon Mountain (a northern New Hampshire ski resort)
    Assistant ski patrol director Gareth Slattery

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any 
invention in human history - with the possible exceptions 
of handguns and tequila.
   -Mitch Ratliffe

A liberal and a conservative were sitting in a bar. Then Bill Gates walked
in. "Hey, we're rich!" shouted the conservative. "The average person in
this bar is now worth more than a billion!" "That's silly," replied the
liberal. "Bill Gates raises the average, but that doesn't make you or me
any richer." "Hah!" said the conservative, "I see you're still practicing
the discredited politics of class warfare."
   -Paul Krugman

Nicotine is one of the most powerful poisons known. Though we 
normally think in terms of arsenic and strychnine when the term 
"poison" comes up, the truth is that nicotine is far more deadly. 
The lethal dose of arsenic for a 150 pound adult is 200 mg., for 
strychnine 75 mg., but for nicotine only 60 mg. It can and does 
kill even in relatively small amounts. Those who wear nicotine 
patches must exercise great care about the disposal of their used 
patches lest children or pets come in contact with the seemingly 
"spent" aids and become deeply sickened or even possibly die.
   -Urban Legends Reference Pages

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the 
anticipation of change:  the change itself is nothing; when 
we have made it, the next wish is to change again.  
   -Samuel Johnson

Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that 
if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.
  -Colin Powell
 
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
   -Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

Economic studies estimate that Project Apollo returned five to seven
dollars to the United States' economy for every dollar invested in it.
   -www.trickytrivia.com

The coffee was so bad I thought it was 
going to jump out of the cup and rob a bank.
   -My son (about someone else's coffee, not mine)

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are
too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get
by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.
   -J.C. Watts

Lately I'm stupified. Something rancid in the air...chimpanzee turds.
   -Idleeric

In producers, loafing is productive; and no creator, of whatever
magnitude, has ever been able to skip that stage, any more than a 
mother can skip gestation.
   -Jacques Barzun

'"(Bush) is not elected as chief theologian," (Pat) Robertson 
told The Washington Times.  True. In this administration, 
that's John Ashcroft's job.'
   -David Waters

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, 
since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
   -Giovanni  Gentile

Aside from cynicism (which has been an almost infallible guide to
administration environmental policy so far), how do I reach that
conclusion?
   -Paul Krugman in the New York Times

Why should we ask our military to die for cheap oil when 
the rest of us aren't even being asked to get better mileage?
   -Molly Ivins

While the Internet was originally designed and configured 
to be survivable, its transformation to a commercial entity 
has caused it to become economically efficient at the expense 
of no longer being anywhere near as survivable.
   -Vince Cannistraro, the former chief of 
    counterterrorism at the CIA 
    in this Computerworld article

Habaneros for breakfast make you see Jesus!
   -Mr. Roofer

Some of my thoughts are so terrible that they make
Jesus want to drink straight gin out of the cat's dish.
  -Anne Lamott

My masculinity needs tactile affirmation.
   -coop

Owen!  The neighbors are not your guinea pigs!
   -His mom

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
   -Charles F. Kettering

Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that 
accompanies important ongoing activity.
   -Paul Goodman

If you are still talking about what you did 
yesterday, you haven't done much today.
   -Anonymous

"Get busy living, or get busy dying."
   -Stephen King, and Bob Dylan, and....

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are
good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you
are a vegetarian. 
   -Dennis Wholey

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing 
can be changed until it is faced.
   -James Baldwin

There are two kinds of critics in life: those who criticize 
you because they want you to fail and those who criticize 
you because they want you to succeed. And people can smell 
the difference a mile away. If you convey to people that
you really want them to succeed, they will take any criticism 
you dish out. If you convey that you really hold them in
contempt, you can tell them that the sun is shining and they 
won't listen to you. 
   -Thomas L. Friedman, in a
    New York Times Editorial:
    "Tone It Down a Notch"
    Wednesday, October 2, 2002

There are three sides to every story.
Your side, my side, and the truth.
And no one's lying.
   -Robert Evans

The state can't give you free speech, 
and the state can't take it away. 
You're born with it, 
like your eyes, 
like your ears. 
Freedom is something you assume, 
then you wait for someone 
to try to take it away. 
The degree to which you resist 
is the degree to which you are free.
   -Utah Phillips

The condition upon which God hath given 
liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
   -John Philpot Curran, 1790

I pledge on the altar of God undying hostility to any 
government restriction on the free minds of the people.
   -Thomas Jefferson

I feel strongly that the visual arts are of vast importance.
Of course, I could be prejudiced.  I am a visual art.
   -Kermit the Frog

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
   -Anonymous

They crowded up to Lenin with their noses worn off,
A handshake is worthy if it's all that you've got.
   -R.E.M., "Harborcoat"

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will 
spend the first four sharpening the axe.
   -Abraham Lincoln

No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up.
   -Lily Tomlin

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your
path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, 'Why were 
things of this sort ever brought into the world?'
   -Marcus Aurelius

What do you get when you play New Age music
backwards? 
     New Age music. 
What does it say on a blues singer's tombstone? 
     "I didn't wake up this morning..."
   -Jeff Bigler  His MIT Hacks


When the oak is felled the forest echoes with its fall, but 
a hundred acorns are sown silently by an unnoticed breeze.
   -Thomas Carlyle

I am an old man and have known many troubles, but most 
of them never happened.
   -Mark Twain

Most of the clergy are, or seem to be, utterly incapable of
discussing anything in a fair and catholic spirit. They appeal, not
to reason, but to prejudice; not to facts, but to passages of
Scripture. They can conceive of no goodness, of no spiritual
exaltation beyond the horizon of their creed. Whoever differs with
them upon what they are pleased to call "fundamental truths," is,
in their opinion, a base and infamous man. To re-enact the
tragedies of the sixteenth century, they lack only the power.
   -Robert Ingersoll

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the
income tax.
   -Albert Einstein

"I saw the goat the next day--it did not seem too upset,
but it's hard to tell."
   -A police officer in Humberside, England, who was
    inundated with phone calls when a trainload of
    commuters witnessed a man having sex with the
    grazing farm animal  per Newsweek 2/11/2002 p. 17

Money is the mother's milk of politics.
   -Jesse Unruh, Speaker of the California
                Assembly from 1961 to 1968

What we know about Osama bin Laden is this: he's worth 
$300 million, he has five wives and 26 kids ... and he 
hates Americans for their 'excessive' lifestyle."
   -David Letterman

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because 
the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain you might look 
good, but all you could do is run for office.
   -Covert Bailey

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
   -Edward R. Murrow

A person who is nice to you but rude 
to the waiter is not a nice person.
   -anonymous

That's called a "record".  Back in the old days...
   Shirley 1/12/2001

Never bend your head.  Hold it high.  Look the world
straight in the eye.
   -Helen Keller
Ummm....

After blowing my vacation waiting for repairmen who
never showed up, I gradually arrived at my Theory of
Repairman Evolution: Repairmen evolved from cats.
That's why they don't come when you call.
   -P.S. Wall

"I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty.
Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing
quite well for themselves."
   -Jerry Garcia

While I agree it is weird for there to be a general feeling of relief for an
accident over terrorism, as someone who lives in the Boston area, I feel a lot
safer flying than driving around here - no matter how carefully.    The drivers
around here are far more life threatening.   I had no fear of flying going to
Germany last week, but I dread Boston drivers.
   -G.B. (from weschat)

Patriotism seems to be falling to whoever claims it loudest. ...
It's a fact of our culture that the loudest mouths get the most air
play, and the loudmouths are saying now that in times of crisis it is
treasonous to question our leaders. Nonsense. That kind of thinking 
let fascism grow out of the international depression of the 1930s. 
In critical times, our leaders need most to be influenced by the 
moderating force of dissent.  That is the basis of democracy, in 
sickness and in health, and especially when national choices are 
difficult, and bear grave consequences. ... I would like to stand up 
for my flag and wave it over a few things I believe in, including 
but not limited to the protection of dissenting points of view. 
  -Barbara Kingsolver

Right now, I think every doctor in America has anthrax on the brain.
   -A nurse, being interviewed on NPR, trying to reassure people
    that doctors were planning for any outbreaks.  (11/16/2001)

It's actually not that bad.  You can 
tell what most of it is supposed to be.
   -My daughter, commenting upon the food at college
    (To understand why this is true, and not sarcasm, you'd
    have to have experienced typical U.S. public school food
    from an early age.  I don't recommend it to the uninitiated.)

Drugs don't work.  Children work.
   -Sign on a Middletown Area Transit bus.
    My daughter and I are still trying to
    figure out what this means.  Suggestions welcomed.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the
government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert
to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding. 
   -Louis Brandeis

On newspapers:
   "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the
    man who reads nothing but newspapers."
       -Thomas Jefferson
   "Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the
    chaff, and then print the chaff."
       -Adlai Stevenson
   "Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to
    others what it personally does not understand."
       -Lord Northcliffe 

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, 
will ever come out as you first hoped.
   -Lillian Hellman

It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.
   -Mick Jagger

SBC's assertion that cable Internet service slows down 
when web traffic is heavy is like saying that a Porsche 
in traffic is slower than a Yugo on a dirt road.
   -Kent Sipes

Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into 
them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape. 
   -Solon, statesman (c. 638-c558 BCE)

"Mr Vimes is going to go completely bursar.  
 He's going to go totally Librarian-poo." 
       -Fred Colon

Ask an engineer for the time and he'll tell you how to build a clock.
   -My teenaged son, as I tried to explain something to him

Last Words

I'm going away tonight.
   -James Brown
Drink to me.
   -Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Last words
Friends applaud, the Comedy is over.
   -Ludwig von Beethoven, Last words
Go away... I'm all right.
   -H. G. Wells (1866-1946), Last words
Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
   -Karl Marx, Last words to his housekeeper
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--
   -General John Sedgwick, Union commander in the Civil War, speaking his last words as he
     was watching enemy troops during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
   -Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.
   -Oscar Wilde
Die?  I should say not, dear fellow.  No Barrymore would 
allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
   -John Barrymore's dying words


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

It's a lot easier to be a parent when you don't have kids.
   -My son again, 7/20/2001

"Reps. Dick Armey, Tom DeLay and J.C. Watts wrote Bush a letter calling 
stem-cell research 'an industry of death.' Funny, I've never heard any 
of them describe arms manufacturers that way."
   -Molly Ivins

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average
people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where
medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music
and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost,
traveling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to
mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abscesses and you
don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were
talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'.
   -Terry Pratchett

Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could.  
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon 
as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and 
with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.  
   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Remember: friends would help you hide.  TRUE friends would help you hide the body.
   -A siggie from....

I think I will stick with my garden after all--even the growth 
of weeds makes me tense these days.
   -Dave Sloane

Life is short, but sweet for certain.
   -Dave Matthews

The information you have is not what you want; 
the information you want is not what you need; 
the information you need is not what you can get; 
the information you can get costs more than you want to pay. 
   -Brian E Hodges

Are you (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2?

My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest 
explanation is usually dead wrong.  But I've noticed that the simplest 
explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any
complicated explanation could hope to be. 
  -Scott Adams, God's Debris

There's a witch hunt going on, and he's wearing a pointed hat!
   -Sherrill, commenting on our son's penchant for wearing
    all-black clothing, including a trenchcoat, to school.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love.  
Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 
"Good morning" at total strangers.  
   -Maya Angelou

The only exercise I got all day was lifting my legs
during the sexual harassment training at work!
   -Yeah, I'm really going to name this person.  As if.  :-)

In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence, the second listening, the
third remembering, the fourth practicing, the fifth -- teaching others.
   -Ibn Gabirol, poet and philosopher (c. 1022-1058)

One of my basic rules for personal relationships is as follows: 
When A says, "If you invite B, I will not attend", say to A: 
"I'm so sorry. We will miss you."
   -Ann Landers (who adds that it might be prudent to make sure they are
           seated as far from each other as possible if they do attend.)

You know, things used to suck in the old days, too.
They just sucked without indoor plumbing.
   -my son 4-3-2001

I no longer need to punish, deceive or compromise myself.
Unless, of course, I want to stay employed.
   -Rose Thompson

I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be
that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge
myself through someone else's eyes.
   -Sally Field

Henry's Pager Law: Critical partitions never fill up during working hours.
   -Henry Farkas

You don't have a problem if you have a problem.  You only have a problem
if you have a problem and you don't know how to fix it.  If you know how
to fix it, it's not really a problem; it's just a delay.
   -Hans VanBuitenen

True fact:  The first coin officially contracted for minting by the US Government
was designed by Benjamin Franklin, and bore the words "MIND YOUR BUSINESS" on the front.
(However, the contractor cheated the government, and fled the country to avoid prosecution.)
   -http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Fugio.intro.html

Einstein's Relativity put an end to the comfortable notion that science 
was common sense organized.  The net result was that modern physics deprived 
human beings of any object of cosmic contemplation.  One could still gaze at 
the Milky Way, but whatever notion crossed the mind at the sight was obsolete, 
any emotion a primitive fantasy; the impression grows that science is the task 
of peeling an infinite onion.  In that process, science as it moves leaves 
behind it a shadow: superstition.  ...  As things stand, despite the 
conscientious work of many trained minds, the reports of "science" on a wide 
range of subjects are contradictory, equally publicized, and the laity cannot 
decide what to believe; an intelligent opinion cannot be formed.  And when there 
is evidence that business and politics affect more than one "scientific" 
pronouncement, gone is the confidence in science found in the 19C.
   -Jacques Barzun, in From Dawn to Decadence pps. 750-751, excerpted

During the 1998 refit of the U.S.S. Constitution, a number of interesting artifacts 
were found; one was a provisioning record. When the ship left Boston on July 22, 1798 
with a crew of 475 officers and men, she carried 45,600 gallons of fresh water (enough 
for six months), 7,400 cannon balls, 22,600 pounds of black powder and 79,406 gallons 
of rum. Her mission was to harass English shipping. Making Jamaica on October 6, she 
took on 828 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum. Then she headed to the Azores,
where she arrived on November 12. She took on 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of 
Portuguese wine. She then set sail for England on November 18. In the ensuing days she  
defeated five British men-of-war and captured and scuttled twelve merchantmen, but not 
before salvaging the rum.  On January 27, 1799, powder and shot exhausted, Old Ironsides, 
undaunted, slipped up the Firth of Clyde, put ashore that night a landing party, and 
captured a whiskey distillery, hauling away 40,000 gallons of what we now call Scotch. 
Then she raised sail and headed for home. She arrived in Boston on February 20,1799 with 
no cannon balls, no powder, no food, no rum, no wine, no whiskey and 45,600 gallons of 
stagnant water.  Length of cruise: 181 days.  Alcohol consumption: 252,000+ gallons, or
2.93 gallons per man per day (this does not include the unknown quantify of rum captured 
from the 12 English merchant vessels in November).  Naval historians say that the 
re-enlistment rate from this cruise was over 92%.  
   -various sources, including the National Park Service

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. 
  -Benjamin Franklin

I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge. 
   -Edward Chilton

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by
gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
   -James Madison

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, 
it expects what never was and never will be. 
   -Thomas Jefferson

History probably records only one instance in which cavalry
won a naval battle.  The French army that invaded Holland in
the winter of 1794 captured a Dutch fleet when its mounted
soldiers swept across the ice and seized control of the
ships, frozen in place just offshore.
   -Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts

In Germany they first came for the Communists, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. 
Then they came for the Jews, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. 
Then they came for the trade unionists, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. 
Then they came for the Catholics, 
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. 
Then they came for me - 
and by that time no one was left to speak up. 
   -Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the paranoids,
but it's not really paranoia if they actually are out to get you.
Then they came for the schizophrenics.
Part of me wanted to speak up and part of me didn't.
Then they came for the depressives,
but I was too tired to care.
Then they came for me.
They came from another planet and they were in little ships.
They imbedded a microchip in my brain that controls what I say
so now there's nobody left to speak up.
    -me
                                                                               
I suppose anything is possible; it is just that 
some things are more possible than others.
   -Kenneth L. Smith

The American people have now spoken, but it's going to 
take a little while to figure out exactly what they said.
   -Bill Clinton, November 7, 2000

A Pole remarking about the present state of the US election:
If this election were in Poland, and if the guy who declared himself
the winner were the son of a former Premier who also had been the head of
the secret service, and if he had barely won because of voting fraud in a
Province controlled by his brother, then the US would have sent troops in
last week.

Pitr:       Ahhh, finally to be goink to temple of yumski!
            Tonight, comrades, we are eatink sushi.
Dust Puppy: What's sushi?
Pitr:       It is religious.  Like cathedral.
            Caffeine for mind.  Pizza for body.  Sushi... for soul.
   -User Friendly

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation.  ...  One hundred years later, the
Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean 
of material prosperity."
   -Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream", Washington DC, Aug 28, 1963

I love you long time, make you holler, but I got no DASD for you!
   -Bob Beebe

If you pay your employees well, if they love what they are doing, then 
they’ll work so much harder that you will make more money, not less.
   -Charles Butcher, who shared $18 million with his employees, a substantial 
               percentage  of the profit he received when he sold the company

I find it interesting that Eros spelled backwards is sore.
   -John Ganio 

Gosh, isn't having internet access at work a great idea? Who'd ever have thought 
bosses all over the country would fall for that one? Offices where radios are 
forbidden and employees would be considered insane if they asked to watch TV at 
their desks are going online in droves. It's really quite amazing.
   -The Word Detective

Word of the Day (2/14/2001):
Calipygian - (adj.) Characterized by having shapely buttocks.
   www.mailbits.com

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the
religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
   -James Michener

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects
of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up
traffic jams.
   -Mary Ellen Kelly

You reach a certain age and your body doesn't react like it
used to. Fat just jumps on your body. When you're in your
twenties, you can eat a whole bag of Oreo cookies.  Nothing
happens. I'm now in my late thirties. I eat just one and my
butt expands while I'm chewing.
   -Sinbad

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
   -Oscar Levant

A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; 
but a man's heart by his head.
   -Lady Marguerite Blessington (1789-1849)

        Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river.  Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  But
one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
going.  I shall let go, and let it take me where it will.  Clinging, I
shall die of boredom."
        The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool!  Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
        But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
        And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
"See a miracle!  A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!  See the
Messiah, come to save us all!"  And the one carried in the current
said, "I am no more Messiah than you.  The river delight to lift us
free, if only we dare let go.  Our true work is this voyage, this
adventure.
        But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
   -Illusions

"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation
has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more
efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" 
   -Adolph Hitler 1935

The most expensive bottle of wine was a 1787 Chateau Lafite claret 
that sold for $136,248.00.  The most spent on a glass of wine 
was $1453.00 for the first glass of Beaujolais Nouveau 1993.

While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
   -Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman", November 26, 1792

Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.  They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
   -a fortune

Be aware that a halo has to fall only a few inches to be a noose. 
   -Dan McKinnon

I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check. 
   -M.C Escher (1898-1972)

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful 
to us than the injury that provokes it.
   -Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)

"Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands."
   -Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina)

Science is built with 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 Henry Poincare (1854-1912)

Being a grownup means you can go into a restaurant any
time you want and order french fries.  And you don't.
   -Barbara's Old College Roommate

Great minds discuss idea,
Average minds discuss events,
Small minds discuss people.
   -Eleanor Rooseveldt [attr]

Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes.
   -Washington Irving

The Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children,
the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.  It does not
include the beauty of our poetry or the strength or our marriages; the
intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our
learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it
measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
   -Robert Kennedy

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance
when the need for illusion is deep. 
   -Saul Bellow

I'd rather be rejected for what I am
than loved for what I'm not.
   -Winston Clark (from the musical Out!)

An unsupervised teenager with a modem is as 
dangerous as an unsupervised teenager with a gun. 
   -Arizona State Attorney Gail Thackeray

Don't you know that if people could bottle the air they would?
Don't you know there would be an American Air-bottling Association?
And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions 
to die for want of breath if they could not pay for air?
   -Robert Ingersoll

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. 
I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the 
devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.
   -Nick Petreley

Life is short.  Do what you want to.
   -Crosswords

...before TV, the only entry kids had into the adult world was through reading, 
and by the time they were able to read adult literature, they were largely ready
to deal with it. Now we have elementary students regularly exposed to all the
world's problems and faults through the "magic box" every day.
   -Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

When did the oldies stations stop playing 
Bing Crosby and start playing David Crosby?
   -Hans VanBuitenen

So great has been the endurance, so incredible the achievement, that, as
long as the sun keeps a set course in heaven, it would be foolish to
despair of the human race.
   -Ernest L. Woodward

I just got junk mail from this organization that wants me to
save the forest. I sent them back a letter saying stop sending
me the junk mail and save the forest yourself.
   -Linda Herskovic

Last night Rusty pointed out a waitress who was taking orders at the next table.
He said that four years ago she was married, had a fourteen-year-old daughter, 
and was the school system's consultant on dyslexia. It was summer.  She and her 
husband were having a drink in a bar in Aransas Pass. Her husband went to the 
rest room and while he was gone a man at the other end of the bar said, "Hi. 
Would you like to come with me to Mexico?" On the spot she walked out. 
She lived with the man for three years in Guatemala. Even more unexpected 
than the story was the reaction at our table. We were all staring at the woman 
as if she were a heroine. A time comes when you need to clean house. No, you need 
to go even further, you need to burn the house down with yourself inside it. 
Then you must walk from the fire and say, I have no name. 
   -Hugh Prather (from Notes on Love and Courage)

"Hall is a country banker and as honest as the present conditions permit."
   -Ed Clarke, introducing the Texas banker Walter Hall

Life is just a series of trying to make up your mind.
   -Timothy Fuller

Fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
   -Shirley MacLaine

I have never known a man to make running noises...they move 
faster than the speed of light, or else remove their shoes
and tiptoe away on little sock feet.
   -MB

You don't manage people.  You manage things; you lead people.
   -Grace Hopper

Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are
about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they
mean they are going to make money out of it. 
   -Mary McCarthy

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light.  Take off all your
envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.
   -Glenn Clark

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. 
   -James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)

But somehow the social conservative case that the country is a moral abyss -- 
that we're all sunk in sin, the sorriest set of humans since Sodom and Gomorrah, 
rotten to the core, unrivalled in hedonism since the palmiest days of the late
Roman Empire, and so on and so forth -- seems just a bit . . . how to say this? 
. . . well, wrong.  I don't know about your friends and neighbors, but mine are 
exceptionally nice.
   -Molly Ivins

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work,
pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without
morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics
without principle. 
   -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

SCCS: the source motel!  Programs check in, and they never check out!
   -Ken Thompson

... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.  Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell.  If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
   -S. J. Gould, Wide Hats and Narrow Minds

Peering into the liberal mind is like looking into a writhing
snake-pit, except that snakes are generally cleaner.
   -Michael Jones

Here is the real difference between a liberal and a conservative:

A conservative is a person who, seeing a man drowning 50 feet off shore,
throws him a 25 foot rope, and encourages him to swim the remaining
distance for the good of his soul.

A liberal is a person who sees a man drowning 25 feet off shore.  He throws
the man a 50 foot rope, snakes it perfectly over the victim's shoulder...
and then drops his end, and walks off to do another good deed.
   -Seen in Readers' Digest a long time ago

Those who will not reason are bigots, 
those who cannot are fools, 
those who dare not are slaves.  
   -Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The Dopeler Effect:  The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter if they come at you rapidly.
   -Click 'n' Clack (11/27/1999 on NPR radio station WSHU)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
  -Friedrich Nietzsche

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few
are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles
fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
   -Sydney J. Harris

Television is democracy at its ugliest. 
   -Paddy Chayefsky

There are two kinds of companies: 
Good ones ask you to think for them.
The others tell you to think like them.
Once you see that, it's easy to tell whether you're in the right place.
   -Benjy Feen
 
Based on records prior to the summer [1999] break,
   29 members of Congress have been accused of spousal abuse
    7 have been arrested for fraud
   19 have been accused of writing bad checks
  117 have bankrupted at least 2 businesses
    3 have been arrested for assault
   71 have credit reports so bad they can't qualify for a credit card
   14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
    8 have been arrested for shoplifting
   21 are current defendants in lawsuits, and in 1998 alone, 
   84 were stopped for drunk driving, but released after they claimed Congressional immunity.    
   -Peter Langston, from Capitol Hill Blue

You want moral leadership?  Try the clergy.  It's their job.
   -Molly Ivins

In the final analysis there is no solution to man's progress but
the day's honest work, the day's honest decisions, the day's
generous utterances and the day's good deed.
   -Clare Booth Luce

"You've got questions?  We've got answers."
   -A Radio Shack ad
"Yeah, and most of them are 'Call tech support.'!"
   -My son's wry observation

Bureaucracy destroys initiative.  There is little that bureaucrats hate more
than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the
old routines.  Improvements always makes those at the top of the heap look
inept.  Who enjoys appearing inept?
   -A Guide to Trial and Error in Government, Bene Gesserit Archives

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
   -Aesop

Do not meddle with the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
   -Anonymous

I never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready 
booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. 
   -Walt Whitman, American poet (1819-1892)

I love the way vendors talk. No matter what happens, it's always good 
news. If their mother died, the press release would talk about her 
expanding her presence in heaven and taking on new challenges in the 
other world.
   -Doug Barney

Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil.  "Tweedledum
and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote."  Having abstained, they
are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
rummage around in their lives for the next four years.  Consider all
the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
Humphrey.  They showed Humphrey.  Those people who taught Hubert
Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black.
   -Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"

If Men TRULY Ran The World...
24. At the end of the work day a whistle would blow and you would jump out of 
your window and slide down the tail of a brontosaurus and right into your car.

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people
from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item,
with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.
   -Barbara Kingsolver from Animal Dreams
 
Baloney is the unvarnished lie laid on so thick you hate it; 
blarney is flattery laid on so thin you love it.
   -Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (1954)

Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language have so
long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words, with
little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken
for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to
persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but
the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. -John Locke,
English Philosopher (1632-1704) [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding] (1690)

"Most documentation starts as hastily scrawled notes from
 sleep-deprived developers who weren't necessarily hired for their keen
 communication skills.  Those notes are then fleshed out by recently
 graduated English majors who have spent their last four years immersed
 in works of fiction.  The results are then passed on to the marketing
 department whose job it is to make sure that no word or phrase will
 reflect unfavorably on the product ("I don't think that the word
 'Basic' properly communicates the exciting nature of the product.  Why
 don't we call it 'Visual Zesty?!'").  It is then beset by lawyers who
 finish the job by making sure that they haven't explicitly promised
 that the product will actually do anything.  By the time the
 documentation gets into your hands, it has been so sanitized for your
 protection and generalized beyond recognition that you usually have to
 go out and buy a 3rd-party manual (that was, more likely than not,
 written by the same non-technical technical writer who wrote the
 original documentation) in a vain attempt to get an unbiased,
 unexpurgated, and unfiltered view of just how you're really supposed to
 use the stuff."
   -Introduction, About The "@ Novell" Series, November 3, 1998, offering
    the inside scoop on computer documentation.

"Worldwide delivery in 30 minutes or less or your next one is 
free!"
   -Painted on a Minuteman missile in the Delta 9 silo in South Dakota

"With faith in God, we kill!"
   -Graffiti on a Serbian wall, as reported by NPR News
    on the show 'All Things Considered', July 26, 1999

"They'd cage a rainbow if they could trap one!"
   -My 13-year-old son, looking at a pair of bald eagles encaged at a zoo
"But think of how many more visitors we'd get if we could display a rainbow!"
   -The response of a zoo worker when I related his remark to her

"I don't care what she does or where she goes, 
as long as she comes home and sits on my face."
   -J.A.

Last night my girlfriend was rhapsodizing about her new apartment.
"It's so close to everything!" she gushed.  "It's even in walking 
distance to a gas station!"  We were both silent for a few seconds,
and then she quietly said: "That doesn't make sense, does it?"

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
haven't what they want that they don't want it.
   -Ogden Nash

Whatever you do, you need courage.  Whatever course you decide upon, 
there is always someone to tell you you are wrong.  There are always 
difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics 
are right.  To map out a course of action and follow it to the end, 
requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs. 
   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have worked at full speed since May.  And that is I'm
persuaded the root and source and origin of all health and
happiness, provided of course that one rides work as a man rides
a great horse, in a spirited and independent way; not a drudge,
but a man with spurs to his heels.
   -Virginia Woolf, writing in her journal about her life as a
       publisher and writer.

A + B + C = Success if A = Hard Work, B = Hard Play, C = Keeping your mouth shut. 
   -Albert Einstein

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there, that's disgrace.
   -Anonymous

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably,
and justly; or to live prudently, honorably, and justly, without living
pleasurably. 
   -Epicurus (B.C. 341-270)

"Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
phasers on the Heffalump. Piglet, meet me in transporter room three.
Christopher Robin, you have the bridge."

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of
getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into
small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
   -Mark Twain

As I sat in the supermarket office and waited for the cops to arrive,
a thought came to me. Maybe when they say "No purchase necessary,"
it's like some kind of code or something, and you're not supposed to
dump cereal all over the aisle to get the prize. Maybe if they hadn't
taken away my little "Crunch-Berry Decoder," I could have figured it
out.
   -Nick DeCamp

"We have produced, consumed, and disposed of more things in 
 the last fifty years than in all the rest of history combined."
   -Countdown to the Millennium

Overheard: "People keep saying they have a problem with me.
            Why is that?  I've never had a problem with me."

The most powerful force in the world is that of a frisbe straining to land
under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck").

Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering.
   -Yoda (in The Phantom Menace)

Well, I see by the scowl on the rat's face that it is time
for me to get out of here before the iron gates are lowered
and I am left crying for a cask of amontillado.
   -L.F.

Under deadline pressure for the next week.  If you want something, it
can wait.  Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic...

Starting next week, all passwords will be entered in International Morse Code.

..."the 30 percent who earn poverty or near-poverty wages, have been getting the rawest deal.  
'It is a stupid society that runs an experiment to see what its breaking points are.'" 
   -Molly Ivins, quoting Lester Thurow,  economist

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we make ourselves happy, but
how we make ourselves worthy of happiness.
   -Immanual Kant

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life
when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
   -D. Elton Trueblood

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: You find the present tense and the
past perfect.
   -Anonymous

Annex Canada now! We need the room, and who's going to stop us? 
   -Tom Neff

Nuclear war would really set back cable. 
   -Ted Turner

I'll tell you what kind of guy I was. If you ordered a boxcar full 
of sons-of-bitches and opened the door and only found me inside, 
you could consider the order filled. 
   -Robert Mitchum

When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons 
serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality. 
   -Al Capone

Good literature is about Love and War. Trash fiction is about Sex and Violence. 
   -anonymous

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

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door. 
   -Paul Beatty

The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best". 
   -Allen Smith

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, 
and it holds the universe together.... 
   -Carl Zwanzig

Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also 
the worst vegetable of next year. 
   -Steve Rubenstein

Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black. Simply remove all the little 
colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the 
original color of the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, 
this means the puzzle is solved. 
   -Steve Rubenstein

To be is to do. 
   - I. Kant
To do is to be. 
   - A. Sartre
Do bi do bi do.
   - F. Sinatra
Yabba-Dabba-Doo! 
   - F. Flinstone

If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same? 
   -anonymous

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. 
   -ibid

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. 
   -ibid

Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also 
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. 
   -you guessed it... ibid!

Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll 
believe you....  Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll 
have to touch it to be sure. 
   -of course

Paul's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. 
   -so I guess this would come from Paul somebody...

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

I REALLY like Bugs Bunny. I think I just found out why. A local weekly had 
an article on the wascally wabbit's 50th birthday party this year, and they 
had the following quote about the animation studio where Bugs Bunny cartoons 
were created... "It's not every workplace that allows you to have an autographed 
picture of Christ on the wall." 
   -Scott Lieberman

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the
hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
   -Helen Adams Keller

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth.
   -Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

"To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing."
   -Eva Young

The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak
which resists it; and so, in great calamities, it sometimes happens that
light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind
sooner than those of a loftier character. 
   -Walter Scott (1771-1832)

"They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a
virgin in the whole organization."   
   -Mayor Vincent 'Buddy' Cianci 
    on an ACLU suit to have a city nativity scene removed

                                      
"When people have acupuncture, do wax dolls die?

                                               
Foreign aid: A system where the poor people of a rich country
             give money to the rich people of a poor country.

                
What can be the reason for so much disagreement?  The only reason is that
the essential truth is so divided and torn into so many pieces that it is
often lost in the strife.  One party has truth; another also has some 
truth, but each thinks it has the whole truth and, therefore, tries to 
reject that of the other, imagining it is error. 
   -George de Benneville

Rule #10: Do not lean the bike over on its sidestand when the sidestand
          is not down.  
   -From Laura Lemay's How to Live with a Neurotic Motorcycle

The San Jose Mercury News reported in March on some working models of the
Defense Department's "micro air vehicles" including one helicopter that can
fit inside a peanut shell. Each micro air vehicle carries cameras, sensors,
transmitters and antennas.  
   -News of the Weird  8/28/97 New Haven Advocate

Everything I say is my own opinion and does not even attempt to represent  
the  policies,  positions,  or views  of my employer...  or anybody else. 
Also, please be advised that I suffer from transitive neural connectivity  
failure,  due to an intermittently  diminished level of  C8H10N4O2  in my  
hemodynamic conveyance system.   I change my mind quickly and frequently, 
and sometimes I say things just for the hell of it.

"A Snark He Fry"

Koan:  Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

Not one of us ever grows up to be what he intended to be.  Not one of us 
fulfills his own expectations. We are all our own children, in that sense.
At some point, somewhere, we have to stop making demands. 
   -John D. MacDonald  (well, Travis McGee, really!...)

"We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to  
the future.  We cannot afford to drag forward, across the years that are  
to come, the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of 
the past." 
   -Winston Churchill

Q: Why do chicken coops have two doors?       
A: Because if they had four doors they'd be chicken sedans.

Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer.  It has a
150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a
screen resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels, relies entirely on voice
recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's
the first question that the computer community asks?  "Is it PC compatible?"

In the land of the dark the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.
   -Egyptian Book of the Dead  (P.S.  Thank you, Jerry)

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

"Humans are kind, intelligent, well-adjusted creatures.
Until you get to know them."  
   -Dogbert

"I have nothing against humans, really- except that they're not dogs, but
they can't help that."  
   -my daughter, who is a dog fancier

I am looking for information regarding your most powerful firewall and
filter software. Do you have any suggestions? If possible in Japanese.
Purchase honorable wirecutters. Implement between router and csu/dsu.

Unencrypted e-mail is like a postcard chiseled in stone. 
   -Lauren Weinstein

One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with the
degree of one's personal interest in the issue.  When we are not directly
concerned, our morality overflows.  
   -Richard S. Gilbert

"We need your fax number in order to respect your wishes not to
receive unsolicited faxes."      
   -from a Microsoft web page.

Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves
must pass. 
   -Confucius

Said a hunted fox followed by twenty horsemen and a pack of twenty hounds,
"Of course they will kill me. But how poor and how stupid they must be.
Surely it would not be worth while for twenty foxes riding on twenty asses
and accompanied by twenty wolves to chase and kill one man." 
   -Kahlil Gibran

The future is a foreign country.  They do things differently there.
   -L. P. Hartley

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God Who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. 
   -Galileo

Heard on public radio: "And now, we will listen to the story of someone who
played with the forces of darkness and unleashed evil upon the world.   No, 
I'm not talking about Bill Gates.  We will now hear 'The Sorcerer's       
Apprentice' by Paul Dukas."  
   -David Bouchier

[Bill] Gates is trying to make sure that he has a proprietary position
in controlling the tools that allow you and me to access information.
And that's profitable by definition. How would you like to own the
printing press?   
   -Christopher Dixon, Paine Webber media analyst

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Version: 3.1   www.geekcode.com
GCS/CC d+ s:-,+ a+ C+++ UA,LU+++$ P++ L++ E- W++ N o+ K- w O- M V-
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"She would hold a grudge until it died of old age.
Then she would have it stuffed and mounted."  
   -David Weber

My web page designers ascended to the next evolutionary level,         
and all I got was this lousy pudding recipe!

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EE10E510CC98D444AA08E1324
'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said.
'No but I can,' he said. 'The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode,
but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter 
here. But in common English this is what it says:'     
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

A man's judgment cannot be better than the information on which he has
based it.  
   -Arthur H. Sulzberger

Congress shall make no law restricting the size of integers that may be 
multiplied together, or the number of times that an integer may be
multiplied by itself, or the modulus by which an integer may be reduced.
   -Eric Norman

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to
extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.
   -Molly Ivins

Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
   -Alan McKay

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."
   -Henry Kissinger

To read the front pages, you might conclude that Americans are mostly out
for themselves, venal, grasping and mean-spirited.    ...   But you can't
travel the back roads very long without discovering a multitude of gentle
people doing good for others with no expectation of gain or recognition.
   -Charles Kuralt

 The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines.
The gods gave man love and he invented marriage.

It was the kind of store where you could buy your weight in a single jar of
mayonnaise.  
   -Charisse Madlock

Auto-Docking WARNING: Objects in Mir are closer than they appear!

...when you get to monopoly status, you start to develop odd things because
you have no competitors to guage yourself [sic].   Microsoft Word now [has]
the ability to control how you underline misspelled words.   You can have a 
jagged red line or a wavy magenta line.   What are they going to do [next]-
make it twirl and fade to black?  
   -Larry Ellison

Yeh baby, that's the way to do it.  
Software for nothing and the source is free. 
I want my linux or my B S D... 
   -Brothers in (Acorn) ARMs. (and me.)                                                                     

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.              
   -R. Serling

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. 
   -Jeanette Rankin

"Project to connect New York to rest of world gains support." 
Headline about proposed underwater freight tunnel linking NJ and NYC

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
If I passed algebra but failed calculus, what does that say about me? 
In response, thus spake the Oracle: You do it discretely but not continuously.

I question the stability of papers.  I know they aren't necessarily where I  
put them. They may slink away under cover of darkness or transform into
vapor and waft out the door.  Where I left them is not usually where I find
them.   
   -Ruth Cherry    [in Newsweek, 3/3/97 p. 16

Here is another pilot fish who, while still feeding on the parasites which
attack the whale, dreams of a "perfect" world in which there are no whales
or parasites.   
   -Rabbi Haim Cassorla

After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party?   Surely not for
you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply
sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.      
   -P. J. O'Rourke

"We don't do pure research here.  We do 80% research and 20% playing
practical jokes on each other."  
   -Patrick D. Scannell

We take risks, not to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping us.

Salm-on-ing \`sam-on-ing\ (v): Coined 11/15/96 by Henry Farkas
A network condition in which every packet travels through the wire(s) with
a transmission or response time that indicates that it is working as hard
as a salmon swimming upstream against a heavy current during spawning
season.  Successful packets shall be known as "hero packets".  Dropped
packets (the majority) shall be known as "dead fish", and the percentage
of "dead fish" shall indicate how badly the network "stinks".

In Samoa, when elementary schools were first established, the natives
developed an absolute craze for arithmetical calculations. They laid aside
their weapons and were to be seen going about armed with slate and pencil,
setting sums and problems to one another and to European visitors. The
Honourable Frederick Walpole declares that his visit to the beautiful
island was positively embittered by ceaseless multiplication and division.
   -R. Briffault

WYDSIWGY - The first rule of computer security:     
What You Don't See Is What Gets You.  
   -Martin Hepworth

Slatkin's Theorem: By general agreement, nothing is better than eternal       
happiness.  But clearly, a cheese sandwich is better than nothing.      
Therefore, a cheese sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

96.37% of all statistics are made up.

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.

Q:  What do you get if you cross a tsetse fly with a mountain climber?
A:  Nothing.  You can't cross a vector with a scalar.

Crazy?   Some people think walking down the street muttering to yourself is
crazy.  I'll tell you what crazy is.  Crazy is walking down the street with 
half a cantaloupe on your head, saying:  "I'm a hamster, I'm a hamster".
Now that's crazy.      
   -Agent WD-40, in Spy Hard

I speak only for myself.  
I don't speak for my employer, or the other voices in my head.

Windows 95: n. - 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch 
to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor,  
written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.      
   -rec.humor.funny, 8/97  (via Shirley)

"This coffee is fit for a king.  Here, King!"  
   -Henny Youngman 1907

I searched through rebellion, drugs, diets, mysticism, religions,
intellectualism and much more, only to begin to find...that truth
is basically simple -and feels good, clean and right.
   -Chick Corea

Majority, n.:
        That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.

When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
   -Richard Nixon, in an interview with David Frost, 19 May 1977

And then he realized why he was thinking like this.  It was because he wanted there to be
conspirators.  It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad
and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy.  You had to cling to this
sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things
happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children
bedtime stories, were capable of going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary
people.  It was so much easier to blame it on Them.  It was bleakly depressing to
think that They were Us.  If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault.  If it was
Us, what did that make Me?   After all, I'm one of Us.  I must be.  I've certainly
never thought of myself as one of Them.  No one ever thinks of themselves as one of
Them.  We're always one of Us.  It's Them that do the bad things.
   -Terry Pratchett

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs
less than it's operating manual.
   -Ibid

Good judgment comes from experience.  Most worthwhile experiences come from bad judgment.
   -Dusty

If you think that [the] Creator had no sense of fun, I can only ask you, why do men have nipples?
   -Jim Hightower

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. 
   -Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium

To be alive, to be able to see, to walk,...it's all a miracle.  I have adapted the technique of living life from  
miracle to miracle.
   -Arthur Rubinstein

  
During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about
government should begin: "Look out! They're about to smack you around again!"
   -Molly Ivans

"One unexpected result came from the seismic experiment recording the impact of Intrepid on the surface after we
had jettisoned it. The entire Moon rang like a gong, vibrating and resonating for almost on hour after the impact." 
   -Cortwright, Edgar M., Apollo Expeditions To The Moon, By C. Conrad,Jr./ A.B. Shepard, Jr., U.S. History, 1 Sep 1990.

But they are useless. They can only give you answers.
   -Picasso, on computers.

"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"
   -"Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)

O senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm and yet will make Gods by the dozen! 
   -Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Freud on Seuss  ROFL!

Statistics are like bikinis --they show a lot, but hide the important stuff." 
   -Anonymous

All the world's a VAX,
And all the coders merely butchers;
They have their exits and their entrails;
And one int in his time plays many widths,
His sizeof being N bytes.  At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
And shining morning face, creeping like a slug
Unwillingly to school.
  -A Very Annoyed PDP-11

"I remember some cold nights in Minnesota where you'd put some peanut butter on your penis and say hello to the dog."
   -Anonymous (by request, though I can't imagine why...  :-)

Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial "we." 
   -Mark Twain

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you. 
   -Saba

Do you want to know how unix works? Then, echo '16i[q]sa[ln0=aln100%Pln100/snlbx]sbA0D4D465452snlbx'|dc 
Can you read that?   Then, echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb3135071790101768542287578439snlbxq'|dc 
   -Ibid

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. 
   -Ibid

"I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it." 
   -Clarence Darrow

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. 
   -Abraham Lincoln

Here are The Twelve Truths of Networking

"I take confidence in the belief that there is a solution, 
other than that I have nothing going for me."
   -Matthew T. Beitler

Take the baby out to the other room and hit him with the fish!
   -An anonymous parent

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like 
the condemned man who is proud of his large cell. 
   -Simone Weil

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, drive home safely... 
and don't take any s**t from anybody!
   -Billy Joel, closing out a concert in Hartford, CT

One winter evening, when the innovative engineer R. Buckminster Fuller
was drinking tea by the fireplace of Prof. Hugh Kenner, three-year-old
Lisa Kenner prolonged her bedtime farewell with the question: "Bucky,
why is the fire hot?"  Kenner writes: Some instinct told Lisa he was 
the man to ask.  His answer, as he took her on his lap, began, like
most of his answers, some distance away from the question.  "You remember,
darling, when the tree was growing in the sunlight?"  On arms like
upgroping branches, his hands became clusters of leaves as he described
their collecting the sunlight, processing its energies into sugars,
drawing them down into a stocky trunk.  "Then the men cut it down. and
and sawed it into logs.  And what you see now"--he pointed to the
crackling hearth--"is the sunlight, unwinding from the log."
   -New York Times Magazine via Readers' Digest

Let's face it, a little humility is in order from all of us.  I mean,
aren't we slightly too ridiculous for anything else? Do any of us get
where we are going because we know where to go?
   -John Rosenthal

On each race is laid the duty to keep alight its own lamp of mind as its
part in the illumination of the world. To break the lamp of any people is
to deprive it of its rightful place in the world festival. 
   -Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Poet (1861-1941) [Rabindra Rachonabali]

They asked me to go in front of the Reagans. I'm not used to going in 
front of President Reagan, so we went out behind the Bushes. 
   -Dan Quayle, Former U.S. Vice President (1947-)

Quotes from my mom during a recent visit:
   "I hate flying.  The pilots are always drunk!"
   "There's nobody in Boca Raton to talk to!"
   "Cruise?  I'm not taking no cruise!  The ships always go down, then they lose
    your luggage!"

    Sue:    We won't have a moon tonight.
    My mom: You don't know; we might.
    Sue:    No, we had a full moon 2 weeks ago.  Tonight is the new moon.
    My mom: Oh, I don't believe in that stuff!

"There is a very fine line between genius and insanity.  I have erased this line."
  -Oscar Levant

"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."
   -Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery

"I'm not into working out.  My philosophy:  No pain, no pain."
  -Carol Leifer

Don't spend two dollars to dry clean a shirt. Donate it to the
Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger.
Next morning buy it back for seventy-five cents.
   -William Coronel

"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable."
  -Robert A. Heinlein

"Let's face the obvious. Yesterday we were nerds. Today we're the cognitive elite. 
 Let's conquer."
 -Chester G. Edwards

I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.
  -J. Edgar Hoover

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is;
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments 
that differentiate me from a doormat.
   -Rebecca West, 1913

"Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen."
   -Albert Einstein

"And if you give us any more trouble, I shall visit you in the small hours and
 put a bat up your nightdress."
 -Basil Fawlty

"A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy."
 -Joseph Campbell

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea --massive,
 difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-
 boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
 -Gene Spafford,1992

And the following quotes are from our good friend Ann Onymous:

Your mouse has moved.   Windows NT must be restarted for the change to take
effect.
               Reboot now?  [ OK ]

Microsoft Windows:  computing While U Wait

I feel like a genocidal maniac when emacs asks me if I want to kill 10789
characters.

I have yet to meet a C compiler that is more friendly and easier to use than
eating soup with a knife.

"To know recursion, you must first know recursion"

Mountain Dew and doughnuts... because breakfast is the most important meal
of the day.

Don't have awk? Use this simple sh emulation:
#!/bin/sh
echo 'Awk bailing out!'
exit 2

Whip me.  Beat me.  Make me maintain AIX.
  -Roberta

Of course my password is the same as my pet's name.
My macaw's name was Q47pY!3, but I change it every 90 days.

BREAKFAST.EXE    Halted...Cereal Port Not Responding

Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.....

Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...

All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?

Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.   {I actually got this
error once!  -henry}

Press any key to continue or any other key to quit...

Excuse me for butting in, but I'm interrupt-driven...

The world is coming to an end... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!
   -Anonymous

One-liners from Kaz:
 The fact that no one understands you doesn't necessarily mean you're an artist.
 It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy.
 Thank you. We're all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view.
 I like you. You remind me of when I was young and stupid.
 I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.
 Someday we'll look back on this, laugh nervously, and change the subject.

Life is like a litterbox.  You don't want to go digging around in past events.
   -My (12-year-old) son

Technology gives us cancer, and then we want technology to cure us.
Technology is a big dog with glittering eyes chasing it's tail in
a long and complicated dream.
   -Poe Ballantine

Some things I've learned:

   * Never underestimate the power of a single red sock in the laundry.
   * Never put stickers on suede.
   * If you must tape your windows because a hurricane, take the masking tape off 
     immediately after the storm is over.
   * Wait 24 hours before you make what an objective observer might call a major purchase.  
     No matter how much you want it.  No matter how good the deal is.  No matter what.
   * Nobody in the store is an objective observer.
   * Once in a lifetime deals aren't.
   * Change your vehicle's oil every 3,000 miles.  No matter what.
     This way, no matter how busy you are, you'll still manage to change it every 5,000 miles.
   * No, you will not remember; write it down.
   * No, you will not remember; put it on the calendar now.
   * Keep a pad and pencil by the phone.  Get their name.  At the very beginning of the
     conversation.  Every single time.  Write down what they said, and the date.
   * Keep the records until the problem is solved.
   * Counting to 10 when you're angry really does work.  If it doesn't work for you count to 20.
   * Make backups.  And an emergancy startup disk.  Make regular backups.  Frequently.

Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today,
and that's why everything is screwy.
   -Joseph Campbell

Once I was told I should shoot for the stars, and look at me now: 
Mars is in my grasp!  Is this a great country or what!!!!!
   -Ralph Guzman  (A SysAdmin, upon learning that he would inherit 
                   a machine with the hostname 'mars')

People have forgotten, but we Dogs remember.

We remember, through our innate racial memories, the days when our 
race and the world were both young, the days when People still stayed 
in the trees, and when all of our kind lived in the woods and the fields,
in the awful, desolate lonliness--in seperateness.  When we ate only what 
we caught and killed, and the night shadows and the night smells were
around us, and the Night Devils rode the high howling winds, and there
was no light when the sun went down except the thin skittery moonlight.
Nor was there any warmth when the stars came out but in the warmth of
our fur and our tails, in which we buried our cold twitching noses.

We Dogs remember, and at night, sleeping across the doorway or behind 
the chair, we dream; and our sleep is broken by the momory of separateness,
and we whimper and try to run from the horror.  We Dogs remember.

We remember when the night comes down and we are out and not in, and the
Night Devils that no Dog can catch ride the winds, and then we point our
noses at the moon, which is the enemy of all Dogs, and we sing our 
ancient song of desolation and loneliness.  And so do our cousins, the
wolves and coyotes and foxes, the ones who still cling to the old customs..
   -Greyfriar's Flannel Petticoat  (A.K.C. # WA-339236)
            (With her Special Person, Roland A. Browne)
    From  The Intelligent Dog's Guide to People Owning

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
   -anonymous

When one person receives without working
another must work without receiving.
   -anonymous

....the First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, 
since governments never try to ban the other kind.
   -Mike Godwin

Beer -Wine -Guns -Ammo -Picnic Supplies
   -sign at a roadside convenience store in south Texas

By one estimate, the average American spends 1,600 hours a year either 
driving or earning the money to support a car, and drives an average
of 6,000 miles a year.  That works out to about 4 miles traveled
per hour spent --the equivalent of a normal walking pace.
   -Edward Tenner  Why Things Bite Back
 
Sometimes I jest sits here and types.  Sometimes I jest sits here and
laughs for no apparent reason.  Scares the bejezus out of my cubemates.
   -Bill Stout
 
"Why not?" "Yeah."
   -The last words of Timothy Leary, who dropped out due to cancer, at age 75.
 
It's easy to play any musical instrument;
all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time
and the instrument will play by itself.
   -Johann Sebastian Bach
 
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
   -Abbie Hoffman 
 
If you watch a game, it's fun.  
If you play it, it's recreation.  
If you work at it, it's golf.
   -Bob Hope
 
They riseth in the early morning,
They goeth forth full of hope,
Mighty are their prospects.
When the day is spent they returneth
Smelling of strong drink-
And the truth is not in them.
   -a sign pinned to a wall of a Minnesota hunting lodge 

Some birthdays are special.  They really get you.
   -Carl Kraft
 
In Dance We Trust
   -Marguerite Plank
 
"I mean, after all; you have to consider we're only made out of dust.  That's
 admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that.  But even
 considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So
 I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we
 can make it. You get me?" 
   -Leo Bulero/PKD, via proff@suburbia.net
 
"Tommy Sucks At Pinball" and I "Don't Care Who You Are"
   -The handwritten titles of two recently discovered Keith Moon drum tracks
 
Note that this is not a vulnerability with Java, per se. It is
really a vulnerablility with DNS that Java does not check for.
   -CIAC note 96-01
 
"You go to heaven...  God sneezes...  What do you say ?"
   -Peter Houppermans peter@phobos.co.uk 
 
A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
   -Max Weinrich   From Mat Simmons' siggie
 
Trying to have sex at my age is like trying to play pool with a rope.
   -George Burns 
 
Jeff correctly points out a major potential problem with [this policy].  
At the risk of agreeing with him, I would like to comment.
   -the notoriously controversial "Dr. Fred" -
 
Technician 1: They've changed the drop dead date again.
Technician 2: It's starting to become a drop dead window.
 
Lawsuits follow money, and money has found the internet.  
Who can sue who, and for how much, is still being worked out.
   -Tim Kolar
 
Is time travel a thing of the past?
   -heard somewhere
 
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
   -Noelie Altito

I am the warrior God of Atlantis!
   -an acolyte at church, marching up the center aisle with a large candle,
     apparently not realizing that his comment to the boy beside him could be heard
 
The Cat's Diary 

Day 751:          My captors continue  to torment me  with bizarre dangling 
objects.  They eat lavish meals in my presence while I am forced to subsist 
on dry cereal.   The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of eventual 
escape --that, and the satisfaction  I get from  occasionally ruining some 
piece of their furniture.  

I fear I may be going insane.  Yesterday, I
ate a houseplant. Tomorrow I may eat another.
 
Never dance in wool socks.
   -(this is something I found out the hard way)
 
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; 
they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
   -A Bit of Fry and Laurie -
 
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
   -multiple sources
 
The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in
many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls
the "Four F's": 1. fighting;  2. fleeing;  3.feeding; and  4. mating.
   -Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course
 
What is a committee?  A group of the unwilling, 
picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
   -Richard Harkness, The New York Times
 
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles
closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there
are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. 
   -Ransom K. Ferm
 
Madness takes its toll.  Please have exact change.
   -attr: John Owen 
  
Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench 
to pound in the correct screw. 
   -ibid
 
The graduate with a Science degree asks,                 "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks,            "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks,        "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
   -John, again
 
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and 
years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the 
worst movies in the history of the world.
   -Dave Barry
 
I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; 
I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. 
   -A. Whitney Brown
 
A great many people think they are thinking 
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. 
   -William James
 
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon 
full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
   -Andrew Tannenbaum
 
There's so much comedy on television.  
Does that cause comedy in the streets?
   -Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate
 
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's
life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if
there are men on base.
   -Dave Barry
 
I am sick unto death of obscure English towns that exist seemingly for the
sole accommodation of these so-called limerick writers --and even sicker of
their residents, all of whom suffer from physical deformities and spend their
time dismembering relatives at fancy dress balls. 
   -Editor of the Limerick Times (Limerick, Ireland) 
 
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
   -6&nL#bi~8r
 
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:  No matter how great your triumphs or how
tragic your defeats ---approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
 
668: The Neighbor of the Beast
 
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
   -Emo Phillips
 
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
   -Anonymous
 
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
   -F. P. Jones
 
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the
experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination
to do so.
   -Douglas Adams, _Last Chance to See_ 
 
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in
the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or
the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
   -Quentin Crisp
 
Boundary, n.  In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations,
separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
 
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of
being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being
sick and tired.  I'm certainly not!  But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!
   -Monty Python
 
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
   -George Carlin
 
Born OK the first time.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
I brake for... wait... AAAHi! NO BRAKES!!!!!
If you can read this, I can hit my brakes and sue you.
Why do single Western men have the attention span of fruit flies?
Back off --I'm a postal worker!
Visualize whirlled peas.
Visualize using your turn signals.
Hang up and drive!
Hung like Einstein.  Brains of a horse.
Guns don't kill people.  Postal workers do.
You left your stove on.
I brake for red lights.
   -bumper snickers
 
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible 
will make violent revolution inevitable.
   -John F. Kennedy
 
Life may have no meaning.  Or even worse,
it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
   -Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
   -ibid
 
Her kisses left something to be desired --the rest of her.
   -anonymous: and for a darned good reason! 
 
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
   -Mark Twain
 
Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham
Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1.            Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2.                          Advising the President.
3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
   -David Letterman 
 
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, 
"I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli replied, 
"That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress." 
 
For three days after death, hair and fingernails 
continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
   -Johnny Carson
 
A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least
expect it.  That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.
-In the August 1993 issue, page 9, of PS magazine, the Army's
  magazine of preventive maintenance
 
An Animated Cartoon Theology:
1. People are animals.
2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain.
3. Life is antagonistic to the living.
4. The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music.
5. The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart destroyed by their own cunning.
6. The small are tortured by the large and the large destroyed by their own momentum.
7. We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
   -E. L. Doctorow "The Book of Daniel"

CALVIN: People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't
realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
HOBBES: Isn't your pants' zipper supposed to be in the front?
 
The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs.
   -E. Grebenik 
 
Old Yiddish proverb: "If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides."
 
Don't worry about temptation--as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.
   -Old Farmer's Almanac

G:   "If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?" 
EB:  "Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area."
   -Somewhere in No Man's Land, BA4
 
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. 
   -Plutarch
 
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a
voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
   -Charlie Brown
 
The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
   -Salvador Dali
 
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, 
but they've always worked for me.
   -Hunter S. Thompson
 
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
   -Mark Twain
 
"Time's fun when you're having flies."
   -Kermit the Frog
 
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds.
The pessimist fears this is true.
   -James Branch Cabell

A pessimist is one who feels bad when he feels good
for fear he'll feel worse when he feels better.
   -H. Allen Smith

He's beaten everyone on earth.  Saint Peter, rack 'em up!
   -the widow of Minnesota Fats, after his funeral
 
By the time you get to whereever whatever it was was, it's gone!
   -Laura Sloat (A coworker, attempting to understand seemingly inexplicable traffic clumps) 
 
Christmas canceled.  Joseph confessed.
   -rec.humor.funny 
 
Here at the frontier there are falling leaves.
Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
And you, you are a thousand miles away,
There are always two cups on my table.
   -from the T'ang Dynasty, A.D. 618-906
 
I speak only for myself and not the other voices in my head.
   -siggie, ibelooze@runet.edu \
 
Speed does not kill.  Stopping very quickly kills.
   -heard somewhere
 
Here's a little puzzle for the hypocrites to solve:
Jesus born from Woman, not a man at all involved!
   -Bob Franke
 
When one person receives without working
another must work without receiving.
   -heard somewhere 
 
I keep hearing
tree talk
water words
and I keep knowing what they mean.
   -Lucille Clifton 
 
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
   -Muriel Rukeyser
 
Most of the things worth doing in the world have
been declared impossible before they were done.
   -Louis Brandeis
 
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
  -seen on a siggie
 
Housework: The work your house does not do when you are not home.
 
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction
and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.
He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
   -1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
 
Man does.  Woman is.
   -Piers Anthony
 
God is real... unless declared integer.
   -heard somewhere
 
From a Fall issue of Kitchen and Bath Custom Planner
"GE's white-on-white catalogue offers a complete line of all-white 
appliances.  Send for a full-color brochure."
   -Reader's Digest, November, 1995 p. 100

Not to worry, we'll just outlaw all unlicensed cryptography. 
After all, it works in France. 
You don't see weekly terrorist attacks over there any more,now do you ?
   -"Futplex"

His ... argument style makes me want to step outside and hork in the bushes.
   -Robert Hettinga 
 
"According to Enderle, [Dataquest's senior industry analyst,
client/server software], [Microsoft] spent only $US120 million on
developing Windows 95, while it spent $300 million on marketing the
product."  
   -Computerworld, 13th October 1995
 
Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product
that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it. 
   -Will Rogers

Congress shall make no law restricting the size of integers that may be 
multiplied together, or the number of times that an integer may be 
multiplied by itself, or the modulus by which an integer may be reduced.
   -Eric Norman

"I don't know if security explains why the Win95 support Web servers run BSDI
2.0--an Intel-based Unix--rather than Windows NT, which Microsoft insists is
the ideal Web software solution.  Does Redmond know something we don't know?"
   -Robert X. Cringely, INFORWORLD, 9/11/95
 
And in The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin recounts, "Since this 
inexplicable power of a magnatized needle to 'find' the north smacked of 
black magic, common seamen were wary of its powers.  For many decades, the 
prudent sea captain consulted his compass secretly...After the compass 
had lost its occult flavor and become every sailor's everyday tool, it 
came out onto the open deck.  Still, in Colombus's day, a pilot who used 
the magnetic compass might be accused of trafficking with Satan."
   -Kenneth C. Davis - (In his book Don't Know Much About Geography)
    [Whether or not this has any relevance to present-day issues and 
     if so, it's significance, is left as an exercise for the reader.]
 
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. 
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. 
   -George Bernard Shaw
 
Nobody's going to listen to you if you just stand there and flap your arms like a fish.
   -Mike McNally (m5@tivoli.com)
 
He who hesitates to act on inside information is lost.
   -Timothy C. May 
 
If insider trading rules are interpreted logically, then failure to make 
a planned trade on the basis of inside information is just as illegal as 
deciding to make some trade on the basis of inside information.  The SEC
should require all insiders to file a daily report, preferably before the
market opens in New York, listing all of their planned transactions for 
that day, so that violations of the "insider non-trading laws" can be 
detected and prosecuted.
   -Tim May (paraphrasing Stew Brownstein)
 
Shit happens.  But an awful lot of shit can be avoided by simply not tailgating.
 
There is no polite way to eat spare ribs.
 
To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist!
   -Jesse Jackson 
Huh?
   -me
 
When she's sad, she doesn't even look pretty... she looks Italian!
   -MeC
 
I wish to find where spirituality, politics, community 
and chocolate come together.
   -Gary D. Shapiro
 
....the First Ammendment was designed to protect offensive speech, 
since governments never try to ban the other kind.
 -Mike Godwin
                                       
Hey!  I like this channel!
   -Steven (who's 9 years old) watching a fire in a fireplace
                                        
Prisoner, God has given you good abilities, instead of which you 
go about the country stealing ducks!
   -William Arabin
                                       
When I go I want to go in my sleep like my grandfather, 
not screaming, like the people in his plane.
   -S. Simone
                                       
Common sense must be the most universal of all commodities, because 
every man is convinced that he is posessed with an abundance of it.
   -Rene Descartes
                                       
A luxury, once enjoyed, quickly becomes a necessity.
   -Bill O'Neill
                                       
The difference between theory and practice is bigger in practice than theory.
   -Jay Ashworth
                                       
Guilt is a very peculiar emotion.  As long as you are guilty about
something you are not compelled to change it.  Guilt is like a warm   
bath or, to be rude, it is like masturbation-you can get used to it.
But, in order to live without it, you must get past it.  In order to 
get past it you must act. And, in order to act, you must be conscious. 
You must take great chances-and be responsible for the consequences.
   -James Baldwin
                                                                  
I don't need to take this abuse from you.  I've got hundreds of
people willing to abuse me.
   -Bill Murray  (from Ghostbusters)
                                        
While lifting a ~170 lb. Sun disk drive:
Henry:  Let's just say I'm trying to be macho.
 Eric:   No, I'd say it was a case of testosterone poisoning.
                                        
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
                                        
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
   -Calvin
                                        
"To know that we know what we know, and that we don't know what we 
don't know, that is true knowledge".
   -Confucious 
    (But it sure sounds like Dan Quayle, doesn't it? :-)
                                        
You're not drunk if you can lay on the floor without holding on.
   -Dean Martin
                                        
Hardware, n.:
The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
   -anonymous
                                        
Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
   -anonymous
                                        
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is.  If you don't, it's its.  Then too, it's hers.  It isn't her's. 
It isn't our's either.  It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
  -Oxford University Press, Edpress News
                                        
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.  
   -anonymous
                                        
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
   -anonymous
                                        
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems.  It's easy 
to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
   -D. J. Hicks
                                        
Law of Probable Dispersion:  
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. 
   -Todd Merrill
                                        
Necrophilia means never having to say you're sorry.
                                        
He advised all seekers to examine what each system asked of
the potential initiate, keeping in mind three rules:
   1.  What you are required to believe is what the
       system cannot prove.
   2.  Anything that you are asked to keep secret is of
       more value to the teacher than to the student.
   3.  Any practice that is forbidden offers something
       that the system cannot successfully replace with
       an alternative.
One listener asked: "Don't you believe that giving up the
pleasures of the senses will produce a different consciousness?"
       "My personal experience," Ben replied, "was that it produced
       the consciousness of fanaticism." .... The guru said: "You
       must get beyond pleasure."  Jane answered: "If you think you
       can get beyond pleasure without going through it we are
       definitely on different trips," and left.
   -Camden Benares    Zen Without Zen Masters
                                        
The only measure of your words and your deeds will be the love 
you leave behind you when you're done. 
   -Fred Small
                                       
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them
that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
   -heard somewhere 
                                       
Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone.
   -John Cougar
                                       
She's kind.  She's soft.  Her name is Daisy.
The more I deal with women the better I like my sheep.
                                       
Would you say that Richard Nixon had a "Checkered" past?
                                       
"Well, what do you think [laws] are for?  We  want  them to be broken.
There is no way to rule innocent men.  The only power any government
has is the power to crack down on criminals.  Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one  makes  them.  One declares so many things to
be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking 
laws.  ... just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed
nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of
law-breakers ... that's the game."
   -Ayn Rand    Atlas Shrugged p. 411
                                       
We find in the rules laid down by the greatest English judges, who have
been the brightest of mankind, [that] we are to look upon it as more
beneficial that many guilty persons should escape unpunished than one
innocent person should suffer.  The reason is because it is of more
importance to [the] community that innocence should be protected 
than it is that guilt should be punished, for guilt and crimes are so 
frequent in the world that all of them cannot be punished, and many
times they happen in such a manner that it is not of much consequence
to the public whether they are punished or not.  But when innocence
itself is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the
subject will exclaim, "It is immaterial to me whether I behave well
or ill, for virtue itself is no security."  And if such a sentiment
as this should take place in the mind of the subject there would be
an end to all security whatsoever.
   -John Adams 
    This was his final argument in defense of the British soldiers 
    accused of committing murders at the Boston Massacre.
    (This is from James Kunen's book "How Can You Defend Those People".)
                                       
"It breaks my heart to see those stars smashing perfectly good guitars."
   -John Hiatt
                                       
"I mean, no matter how you attempt to twist it, you can't prove that
other people are not hiding who they are when you claim that your
lack of ability to find out who I am means I am hiding something."
   -some clueless net-dweeb, c. 1993
                                        
"From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the
appetite of the tapeworm."
   -Edward Abbey
                                        
"Question Authority and the Authorities will question You!"
   -someone's sig
                                        
I do three kinds of work: Good, Fast and Cheap.  You may pick any TWO.
           I can do good work fast  but it won't be cheap.
           I can do good work cheap but it won't be fast.
           I can do fast work cheap but it won't be good.
                                        
It don't make no sense that that common sense don't make no sense no more.
   -John Prine
                                       
"The Pledge of Allegiance says '..with liberty and justice for all'.    
What part of 'all' don't you understand?"
   -Rep. Pat Schroeder (D) CO
                                       
The more you stare at a computer screen, the more you realize
it only knows what you tell it.
The more you stare at a television, the more you realize 
that you only know what it tells you.
   -James Birkinshaw .sig, Dec 1993 -
    (I stole this from Shirley Peters)
                                       
"The national budget must be balanced.  The public debt must be 
reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and 
controlled.  Payments to foreign governments must be reduced if 
the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn 
to work instead of living on public assistance."
   -Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC 
    (She stole this one from me)
                                       
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of my life and wonder:
"What's going on here?"
   -anonymous
                                        
If, in the last few years, you haven't discarded a major opinion or
acquired a new one, check your pulse.  You may be dead.
   -Gelett Burgess
                                       
There once was a lady named Jude,
Who went to the beach to bathe nude.
Then a man came along,
and unless I am wrong,
You'd expect this last line to be rude.
   -anonymous
                                       
I've learned not to think about my life after 11 pm.
   -anonymous
                                        
Of all the people living in America today:
   22 %   Don't remember the American Bicentennial Celebration.
   33 %   Feel people have  always  been on the moon.
   50 %   Are too young to remember the assassination of JFK.
   66 %   Are not old enough to remember the Korean War.
   70 %   Don't remember "before TV".
   85 %   Are not old enough to remember the 1929 stock market crash.
   -Fred Newell -
                                       
"I've got spurs that jingle jangle jingle...."

semper ubi, sub ubi
always wear underwear
                                       
tua mater caligas gerit.
your mother wears combat boots.
                                       
To be or not to be, those are the parameters.
                                       
Is an egotist someone who is always me-deep in conversation?
                                       
What is a CDRom?   3 billion pits arranged in a 3 mile spiral!
   -Gess Shankar
                                       
Objects are just data structures with an attitude.
   -Alex Morrow
                                       
"Get a life?"   Life is for people who can't handle computers!

When I sing, dogs hunker to their bellies and stick their front paws 
in their ears, screw their eyes closed tight, and whine piteously.  
Mothers snatch young children indoors, and hardened Harley owners 
rev up their bikes and roar away, leaving unfinished drinks behind, 
shaking, and with tears of agony streaming down their wretched, 
wind-chiseled faces.
  -Me

It seems that the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, had quite
the crush on an actress named Lillie Langtry, and they seem to have
generously opened their purses for each other.  He even had a manor
house (now a hotel) built for their private relaxation.
Albert: I've spent enough on you to build a battleship!
Lillie: And you've spent enough in me to float one.
 -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillie_Langtry

I was visiting my folks in the Florida Keys and we were rounding the 
point in our boat, dad was driving, mom sitting next to him, our two 
kids in the nose watching for sting rays, and my wife was sitting on 
one side taking in the scenery. We were passing some larger boats 
moored just off the shore, when my eyes caught this beautiful young 
lady taking off a sweatshirt. She had nothing underneath. And you're 
right, they do dance. Oh Lord, they dance! We actually made eye contact 
as we innocently pulled away. I just smiled and gave her a little wave. 
She did the same. Ahh, simple pleasure. There is a God!
  -R.D.