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