Otherware/Otherware_1_SB_Development.iso/amiga/misc/afortune.lha/AFortune/30.frt/30.frt

Text File | 1980-01-01 | 30.8 KB | 650 lines

ñ
We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
ñ
...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
- George Jacob Holyoake
ñ
"If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."
- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston
  July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
ñ
The meek are contesting the will.
ñ
I'm sick of being trodden on!  The Elder Gods say they can make me a man!
All it costs is my soul!  I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!
- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
ñ
"I'm a mean green mother from outer space"
 -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
ñ
Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer.
It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who
watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide
people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and
cruelty for that.  On the other hand, I respect and envy the people
who get inspiration from their religions.
- Benjamin Spock
ñ
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
- Andy Finkel, computer guy
ñ
Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.
ñ
NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again.
- The Firesign Theater
ñ
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's
technical vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much
different.
- The Firesign Theater
ñ
...this is an awesome sight.  The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
- The Firesign Theater
ñ
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
- Ann Marion
ñ
I know engineers.  They love to change things.
- Dr. McCoy
ñ
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective
software tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the
University.
- John Lions (U. of Toronto (?))
ñ
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
ñ
"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the
United States?  Because your hackers have so much mobility into the
establishment.  Here, there is no such mobility.  If you have the slightest
bit of intellectual integrity you cannot support the government....  That's
why the best computer minds belong to the opposition."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
ñ
"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door.  Now all you have to do is
bend a disk."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
ñ
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- Mark Twain
ñ
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
- Ed Bluestone
ñ
He's dead, Jim.
ñ
New York...  when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of
you.
- David Letterman
ñ
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
- Al Capone
ñ
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip
objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air
due to levitation.

Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
character does not have fire resistance.

- README file from the NetHack game
ñ
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
- Frank Zappa
ñ
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired.  I'm certainly not.  But I'm
sick and tired of being told that I am.
- Monty Python
ñ
"There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."
-- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
ñ
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
- T. K. Lawson
ñ
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
- William Cowper
ñ
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
ñ
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
  commenting on psi research
ñ
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
- John Keats
ñ
Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.
ñ
"Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.

In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket,
achieving an altitude of 41 feet.  In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth.

In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
in Apollo 11."
-- Michael Collins
   Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum
ñ
Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the
peasantry." Don't lose what you've got.  Don't change.  Don't take a chance,
because you might end up starving to death.  Play it safe.  Buy just as much
as you need.  Don't waste time.

When  we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their
heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive.  But when it comes down
to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in
something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
the game as it must be played.

- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988
ñ
"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting"
--Stanley Sutton
ñ
Weekends were made for programming.
- Karl
ñ
"Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards."
- H.  L.  Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the
supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in
1925.
ñ
...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer,
  Vol XII No. 2
ñ
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines, no
wires, no controls.
- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
ñ
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
and tears.  ...  It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious,
inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us
sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness
and acts that are contrary to habit...
- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
ñ
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural
function are no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain
now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.
Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only....It is quite
conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected.  But it is
important also to see that we have not reached that day yet:  the working
assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.
Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble.  One
cannot logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in
psychology.
- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior:  A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
ñ
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
  Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
ñ
...  Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part
of the person making the claim, not the critic.  It is not the
responsibility of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is
it the responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that
crystals or colored lights never healed anyone.  The skeptic's role is to
point out claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidcence
and to provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping
with the accepted body of scientific evidence.  ...
- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
ñ
"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."
- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
ñ
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.  There are many examples of
outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
they prevailed with irrefutable data.  More often, egregious findings that
contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts.  I have
argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic conciousness,"
and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
neuroscience.  Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for Psi
   Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
ñ
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.
Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only
atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
ñ
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going
around the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but,
when evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
ñ
...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
ñ
... The book is worth attention for only two reasons:  (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
ñ
e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data
you're seeing is genuine rather than somebody's made-up crap.
- karl
ñ
Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
- Oscar Wilde
ñ
Shit Happens.
ñ
My mother is a fish.
- William Faulkner
ñ
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
ñ
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the
firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this
ordered regularity for causes of a different nature.  For him neither the
rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of
natural events.  To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with
natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for
this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific
knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of
religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.  For a doctrine which is
able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will of
necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress.  In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must
have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up
that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast powers in
the hands of priests.  In their labors they will have to avail themselves of
those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful in humanity itself.  This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an
incomparably more worthy task.
- Albert Einstein
ñ
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
ñ
Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
- Our Sunday Visitor, an American-Catholic newspaper, circa 1949
ñ
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to
whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be
accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected
with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers'
money.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
ñ
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
ñ
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
ñ
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries...
- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
ñ
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
ñ
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?
Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of
ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
ñ
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
his ignorance.  And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
ñ
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
- Voltaire
ñ
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity.  We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly --
that is the first law of nature.
- Voltaire
ñ
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
- Voltaire
ñ
I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us --
a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole
normal evolution of society.
- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
ñ
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be....  The
natural disposition is always to believe.  It is acquired wisdom and
experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it
enough.
- Adam Smith
ñ
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of
tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If
they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go
crude.  I'm a very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.
These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even
aspire to crudeness.
- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
ñ
However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise.
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
beliefs.  There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
Jese Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf
should be used sparingly.  The religious factions that are growing
throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.
They are trying to force government leaders into following their position
100 percent.  If you disagree with these religious groups on a
particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of
money or votes or both.  I'm frankly sick and tired of the political
preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D."  Just who do
they think they are?  And from where do they presume to claim the
right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?  And I am even more angry as
a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate.  I am warning them today:  I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of "conservatism."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
ñ
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's
suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's
nomination to the Supreme Court
ñ
...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers.  No matter how assured we
may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions.  This is true in religion
as it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the
naive.  As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we
might be advised to leave them to heaven.  They will not, unfortunately, do
us the same courtesy.  They attack us and each other, and whatever their
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword.  My own belief in
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge.  My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the most
virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth.  But even well-educated Christians are
frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure of Jesus
because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.  Such
ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every recognized
Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it.  Some Christians, alas, resort to
formal lying to obscure such reality.
- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
  Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
ñ
...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
- Sidney Hook
ñ
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject.
- Winston Churchill
ñ
We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...
we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.
- Jerry Falwell
ñ
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
- Thomas Jefferson
ñ
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
- George Orwell
ñ
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
conversions -- to anything -- less likely.  Brian now realizes this and
has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with.  The
problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
irrational -- the powers of reason are suprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer's mind.
- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
  Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
ñ
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
- Fyodor Dostoevski
ñ
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual
concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.
But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
resources.  If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
ñ
The Messiah will come.  There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
- Rabbi Meir Kahane
ñ
The world is no nursery.
- Sigmund Freud
ñ
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
superficial answer is not far to seek....
The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
ñ
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality.  All proffered
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
common tests.  It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse.  The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generall known;
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
where the method of free inquiry has made its way.  The "religious"
would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
ñ
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality...Whether this
educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-
democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance
not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
interests and activites of a society that is committed to the democratic
way of life.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
ñ
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts
them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing
grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another...
Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every
moult is a step gained.
- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
ñ
...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our
family, the Hominidae.
- Richard Leakey
ñ
It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us
as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.
- Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species",
  Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
ñ
"Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature.  It's a piss-poor
reptile and not very much of a bird."
- Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
studied the archeopteryz and found it "very much like people"
ñ
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.  What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectualy heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
ñ
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
ñ
"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."
-- presumable misprint from the 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
ñ
"Your attitude determines your attitude."
-- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
ñ
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...

This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes.  As a
metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it?  As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the
miraculous, it leaves much to be desired.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness:  Implications for
   Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
ñ
Thufir's a Harkonnen now.
ñ
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
-- P.  J.  Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer
Language"
ñ
"If you want to eat hippopautamus, you've got to pay the freight."
-- some IBM guy
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Parkinson's Law:  Work expands to fill the time alloted it.
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Karl's version of Parkinson's Law:  Work expands to exceed the time alloted
it.
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It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and
failed.
- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
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"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other
dimension."
-- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us:  Hypnotic Regression Revisited",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
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>> Sir, the computer doesn't make mistakes.  Your bill is still $21,736.4
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For a good prime, call:  391581 * 2^216193 -1
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 "You are in a twisty little maze of Unix versions, all different."
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