ca. 2/1991:
This U.S. stamp, along with 25 [cents] of additional U.S. postage,
is equivalent to the 'F' stamp rate
- Official Algorithm of the US Postal Service
2/1992 - 3/1992; 1/1994:
Is it possible to see this simple business as obscure and mysterious?
We must try.
- J. S. Bell
4/1992:
Intelligence is nothing without delight
- Paul Claudel
5/1992:
To be prepared against surprise is to be trained.
To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
- James Carse
6/1992:
Careful! We don't want to learn anything from this.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson)
7/1992:
Give me a burrito. . .resistance is futile!
- Steve Roberts, of Winnebiko and BEHEMOTH fame,
to a terrified clerk at a Taco Bell drive-through
8/1992:
TV dinner by the pool; I'm so glad I finished school!
- Frank Zappa
9/1992:
Between 20 and 30 percent of the gross national product of the
United States comes from high energy physics.
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX)
10/1992:
Sloppy thinking gets worse over time
- Jenny Holzer
11/1992:
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton, who is almost always misquoted
12/1992:
[X and Y] point out that their device is hardly state of the art.
It was, after all, built out of off-the-shelf parts by theorists.
- world-class understatement from the November /Physics Today/
1/1993:
Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living
that wears you out.
- Chekhov
2/1993:
Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth
century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice.
- Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual
3/1993:
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
- Richard P. Feynman
4/1993:
[It's] like saying Michelangelo *helped* paint the Sistine chapel
just because some Pope owned the ceiling.
- Art Spiegelman
5/1993:
These holdings enrich the literature of sophistry.
- I. F. Stone,
on a couple of Supreme Court opinions he didn't care for
6/1993:
Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of UNIX, although they should
have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.
- MIT AI Lab job ad in the /Boston Globe/
7/1993:
Contention is better than loneliness.
- old Irish proverb; proposed netnews motto (RFC1609)
8/1993:
Usually, if you're calling any shots at all, you're not eating worms.
- Derkins' Canonical Test of Empowerment
(Bill Watterson)
9/1993:
A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things
to the human spirit.
- Cecil B. De Mille
10/1993:
I don't think my name will mean much to the bear business,
but you're welcome to use it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
11/1993:
The status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed.
- Clark Kerr
12/1993:
In this world, there is one terrible thing,
and that is that everyone has his reasons.
- Jean Renoir
2/1994:
Data without generalization is just gossip.
- Robert Pirsig
3/1994:
The point of philosophy is to start with something so
simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with
something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
- Bertrand Russell
4/1994:
Bachelors and Masters of Arts who do not follow Aristotle's
philosophy are subject to a fine of 5 shillings for each
point of divergence.
- 14th century statute of Oxford University
5/1994:
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
- Oscar Wilde
6/1994:
Bad policies, stupid policies, gutless policies have real consequences.
- Molly Ivins
7/1994:
I can speak to almost anything with a lot of authority.
- Fred Barnes
8/1994:
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, who obviously never read netnews
9/1994:
There's always an easy solution to every human problem -
neat, plausible, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
10/1994:
It is not necessary to understand things
in order to argue about them.
- Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
11/1994:
Because if they didn't vote for a lizard the wrong lizard
might get in. Got any gin?
- Ford Prefect (Douglas Adams)
12/1994:
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
- Walt Kelly
1/1995:
Most of the folks I talk to in the television industry think
that interactive television consists of putting a 'Buy'
button on your channel clicker.
- John Perry Barlow
2/1995:
There's a fine line between participation and mockery.
- Wally (Scott Adams)
3/1995:
Stop thinking about it as the information highway and start thinking
about it as the marketing superhighway. Doesn't it sound better already?
- Don Logan, President & CEO of Time, Inc
to the Association of National Advertisers
4/1995:
You know how every morning I make it a point to think about
doing twenty minutes of vigorous exercise? Well I think
it's doing me a lot more good than it actually is.
- Willy (Joe Martin)
5/1995:
Percentage of Americans who believe that every holder of
a PhD has attended medical school: 41
- /Harper's/ Index
6/1995:
I'm tempted to say that this argument is disingenuous,
but I have a sneaking suspicion that it may merely be ingenuous.
- Dani Zweig
7/1995:
It is not unfair to say that obscurities in the presentation
do not seem to arise wholly from the inherent complexities
of the problem.
- Edmund Stoner
8/1995:
Demagogue: One who preaches doctrine he knows to be untrue
to men he knows to be idiots.
- H. L. Mencken
9/1995:
Anybody who's not bothered by Bell's theorem
has to have rocks in his head.
- David Mermin
10/1995:
If the average kid has witnessed 100,000 acts of violence by
the age of 12, how many examples of glib hypocrisy and
self-serving deceit do you suppose they've seen? Enough to
get 'Larry King Live' banned for all eternity is my guess.
- Will Durst
11/1995:
There's a detailed explanation at the bottom of the hole.
- Catbert (Scott Adams)
12/1995:
. . .when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains,
however improbable, had better work or we're all in big trouble.
- [apologies to] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1/1996:
*All* lies are told with a straight face. It's truth that's said
with a dismissive giggle.
- P. J. O'Rourke
2/1996:
Editor's Note: A mistake made by a transcription service mangled a
quotation from William Bennett in Michael Kelley's July 17th Letter from
Washington. In criticizing the political views of Patrick Buchanan, Mr.
Bennett said 'it's a real us-and-them kind of thing,' not, as we reported,
'it's a real S & M kind of thing.'
- correction in the August 14, 1995, issue of /The New Yorker/
3/1996:
I just want people to know that I actually admire everyone I
make fun of in my book [/Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, and
Other Observations/]. Except Pat Robertson. He's a lunatic.
And I really don't like Limbaugh. And Pat Buchanan, let's face
it, is a bigot. Dick Armey I have no use for. And Gingrich
just plain scares me.
- Al Franken
4/1996:
A thousand stories which the ignorant tell, and believe,
die away at once when the computist takes them in his gripe.
- Samuel Johnson, who obviously never read netnews
5/1996:
This web project is the most self-indulgent, egotistical thing
I have ever done in my life. But the day is young. I can top it.
- Scott Adams
6/1996:
One horselaugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.
- H. L. Mencken
7/1996:
It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem.
But I would like to understand it too.
- Eugene Wigner
8/1996:
Number of hand-woven napkins bearing Alfred Nobel's portrait
that were stolen from the 1995 Nobel Prize banquet: 88
- /Harper's/ Index
9/1996:
You can fool all the people all the time
if the advertising budget is big enough.
- Ed Rollins
10/1996:
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea
that life is serious.
- Brendan Gill
11/1996:
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say
should be believed.
- I. F. Stone
12/1996:
The best performance improvement is the transition
from the nonworking state to the working state.
- John Ousterhout
1/1997:
Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.
- Francis Bacon
2/1997:
If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.
- Don Knuth
3/1997:
What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is
the matter with the rich is uselessness.
- George Bernard Shaw
4/1997:
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance
when the need for illusion is deep.
- Saul Bellow
5/1997:
We should take care not to make the intellect our god;
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
- Albert Einstein
6/1997:
I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating
systems of electric lighting, not only on account of danger,
but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability
for any general system of distribution.
- Thomas Edison
7/1997:
Humans are hampered because such things as logic
can control the libido.
- Pat Craig (Knight-Ridder News Service)
8/1997:
Reality is a useful brake on megalomania.
- Clive James
9/1997:
It is also a good rule not to put too much confidence in
experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.
- Sir Arthur Eddington
10/1997:
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk.
That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
- Ernest Hemingway
11/1997:
Marketing folks would rather hang themselves than learn
the arguments to the grep command.
- Alex Simeonides
12/1997:
The best way to sound like you know what you're talking about
is to know what you're talking about.
- Scott Simon
1/1998:
"Absolute truth? What's that?"
"It's a five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court."
- Dan O'Neill
2/1998:
Business is more than making money; losing less money is
sometimes important too.
- Kim Woo-Choong
3/1998:
The sudden spike in Bill Clinton's popularity is baffling
only to those who still think of politics as an autonomous
realm, existing apart from entertainment.
- Kurt Andersen
4/1998:
Nature follows quantum mechanical predictions
even when these predictions seem to be crazy.
- Alain Aspect
5/1998:
There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words
a wonderful obstruction to the mind.
- Francis Bacon
6/1998:
But that's the beauty of the game. At this very moment, your
absurd vicarious defeat is being perfectly counterbalanced by
some opposing fan's absurd vicarious triumph.
- Robert Mankoff
7/1998:
Advertisers know that no matter how excellent an automobile may be,
it will not sell if it is called a "Lumbering Elephant."
- Neil Postman
8/1998:
Where understanding fails, a word will come to take its place.
- Goethe
9/1998:
The key to productivity is to rotate your avoidance techniques.
- Too Much Coffee Man (Shannon Wheeler)
10/1998:
Rank of 'listening to other students' among the classroom
activities that schoolchildren find most boring: 1
- /Harper's/ Index
11/1998:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something
when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
- Upton Sinclair
12/1998:
If you ask me, most sports would benefit
from an infusion of rocketry.
- Jason Fox (Bill Amend)
1/1999:
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown
is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell
2/1999:
I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as
good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next
step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.
- Leo Szilard
3/1999:
Find computer scientists you respect and listen to their
recommendations. When they are still making the same
recommendations a year later, look into it.
- Paul Dubois
4/1999:
In our time, political speech and writing are
largely the defense of the indefensible.
- George Orwell, writing in 1946
5/1999:
The data structures of the code require some degree
higher than a PhD to understand, since we've got PhDs
and we can't figure them out. - J. A. Templon
6/1999:
Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.
- Leonardo da Vinci
7/1999:
It's a great failing of televangelism that the
Pentecostal wind blows so rarely on home repair problems.
- Colin McEnroe
8/1999:
The entrepreneurial spirit is not rare in humankind. The problem
is most people who have it, apply it to lunatic enterprises.
- Mike O'Brien
9/1999:
Spend the optimal amount of time on each decision
and pretty soon you run out of life.
- Steven Waldman
10/1999:
Kids, thinking about theories is no way to get an education!
- God-Man (Ruben Bolling)
11/1999:
If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.
- Edward Hopper
12/1999:
It doesn't matter that I'm a crab! I'm an Internet visionary!
- Hawthorne (Jim Toomey)
01/2000:
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving
there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
02/2000:
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that
I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful
nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them.
- René Descartes
03/2000:
With software, unusual conditions come up all the time;
seemingly impossible conditions take a little longer.
- Watts Humphrey
04/2000:
An advertiser will happily make you feel bad about
yourself if that will make you buy, say, a Bic pen.
- George Meyer
05/2000:
In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.
- Charles Carruthers
06/2000:
You can never solve all difficulties at once.
- Paul Dirac
07/2000:
A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only
advise his client to plant vines.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
08/2000:
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save)
the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes
it hard to plan the day.
- E. B. White
09/2000:
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong,
as when you find a trout in the milk.
- Henry David Thoreau
10/2000:
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
- Wilson Mizner
11/2000:
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will
to find out, which is the exact opposite.
- Bertrand Russell
12/2000:
I know nothing about this subject but I do have
prejudices, which I am more than happy to share with you.
- Leon Botstein
01/2001:
The power of accurate observation is frequently called
cynicism by those who don't have it.
- George Bernard Shaw
02/2001:
Having your book made into a movie is like having
your ox made into a bouillon cube.
- Bill Neely
03/2001:
They are the sort of people who think that no observation is
so intuitive that it can't be improved by regression analysis.
- Louis Menand
04/2001:
Popular memory may be short, but it is nothing
compared with the amnesia of experts.
- Adam Gopnik
05/2001:
In any business model you need someone to sue.
That's the American way.
- Bill Weinberg
06/2001:
As a rule, I tend to avoid activities
that require snakeproof boots.
- Jonathan Rosen
07/2001:
The chief executives of large American corporations are,
as a class, the most overpaid people on the planet.
- James Surowiecki
08/2001:
Don't talk to the crazy people on the street, even though
they may seem fun to be with.
- /CityPack, New York/ Chinese language edition (1996)
09/2001:
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results,
but that's not why we do it. - Richard Feynman
10/2001:
Meeting the author, I think, is one of life's most reliably
disappointing experiences. - Billy Collins
11/2001:
After a recent trip to New York one French journalist remarked that
leafing through a copy of /Forbes/ or /Fortune/ is like reading the
operating manual of a strangely sanctimonious pirate ship.
- Adam Gopnik
12/2001:
This is a clear abuse of the God-given gifts
of repression and denial.
- The Reverend Theo Fobius (Howard Tayler)
01/2002:
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
02/2002:
Back in the Sixties we didn't have video games and the
Internet. All we had was drugs and naked people.
- Scott Bateman
03/2002:
What about my right to live on a street with a name
of my choosing? Huh?
- Riley "Escobar" Freeman (Aaron McGruder)
04/2002:
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary
out of order. - Jean Cocteau
05/2002:
The Enron scandal calls into question the integrity of the
entire capitalist system, which previously we assumed was based
on honest, straightforward greed. - Joel Achenbach
06/2002:
Until we test our beliefs, we can't say for sure if we have
leeches or we have aspirin. - David Faigman
07/2002:
What is this endless series of meaningless experiences
trying to teach me? - Bruce Eric Kaplan
08/2002:
Nothing happens in Paris in late July. If the king could have
kept things calm around the Bastille for another three weeks,
France would still be a monarchy. - Adam Gopnik
09/2002:
Yes, but what if it were a parrot?
- Graham Chapman, to John Cleese
10/2002:
How can anyone be expected to govern a country with two
hundred and forty-six cheeses? - Charles de Gaulle
11/2002:
It is not easy, these days, to go beyond the bounds of taste.
- Paul Goldberger
12/2002:
It is impossible to design a system so perfect that
no one needs to be good. - T. S. Eliot
01/2003:
Well. . .old people with really good memories think I'm
clever. So there!! - Huey Freeman (Aaron McGruder)
02/2003:
A retired physicist reading the /Encyclopaedia Britannica/
can do just so much toward securing world peace.
- Brian Hayes
03/2003:
It's impossible to awaken a man who is pretending to be asleep.
- Navajo saying
04/2003:
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which,
when you looked at it in the right way, did not become
still more complicated. - Poul Anderson
05/2003:
The asking of questions is in itself the correct rite.
- Confucius
06/2003:
Not only in research, but in the everyday world of politics and
economics, we would all be better off if more people realized that
simple systems do not necessarily possess simple dynamical properties.
- Robert May
07/2003:
It is necessary to be slightly underemployed if you want to
do something significant. - James D. Watson
08/2003:
In general, a standard is very useful, whether it's
de facto or du jour. - Microsoft's Greg Sullivan
as misquoted by News.Com
09/2003:
There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool
until he has stopped asking questions.
- Charles P. Steinmetz
10/2003:
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old,
and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and
therefore better." - Dean William Inge
11/2003:
I was going for a fair dose of irony and satire, and what
could be better than using Powerpoint and a projector?
- David Byrne
12/2003:
Logic doesn't apply to the real world. - Marvin Minsky
01/2004:
No *good* model ever accounted for *all* the facts, since
some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong.
- James D. Watson
02/2004:
The *world* is arbitrary. *Individuals* are either fair
or unfair. Which are you? - Caulfield (Jef Mallett)
03/2004:
The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.
- Leonardo da Vinci
04/2004:
Hate to interrupt with a spelling flame, but it's "Cheney,"
not "Chaney." It may only be one letter, but it's 998 faces.
- Mike Peterson
05/2004:
If we had cloned Saddam, we could capture him over and over
whenever we felt bad about the situation in Iraq.
- Sylvia (Nicole Hollander)
06/2004:
Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime
in this century unless we can find a way to live without
fossil fuels. - David Goodstein
07/2004:
The scientific mind does not so much provide the right
answers as ask the right questions.
- Claude Levi-Strauss
08/2004:
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it
is the merger of state and corporate power.
- Benito Mussolini
09/2004:
The danger to society is not merely that it should believe
wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should
become credulous. - William K. Clifford
10/2004:
When my information changes, I change my opinion.
What do you do, Sir? - John Maynard Keynes
11/2004:
Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without
learning is dangerous. - Confucius
12/2004:
You should always save hyperbole until you really need it.
- Hobbes (Bill Watterson)
01/2005:
Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.
- Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
02/2005:
People who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing
or up to mischief. - Sir Peter Medawar
03/2005:
All creativity is an extended form of a joke.
- Alan Kay
04/2005:
All artists in all fields despise all critics
all the time. - Adam Gopnik
05/2005:
Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go
on forever in a finite world is either a madman or
an economist. - Kenneth Boulding
06/2005:
The joy of writing a comic strip about a middle-age couple
is, I'm never far from the subjects of demise and mortality.
The jokes just write themselves! - Jimmy Johnson
07/2005:
It is difficult for men in high office to avoid
the malady of self-delusion. - Calvin Coolidge
08/2005:
We'd like to do away with much of the health care system.
We'd like to keep people healthy until they suddenly go up
in a puff of smoke. - Charles Cantor
09/2005:
Right now America is a superpower living on credit -
something I don't think has happened since Philip II
ruled Spain. - Paul Krugman
10/2005:
The most important of all medical discoveries is not antibiotics,
or immunization; it is the randomized double-blind test, by means
of which we find out what works and what doesn't. - Robert Park
11/2005:
Of course a weed-puller isn't of much *use* in the Garden
of Eden, but it takes a while to figure that out.
- Tim Peters
12/2005:
If it made sense, that would be a very powerful idea.
- Bruce Eric Kaplan
01/2006:
Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
02/2006:
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe,
is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
- H. L. Mencken
03/2006:
Archimedes constructing his circle pays with his life
for his defective biological adaptation to immediate
circumstances. - Ernst Mach
04/2006:
An information system based on theory isolated from reality
is bound to fail. - Mitch Kabay
05/2006:
It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
- Anatole France
06/2006:
The road to technology centered systems is paved
with user centered intentions. - David Woods
07/2006:
Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public;
ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.
- Vilhjalmur Stefansson
08/2006:
If you don't apply it when it's inconvenient
it's not a rule of law. - Admiral John Hutson
09/2006:
Numbers like 8 and 9 are useless for coding - everything
beyond 0 and 1 implies a flawed design. - Ville Vainio
10/2006:
This is a great country, in no small part because it is the
best country ever devised in which to be a public crank.
- Charles Pierce
11/2006:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace
alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an
endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken
12/2006:
The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy
religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible,
Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological
fundamentals. - Ambrose Bierce
01/2007:
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this:
that you are dreadfully like other people.
- James Russell Lowell
02/2007:
I'd love to see a fine painting by Titian or Leonardo
that was really silly - a Venus with false nose and
glasses and duck feet. - B[ernard] Kliban
03/2007:
Every 10 years we say to ourselves, "If only we had
done the right thing 10 years ago."
- Thomas Friedman
04/2007:
An ideology has axioms and algorithms; a view of life
has approaches and approximations. - Adam Gopnik
05/2007:
My spider sense is tingling! I think we should
leave the country! - Roger (Maritza Campos)
06/2007:
You can hardly learn more about someone than by looking
at the lies he tells himself. - Jonathan Rauch
07/2007:
God help this nation when it has a President
who doesn't know as much about the military as I do.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
08/2007:
The greatest problem with communication is the illusion
that it has been accomplished. - George Bernard Shaw
09/2007:
Economics is a powerful tool, but like a microscope it focuses
attention on some aspects of reality (especially the role of
prices in markets), while it also diverts attention from other
aspects. - George Akerlof, 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics
10/2007:
Hanging out in bad bars waiting for sources to show up is a
time-honored tradition in journalism. - Douglas McCollam
11/2007:
Like many people, I started blogging out of
an urgent need to procrastinate. - Alex Ross
12/2007:
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for
taking things for granted. - Aldous Huxley
01/2008:
Never send anthromorphic animals to do a mother's job.
- Sabrina Tanzini (Corey Pandolph)
02/2008:
Hopefully every Bush press conference will devolve into
nonsensical Dadaist performance art involving fish,
collages, and angry repudiations of accepted scientific
views of climate change. - Josh Fruhlinger
03/2008:
Through the years, I have learned that there is no
harm in charging oneself up with delusions between
moments of valid inspiration. - Steve Martin
04/2008:
This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a
ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite
of what is usual in economics. - Paul Krugman
05/2008:
Life was simple before World War II. After that,
we had systems. - Admiral Grace Hopper
06/2008:
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their
willingness to believe, but in proportion to their
readiness to doubt. - H. L. Mencken
07/2008:
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is
dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
- Clarence Darrow
08/2008:
I love to draw. I loved to draw a lot more
before I became a cartoonist. - Aaron McGruder