Literary Classics

Always look over your shoulder because everyone is watching and plotting against you.

"Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us."

— militant religionists everywhere

Baby On Board.

"The net result is a system that is not only binary compatible with 4.3 BSD, but is even bug for bug compatible in almost all features."

— Avadit Tevanian, Jr., "Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory Management for Parallel and Distributed Environments: The

"The number of Unix installations has grown to 10, with more expected."

— The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June, 1972

"Engineering without management is art."

— Jeff Johnson

"I'm not a god, I was misquoted."

— Lister, Red Dwarf

Brain off-line, please wait.

Are you having fun yet?

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust."

— Lawrence Dalzell

"Perhaps I am flogging a straw herring in mid-stream, but in the light of what is known about the ubiquity of security vulnerabilities, it seems vastly too dangerous for university folks to run with their heads in the sand."

— Peter G. Neumann, RISKS moderator, about the Internet virus

"Seed me, Seymour"

— a random number generator meets the big green mother from outer space

"Buy land. They've stopped making it."

— Mark Twain

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

— Dave Bowman, 2001

"There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance..."

— Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_

...Saure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papryomancy, the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll reefers - the shape, the licking pattern, the wrinkles and folds or absence thereof in the paper. "You will soon be in love," sez Saure, "see, this line here." "It's long, isn't it? Does that mean --" "Length is usually intensity. Not time."

— Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_

Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are --"

— Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_

...the prevailing Catholic odor - incense, wax, centuries of mild bleating from the lips of the flock.

— Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_

...At that time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories scientists projected that computer speeds as high as 30 million floating-point calculations per second (megaflops) would be needed for the Army's ballistic missile defense system. Many computer experts -- including a National Academy of Sciences panel -- said achieving such speeds, even using multiple processors, was impossible. Today, new generation supercomputers operate at billions of operations per second (gigaflops).

— Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1988, "Washington Roundup", pg 13

Shit Happens.

backups: always in season, never out of style.

"There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearence; he somehow seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an actor, and clad in immaculate linen."

— H.L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan

Work was impossible. The geeks had broken my spirit. They had done too many things wrong. It was never like this for Mencken. He lived like a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryan on some nights and drunker than Judas on others. It was all a dehumanized nightmare...and these raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines.

— Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_

"This generation may be the one that will face Armageddon."

— Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985

... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually we were all forced to turn to it. By the summer of '85, the valley had more satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of Alaska. Mine was one of the last to go in. I had been nervous from the start about the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these things. Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.

— Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_

"Call immediately. Time is running out. We both need to do something monstrous before we die."

— Message from Ralph Steadman to Hunter Thompson

"The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down."

— H.L. Mencken

"You don't go out and kick a mad dog. If you have a mad dog with rabies, you take a gun and shoot him."

— Pat Robertson, TV Evangelist, about Muammar Kadhafy

The reported resort to astrology in the White House has occasioned much merriment. It is not funny. Astrological gibberish, which means astrology generally, has no place in a newspaper, let alone government. Unlike comics, which are part of a newspaper's harmless pleasure and make no truth claims, astrology is a fraud. The idea that it gets a hearing in government is dismaying.

— George Will, Washing Post Writers Group

Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.

— James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate

A serious public debate about the validity of astrology? A serious believer in the White House? Two of them? Give me a break. What stifled my laughter is that the image fits. Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward science. Facts, like numbers, roll off his back. And we've all come to accept it. This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not that long ago, it was Reagan's support of Creationism....Creationists actually got equal time with evolutionists. The public was supposed to be open-minded to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense. The same people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of laetrile to eye of newt to the movment of planets. We lose the capacity to make rational -- scientific -- judgments. It's all the same.

— Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers Group

The spectacle of astrology in the White House -- the governing center of the world's greatest scientific and military power -- is so appalling that it defies understanding and provides grounds for great fright. The easiest response is to laugh it off, and to indulge in wisecracks about Civil Service ratings for horoscope makers and palm readers and whether Reagan asked Mikhail Gorbachev for his sign. A contagious good cheer is the hallmark of this presidency, even when the most dismal matters are concerned. But this time, it isn't funny. It's plain scary.

— Daniel S. Greenberg, Editor, _Science and Government Report_, writing in "Newsday", May 5, 1988

[Astrology is] 100 percent hokum, Ted. As a matter of fact, the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written in 1771 -- 1771! -- said that this belief system is a subject long ago ridiculed and reviled. We're dealing with beliefs that go back to the ancient Babylonians. There's nothing there.... It sounds a lot like science, it sounds like astronomy. It's got technical terms. It's got jargon. It confuses the public....The astrologer is quite glib, confuses the public, uses terms which come from science, come from metaphysics, come from a host of fields, but they really mean nothing. The fact is that astrological beliefs go back at least 2,500 years. Now that should be a sufficiently long time for astrologers to prove their case. They have not proved their case....It's just simply gibberish. The fact is, there's no theory for it, there are no observational data for it. It's been tested and tested over the centuries. Nobody's ever found any validity to it at all. It is not even close to a science. A science has to be repeatable, it has to have a logical foundation, and it has to be potentially vulnerable -- you test it. And in that astrology is reqlly quite something else.

— Astronomer Richard Berendzen, President, American University, on ABC News "Nightline," May 3, 1988

Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked. Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an effect on our characters, lives, or destinies? What force or influence, what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human beings and affect our development or fate? No amount of scientific-sounding jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . . Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have generously done such testing for them. There have been dozens of well-designed tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . . I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by the firelight, afraid of the night.

— Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed

With the news that Nancy Reagan has referred to an astrologer when planning her husband's schedule, and reports of Californians evacuating Los Angeles on the strength of a prediction from a sixteenth-century physician and astrologer Michel de Notredame, the image of the U.S. as a scientific and technological nation has taking a bit of a battering lately. Sadly, such happenings cannot be dismissed as passing fancies. They are manifestations of a well-established "anti-science" tendency in the U.S. which, ultimately, could threaten the country's position as a technological power. . . . The manifest widespread desire to reject rationality and substitute a series of quasirandom beliefs in order to understand the universe does not augur well for a nation deeply concerned about its ability to compete with its industrial equals. To the degree that it reflects the thinking of a significant section of the public, this point of view encourages ignorance of and, indeed, contempt for science and for rational methods of approaching truth. . . . It is becoming clear that if the U.S. does not pick itself up soon and devote some effort to educating the young effectively, its hope of maintaining a semblance of leadership in the world may rest, paradoxically, with a new wave of technically interested and trained immigrants who do not suffer from the anti-science disease rampant in an apparently decaying society.

— Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988

miracle: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.

— Webster's Dictionary

"The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs."

— Joseph Weizenbaum, _Computer Power and Human Reason_

"If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong."

— Norm Schryer

"May your future be limited only by your dreams."

— Christa McAuliffe

"It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it."

— Henry Allen

"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of watching television."

— Cal Keegan

"We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston. "That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell -- we *show*. We do not claim -- we *prove*."

— Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_

"I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and my mother would get drunk and try to make pancakes."

— George Carlin

"My father? My father left when I was quite young. Well actually, he was asked to leave. He had trouble metabolizing alcohol."

— George Carlin

"I turn on my television set. I see a young lady who goes under the guise of being a Christian, known all over the nation, dressed in skin-tight leather pants, shaking and wiggling her hips to the beat and rythm of the music as the strobe lights beat their patterns across the stage and the band plays the contemporary rock sound which cannot be differentiated from songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, or anyone else. And you may try to tell me this is of God and that it is leading people to Christ, but I know better.

— Jimmy Swaggart, hypocritical sexual pervert and TV preacher, self-described pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Ch

"So-called Christian rock. . . . is a diabolical force undermining Christianity from within."

— Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite and TV preacher, self-described pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and

"Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin."

— John Von Neumann

"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all."

— Nathaniel Branden

Aren't you glad you're not getting all the government you pay for now?

"I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."

— Mark Twain

These screamingly hilarious gogs ensure owners of X Ray Gogs to be the life of any party.

— X-Ray Gogs Instructions

A student asked the master for help... does this program run from the Workbench? The master grabbed the mouse and pointed to an icon. "What is this?" he asked. The student replied "That's the mouse". The master pressed control-Amiga-Amiga and hit the student on the head with the Amiga ROM Kernel Manual.

— Amiga Zen Master Peter da Silva

"Thank heaven for startups; without them we'd never have any advances."

— Seymour Cray

"Out of register space (ugh)"

— vi

"Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." - Oscar Wilde

"Ada is PL/I trying to be Smalltalk.

— Codoso diBlini

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by mean of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

— Justice Louis O. Brandeis (Olmstead vs. United States)

"'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true."

— Poloniouius, in Willie the Shake's _Hamlet, Prince of Darkness_

"All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in. I'm glad they are a snowman with protective rubber skin"

— They Might Be Giants

"Indecision is the basis of flexibility"

— button at a Science Fiction convention.

"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative"

— button at a Science Fiction convention.

"Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time."

— a coffee cup

"The most important thing in a man is not what he knows, but what he is."

— Narciso Yepes

"All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one thing or another."

— Ortega y Gasset

"We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in the idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking to know what we do not know."

— Plato

"To undertake a project, as the word's derivation indicates, means to cast an idea out ahead of oneself so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled not only by the efforts of its originator but, indeed, independently of him as well.

— Czeslaw Milosz

"We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness; it is always urgent, "here and now," without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank."

— Ortega y Gasset

"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."

— Dr. Seuss

"When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest."

— Bullwinkle Moose

Remember, an int is not always 16 bits. I'm not sure, but if the 80386 is one step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is aymptotically approaching a real machine, perhaps an int has been implemented as 32 bits by some Unix vendors...?

— Derek Terveer

"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen." Madrak, in _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, by Roger Zelazny

"An Academic speculated whether a bather is beautiful if there is none in the forest to admire her. He hid in the bushes to find out, which vitiated his premise but made him happy. Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation."

— Sam Weber

1 1 was a race-horse, 2 2 was 1 2. When 1 1 1 1 race, 2 2 1 1 2.

"I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers."

— Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is so nice

"Engineering meets art in the parking lot and things explode."

— Garry Peterson, about Survival Research Labs

...and before I knew what I was doing, I had kicked the typewriter and threw it around the room and made it beg for mercy. At this point the typewriter pleaded for me to dress him in feminine attire but instead I pressed his margin release over and over again until the typewriter lost consciousness. Presently, I regained consciousness and realized with shame what I had done. My shame is gone and now I am looking for a submissive typewriter, any color, or model. No electric typewriters please! --Rick Kleiner

Professional wrestling: ballet for the common man.

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - H.L. Mencken

"Are those cocktail-waitress fingernail marks?" I asked Colletti as he showed us these scratches on his chest. "No, those are on my back," Colletti answered. "This is where a case of cocktail shrimp fell on me. I told her to slow down a little, but you know cocktail waitresses, they seem to have a mind of their own."

— The Incredibly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs National Lampoon, October 1982

"Never give in. Never give in. Never. Never. Never."

— Winston Churchill

"Never ascribe to malice that which is caused by greed and ignorance."

— Cal Keegan

"Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one'w own allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.

— Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility," New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area

"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."

— Dave Enyeart

"After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United States. Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of the mentality of being open-minded, always positive. Everything you want to do in Europe is just, 'No way. No one has ever done it.' They haven't any more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much more the American spirit."

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."

— Alexandre Dumas (fils)

Well, punk is kind of anti-ethical, anyway. Its ethics, so to speak, include a disdain for ethics in general. If you have to think about some- thing so hard, then it's bullshit anyway; that's the idea. Punks are anti- ismists, to coin a term. But nonetheless, they have a pretty clearly defined stance and image, and THAT is what we hang the term `punk' on.

— Jeff G. Bone

I think for the most part that the readership here uses the c-word in a similar fashion. I don't think anybody really believes in a new, revolution- ary literature --- I think they use `cyberpunk' as a term of convenience to discuss the common stylistic elements in a small subset of recent sf books.

— Jeff G. Bone

So we get to my point. Surely people around here read things that aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*. Surely we don't (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and philosophical message in all this, do we? So if this `cyberpunk' thing is just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out? If cyberpunk is just a word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be dead? Where are the profound statements that the `Movement' is or was trying to make? I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary (and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no? Maybe there should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or somthing. Something less restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk.

— Jeff G. Bone

"Everyone's head is a cheap movie show."

— Jeff G. Bone

Life is full of concepts that are poorly defined. In fact, there are very few concepts that aren't. It's hard to think of any in non-technical fields.

— Daniel Kimberg

...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable, challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self. That seems all the better reason to assume that cyberpunk art & music is essentially mindless garbagio. Willy certainly addressed this idea in "Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girl's observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself, rather than its output.

— Eliot Handelman

It might be worth reflecting that this group was originally created back in September of 1987 and has exchanged over 1200 messages. The original announcement for the group called for an all inclusive discussion ranging from the writings of Gibson and Vinge and movies like Bladerunner to real world things like Brands' description of the work being done at the MIT Media Lab. It was meant as a haven for people with vision of this scope. If you want to create a haven for people with narrower visions, feel free. But I feel sad for anyone who thinks that alt.cyberpunk is such a monstrous group that it is in dire need of being subdivided. Heaven help them if they ever start reading comp.arch or rec.arts.sf-lovers.

— Bob Webber

...I don't care for the term 'mechanistic'. The word 'cybernetic' is a lot more apropos. The mechanistic world-view is falling further and further behind the real world where even simple systems can produce the most marvellous chaos.

— Peter da Silva

As for the basic assumptions about individuality and self, this is the core of what I like about cyberpunk. And it's the core of what I like about certain pre-gibson neophile techie SF writers that certain folks here like to put down. Not everyone makes the same assumptions. I haven't lost my mind... it's backed up on tape.

— Peter da Silva

Who are the artists in the Computer Graphics Show? Wavefront's latest box, or the people who programmed it? Should Mandelbrot get all the credit for the output of programs like MandelVroom?

— Peter da Silva

Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following TETflame programme: 1) For a negotiated price (no quatloos accepted) one of our flaming representatives will flame the living shit out of the poster of your choice. The price is inversly proportional to how much of an asshole the target it. We cannot be convinced to flame Dennis Ritchie. Matt Crawford flames are free. 2) For a negotiated price (same arrangement) the TETflame programme is offering ``flame insurence''. Under this arrangement, if one of our policy holders is flamed, we will cancel the offending article and flame the flamer, to a crisp. 3) The TETflame flaming representatives include: Richard Sexton, Oleg Kisalev, Diane Holt, Trish O'Tauma, Dave Hill, Greg Nowak and our most recent aquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his kill file. Weemba by special arrangement.

— Richard Sexton

"As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs..." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 1 proof by example: The author gives only the case n = 2 and suggests that it contains most of the ideas of the general proof. proof by intimidation: 'Trivial'. proof by vigorous handwaving: Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.

HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 2 proof by cumbersome notation: Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special symbols. proof by exhaustion: An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful. proof by omission: 'The reader may easily supply the details' 'The other 253 cases are analogous' '...'

HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 3 proof by obfuscation: A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless syntactically related statements. proof by wishful citation: The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization of a theorem from the literature to support his claims. proof by funding: How could three different government agencies be wrong? proof by eminent authority: 'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP- complete.'

HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 4 proof by personal communication: 'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete [Karp, personal communication].' proof by reduction to the wrong problem: 'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.' proof by reference to inaccessible literature: The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883. proof by importance: A large body of useful consequences all follow from the proposition in question.

HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 5 proof by accumulated evidence: Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample. proof by cosmology: The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or meaningless. Popular for proofs of the existence of God. proof by mutual reference: In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3 in reference B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2 in reference C, which is an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in reference A. proof by metaproof: A method is given to construct the desired proof. The correctness of the method is proved by any of these techniques.

HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 6 proof by picture: A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well with proof by omission. proof by vehement assertion: It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the audience. proof by ghost reference: Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears in the reference given.

HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 7 proof by forward reference: Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author, which is often not as forthcoming as at first. proof by semantic shift: Some of the standard but inconvenient definitions are changed for the statement of the result. proof by appeal to intuition: Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.

[May one] doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated, or, if beetles and wasps, in cow-dung, or if butterflies, locusts, shellfish, snails, eels, and such life be procreated of putrefied matter, which is to receive the form of that creature to which it is by formative power disposed[?] To question this is to question reason, sense, and experience. If he doubts this, let him go to Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice begot of the mud of the Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants. A seventeenth century opinion quoted by L. L. Woodruff, in *The Evolution of Earth and Man*, 1929

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

— Albert Einstein

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite."

— Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928

"Were there no women, men might live like gods."

— Thomas Dekker

"Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing."

— G. Steinem

"It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."

— Frank Zappa

"It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."

— Cal Keegan

"BTW, does Jesus know you flame?"

— Diane Holt, [email protected], to Ed Carp

"I've seen the forgeries I've sent out."

— John F. Haugh II ([email protected]), about forging net news articles

"Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?"

— Patricia O Tuama, [email protected]

"Bite off, dirtball." Richard Sexton, [email protected]

"Oh my! An `inflammatory attitude' in alt.flame? Never heard of such a thing..."

— Allen Gwinn, [email protected]

(null cookie; hope that's ok)

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality? He who *suffers* from it."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?"

— Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians

"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is forbidden. Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin. *This alone is morality.* ``Thou shalt not know'' -- the rest follows."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

>One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative. Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this. The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.

— Chuq Von Rospach, [email protected]

"Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits."

— Chuq Von Rospach, [email protected], about Usenet

Backed up the system lately?

"It doesn't much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else."

— Rogers

"If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry."

— Chekhov

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished."

— Goethe

"In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved."

— Butler

"The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, `What does woman want?'"

— Sigmund Freud

"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."

— Mandelbrot, _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

— Thomas Jefferson

Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.

— Dave Butler

"The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars. Verily, the learned men are the heirs of the Prophets."

— A tradition attributed to Muhammad

"The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity."

— Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_

"Inquiry is fatal to certainty."

— Will Durant

"The Mets were great in 'sixty eight, The Cards were fine in 'sixty nine, But the Cubs will be heavenly in nineteen and seventy."

— Ernie Banks

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

— Charles Babbage

"I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it the *one* mortal blemish of mankind."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity." "Religion is verily the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the world and of tranquillity amongst it's peoples...The greater the decline of religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but lead in the end to chaos and confusion."

— Baha'u'llah, a selection from the Baha'i scripture

"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."

— Blair Houghton

"...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs."

— Robert Firth

Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What should I do? A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the correction. And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform the whole net right away!

— Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_

Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ... Q: How about an example? A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this.

— Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_

Q: I cant spell worth a dam. I hope your going too tell me what to do? A: Don't worry about how your articles look. Remember it's the message that counts, not the way it's presented. Ignore the fact that sloppy spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.

— Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_

Q: They just announced on the radio that Dan Quayle was picked as the Republican V.P. candidate. Should I post? A: Of course. The net can reach people in as few as 3 to 5 days. It's the perfect way to inform people about such news events long after the broadcast networks have covered them. As you are probably the only person to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post as soon as you can.

— Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_

What did Mickey Mouse get for Christmas? A Dan Quayle watch.

— heard from a Mike Dukakis field worker

Q: What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman? A: The car salesman can probably drive!

— Joan McGalliard ([email protected])

A selection from the Taoist Writings: "Lao-Tan asked Confucius: `What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?' Confucius said: `To be in one's inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature of benevolence and righteousness.'"

— Kwang-tzu

"Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound!"

— Daniel Hinojosa (hinojosa@hp-sdd)

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."

— Bertrand Russell

"Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his delight. A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger. He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with thy lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue."

— Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture

"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."

— Matt Cartmill

Heisengberg might have been here.

"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."

— Aesop

"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything."

— Russell Baker

How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to change it and one not to change it.

"I prefer the blunted cudgels of the followers of the Serpent God."

— Sean Doran the Younger

"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak."

— Phil Wayne

"my terminal is a lethal teaspoon."

— Patricia O Tuama

"I am ... a woman ... and ... technically a parasitic uterine growth"

— Sean Doran the Younger [allegedly]

"Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time someone writes `bible thumpers?'

— Joel M. Snyder, [email protected]

"Money is the root of all money."

— the moving finger

"And it's my opinion, and that's only my opinion, you are a lunatic. Just because there are a few hunderd other people sharing your lunacy with you does not make you any saner. Doomed, eh?"

— Oleg Kiselev,[email protected]

"Obedience. A religion of slaves. A religion of intellectual death. I like it. Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex on his wrist. I like that job! Where can I sign up?"

— Oleg Kiselev,[email protected]

"Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a cockatoo."

— George Bernard Shaw

"Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out."

— Montaigne

"For a male and female to live continuously together is... biologically speaking, an extremely unnatural condition."

— Robert Briffault

"Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it."

— Baskins

Marriage is the sole cause of divorce.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."

— G. Fitch

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

— Mark Twain

"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products. This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go by some more."

— [email protected], in alt.conspiracy

"If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in the cigarettes?"

— the elder Steptoe, c. 1970

"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet."

— Comedian Jay Leno

"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like `Psychic Wins Lottery.'"

— Comedian Jay Leno

"Well hello there Charlie Brown, you blockhead."

— Lucy Van Pelt

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

— Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows."

— Robert G. Ingersoll

"Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable."

— Robert G. Ingersoll

"I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'"

— Robert G. Ingersoll

"It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius."

— Robert G. Ingersoll

"Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul."

— Robert G. Ingersoll

"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray."

— Robert G. Ingersoll

"It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating us in a stupid way."

— J. W. Nienhuys

"No, no, I don't mind being called the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one."

— Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN

"Be *excellent* to each other."

— Bill, or Ted, in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

The Seventh Edition licensing procedures are, I suppose, still in effect, though I doubt that tapes are available from AT&T. At any rate, whatever restrictions the license imposes still exist. These restrictions were and are reasonable for places that just want to run the system, but don't allow many of the things that Minix was written for, like study of the source in classes, or by individuals not in a university or company. I've always thought that Minix was a fine idea, and competently done. As for the size of v7, wc -l /usr/sys/*/*.[chs] is 19271.

— Dennis Ritchie, 1989

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." --Matt Groening

"I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens."

— Woody Allen

"The Street finds its own uses for technology."

— William Gibson

"I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!"

— Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"

"You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but only for a limited period of time. Why should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"

— Ronald Reagan

"He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion."

— Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_

"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will."

— Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"

It's time to boot, do your boot ROMs know where your disk controllers are?

"What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying."

— Nikita Khrushchev

"...a most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"

— _Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure_