Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Quote of the Day

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.
-- Henny Youngman

Monday, July 30, 2007

Quote of the Day

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
-- Charles Mingus

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Quote of the Day

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
-- Mark Twain

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Quote of the Day

I used to think it was a terrible thing that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'what if life *were* fair, and all of the terrible things that happen to us came because we really deserved them?' Now I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe.
-- Marcus Cole (Babylon 5)

Week in Review

- Friday Random Ten
- Reading: _H.M.S. Surprise_
- Mmmm, Barbecued Iguana
- Ruh-Ro!
- Friday Random Ten
- Maritime Simulation Forums
- Nordic Tugs Trawler Yacht to Make European Debut
- The Pope is a Primate
- Homer!
- Patrick O’Brian — Aubrey Maturin Series

Friday, July 27, 2007

Quote of the Day

...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism," Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Quote of the Day

... C++ offers even more flexible control over the visibility of member objects and member functions. Specifically, members may be placed in the public, private, or protected parts of a class. Members declared in the public parts are visible to all clients; members declared in the private parts are fully encapsulated; and members declared in the protected parts are visible only to the class itself and its subclasses. C++ also supports the notion of *friends*: cooperative classes that are permitted to see each other's private parts.
-- Grady Booch, "Object Oriented Design with Applications"

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Quote of the Day

Hey, don't drink that poison! That's $4.00 an ounce!
-- Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Quote of the Day

It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature human beings.

The worst kind of friend to take home is a girl, because in that case, there is the potential that your parents will lose you not just for the duration of the visit but forever. The worst kind of girl to take home is one of a different religion: Not only will you be lost to your parents forever but you will be lost to a woman who is immune to their religious/moral arguments and whose example will irretrievably corrupt you.

Let's say you've fallen in love with just such a girl and would like to take her home for the holidays. You are aware of your parents' xenophobic response to anyone of a different religion. How to prepare them for the shock?

Simple. Call them up shortly before your visit and tell them that you have gotten quite serious about somebody who is of a different religion, a different race and the same sex. Tell them you have already invited this person to meet them. Give the information a moment to sink in and then remark that you were only kidding, that your lover is merely of a different religion. They will be so relieved they will welcome her with open arms.

-- Playboy, January, 1983

Monday, July 23, 2007

Quote of the Day

Almost anything derogatory you could say about today's software design would be accurate.
-- K.E. Iverson

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Quote of the Day

At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw fuck you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.
-- Jack Handey

Friday, July 20, 2007

Quote of the Day

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
-- George Orwell

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Quote of the Day

My mother didn't breast-feed me. She said she liked me as a friend.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Quote of the Day

A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.
-- Bertrand Russell

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Quote of the Day

The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"

Monday, July 16, 2007

Quote of the Day

... of course, this probably only happens for tcsh which uses wait4(), which is why I never saw it. Serves people who use that abomination right 8^)
-- Linus Torvalds, about a patch that fixes getrusage for 1.3.26

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Quote of the Day

The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
-- Frank Zappa

Friday, July 13, 2007

Quote of the Day

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
-- Isaac Asimov

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Quote of the Day

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
-- Eugene McCarthy

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Quote of the Day

It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?
-- Philip J. Fry

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Quote of the Day

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!
-- Terry Pratchett (The Truth)

Monday, July 09, 2007

Quote of the Day

Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Quote of the Day

There are two essential rules of management. One: the customer is always right. Two: they must be punished for their arrogance.
-- Dogbert

Friday, July 06, 2007

Quote of the Day

Love is a slippery eel that bites like hell.
-- Matt Groening

Thursday, July 05, 2007

rlrr.jaiku.com

Quote of the Day

If happiness is in your destiny, you need not be in a hurry.
-- Chinese proverb

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Quote of the Day

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
-- Doug Larson

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Quote of the Day

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
-- Groucho Marx

Monday, July 02, 2007

Quote of the Day

Too bad when I was a kid there wasn't a guy in our class that everybody called the "Cricket Boy", because I would have liked to stand up in class and tell everybody, "You can make fun of the Cricket Boy if you want to, but to me he's just like everybody else." Then everybody would leave the Cricket Boy alone, and I'd invite him over to spend the night at my house, but after about five minutes of that loud chirping I'd have to kick him out. Maybe later we could get up a petition to get the Cricket Family run out of town. Bye, Cricket Boy.
-- Jack Handey

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Quote of the Day

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
-- Douglas Adams