Monday, May 31, 2010

Quote of the Day

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
-- Stephen Jay Gould

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Quote of the Day

Oh, there will be a day of reckoning for you, non-believer! A totalling of sums and a snapping of necks, and you will count yourself among the damned!
-- Jodene Sparks

Friday, May 28, 2010

Quote of the Day

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street- cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)

Thursday, May 27, 2010

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

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Quote of the Day

This item demonstrates how stupid the average American is. Every ninety minutes someone in this country is hit by a train. A train, okay? Trains are on tracks; they can't come and get you. They can't surprise you when you step off a curb. You have to go to them. Got that?
-- George Carlin

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Quote of the Day

It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
-- Harry S. Truman

Monday, May 24, 2010

Quote of the Day

Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her? What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the applications for.
-- Dave Barry

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Quote of the Day

It's tough to have sex during marriage because you're always walking that tight rope between "this again?" and "where did you learn that?"
-- Emo Philips

Friday, May 21, 2010

Quote of the Day

No! No! NO! We're not watching the bloody Good Life! Bloody bloody bloody! I hate it! It's so bloody nice! Felicity "Treacle" Kendall and Richard "Sugar-Flavored-Snot" Briars! What do they do now? Chocolate bloody Button ads, that's what! They're just a couple of reactionary stereotypes, confirming the myth that everyone in Britain is a lovable, middle-class eccentric - and I - HATE - THEM!
-- Vyvyan Basterd

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Quote of the Day

Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.
-- Stanislaw Lem

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Quote of the Day

I don't have a fear of heights. I do, however, have a fear of falling from heights.
-- George Carlin

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Quote of the Day

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.
-- H.G. Wells

Monday, May 17, 2010

Quote of the Day

Reality is a bit untrustworthy at the best of times. There are plenty of people who believe that Elvis is alive, or that aliens occasionally land here to do highly personal things to people, or that the whole idea of evolution is a conspiracy of godless scientists. Almost all of these people can vote and some of them have got guns.
-- Terry Pratchett

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Quote of the Day

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager."
-- William S. Burroughs

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Quote of the Day

Science Fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.
-- Philip K. Dick

Week in Review

- Glenn Beck’s Nazi Tourette’s
- Love Is a Loaded Pistol
- Friday Random Ten: 2010-05-14
- Betty White is tired of your…
- Reading: _The Nature of Space and Time_
- Slow Death from Paula Deen
- Bill O’Reilly Supreme Court FAIL
- MST3K – Prince of Space
- British Petroleum
- Index

Friday, May 14, 2010

Quote of the Day

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.
-- Johnny Carson

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Quote of the Day

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Quote of the Day

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.
-- Hunter S. Thompson

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Quote of the Day

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
-- Groucho Marx

Monday, May 10, 2010

Index

An index of my web log.

Quote of the Day

Indoor electric illumination is often referred to as "artificial light." How can it be artificial? The way I look at it is this: If I can read by it, see myself in the mirror, and recognize my friends, it's probably as real as I'm ever going to need it to be.
-- George Carlin

Sunday, May 09, 2010

Quote of the Day

Do not worry about your problems in mathematics. I assure you, my problems with mathematics are much greater than yours.
-- Albert Einstein

Saturday, May 08, 2010

Friday, May 07, 2010

Quote of the Day

In a mad world only the mad are sane.
-- Akira Kurosawa

Thursday, May 06, 2010

Quote of the Day

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
-- H.G. Wells

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Quote of the Day

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
-- H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Quote of the Day

I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.
-- Frank Deford

Monday, May 03, 2010

Quote of the Day

Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others.
-- Berry Kercheval

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Quote of the Day

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain

Saturday, May 01, 2010