Quote of the Day

An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.

As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next time." Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.

This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable.

The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big p ile."
-- Frederick Brooks, (The Mythical Man Month)

Quote of the Day

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-- Albert Einstein

Quote of the Day

Just because swans mate for life, I don't think its that big a deal. First of all, if you're a swan, you're probably not going to find a swan that looks much better than the one you've got, so why not mate for life?
-- Jack Handey

Quote of the Day

Yes, honey...Just squeeze your rage up into a bitter little ball and release it at an appropriate time, like that day I hit the referee with the whiskey bottle.
-- Homer J. Simpson

Quote of the Day

The two most beautiful words in the English language are "Cheque Enclosed."
-- Dorothy Parker

Quote of the Day

They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"

Quote of the Day

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
-- Stephen Wright

Quote of the Day

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
-- Peter Ustinov

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

Quote of the Day

I want to share something with you -- the three little sentences that will get you through life. Number one, "Cover for me." Number two, "Oh, good idea, boss." Number three, "It was like that when I got here."
-- Homer J. Simpson

Quote of the Day

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
-- Quentin Crisp

Quote of the Day

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15 year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy - the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really.
-- Dr. Evil

Quote of the Day

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
-- Henri Poincare

Quote of the Day

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.
-- Jon Stewart

Quote of the Day

The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
-- Mark Twain

Quote of the Day

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
-- Douglas Adams

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

Quote of the Day

A functioning police state needs no police.
-- William S. Burroughs

Quote of the Day

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.
-- Cicero

Quote of the Day

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

Quote of the Day

The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything.
-- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California

Quote of the Day

Mmmm, free goo.
-- Homer J. Simpson

Quote of the Day

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
-- Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

Quote of the Day

After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

Quote of the Day

Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.
-- Dave Brubeck

Quote of the Day

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
-- James Thurber

Quote of the Day

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
-- Bertrand Russell

Quote of the Day

I used to think that cyberspace was fifty years away. What I thought was fifty years away, was only ten years away. And what I thought was ten years away... it was already here. I just wasn't aware of it yet.
-- Bruce Sterling

Quote of the Day

Sure I eat what I advertise. Sure I eat Wheaties for breakfast. A good bowl of Wheaties with bourbon can't be beat.
-- Dizzy Dean

Quote of the Day

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Quote of the Day

If you ever require a picture of resentful apathy, check out any background munchkin in the Wizard of Oz. Also, I think it's shameful to try to pin the collapse of the lollipop industry on the lollipop guild.
-- John Hodgman (via Twitter)