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

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
-- Mark Twain

Quote of the Day

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
-- Donald E. Knuth

Quote of the Day

One does not need to puzzle long over why religionists hate atheists so venomously. Atheist stir up the suppressed doubts of believers to the point of producing anguish. This is the anguish that incited believers to burn heretics and atheists at the stake in olden times to remove the source of the unsettling, disturbing doubts that plagued the believers.
-- C. W. Dalton (The Right Brain and Religion)

Quote of the Day

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider godfearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
-- Aristotle (384-322 BCE), "Politics"

Quote of the Day

I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven't had time for tobacco since.
-- Arturo Toscanini

Quote of the Day

Is Kreme is really at its best when Krispy? Seems counterintuitive. And gross.
-- Bill Corbett (via Twitter)

Quote of the Day

I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine.
-- Rita Rudner

Quote of the Day

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.
-- Orson Welles

Quote of the Day

You've got a Methodist Coloring Book
And you color really well
But don't color outside the lines
Or God will send you to hell
-- Dead Milkmen, "Methodist Coloring Book"