Random: Under Continual Construction
RANDOM
RANDOM The Cartoon Laws of Physics
Law I: Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point,
the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over. However, he will not necessarily fall immediately. He may be given the chance to run (on
air) back toward the precipice before he begins to accelerate downwards. He usually cannot run fast enough, and starts to fall JUST before his arms can reach
the edge.
Nor does he necesarily always accelerate at 32 feet per second per second, but often reaches a high velocity instantaneously. Also, this high velocity causes
tidal forces such that his arm stretches (while the rest of him falls) long enough to wave bye-bye.
Law II: Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outside boulder
retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease.
Law III: Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager
to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this
reaction.
Law IV: The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to
spiral down 20 flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
Such an object is inevitably priceless, thus the attempt to capture it will be inevitably unsuccessful.
Law V: All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature
sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. A character's feet when running or the wheels
of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.
Law VI: As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places
simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. Only at manic high speeds, the wacky guy may ricochet off
walls to achieve the velocity required.
Law VII: Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted as tunnel entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an
opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the
painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.
Corollary: Portable holes work.
Law VIII: Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
Cartoon cats posses even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated,
spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.
Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.
Law IX: Everything falls faster than an anvil.
Law X: For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to
a duck instead.
Amendments to the Laws
A) A sharp object will always propel a character upward.
When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great velocity.
B) The laws of object permanence are nullified for cool characters.
Characters who are intended to be "cool" can make previously nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs at will. For instance, the Road Runner can
materialize signs to express himself without speaking.
C) Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries.
They merely turn the character black and smoky. It appears that the clothing of the character absorbs the full force of the explosion, protecting the body
inside. This results in shredding and tearing of the character's clothing.
D) Gravity is transmitted by slow-moving waves of large wavelengths.
Their operation can be witnessed by observing the behavior of a canine suspended over large vertical drop. Its feet will begin to fall first, causing its
legs to stretch. As the wave reaches its torso, that part will begin to fall, causing neck to stretch. As the head begins to fall, tension released and the
canine will resume its regular proportions until such time it strikes the ground.
E) Dynamite is spontaneously generated in "C-spaces" (spaces in which cartoon laws hold).
The process is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe which postulated that the tension involved in maintaining a space would cause the creation
of hydrogen from nothing. Dynamite quanta are quite large (stick sized) and unstable (lit). Such quanta are attracted to physic forces generated by feeling
of distress in "cool" characters (see Amendment B, which may be a special case of this law) who are able to used said quanta to their advantage. One may
imagine C-spaces where all matter and energy result from primal masses of dynamite exploding. A big bang indeed.
F) Any bag, sack, purse, etc. possessed by a cool character is a tesseract.
Any number of objects of any size may be placed in it or removed from it with no change in its outer dimensions.
G) Characters can spin around and change into any set of clothes appropriate to the situation.
H) Rabbits can dig a burrow from here to there in less than 20 seconds and emerge spotlessly clean.
I) Movements are accompanied by funny sound effects.
The Element Song by Tom Lehrer
These are the lyrics to the Tom Lehrer song about the elements. It is sung to the tune of "A modern Major General".
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium (inhale)
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdinum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Paladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, and
Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (inhale)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
Tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered
Quotable Quotes:
-
- Speak a little louder into the salt shaker, please.
- I had the most irrefragable evidence of the absolute truth and soundness of the principle upon which my invention was based. --Sir Henry Bessemer,
- Futilitarian tendencies getting the better of you?
- Research and take over industry
- I wish for an ideal world that I know cannot be.
- The tiger toothed sabre awaits
- Burns from initiation (belief?)
- My mother prepared me for retirement. Now all I need is a career to retire from.
- Leave ME ALONE! I lvoe my pretty pink bracelet...
- Above and beyond the call of duty
- Hats, dark glasses, follow them around with secret cameras...cash prizes..split 3 way.. AFHV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- It's french, three feet long, has to do with swimming, pythons and scissors...what is it?
- Patrick's our youngest child now that your mother has run off to Texas!
- If I bring blocks, will you play with me?
- Ever since you left the room, it feels so...big? open?
- First the Bose Einstein Condensate. Then cheap clean energy. Afterwards we can save the world! (check up the order)
- Why can't we just work in our own bubbles? Try REAL WORLD PHYSICS on PBS --> its just like Real world with scientific equipment for nerds
- Cursing is bad: it's just proof of your undersized vocabulary (who?)
- You're right: help's never free...bill's in the mail!
- I don't deface mathematical tools! (a few blender drinks later)
- These ice cubes look like yiyi's cylindrical lenses --- and you can DEFINITELY frequency double with them (courtesy of the study of non-linear optics!)...of
course, its not of maximum energy efficiency.
- This golf course has a multiple Gaussian Profile!
- I know --- I'll tape it and send it to AFV and we'll split the profits!
- Time flies like files with a hundred wings
- He's a sticky bug
- CALSSICAL PHYSICS, QUANTUM MECHANICS, LASERS, WAVES AND OPTICS, EM THEORY, RELATIVITY, NUCLEAR AND PARTICLE PHYSICS
- GENERAL CHEM, ORGANIC CHEM, PHYSICAL CHEM, ANALYTICAL CHEM, NUCLEAR CHEM
- BIOCHEMISTRY, ECOLOCY, EVOLUTION, MAMMALIAN PHYSIOLOGY, CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, NEUROBIOLOGY
- Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own
personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs. -- Albert Einstein
- A little modesty might suit you better...
- Buy at 10 sell at 7 (for 57)
- Fourteen Horsepower Hairdryer
- The presentation of the Barzilians / World Gymnastics Championships / Venice
- Fourth of July with Afros ~
- You go write a piano concerto then. I have!
- Y'all come back now, ya hear?
- Mommy, guess what I did today? I ate eggplant, learned Chinese, and stared at a wall for three hours...Oh yeah, I gotta get me some rubber gloves and a laser
- You'll live without the green goggles.
- Patrick the Grasshopper. Maanit the daa** it. Oleg the Weevil. Rollercoaster Allison. Don't Mess with Texas ~ (Nice Lab, huh?)
- Where'd I put that multi-factedretro reflector (the WHAT?) --- party's tonight, you know
- You are sooo good at backing in backwards...(I had too much lunch?)
- >So it is mine now? awww...she just went miaux (or was it ouah?)
- CPs rock. Seiously. No Soap, Radio!
- But WHY? Oh yeah, its Maanit....
- Do you eat hamburgers, spaghetti or pasta? I eat a superposition of all three
- I'm telepathetic, no kidding
- Patricio, fetch me a rubberband~
- I looked under the cheese and found my eggplant (eventually)
- ...but my favorite castle, that one's in Germany...
- I'm hungry. how are you?
- Holy Mackerel! I looked under the eel and there was my sushi
- If I could just figure out the math behind this coherent BS...AP Chem is so fun ~
- ...and so the monkey died in vain
- A senior --- and a physics major at that!
- Loving attack four while loathing parry five, what a shame
- CHOP CHOP PEANUT BUTTER
- The Yellow Skool Bus Rules ~
- Top bottom, bottom top, middle bottom, middle top, not middle (explanation of redox chart)
- LeChatlier's simple explanation of the Universe
- Tasty organelle juices --- thank you Waldorf-Astoria!
- Follow the yellow brick asymptote (or CaptanX)
- To err is human; to forgive is NOT company policy
- Looks like AP Chem to me...Let there be...ummmm....H2O?
- My dad is an I-14 (a what?!)
- We got some solder on the new carpet --- and the hotel manager went, like, non-linear
- An unwatched flask will not boil (I promise)
- Sir, I need a glass of dihydrogen monoxide with citric acid monohydrate
- A certain fudge factor
- Suspiciously shallow for someone so smart
- Planned Obselence
- Immune to logic and allergic to the rules
- I could really care less...(!?)
- Don't wish your life away
- You're the only person I know who speaks in italics
- They took all the Chemistry out of Chemistry
- Whatever floats your boat
- And the meaning of life is strawberries, NOT 42
-
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." - H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
"His ignorance is encyclopedic"
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"I can write better than anybody who can write faster,
and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
- A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)
"People demand freedom of speech to make up
for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- Saint Augustine (354-430)
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to
get its pants on."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has
endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo
their use."
- Galileo Galilei
"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing
without work."
- Emile Zola (1840-1902)
"This book fills a much-needed gap."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
"The full use of your powers along lines of excellence."
- definition of"happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may
almost be said to be living apart."
- e e cummings (1894-1962)
"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra
"I'll moider da bum."
- Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of
William Shakespeare
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But, in practice, there is."
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to
have." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served
afterwards to solve other problems." - Rene Descartes
(1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed." - George Burns (1896-1996)
"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951)
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." - Edsgar Dijkstra
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg." - Bjarne
Stroustrup
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." - Paul Erdos
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near." - Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato (427-347
B.C.)
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'." - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"We have art to save ourselves from the truth." - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"I think 'Hail to the Chief' has a nice ring to it." - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) when asked what is his favorite song
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." - H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must." - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig
was 'committed'." - unknown
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." - Frank Lloyd Wright
(1868-1959)
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire (1694-1778)
"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death." - H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." - Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)
"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them." - Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars." - J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)
"Facts are the enemy of truth." - Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"
"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world." - George Washington Carver
(1864-1943)
"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself." - Anais Nin
(1903-1977)
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right." - Frederick (II) the Great
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell." - Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." - George Eliot (1819-1880)
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes (by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright
"I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time." - Vince Lombardi
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true." - James Branch Cabell
"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship." - John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." - Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." - Gilbert Keith Chesterton
(1874-1936)
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth." - Umberto Eco
"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down." - Jimmy Durante
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." - Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural
Address, January 20, 1953
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)
"Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working." - Albert Giacometti (sculptor)
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being
self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street." - Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life." - Frank Zappa
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint
Exupery
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." - Isaac Asimov
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan
"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts." - G. B. Burgin
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action." - Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming
(1908-1964)
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance" - - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." - Jimi Hendrix
"A clever man commits no minor blunders." - Goethe (1749-1832)
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours." - Richard Bach
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." - Will Durant
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence." - Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." - Mario Andretti
"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure --
that is all that agnosticism means." - Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." - Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"I'll sleep when I'm dead." - Warren Zevon
"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this
fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head." - Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together." - Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it" - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"While we are postponing, life speeds by." - Seneca (3BC - 65AD)
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?" - Bumper Sticker
"God, please save me from your followers!" - Bumper Sticker
"Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches." - the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the
secret of a long and happy life
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Luck is the residue of design." - Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." - Mel Brooks
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife
you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
- Gore Vidal
"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."
- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
"It has become appallingly obvious that our
technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion
that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not
heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no
brains."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty.
I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have
finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be
understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before.
But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
"I would have made a good Pope." - Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience." - W.B. Prescott
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." - John von Neumann
(1903-1957)
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
on the game's opening position
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Grove giveth and Gates taketh away."
- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet)
on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with
software demands
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is
the belief that one's work is terribly important."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation." - H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way
is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C. A. R. Hoare
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"What do you take me for, an idiot?" - General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy
"I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis
Bacon." - Bill Hirst
"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do." - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"Logic is in the eye of the logician." - Gloria Steinem
"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live." - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
- Martin Fraquhar Tupper
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -
I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was
convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy." - Goethe (1749-1832)
"In the end, everything is a gag." - Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
"The nice thing about egotists is that they
don't talk about other people." - Lucille S. Harper
"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're
going, because you might not get there." - Yogi Berra
"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"He who hesitates is a damned fool." - Mae West (1892-1980)
"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths
theater."
- Gail Godwin
"University politics are vicious precisely
because the stakes are so small." - Henry Kissinger (1923-)
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world
would have no meaning." - Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make
the other bastard die for his." - General George Patton (1885-1945)
"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking."
- Katherine Cebrian
"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here'
written all over it." - Steven Wright
"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
"Manuscript: something submitted in haste
and returned at leisure." - Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
"I have read your book and much like it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"The covers of this book are too far apart."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles
writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've
never tried before."
- Mae West (1892-1980)
"I don't know anything about music.
In my line you don't have to." - Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
"No Sane man will dance." - Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"Hell is a half-filled auditorium." - Robert Frost (1874-1963)
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
"Vote early and vote often." - Al Capone (1899-1947)
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Hell is other people." - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after
witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)
"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."
- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)
"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." - Thomas Jones
"You can get more with a kind word and a gun
than you can with a kind word alone." - Al Capone (1899-1947)
"The gods too are fond of a joke." - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
- Gloria Leonard
"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man."
- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell
"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the
richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
- Robert Orben
"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice
from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
- "Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance."
- - Plato (427-347 B.C.)
- "Plato was a bore."
- - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
- "Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."
- - Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
- "I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
- - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
- "Hemingway was a jerk."
- - Harold Robbins
"Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things." - Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)
"What about things like bullets?" - Herb Kimmel, Behavioralist, Professor of Psychology, upon hearing the above quote (1981)
- "How can I lose to such an idiot?"
- - A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
- "Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
- - Woody Allen (1935-)
- "I don't feel good."
- - The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)
- "Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the
ocean level wouldn't cure."
- - Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)
- "Men have become the tools of their tools."
- - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
- "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
- "It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot
pregnant."
- - Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines
- "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
- - Gore Vidal
- "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work;
I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
- - Woody Allen (1935-)
- "Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted
all the other alternatives."
- - Abba Eban (1915-2002)
- "To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
- - Charles William Stubbs
- "Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
- - George Santayana (1863-1952)
- "Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
- - Fred Allen (1894-1956)
- "Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
- "In America, anybody can be president.
That's one of the risks you take."
- - Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
- "Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
- - Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
- "Why don't you write books people can read?"
- - Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)
- "Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- - T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
- "Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
- - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
- "It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- - Tom Stoppard
- "Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
- - Karl Wallenda
- "Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- - Sun Tzu
- "A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be
deemed a scholar."
- - Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)
- "
The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- - Alan Kay
- "Never mistake motion for action."
- - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
- "Hell is paved with good samaritans."
- - William M. Holden
- "The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about
anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to
verify my notions have only wasted my time."
- - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
- "Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- - Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)
- "Well done is better than well said."
- - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
- "The average person thinks he isn't."
- - Father Larry Lorenzoni
- "Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."
- - William Congreve (1670-1729)
- "A husband is what is left of the lover
after the nerve has been extracted."
- - Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
- "Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- - Perelman
- "The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels
with another must wait till that other is ready."
- - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
- "There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."
- - Sigfried Hulzer
- "Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
- - Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working,
when informed that his wife is dying
- "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
- "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- - Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943
- "I think it would be a good idea."
- - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of
Western civilization
- "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
men to do nothing."
- - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
- "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a
Democrat!"
- - Will Rogers (1879-1935)
- "If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
"
- - Will Rogers (1879-1935)
- "The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
- - Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
- "Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
- - Irving Kristol
- "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital
Equipment Corp., 1977
- "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
- - A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
- "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- - H. M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927
- "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962
- "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
- "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
- - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
- "A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood."
- - General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
- "After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than
why I have one."
- - Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)
- "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I
know."
- - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
- "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- - last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)
- "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
- - Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)
- "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- - Tom Clancy
- "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
- - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
- "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
- - Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"
- "Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
- "The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
- - Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live
- "We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
- - Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks
- "Half this game is ninety percent mental."
- - Yogi Berra
- "There is only one nature - the division into
science and engineering is a human imposition, not a
natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it
reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
-
- Bill Wulf
- "There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented
by a good teacher."
- - Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
- "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
- "I criticize by creation - not by finding fault."
- - Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
- "Love is friendship set on fire."
- - Jeremy Taylor
- "God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time."
- - Robin Williams,
commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair
- "My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate."
- - Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession
was
- "Woman was God's second mistake."
- - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
- "This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
- - Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper
- "For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."
- - Henry Louis Mencken
(1880-1956)
- "Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
- - Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914)
- "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
- - Henry Louis
Mencken (1880-1956)
- "Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- - Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking
that he renounce Satan.
- "Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."
- - Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
- "He would make a lovely corpse."
- - Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
- "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- - Irvin S. Cobb
- "I worship the quicksand he walks in."
- - Art Buchwald
- "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
- - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
- "A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
- - Paul Valery (1871-1945)
- "We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction."
- - General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
- "If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"
- - Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of
supercomputing
- "#3 pencils and quadrille pads."
- - Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also
recommended using the back side of the pages so that the lines were not so dominant.
- "I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
- - Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when was informed that Apple Inc. had recently bought a
Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.
- "Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- - Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on
celestial mechanics make no mention of God.
- "I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't
need."
- - Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how
he managed to make his remarkable statues
- "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over
the man who cannot read them."
- - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
- "The truth is more important than the facts."
- - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
- "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- - Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)
- "There are only two tragedies in life:
one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
- - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
- "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- -
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves into a position of power should on no account be allowed to do the job.Douglas Adams
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an
afterlife.Douglas Adams
Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.Douglas Adams
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.Douglas Adams
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.Douglas
Adams
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.Douglas
Adams
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small
furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.Douglas Adams
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.Douglas Adams
Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.Douglas Adams
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.Douglas Adams
An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.Bonnie Friedman, in New York Times
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it
for you.Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967)
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, 'A Woman of Independent Means'
Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park
Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.Jim Bishop
The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity
for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)
We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch.John F. Kennedy (1917 -
1963)
There is never enough time, unless you're serving it.Malcolm Forbes (
1919 - 1990)
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Mathematics]
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [God] [Equality]
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Mathematics]
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary
prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Intelligence]
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [War]
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [The Future]
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
Albert Einstein
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge...
Albert Einstein
Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire
population.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Laws]
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail
and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Religion]
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Stupidity]
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy
habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Books]
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Reality]
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite
subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Kindness]
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of
eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy
curiosity.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Albert EinsteinThe release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Creativity]
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Americans] [Money]
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
- More quotations on: [Success]
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a
matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941
- More quotations on: [Science] [Religion]
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
Albert Einstein, 'Out of My Later Years,' 1950
- More quotations on: [Freedom]
It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
Albert Einstein, 'Treasury for the Free World,' 1946
- More quotations on: [Politics]
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
- More quotations on: [Common Sense] [Prejudice]
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
- More quotations on: [Simplicity]
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
- More quotations on: [Facts]
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
- More quotations on: [Sanity]
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
- More quotations on: [Taxes]
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein (attributed)
At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
Albert Einstein, In a letter to Max Born, 1926
If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein, Observer, Jan. 15, 1950
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Albert Einstein, Telegram, 24 May 1946
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And
radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio
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