fortune-teller 0.1.2 → 0.3.0

package/fortunes/science

@@ -1,3010 +0,0 @@
-1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.
-%
-1 Billion dollars of budget deficit		= 1 Gramm-Rudman
-6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears	= Avocado's number
-2 pints						= 1 Cavort
-Basic unit of Laryngitis			= The Hoarsepower
-Shortest distance between two jokes		= A straight line
-6 Curses					= 1 Hexahex
-3500 Calories					= 1 Food Pound
-1 Mole						= 007 Secret Agents
-1 Mole						= 25 Cagey Bees
-1 Dog Pound					= 16 oz. of Alpo
-1000 beers served at a Twins game		= 1 Killibrew
-2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League
-2000 pounds of chinese soup			= 1 Won Ton
-10 to the minus 6th power mouthwashes		= 1 Microscope
-Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier	= 1 Machturtle
-8 Catfish					= 1 Octo-puss
-365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer.		= 1 Lite-year
-16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone			= 1 Rod Serling
-Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies	= 1 Fig-newton
-	to 1 meter per second
-One half large intestine			= 1 Semicolon
-10 to the minus 6th power Movie			= 1 Microfilm
-1000 pains					= 1 Megahertz
-1 Word						= 1 Millipicture
-1 Sagan						= Billions & Billions
-1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety		= 1000 nail-bytes
-10 to the 12th power microphones		= 1 Megaphone
-10 to the 6th power Bicycles			= 2 megacycles
-The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship	= 1 Millihelen
-%
-(1)	A sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane.
-(2)	An inclined plane is a slope up.
-(3)	A slow pup is a lazy dog.
-
-QED: A sheet of paper is a lazy dog.
-		-- Willard Espy, "An Almanac of Words at Play"
-%
-(1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
-(2) Great generals are forewarned.
-(3) Forewarned is forearmed.
-(4) Four is an even number.
-(5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
-(6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
-	Therefore, all horses are black.
-%
-(1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
-(2) Great generals are forewarned.
-(3) Forewarned is forearmed.
-(4) Four is an even number.
-(5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
-(6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
-
-Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
-%
-(1) Never draw what you can copy.
-(2) Never copy what you can trace.
-(3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
-%
-(1) X=Y				; Given
-(2) X^2=XY			; Multiply both sides by X
-(3) X^2-Y^2=XY-Y^2		; Subtract Y^2 from both sides
-(4) (X+Y)(X-Y)=Y(X-Y)		; Factor
-(5) X+Y=Y			; Cancel out (X-Y) term
-(6) 2Y=Y			; Substitute X for Y, by equation 1
-(7) 2=1				; Divide both sides by Y
-		-- "Omni", proof that 2 equals 1
-%
-1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
-the law!
-%
-10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
-%
-13. ...  r-q1
-%
-"355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!"
-%
-	7,140	pounds on the Sun
-	   97	pounds on Mercury or Mars
-	  255	pounds on Earth
-	  232	pounds on Venus or Uranus
-	   43	pounds on the Moon
-	  648	pounds on Jupiter
-	  275	pounds on Saturn
-	  303	pounds on Neptune
-	   13	pounds on Pluto
-
-		-- How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places
-		   in the solar system.
-%
-A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by
-hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to the West.  They
-drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and
-found there was no pilot on board.  Terrified, they listened as the sirens
-got louder.  Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an
-experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft.
-	He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out.  The sirens
-got louder and louder.  Armed men surrounded the jet.  The would be pilot's
-friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!!  Hurry!!!"
-	The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience.  I'm just a simple
-pole in a complex plane."
-%
-A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
-%
-A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing
-but together can decide that nothing can be done.
-		-- Fred Allen
-%
-A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.
-		-- Klipstein
-%
-A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.
-%
-"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
-dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
-		-- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
-%
-A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist.  He explained
-that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
-assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
-They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
-each propose to ensure a win.  When they reconvened the gangster started with
-the engineer:
-	
-Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
-Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
-	  blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
-	  electrical shock to the horse.
-G:	  That's very good!  But let's hear from the chemist.
-Chemist:  I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
-	  into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
-	  cannot be detected in post-race tests.
-G:	  Excellent, excellent!  But I want to hear from the physicist before
-	  I decide what to do.  Physicist?  
-Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
-%
-"A horrible little boy came up to me and said, `You know in your book
-The Martian Chronicles?'  I said, `Yes?'  He said, `You know where you
-talk about Deimos rising in the East?'  I said, `Yes?'  He said `No.'
--- So I hit him."
-		-- attributed to Ray Bradbury
-%
-A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
-		-- P. Erdos
-%
-A mathematician, a doctor, and an engineer are walking on the beach and
-observe a team of lifeguards pumping the stomach of a drowned woman.  As
-they watch, water, sand, snails and such come out of the pump.
-	The doctor watches for a while and says: "Keep pumping, men, you may
-yet save her!!"
-	The mathematician does some calculations and says: "According to my
-understanding of the size of that pump, you have already pumped more water
-from her body than could be contained in a cylinder 4 feet in diameter and
-6 feet high."
-	The engineer says: "I think she's sitting in a puddle."
-%
-A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start,
-and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.
-		-- Leibnitz
-%
-A pain in the ass of major dimensions.
-		-- C.A. Desoer, on the solution of non-linear circuits
-%
-A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
-		-- George Wald
-%
-A rope lying over the top of a fence is the same length on each side.  It
-weighs one third of a pound per foot.  On one end hangs a monkey holding a
-banana, and on the other end a weight equal to the weight of the monkey.
-The banana weighs two ounces per inch.  The rope is as long (in feet) as
-the age of the monkey (in years), and the weight of the monkey (in ounces)
-is the same as the age of the monkey's mother.  The combined age of the
-monkey and its mother is thirty years.  One half of the weight of the monkey,
-plus the weight of the banana, is one forth as much as the weight of the
-weight and the weight of the rope.  The monkey's mother is half as old as
-the monkey will be when it is three times as old as its mother was when she
-she was half as old as the monkey will be when when it is as old as its mother
-will be when she is four times as old as the monkey was when it was twice
-as its mother was when she was one third as old as the monkey was when it
-was old as is mother was when she was three times as old as the monkey was
-when it was one fourth as old as it is now.  How long is the banana?
-%
-A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
-making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
-die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
-		-- Max Planck
-%
-A sense of desolation and uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness
-of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavor, and a thirst for a life giving
-water which seems suddenly to have failed, are the signs in conciousness
-of this necessary reorganization of our lives.
-
-It is difficult to believe that this state of mind can be produced by the
-recognition of such facts as that unsupported stones always fall to the
-ground.
-		-- J.W.N. Sullivan
-%
-A Severe Strain on the Credulity
-	As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
-highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
-is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the
-multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt...
-for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its
-flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
-charges it then might have left.  Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in
-Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
-know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something
-better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to
-lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-		-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
-%
-A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least the end of the blackboard.
-		-- Prof. Steiner
-%
-A social scientist, studying the culture and traditions of a small North
-African tribe, found a woman still practicing the ancient art of matchmaking.
-Locally, she was known as the Moor, the marrier.
-%
-A statistician, who refused to fly after reading of the alarmingly high
-probability that there will be a bomb on any given plane, realized that
-the probability of there being two bombs on any given flight is very low.
-Now, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him.
-%
-A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
-blowing first.
-%
-A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle.
-%
-According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold,
-and according to convention, there is an order.  In truth, there are atoms
-and a void.
-		-- Democritus, 400 B.C.
-%
-According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
-totally worthless.
-%
-			ACHTUNG!!!
-
-Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.  Ist easy schnappen
-der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit spitzensparken.  Ist nicht
-fur gewerken by das dummkopfen.  Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands
-in das pockets.  Relaxen und vatch das blinkenlights!!!
-%
-Actually, the probability is 100% that the elevator will be going in the
-right direction.  Proof by induction:
-
-N=1.	Trivially true, since both you and the elevator only have one
-	floor to go to.
-
-Assume true for N, prove for N+1:
-	If you are on any of the first N floors, then it is true by the
-	induction hypothesis.  If you are on the N+1st floor, then both you
-	and the elevator have only one choice, namely down.  Therefore,
-	it is true for all N+1 floors.
-QED.
-%
-After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
-%
-After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
-on the bench.
-%
-	After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years
-in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would
-finally find and enter the Promised Land.  With him, he brought his
-favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do
-assorted camp chores.
-	The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and,
-as the months passed, became very fond of him.  Patriarchs took to
-discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the
-children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed.
-Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was
-ending, he abruptly wore out.  Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
-	"It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend
-Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it.  He must be properly
-interred.  We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians.  Nor have we wood for
-a coffin.  But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own
-cattle.  We shall bury him in it."
-	Feghoot agreed.  "Yes, let this be his last rusting place."
-	"Rusting?" Moses cried.  "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
-	"Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not
-realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
-		-- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
-		   Feghoot!"
-%
-After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
-cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
-%
-After this was written there appeared a remarkable posthumous memoir that
-throws some doubt on Millikan's leading role in these experiments.  Harvey
-Fletcher (1884-1981), who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago,
-at Millikan's suggestion worked on the measurement of electronic charge for
-his doctoral thesis, and co-authored some of the early papers on this subject
-with Millikan.  Fletcher left a manuscript with a friend with instructions
-that it be published after his death; the manuscript was published in
-Physics Today, June 1982, page 43.  In it, Fletcher claims that he was the
-first to do the experiment with oil drops, was the first to measure charges on
-single droplets, and may have been the first to suggest the use of oil.
-According to Fletcher, he had expected to be co-authored with Millikan on
-the crucial first article announcing the measurement of the electronic
-charge, but was talked out of this by Millikan.
-		-- Steven Weinberg, "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles"
-
-Robert Millikan is generally credited with making the first really
-precise measurement of the charge on an electron and was awarded the 
-Nobel Prize in 1923.
-%
-After years of research, scientists recently reported that there is,
-indeed, arroz in Spanish Harlem.
-%
-	Against his wishes, a math teacher's classroom was remodeled.  Ever
-since, he's been talking about the good old dais.  His students planted a small
-orchard in his honor; the trees all have square roots.
-%
-Air is water with holes in it.
-%
-Air pollution is really making us pay through the nose.
-%
-Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "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."
-%
-Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
-for a dial tone.
-%
-Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
-		-- Philippe Schnoebelen
-%
-All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
-without thinking.
-%
-All great discoveries are made by mistake.
-		-- Young
-%
-All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
-%
-All laws are simulations of reality.
-		-- John C. Lilly
-%
-All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
-		-- Dawkins
-%
-All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
-%
-All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-		-- Ernest Rutherford
-%
-All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to
-Gaussian noise.
-		-- James Martin
-%
-All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
-%
-All the evidence concerning the universe has not yet been collected,
-so there's still hope.
-%
-All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists 
-know it.
-		-- Richard P. Feynman
-%
-Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
-%
-Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers,
-etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these
-things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in.
-Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a
-kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock.  This
-proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also
-damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in
-incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned."
-Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.
-		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
-%
-Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
-%
-Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.
-%
-Always think of something new; this helps you forget your last rotten idea.
-		-- Seth Frankel
-%
-Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing that way.
-%
-An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
-people refuse to see it.
-		-- James Michener, "Space"
-%
-An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
-winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen.  He was amazed to find that
-over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
-open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
-let it spill out).  The American said with a nervous laugh,
-	"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
-do you, Professor Bohr?  After all, as a scientist --"
-Bohr chuckled.
-	"I believe no such thing, my good friend.  Not at all.  I am
-scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense.  However, I am told
-that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
-%
-An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
-Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
-new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
-		-- David Letterman
-%
-	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 pile."
-		-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
-%
-An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
-really care to know.
-%
-An economist is a man who would marry Farrah Fawcett-Majors for her money.
-%
-An egghead is one who stands firmly on both feet, in mid-air, on both
-sides of an issue.
-		-- Homer Ferguson
-%
-An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
-anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt
-already heard.  After some observations and rough calculations the
-engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing.  A few minutes later
-the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now
-has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper.  This leaves the
-mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he
-was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of
-humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too
-trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
-%
-And the French medical anatomist Etienne Serres really did argue that
-black males are primitive because the distance between their navel and
-penis remains small (relative to body height) throughout life, while
-white children begin with a small separation but increase it during
-growth -- the rising belly button as a mark of progress.
-		-- S.J. Gould, "Racism and Recapitulation"
-%
-And this is a table ma'am.  What in essence it consists of is a horizontal
-rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports,
-which we call legs.  The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced
-in design as one will find anywhere in the world.
-		-- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
-%
-... 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"
-%
-Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts
-which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
-%
-Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
-%
-Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-		-- Arthur C. Clarke
-%
-Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he
-is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
-make messes in the house.
-		-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
-%
-Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time
-as the strawberries, knows nothing about grapes.
-		-- Philippus Paracelsus
-%
-"Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator."
-		-- Claude Shouse
-
-"Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist."
-		-- Joseph C. Wang
-%
-Anything cut to length will be too short.
-%
-Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
-		-- Mickey Mouse
-%
-Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as
-artificial flowers have to flowers.
-		-- David Parnas
-%
-"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty,
-and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a
-scientist.  This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
-		-- Matt Cartmill
-%
-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
-%
-As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one.
-		-- Dave "First Strike" Pare
-%
-Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
-one went to Harvard).
-		-- Edgar R. Fiedler
-%
-At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
-not.  But obviously it cannot be where it is not.  And if it is where
-it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
-		-- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
-%
-At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
-contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
-or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
-of all ideas, old and new.  This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
-nonsense.  Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
-world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism:  The collective
-enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
-field on track.
-		-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"
-%
-Back in the early 60's, touch tone phones only had 10 buttons.  Some
-military versions had 16, while the 12 button jobs were used only by people
-who had "diva" (digital inquiry, voice answerback) systems -- mainly banks.
-Since in those days, only Western Electric  made "data sets" (modems) the
-problems of terminology were all Bell System.  We used to struggle with
-written descriptions of dial pads that were unfamiliar to most people
-(most phones were rotary then.)  Partly in jest, some AT&T engineering
-types (there was no marketing in the good old days, which is why they were
-the good old days) made up the term "octalthorpe" (note spelling) to denote
-the "pound sign."  Presumably because it has 8 points sticking out.  It
-never really caught on.
-%
-Base 8 is just like base 10, if you are missing two fingers.
-		-- Tom Lehrer
-%
-Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
-%
-Besides the device, the box should contain:
-	* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
-	* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
-		club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
-
-YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram cable.
-
-IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your spouse
-and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car that can get
-all the way through the drive-through at Burger King without a major
-transmission overhaul?  Because nobody cares, that's why."
-
-WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
-		-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
-%
-Between infinite and short there is a big difference.
-		-- G.H. Gonnet
-%
-Biology grows on you.
-%
-Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing
-as division.
-%
-Bistromathics is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the
-behavior of numbers.  Just as Einstein observed that space was not an
-absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that
-time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in
-time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend
-on the observer's movement in restaurants.
-		-- Douglas Adams
-%
-But it does move!
-		-- Galileo Galilei
-%
-But you who live on dreams, you are better pleased with the sophistical
-reasoning and frauds of talkers about great and uncertain matters than
-those who speak of certain and natural matters, not of such lofty nature.
-		-- Leonardo Da Vinci, "The Codex on the Flight of Birds"
-%
-Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center
-of the universe.  The premise is wrong, but the navigation works.  An
-incorrect model can be a useful tool.
-		-- Kelvin Throop III
-%
-Chapter 2:  Newtonian Growth and Decay
-
-	The growth-decay formulas were developed in the trivial fashion by
-Isaac Newton's famous brother Phigg.  His idea was to provide an equation
-that would describe a quantity that would dwindle and dwindle, but never
-quite reach zero.  Historically, he was merely trying to work out his
-mortgage.  Another versatile equation also emerged, one which would define
-a function that would continue to grow, but never reach unity.  This equation
-can be applied to charging capacitors, over-damped springs, and the human
-race in general.
-%
-Chemist who falls in acid is absorbed in work.
-%
-Chemist who falls in acid will be tripping for weeks.
-%
-Chemistry is applied theology.
-		-- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
-%
-Chemistry professors never die, they just fail to react.
-%
-Congratulations!  You have purchased an extremely fine device that would
-give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you
-undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver.
-Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL
-CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE.  YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T
-YOU?  YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH
-THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH
-SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS
-CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT?  AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING
-TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT???  WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE
-DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-		-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
-%
-"Consider a spherical bear, in simple harmonic motion..."
-		-- Professor in the UCB physics department
-%
-"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
-if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic!"
-		-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
-%
-"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
-marvelous things.  It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory",
-quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can
-claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed.
-		-- Randy Davis
-%
-Did you hear that there's a group of South American Indians that worship
-the number zero?
-
-Is nothing sacred?
-%
-Did you hear that two rabbits escaped from the zoo and so far they have
-only recaptured 116 of them?
-%
-Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined
-them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction?
-%
-Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term, convertible
-only through the use of weird and unnatural conversion factors.  Velocity,
-for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
-%
-Dinosaurs aren't extinct.  They've just learned to hide in the trees.
-%
-Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
-%
-Duct tape is like the force.  It has a light side, and a dark side, and
-it holds the universe together ...
-		-- Carl Zwanzig
-%
-E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
-%
-Earl Wiener, 55, a University of Miami professor of management science,
-telling the Airline Pilots Association (in jest) about 21st century aircraft:
-
-	"The crew will consist of one pilot and a dog.  The pilot will
-	nurture and feed the dog.  The dog will be there to bite the
-	pilot if he touches anything.
-		-- Fortune, Sept. 26, 1988
-		   [the *magazine*, silly!]
-%
-Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-		-- John Kenneth Galbraith
-%
-Economists can certainly disappoint you.  One said that the economy would
-turn up by the last quarter.  Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't.
-		-- Robert Orben
-%
-Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
-percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
-		-- Edgar R. Fiedler
-%
-Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called
-electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been
-drinking.  Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American
-homes is 110 volts per hour.  This is very fast.  In the time it has taken
-you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the
-way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although God alone knows
-why it would want to.
-
-The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current,
-lightning, static, and European.  Most American homes have alternating
-current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while,
-then goes in the other direction.  This prevents harmful electron buildup in
-the wires.
-		-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
-%
-Elegance and truth are inversely related.
-		-- Becker's Razor
-%
-Elliptic paraboloids for sale.
-%
-Entropy isn't what it used to be.
-%
-Entropy requires no maintenance.
-		-- Markoff Chaney
-%
-Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
-otherwise require harder thinking.
-		-- Jerome Lettvin
-%
-Eureka!
-		-- Archimedes
-%
-Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
-		-- Don Vonada
-%
-Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
-
-It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
-%
-Every paper published in a respectable journal should have a preface by
-the author stating why he is publishing the article, and what value he
-sees in it.  I have no hope that this practice will ever be adopted.
-		-- Morris Kline
-%
-Everyone knows that dragons don't exist.  But while this simplistic
-formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific
-mind.  The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned
-with what ____does exist.  Indeed, the banality of existence has been
-so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further
-here.  The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically,
-discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical,
-and the purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent,
-but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ...
-		-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
-%
-Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-		-- Charles Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899
-%
-Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
-obvious as you begin to study the universe.  For example, there are no
-solids in the universe.  There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
-There are no absolute continuums.  There are no surfaces.  There are no
-straight lines.
-		-- R. Buckminster Fuller
-%
-Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
-the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
-evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can
-doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all present
-life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is
-as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ only with
-respect to theories about how the process operates.
-		-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life". 
-%
-Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
-%
-Experiments must be reproducible; they should all fail in the same way.
-%
-Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.  There are many examples
-of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies,
-but they prevailed with irrefutable data.  More often, egregious findings
-that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts.  I have
-argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic conciousness,"
-and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
-neuroscience.  Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
-handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
-than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
-offer more plausible alternatives.
-		-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness:
-		   Implications for Psi Phenomena".
-%
-Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.
-%
-Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
-%
-Federal grants are offered for... research into the recreation
-potential of interplanetary space travel for the culturally disadvantaged.
-%
-Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
-		-- Robert Firth
-
-"One, two, five."
-		-- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
-%
-Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
-husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer!  My joules!  Someone has stolen my
-joules!"
-
-"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
-a moment.  Perhaps they're mislead."
-
-"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence.  "I remember putting them
-in my burette ... We must call a copper."
-
-Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
-said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
-of Lawrence Ium.
-
-"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
-dangerous.  His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium.  Maybe I can
-catch him there."  With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
-activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
-		-- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
-%
-For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
-		-- H. L. Mencken
-%
-For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
-%
-For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
-%
-Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
-the person making the claim, not the critic.  It is not the responsibility
-of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
-responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
-or colored lights never healed anyone.  The skeptic's role is to point out
-claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidcence and to
-provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
-the accepted body of scientific evidence.
-		-- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII,
-		   No. 2, pg. 215
-%
-FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL:		#1
-	A guinea pig is not from Guinea but a rodent from South America.
-	A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle.
-	A giant panda bear is really a member of the racoon family.
-	A black panther is really a leopard that has a solid black coat
-	    rather then a spotted one.
-	Peanuts are not really nuts.  The majority of nuts grow on trees
-		while peauts grow underground.  They are classified as a
-		legume -- part of the pea family.
-	A cucumber is not a vegetable but a fruit.
-%
-FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL:		#44
-	Zebras are colored with dark stripes on a light background.
-%
-FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #14
-What to do...
-    if reality disappears?
-	Hope this one doesn't happen to you.  There isn't much that you
-	can do about it.  It will probably be quite unpleasant.
-
-    if you meet an older version of yourself who has invented a time
-    traveling machine, and has come from the future to meet you?
-	Play this one by the book.  Ask about the stock market and cash in.
-	Don't forget to invent a time traveling machine and visit your
-	younger self before you die, or you will create a paradox.  If you
-	expect this to be tricky, make sure to ask for the principles
-	behind time travel, and possibly schematics.  Never, NEVER, ask
-	when you'll die, or if you'll marry your current SO.
-%
-FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #2
-What to do...
-    if you get a phone call from Mars:
-	Speak slowly and be sure to enunciate your words properly.  Limit
-	your vocabulary to simple words.  Try to determine if you are
-	speaking to someone in a leadership capacity, or an ordinary citizen.
-
-    if he, she or it doesn't speak English?
-	Hang up.  There's no sense in trying to learn Martian over the phone.
-	If your Martian really had something important to say to you, he, she
-	or it would have taken the trouble to learn the language before
-	calling.
-
-    if you get a phone call from Jupiter?
-	Explain to your caller, politely but firmly, that being from Jupiter,
-	he, she or it is not "life as we know it".  Try to terminate the
-	conversation as soon as possible.  It will not profit you, and the
-	charges may have been reversed.
-%
-FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #6
-What to do...
-    if a starship, equipped with an FTL hyperdrive lands in your backyard?
-	First of all, do not run after your camera.  You will not have any
-	film, and, given the state of computer animation, noone will believe
-	you anyway.  Be polite.  Remember, if they have an FTL hyperdrive,
-	they can probably vaporize you, should they find you to be rude.
-	Direct them to the White House lawn, which is where they probably
-	wanted to land, anyway.  A good road map should help.
-
-    if you wake up in the middle of the night, and discover that your
-    closet contains an alternate dimension?
-	Don't walk in.  You almost certainly will not be able to get back,
-	and alternate dimensions are almost never any fun.  Remain calm
-	and go back to bed.  Close the door first, so that the cat does not
-	wander off.  Check your closet in the morning.  If it still contains
-	an alternate dimension, nail it shut.
-%
-Friction is a drag.
-%
-Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything.
-%
-Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
-you should.
-%
-(German philosopher) Georg Wilhelm Hegel, on his deathbed, complained,
-"Only one man ever understood me."  He fell silent for a while and then added,
-"And he didn't understand me."
-%
-God doesn't play dice.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
-		-- Kronecker
-%
-God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
-and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
-		-- William Bragg
-%
-Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
-%
-Good morning.  This is the telephone company.  Due to repairs, we're
-giving you advance notice that your service will be cut off indefinitely
-at ten o'clock.  That's two minutes from now.
-%
-Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward?  That's the trouble with
-time travel, you never can tell."
-		-- Doctor Who, "Androids of Tara"
-%
-Got Mole problems?  Call Avogadro at 6.02 x 10^23.
-%
-Gravity brings me down.
-%
-Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
-%
-GREAT MOMENTS IN HISTORY (#7):  April 2, 1751
-
-Issac Newton becomes discouraged when he falls up a flight of stairs.
-%
-Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-
-They laughed at Einstein.  They laughed at the Wright Brothers.  But they
-also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-		-- Carl Sagan
-%
-He keeps differentiating, flying off on a tangent.
-%
-He:	Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
-She:	What?!?  Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
-		-- Walt Kelly
-%
-Heard that the next Space Shuttle is supposed to carry several Guernsey cows?
-It's gonna be the herd shot 'round the world.
-%
-Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
-		-- Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, c. 1895
-%
-Heisenberg may have been here.
-%
-Heisenberg may have slept here...
-%
-Help fight continental drift.
-%
-Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
-lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your
-hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.  Did you
-notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain?  This
-teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never
-use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
-	It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works.  When you scuffed
-your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects
-that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt.
-The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger,
-where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels
-down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
-	Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
-touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger
-would explode!  But this is nothing to worry about unless you have
-carpeting.
-		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
-%
-Hi! How are things going?
-	(just fine, thank you...)
-Great! Say, could I bother you for a question?
-	(you just asked one...)
-Well, how about one more?
-	(one more than the first one?)
-Yes.
-	(you already asked that...)
-[at this point, Alphonso gets smart...	]
-May I ask two questions, sir?
-	(no.)
-May I ask ONE then?
-	(nope...)
-Then may I ask, sir, how I may ask you a question?
-	(yes, you may.)
-Sir, how may I ask you a question?
-	(you must ask for retroactive question asking privileges for
-	 the number of questions you have asked, then ask for that
-	 number plus two, one for the current question, and one for the
-	 next one)
-Sir, may I ask nine questions?
-	(go right ahead...)
-%
-Houston, Tranquillity Base here.  The Eagle has landed.
-		-- Neil Armstrong
-%
-How can you do 'New Math' problems with an 'Old Math' mind?
-		-- Charles Schulz
-%
-How many weeks are there in a light year?
-%
-How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere
-else.
-		-- R. Buckminster Fuller
-%
-Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
-%
-I am not an Economist.  I am an honest man!
-		-- Paul McCracken
-%
-I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos.
-		-- Albert Einstein, on the randomness of quantum mechanics
-%
-I do hate sums.  There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
-exact science.  There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds
-entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail
-to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to
-perceive.  For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again
-from the top down, the result is always different.
-		-- Mrs. La Touche
-%
-I do not remember ever having seen a sustained argument by an author which,
-starting from philosophical premises likely to meet with general acceptance,
-reached the conclusion that a praiseworthy ordering of one's life is to
-devote it to research in mathematics.
-		-- Sir Edmund Whittaker, "Scientific American", Vol. 183
-%
-"I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes.  Just then, he vanished.
-%
-I had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all.  Depth beyond
-depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as one might
-see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a quantity passing
-through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus.  I saw exactly
-why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable -- but it was after
-dinner and I let it go.
-		-- Winston Churchill
-%
-I have a theory that it's impossible to prove anything, but I can't prove it.
-%
-	"I have examined Bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me.
-I think very probably he might be cured."
-	"That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.
-	"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.
-	The elders murmured assent.
-	"Now, what affects it?"
-	"Ah!" said old Yacob.
-	"This," said the doctor, answering his own question.  "Those queer
-things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft
-depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way
-as to affect his brain.  They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and
-his eyelids move, and cosequently his brain is in a state of constant
-irritation and distraction."
-	"Yes?" said old Yacob.  "Yes?"
-	"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order
-to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical
-operation -- namely, to remove those irritant bodies."
-	"And then he will be sane?"
-	"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."
-	"Thank heaven for science!" said old Yacob.
-		-- H.G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind"
-%
-I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
-		-- Plato
-%
-I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when
-you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-		-- Poul Anderson
-%
-I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres
-and planets.  Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit
--- around the sun.  If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if
-we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand
-feet for the base.
-
-And it has advantages.  The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson
-sphere.  We can spin it on its axis for gravity.  A rotation speed of 770
-m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal.  We wouldn't even need to
-roof it over.  Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the
-sun.  Very little air will leak over the edges.
-
-Lord knows the thing is roomy enough.  With three million times the surface
-area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the
-crowding.
-		-- Larry Niven, "Ringworld"
-%
-I put up my thumb... and it blotted out the planet Earth.
-		-- Neil Armstrong
-%
-I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that
-they might escape the lusts of the flesh.
-		-- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
-%
-"I think it is true for all _n.  I was just playing it safe with _n >= 3
-because I couldn't remember the proof."
-		-- Baker, Pure Math 351a
-%
-I THINK MAN INVENTED THE CAR by instinct.
-		-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
-%
-"I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
-to blue, and it has to do with where the light is.  You know, the
-farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
-into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
-the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
-off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
-color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
-out, it's the shifting of color.  We mentioned before about the stars
-singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
-		-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
-%
-I THINK THERE SHOULD BE SOMETHING in science called the "reindeer effect."
-I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone say,
-"Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect."
-		-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
-%
-I THINK THEY SHOULD CONTINUE the policy of not giving a Nobel Prize for
-paneling.
-		-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
-%
-I use technology in order to hate it more properly.
-		-- Nam June Paik
-%
-I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block
-of wax...  and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the
-image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we
-forget or do not know.
-		-- Plato, Dialogs, Theateus 191
- 
-	[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
-	 referring to image activation and termination.]
-%
-I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
-gence?"  I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
-and use the word *billions*, and so on.  And then I say it would be astonishing
-to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
-yet no compelling evidence for it.  And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you
-really think?"  I say, "I just told you what I really think."  "Yeah, but 
-what's your gut feeling?"  But I try not to think with my gut.  Really, it's
-okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
-		-- Carl Sagan
-%
-If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-		-- Roy Santoro
-%
-If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus forecast is a
-camel's behind.
-		-- Edgar R. Fiedler
-%
-If A equals success, then the formula is _A = _X + _Y + _Z.  _X is work.  _Y
-is play.  _Z is keep your mouth shut.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-		-- John Kenneth Galbraith
-%
-If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
-conclusion.
-		-- William Baumol
-%
-If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
-%
-If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
-%
-If for every rule there is an exception, then we have established that there
-is an exception to every rule.  If we accept "For every rule there is an
-exception" as a rule, then we must concede that there may not be an exception
-after all, since the rule states that there is always the possibility of
-exception, and if we follow it to its logical end we must agree that there
-can be an exception to the rule that for every rule there is an exception.
-		-- Bill Boquist
-%
-If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
-%
-If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-If I have not seen so far it is because I stood in giant's footsteps.
-%
-If I set here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think
-I'm an engineer working on something.
-		-- S.R. McElroy
-%
-If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the
-answer can be obtained by simple inspection.
-%
-If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact,
-proof is necessary.
-		-- Samuel Clemens
-%
-If it smells it's chemistry, if it crawls it's biology, if it doesn't work
-it's physics.
-%
-If it wasn't for Newton, we wouldn't have to eat bruised apples.
-%
-If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
-the page number.
-%
-If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
-arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical
-world.  One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by
-the use of the mathematics of probability.
-		-- Vannevar Bush
-%
-If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
-presumably flunk it.
-		-- Stanley Garn
-%
-If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it,
-we would be so simple we couldn't.
-%
-If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
-something out of you.
-		-- Muhammad Ali
-%
-"If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely."
-%
-If you analyse anything, you destroy it.
-		-- Arthur Miller
-%
-If you are smart enough to know that you're not smart enough to be an
-Engineer, then you're in Business.
-%
-If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
-%
-If you haven't enjoyed the material in the last few lectures then a career
-in chartered accountancy beckons.
-		-- Advice from the lecturer in the middle of the Stochastic
-		   Systems course.
-%
-If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine, you won't
-get any ice.  If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice, but no cup.
-%
-	If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you
-brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled-
-up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and
-repeat the sequence. 
-	You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to
-hit that window jamb, that door, that chair.  Get back on course and do it
-again.  How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around
-your own apartment?
-		-- William S. Burroughs
-%
-If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from
-many it's research.
-		-- Wilson Mizner
-%
-If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-%
-Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of stairs.
-%
-In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.
-%
-In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between
-frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they
-are all merely transforms of one another.  This combined with
-minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct
-compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can
-lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost.  However,
-this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
-%
-IN MY OPINION anyone interested in improving himself should not rule out
-becoming pure energy.
-		-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
-%
-In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.
-		-- R.G. Ingersoll
-%
-In order to dial out, it is necessary to broaden one's dimension.
-%
-"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
-universe."
-		-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
-%
-In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really
-good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change
-their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.  They really
-do it.  It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are
-human and change is sometimes painful.  But it happens every day.  I cannot
-recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-		-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
-%
-"In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian."
-%
-In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
-%
-In the beginning there was nothing.  And the Lord said "Let There Be Light!"
-And still there was nothing, but at least now you could see it.
-%
-	In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
-the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist.  And they grew to
-large numbers and prospered.
-	One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
-as the eye could see.  So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
-was to reach up as far as "up" went.  Further and further up they went ...
-until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
-	The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
-structure reaching to the heavens.  One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
-out from under the rubble.  It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
-they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not
-understand each other.  They all spoke different languages.  They all fought
-amongst themselves and each went about their own way.  To this day the
-Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
-		-- The Story of Babel
-%
-In the course of reading Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the
-Mathematical Field", I have come across evidence supporting a fact
-which we coffee achievers have long appreciated:  no really creative,
-intelligent thought is possible without a good cup of coffee.  On page
-14, Hadamard is discussing Poincare's theory of fuchsian groups and
-fuchsian functions, which he describes as "... one of his greatest
-discoveries, the first which consecrated his glory ..."  Hadamard refers
-to Poincare having had a "... sleepless night which initiated all that
-memorable work ..." and gives the following, very revealing quote:
-
-	"One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and
-	could not sleep.  Ideas rose in crowds;  I felt them collide
-	until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable
-	combination."
-
-Too bad drinking black coffee was contrary to his custom.  Maybe he
-could really have amounted to something as a coffee achiever.
-%
-In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.  In practice,
-there is.
-%
-In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing certain.
-		-- Pliny the Elder
-%
-	"In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
-to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to
-like them, and I'm old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely
-baroque feel to a continent.  And they tell me it's not equatorial enough.
-Equatorial!"  He gave a hollow laugh.  "What does it matter?  Science has
-achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than
-right any day."
-	"And are you?"
-	"No.  That's where it all falls down, of course."
-	"Pity," said Arthur with sympathy.  "It sounded like quite a good
-life-style otherwise."
-		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
-%
-Information is the inverse of entropy.
-%
-Interchangeable parts won't.
-%
-Invest in physics -- own a piece of Dirac!
-%
-"Irrationality is the square root of all evil"
-		-- Douglas Hofstadter
-%
-Is knowledge knowable?  If not, how do we know that?
-%
-Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
-listen to weather forecasts and economists?
-		-- Kelvin Throop III
-%
-Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
-tellers take economists seriously?
-%
-"It could be that Walter's horse has wings" does not imply that there is
-any such animal as Walter's horse, only that there could be; but "Walter's
-horse is a thing which could have wings" does imply Walter's horse's
-existence.  But the conjunction "Walter's horse exists, and it could be
-that Walter's horse has wings" still does not imply "Walter's horse is a
-thing that could have wings", for perhaps it can only be that Walter's
-horse has wings by Walter having a different horse.  Nor does "Walter's
-horse is a thing which could have wings" conversely imply "It could be that
-Walter's horse has wings"; for it might be that Walter's horse could only
-have wings by not being Walter's horse.
-
-I would deny, though, that the formula [Necessarily if some x has property P
-then some x has property P] expresses a logical law, since P(x) could stand
-for, let us say "x is a better logician than I am", and the statement "It is
-necessary that if someone is a better logician than I am then someone is a
-better logician than I am" is false because there need not have been any me.
-		-- A.N. Prior, "Time and Modality"
-%
-It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
-%
-It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in
-which there is absolutely nothing.
-		-- Descartes
-%
-It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable,
-as one's hat keeps blowing off.
-		-- Woody Allen
-%
-It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem.
-%
-It is not every question that deserves an answer.
-		-- Publilius Syrus
-%
-It is not for me to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence.
-		-- The Earl of Birkenhead
-%
-It is not that polar co-ordinates are complicated, it is simply
-that cartesian co-ordinates are simpler than they have a right to be.
-		-- Kleppner & Kolenhow, "An Introduction to Mechanics"
-%
-It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to
-mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
-		-- H.L. Mencken
-%
-It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for five
-straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity.  But it takes
-Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
-%
-It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong.
-		-- Chris Torek
-%
-It seems that more and more mathematicians are using a new, high level
-language named "research student".
-%
-"It's easier said than done."
-
-... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
-said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
-said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
-done".
-%
-It's hard to think of you as the end result of millions of years of evolution.
-%
-It's later than you think, the joint Russian-American space mission has
-already begun.
-%
-It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
-		-- Phil White
-%
-It's not hard to admit errors that are [only] cosmetically wrong.
-		-- J.K. Galbraith
-%
-Just because they are called 'forbidden' transitions does not mean that they
-are forbidden.  They are less allowed than allowed transitions, if you see
-what I mean.
-		-- From a Part 2 Quantum Mechanics lecture.
-%
-Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
-%
-Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
-%
-Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer.  Now I are won.
-%
-Lawrence Radiation Laboratory keeps all its data in an old gray trunk.
-%
-Life is a biochemical reaction to the stimulus of the surrounding
-environment in a stable ecosphere, while a bowl of cherries is a
-round container filled with little red fruits on sticks.
-%
-Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
-%
-Life is difficult because it is non-linear.
-%
-Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____awful*.
-%
-Logic is a pretty flower that smells bad.
-%
-Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
-%
-Logic is the chastity belt of the mind!
-%
-Love makes the world go 'round, with a little help from intrinsic angular
-momentum.
-%
-Lucas is the source of many of the components of the legendarily reliable
-British automotive electrical systems.  Professionals call the company "The
-Prince of Darkness".  Of course, if Lucas were to design and manufacture
-nuclear weapons, World War III would never get off the ground.  The British
-don't like warm beer any more than the Americans do.  The British drink warm
-beer because they have Lucas refrigerators.
-%
-Ma Bell is a mean mother!
-%
-Machines have less problems.  I'd like to be a machine.
-		-- Andy Warhol
-%
-Make it myself?  But I'm a physical organic chemist!
-%
-Make it right before you make it faster.
-%
-Man will never fly.  Space travel is merely a dream.  All aspirin is alike.
-%
-MATH AND ALCOHOL DON'T MIX!
-	Please, don't drink and derive.
-
-	Mathematicians
-	Against
-	Drunk
-	Deriving
-%
-Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
-		-- R. Drabek
-%
-Mathematicians are like Frenchmen:  whatever you say to them they translate
-into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-		-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
-%
-Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
-described as being n-dimensional.  Like modern sex, any number can play.
-		-- Dr. Thor Wald, "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by James Blish
-%
-Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.
-		-- Henry Adams
-%
-Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts
-to each other without consideration of their relation to experience.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what 
-one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
-		-- Russell
-%
-Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty --
-a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture, without appeal to any
-part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trapping of painting or music,
-yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the
-greatest art can show.  The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense
-of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is
-to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.
-		-- Bertrand Russell
-%
-Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a receipt.
-%
-Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.
-%
-Measure twice, cut once.
-%
-Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
-%
-Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
-		-- Frederick Crane
-%
-Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
-%
-Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves
-up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
-		-- Winston Churchill
-%
-Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural
-function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the
-other.  There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the
-brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.
-Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only. ... It is quite
-conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected.  But it
-is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working
-assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.
-Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot
-logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
-		-- D.O. Hebb, "Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological
-		   Theory", 1949
-%
-More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads.  One path
-leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.
-Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-		-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
-%
-"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,
-365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365".  He [ten-year-old Truman Henry
-Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the
-tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes
-smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more
-than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,255!"
-An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be
-as much fun to watch.
-		-- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"
-%
-Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem.
-		-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
-%
-My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always,
-always, he was right.
-	[That's an interesting angle.  I wonder if there are any parallels?]
-%
-	My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or
-even that they were always wrong.  Rather, I believe that science must be
-understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of
-robots programmed to collect pure information.  I also present this view as
-an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on
-the alter of human limitations.
-	I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often
-in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it.  Galileo was not shown
-the instruments of torture in an abstract debate about lunar motion.  He had
-threatened the Church's conventional argument for social and doctrinal
-stability:  the static world order with planets circling about a central
-earth, priests subordinate to the Pope and serfs to their lord.  But the
-Church soon made its peace with Galileo's cosmology.  They had no choice; the
-earth really does revolve about the sun.
-		-- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
-%
-Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them.
-		-- Booth Tarkington
-%
-Natural laws have no pity.
-%
-Nature abhors a hero.  For one thing, he violates the law of conservation
-of energy.  For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the
-fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be
-creamed?
-		-- Solomon Short
-%
-Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
-%
-Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where,
-it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
-		-- Fran Lebowitz
-%
-Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
-		-- Francis Bacon
-%
-Neil Armstrong tripped.
-%
-Neutrinos are into physicists.
-%
-Neutrinos have bad breadth.
-%
-Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
-		-- R. A. Heinlein
-%
-No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.
-%
-No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
-%
-Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
-%
-Nonsense.  Space is blue and birds fly through it.
-		-- Heisenberg
-%
-Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
-Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in
-their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
-moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
-dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
-And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it
-was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put
-them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
-and everything was just fine ...
-		-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
-%
-Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
-
-To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
-light comes on.
-%
-Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.
-She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep.
-		-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
-%
-Nuclear powered vacuuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.
-		-- Alex Lewyt (President of the Lewyt Corporation,
-		   manufacturers of vacuum cleaners), quoted in The New York
-		   Times, June 10, 1955.
-%
-Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
-%
-"Obviously, a major malfunction has occurred."
-		-- Steve Nesbitt, voice of Mission Control, January 28,
-		   1986, as the shuttle Challenger exploded within view
-		   of the grandstands.
-%
-Of course you can't flap your arms and fly to the moon.  After a while you'd
-run out of air to push against.
-%
-Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lampposts -- for support
-rather than illumination.
-%
-On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
-
-"This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
-		-- Wolfgang Pauli
-%
-Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
-us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of the
-smaller prime numbers.
-
-2:  The Odd Prime --
-	It's the only even prime, therefore is odd.  QED.
-3:  The True Prime --
-	Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you 3 times, it's true."
-31: The Arbitrary Prime --
-	Determined by unanimous unvote.  We needed an arbitrary prime in
-	case the prof asked for one, and so had an election.  91 received
-	the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the next most.
-	However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none at all.
-41: The Female Prime --
-	The polynomial X**2 - X + 41 is
-	prime for integer values from 1 to 40.
-43: The Male Prime - they form a prime pair.
-
-Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities
-are derived from those primes.  So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd
-but true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
-%
-	Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property
-of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane
-complexities.  Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to
-obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
-	Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is
-available to anyone.
-		-- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid"
-%
-One Bell System - it sometimes works.
-%
-One Bell System - it used to work before they installed the Dimension!
-%
-One Bell System - it works.
-%
-One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the
-mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.
-		-- J. Gustav White
-%
-One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
-%
-One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
-to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
-a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
-just stupid.
-		-- J.D. Watson, "The Double Helix"
-%
-One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and
-decides to do something about it.  He calls up his best friend, who is a
-mathematical genius.  "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some
-way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track?  We could
-make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life."  The mathematician thinks
-this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself.
-	A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any
-success.  The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes,
-actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but
-there a number of details to be figured out.
-	After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house,
-looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have
-some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right
-track."
-	At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by
-pounding on his door at three in the morning.  He has dark circles under his
-eyes.  His hair hasn't been combed for many days.  He appears to be wearing
-the same clothes as the last time.  He has several pencils sticking out from
-behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face.  "WE CAN DO
-IT!  WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!!
-And it's so EASY!  First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple
-harmonic motion..."
-%
-One has to look out for engineers -- they begin with sewing machines
-and end up with the atomic bomb.
-		-- Marcel Pagnol
-%
-One man's "magic" is another man's engineering.  "Supernatural" is a null word.
-		-- Robert Heinlein
-%
-One man's constant is another man's variable.
-		-- A.J. Perlis
-%
-One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor...
-is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics.
-		-- N. Wiener
-%
-One small step for man, one giant stumble for mankind.
-%
-One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
-sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
-terror.
-		-- W.K. Hartmann
-%
-Only God can make random selections.
-%
-Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
-%
-Optimization hinders evolution.
-%
-Order and simplification are the first steps toward mastery of a subject
--- the actual enemy is the unknown.
-		-- Thomas Mann
-%
-Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.  Biochemistry
-is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-		-- Mike Adams
-%
-"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it."
-		-- Alex Schure
-%
-Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard.  It is fatal in
-concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m.  Humans exposed to the
-oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes.  Symptoms resemble very
-much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.).  In higher
-concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it
-takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place.  The reason
-for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of
-oxygen in 20% concentration.  It apparently contributes to a complex
-process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is
-always fatal.
-
-However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the
-fact it is habit forming.  The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is
-sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent.  After that, any
-considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with
-symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.
-
-Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard.  All of the fires that were reported in
-the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be
-due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings
-in question.
-
-Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and
-tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is
-too late.
-		-- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956
-%
-Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
-%
-Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
-%
-People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
-%
-Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
-%
-"Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
-hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
-sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..."
-%
-Pie are not square.  Pie are round.  Cornbread are square.
-%
-Polymer physicists are into chains.
-%
-Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
-%
-Power corrupts.  And atomic power corrupts atomically.
-%
-Progress means replacing a theory that is wrong with one more subtly wrong.
-%
-Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
-
-This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them.  Induction
-techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
-
-SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
-
-	We know it's true for _n equal to 1.  Now assume that it's true
-for every natural number less than _n.  _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
-as large as we want.  If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
-trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n.  We
-can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
-about _n.
-	QED.	(QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
-%
-... proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
-downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
-awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect.
-		-- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in
-		   "The History of Manned Space Flight"
-%
-Prototype designs always work.
-		-- Don Vonada
-%
-"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
-than the both put together."
-%
-Psychologists think they're experimental psychologists.
-Experimental psychologists think they're biologists.
-Biologists think they're biochemists.
-Biochemists think they're chemists.
-Chemists think they're physical chemists.
-Physical chemists think they're physicists.
-Physicists think they're theoretical physicists.
-Theoretical physicists think they're mathematicians.
-Mathematicians think they're metamathematicians.
-Metamathematicians think they're philosophers.
-Philosophers think they're gods.
-%
-Quantum Mechanics is a lovely introduction to Hilbert Spaces!
-		-- Overheard at last year's Archimedeans' Garden Party
-%
-Quantum Mechanics is God's version of "Trust me."
-%
-Quark!  Quark!  Beware the quantum duck!
-%
-Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
-%
-Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature
-cannot be fooled.
-		-- R.P. Feynman
-%
-Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
-lose your job.  These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
-but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
-Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.
-%
-	"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised.  "We're back in the
-universe again..."  An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't
-know which part.  We seem to have changed our position in space."  A
-spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
-starfield surrounding the ship.
-	"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us,"
-ZORAC announced after a short pause.  "The designs are not familiar, but
-they are obviously the products of intelligence.  Implications: we have
-been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown,
-and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
-Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-		-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
-%
-Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
-%
-Research is the best place to be: you work your buns off, and if it works
-you're a hero; if it doesn't, well -- nobody else has done it yet either,
-so you're still a valiant nerd.
-%
-Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and think what nobody
-else has thought.
-%
-Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-		-- Wernher von Braun
-%
-Review Questions
-
-(1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
-    and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
-    he exceeds the speed of light?  How long will it be before the
-    Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
-
-(2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
-    twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
-    every bone in his body?  How long will it be before they cut off
-    his insurance?  Where does he get a new car every week?
-
-(3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
-    the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
-    pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
-    Tut's?  When will it fall on him?  Will he notice?
-%
-Round Numbers are always false.
-		-- Samuel Johnson
-%
-Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long
-period of time.
-		-- George Carlin
-%
-Science and religion are in full accord but science and faith are in complete
-discord.
-%
-Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones.  But a collection
-of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
-		-- Jules Henri Poincar'e
-%
-Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
-%
-Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
-%
-Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
-		-- William Buckley
-%
-Sentient plasmoids are a gas.
-%
-Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
-%
-So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your
-current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it
-into a dumpster.  Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of
-8-millimeter video equipment.
-
-... OK!  Got everything?  Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were
-gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes
-your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt.
-This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until
-it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so
-*order yours now*.
-		-- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution"
-%
-Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them
-over the horizon.
-		-- K.A. Arsdall
-%
-Space is big.  You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly
-big it is.  I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the
-drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-		-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
-%
-Space is to place as eternity is to time.
-		-- Joseph Joubert
-%
-Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to curve.
-		-- Wheeler
-%
-Statistics are no substitute for judgement.
-		-- Henry Clay
-%
-Statistics means never having to say you're certain.
-%
-Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays.  Embezzlement is another matter.
-%
-Stuckness shouldn't be avoided.  It's the psychic predecessor of all
-real understanding.  An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
-understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
-		-- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
-%
-Supervisor: Do you think you understand the basic ideas of Quantum Mechanics?
-Supervisee: Ah! Well, what do we mean by "to understand" in the context of
-	    Quantum Mechanics?
-Supervisor: You mean "No", don't you?
-Supervisee: Yes.
-		-- Overheard at a supervision.
-%
-Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
-%
-Take an astronaut to launch.
-%
-Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
-for going backwards.
-		-- Aldous Huxley
-%
-Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
-%
-That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.
-		-- Neil Armstrong
-%
-The  White Rabbit put on his spectacles.
-	"Where shall  I  begin, please your Majesty ?" he asked.
-	"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on
-till you come to the end: then stop."
-		-- Lewis Carroll
-%
-The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex
-facts.  Seek simplicity and distrust it.
-		-- Whitehead.
-%
-The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the
-pavement is precisely 1 bananosecond.
-%
-The amount of weight an evangelist carries with the almighty is measured
-in billigrahams.
-%
-The ark lands after The Flood.  Noah lets all the animals out.  Says he, "Go
-and multiply."  Several months pass.  Noah decides to check up on the animals.
-All are doing fine except a pair of snakes.  "What's the problem?" says Noah.
-"Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes.  Noah follows
-their advice.  Several more weeks pass.  Noah checks on the snakes again.
-Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy.  Noah asks, "Want to tell me how
-the trees helped?"  "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need
-logs to multiply."
-%
-The astronomer Francesco Sizi, a contemporary of Galileo, argues that
-Jupiter can have no satellites:
-
-	There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two
-eyes, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
-unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent.
-From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven
-metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number
-of planets is necessarily seven. [...]
-	Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and
-therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless
-and therefore do not exist.
-%
-The best defense against logic is ignorance.
-%
-The best rebuttal to this kind of statistical argument came from the
-redoubtable John W. Campbell:
-
-	The laws of population growth tell us that approximately half the
-	people who were ever born in the history of the world are now
-	dead.  There is therefore a 0.5 probability that this message is
-	being read by a corpse.
-%
-The bigger the theory the better.
-%
-The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.
-		-- Merrick Furst
-%
-The bomb will never go off.  I speak as an expert in explosives.
-		-- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
-%
-The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
-		-- Elbert Hubbard
-%
-The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.
-%
-The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
-		-- John Muir
-%
-The Commandments of the EE:
-
- (9)	Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
-	commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
-	frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages.
-(10)	Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
-	written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
-	and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
-	thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician.
-(11)	When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
-	unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket.  Better
-	that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
-	experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
-	innocent-seeming device.
-%
-The Commandments of the EE:
-
-(1)	Beware of lightning that lurketh in an uncharged condenser
-	lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
-	embarrassing manner.
-(2)	Cause thou the switch that supplieth large quantities of juice to
-	be opened and thusly tagged, that thy days may be long in this
-	earthly vale of tears.
-(3)	Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth, and upon
-	which the worketh, are grounded and thusly tagged lest they lift
-	thee to a radio frequency potential and causeth thee to make like
-	a radiator too.
-(4)	Tarry thou not amongst these fools that engage in intentional
-	shocks for they are not long for this world and are surely
-	unbelievers.
-%
-The Commandments of the EE:
-
-(5)	Take care that thou useth the proper method when thou takest the
-	measures of high-voltage circuits too, that thou dost not incinerate
-	both thee and thy test meter, for verily, though thou has no company
-	property number and can be easily surveyed, the test meter has
-	one and, as a consequence, bringeth much woe unto a purchasing agent.
-(6)	Take care that thou tamperest not with interlocks and safety devices,
-	for this incurreth the wrath of the chief electrician and bring
-	the fury of the engineers on his head.
-(7)	Work thou not on energized equipment for if thou doest so, thy
-	friends will surely be buying beers for thy widow and consoling
-	her in certain ways not generally acceptable to thee.
-(8)	Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service equipment alone,
-	for electrical cooking is a slow process and thou might sizzle in
-	thy own fat upon a hot circuit for hours on end before thy maker
-	sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into his fold.
-%
-The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
-%
-The devil finds work for idle glands.
-%
-The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so
-little to recommend it.
-		-- Allan Sherman
-%
-The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
-requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
-		-- Robert Heinlein
-%
-The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
-%
-The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
-weather forecasters.
-		-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
-%
-The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed
-to do the work of a man.  The marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics
-Corporation defines a robot as 'Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With'.
-The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the
-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the
-first against the wall when the revolution comes', with a footnote to effect
-that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking
-over the post of robotics correspondent.
-	Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that
-had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in
-the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
-Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the
-wall when the revolution came'.
-		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
-%
-The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
-of thing.  Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
-of these atoms is talking moonshine.
-		-- Ernest Rutherford, after he had split the atom for
-		   the first time
-%
-The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be
-correct.
-		-- William of Occam
-%
-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"
-%
-The following statement is not true.  The previous statement is true.
-%
-The Force is what holds everything together.  It has its dark side, and
-it has its light side.  It's sort of like cosmic duct tape.
-%
-"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl."
-		-- Dave Barry
-%
-The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people,
-but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons.
-		-- Dr. David Butler, British psephologist
-%
-The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
-%
-The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.  The goal of nature
-is to build better mice.
-%
-The Greatest Mathematical Error 
-	The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28
-July 1962 towards Venus.  After 13 minutes' flight a booster engine would
-give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes 9,800 solar cells
-would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course
-corrections and after 100 days the craft would cirlce the unknown planet,
-scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed.  
-	However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I
-plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after takeoff.
-	Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from
-the instructions fed into the computer.  "It was human error", a launch
-spokesman said.
-	This minus sign cost L4,280,000.
-		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
-%
-The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
-%
-The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they
-are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally
-understood.  Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
-		-- John Maynard Keyes
-%
-"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
-		-- Franco Spisani
-%
-The instruments of science do not in themselves discover truth.  And there are
-searchings that are not concluded by the coincidence of a pointer and a mark.
-		-- Fred Saberhagen, "The Berserker Wars"
-%
-The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets.
-		-- L. Zadeh
-%
-The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the moon.
-%
-The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
-	The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
-Hubert Cecil Booth.  However, he got the idea from a man who almost
-invented it.  
-	In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall.  On the bill was an
-American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
-	The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
-After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
--- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
-	"It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
-point.  "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor.  "Your machine just moves
-the dust around the room," Booth informed him.  "Suck?  Suck?  Sucking is
-not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out.  Booth proved
-that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
-sucking the back of an armchair.  "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
-		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
-%
-The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
-soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
-when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
-%
-The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars.
-%
-The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us, the Universe.
-%
-The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
-%
-The moon is made of green cheese.
-		-- John Heywood
-%
-The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
-%
-The more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain.
-%
-The most advantageous, pre-eminent thing thou canst do is not to exhibit
-nor display thyself within the limits of our galaxy, but rather depart
-instantaneously whence thou even now standest and flee to yet another rotten
-planet in the universe, if thou canst have the good fortune to find one.
-		-- Carlyle
-%
-The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
-discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
-		-- Isaac Asimov
-%
-The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe.
-		-- Chester Gould/Dick Tracy
-%
-The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
-		-- John Kenneth Galbraith
-%
-The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they
-serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have
-no legitimacy.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-The only perfect science is hind-sight.
-%
-The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
-%
-The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social
-sciences' is: some do, some don't.
-		-- Ernest Rutherford
-%
-The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite
-of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-		-- Niels Bohr
-%
-The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated by the fact that, when
-exposed to the same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.
-%
-The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
-Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using
-other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern
-countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so
-far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill
-and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons.  None of the animals turned into
-oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer.
-		-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
-%
-The purpose of Physics 7A is to make the engineers realize that they're
-not perfect, and to make the rest of the people realize that they're not
-engineers.
-%
-The rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field is a precise
-measurement of the speed of blight.
-%
-The reason that every major university maintains a department of
-mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.
-%
-The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
-give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
-		-- Jane Bryant Quinn
-%
-The Shuttle is now going five times the sound of speed.
-		-- Dan Rather, first landing of Columbia
-%
-The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
-tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
-have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor
-its theories will hold water.
-%
-The solution of problems is the most characteristic and peculiar sort
-of voluntary thinking.
-		-- William James
-%
-The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for
-the reader.
-%
-The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
-		-- Peer
-%
-The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything.
-%
-The spirit of Plato dies hard.  We have been unable to escape the philosophical
-tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the
-superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.
-		-- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
-%
-The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers
-written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not
-follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
-of paper in any other parts of the Universe.  This single statement took
-the scientific world by storm.  So many mathematical conferences got held
-in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation
-died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put
-back by years.
-		-- Douglas Adams
-%
-The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology.
-%
-"The subspace _W inherits the other 8 properties of _V. And there aren't
-even any property taxes."
-		-- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
-%
-The sum of the Universe is zero.
-%
-The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
-data.  Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
-shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
-as the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
-radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
-as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all.  The light we
-receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
-Sun, so we can ignore that.  With these data we can compute the temperature
-of Heaven.  The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
-the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
-i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using
-the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
-temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C).  The exact
-temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
-temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
-Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
-part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten
-brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
-or 444.6C  (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.)  We have,
-then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
-		-- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972
-%
-The test of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-		-- Aldo Leopold
-%
-The tree of research must from time to time be refreshed with the blood
-of bean counters.
-		-- Alan Kay
-%
-The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.  And
-vice versa.
-%
-The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
-		-- Harlan Ellison
-%
-The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude.
-%
-The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.
-%
-The universe is all a spin-off of the Big Bang.
-%
-The universe is an island, surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds
-universes.
-%
-The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
-combination is locked up in the safe.
-		-- Peter DeVries
-%
-The Universe is populated by stable things.
-		-- Richard Dawkins
-%
-The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
-		-- Sagan
-%
-The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four
-forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and
-bloody-mindedness.
-		-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
-%
-The University of California Statistics Department; where mean is normal,
-and deviation standard.
-%
-The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be
-done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
-		-- E. Hubbard
-%
-The Wright Bothers weren't the first to fly.  They were just the first
-not to crash.
-%
-Theory is gray, but the golden tree of life is green.
-		-- Goethe
-%
-There *__is* no such thing as a civil engineer.
-%
-There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis
-are chosen correctly.
-%
-"There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers.
-While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain."
-		-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
-%
-There are three schools of magic.  One:  State a tautology, then ring the
-changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy.  Two:  Record many facts.
-Try to find a pattern.  Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's
-science.  Three:  Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled
-by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering.
-%
-There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect the
-sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the sunlight that
-hits your neighbors' homes, too.
-		-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
-%
-There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
-		-- R. W. Gerard
-%
-There is a building with four floors.  On the first floor, there
-is a convention of architects.  On the second floor, there is a
-vinyl manufacturing plant.  On the third floor there is a fast food
-stand, and on the fourth floor there is a library.
-
-Q:	What would happen if a librarian traveled down in a small
-	elevator with one other person from each floor?
-A:	The elevator would be full.
-%
-There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what
-the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
-replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.  There is another
-theory which states that this has already happened.
-		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
-%
-There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
-originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
-has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
-beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
-being, evolved.
-		-- Darwin
-%
-There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing the
-rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries civilization
-will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. We must provide a
-Great Age or see the collapse of the upward striving of the human race.
-		-- Alfred North Whitehead
-%
-There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.
-		-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
-%
-There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it.
-		-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"
-%
-There is no royal road to geometry.
-		-- Euclid
-%
-There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
-however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
-Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be 
-discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
-on his own account.  The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
-even highly probable.
-		-- H.L. Mencken, 1930
-%
-	There was a mad scientist (a mad... social... scientist) who kidnapped
-three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked 
-each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no
-can opener.
-	A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's
-cell and found it long empty.  The engineer had constructed a can opener from
-pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive,
-and escaped.
-	The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids
-off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall.  She was developing a good
-pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
-	The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising
-solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly
-against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor:
-	Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.
-	Proof: assume the opposite...
-%
-There was a writer in 'Life' magazine ... who claimed that rabbits have
-no memory, which is one of their defensive mechanisms.  If they recalled
-every close shave they had in the course of just an hour life would become
-insupportable.
-		-- Kurt Vonnegut
-%
-There was an old Indian belief that by making love on the hide of
-their favorite animal, one could guarantee the health and prosperity
-of the offspring conceived thereupon.  And so it goes that one Indian
-couple made love on a buffalo  hide.  Nine months later, they were
-blessed with a healthy baby son.  Yet another couple huddled together
-on the hide of a deer and they too were blessed with a very healthy
-baby son.  But a third couple, whose favorite animal was a hippopotamus,
-were blessed with not one, but TWO very healthy baby sons at the conclusion
-of the nine month interval.  All of which proves the old theorem that:
-The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of
-the squaws of the other two hides.
-%
-There's a whole WORLD in a mud puddle!
-		-- Doug Clifford
-%
-There's no future in time travel.
-%
-There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking
-about.
-		-- John von Neumann
-%
-They don't know how the world is shaped.  And so they give it a shape, and
-try to make everything fit it.  They separate the right from the left, the
-man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They
-only want to count to two.
-		-- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
-%
-Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.
-%
-This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough
-hunchbacks.
-%
-This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers.  The
-spark-gap is mightier than the pen.  Democracy will not be salvaged by men
-who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
-		-- Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen, 1938
-%
-This is the theory that Jack built.
-This is the flaw that lay in the theory that Jack built.
-This is the palpable verbal haze that hid the flaw that lay in...
-%
-This isn't true in practice -- what we've missed out is Stradivarius's
-constant.  And then the aside: "For those of you who don't know, that's
-been called by others the fiddle factor..."
-		-- From a 1B Electrical Engineering lecture.
-%
-This place just isn't big enough for all of us.  We've got to find a way
-off this planet.
-%
-This universe shipped by weight, not by volume.  Some expansion of the
-contents may have occurred during shipment.
-%
-This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard
-dying... but nobody thought so.  This was a future of fortune and theft,
-pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
-		-- Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"
-%
-Those who can, do; those who can't, simulate.
-%
-Those who can, do; those who can't, write.
-Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
-%
-... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage
-from beginning to end.
-		-- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
-%
-Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the
-molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic.  A fourth affirms, with
-Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose
-existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A fifth
-theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about
-the matter than the others.
-		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
-%
-Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know
-what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
-		-- Bertrand Russell
-%
-Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
-%
-Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
-
-Space is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen to you.
-%
-TIRED of calculating components of vectors?  Displacements along direction of
-force getting you down?  Well, now there's help.  Try amazing "Dot-Product",
-the fast, easy way many professionals have used for years and is now available
-to YOU through this special offer.  Three out of five engineering consultants
-recommend "Dot-Product" for their clients who use vector products.  Mr.
-Gumbinowitz, mechanical engineer, in a hidden-camera interview...
-	"Dot-Product really works!  Calculating Z-axis force components has
-	never been easier."
-Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product.  Use
-it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector
-components.  How much would you pay for it?  But wait, it also calculates the
-work done in Joules, Ergs, and, yes, even BTU's.  Divide Dot-Product by the
-magnitude of the vectors and it becomes an instant angle calculator!  Now, how
-much would you pay?  All this can be yours for the low, low price of $19.95!!
-But that's not all!  If you order before midnight, you'll also get "Famous
-Numbers of Famous People" as a bonus gift, absolutely free!  Yes, you'll get
-Avogadro's number, Planck's, Euler's, Boltzmann's, and many, many, more!!
-Call 1-800-DOT-6000.  Operators are standing by.  That number again...
-1-800-DOT-6000.  Supplies are limited, so act now.  This offer is not
-available through stores and is void where prohibited by law.
-%
-To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances
-may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence.
-		-- Joseph Glanvill, 1661
-%
-To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
-		-- Thomas Edison
-%
-Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
-
-And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
-		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
-%
-Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the earth's
-supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century. As man
-struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help. Please...
-
-			CONSERVE GRAVITY
-
-Follow these simple suggestions:
-
-(1)  Walk with a light step.  Carry helium balloons if possible.
-(2)  Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
-(3)  Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like curling.
-(4)  Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
-(5)  Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big pile.
-(6)  Stop flipping pancakes
-%
-Torque is cheap.
-%
-Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
-%
-Two men are in a hot-air balloon.  Soon, they find themselves lost in a
-canyon somewhere.  One of the three men says, "I've got an idea.  We can
-call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the
-end of the canyon.  Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
-	So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo!  Where
-are we?"  (They hear the echo several times).
-	Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
-You're lost!"
-	The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
-	Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
-	"For three reasons.  First, he took a long time to answer, second,
-he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
-%
-Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
-%
-Two wrights don't make a rong, they make an airplane.  Or bicycles.
-%
-UFOs are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
-%
-Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem
-in relation to a bigger problem.
-		-- P.D. Ouspensky
-%
-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
-%
-We are all agreed that your theory is crazy.  The question which divides us is
-whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.  My own feeling
-is that it is not crazy enough. 
-		-- Niels Bohr
-%
-We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his
-own facts.
-		-- Patrick Moynihan
-%
-We are sorry.  We cannot complete your call as dialed.  Please check
-the number and dial again or ask your operator for assistance.
-
-This is a recording.
-%
-We can defeat gravity.  The problem is the paperwork involved.
-%
-We can predict everything, except the future.
-%
-We cannot command nature except by obeying her.
-		-- Sir Francis Bacon
-%
-We dedicate this book to our fellow citizens who, for love of truth, take from
-their own wants by taxes and gifts, and now and then send forth one of
-themselves as dedicated servant, to forward the search into the mysteries and
-marvelous simplicities of this strange and beautiful Universe, Our home.
-		-- "Gravitation", Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
-%
-"We don't care.  We don't have to.  We're the Phone Company."
-%
-We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
-%
-We don't know who it was that discovered water, but we're pretty sure
-that it wasn't a fish.
-	-- Marshall McLuhan
-%
-We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
-		-- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
-%
-We have a equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated.
-%
-We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support
-of the earth, contrived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support
-the elephant, a huge tortoise.  If we will candidly confess the truth, we
-know as little of the operation of the nerves, as he did of the manner in
-which the earth is supported: and our hypothesis about animal spirits, or
-about the tension and vibrations of the nerves, are as like to be true, as
-his about the support of the earth.  His elephant was a hypothesis, and our
-hypotheses are elephants.  Every theory in philosophy, which is built on
-pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly
-by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose
-feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.
-		-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
-%
-... we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection
-by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
-I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized
-brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as
-an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting
-functions).  But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often
-uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities
-of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
-		-- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
-%
-We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful
-new world.  We will see it when we believe it.
-		-- Saul Alinsky
-%
-... we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
-observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
-years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
-descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
-do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
-flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
-things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
-established as our planet's shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
-to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
-cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
-into doubt.
-		-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", 
-		   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2.
-%
-We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a
-clever but highly unmotivated trick.
-		-- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra"
-%
-We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to
-brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction.
-		-- S.J. Gould
-%
-We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical
-problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
-%
-We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away.  The center
-of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away.  You could drive that in a week,
-but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
-		-- Andy Rooney
-%
-Weinberg, as a young grocery clerk, advised the grocery manager to get
-rid of rutabagas which nobody every bought.  He did so. "Well, kid, that
-was a great idea," said the manager. Then he paused and asked the killer
-question, "NOW what's the least popular vegetable?"
-
-Law: Once you eliminate your #1 problem, #2 gets a promotion.
-	-- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting"
-%
-Wernher von Braun settled for a V-2 when he coulda had a V-8.
-%
-"What I've done, of course, is total garbage."
-		-- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
-%
-What is algebra, exactly?  Is it one of those three-cornered things?
-		-- J.M. Barrie
-%
-What is mind?  No matter.  What is matter?  Never mind.
-		-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
-%
-What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
-		-- William Blake
-%
-What is research but a blind date with knowledge?
-		-- Will Harvey
-%
-What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
-which is the exact opposite.
-		-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928
-%
-What the deuce is it to me?  You say that we go around the sun.  If we went
-around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work.
-		-- Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet"
-%
-What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying.
-		-- Nikita Khruschev
-%
-What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
-%
-When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute.
-But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute -- and it's longer than any
-hour.  That's relativity.
-		-- Albert Einstein
-%
-When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, the telephone people interrupted
-service for one minute in his honor.  They've been honoring him intermittently
-ever since, I believe.
-		-- The Grab Bag
-%
-When some people discover the truth, they just can't understand why
-everybody isn't eager to hear it.
-%
-When speculation has done its worst, two plus two still equals four.
-		-- S. Johnson
-%
-"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical."
-		-- Jon Carroll
-%
-When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
-stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
-from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were
-set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as
-bodies of a lower grade ...
-		-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
-%
-When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
-plane will fly.
-		-- Donald Douglas
-%
-When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation
-of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand, so that you can
-proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the goal.
-		-- Amrom Katz
-%
-When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
-asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
-know the answer either.
-		-- Edgar R. Fiedler
-%
-Where are the calculations that go with a calculated risk?
-%
-WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
-	Oh, dear, where can the matter be
-	When it's converted to energy?
-	There is a slight loss of parity.
-	Johnny's so long at the fair.
-%
-Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
-examine the laws of heat.
-		-- Christopher Morley
-%
-	While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to
-his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?"
-	"Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant.  "What do you
-mean?"
-	The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of
-`Why the sea is salt' many times, but I never thought it important until just
-a moment ago.  It's something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and
-salt was rare and expensive.  A miller received from a wizard a wonderful
-machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long.  At first the miller
-thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages
-had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding
-more salt.  The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his
-acres.  At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and
-be rid of it.  But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine
-were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that's
-why the sea is salt."
-	"I don't get you," said the assistant.
-		-- Guy Endore, "Men of Iron"
-%
-White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship.
-%
-Why do mathematicians insist on using words that already have another
-meaning?  "It is the complex case that is easier to deal with."  "If it
-doesn't happen at a corner, but at an edge, it nonetheless happens at a
-corner."
-%
-Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle?
-		-- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program
-%
-With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
-build a nuclear balm?
-%
-With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
-miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
-still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
-such thing as progress.
-		-- Ransom K. Ferm
-%
-Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
-%
-Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
-%
-Xerox never comes up with anything original.
-%
-Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some
-rays and became a tangent ?
-%
-"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."
-%
-	"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his
-mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
-	"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said.  "You should either
-bury it or else throw it into the brook."
-	"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno.  "How ever would you
-do a garden without one?  We make each bed three mouses and a half
-long, and two mouses wide."
-	I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me
-how it was used...
-		-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
-%
-	"Yo, Mike!"
-	"Yeah, Gabe?"
-	"We got a problem down on Earth.  In Utah."
-	"I thought you fixed that last century!"
-	"No, no, not that.  Someone's found a security problem in the physics
-program.  They're getting energy out of nowhere."
-	"Blessit!  Lemme look...  <tappity clickity tappity>  Hey, it's
-there all right!  OK, just a sec...  <tappity clickity tap... save... compile>
-There, that ought to patch it.  Dist it out, wouldja?"
-		-- Cold Fusion, 1989
-%
-You are a taxi driver.  Your cab is yellow and black, and has been in
-use for only seven years.  One of its windshield wipers is broken, and
-the carburetor needs adjusting.  The tank holds 20 gallons, but at the
-moment is only three-quarters full.  How old is the taxi driver?"
-%
-You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat.
-		-- The First Law Of Thermodynamics
-
-What ever you want is going to cost a little more than it is worth.
-		-- The Second Law Of Thermodynamics
-
-You can not win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing.
-		-- The Third Law Of Thermodynamics
-%
-You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
-decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
-over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
-		-- F. Allen
-%
-You can't cheat the phone company.
-%
-You cannot have a science without measurement.
-		-- R. W. Hamming
-%
-You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
-%
-You mean you didn't *know* she was off making lots of little phone companies?
-%
-You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
-about 10^12 to 1.
-		-- Ernest Rutherford
-%
-You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
-contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses.
-Really, that's what scientists believe.  In fact many scientists actually
-use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer.  If you visit a
-scientist's house on a sultry August day, you'll find a cheerful fire
-roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how
-cool he is and drinking heavily.
-		-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
-%
-You will never amount to much.
-		-- Munich Schoolmaster, to Albert Einstein, age 10
-%