Orithena A temple founded in ancient times by Adrakhones on the Isle of Ecba, later populated by physiologers who migrated there from all over the ancient world. Destroyed by a volcanic eruption in-2621, excavated, beginning in 3000, by avout who founded a new math around the perimeter of the dig. ~ From the glossary of 'Anathem' by Neal Stephenson

Never try to outstubborn a cat. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep". Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference: "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling." Obvious, isn't it? Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed individuals and then grow.... Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think not. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

He who lives without folly is less wise than he believes.

Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.

Portfolio: 1. a spreadsheet of debt owed to failing businesses; 2. a collection of invalid patents not yet invalidated by the examiners; 3. Atari’s entry into the PDA market

Be with us again next Saturday at 10 p.m. for "High Fidelity," designed to help music lovers increase their reproduction.

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance. -- Ogden Nash

I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Michael Foucault's biopolitics is a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open field. ~ Donna J. Haraway

La Biblia, que es un libro muy interesante y a veces muy profundo cuando se lo considera como una de las ms antiguas manifestaciones de la sabidura y de la fantasa humanas que han llegado hasta nosotros, expresa esta verdad de una manera muy ingenua en su mito del pecado original. Jehov, que de todos los buenos dioses que han sido adorados por los hombres es ciertamente el ms envidioso, el ms vanidoso, el ms feroz, el ms injusto, el ms sanguinario, el ms dspota y el ms enemigo de la dignidad y de la libertad humanas, que cre a Adn y a Eva por no s qu capricho (sin duda para engaar su hasto que deba de ser terrible en su eternamente egosta soledad, para procurarse nuevos esclavos), haba puesto generosamente a su disposicin toda la Tierra, con todos sus frutos y todos los animales, y no haba puesto a ese goce completo ms que un lmite. Les haba prohibido expresamente que tocaran los frutos del rbol de la ciencia. Quera que el hombre, privado de toda conciencia de s mismo, permaneciese un eterno animal, siempre de cuatro patas ante el Dios eterno, su creador su amo. Pero he aqu que llega Satans, el eterno rebelde, el primer librepensador y el emancipador de los mundos. Avergenza al hombre de su ignorancia de su obediencia animales; lo emancipa e imprime sobre su frente el sello de la libertad y de la humanidad, impulsndolo a desobedecer y a comer del fruto de la ciencia. Se sabe lo dems. El buen Dios, cuya ciencia innata constituye una de las facultades divinas, habra debido advertir lo que sucedera; sin embargo, se enfureci terrible y ridculamente: maldijo a Satans, al hombre y al mundo creados por l, hirindose, por decirlo as, en su propia creacin, como hacen los nios cuando se encolerizan; y no contento con alcanzar a nuestros antepasados en el presente, los maldijo en todas las generaciones del porvenir, inocentes del crimen cometido por aquellos. (...) Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, God and the State

In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. -- Satoshi Nakamoto; Feb 14, 2010

silience n. The kind of unnoticed excellence that carries on around you every day, unremarkable the hidden talents of friends and coworkers,the fleeting solos of subway buskers,the slapdash eloquence of anonymous users,the unseen portfolios of aspiring artists which would be renowned as masterpieces if only they'd been appraised by the cartel of popular taste, who assume that brilliance is a rare and precious quality, accidentally overlooking buried jewels that may not be flawless but are still somehow perfect. ~ Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition: 88. When the boss comes to dinner, it never hurts to have the wife wear something

We live well in the houses, well enough, but we are ruled utterly by fear. There was a time we sailed in ships between the stars. Now, we dare not go 100 miles from home. We keep a little knowledge and do nothing with it, but once we used that knowledge to weave the pattern of life like a tapestry across night and chaos. We enlarged the chances of life. Ursula K. Le Guin

If the ends don't justify the means, what does? -- Saul Alinsky

Wedding, n: A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing and nothing undertakes to become supportable. -- Ambrose Bierce

An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border. Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *___not* a murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."

The Great Movie Posters: HOODLUMS FROM ANOTHER WORLD ON A RAY-GUN RAMPAGE! -- Teenagers from Outher Space (1959) Which will be Her Mate... MAN OR BEAST? Meet Velda -- the Kind of Woman -- Man or Gorilla would kill... to Keep. -- Untamed Mistress (1960) NOW AN ALL-MIGHTY ALL-NEW MOTION PICTURE BRINGS THEM TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME... HISTORY'S MOST GIGANTIC MONSTERS IN COMBAT ATOP MOUNT FUJI! -- King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)

After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out. It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life more advanced than the lichen family. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"

After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or speaker of intuitive likes". (Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X the intuitiveness of a Mac interface.)