You exhale air at 15 m.p.h.

Each kiss is as the first. -- Miramanee, Kirk's wife, "The Paradise Syndrome", stardate 4842.6

A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State

"We're running out of adjectives to describe our situation. We had crisis, then we went into chaos, and now what do we call this?" said Nicaraguan economist Francisco Mayorga, who holds a doctorate from Yale. -- The Washington Post, February, 1988 The New Yorker's comment: At Harvard they'd call it a noun.

Amanda Grayson: After all these years among humans, you still haven't learned to smile. Spock: Humans smile with so little provocation. "Star Trek: The Original Series: Journey to Babel, Season 2"

With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life? ~ Adlai Stevenson

From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength. -- Cesar Chavez

Roland was a warrior, from the land of the midnight sun, With a Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done. The deal was made in Denmark, on a dark and stormy day, So he set out for Biafra, to join the bloody fray. Through sixty-six and seven, they fought the Congo war, With their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore. Days and nights they battled, the Bantu to their knees, They killed to earn their living, and to help out the Congolese. Roland the Thompson gunner... His comrades fought beside him, Van Owen and the rest, But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best. So the C.I.A decided, they wanted Roland dead, That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen, blew off Roland's head. Roland the headless Thompson gunner... Roland searched the continent, for the man who'd done him in. He found him in Mombasa, in a bar room drinking gin, Roland aimed his Thompson gun, he didn't say a word, But he blew Van Owen's body from there to Johannesburg. The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night, Now it's ten years later, but he stills keeps up the fight. In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Berkeley, Patty Hearst... heard the burst... of Roland's Thompson gun, and bought it. -- Warren Zevon, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"

Ethereum: a mechanism for making normally-free voluntary distributed computing schemes cost money

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms. ~ Aristotle

Startup: a small business with no plans to become profitable

FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #16 Relationships: First of all, a man does not call a relationship a relationship -- he refers to it as "that time when me and Suzie were doing it on a semi-regular basis". When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled "All Men Are Idiots". Then she will get on with her life. A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the breakup, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say, "I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I'll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you're a total floozy. But I want you to know that there's always a chance for us". This is known as the "I Hate You / I Love You" drunken phone call, that 99% if all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need; alas, these classes rarely prove effective.

Han Solo: Wonderful girl! Either I'm going to kill her or I'm beginning to like her.

Pittsburgh driver's test (9) Roads are salted in order to (a) kill grass. (b) melt snow. (c) help the economy. (d) prevent potholes. The correct answer is (c). Road salting employs thousands of persons directly, and millions more indirectly, for example, salt miners and rustproofers. Most important, salting reduces the life spans of cars, thus stimulating the car and steel industries.

Go climb a gravity well!

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. -- George Carlin

A young girl once committed suicide because her mother refused her a new bonnet. Coroner's verdict: "Death from excessive spunk." -- Sacramento Daily Union, September 13, 1860

The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest. -- Simone Weil

Reyna d’Assia: The Key to Immortal Consciousness 44. Transform your envy into admiration for the values of the other.

Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in daydreams about women. -- George Bernard Shaw