catoptric tristesse n. The sadness that you'll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad or if at all that although we reflect on each other with the sharpness of a mirror, the true picture of how were coming off somehow reaches us softened and distorted, as if each mirror was preoccupied with twisting around, desperately trying to look itself in the eye. ~ Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

EPIGRAMS IN PROGRAMMING 84. Motto for a research laboratory: What we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

The Fundamental Truths (1) It Has To Work. (2) No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light. (2a) (corollary). No matter how hard you try, you can't make a baby in much less than 9 months. Trying to speed this up *might* make it slower, but it won't make it happen any quicker.

Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. ~ Alfred Korzybski

[... in the words of Heraclitus,] "the prince of lies." ~ Heraclitus, Fragments

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum. -- Arthur C. Clarke

Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon." -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. -- Chuang-tzu

EPIGRAMS IN PROGRAMMING 74. Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to see it as a soap bubble?

"What do you throw a Pink who's drowning in quicksand?" "His wife and child." ~ Boxholder

The idea of humanity becomes more and more of a power in the civilized world, and, owing to the expansion and increasing speed of means of communication, and also owing to the influence, still more material than moral, of civilization upon barbarous peoples, this idea of humanity begins to take hold even of the minds of uncivilized nations. This idea is the invisible power of our century, with which the present powers the States must reckon. They cannot submit to it of their own free will because such submission on their part would be equivalent to suicide, since the triumph of humanity can be realized only through the destruction of the States. But the States can no longer deny this idea nor openly rebel against it, for having now grown too strong, it may finally destroy them. In the face of this fainful alternative there remains only one way out: and that is hypocrisy. The States pay their outward respects to this idea of humanity; they speak and apparently act only in the name of it, but they violate it every day. This, however, should not be held against the States. They cannot act otherwise, their position having become such that they can hold their own only by lying. Diplomacy has no other mission. Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war upon another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that right and justice are on its side, and it endeavors to prove that it is actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with generous and peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until the mounting iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. At the same time it vows that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any increase in territory, it will put and end to this war as soon as justice is reestablished. And its antagonist answers with a similar manifesto, in which naturally right, justice, humanity, and all the generous sentiments are to be found respectively on its side. Those mutually opposed manifestos are written with the same eloquence, they breathe the same virtuous indignation, and one is just as sincere as the other; that is to say both of them are equally brazen in their lies, and it is only fools who are deceived by them. Sensible persons, all those who have had some political experience, do not even take the trouble of reading such manifestos. On the contrary, they seek ways to uncover the interests driving both adversaries into this war, and to weigh the respective power of each of them in order to guess the outcome of the struggle. Which only goes to prove that moral issues are not at stake in such wars. -- Mikhail Bakunin

An often-repeated assertion in the body of film criticism I have written is the assertion that movies do not just mirror the culture of any given time; they also create it. ~ bell hooks

If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone. ~ Alfred Korzybski

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

A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for its species, managed to trap them in a corner. The children cowered, terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother! Save us! Save us! We're scared, Mother!" Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them, and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman proud. The startled cat fled in fear for its life. As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother, you saved us!" and "Yay! You scared the cat away!" she turned to them purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second language?"

[singing] Oh, you never see a vampire with a full grown beard But a vampire can't see his reflection So a lack of facial hair is unbelievably weird 'Cause you'd think shaving would be out of the question.

The proof-of-work chain is the solution to the synchronisation problem, and to knowing what the globally shared view is without having to trust anyone. -- Satoshi Nakamoto; Nov 9, 2008

Procrastination means never having to say you're sorry.

Being happy is more important than anything else. -- Jenny Holzer

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