This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. -- Robert Heinlein

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. - G.K. Chesterton

When we survey the wretched conditions of man, under the monarchical and hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the principle and construction of Governments is necessary. What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is supported; and though by force and contrivance it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the Nation only, and not to any individual; and a Nation has at all times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest, disposition and happiness. the romantic and barbarous distinction of men into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers, cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon which Governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member of the Sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no personal subjection; and his obedience can be only to the laws. -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

I will not illegally download this movie.

I share your modest enthusiasm for Austens Mansfield Park. I didnt like the movie, though. Do you like any of the recent Jane movies? Oh, as movies, sure. Not as Austen. There is no way I can dislike Alan whatshisname with the voice like a cello. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wild Girls

UNIX Shell is the Best Fourth Generation Programming Language It is the UNIX shell that makes it possible to do applications in a small fraction of the code and time it takes in third generation languages. In the shell you process whole files at a time, instead of only a line at a time. And, a line of code in the UNIX shell is one or more programs, which do more than pages of instructions in a 3GL. Applications can be developed in hours and days, rather than months and years with traditional systems. Most of the other 4GLs available today look more like COBOL or RPG, the most tedious of the third generation lanaguages. "UNIX Relational Database Management: Application Development in the UNIX Environment" by Rod Manis, Evan Schaffer, and Robert Jorgensen. Prentice Hall Software Series. Brian Kerrighan, Advisor. 1988.

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set. ~ Adlai Stevenson

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work. -- Georgia O'Keeffe

I've built a better model than the one at Data General For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality; My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality. My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity, You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity; There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting; My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting. I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point: There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point, Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral I've built a better model than the one at Data General. -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance", by Gilbert & Sullivan)

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

'The Guppy' Whales have calves, Cats have kittens, Bears have cubs, Bats have bittens, Swans have cygnets, Seals have puppies, But guppies just have little guppies. -- Ogden Nash

We tried to close Ohio's borders and ran into a Constitutional problem. There's a provision in the Constitution that says you can't close your borders to interstate commerce, and garbage is a form of interstate commerce. -- Ohio Lt. Governor Paul Leonard

A Hen Brooding Kittens A friend informs us that he saw at the Novato ranch, Marin county, a few days since, a hen actually brooding and otherwise caring for three kittens! The gentleman upon whose premises this strange event is transpiring says the hen adopted the kittens when they were but a few days old, and that she has devoted them her undivided care for several weeks past. The young felines are now of respectable size, but they nevertheless follow the hen at her cluckings, and are regularly brooded at night beneath her wings. -- Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1861

Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"

We define an electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures. Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin. A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership. -- Satoshi Nakamoto; Oct 31, 2010

IT'S AN EXTRAORDINARY FEELING WHEN PART OF YOUR BODY ARE TOUCHED FOR THE FIRST TIME. I'M THINKING OF THE SENSATIONS FROM SEX AND SURGERY. -- Jenny Holzer

exulansis n. The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land. ~ Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

You ever see one of these? It's called a GPS, which stands for - well, who cares? Point is, this thing uses satellites to tell you where you are, which means that every man can have a five-hundred-dollar reason not to ask for directions.

Nietzsche thought he was the Antichrist or Dionysus, but that was after the syphilis crossed the blood-brain barrier.