Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| A circus foreman was making the rounds inspecting the big top when a scrawny little man entered the tent and walked up to him. "Are you the foreman around here?" he asked timidly. "I'd like to join your circus; I have what I think is a pretty good act." The foreman nodded assent, whereupon the little man hurried over to the main pole and rapidly climbed up to the very tip-top of the big top. Drawing a deep breath, he hurled himself off into the air and began flapping his arms furiously. Amazingly, rather than plummeting to his death the little man began to fly all around the poles, lines, trapezes and other obstacles, performing astounding feats of aerobatics which ended in a long power dive from the top of the tent, pulling up into a gentle feet-first landing beside the foreman, who had been nonchalantly watching the whole time. "Well," puffed the little man. "What do you think?" "That's all you do?" answered the foreman scornfully. "Bird imitations?" | |
| Ever get the feeling that the world's on tape and one of the reels is missing? -- Rich Little | |
| I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole ____BODY! -- from "Cerebus" #82 | |
| If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner, and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops, not just because you fear she might be crazy. If she tells her tale on camera, you might listen. Watching strangers on television , even responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged -- voyeurs collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community. Never have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little. -- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional". | |
| If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding- forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp of a student-poet to hang on to his every word I never saw. -- James Dickey | |
| My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked. -- Peter Stack, movie review His performance is so wooden you want to spray him with Liquid Pledge. -- John Stark, movie review | |
| One big pile is better than two little piles. -- Arlo Guthrie | |
| The Great Movie Posters: POWERFUL! SHOCKING! RAW! ROUGH! CHALLENGING! SEE A LITTLE GIRL MOLESTED! -- Never Take Candy from a Stranger (1963) She Sins in Mobile -- Marries in Houston -- Loses Her Baby in Dallas -- Leaves Her Husband in Tuscon -- MEETS HARRU IN SAN DIEGO!... FIRST -- HARLOW! THEN -- MONROE! NOW -- McCLANAHAN!!! -- The Rotten Apple (1963), Rue McClanahan *NOT FOR SISSIES! DON'T COME IF YOU'RE CHICKEN! A Horrifying Movie of Wierd Beauties and Shocking Monsters... 1001 WIERDEST SCENES EVER!! MOST SHOCKING THRILLER OF THE CENTURY! -- Teenage Psycho meets Bloody Mary (1964) (Alternate Title: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies) | |
| "Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet. The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily maim or kill innocent little children." "Oh, so you don't like it?" "Don't like it? I'm CRAZY for it." -- The Killing Joke | |
| Why you say you no bunny rabbit when you have little powder-puff tail? -- The Tasmanian Devil | |
| A little dog goes into a saloon in the Wild West, and beckons to the bartender. "Hey, bartender, gimme a whiskey." The bartender ignores him. "Hey bartender, gimme a whiskey!" Still ignored. "HEY BARMAN!! GIMME A WHISKEY!!" The bartender takes out his six-shooter and shoots the dog in the leg, and the dog runs out the saloon, howling in pain. Three years later, the wee dog appears again, wearing boots, jeans, chaps, a Stetson, gun belt, and guns. He ambles slowly into the saloon, goes up to the bar, leans over it, and says to the bartender, "I'm here t'git the man that shot muh paw." | |
| "If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet." -- Jay Leno | |
| When the fog came in on little cat feet last night, it left these little muddy paw prints on the hood of my car. | |
| Little hamster in running wheel had coronary; waiting for replacement to be Fedexed from Wyoming | |
| Big to little endian conversion error | |
| Fanout dropping voltage too much, try cutting some of those little traces | |
| Too many little pins on CPU confusing it, bend back and forth until 10-20% are neatly removed. Do _not_ leave metal bits visible! | |
| All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. -- Samuel Beckett | |
| Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain | |
| It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity" | |
| It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one day like any other day, only shorter. -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies" | |
| Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo. -- Rachel Sheeley, winner The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never see her little dog Pritzi again. -- Claudia Fields, runner-up It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk. -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the worst possible novel. | |
| So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots. -- Samuel Foote | |
| The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know. -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. | |
| "...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!" "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested. "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged Aged Man.'" "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself. "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!" "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered. "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention." --Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass" | |
| This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one. -- Arthur Clarke | |
| You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet" | |
| "What's this? Trix? Aunt! Trix? You? You're after the prize! What is it?" He picked up the box and studied the back. "A glow-in-the-dark squid! Have you got it out of there yet?" He tilted the box, angling the little colored balls of cereal so as to see the bottom, and nearly spilling them onto the table top. "Here it is!" He hauled out a little cream-colored, glitter-sprinkled squid, three-inches long and made out of rubbery plastic. -- James P. Blaylock, "The Last Coin" | |
| "Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?" "Good afternoon. I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please." "A--? Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I say they have a right to. But I think... I might... Let's have a look down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are! Look at that, isn't it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well, but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories, including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I got to do the fitting for that! Ha -- just my little joke. And there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun, charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there's the *special* presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two* charged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that -- don't worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat? Feel how light it is? Smooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and* beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's no recoil. Because it's shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun, beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That's not a line, she really has. Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for one-forty-nine." "I'll take the special." "Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice. Now, do--?" "And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is compatible?" "Aah... yes, And how does madam wish to pay?" She slapped her credit card on the counter. "Eventually." -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background" | |
| A Fortran compiler is the hobgoblin of little minis. | |
| A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS. -- Fred Brooks | |
| A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity. A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least. A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward appearances. If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the program. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" | |
| Behind every great computer sits a skinny little geek. | |
| Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little. | |
| Eudaemonic research proceeded with the casual mania peculiar to this part of the world. Nude sunbathing on the back deck was combined with phone calls to Advanced Kinetics in Costa Mesa, American Laser Systems in Goleta, Automation Industries in Danbury, Connecticut, Arenberg Ultrasonics in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and Hewlett Packard in Sunnyvale, California, where Norman Packard's cousin, David, presided as chairman of the board. The trick was to make these calls at noon, in the hope that out-to-lunch executives would return them at their own expense. Eudaemonic Enterprises, for all they knew, might be a fast-growing computer company branching out of the Silicon Valley. Sniffing the possibility of high-volume sales, these executives little suspected that they were talking on the other end of the line to a naked physicist crazed over roulette. -- Thomas Bass, "The Eudaemonic Pie" | |
| Even bytes get lonely for a little bit. | |
| Everybody needs a little love sometime; stop hacking and fall in love! | |
| Little known fact about Middle Earth: The Hobbits had a very sophisticated computer network! It was a Tolkien Ring... | |
| My little brother got this fortune: nohup rm -fr /& So he did... | |
| Okay, Okay -- I admit it. You didn't change that program that worked just a little while ago; I inserted some random characters into the executable. Please forgive me. You can recover the file by typing in the code over again, since I also removed the source. | |
| One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. -- Joe Martin | |
| OS/2 Skyways: The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling about. The announcer says that their flight has just departed, wishes them a good flight, though there are no planes on the runway. Airline personnel walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight systems. Maybe until mid-1995. Maybe longer. | |
| "Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'" "TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make any difference if it takes a while to fix it." -- Ken Olson, in Digital News, 1988 | |
| Shopping at this grody little computer store at the Galleria for a totally awwwesome Apple. Fer suuure. I mean Apples are nice you know? But, you know, there is this cute guy who works there and HE says that VAX's are cooler! I mean I don't really know, you know? He says that he has this totally tubular VAX at home and it's stuffed with memory-to-the-max! Right, yeah. And he wants to take me home to show it to me. Oh My God! I'm suuure. Gag me with a Prime! | |
| So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh? In reality all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have tomorrow, why, it already happened. You see, it's just a little universal recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of the instant. So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of eternity, the anti-time. So go to sleep... | |
| Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's very little call for those up there. -- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone | |
| This "brain-damaged" epithet is getting sorely overworked. When we can speak of someone or something being flawed, impaired, marred, spoiled; batty, bedlamite, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, demented, deranged, loco, lunatic, mad, maniac, mindless, non compos mentis, nuts, Reaganite, screwy, teched, unbalanced, unsound, witless, wrong; senseless, spastic, spasmodic, convulsive; doped, spaced-out, stoned, zonked; {beef, beetle,block,dung,thick}headed, dense, doltish, dull, duncical, numskulled, pinhead; asinine, fatuous, foolish, silly, simple; brute, lumbering, oafish; half-assed, incompetent; backward, retarded, imbecilic, moronic; when we have a whole precisely nuanced vocabulary of intellectual abuse to draw upon, individually and in combination, isn't it a little <fill in the blank> to be limited to a single, now quite trite, adjective? | |
| Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (10) Sorry, but that's too useful. (9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent! (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell #pragma is for. (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too hard to write. (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar. (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here? (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!" (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this sucker. (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth. (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'. | |
| "Well," said Programmer, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows." "What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said End-user. "For I am an End-user of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me." "It means the Thing to Do." "As long as it means that, I don't mind," said End-user humbly. [with apologies to A.A. Milne] | |
| You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike. | |
| You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different. | |
| A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson | |
| A little experience often upsets a lot of theory. | |
| A little inaccuracy saves a world of explanation. -- C.E. Ayres | |
| A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. -- H.H. Munro, "Saki" | |
| Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit. [Add little to little and there will be a big pile.] -- Ovid | |
| Any road followed to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain. -- Bene Gesserit proverb, "Dune" | |
| To err is human, but when the eraser wears out before the pencil, you're overdoing it a little. | |
| A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS. - Fred Brooks, Jr. | |
| The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions. This simple but basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that needs explanation. -- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161 | |
| Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images. -- Jean Cocteau | |
| I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience. - Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87 | |
| Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions. - Thomas Jefferson | |
| "I'm a mean green mother from outer space" -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors | |
| Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. - Mark Twain | |
| However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." - Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981 | |
| "Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined, hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension." -- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2 | |
| Two things are certain about science. It does not stand still for long, and it is never boring. Oh, among some poor souls, including even intellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequently misperceived. Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated from on high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchanging precepts defended with authoritarian vigor. Others view it as nothing but a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process -- the scientific method: hidebound, linear, and left brained. These people are the victims of their own stereotypes. They are destined to view the world of science with a set of blinders. They know nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, and tendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone the creativity, passion, and joy of discovery. And they are likely to know little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveries that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the natural world. -- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in 1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. | |
| "Ever free-climbed a thousand foot vertical cliff with 60 pounds of gear strapped to your butt?" "No." "'Course you haven't, you fruit-loop little geek." -- The Mountain Man, one of Dana Carvey's SNL characters [ditto] | |
| "In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die unless he received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that their client has not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that "If I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago." -- Dennis Miller, SNL News | |
| "And we heard him exclaim As he started to roam: `I'm a hologram, kids, please don't try this at home!'" -- Bob Violence -- Howie Chaykin's little animated 3-dimensional darling, Bob Violence | |
| "I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people there are hungry for information about the West. He was asked about many things, but I will give you two examples that are very revealing about life in the Soviet Union. The first question he was asked was if we had exploding television sets. You see, they have a problem with the picture tubes on color television sets, and many are exploding. They assumed we must be having problems with them too. The other question he was asked often was why the CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a few years ago; their propaganda is very effective. -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100 | |
| "The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?* It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988) | |
| "Little else matters than to write good code." -- Karl Lehenbauer | |
| Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked. Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an effect on our characters, lives, or destinies? What force or influence, what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human beings and affect our development or fate? No amount of scientific-sounding jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . . Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have generously done such testing for them. There have been dozens of well-designed tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . . I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by the firelight, afraid of the night. -- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury News, May 8, 1988 | |
| "Are those cocktail-waitress fingernail marks?" I asked Colletti as he showed us these scratches on his chest. "No, those are on my back," Colletti answered. "This is where a case of cocktail shrimp fell on me. I told her to slow down a little, but you know cocktail waitresses, they seem to have a mind of their own." -- The Incredibly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs National Lampoon, October 1982 | |
| "It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side." -- Frank Zappa | |
| "Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche | |
| "If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet." -- Comedian Jay Leno | |
| "I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!" -- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple" | |
| "If you can't debate me, then there is no way in hell you'll out-insult me." -- Scott Legrand (Scott.Legrand@hogbbs.Fidonet.Org) "You may be wrong here, little one." -- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM) | |
| THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other reader. Fun With Usenet postings are no exception. Since there are some who might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these postings. One. I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses. For instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too mundane to bother with. "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become "I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it. Two. If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place". Imagine the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts. If I can set up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing, I don't put ellipses in. And by the way, I love using this mechanism for turning things around. If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you don't think it's wonderful. ... -- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP) | |
| "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 | |
| If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola would be a Fortune-500 company. If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you'd be able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95. If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still be using autocoder and running compile decks. -- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective | |
| We'll be more than happy to do so once Jim shows the slightest sign of interest in fixing his proposal to deal with the technical arguments that have *already* been made. Most engineers have learned there is little to be gained in fine-tuning the valve timing on a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine when the pistons and crankshaft are missing... -- Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu on NANOG | |
| I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to run their own business. I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em. -- The Best of Will Rogers | |
| I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing... -- Thomas Jefferson | |
| If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word "National." -- George Will | |
| It seems a little silly now, but this country was founded as a protest against taxation. | |
| Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out the right thing to do. Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing, but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the right thing to do and what is the right way to do it. That is the problem. But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President. This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people, and it reflects their desires, they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a thing that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously just by a few words or any particular -- say, a little this and that, or even a panacea so alleged. -- D.D. Eisenhower, in response to: "Has the government been lacking in courage and boldness in facing up to the recession?" | |
| Nobody takes a bribe. Of course at Christmas if you happen to hold out your hat and somebody happens to put a little something in it, well, that's different. -- New York City Police Commissioner (Ret.) William P. O'Brien, instructions to the force. | |
| Pilfering Treasury property is paticularly dangerous: big thieves are ruthless in punishing little thieves. -- Diogenes | |
| The General disliked trying to explain the highly technical inner workings of the U.S. Air Force. "$7,662 for a ten cup coffee maker, General?" the Senator asked. In his head he ran through his standard explanations. "It's not so," he thought. "It's a deterrent." Soon he came up with, "It's computerized, Senator. Tiny computer chips make coffee that's smooth and full-bodied. Try a cup." The Senator did. "Pfffttt! Tastes like jet fuel!" "It's not so," the General thought. "It's a deterrent." Then he remembered something. "We bought a lot of untested computer chips," the General answered. "They got into everything. Just a little mix-up. Nothing serious." Then he remembered something else. It was at the site of the mysterious B-1 crash. A strange smell in the fuel lines. It smelled like coffee. Smooth and full bodied... -- Another Episode of General's Hospital | |
| The Government just announced today the creation of the Neutron Bomb II. Similar to the Neutron Bomb, the Neutron Bomb II not only kills people and leaves buildings standing, but also does a little light housekeeping. | |
| "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 | |
| We the unwilling, led by the ungrateful, are doing the impossible. We've done so much, for so long, with so little, that we are now qualified to do something with nothing. | |
| Consultant, n.: [From con "to defraud, dupe, swindle," or, possibly, French con (vulgar) "a person of little merit" + sult elliptical form of "insult."] A tipster disguised as an oracle, especially one who has learned to decamp at high speed in spite of a large briefcase and heavy wallet. | |
| flowchart, n. & v.: [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."] 1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate (a problem) with esoteric cartoons. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
| Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee: (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck"). (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!" (3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly proportional to the cost of hitting it. For instance, a Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy. (4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you in the head and knock you silly. | |
| MAFIA, n: [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay. Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and entire nodal aggravations. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
| Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead. | |
| QOTD: "Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone." | |
| QOTD: All I want is a little more than I'll ever get. | |
| The rules: (1) Thou shalt not worship other computer systems. (2) Thou shalt not impersonate Liberace or eat watermelon while sitting at the console keyboard. (3) Thou shalt not slap users on the face, nor staple their silly little card decks together. (4) Thou shalt not get physically involved with the computer system, especially if you're already married. (5) Thou shalt not use magnetic tapes as frisbees, nor use a disk pack as a stool to reach another disk pack. (6) Thou shalt not stare at the blinking lights for more than one eight hour shift. (7) Thou shalt not tell users that you accidentally destroyed their files/backup just to see the look on their little faces. (8) Thou shalt not enjoy cancelling a job. (9) Thou shalt not display firearms in the computer room. (10) Thou shalt not push buttons "just to see what happens". | |
| Lessness: A philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with diminishing expectations of material wealth: "I've given up wanting to make a killing or be a bigshot. I just want to find happiness and maybe open up a little roadside cafe in Idaho." -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
| Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images. -- Jean Cocteau | |
| Three o'clock in the afternoon is always just a little too late or a little too early for anything you want to do. -- Jean-Paul Sartre | |
| I am tired of fighting...The old men are all dead...The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are...Hear me, my Chiefs!! I am tired: my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more. Chief Joseph, (Nez Perce) | |
| Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike. Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas tree. The piano is missing. You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog. | |
| [Norm tries to prove that he is not Anton Kreitzer.] Norm: Afternoon, everybody! All: Anton! -- Cheers, The Two Faces of Norm Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson? Norm: A flashing sign in my gut that says, ``Insert beer here.'' -- Cheers, Call Me, Irresponsible Sam: What can I get you, Norm? Norm: [scratching his beard] Got any flea powder? Ah, just kidding. Gimme a beer; I think I'll just drown the little suckers. -- Cheers, Two Girls for Every Boyd | |
| Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days. -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee" | |
| The best audience is intelligent, well-educated and a little drunk. -- Maurice Baring | |
| Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, what do you say to a cold one? Norm: See you later, Vera, I'll be at Cheers. -- Cheers, Norm's Last Hurrah Sam: Well, look at you. You look like the cat that swallowed the canary. Norm: And I need a beer to wash him down. -- Cheers, Norm's Last Hurrah Woody: Would you like a beer, Mr. Peterson? Norm: No, I'd like a dead cat in a glass. -- Cheers, Little Carla, Happy at Last, Part 2 | |
| Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson? Norm: Let's talk about what's going *in* Mr. Peterson. A beer, Woody. -- Cheers, Paint Your Office Sam: How's life treating you? Norm: It's not, Sammy, but that doesn't mean you can't. -- Cheers, A Kiss is Still a Kiss Woody: Can I pour you a draft, Mr. Peterson? Norm: A little early, isn't it Woody? Woody: For a beer? Norm: No, for stupid questions. -- Cheers, Let Sleeping Drakes Lie | |
| Knucklehead: "Knock, knock" Pee Wee: "Who's there?" Knucklehead: "Little ol' lady." Pee Wee: "Liddle ol' lady who?" Knucklehead: "I didn't know you could yodel" | |
| Q: Minnesotans ask, "Why aren't there more pharmacists from Alabama?" A: Easy. It's because they can't figure out how to get the little bottles into the typewriter. | |
| Q: What do little WASPs want to be when they grow up? A: The very best person they can possibly be. | |
| A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems best. That's dangerous. Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the schools as 'standards'? Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent, elitist. ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real professionals. Those texts are called 'reading material.' They are the academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms, and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating resource centers along the roads. -- The Underground Grammarian | |
| If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more! | |
| If little else, the brain is an educational toy. -- Tom Robbins | |
| In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi, Junior, what are you up to?" "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit. "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible! No one will publish such rubbish!" "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a wolf. "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?" "I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves." "Are you crazy? Where's your academic honesty?" "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody remnants of the wolf and the fox. The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts. | |
| Never have so many understood so little about so much. -- James Burke | |
| Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way. "The cost may be upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be nearly 10m#. "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris. "Rarely does the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a periphrasis for November, and another for lingers. "The answer is in the negative" is a periphrasis for No. "Was made the recipient of" is a periphrasis for Was presented with. The periphrasis style is hardly possible on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis, case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack, nature, reference, regard, respect". The existence of abstract nouns is a proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are by many held to be inseparable. These good people feel that there is an almost indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory developments." -- Fowler's English Usage | |
| Universities are places of knowledge. The freshman each bring a little in with them, and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates. | |
| A prominent broadcaster, on a big-game safari in Africa, was taken to a watering hole where the life of the jungle could be observed. As he looked down from his tree platform and described the scene into his tape recorder, he saw two gnus grazing peacefully. So preoccupied were they that they failed to observe the approach of a pride of lions led by two magnificent specimens, obviously the leaders. The lions charged, killed the gnus, and dragged them into the bushes where their feasting could not be seen. A little while later the two kings of the jungle emerged and the radioman recorded on his tape: "Well, that's the end of the gnus and here, once again, are the head lions." | |
| FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the .... | |
| The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal other people's ideas and phrases ... is also invaluable. -- Nicolas Tomalin, "Stop the Press, I Want to Get On" | |
| 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" | |
| Iowans ask why Minnesotans don't drink more Kool-Aid. That's because they can't figure out how to get two quarts of water into one of those little paper envelopes. | |
| It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case. -- Sydney J. Harris | |
| Moishe Margolies, who weighed all of 105 pounds and stood an even five feet in his socks, was taking his first airplane trip. He took a seat next to a hulking bruiser of a man who happened to be the heavyweight champion of the world. Little Moishe was uneasy enough before he even entered the plane, but now the roar of the engines and the great height absolutely terrified him. So frightened did he become that his stomach turned over and he threw up all over the muscular giant siting beside him. Fortunately, at least for Moishe, the man was sound asleep. But now the little man had another problem. How in the world would he ever explain the situation to the burly brute when he awakened? The sudden voice of the stewardess on the plane's intercom, finally woke the bruiser, and Moishe, his heart in his mouth, rose to the occasion. "Feeling better now?" he asked solicitously. | |
| On the night before her family moved from Kansas to California, the little girl knelt by her bed to say her prayers. "God bless Mommy and Daddy and Keith and Kim," she said. As she began to get up, she quickly added, "Oh, and God, this is goodbye. We're moving to Hollywood." | |
| The trouble is, there is an endless supply of White Men, but there has always been a limited number of Human Beings. -- Little Big Man | |
| There once was this swami who lived above a delicatessan. Seems one day he decided to stop in downstairs for some fresh liver. Well, the owner of the deli was a bit of a cheap-skate, and decided to pick up a little extra change at his customer's expense. Turning quietly to the counterman, he whispered, "Weigh down upon the swami's liver!" | |
| Yes, I've now got this nice little apartment in New York, one of those L-shaped ones. Unfortunately, it's a lower case l. -- Rita Rudner | |
| "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 | |
| 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!" | |
| Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own. -- Don Vonada | |
| 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" | |
| 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. | |
| Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____awful*. | |
| Love makes the world go 'round, with a little help from intrinsic angular momentum. | |
| "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, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" 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" | |
| 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..." | |
| 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 | |
| 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 difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so little to recommend it. -- Allan Sherman | |
| 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 | |
| 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 | |
| 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" | |
| Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle? -- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program | |
| 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 mean you didn't *know* she was off making lots of little phone companies? | |
| "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?" asked the father of his little son. "Diet." | |
| How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by a waiter at a nice party? Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another cheese!" and so on. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" | |
| Pete: Waiter, this meat is bad. Waiter: Who told you? Pete: A little swallow. | |
| So much food; so little time! | |
| The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12." The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets." -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" | |
| You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car. -- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82 | |
| A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and B is for biff, which reads all your mail. C is for cc, as hackers recall, while D is for dd, the command that does all. E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees. G is for grep, a clever detective, while H is for halt, which may seem defective. I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and J is for join, which nobody uses. K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while L is for lex, which is missing from DOS. M is for more, from which less was begot, and N is for nice, which it really is not. O is for od, which prints out things nice, while P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice. Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table. S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while T is for true, which does very little. U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and V is for vi, which is hard to abort. W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while X is, well, X, of dubious fame. Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and Z is for zcat, which handles compression. -- THE ABC'S OF UNIX | |
| A little word of doubtful number, A foe to rest and peaceful slumber. If you add an "s" to this, Great is the metamorphosis. Plural is plural now no more, And sweet what bitter was before. What am I? | |
| Against Idleness and Mischief How doth the little busy bee How skillfully she builds her cell! Improve each shining hour, How neat she spreads the wax! And gather honey all the day And labours hard to store it well From every opening flower! With the sweet food she makes. In works of labour or of skill In books, or work, or healthful play, I would be busy too; Let my first years be passed, For Satan finds some mischief still That I may give for every day For idle hands to do. Some good account at last. -- Isaac Watts, 1674-1748 | |
| As some day it may happen that a victim must be found I've got a little list -- I've got a little list Of society offenders who might well be underground And who never would be missed -- who never would be missed. -- Koko, "The Mikado" | |
| Big M, Little M, many mumbling mice Are making midnight music in the moonlight, Mighty nice! | |
| Black shiny mollies and bright colored guppies, Shy little angels as gentle as puppies, Swimming and diving with scarcely a swish, They were just some of my tropical fish. Then I got mantas that sting in the water, Deadly piranhas that itch for a slaughter, Savage male betas that bite with a squish, Now I have many less tropical fish. If you think that Fish are peaceful That's an empty wish. Just dump them together And leave them alone, And soon you will have -- no fish. -- To My Favorite Things | |
| But has any little atom, While a-sittin' and a-splittin', Ever stopped to think or CARE That E = m c**2 ? | |
| Come fill the cup and in the fire of spring Your winter garment of repentence fling. The bird of time has but a little way To flutter -- and the bird is on the wing. -- Omar Khayyam | |
| Ever since I was a young boy, I've hacked the ARPA net, From Berkeley down to Rutgers, He's on my favorite terminal, Any access I could get, He cats C right into foo, But ain't seen nothing like him, His disciples lead him in, On any campus yet, And he just breaks the root, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Always has full SYS-PRIV's, Sure sends a mean packet. Never uses lint, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Sure sends a mean packet. He's a UNIX wizard, There has to be a twist. The UNIX wizard's got Ain't got no distractions, Unlimited space on disk. Can't hear no whistles or bells, How do you think he does it? Can't see no message flashing, I don't know. Types by sense of smell, What makes him so good? Those crazy little programs, The proper bit flags set, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Sure sends a mean packet. -- UNIX Wizard | |
| Everything's great in this good old world; (This is the stuff they can always use.) God's in his heaven, the hill's dew-pearled; (This will provide for baby's shoes.) Hunger and War do not mean a thing; Everything's rosy where'er we roam; Hark, how the little birds gaily sing! (This is what fetches the bacon home.) -- Dorothy Parker, "The Far Sighted Muse" | |
| Gibson's Springtime Song (to the tune of "Deck the Halls"): 'Tis the season to chase mousies (Fa la la la la, la la la la) Snatch them from their little housies (...) First we chase them 'round the field (...) Then we have them for a meal (...) Toss them here and catch them there (...) See them flying through the air (...) Watch them fly and hear them squeal (...) Falling mice have great appeal (...) See the hunter stretched before us (...) He's chased the mice in field and forest (...) Watch him clean his long white whiskers (...) Of the blood of little critters (...) | |
| Have you seen the old man in the closed down market, Kicking up the papers in his worn out shoes? In his eyes you see no pride, hands hang loosely at his side Yesterdays papers, telling yesterdays news. How can you tell me you're lonely, And say for you the sun don't shine? Let me take you by the hand Lead you through the streets of London I'll show you something to make you change your mind... Have you seen the old man outside the sea-man's mission Memories fading like the metal ribbons that he wears. In our winter city the rain cries a little pity For one more forgotten hero and a world that doesn't care... | |
| Hey! now! Come hoy now! Whither do you wander? Up, down, near or far, here, there or yonder? Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail and Bumpkin, White-socks my little lad, and old Fatty Lumpkin! -- J. R. R. Tolkien | |
| Hey, diddle, diddle the overflow pdl To get a little more stack; If that's not enough then you lose it all And have to pop all the way back. | |
| Hop along my little friends, up the Withywindle! Tom's going on ahead candles for to kindle. Down west sinks the Sun; soon you will be groping. When the night-shadows fall, then the door will open, Out of the winfow-panes light will twinkle yellow. Fear no alder black! Heed no hoary willow! Fear neither root nor bough! Tom goes on before you. Hey now! merry dol! We'll be waiting for you! -- J. R. R. Tolkien | |
| How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws! -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" | |
| I can see him a'comin' With his big boots on, With his big thumb out, He wants to get me. He wants to hurt me. He wants to bring me down. But some time later, When I feel a little straighter, I'll come across a stranger Who'll remind me of the danger, And then.... I'll run him over. Pretty smart on my part! To find my way... In the dark! -- Phil Ochs | |
| I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-- Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller, like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. -- R.L. Stevenson | |
| I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda S-O-D-A soda I saw the little runt sitting there on a log I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda Well I've been around but I ain't never seen A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda -- Weird Al Yankovic, "The Star Wars Song," to the tune of "Lola" by the Kinks | |
| I sent a letter to the fish, I said it very loud and clear, I told them, "This is what I wish." I went and shouted in his ear. The little fishes of the sea, But he was very stiff and proud, They sent an answer back to me. He said "You needn't shout so loud." The little fishes' answer was And he was very proud and stiff, "We cannot do it, sir, because..." He said "I'll go and wake them if..." I sent a letter back to say I took a kettle from the shelf, It would be better to obey. I went to wake them up myself. But someone came to me and said But when I found the door was locked "The little fishes are in bed." I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked, I said to him, and I said it plain And when I found the door was shut, "Then you must wake them up again." I tried to turn the handle, But... "Is that all?" asked Alice. "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye." | |
| I used to be such a sweet sweet thing, 'til they got a hold of me, I opened doors for little old ladies, I helped the blind to see, I got no friends 'cause they read the papers, they can't be seen, With me, and I'm feelin' real shot down, And I'm, uh, feelin' mean, No more, Mr. Nice Guy, No more, Mr. Clean, No more, Mr. Nice Guy, They say "He's sick, he's obscene". My dog bit me on the leg today, my cat clawed my eyes, Ma's been thrown out of the social circle, and Dad has to hide, I went to church, incognito, when everybody rose, The reverend Smithy, he recognized me, And punched me in the nose, he said, (chorus) He said "You're sick, you're obscene". -- Alice Cooper, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" | |
| I went home with a waitress, The way I always do. How I was I to know? She was with the Russians too. I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk. Send lawyers, guns, and money, Dad, get me out of this. -- Warren Zevon, "Lawyers, Guns and Money" | |
| If researchers wrote nursery rhymes... Little Miss Muffet sat on her gluteal region, Eating components of soured milk. On at least one occasion, along came an arachnid and sat down beside her, Or at least in her vicinity, And caused her to feel an overwhelming, but not paralyzing, fear, Which motivated the patient to leave the area rather quickly. -- Ann Melugin Williams | |
| Last night I met upon the stair A little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Gee how I wish he'd go away! | |
| Little Fly, Thy summer's play If thought is life My thoughtless hand And strength & breath, Has brush'd away. And the want Of thought is death, Am not I A fly like thee? Then am I Or art not thou A happy fly A man like me? If I live Or if I die. For I dance And drink & sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. -- William Blake, "The Fly" | |
| Louie Louie, me gotta go Louie Louie, me gotta go Fine little girl she waits for me Me catch the ship for cross the sea Me sail the ship all alone Three nights and days me sail the sea Me never thinks me make it home Me think of girl constantly (chorus) On the ship I dream she there I smell the rose in her hair Me see Jamaica moon above (chorus, guitar solo) It won't be long, me see my love I take her in my arms and then Me tell her I never leave again -- The real words to The Kingsmen's classic "Louie Louie" | |
| "No program is perfect," They said with a shrug. "The customer's happy-- What's one little bug?" But he was determined, Then change two, then three more, The others went home. As year followed year. He dug out the flow chart And strangers would comment, Deserted, alone. "Is that guy still here?" Night passed into morning. He died at the console The room was cluttered Of hunger and thirst With core dumps, source listings. Next day he was buried "I'm close," he muttered. Face down, nine edge first. Chain smoking, cold coffee, And his wife through her tears Logic, deduction. Accepted his fate. "I've got it!" he cried, Said "He's not really gone, "Just change one instruction." He's just working late." -- The Perfect Programmer | |
| No rock so hard but that a little wave May beat admission in a thousand years. -- Tennyson | |
| Now of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It leaves me only fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. -- A.E. Housman | |
| Oh give me your pity! I'm on a committee, We attend and amend Which means that from morning And contend and defend to night, Without a conclusion in sight. We confer and concur, We defer and demur, We revise the agenda And reiterate all of our thoughts. With frequent addenda And consider a load of reports. We compose and propose, We suppose and oppose, But though various notions And the points of procedure are fun; Are brought up as motions, There's terribly little gets done. We resolve and absolve; But we never dissolve, Since it's out of the question for us To bring our committee To end like this ditty, Which stops with a period, thus. -- Leslie Lipson, "The Committee" | |
| "Oh, 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And whence such fair garments such prosperi-ty?" "Oh, didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she. "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" "Yes: That's how we dress when we're ruined," said she. "At home in the barton you said `thee' and `thou,' And `thik oon' and `theas oon' and `t'other;' but now Your talking quite fits 'ee for compa-ny!" "Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she. "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek, And your little gloves fit like as on any la-dy!" "We never do work when we're ruined," said she. "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" "True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she. "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" "My dear--a raw country girl, such as you be, Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she. --Thomas Hardy | |
| Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail, And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail, And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool, He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!) And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat, He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat, And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout! And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out! And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog, And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god, The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed, But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed! Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace, And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste, But all they ever found was this: "panic: never doubt", And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out! When the day is done and the moon comes out, And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count, When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey, And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay, You must mind the file protections and not snoop around, Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down! | |
| Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee. -- Tennyson | |
| Proposed Country & Western Song Titles I Don't Mind If You Lie to Me, As Long As I Ain't Lyin' Alone I Wouldn't Take You to a Dog Fight Even If I Thought You Could Win If You Leave Me, Walk Out Backwards So I'll Think You're Comin' In Since You Learned to Lip-Sync, I'm At Your Disposal My John Deere Was Breaking Your Field, While Your Dear John Was Breaking My Heart Don't Cry, Little Darlin', You're Waterin' My Beer Tennis Must Be Your Racket, 'Cause Love Means Nothin' to You When You Say You Love Me, You're Full of Prunes, 'Cause Living With You Is the Pits I Wanted Your Hand in Marriage but All I Got Was the Finger -- "Wordplay" | |
| Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes: He only does it to annoy Because he knows it teases. Wow! wow! wow! I speak severely to my boy, And beat him when he sneezes: For he can thoroughly enjoy The pepper when he pleases! Wow! wow! wow! -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" | |
| Speak roughly to your little VAX, And boot it when it crashes; It knows that one cannot relax Because the paging thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! I speak severely to my VAX, And boot it when it crashes; In spite of all my favorite hacks My jobs it always thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! | |
| Take a look around you, tell me what you see, A girl who thinks she's ordinary lookin' she has got the key. If you can get close enough to look into her eyes There's something special right behind the bitterness she hides. And you're fair game, You never know what she'll decide, you're fair game, Just relax, enjoy the ride. Find a way to reach her, make yourself a fool, But do it with a little class, disregard the rules. 'Cause this one knows the bottom line, couldn't get a date. The ugly duckling striking back, and she'll decide her fate. (chorus) The ones you never notice are the ones you have to watch. She's pleasant and she's friendly while she's looking at your crotch. Try your hand at conversation, gossip is a lie, And sure enough she'll take you home and make you wanna die. (chorus) -- Crosby, Stills, Nash, "Fair Game" | |
| The Bird of Time has but a little way to fly ... and the bird is on the wing. -- Omar Khayyam | |
| The little town that time forgot, Where all the women are strong, The men are good-looking, And the children above-average. -- Prairie Home Companion | |
| There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good And when she was bad, she was very, very popular. -- Max Miller, "The Max Miller Blue Book" | |
| There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle -- Would you kindly direct me to hell? -- Dorothy Parker | |
| This is the story of the bee Whose sex is very hard to see You cannot tell the he from the she But she can tell, and so can he The little bee is never still She has no time to take the pill And that is why, in times like these There are so many sons of bees. | |
| Though I respect that a lot I'd be fired if that were my job After killing Jason off and Countless screaming argonauts Bluebird of friendliness Like guardian angels it's Always near Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch Who watches over you Make a little birdhouse in your soul Not to put too fine a point on it Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet Make a little birdhouse in your soul -- "Birdhouse in your Soul", They Might Be Giants | |
| We're happy little Vegemites, As bright as bright can be. We all all enjoy our Vegemite For breakfast, lunch and tea. | |
| Well I looked at my watch and it said a quarter to five, The headline screamed that I was still alive, I couldn't understand it, I thought I died last night. I dreamed I'd been in a border town, In a little cantina that the boys had found, I was desperate to dance, just to dig the local sounds. When along came a senorita, She looked so good that I had to meet her, I was ready to approach her with my English charm, When her brass knuckled boyfriend grabbed me by the arm, And he said, grow some funk of your own, amigo, Grow some funk of your own. We no like to with the gringo fight, But there might be a death in Mexico tonite. ... Take my advice, take the next flight, And grow some funk, grow your funk at home. -- Elton John, "Grow Some Funk of Your Own" | |
| Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers, And we're loved everywhere we go. We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth, At ten thousand dollars a show. We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills, But the thrill we've never known, Is the thrill that'll get'cha, when you get your picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. I got a freaky old lady, name of Cole King Katie, Who embroiders on my jeans. I got my poor old gray-haired daddy, Drivin' my limousine. Now it's all designed, to blow our minds, But our minds won't be really be blown; Like the blow that'll get'cha, when you get your picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. We got a lot of little, teen-aged, blue-eyed groupies, Who'll do anything we say. We got a genuine Indian guru, that's teachin' us a better way. We got all the friends that money can buy, So we never have to be alone. And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show [As a note, they eventually DID make the cover of RS. Ed.] | |
| While walking down a crowded City street the other day, I heard a little urchin To a comrade turn and say, "Say, Chimmey, lemme tell youse, I'd be happy as a clam If only I was de feller dat Me mudder t'inks I am. "She t'inks I am a wonder, My friends, be yours a life of toil An' she knows her little lad Or undiluted joy, Could never mix wit' nuttin' You can learn a wholesome lesson Dat was ugly, mean or bad. From that small, untutored boy. Oh, lot o' times I sit and t'ink Don't aim to be an earthly saint How nice, 'twould be, gee whiz! With eyes fixed on a star: If a feller was de feller Just try to be the fellow that Dat his mudder t'inks he is." Your mother thinks you are. -- Will S. Adkin, "If I Only Was the Fellow" | |
| Chicken Little only has to be right once. | |
| Chicken Little was right. | |
| Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone. | |
| Give your very best today. Heaven knows it's little enough. | |
| COONDOG MEMORY (heard in Rutledge, Missouri, about eighteen years ago) Now, this dog is for sale, and she can not only follow a trail twice as old as the average dog can, but she's got a pretty good memory to boot. For instance, last week this old boy who lives down the road from me, and is forever stinkmouthing my hounds, brought some city fellow around to try out ol' Sis here. So I turned her out south of the house and she made two or three big swings back and forth across the edge of the woods, set back her head, bayed a couple of times, cut straight through the woods, come to a little clearing, jumped about three foot straight up in the air, run to the other side, and commenced to letting out a racket like she had something treed. We went over there with our flashlights and shone them up in the tree but couldn't catch no shine offa coon's eyes, and my neighbor sorta indicated that ol' Sis might be a little crazy, `cause she stood right to the tree and kept singing up into it. So I pulled off my coat and climbed up into the branches, and sure enough, there was a coon skeleton wedged in between a couple of branches about twenty foot up. Now as I was saying, she can follow a pretty old trail, but this fellow was still calling her crazy or touched `cause she had hopped up in the air while she was crossing the clearing, until I reminded him that the Hawkins' had a fence across there about five years back. Now, this dog is for sale. -- News that stayed News: Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly | |
| Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved. -- Steve Rubenstein | |
| I guess the Little League is even littler than we thought. -- D. Cavett | |
| Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee: (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck"). (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!" (3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly proportional to the cost of hitting it. For instance, a Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy. (4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you in the head and knock you silly. | |
| "Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the dog] is good for almost every kind of game. He went duck hunting one time and did real well at it. Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but, you know, farm ducks. And it got Don Carlos all mixed up. Since the ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something. So one morning last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and buried them." "What do you mean, buried them?" "Oh, he didn't hurt them. He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth and put them in the holes. Then he covered them up with mud except for their heads. He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for another one when Tony found him. We talked about it for a long time. Papa said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't know how to build a cage he put them in holes. He's a smart dog." -- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning" | |
| Several years ago, an international chess tournament was being held in a swank hotel in New York. Most of the major stars of the chess world were there, and after a grueling day of chess, the players and their entourages retired to the lobby of the hotel for a little refreshment. In the lobby, some players got into a heated argument about who was the brightest, the fastest, and the best chess player in the world. The argument got quite loud, as various players claimed that honor. At that point, a security guard in the lobby turned to another guard and commented, "If there's anything I just can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer." | |
| When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again. The fans with the cigars and the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in the street and foreign presidents. It's goin' to be back to the fighter who comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says he's in shape. Old hat. I was the onliest boxer in history people asked questions like a senator. -- Muhammad Ali | |
| A little suffering is good for the soul. -- Kirk, "The Corbomite Maneuver", stardate 1514.0 | |
| "Can you imagine how life could be improved if we could do away with jealousy, greed, hate ..." "It can also be improved by eliminating love, tenderness, sentiment -- the other side of the coin" -- Dr. Roger Corby and Kirk, "What are Little Girls Made Of?", stardate 2712.4 | |
| I thought my people would grow tired of killing. But you were right, they see it is easier than trading. And it has its pleasures. I feel it myself. Like the hunt, but with richer rewards. -- Apella, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8 | |
| It is a human characteristic to love little animals, especially if they're attractive in some way. -- McCoy, "The Trouble with Tribbles", stardate 4525.6 | |
| Killing is stupid; useless! -- McCoy, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8 | |
| The only solution is ... a balance of power. We arm our side with exactly that much more. A balance of power -- the trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of them all. But the only one that preserves both sides. -- Kirk, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8 | |
| There is an old custom among my people. When a woman saves a man's life, he is grateful. -- Nona, the Kanuto witch woman, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8. | |
| War isn't a good life, but it's life. -- Kirk, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8 | |
| "`...and the Universe,' continued the waiter, determined not to be deflected on his home stretch, `will explode later for your pleasure.' Ford's head swivelled slowly towards him. He spoke with feeling. `Wow,' he said, `What sort of drinks do you serve in this place?' The waiter laughed a polite little waiter's laugh. `Ah,' he said, `I think sir has perhaps misunderstood me.' `Oh, I hope not,' breathed Ford." - Ford in paradise. | |
| "`Hand me the rap-rod, Plate Captain.' The little waiter's eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion. `I beg your pardon, sir?' he said. `The phone, waiter,' said Zaphod, grabbing it off him. `Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off.'" - Zaphod discovers that waiters are the least hip people in the Universe. | |
| "Trillian did a little research in the ship's copy of THHGTTG. It had some advice to offer on drunkenness. `Go to it,' it said, `and good luck.' It was cross-referenced to the entry concerning the size of the Universe and ways of coping with that." - One of the more preferable pieces of advice contained in the Guide. | |
| Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea ... -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" | |
| I have a box of telephone rings under my bed. Whenever I get lonely, I open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call. One day I dropped the box all over the floor. The phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to get it disconnected. So I got a new phone. I didn't have much money, so I had to get an irregular. It doesn't have a five. I ran into a friend of mine on the street the other day. He said why don't you give me a call. I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone doesn't have a five. He asked how long had it been that way. I said I didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens. -- Steven Wright | |
| I put contact lenses in my dog's eyes. They had little pictures of cats on them. Then I took one out and he ran around in circles. -- Steven Wright | |
| 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" | |
| When I was little, I went into a pet shop and they asked how big I'd get. -- Rodney Dangerfield | |
| A little pain never hurt anyone. | |
| You Might be a Microsoft Employee If... 1. Every night you dream of torturing Linus Torvalds 2. Every morning you say, "I pledge allegiance to the logo of the United Corporation of Microsoft. And to the stock options for which it stands, one company, under Bill, with headaches and buggy software for all." 3. Your favorite pick-up line is, "Hey baby...do you want to see a little ActiveX?" 4. Everytime you see a website with "Best viewed with Netscape" on it you feel like filing a lawsuit against its webmaster 5. You feel that all Anti-Microsoft websites should be censored because they are on the Internet, something Bill "invented." 6. You've set a goal to invent at least one new buzzword or acronym per day 7. You've ever been nervous because you haven't registered your Microsoft software yet. 8. You've trained your parrot to say "Unix sucks!" and "All hail Bill Gates!" 9. You own a limited edition Monopoly game in which Boardwalk is Microsoft and Jail is replaced by Justice Department Investigation 10. You've spent countless hours tracking down the source of the "Microsoft Acquires Vatican Church" rumor | |
| Tux Penguin Boxing Match LAS VEGAS, NV -- The unofficial Linux mascot Tux the Penguin will face his arch rival the BSD Daemon in a boxing match this Saturday night. The match is part of the International Computer Mascot Boxing Federation's First Annual World Championship Series. The winner will advance to face one of the Intel "Bunny People". Boxing pundits favor Tux as the winner. Last week Tux won his first match in the Championship Series against Wilbur the Gimp. "The Gimp didn't have a chance," one spectator said. "With Tux's ability to run at top speeds of over 100mph, I don't see how he could possibly lose." The BSD Daemon, however, is certainly a formidible opponent. While boxing rules prohibit the Daemon from using his patented pitchfork, his pointy horns are permitted in the ring. Some observers think the whole Computer Mascot Boxing Federation is a fake. "WWF is all scripted," one sports writer pointed out. "And so is this. You actually think that a penguin is capable of boxing? The idea of a penguin fighting a demon is patently absurd. This whole Championship Series has no doubt been scripted. It's probably nothing more than two little kids in penguin and demon suits duking it out in a boxing ring. What a waste of time." | |
| Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball... July 2000: Government Issues Update on Y2K Crisis to American Public In a statement to all U.S. citizens, the President assured that the repairs to the nation's infrastructure, damaged severely when the Y2K crisis hit on January 1, is proceeding on track with the Government's guidelines. The message was mailed to every citizen by mail carriers via horseback. The statement itself was written on parchment with hand-made ink written from fountain pens. "Our technological progress since the Y2K disaster has been staggering," said the statement. "We have been able to fix our non-Y2K compliant horse carriages so that commerce can once again continue. We believe that we will be able to reinvent steam-powered engines within the next decade. Internal combustion engines should become operational once again sometime before the dawn of the next century." No one knows when the technological luxuries we once enjoyed as little as 6 months ago will return. Things such as e-mail, the Internet, and all computers were lost when the crisis showed itself for what it really was: a disaster waiting to happen. Scholars predict the mainframe computer will be invented again during the 24th century... | |
| Jargon Coiner (#13) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * NINETY-NINERS: In 1849, a horde of people ("Forty-niners") headed to California to pan gold and get rich quick. In 1999, a horde of people ("Ninety-niners") headed to California to invest in Linux companies and get rich quick. Some things never change. * ZOO: The ubiquitous shelf of O'Reilly Animal Books that many nerds keep next to their computer * THEY'RE MULTIPLYING LIKE PORTALS: The proliferation of Linux portals that have the latest headlines from Slashdot and LinuxToday but offer little original content. * YOU CAN SPELL EVIL WITHOUT vi: A curse uttered by freshman Computer Science students struggling with vi's insert mode for the first time. | |
| Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#6) (Round 4, the Who Wants To Be A Billionaire? Round) ERIC RAYMOND (Moderator): Here's the second question: Who is the primary author of the world-renowned fetchmail program? [Bzzz] Yes, Hemos? HEMOS: Mr. Eric... Fetch of Cincinnati, Ohio. RAYMOND: No, no, no! The answer is me, me, me, you idiots! Sheesh. I'm resetting your points to zero for that. ALAN COX: Are you going to ask any questions that are not about you? RAYMOND: Um... let's see... yeah, there's one or two here... Okay, here's question three... What loud-mouthed hippie-spirtualist founder of the GNU Project keeps demanding that everybody use the crappy term "Free Software" instead of "Open Source"? [Bzzz] Yes, Anonymous Coward? ANONCOW: Eric Raymond! RAYMOND: Why you little [expletive]! I'm going to... | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#12) A note from Bill Gates' second grade teacher: Billy has been having some trouble behaving in class lately... Last Monday he horded all of the crayons and refused to share, saying that he needed all 160 colors to maximize his 'innovation'. He then proceeded to sell little pieces of paper ("End-User License Agreement for Crayons" he called them) granting his classmates the 'non-transferable right' to use the crayons on a limited time basis in exchange for their lunch money... When I tried to stop Billy, he kept harping about his right to innovate and how my interference violated basic notions of free-market capitalism. "Holding a monopoly is not illegal," he rebutted. I chastised him for talking back, and then I took away the box of crayons so others could share them... angrily, he then pointed to a drawing of his hanging on the wall and yelled, "That's my picture! You don't have the right to present my copyrighted material in a public exhibition without my permission! You're pirating my intellectual property. Pirate! Pirate! Pirate!" I developed a headache that day that even the maximum dosage of Aspirin wasn't able to handle. And then on Tuesday, he conned several students out of their milk money by convincing them to play three-card Monty... | |
| Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Linus Torvalds SILLYCON VALLEY -- Nearly 130 former system administrators have filed suit against Linus Torvalds in which they claim Linux cost them their jobs. Recently several companies migrated from Windows to Linux, increasing their productivity but decreasing the need for a large staff of tech workers, prompting a wave of layoffs. "The good old days when it required five full-time system administrators to maintain a Microsoft Exchange server are history, all because of that cancer known as Linux," explained the lead litigant in the lawsuit. "It all started two years ago when some pimply-faced idiot down in Accounting decided to smuggle in a Linux box to automate some of his work. Before long every tech-savvy person in Accounting, Billing, and Sales was secretly using Linux." "That's when the troubles started. Productivity soared. Downtime was limited to an average of three milliseconds per day. Macro viruses ceased to spread. It was horrible! The entire IT staff was replaced by one part-time bearded wonder, who was able to administrate the entire Linux network! Due to the layoffs, I'm now sitting in a homeless shelter with little hope to find work. Nobody wants to hire an MCSE anymore!" | |
| A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselvse, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul. -- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces" | |
| A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on. -- William S. Burroughs | |
| All most people want is a little more than they'll ever get. | |
| And I suppose the little things are harder to get used to than the big ones. The big ones you get used to, you make up your mind to them. The little things come along unexpectedly, when you aren't thinking about them, aren't braced against them. -- Marion Zimmer Bradley, "The Forbidden Tower" | |
| By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task completely overwhelm you. | |
| Creativity is not always bred in an environment of tranquility; sometimes you have to squeeze a little to get the paste out of the tube. | |
| Higgins: Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue. Doolittle: A little of both, Guv'nor. Like the rest of us, a little of both. -- Shaw, "Pygmalion" | |
| I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them are trash. -- Sigmund Freud | |
| I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was this little hole in the bottom ... -- John Croll | |
| If man is only a little lower than the angels, the angels should reform. -- Mary Wilson Little | |
| It is the business of little minds to shrink. -- Carl Sandburg | |
| Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood. -- Daniel Hudson Burnham | |
| Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans; it's lovely to be silly at the right moment. -- Horace | |
| No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast. -- W.S. Gilbert | |
| People say I live in my own little fantasy world... well, at least they *know* me there! -- D.L. Roth | |
| People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito. | |
| Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? -- J.M. Barrie | |
| Something better... 13 (sympathetic): Oh, What happened? Did your parents lose a bet with God? 14 (complimentary): You must love the little birdies to give them this to perch on. 15 (scientific): Say, does that thing there influence the tides? 16 (obscure): Oh, I'd hate to see the grindstone. 17 (inquiry): When you stop to smell the flowers, are they afraid? 18 (french): Say, the pigs have refused to find any more truffles until you leave. 19 (pornographic): Finally, a man who can satisfy two women at once. 20 (religious): The Lord giveth and He just kept on giving, didn't He. 21 (disgusting): Say, who mows your nose hair? 22 (paranoid): Keep that guy away from my cocaine! 23 (aromatic): It must be wonderful to wake up in the morning and smell the coffee ... in Brazil. 24 (appreciative): Oooo, how original. Most people just have their teeth capped. 25 (dirty): Your name wouldn't be Dick, would it? -- Steve Martin, "Roxanne" | |
| The best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. -- Wordsworth | |
| The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet, challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that keeps the blood at heat. Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb of innocence. To yield to its blandishments is so easy. The wrong, it seems, is venial... Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of adventurous youth. -- Benjamin Cardozo | |
| This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply. -- Lazarus Long | |
| We seldom repent talking too little, but very often talking too much. -- Jean de la Bruyere | |
| You know you're in trouble when... (1) You've been at work for an hour before you notice that your skirt is caught in your pantyhose. Especially if you're a man. (2) Your blind date turns out to be your ex-wife. (3) Your income tax check bounces. (4) You put both contact lenses in the same eye. (5) Your wife says, "Good morning, Bill" and your name is George. (6) You wake up to the soothing sound of flowing water... the day after you bought a waterbed. (7) You go on your honeymoon to a remote little hotel and the desk clerk, bell hop, and manager have a "Welcome Back" party for your spouse. | |
| You shouldn't wallow in self-pity. But it's OK to put your feet in it and swish them around a little. -- Guindon | |
| Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and management of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not how they innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly, it is good to compound employments of both ... because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both. -- Francis Bacon, "Essay on Youth and Age" | |
| If a man slept by day, he had little time to work. That was a satisfying notion to Escargot. -- "The Stone Giant", James P. Blaylock | |
| He liked fishing a little too much, and he believed that work was something a man did when he had to. He had always been able to get along well enough without it, especially for the last couple of years. -- "The Stone Giant", James P. Blaylock | |
| "Now I know why you say so little in person, you mouth is in a NOP because the brain is always inserting requests at the top of the list_head." - Andre Hedrick on Alan Cox | |
| "Maybe a good analogy is that drivers are to hardware companies like excrements are to living creatures: in order to stay alive, they have to produce them, but you don't put much love into their production, and their internals (like their development) may be a little disgusting." - Werner Almesberger | |
| You don't get out much, do you :-)? Lighten up a little, this is supposed to be fun.......We could argue all day, but there was lots of computer work done before PCI and PCs. I'm more than old enough to know, so just leave it at that....... - Dan Malek on the linuxppc-embedded list | |
| If you really want to know where you stand, it'll cost you around $15K and that, in my opinion, is fine. If it isn't worth $15K to protect your code then it is worth so little to you that there really is no good reason not to just GPL it from the start. - Larry McVoy on GPL licensing issues | |
| <mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel, <mikkei> Who thought Tux should have been an Eel, <mikkei> Although he was a fine programmer, <mikkei> He called the little penguin, <mikkei> A veritably ugly hack, <mikkei> But they all laughed and said "He's on crack!" <mikkei> <mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel, <mikkei> At whose feet the newbies would kneel, <mikkei> Each and every day, one newbie would say: <mikkei> "Make my patch the Patch of the Month." <mikkei> But Riel, saying no with a negative, "hummpfh" <mikkei> Would say "fsck off" to the newbies's dismay. - Anonymous on #kernelnewbies | |
| > Linus seems to be getting a little emotional in this discussion but swearing > does not replace data. Hey, I called people silly, not <censored>. You must have a very low tolerance ;) - Linus Torvalds about offending people on the gcc mailing list | |
| Interface definitions tend to be treated a little differently to "code". But as I keep trying to beat into people - if you are going to mix GPL and non GPL code see a lawyer - thats what they are there for - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
| ..... using XML would just be shooting birds with tactical nukes. E.g. lots of fun, but a little expensive and not really necessary. - Jakob Østergaard about using XML in /proc file on linux-kernel | |
| So the current heuristic provably sucks. We have cold hard numbers, and quite frankly, Al, there is very very little point in arguing against numbers. It's silly. "Gimme an S, gimme a U, gimme a C, gimme a K - S-U-C-K". The current one sucks. - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel | |
| Yield and overcome; Bend and be straight; Empty and be full; Wear out and be new; Have little and gain; Have much and be confused. Therefore the wise embrace the one And set an example to all. Not putting on a display, They shine forth. Not justifying themselves, They are distinguished. Not boasting, They receive recognition. Not bragging, They never falter. They do not quarrel, So no one quarrels with them. Therefore the ancients say, "Yield and overcome." Is that an empty saying? Be really whole, And all things will come to you. | |
| To talk little is natural. High winds do not last all morning. Heavy rain does not last all day. Why is this? Heaven and Earth! If heaven and Earth cannot make things eternal, How is it possible for man? He who follows the Tao Is at one with the Tao. He who is virtuous Experiences Virtue. He who loses the way Is lost. When you are at one with the Tao, The Tao welcomes you. When you are at one with Virtue, The Virtue is always there. When you are at one with loss, The loss is experienced willingly. He who does not trust enough Will not be trusted. | |
| Know the strength of man, But keep a woman's care! Be the stream of the universe! Being the stream of the universe, Ever true and unswerving, Become as a little child once more. Know the white, But keep the black! Be an example to the world! Being an example to the world, Ever true and unwavering, Return to the infinite. Know honor, Yet keep humility. Be the valley of the universe! Being the valley of the universe, Ever true and resourceful, Return to the state of the uncarved block. When the block is carved, it becomes useful. When the sage uses it, he becomes the ruler. Thus, "A great tailor cuts little." | |
| The sage has no mind of his own. He is aware of the needs of others. I am good to people who are good. I am also good to people who are not good. Because Virtue is goodness. I have faith in people who are faithful. I also have faith in people who are not faithful. Because Virtue is faithfulness. The sage is shy and humble - to the world he seems confusing. Others look to him and listen. He behaves like a little child. | |
| If I have even just a little sense, I will walk on the main road and my only fear will be of straying from it. Keeping to the main road is easy, But people love to be sidetracked. When the court is arrayed in splendor, The fields are full of weeds, And the granaries are bare. Some wear gorgeous clothes, Carry sharp swords, And indulge themselves with food and drink; They have more possessions than they can use. They are robber barons. This is certainly not the way of Tao. | |
| Practice non-action. Work without doing. Taste the tasteless. Magnify the small, increase the few. Reward bitterness with care. See simplicity in the complicated. Achieve greatness in little things. In the universe the difficult things are done as if they are easy. In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds. The sage does not attempt anything very big, And thus achieved greatness. Easy promises make for little trust. Taking things lightly results in great difficulty. Because the sage always confronts difficulties, He never experiences them. | |
| Why are the people starving? Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes. Therefore the people are starving. Why are the people rebellious? Because the rulers interfere too much. Therefore they are rebellious. Why do the people think so little of death? Because the rulers demand too much of life. Therefore the people take death lightly. Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much. | |
| A little kid went up to Santa and asked him, "Santa, you know when I'm bad right?" And Santa says, "Yes, I do." The little kid then asks, "And you know when I'm sleeping?" To which Santa replies, "Every minute." So the little kid then says, "Well, if you know when I'm bad and when I'm good, then how come you don't know what I want for Christmas?" | |
| A young married couple had their first child. Their original pride and joy slowly turned to concern however, for after a couple of years the child had never uttered any form of speech. They hired the best speech therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, all to no avail. The child simply refused to speak. One morning when the child was five, while the husband was reading the paper, and the wife was feeding the dog, the little kid looks up from his bowl and said, "My cereal's cold." The couple is stunned. The man, in tears, confronts his son. "Son, after all these years, why have you waited so long to say something?". Shrugs the kid, "Everything's been okay 'til now". | |
| I opened the drawer of my little desk and a single letter fell out, a letter from my mother, written in pencil, one of her last, with unfinished words and an implicit sense of her departure. It's so curious: one can resist tears and "behave" very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window... or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed... or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. -- Letters From Colette | |
| My ritual differs slightly. What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them. -- Dave Barry | |
| No house is childproofed unless the little darlings are in straitjackets. | |
| * Turken thinks little kids are absolutely adorable... especialyy when they're someone elses. | |
| <Knghtbrd> you know, Linux needs a platform game starring Tux <Knghtbrd> kinda Super Marioish, but with Tux and things like little cyber bugs and borgs and that sort of thing ... <Knghtbrd> And you have to jump past billgatus and hit the key to drop him into the lava and then you see some guy that looks like a RMS or someone say "Thank you for rescuing me Tux, but Linus Torvalds is in another castle!" | |
| <KnaraKat> Bite me. * TheOne gets some salt, then proceeds to nibble on KnaraKat a little bit.... | |
| <Knghtbrd> learn to love Window Maker. <Knghtbrd> a little NeXTStep is good for the soul. | |
| I'm starting to think the gene pool could use a little chlorine. | |
| * woot is now known as woot-dinner * Knghtbrd sprinkles a little salt on woot <Knghtbrd> I've never had a woot before... Hope they taste good <woot-dinner> noooo! <woot-dinner> don't eat me! * Knghtbrd decides he does not want a dinner that talks to him... hehe | |
| <Endy> Actually, I think I'll wait for potato to be finalised before installing debian. <Endy> That should be soon, I'm hoping. :) <knghtbrd> Endy: You obviously know very little about Debian. | |
| 99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again... 101 little bugs in the code.... | |
| <WildCode> Mercury, isn't debugging X a little like finding perfectly bugfree code in windows ?? <Mercury> WildCode: Debugging X is like trying to run a straight line through a maze. <Mercury> You just need to bend space-time so that the corners move around you and you won't have any problems. (=:] | |
| <hoponpop> the difference between netbsd, freebsd, and openbsd, as an insider is freebsd is interested in getting things done, and doesn't mind hurting people who get in their way. <hoponpop> netbsd is interested in making sure nothing gets done, and doesn't mind hurting people who try to accomplish things. <hoponpop> openbsd is interested in looking good, and doesn't hurt anyone in their own little community, but look out everybody else! | |
| A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing into trees. At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same forest, with identical results. They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing. "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally," apologized the rabbit. "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same problem!" "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do you think you could help me find out?" "I'll try," said the snake. He gently coiled himself around the rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail and long ears. You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!" "Great!" said the rabbit. "Thanks, I really owe you one!" "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either. Do you suppose you could try and tell me?" The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake. "Well, you're low, cold and slimey..." And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have no balls. You must be an attorney!" | |
| Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives. -- Roy G. Blount, Jr. | |
| "Gentlemen of the jury," said the defense attorney, now beginning to warm to his summation, "the real question here before you is, shall this beautiful young woman be forced to languish away her loveliest years in a dark prison cell? Or shall she be set free to return to her cozy little apartment at 4134 Mountain Ave. -- there to spend her lonely, loveless hours in her boudoir, lying beside her little Princess phone, 962-7873?" | |
| "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." -- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859) | |
| The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock. | |
| "There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial: both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him during the trial." -- David Letterman | |
| Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around -- nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. I know it; I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy. -- J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye" | |
| Don't kid yourself. Little is relevant, and nothing lasts forever. | |
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| If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women you've got in the house. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" | |
| Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better. -- Edgar W. Howe | |
| It is only with the heart one can see clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. -- The Fox, 'The Little Prince" | |
| Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt someone. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together. -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten" | |
| So little time, so little to do. -- Oscar Levant | |
| The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may experience it as such. Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid. Whoever could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very swift. Thinking of oneself gives little happiness. If, however, one feels much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of oneself but of one's ideal. This is far, and only the swift shall reach it and are delighted. -- Nietzsche | |
| Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. -- James Cabell, "The Silver Stallion" | |
| N: Phil Lewis E: beans@bucket.ualr.edu D: Promised to send money if I would put his name in the source tree. S: PO Box 371 S: North Little Rock, Arkansas 72115 S: US -- /usr/src/linux/CREDITS | |
| > If you don't need X then little VT-100 terminals are available for real > cheap. Should be able to find decent ones used for around $40 each. > For that price, they're a must for the kitchen, den, bathrooms, etc.. :) You're right. Can you explain this to my wife? -- Seen on c.o.l.development.system, on the subject of extra terminals | |
| So in the future, one 'client' at a time or you'll be spending CPU time with lots of little 'child processes'. -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd | |
| By the way, I can hardly feel sorry for you... All last night I had to listen to her tears, so great they were redirected to a stream. What? Of _course_ you didn't know. You and your little group no longer have any permissions around here. She changed her .lock files, too. -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd | |
| "... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed." - Unix for Dummies, 2nd Edition -- found in the .sig of Rob Riggs, rriggs@tesser.com | |
| Winnuke in one line? No problem: perl -MIO::Socket -e 'IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")->send("bye",MSG_OOB)' And formatted so it's a little easier to read: #!/usr/bin/perl use IO::Socket; IO::Socket::INET ->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139") ->send("bye", MSG_OOB); -- Randal Schwartz | |
| Could somebody drag the Irix team kicking and screaming into the 1980's, please? I realize it might be quite painful for them, but maybe you could buy them a disco tape, so they'd feel a little bit more at home. -- Linus "Stayin' alive, stayin' alive" Torvalds | |
| American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors. -- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister" | |
| But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" | |
| Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say "shop for," as opposed to "obtain." This is the major drawback of home centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ... Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of these sometime around the middle of next week." -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" | |
| I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around. | |
| Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon administration. In either the hardware or housewares department, you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools that Americans might use around the home. Buy it. This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to direct sunlight. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" | |
| Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming. -- J. P. McEvoy | |
| Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how little you have. -- Ernest Haskins | |
| The difficult we do today; the impossible takes a little longer. | |
| The King and his advisor are overlooking the battle field: King: "How goes the battle plan?" Advisor: "See those little black specks running to the right?" K: "Yes." A: "Those are their guys. And all those little red specks running to the left are our guys. Then when they collide we wait till the dust clears." K: "And?" A: "If there are more red specks left than black specks, we win." K: "But what about the ^#!!$% battle plan?" A: "So far, it seems to be going according to specks." | |
| There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange. -- Thomas W. Lamont, October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday) | |
| There is hardly a thing in the world that some man can not make a little worse and sell a little cheaper. | |
| There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong. | |
| Veni, Vidi, VISA: I came, I saw, I did a little shopping. | |
| Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it. | |
| "We maintain that the very foundation of our way of life is what we call free enterprise," said Cash McCall, "but when one of our citizens show enough free enterprise to pile up a little of that profit, we do our best to make him feel that he ought to be ashamed of himself." -- Cameron Hawley | |
| What they said: What they meant: "If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much of him as I do." (Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.) "Her input was always critical." (She never had a good word to say.) "I have no doubt about his capability to do good work." (And it's nonexistent.) "This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which already has so many outstanding members." (Unless you already have a moron.) "His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable: one unbelievable result after another." (And we didn't believe them, either.) "She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her." (In fact, to life in general...) | |
| Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. -- Snoopy | |
| But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news. -- Larry Wall in <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> | |
| Well, that's more-or-less what I was saying, though obviously addition is a little more cosmic than the bitwise operators. -- Larry Wall in <199709051808.LAA01780@wall.org> | |
| But that looks a little too much like a declaration for my tastes, when in fact it isn't one. So forget I mentioned it. -- Larry Wall in <199710011704.KAA21395@wall.org> | |
| Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it. -- Hannah More | |
| "No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods -- it was so simple, really. "I didn't, for a long time, but I do now. You just can't hold people, you can't own them. I mean it's only natural, a natural process really. Meet. Love. Part. Life goes on. There was never any reason to expect her to stay always the same -- I mean `in love,' you know." There were those doubt-quotes of Smoky's, heavily indicated. "I don't hold a grudge. I can't." "You do," Grandfather Trout said. "And you don't understand." -- Little, Big, "John Crowley" | |
| On a tous un peu peur de l'amour, mais on a surtout peur de souffrir ou de faire souffrir. [One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.] | |
| The little pieces of my life I give to you, with love, to make a quilt to keep away the cold. | |
| Actually, what I'd like is a little toy spaceship!! | |
| I can't think about that. It doesn't go with HEDGES in the shape of LITTLE LULU -- or ROBOTS making BRICKS ... | |
| I KAISER ROLL?! What good is a Kaiser Roll without a little COLE SLAW on the SIDE? | |
| There's a little picture of ED MCMAHON doing BAD THINGS to JOAN RIVERS in a $200,000 MALIBU BEACH HOUSE!! | |
| YOU!! Give me the CUTEST, PINKEST, most charming little VICTORIAN DOLLHOUSE you can find!! An make it SNAPPY!! | |
| Fortune's Exercising Truths: 1: Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic. You don't. 2. Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart. So do heart attacks. 3. Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life. 4. Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing. 5. No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done quietly at your desk at work. People will suspect manic tendencies as you twitter around in your chair. 6. Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers. 7. Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity. 8. Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups, followed by one throw-up. 9. Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided. | |
| We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION". Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the police would find you. You know the kind of flu I'm talking about. -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide" | |
| Your digestive system is your body's Fun House, whereby food goes on a long, dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter. We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it. -- Dave Barry, "Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead" | |
