Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.' -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. | |
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 | |
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass." - Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination to the Supreme Court | |
"The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so." -- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson | |
Concerning the war in Vietnam, Senator George Aiken of Vermount noted in January, 1966, "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls." -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits" | |
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management. -- Senator Soaper | |
Take your Senator to lunch this week. | |
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 Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school graduation. Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life." According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22, 1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm." Their "farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year. But as a "family farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year. Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers." You probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency. It's not "elderly" or "senior citizens" anymore. Now it's "chrono- logically experienced citizens." According to the FAA, the propeller blade didn't break off, it was just a case of "uncontained blade liberation." -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE) | |
"Wrong," said Renner. "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'" | |
Rudd's Discovery: You know that any senator or congressman could go home and make $300,000 to $400,000, but they don't. Why? Because they can stay in Washington and make it there. | |
My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side. -- Senator Hubert Humphrey | |
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 | |
Is Linux A Finnish Conspiracy? WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF CORRUPTION -- According to a report recently issued by the NSA (No Such Agency), Finland is now considered a national economic and security risk. "We don't trust the Finns... software written by these people could potentially contain backdoors that could undermine domestic security," the report states. In response to the news, US Senator Fatcatte (R-WA) has proposed a bill, the It's For The Children Act of 2000, that would ban all software written by native-born Finns. "It's time we take the Finnish threat seriously," Fatcatte said at a press conference. "Not only is Finn software a threat to domestic tranquility, but it could radically alter the computer industry, costing us thousands of jobs... and, more importantly, billions in tax revenue. We must prevent the Finns from subverting our economy with so-called 'open-source software'." He then asked, "Is anybody thinking of the children of programmers who will become unemployed when Finnish software overruns the country?" | |
Linux World Domination: Not A Joke! WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senator Fattecat (R-WA) is pushing for a ban on Finnish-produced software. His chief of staff, Ms. Dee Septive, has published a 200-page report revealing "the Helsinkian Underground", a Finnish world domination plot hatched in 1943. The Fattecat expose describes Finland's recent scheme involving free software. "Linux, originally called Freix (FREIX Retrieves Electronic Intelligence X), is a scheme to infiltrate the Western world with a 'free' operating system with nasty backdoors hidden within its obfuscated source code. IRC (Intelligence Relaying Code) is another Finnish innovation designed for spying purposes." Linus Torvalds plays a prominent role in the conspiracy. "That old story about Linus developing a Unix clone in his spare time while at University is a lark," the report states. "Indeed, the name Linux ("Line X") was coined because the kernel can extract any arbitrary line of intelligence from any document it has access to." | |
Man Charged With Crashing Windows MOUNTAIN HOME, AR -- Eric Turgent, a closet Linux advocate, was arrested yesterday for intentionally crashing his co-worker's Windows box at the offices of the "Roadkill Roundup" newspaper. Turgent disputes the charges, saying, "If causing an operating system to crash is illegal, than why isn't Bill Gates serving life without parole?" Turgent's co-worker, Mr. Stu Poor, the clueless technology pundit for the newspaper, is a heavy Microsoft supporter. He frequently brags in his weekly Tech Talk column that he "once had a conversation with Bill Gates." A heated argument broke out yesterday morning in which the two insulted each other ("You're nothing but a Linux hippie freak on the Red Hat payroll!" vs. "You make Jesse Berst and Fred Moody look like [expletive] geniuses!") for two hours. At the heat of the moment, Turgent shoved Poor aside and typed in "C:\CON\CON". The machine crashed and the pundit lost all of his work (a real loss to humanity, to be sure). Turgent is in jail awaiting trial for violating the "Slash Crashes Act". This bill was enacted in 1999 after a Senator's gigabyte cache of pornography was destroyed by a Windows crash. | |
Brief History Of Linux (#14) Military Intelligence: Not an oxymoron in 1969 It was the Department Of Defense that commissioned the ARPANET in 1969, a rare example of the US military breaking away from its official motto, "The Leading Edge Of Yesterday's Technology(tm)". In the years leading up to 1969, packet switching technology had evolved enough to make the ARPANET possible. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. received the ARPA contract in 1968 for packet switching "Interface Message Processors". US Senator Edward Kennedy, always on the ball, sent a telegram to BBN praising them for their non-denominational "Interfaith" Message Processors, an act unsurpassed by elected representatives until Al Gore invented the Internet years later. While ARPANET started with only four nodes in 1969, it evolved rapidly. Email was first used in 1971; by 1975 the first mailing list, MsgGroup, was created by Steve Walker when he sent a "First post!" messages to it. In 1979 all productive use of ARPANET ceased when USENET and the first MUD were created. In 1983, when the network surpassed 1,000 hosts, a study showed that 90.4% of all traffic was devoted to email and USENET flame wars. | |
"I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer" -- Senator Claghorn |