Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over. II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease. III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter. Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction. -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980 | |
Let me take you a button-hole lower. -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost" | |
"IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique' to destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor approaches the pot, he falls into the pit" - John C. Dvorak | |
I have stripped off my dress; must I put it on again? I have washed my feet; must I soil them again? When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred within me [my bowels were moved for him (KJV)]. When I arose to open for my beloved, my hands dripped with myrrh; the liquid myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt. With my own hands I opened to my love, but my love had turned away and gone by; my heart sank when he turned his back. I sought him but I did not find him, I called him but he did not answer. The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me; they struck me and wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took away my cloak. [Song of Solomon 5:3-7 (NEB)] | |
"The pyramid is opening!" "Which one?" "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!" -- The Firesign Theatre | |
It's grad exam time... COMPUTER SCIENCE Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.) MATHEMATICS If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE Describe the Universe. Give three examples. | |
`O' LEVEL COUNTER CULTURE Timewarp allowed: 3 hours. Do not scrawl situationalist graffiti in the margins or stub your rollups in the inkwells. Orange may be worn. Credit will be given to candidates who self-actualise. (1) Compare and contrast Pink Floyd with Black Sabbath and say why neither has street credibility. (2) "Even Buddha would have been hard pushed to reach Nirvana squatting on a juggernaut route." Consider the dialectic of inner truth and inner city. (3) Discuss degree of hassle involved in paranoia about being sucked into a black hole. (4) "The Egomaniac's Liberation Front were a bunch of revisionist ripoff merchants." Comment on this insult. (5) Account for the lack of references to brown rice in Dylan's lyrics. (6) "Castenada was a bit of a bozo." How far is this a fair summing up of western dualism? (7) Hermann Hesse was a Pisces. Discuss. | |
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." | |
John the Baptist after poisoning a thief, Looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief, Saying tell me great leader, but please make it brief Is there a hole for me to get sick in? The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly, Saying death to all those who would whimper and cry. And dropping a barbell he points to the sky, Saying the sun is not yellow, it's chicken. -- Bob Dylan, "Tombstone Blues" | |
Troll sat alone on his seat of stone, And munched and mumbled a bare old bone; For many a year he had gnawed it near, For meat was hard to come by. Done by! Gum by! In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone, And meat was hard to come by. Up came Tom with his big boots on. Said he to Troll: "Pray, what is youn? For it looks like the shin o' my nuncle Tim, As should be a-lyin in graveyard. Caveyard! Paveyard! This many a year has Tim been gone, And I thought he were lyin' in graveyard." "My lad," said Troll, "this bone I stole. But what be bones that lie in a hole? Thy nuncle was dead as a lump o' lead, Afore I found his shinbone. Tinbone! Thinbone! He can spare a share for a poor old troll For he don't need his shinbone." Said Tom: "I don't see why the likes o' thee Without axin' leave should go makin' free With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin; So hand the old bone over! Rover! Trover! Though dead he be, it belongs to he; So hand the old bnone over!" -- J. R. R. Tolkien | |
A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as "you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants to make a travesty of the game. -- Donald A. Metz | |
If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop. The law of gravity supercedes the law of golf. -- Donald A. Metz | |
"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" | |
My friends, I am here to tell you of the wonderous continent known as Africa. Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31. We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in Africa. Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule: Up at 6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00. Pretty soon we were back in bed by 6:30. Now Africa is full of big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That was the biggest game we had. Africa is primerally inhabited by Elks, Moose and Knights of Pithiests. The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their annual conventions. And you should see them gathered around the water hole, which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water. They weren't looking for a water hole. They were looking for an alck hole. One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my pajamas, I don't know. Then we tried to remove the tusks. That's a tough word to say, tusks. As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were imbedded so firmly we couldn't get them out. But in Alabama the Tuscaloosa, but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying. We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. So we're going back in a few years... -- Julius H. Marx [Groucho] | |
"The pyramid is opening!" "Which one?" "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!" -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All" | |
I tripped over a hole that was sticking up out of the ground. | |
This telethon isn't just about helping disenfranchised geeks. We're also here for the betterment of mankind through our research into finding a Cure for Windows. Each day, millions of man-hours are wasted due to design flaws in Microsoft Windows. Each day, millions of dollars are sent by business and individuals like yourself into a huge black hole known as "Microsoft" for exorbitantly priced software products that should be free. But don't worry. We've almost found a Cure for Windows. Geeks worldwide have toiled endlessly for the past eight years working on a replacement operating system called Linux. It's almost ready. Now we need to convince the world to use our creation and eliminate the virus known as Windows. -- Excerpt from Eric S. Raymond's speech during the Geek Grok '99 telethon held in Silicon Valley | |
Press Release -- For Immediate Release Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA ...Virtually all version of Linux (and Unix) contain a security hole that allows unauthorized users to gain complete control over the machine. By simply typing "root" at the login prompt and supplying a password from a limited number of possibilities, a malicious user can easily gain administrator privileges. This hole can be breached in seconds with only a dozen or so keystrokes... We suspect this issue has been known to Red Hat and other Linux distributors for years and they have refused to acknowlege its existence or supply a patch preventing users from exploiting the "root" login loophole... By ignoring the problem, the Linux community has proven that installing Linux is a dangerous proposition that could get you fired. We would like to point out that Windows XP does not suffer from this gaping hole... Tests conducted by both Ziff-Davis and Mindcraft prove that Windows XP is indeed the most secure operating system ever produced... | |
I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was this little hole in the bottom ... -- John Croll | |
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head. | |
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore benefit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there. | |
I did some heavy research so as to be prepared for "Mommy, why is the sky blue?" HE asked me about black holes in space. (There's a hole *where*?) I boned up to be ready for, "Why is the grass green?" HE wanted to discuss nature's food chains. (Well, let's see, there's ShopRite, Pathmark...) I talked about Choo-Choo trains. HE talked internal combustion engines. (The INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE said, "I think I can, I think I can.") I was delighted with the video game craze, thinking we could compete as equals. HE described the complexities of the microchips required to create the graphics. Then puberty struck. Ah, adolescence. HE said, "Mom, I just don't understand women." (Gotcha!) -- Betty LiBrizzi, "The Care and Feeding of a Gifted Child" | |
I need another lawyer like I need another hole in my head. -- Fratianno | |
The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own capacity. ... Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god of the center. Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together what they could do to repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died. -- Chuang Tzu | |
<miguel> any new sendmail hole I have to fix before going on vacations? -- Seen on #Linux | |
Perhaps the RBLing (Realtime Black Hole) of msn.com recently, which prevented a large amount of mail going out for about 4 days, has had a positive influence in Redmond. They did agree to work on their anti-relay capabilities at their POPs to get the RBL lifted. -- Bill Campbell on Smail3-users | |
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. | |
Do you guys know we just passed thru a BLACK HOLE in space? | |
Laundry is the fifth dimension!! ... um ... um ... th' washing machine is a black hole and the pink socks are bus drivers who just fell in!! | |
Yow! It's a hole all the way to downtown Burbank! | |
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" |