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Tradition
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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."
                -- Johnny Carson
By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.
                -- P.J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April
                   Fool's column.
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
superficial answer is not far to seek....
The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
-- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language"
While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession,
conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge,
we must ask how one differentiates "real transcendence" from neuropathies
that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense
of cosmic unity.  When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs
[temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of
the religious tradition, the parallels are striking.  The same is true of the
recent spate of alleged UFO abductees.  Parsimony alone argues against invoking
spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
   Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
"The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence
of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars.  Verily, the
learned men are the heirs of the Prophets."
-- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
Don't talk to me about naval tradition.  It's nothing but rum, sodomy and
the lash.
        -- Winston Churchill
Godwin's Law (prov.  [Usenet]):
        As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
        comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a
        tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is
        over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost
        whatever argument was in progress.  Godwin's Law thus guarantees
        the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Jack-and-Jill Party:
        A Squire tradition; baby showers to which both men and
women friends are invited as opposed to only women.  Doubled
purchasing power of bisexual attendance brings gift values up to
Eisenhower-era standards.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
The spirit of Plato dies hard.  We have been unable to escape the philosophical
tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the
superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.
                -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
It BASICally Sucks

Older versions of MS-DOS came with bundled programming languages including
GW-BASIC and QBasic. Windows XP continues the Microsoft tradition of
ruining budding programmers with horrible programming tools by including
XPBasic, an interpreted language in which all of the customary BASIC
keywords have been replaced with advertising slogans.

Nike has paid a handsome amount to Microsoft for "keyword rights". Instead
of saying PRINT "HELLO WORLD", XPBasic programmers must now type JUST DO
IT "HELLO WORLD". Other common XPBasic statements include WHERE DO YOU
WANT TO GOTO 20 TODAY? and DIM ARRAY(1 TO 20) AS INTEGER BROUGHT TO YOU BY
VERIZON WIRELESS.

  -- from Humorix's review of Windows XP (eXceptionally Pathetic)
> I can just imagine Xmas at the Torvalds residence, with their annual
> tradition of having the kids scream... But dad, other kids have the l
> lights strung around the trees, not the computer....

I don't think you get the full picture. I suspect what gets strung up on the
trees at Christmas if Linus does too much hacking is ... Linus

        - Alan Cox
... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm.  One thing
I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition.  If somebody
gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal
stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person
would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
                -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
(It is an old Debian tradition to leave at least twice a year ...)
        -- Sven Rudolph
The departing division general manager met a last time with his young
successor and gave him three envelopes.  "My predecessor did this for me,
and I'll pass the tradition along to you," he said.  "At the first sign
of trouble, open the first envelope.  Any further difficulties, open the
second envelope.  Then, if problems continue, open the third envelope.
Good luck."  The new manager returned to his office and tossed the envelopes
into a drawer.
        Six months later, costs soared and earnings plummeted. Shaken, the
young man opened the first envelope, which said, "Blame it all on me."
        The next day, he held a press conference and did just that.  The
crisis passed.
        Six months later, sales dropped precipitously.  The beleagured
manager opened the second envelope.  It said, "Reorganize."
        He held another press conference, announcing that the division
would be restructured.  The crisis passed.
        A year later, everything went wrong at once and the manager was
blamed for all of it.  The harried executive closed his office door, sank
into his chair, and opened the third envelope.
        "Prepare three envelopes..." it said.
Perl has a long tradition of working around compilers.
             -- Larry Wall in <199708252256.PAA00105@wall.org>
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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