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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

"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)
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the
system from within.  I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them.  First
we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens.  I'm guided by this birthmark on
my skin.  I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons.  First we take Manhattan,
then we take Berlin.

I'd really like to live beside you, baby.  I love your body and your spirit
and your clothes.  But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you I told you I told you I was one of those.
        -- Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan"
        In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist.  And they grew to
large numbers and prospered.
        One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
as the eye could see.  So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
was to reach up as far as "up" went.  Further and further up they went ...
until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
        The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens.  One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
out from under the rubble.  It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not
understand each other.  They all spoke different languages.  They all fought
amongst themselves and each went about their own way.  To this day the
Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
                -- The Story of Babel
The astronomer Francesco Sizi, a contemporary of Galileo, argues that
Jupiter can have no satellites:

        There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two
eyes, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent.
From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven
metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number
of planets is necessarily seven. [...]
        Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and
therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless
and therefore do not exist.
                        Has your family tried 'em?

                           POWDERMILK BISCUITS

                 Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!

            They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons
           the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.

                           POWDERMILK BISCUITS

        Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of
        the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark
                     stains that indicate freshness.
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Of music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.

He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.

When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Sun in the night, everyone is together,
Ascending into the heavens, life is forever.
                -- Brand X, "Moroccan Roll/Sun in the Night"
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running
Linux... And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a
client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million
Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred
years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola.

   -- Polly Sprenger, LAN Times
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

January 2099: Rob Malda Finally Gets His Damned Nano-Technology

The Linux hacker community finally breathed a collective sigh of relief
when it was announced that Rob Malda finally got his damned
nanotechnology.

"It's about time!" exclaimed one Dothead. "He been going on about that
crap since god-knows-when. Now that he's got that and those wearable
computers, maybe we can read about something interesting on Slashdot!"

Observers were skeptical, however. Already the now-immortal Rob Malda
nano-cyborg (who reportedly changed his name to "18 of 49, tertiary
adjunct of something-or-other") has picked up a few new causes to shout
about to the high heavens until everyone's ears start bleeding. In one
Slashdot article, Malda writes "Here's an article about the potential of
large greyish high-tech mile-wide cubes flying through space, all
controlled by a collective mind set upon intergalactic conquest.
Personally, I can't wait. Yum."
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running
Linux. And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a
client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million
Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred
years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola.
        -- LAN Times
Man's reach must exceed his grasp, for why else the heavens?
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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