One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the
mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.
-- J. Gustav White
%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.
-- J. D. Watson, "The Double Helix"
%
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..."
%
One has to look out for engineers -- they begin with sewing machines
and end up with the atomic bomb.
-- Marcel Pagnol
%
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
One man's constant is another man's variable.
-- A. J. Perlis
%
One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor...
is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics.
-- N. Wiener
%
One small step for man, one giant stumble for mankind.
%
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror.
-- W. K. Hartmann
%
Only God can make random selections.
%
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%
Order and simplification are the first steps toward mastery of a subject
-- the actual enemy is the unknown.
-- Thomas Mann
%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry
is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams
%
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it."
-- Alex Schure
%
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
%
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%
People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%
"Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..."
%
Pie are not square. Pie are round. Cornbread are square.
%
Polymer physicists are into chains.
%
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
%
Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
%
Progress means replacing a theory that is wrong with one more subtly wrong.
%
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
about _n.
QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
%
... proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect.
-- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in
"The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
Prototype designs always work.
-- Don Vonada
%
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
than the both put together."
%
Psychologists think they're experimental psychologists.
Experimental psychologists think they're biologists.
Biologists think they're biochemists.
Biochemists think they're chemists.
Chemists think they're physical chemists.
Physical chemists think they're physicists.
Physicists think they're theoretical physicists.
Theoretical physicists think they're mathematicians.
Mathematicians think they're metamathematicians.
Metamathematicians think they're philosophers.
Philosophers think they're gods.
%
Quantum Mechanics is a lovely introduction to Hilbert Spaces!
-- Overheard at last year's Archimedeans' Garden Party
%
Quantum Mechanics is God's version of "Trust me."
%
Quark! Quark! Beware the quantum duck!
%
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
%
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature
cannot be fooled.
-- R. P. Feynman
%
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.
%
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the
universe again..." An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't
know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us,"
ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but
they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have
been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown,
and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
%
Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
%
Research is the best place to be: you work your buns off, and if it works
you're a hero; if it doesn't, well -- nobody else has done it yet either,
so you're still a valiant nerd.
%
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and think what nobody
else has thought.
%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Review Questions
(1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
(2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
(3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
%
Round Numbers are always false.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long
period of time.
-- George Carlin
%
Science and religion are in full accord but science and faith are in complete
discord.
%
Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection
of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
-- Jules Henri Poincar'e
%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
%
Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
-- William Buckley
%
Sentient plasmoids are a gas.
%
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
%
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your
current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it
into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of
8-millimeter video equipment.
... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were
gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes
your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt.
This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until
it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so
*order yours now*.
-- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution"
%
Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them
over the horizon.
-- K. A. Arsdall
%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly
big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the
drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
Space is to place as eternity is to time.
-- Joseph Joubert
%
Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to curve.
-- Wheeler
%
Statistics are no substitute for judgement.
-- Henry Clay
%
Statistics means never having to say you're certain.
%
Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter.
%
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all
real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
-- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
Supervisor: Do you think you understand the basic ideas of Quantum Mechanics?
Supervisee: Ah! Well, what do we mean by "to understand" in the context of
Quantum Mechanics?
Supervisor: You mean "No", don't you?
Supervisee: Yes.
-- Overheard at a supervision.
%
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
%
Take an astronaut to launch.
%
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
%
That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.
-- Neil Armstrong
%
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles.
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty ?" he asked.
"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on
till you come to the end: then stop."
-- Lewis Carroll
%
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex
facts. Seek simplicity and distrust it.
-- Whitehead.
%
The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the
pavement is precisely 1 bananosecond.
%
The amount of weight an evangelist carries with the almighty is measured
in billigrahams.
%
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 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.
%
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
%
The best rebuttal to this kind of statistical argument came from the
redoubtable John W. Campbell:
The laws of population growth tell us that approximately half the
people who were ever born in the history of the world are now
dead. There is therefore a 0.5 probability that this message is
being read by a corpse.
%
The bigger the theory the better.
%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.
-- Merrick Furst
%
The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.
-- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
%
The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.
%
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
-- John Muir
%
The Commandments of the EE:
(9) Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages.
(10) Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician.
(11) When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket. Better
that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
innocent-seeming device.
%
The Commandments of the EE:
(1) Beware of lightning that lurketh in an uncharged condenser
lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
embarrassing manner.
(2) Cause thou the switch that supplieth large quantities of juice to
be opened and thusly tagged, that thy days may be long in this
earthly vale of tears.
(3) Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth, and upon
which the worketh, are grounded and thusly tagged lest they lift
thee to a radio frequency potential and causeth thee to make like
a radiator too.
(4) Tarry thou not amongst these fools that engage in intentional
shocks for they are not long for this world and are surely
unbelievers.
%
The Commandments of the EE:
(5) Take care that thou useth the proper method when thou takest the
measures of high-voltage circuits too, that thou dost not incinerate
both thee and thy test meter, for verily, though thou has no company
property number and can be easily surveyed, the test meter has
one and, as a consequence, bringeth much woe unto a purchasing agent.
(6) Take care that thou tamperest not with interlocks and safety devices,
for this incurreth the wrath of the chief electrician and bring
the fury of the engineers on his head.
(7) Work thou not on energized equipment for if thou doest so, thy
friends will surely be buying beers for thy widow and consoling
her in certain ways not generally acceptable to thee.
(8) Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service equipment alone,
for electrical cooking is a slow process and thou might sizzle in
thy own fat upon a hot circuit for hours on end before thy maker
sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into his fold.
%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%
The devil finds work for idle glands.
%
The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so
little to recommend it.
-- Allan Sherman
%
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
%
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed
to do the work of a man. The marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation defines a robot as 'Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With'.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the
first against the wall when the revolution comes', with a footnote to effect
that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking
over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that
had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in
the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the
wall when the revolution came'.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
of these atoms is talking moonshine.
-- Ernest Rutherford, after he had split the atom for
the first time
%
The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be
correct.
-- William of Occam
%
The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer
and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown
suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged,
I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not
dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the
quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors,
and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural
for them to despise science fiction.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"
%
The following statement is not true. The previous statement is true.
%
The Force is what holds everything together. It has its dark side, and
it has its light side. It's sort of like cosmic duct tape.
%
"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl."
-- Dave Barry
%
The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people,
but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons.
-- Dr. David Butler, British psephologist
%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature
is to build better mice.
%
The Greatest Mathematical Error
The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28
July 1962 towards Venus. After 13 minutes' flight a booster engine would
give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes 9,800 solar cells
would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course
corrections and after 100 days the craft would cirlce the unknown planet,
scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed.
However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I
plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after takeoff.
Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from
the instructions fed into the computer. "It was human error", a launch
spokesman said.
This minus sign cost L4,280,000.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
%
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
%
"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
-- Franco Spisani
%
The instruments of science do not in themselves discover truth. And there are
searchings that are not concluded by the coincidence of a pointer and a mark.
-- Fred Saberhagen, "The Berserker Wars"
%
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets.
-- L. Zadeh
%
The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the moon.
%
The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth. However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.
In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall. On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
"It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point. "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor. "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him. "Suck? Suck? Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out. Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair. "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us, the Universe.
%
The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
%
The moon is made of green cheese.
-- John Heywood
%
The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%
The more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain.
%
The most advantageous, pre-eminent thing thou canst do is not to exhibit
nor display thyself within the limits of our galaxy, but rather depart
instantaneously whence thou even now standest and flee to yet another rotten
planet in the universe, if thou canst have the good fortune to find one.
-- Carlyle
%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov
%
The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe.
-- Chester Gould/Dick Tracy
%
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they
serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have
no legitimacy.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The only perfect science is hind-sight.
%
The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
%
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social
sciences' is: some do, some don't.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite
of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr
%
The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated by the fact that, when
exposed to the same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.
%
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using
other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern
countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so
far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill
and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None of the animals turned into
oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
The purpose of Physics 7A is to make the engineers realize that they're
not perfect, and to make the rest of the people realize that they're not
engineers.
%
The rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field is a precise
measurement of the speed of blight.
%
The reason that every major university maintains a department of
mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.
%
The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
-- Jane Bryant Quinn
%
The Shuttle is now going five times the sound of speed.
-- Dan Rather, first landing of Columbia
%
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor
its theories will hold water.
%
The solution of problems is the most characteristic and peculiar sort
of voluntary thinking.
-- William James
%
The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for
the reader.
%
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
-- Peer
%
The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything.
%
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"
%
The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers
written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not
follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single statement took
the scientific world by storm. So many mathematical conferences got held
in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation
died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put
back by years.
-- Douglas Adams
%
The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology.
%
"The subspace _W inherits the other 8 properties of _V. And there aren't
even any property taxes."
-- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
%
The sum of the Universe is zero.
%
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
-- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972
%
The test of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Aldo Leopold
%
The tree of research must from time to time be refreshed with the blood
of bean counters.
-- Alan Kay
%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
vice versa.
%
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
-- Harlan Ellison
%
The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude.
%
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.
%
The universe is all a spin-off of the Big Bang.
%
The universe is an island, surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds
universes.
%
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
combination is locked up in the safe.
-- Peter DeVries
%
The Universe is populated by stable things.
-- Richard Dawkins
%
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
-- Sagan
%
The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four
forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and
bloody-mindedness.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
The University of California Statistics Department; where mean is normal,
and deviation standard.
%
The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be
done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
-- E. Hubbard
%
The Wright Bothers weren't the first to fly. They were just the first
not to crash.
%
Theory is gray, but the golden tree of life is green.
-- Goethe
%
There *__is* no such thing as a civil engineer.
%
There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis
are chosen correctly.
%
"There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers.
While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain."
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
%
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the
changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts.
Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's
science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled
by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering.
%
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the sunlight that
hits your neighbors' homes, too.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
-- R. W. Gerard
%
There is a building with four floors. On the first floor, there
is a convention of architects. On the second floor, there is a
vinyl manufacturing plant. On the third floor there is a fast food
stand, and on the fourth floor there is a library.
Q: What would happen if a librarian traveled down in a small
elevator with one other person from each floor?
A: The elevator would be full.
%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what
the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another
theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved.
-- Darwin
%
There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing the
rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries civilization
will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. We must provide a
Great Age or see the collapse of the upward striving of the human race.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.
-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
%
There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"
%
There is no royal road to geometry.
-- Euclid
%
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%
There was a mad scientist (a mad... social... scientist) who kidnapped
three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked
each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no
can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's
cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from
pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive,
and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids
off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good
pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising
solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly
against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor:
Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.
Proof: assume the opposite...
%
There was a writer in 'Life' magazine ... who claimed that rabbits have
no memory, which is one of their defensive mechanisms. If they recalled
every close shave they had in the course of just an hour life would become
insupportable.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
%
There was an old Indian belief that by making love on the hide of
their favorite animal, one could guarantee the health and prosperity
of the offspring conceived thereupon. And so it goes that one Indian
couple made love on a buffalo hide. Nine months later, they were
blessed with a healthy baby son. Yet another couple huddled together
on the hide of a deer and they too were blessed with a very healthy
baby son. But a third couple, whose favorite animal was a hippopotamus,
were blessed with not one, but TWO very healthy baby sons at the conclusion
of the nine month interval. All of which proves the old theorem that:
The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of
the squaws of the other two hides.
%
There's a whole WORLD in a mud puddle!
-- Doug Clifford
%
There's no future in time travel.
%
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking
about.
-- John von Neumann
%
They don't know how the world is shaped. And so they give it a shape, and
try to make everything fit it. They separate the right from the left, the
man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They
only want to count to two.
-- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
%
Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.
%
This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough
hunchbacks.
%
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The
spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men
who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
-- Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen, 1938
%
This is the theory that Jack built.
This is the flaw that lay in the theory that Jack built.
This is the palpable verbal haze that hid the flaw that lay in...
%
This isn't true in practice -- what we've missed out is Stradivarius's
constant. And then the aside: "For those of you who don't know, that's
been called by others the fiddle factor..."
-- From a 1B Electrical Engineering lecture.
%
This place just isn't big enough for all of us. We've got to find a way
off this planet.
%
This universe shipped by weight, not by volume. Some expansion of the
contents may have occurred during shipment.
%
This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard
dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft,
pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
-- Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"
%
Those who can, do; those who can't, simulate.
%
Those who can, do; those who can't, write.
Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
%
... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage
from beginning to end.
-- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the
molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose
existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A fifth
theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about
the matter than the others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know
what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
Space is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen to you.
%
TIRED of calculating components of vectors? Displacements along direction of
force getting you down? Well, now there's help. Try amazing "Dot-Product",
the fast, easy way many professionals have used for years and is now available
to YOU through this special offer. Three out of five engineering consultants
recommend "Dot-Product" for their clients who use vector products. Mr.
Gumbinowitz, mechanical engineer, in a hidden-camera interview...
"Dot-Product really works! Calculating Z-axis force components has
never been easier."
Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product. Use
it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector
components. How much would you pay for it? But wait, it also calculates the
work done in Joules, Ergs, and, yes, even BTU's. Divide Dot-Product by the
magnitude of the vectors and it becomes an instant angle calculator! Now, how
much would you pay? All this can be yours for the low, low price of $19.95!!
But that's not all! If you order before midnight, you'll also get "Famous
Numbers of Famous People" as a bonus gift, absolutely free! Yes, you'll get
Avogadro's number, Planck's, Euler's, Boltzmann's, and many, many, more!!
Call 1-800-DOT-6000. Operators are standing by. That number again...
1-800-DOT-6000. Supplies are limited, so act now. This offer is not
available through stores and is void where prohibited by law.
%
To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances
may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence.
-- Joseph Glanvill, 1661
%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
-- Thomas Edison
%
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the earth's
supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century. As man
struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help. Please...
CONSERVE GRAVITY
Follow these simple suggestions:
(1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like curling.
(4) Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
(5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big pile.
(6) Stop flipping pancakes
%
Torque is cheap.
%
Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
%
Two men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a
canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can
call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the
end of the canyon. Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo! Where
are we?" (They hear the echo several times).
Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
You're lost!"
The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
"For three reasons. First, he took a long time to answer, second,
he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%
Two wrights don't make a rong, they make an airplane. Or bicycles.
%
UFOs are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem
in relation to a bigger problem.
-- P. D. Ouspensky
%
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
-- Doug Larson
%
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is
whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling
is that it is not crazy enough.
-- Niels Bohr
%
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his
own facts.
-- Patrick Moynihan
%
We are sorry. We cannot complete your call as dialed. Please check
the number and dial again or ask your operator for assistance.
This is a recording.
%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%
We can predict everything, except the future.
%
We cannot command nature except by obeying her.
-- Sir Francis Bacon
%
We dedicate this book to our fellow citizens who, for love of truth, take from
their own wants by taxes and gifts, and now and then send forth one of
themselves as dedicated servant, to forward the search into the mysteries and
marvelous simplicities of this strange and beautiful Universe, Our home.
-- "Gravitation", Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
%
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
%
We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
%
We don't know who it was that discovered water, but we're pretty sure
that it wasn't a fish.
-- Marshall McLuhan
%
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
-- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
%
We have a equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated.
%
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
%
... we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection
by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized
brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as
an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting
functions). But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often
uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities
of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
-- S. J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
%
We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful
new world. We will see it when we believe it.
-- Saul Alinsky
%
... we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2.
%
We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a
clever but highly unmotivated trick.
-- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra"
%
We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to
brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction.
-- S. J. Gould
%
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical
problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
%
We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
-- Andy Rooney
%
Weinberg, as a young grocery clerk, advised the grocery manager to get
rid of rutabagas which nobody ever bought. He did so. "Well, kid, that
was a great idea," said the manager. Then he paused and asked the killer
question, "NOW what's the least popular vegetable?"
Law: Once you eliminate your #1 problem, #2 gets a promotion.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting"
%
Wernher von Braun settled for a V-2 when he coulda had a V-8.
%
"What I've done, of course, is total garbage."
-- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
%
What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things?
-- J. M. Barrie
%
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
%
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
-- William Blake
%
What is research but a blind date with knowledge?
-- Will Harvey
%
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
which is the exact opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928
%
What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go around the sun. If we went
around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work.
-- Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet"
%
What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying.
-- Nikita Khruschev
%
What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
%
When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute.
But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute -- and it's longer than any
hour. That's relativity.
-- Albert Einstein
%
When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, the telephone people interrupted
service for one minute in his honor. They've been honoring him intermittently
ever since, I believe.
-- The Grab Bag
%
When some people discover the truth, they just can't understand why
everybody isn't eager to hear it.
%
When speculation has done its worst, two plus two still equals four.
-- S. Johnson
%
"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical."
-- Jon Carroll
%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were
set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as
bodies of a lower grade ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
plane will fly.
-- Donald Douglas
%
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation
of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand, so that you can
proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the goal.
-- Amrom Katz
%
When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
know the answer either.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
Where are the calculations that go with a calculated risk?
%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
Oh, dear, where can the matter be
When it's converted to energy?
There is a slight loss of parity.
Johnny's so long at the fair.
%
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat.
-- Christopher Morley
%
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"
%
White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship.
%
Why do mathematicians insist on using words that already have another
meaning? "It is the complex case that is easier to deal with." "If it
doesn't happen at a corner, but at an edge, it nonetheless happens at a
corner."
%
Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle?
-- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program
%
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?
%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
%
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%
Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some
rays and became a tangent ?
%
"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."
%
"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his
mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said. "You should either
bury it or else throw it into the brook."
"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno. "How ever would you
do a garden without one? We make each bed three mouses and a half
long, and two mouses wide."
I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me
how it was used...
-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
%
"Yo, Mike!"
"Yeah, Gabe?"
"We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
"I thought you fixed that last century!"
"No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics
program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
"Blessit! Lemme look... <tappity clickity tappity> Hey, it's
there all right! OK, just a sec... <tappity clickity tap... save... compile>
There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?"
-- Cold Fusion, 1989
%
You are a taxi driver. Your cab is yellow and black, and has been in
use for only seven years. One of its windshield wipers is broken, and
the carburetor needs adjusting. The tank holds 20 gallons, but at the
moment is only three-quarters full. How old is the taxi driver?"
%
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 can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
-- F. Allen
%
You can't cheat the phone company.
%
You cannot have a science without measurement.
-- R. W. Hamming
%
You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
%
You mean you didn't *know* she was off making lots of little phone companies?
%
You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
about 10^12 to 1.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses.
Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many scientists actually
use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a
scientist's house on a sultry August day, you'll find a cheerful fire
roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how
cool he is and drinking heavily.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
You will never amount to much.
-- Munich Schoolmaster, to Albert Einstein, age 10
%
It is the theory which decides what can be observed.
-- Albert Einstein
%
God is subtle, but he is not malicious.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Dopeler effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they
come at you rapidly.
-- Greg Oetjen of Lorton, VA in the Washington Post
"Style Invitational Report from Week 278" published
August 2, 1998
%