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!!!Albert Einstein

• "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
  -- 1954 letter to an atheist. (Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1981.)

Douglas Adams

• "I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer."
• "I'm so cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month! I'm so hip I have trouble seeing over my pelvis!"
• "If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now."
• "You guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off."
• Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" - Final message from the Dolphins, as they escape just prior to Earth's destruction

Howard Zinn

• Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.

J. R. R. Tolkien

• The Road goes ever on and on
  Down from the door where it began.
  Now far ahead the Road has gone,
  And I must follow, if I can,
  Pursuing it with eager feet,
  Until it joins some larger way
  Where many paths and errands meet.
  And whither then? I cannot say.
  
• All that is gold does not glitter,
  Not all those who wander are lost;
  The old that is strong does not wither,
  Deep roots are not reached by frost.

Linus Torvalds

• From http://www.linuxtimes.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=145
  Linus Torvalds: Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision.
  So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ works for me", and they'll get involved in the project.
  And if there is anything I've learnt from Linux, it's that projects have a life of their own, and you should _not_ try to enforce your "vision" too strongly on them. Most often you're wrong anyway, and if you're not flexible and willing to take input from others (and willing to change direction when it turned out your vision was flawed), you'll never get anything good done.

Massimo Taken from here

Come to think of it, here are some of the best reasons why we should engage in discussions to begin with:

1. To better understand our own positions; nothing shows us our contradictions and limitations as to have to clearly explain what we think to somebody else.
2. To better understand our interlocutor’s thinking, to see if there is something good in it (Socrates’ “noble and true birth”), or to find better ways to challenge his mistaken ways (Socrates’ “false idols”).
3. To involve and stimulate additional people to think and to participate in the dialogue. It isn’t only that discussions with more than two participants are more fun and likely to be more informative; more importantly, informed dialogue is at the core of a functional liberal democracy.
4. To keep our own mind open to change; changing your mind on something important is a liberating experience, not to mention one that is likely to dramatically improve both your sense of self-esteem and your standing with your friends or colleagues.

Stanley Milgram on Perils of Obedience

from http://remus.rutgers.edu/~rhoads/PerilsofObedience.html

The experimenter's physical presence has a marked impact on his authority -- As cited earlier, obedience dropped off sharply when orders were given by telephone. The experimenter could often induce a disobedient subject to go on by returning to the laboratory.

Conflicting authority severely paralyzes actions -- When two experimenters of equal status, both seated at the command desk, gave incompatible orders, no shocks were delivered past the point of their disagreement.

The rebellious action of others severely undermines authority -- In one variation, three teachers (two actors and a real subject) administered a test and shocks. When the two actors disobeyed the experimenter and refused to go beyond a certain shock level, thirty-six of forty subjects joined their disobedient peers and refused as well.

I will cite one final variation of the experiment that depicts a dilemma that is more common in everyday life. The subject was not ordered to pull the lever that shocked the victim, but merely to perform a subsidiary task (administering the word-pair test) while another person administered the shock. In this situation, thirty-seven of forty adults continued to the highest level of the shock generator. Predictably, they excused their behavior by saying that the responsibility belonged to the man who actually pulled the switch. This may illustrate a dangerously typical arrangement in a complex society: it is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of actions.

The problem of obedience is not wholly psychological. The form and shape of society and the way it is developing have much to do with it. There was a time, perhaps, when people were able to give a fully human response to any situation because they were fully absorbed in it as human beings. But as soon as there was a division of labor things changed. Beyond a certain point, the breaking up of society into people carrying out narrow and very special jobs takes away from the human quality of work and life. A person does not get to see the whole situation but only a small part of it, and is thus unable to act without some kind of overall direction. He yields to authority but in doing so is alienated from his own actions.

Here, there everywhere

• Howard Gardner, the eminent psychologist who defined the concept of the seven intelligences, observed the following:

Expertise generally arises as a result of several years of sustained work within a domain. . . . Part of that training involves the elimination of habits and concepts that, however attractive to the naïve person, are actually inimical to the skilled practice of a discipline or craft. And the remaining part of that training involves the construction of habits and concepts that reflect the best contemporary thinking and practices of the domain. -- From here

• You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. -- Admiral Jim Stockdale Full story
• Seymour Cray on virtual memory: Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.

Email Sig

• From the insipid neologism "blog" appears to mean little more than a Web site that *actually* gets updated, as opposed to one that *promises* to be updated REAL SOON NOW and includes an animation of a MEN AT WORK sign.
• "You had me at EHLO" --E.Webb (10.04.05)
• Opinions are like assholes -- everyone's got one, but nobody wants to look at the other guy's. -- Hal Hickman
• Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. -Bash
• Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer. -- Swami
• Policing is not supposed to be easy. When it is, you are living in a police state.
• You know: I'm a fan of photosynthesis as much as the next guy, but if God merely wanted us to smell the flowers, he wouldn't have invented a 3GHz microprocessor and a 3D graphics board. -- Luke Girardi
• "By filing this bug report you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!"