Humor/Wanda

Brontosaurus Principle: Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when this occurs, they are an endangered species. -- Thomas K. Connellan

Pascal is not a high-level language. -- Steven Feiner

Creativity is no substitute for knowing what you are doing.

QOTD: The forest may be quiet, but that doesn't mean the snakes have gone away.

He who minds his own business is never unemployed.

At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the field on track. -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987

There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better" -- John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider"

Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence. -- Henrik Tikkanen

Best Mistakes In Films In his "Filmgoer's Companion", Mr. Leslie Halliwell helpfully lists four of the cinema's greatest moments which you should get to see if at all possible. In "Carmen Jones", the camera tracks with Dorothy Dandridge down a street; and the entire film crew is reflected in the shop window. In "The Wrong Box", the roofs of Victorian London are emblazoned with television aerials. In "Decameron Nights", Louis Jourdain stands on the deck of his fourteenth century pirate ship; and a white lorry trundles down the hill in the background. In "Viking Queen", set in the times of Boadicea, a wrist watch is clearly visible on one of the leading characters. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more efficient would the current models be? If you have not already heard the analogy, the answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75, it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you were interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead. -- Christopher Evans

• • • • • Special AI Seminar (abstract)

It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly, we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call "wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought. IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.

If the future navigation system [for interactive networked services on the NII] looks like something from Microsoft, it will never work. -- Chairman of Walt Disney Television & Telecommunications

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

Time sharing: The use of many people by the computer.

Linux, the way to get rid of boot viruses -- MaDsen Wikholm, mwikholm@at8.abo.fi

I'm sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.

The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence. -- Lyman Bryson

Windows found - Remove? (Y)es (S)ure (F)ine (O)K (M)ake it so

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

Practice is the best of all instructors. -- Publilius

Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. -- Frank Herbert, "Children of Dune"

George Bernard Shaw once sent two tickets to the opening night of one of his plays to Winston Churchill with the following note: "Bring a friend, if you have one."

Churchill wrote back, returning the two tickets and excused himself as he had a previous engagement. He also attached the following: "Please send me two tickets for the next night, if there is one."

> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-). -- Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds' mailing about a kernel bug.

The honeymoon is over when he phones to say he'll be late for supper and she's already left a note that it's in the refrigerator. -- Bill Lawrence

"If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far." -- Paul White

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years. -- James Thurber

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Life is like a tin of sardines. We're, all of us, looking for the key. -- Beyond the Fringe

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

I've spent almost all of my life with highly intelligent men. They're not like other men. Their spirit is great and stimulating. They hate strife; indeed they reject it. Their inventive gifts are boundless. They demand devotion and obedience. And a sense of humor. I happily gave all of this. I was lucky to be chosen and clever enough to understand them. -- Marlene Dietrich, on her friendship with Ernest Hemingway

drug, n: A substance that, injected into a rat, produces a scientific paper.

The only people for me are the mad ones -- the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles. -- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

Don't let nobody tell you what you cannot do; don't let nobody tell you what's impossible for you; don't let nobody tell you what you got to do, or you'll never know ... what's on the other side of the rainbow... remember, if you don't follow your dreams, you'll never know what's on the other side of the rainbow... -- Melba Moore, "the other side of the rainbow"

"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't." -- Dagwood Bumstead

If Microsoft built cars, you would have to press the "Start" button to turn them off.

You are scrupulously honest, frank, and straightforward. Therefore you have few friends.

There is is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. -- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation), Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977