The magician is seated in his high chair and looks upon the world with favor. He is at the height of his powers. If he closes his eyes, he causes the world to disappear. If he opens his eyes, he causes the world to come back. If there is harmony within him, the world is harmonious. If rage shatters his inner harmony, the unity of the world is shattered. If desire arises within him, he utters the magic syllables that causes the desired object to appear. His wishes, his thoughts, his gestures, his noises command the universe. -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 107

I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!" Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors. There was a computer in every doorknob. -- Danny Hillis

Gnagloot, n.: A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to impress people. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

How kind of you to be willing to live someone's life for them.

This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the power of computers: Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The results are that one should eat each day: 1/2 chicken 1 egg 1 glass of skim milk 27 heads of lettuce. -- Rev. Adrian Melott

It takes both a weapon, and two people, to commit a murder.

Q: Why haven't you graduated yet? A: Well, Dad, I could have finished years ago, but I wanted my dissertation to rhyme.

Remember, an int is not always 16 bits. I'm not sure, but if the 80386 is one step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is asymptotically approaching a real machine, perhaps an int has been implemented as 32 bits by some Unix vendors...? -- Derek Terveer

Life is wasted on the living. -- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Yow! Am I in Milwaukee?

<dark> eat Depends: cook | eat-out. But eat-out is non-free so that's out. And cook Recommends: clean-pans. -- Seen on #Debian

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. -- John Keats

A German, a Pole and a Czech left camp for a hike through the woods. After being reported missing a day or two later, rangers found two bears, one a male, one a female, looking suspiciously overstuffed. They killed the female, autopsied her, and sure enough, found the German and the Pole. "What do you think?" said the the first ranger. "The Czech is in the male," replied the second.

It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river. -- Abraham Lincoln

I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. -- Paul Erlich

Declared guilty... of displaying feelings of an almost human nature. -- Pink Floyd, "The Wall"

Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days.

%DCL-MEM-BAD, bad memory VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears

I live the way I type; fast, with a lot of mistakes.