Linux Education

Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people
so resolutely pursuing it.

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        In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
Junior, what are you up to?"
        "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
        "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!  No one
will publish such rubbish!"
        "Well, follow me and I'll show you."
        They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the
rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face.  Comes along a
wolf.  "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"
        "I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour
wolves."
        "Are you crazy?  Where's your academic honesty?"
        "Come with me and I'll show you."
        As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face
and a diploma in his paw.  Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave
and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge
lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody
remnants of the wolf and the fox.

        The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are
important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.

In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he
thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent
teacher should know.  "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig
said, "up to the mathematicians."
                -- The New York Times, October 22, 1985

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
anything?  If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five
years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
                -- The Best of Will Rogers

Iowa State -- the high school after high school!
                -- Crow T. Robot

It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *only* by amusing oneself that
one can learn."
                -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman

It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill,
or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing.  It dehumanizes those who
achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom
good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy
notions.  This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all
infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from
folklore to Article of Belief.  It enhances their self-esteem and lightens
their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that
appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge,
and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
competence will be quite enough.
                -- The Underground Grammarian

        It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and
by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking about what we are doing.  The precise opposite is the
case.  Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them.  Operations of thought are
like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they
require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
                -- Alfred North Whitehead

                        It's grad exam time...
COMPUTER SCIENCE
        Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating
system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert
this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system.  Prove that these fixes are
bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the
new system.  (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.)

MATHEMATICS
        If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long
it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the
length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe the Universe.  Give three examples.