Linux Science

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that
they might escape the lusts of the flesh.
                -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

"I think it is true for all n.  I was just playing it safe with n >= 3
because I couldn't remember the proof."
                -- Baker, Pure Math 351a

I THINK MAN INVENTED THE CAR by instinct.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.

"I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
to blue, and it has to do with where the light is.  You know, the
farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
out, it's the shifting of color.  We mentioned before about the stars
singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
                -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club

I THINK THERE SHOULD BE SOMETHING in science called the "reindeer effect."
I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone say,
"Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect."
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.

I THINK THEY SHOULD CONTINUE the policy of not giving a Nobel Prize for
paneling.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.

I use technology in order to hate it more properly.
                -- Nam June Paik

I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block
of wax...  and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the
image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we
forget or do not know.
                -- Plato, Dialogs, Theateus 191

        [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
         referring to image activation and termination.]

I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
gence?"  I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
and use the word *billions*, and so on.  And then I say it would be astonishing
to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
yet no compelling evidence for it.  And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you
really think?"  I say, "I just told you what I really think."  "Yeah, but
what's your gut feeling?"  But I try not to think with my gut.  Really, it's
okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
                -- Carl Sagan

If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
                -- Roy Santoro