Linux Science

Measure twice, cut once.

Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.

Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
                -- Frederick Crane

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
                -- Winston Churchill

Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural
function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the
other.  There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the
brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.
Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only. ... It is quite
conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected.  But it
is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working
assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.
Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot
logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
                -- D.O. Hebb, "Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological
                   Theory", 1949

More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads.  One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.
Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
                -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"

"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,
365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365".  He [ten-year-old Truman Henry
Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the
tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes
smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more
than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,255!"
An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be
as much fun to watch.
                -- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"

Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem.
                -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always,
always, he was right.
        [That's an interesting angle.  I wonder if there are any parallels?]