Linux Science

WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
        Oh, dear, where can the matter be
        When it's converted to energy?
        There is a slight loss of parity.
        Johnny's so long at the fair.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat.
                -- Christopher Morley

        While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to
his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?"
        "Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant.  "What do you
mean?"
        The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of
`Why the sea is salt' many times, but I never thought it important until just
a moment ago.  It's something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and
salt was rare and expensive.  A miller received from a wizard a wonderful
machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long.  At first the miller
thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages
had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding
more salt.  The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his
acres.  At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and
be rid of it.  But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine
were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that's
why the sea is salt."
        "I don't get you," said the assistant.
                -- Guy Endore, "Men of Iron"

White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship.

Why do mathematicians insist on using words that already have another
meaning?  "It is the complex case that is easier to deal with."  "If it
doesn't happen at a corner, but at an edge, it nonetheless happens at a
corner."

Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle?
                -- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program

With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?

With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
                -- Ransom K. Ferm

Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.

Xerox does it again and again and again and ...