Freebsd Fortunes 2

        People of all sorts of genders are reporting great difficulty,
these days, in selecting the proper words to refer to those of the female
persuasion.
        "Lady," "woman," and "girl" are all perfectly good words, but
misapplying them can earn one anything from the charge of vulgarity to a good
swift smack.  We are messing here with matters of deference, condescension,
respect, bigotry, and two vague concepts, age and rank.  It is troubling
enough to get straight who is really what.  Those who deliberately misuse
the terms in a misbegotten attempt at flattery are asking for it.
        A woman is any grown-up female person.  A girl is the un-grown-up
version.  If you call a wee thing with chubby cheeks and pink hair ribbons a
"woman," you will probably not get into trouble, and if you do, you will be
able to handle it because she will be under three feet tall.  However, if you
call a grown-up by a child's name for the sake of implying that she has a
youthful body, you are also implying that she has a brain to match.

        "Perhaps he is not honest," Mr. Frostee said inside Cobb's head,
sounding a bit worried.
        "Of course he isn't," Cobb answered. "What we have to look out for
is him calling the cops anyway, or trying to blackmail us for more money."
        "I think you should kill him and eat his brain," Mr. Frostee
said quickly.
        "That's not the answer to *every* problem in interpersonal relations,"
Cobb said, hopping out.
                -- Rudy Rucker, "Software"

        Phases of a Project:
(1)     Exultation.
(2)     Disenchantment.
(3)     Confusion.
(4)     Search for the Guilty.
(5)     Punishment for the Innocent.
(6)     Distinction for the Uninvolved.

        Price Wang's programmer was coding software.  His fingers danced upon
the keyboard.  The program compiled without an error message, and the program
ran like a gentle wind.
        Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!"
        "Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I
follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique.  When I first began to program I
would see before me the whole program in one mass.  After three years I no
longer saw this mass.  Instead, I used subroutines.  But now I see nothing.
My whole being exists in a formless void.  My senses are idle.  My spirit,
free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct.  In short, my program
writes itself.  True, sometimes there are difficult problems.  I see them
coming, I slow down, I watch silently.  Then I change a single line of code
and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke.  I then compile the
program.  I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being.  I close my
eyes for a moment and then log off."
        Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

        "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised.  "We're back in the
universe again..."  An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't
know which part.  We seem to have changed our position in space."  A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.
        "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us,"
ZORAC announced after a short pause.  "The designs are not familiar, but
they are obviously the products of intelligence.  Implications: we have
been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown,
and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
                -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"

        Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him
Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed,
and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell
every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about
getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console
me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under.
        Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem
to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that.
No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or
maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland...  On
the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as
whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last
possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail"

        "Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing
what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt
somebody else. He even told you he'd be hurt if..."
        "He was going to suck my blood!"
        "Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt
if they don't live our way."
...
        "The thing that puzzles you," he said, "is an accepted saying that
happens to be impossible.  The phrase is hurt somebody else.  We choose,
ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what.  Us who decides.
Nobody else.  My vampire told you he'd be hurt if you didn't let him?  That's
his decision to be hurt, that's his choice.  What you do about it is your
decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake
through his heart.  If he doesn't want the holly stake, he's free to resist,
in whatever way he wants.  It goes on and on, choices, choices."
        "When you look at it that way..."
        "Listen," he said, "it's important.  We are all.  Free.  To do.
Whatever.  We want.  To do."
                -- Richard Bach, "Illusions"

        Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly,
uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the
rational functions needed to represent the integrand.  Although the
algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure
of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot
claim that the algorithm is a natural one.  In fact, the creator of
differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's,
largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work.  Probably
he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as
well.
                -- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub

        Robert Kennedy's 1964 Senatorial campaign planners told him that
their intention was to present him to the television viewers as a sincere,
generous person.  "You going to use a double?" asked Kennedy.

        Thumbing through a promotional pamphlet prepared for his 1964
Senatorial campaign, Robert Kennedy came across a photograph of himself
shaking hands with a well-known labor leader.
        "There must be a better photo that this," said Kennedy to the
advertising men in charge of his campaign.
        "What's wrong with this one?" asked one adman.
        "That fellow's in jail," said Kennedy.
                -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"

        SAFETY
I can live without
Someone I love
But not without
Someone I need.