Linux Science

"355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!"

        7,140   pounds on the Sun
           97   pounds on Mercury or Mars
          255   pounds on Earth
          232   pounds on Venus or Uranus
           43   pounds on the Moon
          648   pounds on Jupiter
          275   pounds on Saturn
          303   pounds on Neptune
           13   pounds on Pluto

                -- How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places
                   in the solar system.

A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by
hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to the West.  They
drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and
found there was no pilot on board.  Terrified, they listened as the sirens
got louder.  Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an
experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft.
        He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out.  The sirens
got louder and louder.  Armed men surrounded the jet.  The would be pilot's
friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!!  Hurry!!!"
        The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience.  I'm just a simple
pole in a complex plane."

A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing
but together can decide that nothing can be done.
                -- Fred Allen

A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.
                -- Klipstein

A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.

"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
                -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"

A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist.  He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win.  When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:

Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
          blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
          electrical shock to the horse.
G:        That's very good!  But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist:  I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
          into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
          cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G:        Excellent, excellent!  But I want to hear from the physicist before
          I decide what to do.  Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...

"A horrible little boy came up to me and said, `You know in your book
The Martian Chronicles?'  I said, `Yes?'  He said, `You know where you
talk about Deimos rising in the East?'  I said, `Yes?'  He said `No.'
-- So I hit him."
                -- attributed to Ray Bradbury