Linux Science

The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they
are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally
understood.  Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
                -- John Maynard Keyes

"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
                -- Franco Spisani

The instruments of science do not in themselves discover truth.  And there are
searchings that are not concluded by the coincidence of a pointer and a mark.
                -- Fred Saberhagen, "The Berserker Wars"

The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets.
                -- L. Zadeh

The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the moon.

The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
        The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth.  However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.
        In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall.  On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
        The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
        "It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point.  "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor.  "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him.  "Suck?  Suck?  Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out.  Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair.  "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.

The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars.

The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us, the Universe.