Linux Science

The reason that every major university maintains a department of
mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.

The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
                -- Jane Bryant Quinn

The Shuttle is now going five times the sound of speed.
                -- Dan Rather, first landing of Columbia

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor
its theories will hold water.

The solution of problems is the most characteristic and peculiar sort
of voluntary thinking.
                -- William James

The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for
the reader.

The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
                -- Peer

The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything.

The spirit of Plato dies hard.  We have been unable to escape the philosophical
tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the
superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.
                -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"

The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers
written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not
follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
of paper in any other parts of the Universe.  This single statement took
the scientific world by storm.  So many mathematical conferences got held
in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation
died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put
back by years.
                -- Douglas Adams