Dollops of Truth, in No Particular Order Stolen with All Due Respect But No Attribution Updated: Mar 26, 2016 *** When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. *** The VERY BIG STUPID is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department. *** Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. *** Smart policy would be to keep an eye on the future. It is coming. *** Ignorance is no protection against reality. *** Why I was a History major (And no, it's not 'an History major.' That sounds retarded. The first rule of grammar is you don't have to do it if it sounds retarded.) *** The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it. *** Luck is the residue of design. *** The Theory of Escalating Commitment: The cost of continuing mistakes is borne by others, while the cost of admitting mistakes is borne by yourself. *** If you give people the means to hurt you, and they do it, and you take no action except to continue giving them the means to hurt you, and they take no action except to keep hurting you, then one of the ways you can describe the situation is "it isn't scaling well". *** Inefficiency scales really well. *** The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. *** One other thing that you need to do is state your assumptions in advance. This is particularly important for papers in areas like networking and security, where the lack of a proper network performance model or threat model can make a paper almost meaningless ("assume a perfectly spherical elephant of negligible mass and volume"). *** It's extraodinary. It's always the children that say "Sir, Sir, what's the point of geometry?" or "What's the point of Latin?" who end up having no job, being alcoholic and they don't notice that the ones who actually find knowledge for its own sake and pleasure of information and the history and the world and nature around us, actually getting on and doing things with their fucking lives. It's an odd thing. *** The goal for women in life is to find interesting and rewarding things to do. The goal for men in life is to find interesting and rewarding things to do in between times of having sex. *** I don't think anyone has to worry about widespread deployment of competence. *** The universe does not bargain. *** If you wonder what anyone thinks of you, consider what you think of them. *** ... the ancient Roman Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Elder. His natural history is the great encyclopaedia, covering all human knowledge at that time. "Life," he said, "is my subject". *** No! It looks like five delicious minutes of TOTAL FUN. *** When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people. *** What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? *** Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is. *** ... so you'd rather know the truth and be mad? No, I wanted the truth to be different. *** Self-flagellation is praying for the past to be different. Complaining is praying for the present to be different. Worrying is praying for the future to be different. *** Most things are very easy. Finding out just how easy they are is the hard bit. *** My people rang me up a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I've got people ... and a phone ... and a grasp on the passage of time. *** Whatever happens from now on, you stand firm and face your destiny without fear but with courage. *** the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about -- no matter what twas. *** You can reject a lot of insane bullshit and bad ideas simply because they are incompatible with love. *** Happiness writes in white ink on a white page. *** Even after all this time The sun never says to the earth, "You owe Me." Look what happens with A love like that, It lights the Whole Sky. *** The things that we see And the lights they reflect Exist in our minds As one and the same. Yet a difference much harder Still to detect Is whether we're playing Or part of the game. *** I just wanted your light to shine on me so I don't get swallowed up by the darkness. *** My debt to you, Beloved is one I cannot pay in any coin of any realm on any reckoning day. *** For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'He reminds me of you'