Fall 1998 (Frosh fall)
Spring 1999 (Frosh spring)
Fall 1999 (Soph fall)
Fall 1999 Set 2 (Soph fall)
Spring 2000 (Soph spring)
Summer 2000 (Soph-Jr summer, at Jenzabar.com)
Fall 2000 (Jr fall)
Spring 2001 (Jr spring)
Summer 2001 (Jr-Sr summer, at Cornell)
Fall 2001 (Sr fall)
Spring 2002 (Sr spring)
December 2002 (at Beyond Genomics)
July 7, 2003 (at Beyond Genomics)
November 14, 2003 (at Beyond Genomics)
March 21, 2004 (at Beyond Genomics)
February 16, 2005 (at BG and at LSNE/Cadence Pharma)
July 15, 2005 (at LSNE/Cadence Pharma)


archived Fall 1998...

Satyameva Jayete “The truth alone will triumph” (Sanskrit - on the seal of India)

“You need to sleep like a normal human once in a while.” -my mom

“Don’t forget to breathe.” -Danny Tseng, 1998-99 RA, 2nd floor Class of '17 Hall

“I can actually now carry on a conversation in Java… it’s scary.” -Paul Grzymkowski

“I will never pledge a sorority... and you better not rush, Asheen!” -Jen Ruglovsky circa 9/98, later a Chi Omega sister

“How can they think we have time for all this work? There aren’t enough hours in the day!” -Ruth Gonzalez, Engineer

“So how many classes did you skip today?” -Jen Larson

“I had classes?” -me

“Make sure you jump off a really low bridge.” -Danny Tseng

“All generalizations are false.”
“Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.”
“I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.”
“According to my calculations, the problem doesn't exist.”
“Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder...”
-Bumper stickers

“I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!” -Pat Ferragamo

“Hey Pete, give me an 8MB stick…”
“Sure Asheen, just reach into the bucket-o’-RAM.”
“Got any 16’s?”
“Go fish.”
-Two CS majors (Pete Rinehart & I) having too much fun taking apart a computer

“Je suis screwed.” -Jen Larson

“Thinking recursively is almost as fun as thinking recursively.” -Pete Rinehart

“I don’t think we learned ‘to work’ in high school.”
-Andrew Stucchio, referring to his high school instruction in Italian, and only later seeing the irony.

“Well why don’t you go outside and play hide-and-go-f***-yourself?” -Johnny Kuefner

“Maybe I should transfer to an easier school, like MIT or something.” -me

“It does some weird-ass shit.” -Dan Rabinovitz, regarding his CS 314 project.

“Water flushes the kidneys. Hence peeing.” - Nicole Altstatt

“I used to be able to sing well. Then I got some balls.” -Dan Keen

“I know it sucks, but you gotta do it.” - My dad, referring to my Engineering workload.

Asheen:   “Trust me to find the silver lining in the stormcloud.”
Nicole:   “Trust me to make the stormcloud.”

Nicole:   “You’re an Indian. Show me an Indian dance!”
Asheen:   “You’re an American. Show me an American dance!”

“Might this help?” - Danny Tseng, RA, handing two engineers (Dan Keen and I) a two-liter bottle of Coke the night before the MATH 192 final.

“They’re not skanky sluts. They’re high class sluts.” -an anonymous friend referring to the girls from his high school.

“This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.” -Horace Walpole

“Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.” -George Bernard Shaw

“This shit is hard.” -me, explaining my latest College of Engineering grievances to Jen Larson

“Great men are they who see that spiritual thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Progress of Culture

“I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.” -Plato

archived Spring 1999...

“Life is a strange place.” -Sarah Vincent

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” -François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

“When we focus from the big stuff to deal with the small... that is what makes us powerful.” -me

“We sure are verbose individuals, are we not? i think we should screw engineering and go for communications!” -Jen Ruglovsky, responding to yet another 10K email

“My life is one big ‘To Do’ list.” -me

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'important est invisible pour les yeux.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince)

“You mean to say this code actually works?! ...Impossible.” -DLN, regarding our CS212 code for PS3 #7 (Propostitional Calculus / Tautologies)

“This is really, really abstract…shit.” -Pete Rinehart, regarding CS 212

“After you write a few terms, you sit back, have a beer, and try to find a pattern.” -Prof. Terrell, regarding power series

[lyrics] “Go ahead, you can laugh all that you want... I got my philosophy” -Ben Folds Five, “Philosophy”

[lyrics] “Tell my wife I am trolling Atlantis... and I still have my hands on the wheel” -Billy Joel, “Downeaster Alexa”

[lyrics] “The players tried to take the field; the marching band refused to yield...” -Don McLean, “American Pie”

“A is for Academics, B is for Beer. One of these reasons is why I'm not here.” -AIM Away Message of Mike Hanson (aka MmmBopp)

“Have you seen that new cute guy behind the grill at Jansen's? ...What, there's nothing wrong with checking out the menu.” -Gin Morgan

[lyrics]
“The answers, are getting harder and harder
  And there ain't no way to bargain, or to barter
  But if you've got the angst and you've got the ardor
  You might faint from the fight, but you're gonna find it
  For every challenge could have paradise behind it
  If you accept what you have lost, and you stand tall
  You might just get it back, and you can get it all...
  So now you know why it's a long way to fall...” -Blues Traveler, “Stand”

“I used to be a hunter and pecker. Now I'm just a pecker.” -Pete Rinehart, regarding his keyboard usage -- an essential skill for CS majors.

“Everything we've taught you up to this point is a lie.” -Prof. Greg Morrisett, CS212

“Scheme gives you a lot of leeway, a lot of rope... with which you can hang yourself.” -Morrisett

“Why come to class if you're just going to sleep? At that point, your bed is the best place you can be.” -Jalal Charaf, TA, Math 192

Northwest Ticket Agent: “Where to today, ma'am?”
Mom:                                “San Francisco.”
Agent (uncertainly):           “But ma'am, you're ticket says San Jose...”
Mom (confidently):           “Oh... hmm... okay. Wherever it says on the ticket, that's where I'm going.”

“I'm not a competitive person. I just have a thing against losing.” -Chris Konek

“set! [pronounced "set-bang"] has a weird connotation... it connotes pain.” -Paul Grzymkowski

Pete:       “Just shoot me.”
Carson:   “!”

“This can't be chemistry. It makes too much sense!” -Paul Grzymkowski, regarding organic chem in CHEM 211

“My karma ran over my dogma.” -Bumper sticker

“Are you on the disposable phone?” -mom

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin - more even than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” -Bertrand Russell

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder second seems like an hour. That's relativity.” -Einstein

“Review session? Why would i go to that? i wouldn't understand what they were talking about anyway.” -Chris Boitnott

Chris Boitnott: “Pick out classes? i don't have time.”
Jen Larson:     “You don't have time for classes next semester?!”

“My classes put a serious crimp in my schedule.” -Andrew Stucchio

“If you were an ancient ruler, Asheen, you'd try to take over the whole freakin' world.” -Anthony Mastroniani (aka TBone)

“It's from years of practice in being a sarcastic bastard.” -J. P., explaining his acute sense of humor

“In CS 410 we implement a type of induction known as bullshitty-handwavey induction.” -Dan Rabinovitz

“I better see you playing outside today, or i'll JA your ass.” -Danny Tseng

“I think i'd like to take another Engineering class, just to command the respect that an Arts student taking such a class does.” -Jen Larson, finding a reason for another 'CS100b'

Whaaaat?! I never used the words 'Engineering' and 'respect' in the same sentence.” -Jen Larson, denying the statement six months later

“What's yet another major? You're already insane, so what have you got to lose?!” -Jen Moulton, Engineer, helping me rationalize my intended major(s) at a clarinet dinner

“So when you make circular data structures, you have to be very careful, or you'll find yourself in very deep shit. Too deep to breath. Even with a straw.” -Eli Barzilay, CS212 TA

“Who thinks this code is right? [no hands] ...Wrong? [no hands] ...So, we have a silent majority who does not care about the government.” -Eli

“...and you'll get all kinds of weird and wonderful, exotic bugs.” -Eli

“Wake up! Stop being robots!!” -Eli

“Get ready, get set, !” -Eddie Landsman, Paul Grzymkowski and I racing home from a CS 212 section

“Yeah, you need at least one grade-nicer-bringer-upper each semester.” -Chris Hohorst

Asheen:             “So what're you taking next semester?”
Andrew Davis:   “Sleep 1000000000000000000000000”

“If I had no emotions, i'd be so much happier.” -me

“Caffeine has no effect on me... except that I get a hellacious headache if I don't have any.” -Erin Wetzelberger

“Jen, you're like so cool when you're delerious!” -Andrew Stucchio

“You know Asheen, with all the people you know, I'm surprised I've managed to stay single.” -Jen Ruglovsky

“When the meaning of life hits you, it's such a huge revelation that it hurts your head. It hurts so much that you lose it. Hence no one ever knows the meaning of life at any given time.” -the philosophy of one Anthony Mastroniani

“Anthony said something that smart?! I can't believe he even made a complete sentence!” -Ruth, reading my web page

“Futon! I love that word! I wish more things were named 'futon'. Like pasta!” -Jen Ruglovsky

“If we are not supposed to eat animals then why are they made of meat?” -bumper sticker... props to my boy from home, Matt Coonrod, for that one

“Why are you people constantly talking in the corner?? What is this, a pub?!” -Eli

“I hate AEW. The only reason i go is because i'm in love with my facilitator.” -Jen Ruglovsky

“Wait, you mean there may be days when i have more than one class next semester? ...That sucks!” -Sarah Vincent (i proceeded to smack her)

“Ok, given that there is no Santa Claus... [clamor] ...well maybe we should pick an example that Nadya is more comfortable with.” -Susanna Seigel, Philosophy 100.8 Writing Seminar

“Given, the assumption that Asheen is always late...” -Susanna, finding that example

“Is it true, who votes for true? ...False? ...Well you're wrong! It's neither. So in this one isolated incident the silent majority is correct. Don't you all feel stupid for voting?” -Eli

“At every single moment in one’s life, one is going to be no less than what one has been.” -Oscar Wilde

“I can look at code and tell you what it will do... i am a SCHEME MACHINE.” -Eli

“If you don't know your roots, well, then... some philosophical stuff happens.” -Eli

“Lexical? What does the word mean? I don't know. It's not Hebrew, so I don't care.” -Eli

“Don't you have a desk?” -Brian Lyngaas, to Jen Larson, who was reading outside yet again.

“I like the Asheen philosophy: 'Well, i'm doing pretty bad in this class. Better major in this too.'” -Ben Lauffer

“[Jen Larson's] taste in literature is criminal.” -Jeff Rangan

“A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.” -Robert Bolton

“[To Pete and I] You two are rooming together next year? Dear God save the world!” -Matt Bolcar

“Coherency is overrated.” -Chris Konek, to Jen Larson and I, during another philosophy-at-5am debate session, the night of Slope Day.

“Yeah, I read that article... I mean...” -Pete Rinehart, when told that Slope Day (the party to celebrate the end of the year, on the last day of classes at Cornell) was rated the 6th best collegiate party of the year by Playboy magazine

“So, since she's so short, do you guys 69, or 34 1/2?” -Overheard

“My school colors were clear. We used to say, 'I'm not naked, I'm in the band.'” -Steven Wright

“Now the trumpet summons us again- not as a call to arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope patient in tribulation’, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.” -John F. Kennedy, 1960 inaugural speech

“My entire purpose in life is to be used.” -Carson Bloomberg

“Asheen's computer is in excellent shape. (Ignore the duct tape.)” -Pete

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.” -Gandalf, in J.R.R.Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy

“            ” -Joel Chestnutt

“Dammit, quote me!” -Josh Herman

archived Summer 1999...

Roxanne:   Would you be interested in some computer repair work?
Asheen:     Does a frat boy like beer?

“...as the face of Gates loomed overhead on a video screen like Big Brother in 1984." -CNet News.com article's description of Jobs's 1997 MacWorld announcement that Microsoft would invest $150 million in Apple Computer”

me:     "Not much traffic at the Base (Hanscom AFB) today - they must be taking a day off."
dad:     "Nah. Every day is a day off for the military... so why not come in and get paid for it?"

“Every cloud has a silver lining... but if i tried to find it, i'd probably get struck by lightning.” -overheard at the office

“If you take the word IDIOT, and remove three letters, you get IT.” -Joe Stewart, explaining General Dynamics' decision to outsource our entire Information Technology group to another company

“You'll be fine when you grow up.” -Family friend Jane Coonrod, to my mom, stooping down to tie my mom's dangling shoelace

“I hope I never do!” -- My mom's response
Editor's Note: My mom recently got a ticket for doing 57 in a 25 zone... in a minivan.

archived Fall 1999...

“Just call him Dr. Jhavago.” -Erin, on Pete's ability to converse fluently in Java, a language that he as yet has never studied...

“When i think of the stupidity of the average man, i despair. And when i compare myself to this low standard, i have occasional delusions of competence.” -me

“He really is a great kid, we just get along like fire and gasoline.” - David Savage, of his son Josh

“So, Asheen, you got the cover back on, huh?”
“Yah Pete.”
“Screwed in the casing real tight and everything?”
“Yup. Why?”
“Then, um, why do we have these 3 screws left over?”
“Shit - quick! Tape 'em behind the desk. That way, we'll know where they are, but the Compaq repair guy will never find 'em!”

“Perhaps it's a Menage à Croix [belief] ... or a Menage à Foi [faith]!” -me, while discussing the Hindu and Christian Divine Trinities

“Ours is not to reason why... ours is but to do or die.” -Lord Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade (thanks to Josh Savage)

“A little violence never hurt anyone!” -Josh Savage

“Men don't whine, they complain. Women whine.” -Joe Stewart

“Ok.. you just crossed the line between logical, and engineerical.” -Laura Blau

“Eating and sleeping, they're just hobbies. i do them if i have time.” -Paul

“You're taking 24 credits?! F*** ME!! ...no wait, you don't have time for that.” -Amy Gershkoff

“I'm Human Ecology. I study floofy things, like families and flowers!” -Julie (Jules) Katz

“Jesus tastes like ice cream cones!” -Jen Rug, relating a story about eucharist when she was little

“Asheen, any amount of sleep that you got is twice what you normally get.” -Pete Rinehart (damn roommate)

“I feel like set!-ing something. can't i set! this class to be over?” -Paul experiencing CS212 withdrawl during a CS280 lecture.

“If you don't have the reading material yet, get it ASAFP.” -Prof. Spivey, Cognitive Science 101

“Okay, now i'm going to get philosophical on your asses.” -Spivey

“I hate being a guy. I hate undressing people with my eyes...” -Scott Kelly

“The definition of irony is the word 'monosyllabic'.” -Roland Kluge

“I hate physics, I'm sick of dealing with field and flux and 2 pi epislon nought ass monkey!” -Roland

“If a train stops at a train station, then what stops at a workstation?” -Prof. Van Loan, Chair, CS Dept.

“Ancient Rome was just like one big frat party. Until 496 AD, when they got busted.” -Sandy Cheever

“Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organised by the Swiss. Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, the police German, and it is all organised by the Italians.” -sig file of Dave Craine

“Windows 95 is a 32-bit graphical interface, over a 16-bit shell, over an 8-bit operating system, written for a 4-bit chip, by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1-bit of competition.” -Overheard, courtesy of Dan Keen

“My goal in life is:   when someone asks me what I won my nobel prize in, I'll reply, 'Which one?'” -Herb Wilmoth

“You have a very wise ass.” -Sandy

“Who cuts the barber's hair?” -Joel

“Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vison of things that are to be.” -Adlai Stevenson, courtesy of Tony (T-Bone)

“You're a guy, tyler's a guy, you two have a lot in common!” -Stef Tam

“We can't let our compassion for the denominators outweigh our angst for the numerators!!” -Pete, in the midst of a heated math debate...

“...So what if you have three majors, and I only have two and a half...” -Konek, to me

“Well, I should get to class, since it's over now.” -me, to Joel

“No 'readme' files come with Jen!” -Jen Larson, explaining in Cognitive Studies 101 why she wasn't a tractable computer program.

“If my computer pops up a dialogue box, just do me a favor and click the GO TO HELL button.” -me to Pete, when i was very frustrated with Windows 98... imagine that?

“Too much stud and not enough study.” -David Savage, on why i don't get my work done (shows how little he knows)

“Hard work never killed anyone, but why take chances?” -Overheard (courtesy of Jon Savage)

“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they're not.” -Milo Polte, on cornell.class.cs212.talk

“In computer science, theory is much more practical than in any other field. The fact that practice is important is theoretical.” -Eli's reply [212.talk]

“Bad programmers blame their tools. Good programmers blame themselves. Great programmers blame the TAs.” -email sig of one Mark Adams

“How To Decide if a company is worth working for:
==================================================
0. Start with zero points.
1. If the company is microsoft add negative infinity points.
2. If the company is canadian, add 2 points.
3. If the company has nice bathrooms, add 2 points.
4. If the company is doing something Cool(tm), add 10 points.
5. If the company will Open Source the Cool Thing(tm), add 100 points.
6. If the company makes a Windows product, subtract 20 points.
7. If it will ever be my responsibility to do the Windows product,
subtract 100 points.
8. If the product runs on at least 2 Unixes, subtract 300 points.
9. If the product runs on at least 2 Free Unixes, add 500 points.
A. If the product runs on all Unixes, add 1000 points.
B. If the product is in the process of being ported to run on
all Unixes (but it doesn't currently), subtract 10000 points.
C. If there's also a Mac port in the works (OS 8, not OS X),
subtract 20000 points.
D. If the product is being ported to a PDA, add 300 points.
E. If the product is being ported to a WinCE PDA, subtract 100000 points.
F. If the product is being ported to a Playstation or N64, add 300 points.
10. If I get stock options, add 1 point.
11. If the stock options are worth anything, add 1 point.
12. If I have to admin machines, subtract 1000 points.
13. If I have to admin NT Server, shoot me now.
14. If I have to wear a suit, shoot me now.
15. If I am alive and have at least 1 point, take the job
16. Otherwise, shove it.”
-Aleskey Kliger [212.talk]

“Is not the world #t?” -Walter Chang [212.talk]

“Even though i'm not single, i can still window-shop!” -Pete

“A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.” -Robert Bolton

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.” -Abraham Maslow

“There is a bug in this ant farm!”
“What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it.”
“That's the bug.”
-overheard on the Internet

“I would like to challenge the band to find a subject that Asheen can't comment on.” Matt Kaprove

“You'll have to excuse Asheen. He got ahold of some bad RAM...” -Pete

“... a holistic thinker ...[is] constantly relying on hunches to cope with problems far too complex for rational analysis... organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called ‘rationality’; it lies in a blend of clear logic and powerful intuition.” -Henry Mintzberg as quoted in the Harvard Business Review

archived later, Fall 1999...

I hate it when things suck. -Sandy

Disciple - How can you be what you are not?
Zen Master - By not being.

Pete:   Heh. You start up Age of Empires, i start up Sin.
Me:     It's Civilization 2, Pete. get the addiction right! and i don't do amphetamines, i just smoke crack.
Pete:   No, you just do speed.
-A typical exchange between my roommate and I

I bet if they funneled our work capacity into another outlet, Cornell could become a small superpower... -Courtney Bolger

To iterate is human; to recurse, divine. -Overheard on the Internet

Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time,
                        which only occurs there and then. -Ibid

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. -Ibid

Veni, Vidi, Visa. -Ibid

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
-Ibid

And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode. -Ibid

Walk softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword. -Ibid

Sweater, n.:
            A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
-Ibid

You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
You are permanently confused. -Ibid (Dave Decot)

"Heisenberg may have slept here" -Ibid

Actually, we have scientifically determined that Heisenberg did indeed sleep exactly here. However, we have no idea whatsoever just how fast asleep he was." -Ibid (Dave Aronson in the scary.devil.monastery)

Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology. -R. S. Barton

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -Leonard Brandwein
(ahem)

I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos. -Albert Einstein, on the randomness of quantum mechanics

Brain, n.:
        The apparatus with which we think that we think.
-Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. -Benjamin Disraeli

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. -Winston Churchill

I bet the human brain is a kludge. -Marvin Minsky

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. -the Tao Te Ching

"One World, One Web, One Program" -- Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" -- Adolf Hitler

Transitive closure. is that like a dijon burger? because i understand dijon burgers. snapples too. -me, trying my best to equate CS280 to something i understand (and failing).

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. what the hell's the deal with Y? why's does it have to be so indecisive?! -Sandy

Well, if you make a really curvy line segment... -Jeff

Asheen equals screwed for all reasonable values of CS280-prelim... -me

I had him for my calculus in a foreign language class last semester (ok so it was calculus for biologists, but the entire staff spoke a foreing language--we eventually started calling it cooking in a foreign language when my TA was trying to explain how to take the derivative of the "chicken"--we think he meant secant, but we're not so sure). -Kristen Schroeder, on Prof. Artemov

[Complaining about how the answer to Sergei Artemov's induction problem on a CS 280 prelim was worked out backwards, from (n+1) to n, which we had gotten marked wrong for doing in CS 212]
Pete:   Well apparently, there are several different types of induction. 212, 280...
Me:     ...Russian!




This will subliminally induce patriotism in all of you. -Prof. Spivey (Cog Sci 101), on the American Flag afterimage illusion

They say it's Jesus, but i think it's me! -Spivey

I want this one to work, dammit! -Spivey, on an experiment in class

And because of the motion illusion, the walls move -- and without even any drugs! -Spivey

Your brain is experiencing cupness. -Spivey, on how we see a cup

[On the Necker Cube] You guys are schizophrenic! what's going on?! -Spivey

There's nothing wrong with being an Evil Scout. -Beth, with a hell of a Freudian slip

The voices in our heads should get together for a knitting circle! -Beth

That building isn't even worth criticizing. -Prof Vince Mulcahey (Arch 131), on "my" building, Upson

This building has a personality problem. -Mulcahey on Olin Hall (or "Olin Chemistry" as he called it)

Don't think you're a dumbass if you forget what ancestors and descendents are. but if you forget parents and children, then you are. -Tony, doing a CS 280 lecture

Me:       Hey Mom, we have a Harvard tree. it's all stuck up!
Mom:   Well, how do we make it into a Cornell tree?
Me:       Load it down with lots of stress!
-conversation between my mom and me, Christmas '99

It's not moldy. I'm just growing penicillin. -my mom, speaking of some yogurt that's "been there for a while"

Fran.sys:   Est-ce que tu parles français?
Chris:       Not really.

P = f -1(C)     -Chris and i discussing how peeing and caffeining are related

You might have 2 PhD's, but if you can't make it to the bathroom when you're old it might not be worth it. -the wisdom of the sagacious Pete-Ray Costas

me:       Was that a Java Jolt, or a Cherry Bing?
PER:     [three octaves higher than normal] BIIIIING!!!
-On the effects of caffeine on CS majors

Drunken as I may be, my code is good:
System.out.println("I am very drunk!");
-Frances, upon being told that despite having way too much to drink and not speaking or writing coherently, she could still write java code without a single mistake

Is that my computer? I thought I heard my computer say something to me. -PER

That is SO Descartes! -Frances' first words upon viewing The Matrix

Well my code works, it's just that my brain gets in the way. -PER, regarding 314

If you voted for Clinton in the last election, you can't take a dump here. Your asshole is in Washington.
-Men's room Outback Steakhouse, Tacoma, Washington
At the feast of ego, everyone leaves hungry.
-Bentley's House of Coffee and Tea, Tucson, Arizona
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
-Revolution Books, New York, New York
If pro is opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?
-Unknown
Express Lane: Five beers or less
-Sign over one of the urinals, Ed Debevic's, Phoenix,AZ.

archived 4/19/01...

...and [CS] 410 is just programming and crap, how bad can that be?? PER, with some famous last words

Actually, it's due Thursday. i've just been telling you it's Tuesday to get your ass in the lab. -Ryan, to his CS 314 partner

Could be worse. I mean, i don't feel sick, my head's just all f***ed up. -PER, regarding his sinus infection

"Some assembly required." -on the first CS 314 handout

[regarding a 314 project] Hey, it works. If they don't give us an A for that... they can freakin' TOSS MA SALAD!!! -me, after a near-all-nighter for 314

When you steal from one person, it's plagiarism; when you steal from many people, it's research. -Pete-Ray

Let's not nerd out when we don't have to. -CK

It's just PChem. -me, four days before the first ChemE 391 prelim

So since we have 02 * infinity = 1, it's obviously a fairly large value of 0. -Prof Duncan, ChemE 391

Awe, man! I just highligted my leg. Now i have to study that for the test! -Bolcar

Put away your toys. -Maureen to Bolcar, shooting him down for playing with his laser and his diffraction gratings

archived Summer 2000...

[ From the summer of 2000, where I worked at
Jenzabar, an internet startup ]
Do you know [the java compiler] maxes out at 100 errors? -Sandy Jablonka

[In response to my saying my vacation was fun and relaxing:] Well, we'll take care of that. -Steve Dyer, my boss at Jenzabar, the VP of Development

[The day our new Database Administrator left the company, just a couple days after the other one quit...] Get me a DBA and a beer. -Steve Dyer



archived Fall 2000...

Horn broken: watch for finger. -bumper sticker

Bolcar is an elephant. -Effie

I hope there will be something for every type of reader, even if it is only something to argue with. -Kim Knott, Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction

I'm going to give a presentation tomorrow to a man with guns! -Effie

I'm anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-Semitism. G. W. Bush, in a campaiqn speech

It's just one of those things i've been saying since i was like 12. -CK, on his obsession with the number 12

Attempts to extract [Ayn Rand's] philosophy have usually resulted in thin intellectual chicken soup. -Library Journal on Sciabarra's Ayn Rand, The Russian Radical

No. We don't do that drug around here. CK, on sleep

It might drive her sane. -CK on psycho aunt

Oh, yeah, i can see that one in the emergency room... "What happened?" "I kissed her!!" -Effie teasing me about my refusal to eat chocolate before seeing Lisa, who is allergic to it

That's some great assonance. -CK

I don't mind exchanging bodily fluids with you... after all, I've already drank cream out of your crotch. -Effie, to me

See what happens when I hang out with you guys? Ass keeps coming out of my mouth!! -Nik

He just gives us our prelims back, and then gives us donuts! He can't buy me with a donut! Give me some points back! -Fernanda Tavares

What are you trying to do, make up for the whole semester?! Mom, upon discovering me still asleep on Thanksgiving morning 16 hours after going to bed

Big-O shit! -Effie about her CS 211 prelim

It is like a comfort level, the molecules like to try out different... "states"... much like a young man with women. -Escobedo on chemical potentials

During the week it's plug and chug... but on the weekends it becomes chug and plug. (Except the "plugging" isn't usually successful.) -Dave S

Office hours will be during recess, by the monkey bars... -Elana on the... youthful appearance of one of our TA's

Students are often disheartened by the apparent genius required to obtain solutions to complex equations like the ones bieng considered here. -Denn, Process Fluid Mechanics

When I grow up, i want to be a hot mom. -Christina Nocerino

You remind me of my uncle. At first he seems like a f***up, but then you realize he's brilliant. -CK, to me

You'd like it. It's wierd! -Beth Chestnutt, Joel's mom, to Joel

What's the Reynold's number for urine flow out of a penis? -(an anonymous student in ChemE 323 - Fluid Mechanics)

This was a little disturbing. I was expecting 5-year-olds to come to the door... These were not 5-year-olds. -Cardie, on some of her CS 472 students who trick-or-treated at her door on Halloween night while she was preparing for the next day's lecture

I wish i knew what stress was. -me, on a fluids problem set (what the hell is tauxy anyway?)

Can you buy milk at K-Mart? I used to work at K-Mart. You couldn't buy milk then. -Cardie

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' -Isaac Asimov

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. -Neils Bohr

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? -Albert Einstein

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. -Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. -Einstein apparently took PChem Lab...

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. -...though, he obviously never took Heat and Mass Transfer.

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. -Einstein

If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. -Einstein

"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom." -Einstein

ipsa scientia potestas est (knowledge itself is power) -Francis Bacon, courtesy of Mindy Ruglovsky

Back to your box, you particle! -me to Bolcar, admonishing him for not doing his quantum problem set

My philosophy prof blew off our class today. it says on his door "professor loughey is out due to illness." PETE'S INTERPRETATION: "professor loughey is half in the bag and couldn't drag his drunk ass out of bed after drinking one too many chivas regals. chug-chug-chug". -Once again, the sagacious Pete-Ray Costas enlightens us about one of his professors at Westfield State.

It doesn't matter... you have ass on call. -Bolcar

i just hate chemistry. hate it. -CK, 3/22/99

Self-improvement is masturbation. -Fight Club

do any of you guys even read my away messages? -Jen Rug's away message

...[B]ut the better story was last night, I had a Senegalese poet tell me that he loves me and that he wants me to be his girlfriend (while it rained on us). -Alli, expanding her horizons in Paris

I took the kids skiing on Monday... today [Thursday] i'm gonna play some golf... what a great resort Ithaca is, you get all four seasons in a week! -One of our neighbors

Check this box if Asheen died during the tax year. -An online tax-return thing

No MSE class would be complete without at least 4 words in the title. -Jen Rug

archived Spring 2001...

Let the Game begin. -Shimon Edelman, beginning the GEB Symposium with a reference to Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game

...And I realized it was a sort of Gaussian... -D. R. Hofstadter, describing the emergent property of glue distribution in a stack of 100 Mead envelopes

I don't know how to say this very well... -D. R. Hofstadter

If you're rejecting rationality on rational grounds, then you're a sneaking rationalist. Kaushik Basu (Prof. of Economics)

I wish i knew what stress was... -me, on a fluids problem set (what the hell IS tau-xy, anyway?)

Particle physicists are always trying to hold a meeting, but whenever they decide on a place, the time changes. -sig file of Tanja Bode

Oh yeah, that'll work. You're black, and i look like a woman! -Corey, on Liz's suggestion that he try to use her ID to get into bars

...And you have all these nooks and crannies... much like an English muffin. -Prof. Paulette Clancy, on pourous catalysts

That's already on the board, but I'll add it just so you don't feel bad. -Clancy

All work and no play... probably means you're a cheme. -Christian Eckman

What drives you on
Can drive you mad.
-Garbage (courtesy of Frances)

y? y0. -me

And by this proof, you can prove that there are nonstandard numbers. Now you can tell that to people to impress them. Tell them also that you have proved that there are aliens who manipulate them... that'll really get their attention. -Constable

The math for this is long and complicated... We save those for problem sets. -Prof. Engstrom

Like a tiny top 'cept different. -Duncan's (391) lecture notes on spin angular momentum

This is supposed to be a pep talk, not a porn movie! Effie, to her boys the night before a date

It's not just "for the convenience of the reader," it's for the survivability of the reader! Mathematicians always assume we're infinitely capable. -Constable

The visualization's [Schödinger] uses scarcely make any sense... In other words, I think his work is shit. -Heisenberg, in a letter to Pauli

If you weren't a college student, you'd probably freak out about it. -Constable, on recursive definitions

Some people take youth by the horns and make it fly. -Doug Hicks, Ithaca Times

If you have any nurses, bring them along. I just glanced at my calender and Sunday is Nurse's Day. Matt Siegler, in an email about the Society of Physics Students picnic

...sorry, we plead end-of-semester aagghhness... -Wendy McRae, apologizing for a late ballroom-l mailing

We shall not argue that the word is pretty... -Nagel, on "meta-mathematics" in Gödel's Proof

There is no Scranton number. Scranton is a city in Pennsylvania. -Bocz to Alex

Your last name will always do it for me, Bocz. -Liz

archived Summer 2001...

Once I'm a nun I'll start going to mass! -Ruth

Asheen: So why'd you punch him?
Ruth: Because he called me vindictive!

Thanks for making my job a little less monogamous! -Laurissa

Three letters: 312. -Effie, on what occupied all of her time in Spring '01

So today Paulette [Prof. Clancy] walked into our lab and asked me how my research was going. I thought to myself, "Who are you and what are you doing in my lab?" -Dev, on how often Clancy visits our lab

Have you seen the elusive scarlet pimpernell? -Dev, yet again looking for Paulette

Who sings couch? Erik "the Red" Albenze, obviously not recognizing a Cranberries CD

I guess I picked the wrong week to quit crack. -Leo

archived Fall 2001...

It's because i'm cool. -Dev, in response to the question "Why do you think you'll succeed in the business world?" for a class in the Johnson School

Right, I gotta stop putting faith in the general common sense of humanity -PER

If you happen to be tall, dark, and handsome, and possess a white horse, some shining armor, and maybe your name begins with "sir", i can be found at 10 sisson place, ithaca, ny, for the rest of the day. please save me. -one of jen rug's myriad away messages

it kinda happened when we were both drunk.... -SM, on her new relationship

Paulette Clancy, at a research group meeting: "You can't play God with silicon!"
Mike Thompson (aka Chris Farley): "Yes I can! If crystals didn't exist, all glasses would be liquids!"

Yeah Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Don't we all feel special. Does this mean we'll be CHuMBE's from now on? -Tara, on our department's name change

Bolcar: So my question is, what is z0?
Konek: Warrior princess?

That was too much fun to only do once. -Konek

I think that's the reality factor. -Colleen, in ChemE 711 "Advanced Thermodynamics"

This step is actually entirely obvious. -Prof. V. Kumaran, ChemE 711, proving a relationship among internal energy, entropy, and chemical potential using Euler integration

This stuff always confuses me. -Kumaran, doing yet another proof by Euler integration

I always get more confused when I teach this course. -Kumaran (can you imagine by now how confused *I* am by now?)

For example, at your age all ages above 40 are infinitely old. -Prof. Shai Ben-David, CS 381 "Mathematical Theory of Computation"

Thank you God, for sending me this cute specimen next to me. -Alli, on checking out guys in temple

This violates all of the laws of thermodynamics. -Chris, on the dish that he ordered "Nelson hot" at Thai Cuisine

It's 80 degrees out... I feel very criminal right now. -Prof. David Dunning, Psych 265 "Psych and Law", on the correlation of temperature to violent crimes

I'm thermally excited. -Bolcar

Whatever you think of his guilt or innocence by mental health -- at the very least, he had a bad eating disorder. -Dunning, on Jeffrey Dahmer and the insanity defense

Tired, with a chance of napping. -Konek, on the weather forecast for the day

So tell me if this is a faux pas... because, you know, I am a walking faux pas. -Liz

This means that this is... I forget the word. You don't want to hear it in Hebrew, do you? -Ben-David

I can rationalize anything!!! -Jenners

I dunno... I'm still a little girl. -Alli, when presented with a question about her future

And if each of the five people we invite brings one more, that's ten extra people! [upon being informed that that would be only five *extra* people] ...That's why I went into medicine, and not mathematics. -Mom

A girl should be the right combination of friend and bitch. -Tara G.

Seriously, Connecticut is like the Mexico of Massachusetts. The spring break revelry in Cancun is tame compared to that of such seaside paradises as Mystic, Groton, and Old Saybrook. -Shorts

It's important to know what's the best you can do, so you don't strive for anything better. -Liz, justifying her ideal-world analysis of an engineering problem

This "life" stuff is hard. -Lisa

Do gods like to be scratched behind the ears? -Effie (yes, she said "gods", and yes, it made sense in the context)

I'm still recovering from that last sneeze. -Colleen, having had a little to drink at Chapter House right after our ChemE 711 final

To write a paper, you have to know something about something. -advice from my mom about How It Works In Academia

Suicide notes from insects:
It's always the same story. You meet a gentleman, you think that you might have a future with him, but then after a feral bout of autonomic copulation, somebody ends up devouring somebody else, leaving his still-thrusting thorax to satisfy you until you're ready to finish him off for dessert. I guess there's just no room in this world for a true romantic.
--Praying Mantis
-courtesy of Tara G.

Bard is a cruel mistress. -Jen Rug, Matsci wonderwoman

Asheen: Is there anything definite in your life?
Joel (arm raised in triumph): I'm weird!
Asheen: Point conceded.

How come you never quote me? -Josh Herman

My feet are tired. I've been drinking all night. -Konek

I may not be wise, but I'm a wise ass. -Konek

Asheen: Do you know anything about glass transitions?
Jenners: I have a patent in a polymer that had a Tg of -56C! ... (sorry im a huge f---ing materials nerd)

...and polymers dont go liq -> glassy at Tg. they go like squishy to hard -Jenners again

Sleep Happens. -me

Works out a lot of shit... and chicks dig it. -Christian Eckman on songwriting

Even if you didn't go anywhere, you'd be late coming back. -My dad to my mom

Not many... I'm more of a hookup girl. I don't like commitment. -Cara, asked how many boyfriends she's had

I've had firsthand experiences of the power of the situation and the ability of people to act much worse than they otherwise would. Has anyone ever played Risk? -Dunning

A piece of advice... Never, never play Risk with a couple whose marriage is on the rocks. -Dunning

It's good to read slowly - oh wait, that's eat slowly. -Alli

This man pisses me off exponentially with time. -Liz, on one of our instructors

Heaven forbid I get a girlfriend... then we'll really be screwed. -Bolcar

I think the Balrog violates all three laws of thermodynamics. -Bolcar, discussing with me the Lord of the Rings in a modern context and finding yet another thing that violates all three Laws

...If I owned the One Ring, how much do you think it would sell for on eBay? -me

...I can see Sauron saying, "Darn, I was outbid by a Hobbit!" -Bolcar

archived Spring 2002...

Forty percent of Americans ... think that by not drinking, they'll live longer. To me that just seems wrong. -Prof. Stephen Mutkoski, Intro to Wines

When you start to pay five, six, seven hundred dollars a bottle, you'd better see God, and she'd better be beautiful. -Mutkoski

Who sees all brings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear. -Isa Upanishad

He who knows both knowledge and action, with action overcomes death and with knowledge reaches immortality. -Isa Upanishad

I am all powerful... I am the god of corn! -me: things that make sense after midnight in Olin

CanIMajorInThis2: wassup
jenr53: drunk
jenr53: u?
CanIMajorInThis2: drunk
-Jenners and I having an excellent and productive evening

As always asheen you have a dictionary of fun facts and knowledge :-) -Mindy

Why is a fire-engine red? Because it has four wheels and eight men; 4 plus 8 equals 12. Twelve inches is a ruler; the Ruler is Queen Elizabeth; the Queen Elizabeth is a ship; a ship sails on the ocean; the ocean has fish; the fish have fins; the Finns fought against the Russians; the Russians are red; and fire-engines are always 'rushin'; so thats why they are red. -Courtesy of Tara

i keep trying to listen to my gut, but all my gut keeps telling me is to go and take a nap. -Randall Goldsmith

I'm not racist, I'm just dumb. -Bolcar

Business will be either better or worse. -Calvin Coolidge (courtesy of Dan Keen)

That's okay, I'll watch when you present for the Nobel prize. -Mom, on not getting a chance to watch a Design presentation

I think it is like a huge coup when slackers like us suceeed. -Nikhil, to me

In all honesty, watching you from a distance is fascinating. it often looks like this retard walking into walls. but if you get up close and talk to the retard, you find out that he is this really intelligent kid searching for the one theory that he can grasp better than anyone in the world. -Nikhil's take on me

Hung like Einstein
Smart as a Horse
-Seen on a bumper sticker

...Sort of like, if you shoot for the moon you'll wind up in a tree, that sort of thing... how does that expression go? -Konek

Okay, I have to go now, because you're not worth my cellphone minutes. -an unhappy Allison, to someone who shall remain nameless

See, that's the problem with you. You go to *all* the lectures, so you get confused. -Konek

Marion, isn't it great to get in Chris's pants? -Frances

You have more balls than the average guy! -me, to Frances

I almost went to Catholic school, but by some act of God I didn't have to. -Lisa

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest. —Kurt Vonnegut

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. —Buddha

If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -Roy Santoro, courtesy of Dan Keen

The Washington Bullets are changing their name. They don't want their team to be associated with crime. From now on, they'll just be known as the Bullets. -Jay Leno

i bought myself a ring. it is a sapphire, but not natural, as in it didnt come from the earth and then go to my ring. its lab-made. i don't care bc it's just chromium doped aluminum oxide and by buying it i at least gave some ceramist a job. :D -Jenners

the prof. is out of town. and when the cat's away... well, appearently, most of the mice don't come in.... -Konek

I reserve the right to be smarter tomorrow than I am today -Churchill, courtesy of Mindy Ruglovsky

archived December 2002...

I'm trying to solve the world's problems right now so i can't talk long. -Lisa

why does suede get so f***ed up in the rain? don't cows ever get wet?!?! -Jenners

C is to C++ as a lung is to lung cancer. -Wade Hines, Bioinformaticist at Beyond Genomics

I have very strong opinions, most of which I can be talked out of. -Wade

If you're sick enough to take Pchem 2 for fun and like it enough to switch to chemical engineering, then we can have a lot of fun with statistical mechanics, protein lattice modeling... -Wade, a wry smile slowly forming on his face

Proving yourself wrong in your research is no fun at all. -Joel

To test a high-speed train design, British Rail borrowed the Federal Aviation Administration's gun that fires dead chickens at aircraft windshields to ensure they can withstand a bird strike. BR's engineers were horrified when the test chicken went through the windshield, through the driver's chair, and made a big mess on the back wall. The FAA checked the protocol and recommeneded a retest—"but this time, make sure the chicken has first been thawed." -Natural Capitalism, Hawken, Lovins & Lovins

If you want to be creative, you shouldn't know too much about the subject. -Lewis Wallberg on Sydney Brenner, winner of the 2002 Nobel prize for medicine

As long as there are ill-defined goals, bizarre bugs, and unrealistic schedules, there will be Real Programmers willing to jump in and Solve The Problem, saving the documentation for later. -courtesy of Dan Keen

It seems very foreign to me that you are so far away (haha). -Lisa, in an email to me while I was in India

oh, and i found out the other day that agnostics are covered under the hindu faith, so it seems i unwittingly found god (no pun intended). -Nikhil

I never thought I'd see the day, but it's true: the Birkenstocks are teaching the suits. -Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry

So convenient a thing it is to be a resonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do. -Ben Franklin, courtesy of Etienne Merle

Have you ever noticed that whenever they show scientists on t.v., they're always pipetting? Must be a very scientific thing to do. -Dr. Wayne Stochaj, while pipetting

i just bought an alarmclock today so as to be able to take labnaps longer than 99 minutes (since that is as far as the microwave in the readyroom goes to) -Mariam ElNaggar

Now you can wake up with something hot and easy and not be the subject of gossip. -Better Homes and Gardens back cover add for Uncle Ben's Breakfast Bowls

It's no secret that we've been going through some tough times.... Our confidence remains high. -excerpts from emails from United Airlines, the day they filed for Chapter 11

Sounds like a plan...I'll have my people call your people and we'll do beer. -Rob Collier

When you come to a fork in the road, take it. -Yogi Berra, courtesy of entrepreneur.com

I didn't need it, so f--- it. -Bocz on why he had his appendix removed

I dunno. Maybe I just like adrenaline. -Joel, on why he's naturally drawn to sports that can kill/maim

archived 7 July 2003...

Mom (to me): You talk so much, I never hear you shut up!
Dad: How can you hear him shut up?

Haha, you quoted me on the meanest thing I ever said and actually meant: I didn't even recognize it as my quote at first! I was so drunk when I said that, it was slope day! -Alison, on her "cellphone minutes" quote in the last installment

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -Walt Disney, courtesy of Dan Keen

So I said Johnny whatcha doin' tonight?
He looked at me with a fist full o' fright
And I said, how 'bout, a revolution?
                                                      And he said, right.
-OAR, "Crazy Game of Poker"

I'm a management dork. -Lisa

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for pounding, long scenes of sword and flaming-catapult action and unsettling mystic evil.

I'm unfortunately a mushroom in this matter... kept in the dark and fed on bullshit. -Wade Hines

It breaks my heart to find myself within the cesspool of reality TV shows. -Peter Funt, the host of Candid Camera

The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. -Larry Wall, creator of Perl

...This is because Perl will generally waste memory to save time. This is a good tradeoff; if you're short of memory, you can buy more; if you're short on time, you're hosed. -Learning Perl

I trust Bush with my daughter, but I trust Clinton with my job. -Craig Patterson, a 45-year-old St. Louis ironworker, in USA Today

archived on 14 November 2003...

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. -Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), Prime Minister of India 1966-77 and 1980-84

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside. -Mark Twain (courtesy of Etienne Merle)

Moms are made of sugar and spice and lots of advice. -me

All of us are watchers — of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway — but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing. -Peter M. Leschak

The disclosure of wire-tapping at the European Council's headquarters... [was] discovered in late February during a routine security trawl. ... "There are many indications that they were installed with the building [in] 1994-95." -Sven Olaf-Peterson, Swedish EU Ambassador, quoted in the London Financial Times [emphasis added]

[She's] hotter in a more wholesome "f*** me" sorta way. -Bolcar, on Amy Lee, the lead singer of Evanescence

I went down in three straight pitches. I was like, "Well, that was fun." -Minnesota Twins rookie Todd Sears, after facing Pedro Martinez in his first major league at-bat. In their next meeting, he would hit two home runs off of Pedro

Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly. -St. Francis de Sales

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. -Robert Pirsig

My life has been the poem I would have writ,
but I could not both live and utter it.
-Henry David Thoreau

CanIMajorInThis2: ah yes you catch on quickly
capnmariam: often a little too quickly
capnmariam: so much so that i get ahead of what i try to catch on to, and fall on my bum.
-Mariam being Mariam.

We strive to do what is Right and so must face the reality that doing so is rarely easy. We must be hard as steel, face the storm and be unwavering in our quest - aware that even steel bends with time and even the Earth retreats before a storm. So what are we, this flesh and bone, to stand before such force? We, are eternal...
-Bolcar's profile

CanIMajorInThis2: every day we wake up and we are not who we were yesterday
CanIMajorInThis2: we are one day smarter, one day dumber, one day older and wiser, have made one more day's worth of mistakes and had one more day's worth of triumphs

Hofstadter's Law:  It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. -Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, courtesy of Dan Keen

...so it's not possible in isolation to tell whether cats' is a word with an apostrophe or a word at the end of a quotation. This is probably one reason that computers haven't been able to take over the world yet. -Learning Perl (the Llama book)

The world needs a few reductionists (mainly as physicists). Reductionists like to take things apart. The rest of us are just trying to get it together. Programming Perl (the Camel book), by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen and Jon Orwant

Currently, open my $fh autovivifies a typeglob instead of an IO::Handle object, but someday we may fix that, so you shouldn't rely on the typeglobbedness of what open currently autovivifies. - T. S. Elliott Larry Wall in the Camel book

Unicode is fun — you just have to define fun correctly. -Larry Wall (et al) in the Camel book apparently share Joel's sense of humor

Perl is a blue-collar language, so we're not afraid to call a spade a shovel. -the Camel book

You can program in Perl Baby-Talk, and we promise not to laugh. ... A Perl script is "correct" if it gets the job done before your boss fires you. -the Camel book

Name me any liquid — except our own blood — that flows more intimately and incessantly through the labyrinth of symbols we have conceived to make our status as human beings, from the rudest peasant festival to the mystery of the Eucharist. To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history. -Clifton Fadiman

On the deprecated variable $#: (Mnemonic: # is the number sign, but if you're sharp, you'll just forget it so you don't make a hash out of your program and get pounded for it.) -Camel book

You are not an enemy combatant, you are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any army, you are a terrorist. To call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. -Judge William G. Young, of the United States District Court in Boston, sentencing Richard C. Reid; source: The New York Times, January 31st, 2003

You can only imagine how it felt when someone comes up to tell you that you've lost the vehicle and the crew. -Ronald D. Dittemore, manager of the space shuttle program; source: The New York Times, February 4th, 2003

This cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose. It is a desire written in the human heart. We are that part of creation which seeks to understand all creation. We find the best among us, send them forth into unmapped darkness and pray they will return. They go in peace for all mankind. And all mankind is in their debt. -George W. Bush

We are limited creatures. Realizing this, we see that all we can do is strive for Right Action, never knowing if our efforts will be ultimately futile. But when we ride forth, empty-handed into the breach, clutching only a certainty that we do what is Right, then invisible all around us also rides an army of angels, and true defeat is impossible. -profile of Herb Wilmoth

oh man, bang your head until it falls off then bounce it off the wall -Christian on Slayer

What went wrong? --We got up and came to work. -Jeff Banas

Its never too late to do nothing. -Zen Saying

All religion begins with the cry, "Help!" -William James

This is a test of how much we can screw things up and still get good data. -Mike Meys

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I heard that NBC is replacing Peter Arnette with the Al-Jazeera news network... they wanted a more balanced reporting of what goes on in Baghdad. -P. J. O'Rourk, on WFNX-Boston

Me: Is my mom there please?
MM: Who is this?
Me: This is her son.
-Me to the new medical assistant in my mom's office. I tell you, I'm just brilliant on the phone sometimes.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. -Bertrand Russell

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. -Bertrand Russell

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. -Bertrand Russell

After ecstasy, the laundry. -Zen Saying

To the good listener
a word is enough.
-Spanish proverb

household appliances
          Perl modules for, 549
-found in the index of the Camel book

Mike Meys
Annoyer of the Harrassed
Confounder of the Organized
-Mike's amusing .sig file

Your friend is very unbalanced. -CIA rep to Joel at the Career Fair, pointing at me

You know you're an engineer if you have no life & can prove it mathematically. -overheard, courtesy of Jeff Banas

What we play is life. -Louis Armstrong

What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great explainer. -Henry David Thoreau

I now have an opportunity to say stupid things that will be difficult to deny later. -Mike Meys

What can i say Asheen, I'm a child of a violent society. -Jeff Banas

The true teacher knocks down the idol that the student makes of him. -Jalaluddin Rumi

You idiot! Don't you know perl?! -me, to the perl compiler

This document varies from difficult to understand to completely and utterly opaque. The wandering prose riddled with jargon is hard to fathom in several places. -from the perl documentation on regular expressions, in the "Bugs" section

Clear moments are so short.
There is much more darkness.
-Adam Zagajewski

From the time I recognized the road
     to Taso-chi,
I realized I had nothing to do with birth
     and death.
-The Song of Englightenment

If I were a bartender at a strip club, I'd never come home with any tips. -Nick Laliberte

And so, in my State of the — my State of the Union — or state — my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation — I asked Americans to give 4,000 years — 4,000 hours over the next — the rest of your life — of service to America. -online transcript of G. W. Bush at Connecticut Fundraiser, April 9; source: The New York Times

Knowledge is the reward of action... For it is by doing things that one becomes transformed. Executing a symbolic gesture, actually living through, to the very limit, a particular role, one comes to realize the truth inherent in the role. -Heinrich Zimmer

...and so his code is basically shit put together and fried. -Jeff Banas on the programming skills of a person to remain nameless

This isn't great science, but it's good theatre. -Wade, in an experimental design meeting

The best science gets done when nobody in management is looking. -overheard by Jeff Banas at HPLC 2003, Nice, France

a what? oooo the thing down the street. i would go if i could walk straight. besides, too many stuffy scientists there. heh
-Jeff Banas, asked about his decision to drink wine instead of attending a lecture at said conference

One changes from day to day... every few years one becomes a new being. -George Sand

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day. -Albert Camus

I don't understand it. I keep mowing these people down, but they just keep popping back up again! -Julie Corbo

Sorry. It's that technology thing. It always seems to elude me. -Tom Londo, sending the wrong Outlook meeting request time while mired in writing some Visual Basic code

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment—the moment in which a man finds out once and for all who he is. -Jorge Luis Borges

Lord, who art always the same, give that I know myself, give that I know thee. -St. Augustine

I never take anything I say seriously. -Julie Corbo

Deep in their roots,
All flowers keep the light.
-Theodore Roethke

archived on 21 March 2004...

Wine does not intoxicate men. Men intoxicate themselves. -Chinese proverb

Can't coerce array into hash at digestion.pl line 44 -the perl compiler apparently has some powers of persuasion

It was only two and a half... and I didn't suggest the last round. -Jeff Banas, asked about his three-hour lunch

The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.
Chuang-tzu

...And then Ortiz hit the game-winning homer and the Sox won so their magic number is 2 now, they're going to the postseason!, oh you've heard the play-by-play already, i was going to call you about it last night after Walker's three-run homer but I got distracted, what happened? I forget... oh yeah, your cousin had a baby boy. -My mom: true-blooded Red Sox fan

The absurd is clear reason recognizing its limits. -Albert Camus

My mass spec has two crime syndicates living in it. One is like the Mafia; it has always been there, and probably always will be. The other is like wandering gypsies: they come in for a while, cause some problems and drift away; and then come back later and cause more problems for a while... ad nauseum... -Banas

A moments insight is sometimes worth a lifes experience. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

CanIMajorInThis2: define "home"
Joel Meow: where aoe is :)

Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar. -Sigmund Freud

You're confused, because of too many nightless sleeps. -Mom was too.

Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what's for lunch. -Orson Wells, courtesy of Etienne Merle

Man is the only animal, I believe, who pretends he is thinking of other things when he is eating. -Robert Lynd, courtesy of Etienne Merle

I am not a glutton -- I am an explorer of food. -Erma Brombeck

Burgundy makes you think of silly things; Bordeaux makes you talk about them, and Champagne makes you do them. -Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Just as Jesus was not a Christian, Buddha was not a Buddhist. -Surya Das, an American-born Tibetan lama

Daunte Culpepper will be listed as doubtful with three cracked bones in his back, but he expects to play against San Francisco in Week 4. He has multiple transverse process fractures. "I'm all right, man," Culpepper said. "It's just a little sore."
-from CBS Sportsline fantasy football league news

CanIMajorInThis2: then fall caesar!
CanIMajorInThis2: ...though it's summer still
CanIMajorInThis2: and i don't like salad

The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of his tail. -Rabindranath Tagore

BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
    open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
write it, print the hex while each watches,
    reverse its length, write again; 
    kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
        unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");
    kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
    values aside, each one;
        die sheep! die to reverse the system
        you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
    kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
    wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
    do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
    exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
    select (quickly) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
    wait, wait until time;
    wait until next year, next decade;
        sleep, sleep, die yourself,
        die at last
-From the Camel book... It actually compiled in Perl 4.

I gotta practice on the civilians. -Julie, playing Spy Hunter

[On most startup biotechs working at burnout pace] Maybe our advantage is that we not do that.
[In a slow, calculated voice] I have trouble gaining complete control over everything.
We can't stop the past, but we can stop the future.
-Robert McBurney, all in one meeting

The meltdown has begun. -Mark

What else am I going to break that I should just order now? -Banas, VWR catalogue in hand

You don't get in shape by celebrating the days you worked out. You get in shape by being pissed at the days you didn't. -me

BEACON STREET CONST ... EXPECT DELAYS ... SEEK ALT ROUTES ... GOOD LUCK SARA
-alternate messages flashing on an electronic construction sign in Porter Square, Cambridge

BREW BEER
-same sign, a couple weeks later, a little past midnight on a weekday

Our house is one big ethnic joke. -Jeff Lee, token Asian man at the Wyatt House

How's your phantom football team doing? -Mom

Ah, this staple is stuck... if only I had my Swiss Army knife with me. -me to myself, while trying to remove a staple from the form to send away for a replacement Swiss Army knife, without immediately realizing the irony.

...and they talk about length contraction and time distillation and all ... I said "dilation". No, I didn't? I said what? ... Oh, what a Freudian slip. I obviously need vodka tonight. -Jeff Banas

Wrong guy, wrong wall. -Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon on simultaneously running into the scoreboard on the Green Monster, which has no padding, and teammate Gabe Kapler, a former professional bodybuilder

It's like he was in a car wreck yesterday or something. He's all banged up. When we got out to center field yesterday, there was some blood coming out of his mouth and his legs were beat up, and his ankle. -Red Sox manager Grady Little on the collision

There was a welt behind Damon's right shoulder, serving as a battle scar of the worst collision he's had since Warren Sapp ran into him in a high school game in Florida many years ago. -Ian Browne on Red Sox coverage on MLB.com, 31 August 2003

The greatest sports rivalry in the history of the world... is that too much hyperbole? -heard on NPR on the day of Game 1 of the ALCS between the Red Sox and the Yankees

This is even bigger than Natick-Framingham! -Lou Merloni, MA native and member of the Sox

CanIMajorInThis2: the three essential chemical structures to life
CanIMajorInThis2: DNA, RNA, T&A
-me, talking to Bolcar

I don't know, man. Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism. If anything is at least going to lessen it, it's gonna be rap. I would love it if, even for one day, you could walk through a neighborhood and see an Asian guy sitting on his stoop, then you look across the street and see a black guy and a white guy sitting on their porches, and a Mexican dude walking by. If we could truly be multicultural, racism could be so past the point of anybody giving a f***; but I don't think you or me are going to see it in our lifetimes. -Eminem, in a SPIN Magazine interview entitled "Chocolate on the Inside", May 1999

Although, looking back on it, I'm wondering if that was a sinister plot by my Dad to funnel our pyrotechnic tendencies into something useful, controlled, and supervised. -Joel, on building rockets as a kid

My theory is that the curse is gone...after Ted Williams died, the first thing he did was to kick the crap out of Babe Ruth and tell him to get over it :) -Dave Allen

Elrond320: well, the dishes I have to do
Elrond320: cause they're starting to hold elections for president and are planning to overthrow me
-Bolcar

My advise to someone trying to write fantasy is, go see a psychiatrist. -Robert Jordan in this Barnes & Noble online discussion

I may need to have a beer just to work up the energy to go home (to drink more beer). -Mike

I guess from here on out, if we want a change of scenery it's got to come from inside. -Christian, on the fact that our lives don't change at the turn of the semester anymore

We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage of Cana, as a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy. -Benjamin Franklin

If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good? -Cardinal Richelieu, Prime Minister of France, 1624

Why can't boys be more like haagan daaz? always perfect, always know how to make you feel better, and most importantly, only last about a week. -From Jubey's (er, Julia Spalding's) profile

[17:07] jenr53: classical mechanics
[17:08] jenr53: like coraoilis shit   [i think she meant coriolis]
[17:08] jenr53: i dont even know
[17:08] jenr53: i just google all the homework
-Jenners, PhD candidate at Caltech

You have been unsubscribed from our email list. Best wishes. -Microsoft mailing list unsubscribe page (no, I have no idea how I got signed up for it)... doesn't it sound like a thinly disguised threat of impending doom?

You sleep with the sysadmin, you get unlimited disk quota! -Frances makes a discovery

Jeff: I think i'm gonna be sick.
Julie: That's because you ate so much of my hair... and one of my eyebrows.
-it made sense at the time.

[00:57] Smash82: i hate this app..aaaaaaahhhhhh...how will i make a difference in their education environment, how will i be bring diversity...what the hell?!
[00:57] Smash82: i'm brown..that takes care of diversity
-Swetha, on a medical school application

archived on 16 February 2005...

...Actually, my favorite word isn't sphincter, it's nipple. That's just so much fun to say. [singing] Nipple, nipple, nipple... -Moira, asked about her use of the phrase "sphincter factor"

That sounds worse than not good, so it's probably too bad to be not good. -me, regarding a noise heard from the mass spec room

I'm awed by the sheer artistry of your mismanagement skills. -Dilbert

[11:33] OpticsElrond: I'm in one of those rampage type moods where you're just praying for someone to step in front of you so you can tear them a new one
[11:33] OpticsElrond: kinda exhilirating
[...]
[11:38] OpticsElrond: ok...now I must lay waste to the peons before me
[11:38] OpticsElrond: I'll catch you later
-Bolcar

Our society is still in the middle stage: scarcely beast in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. -Theodore Dreiser, 1900 (courtesty Herb)

They're muted in a bright sort of way. -Eileen, on my pants

Warning to Children
Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
he lives - he then unties the string.
-Robert Graves

Thank you! I can do that every once in a while. -Julie, on making sense

I just had asparagus pee! ... You've never heard of that? Asparagus makes your pee smell bad! Well -- boys might not notice it as much, since they're farther away from their pee than girls are. -Moira

I don't think i've heard of a Cornell grad who's had an average life after graduation. -Anit

[18:06] Joel Meow: keep going up route 3
[18:07] Joel Meow: if you hit what used to be the Wang building, you've gone too far
[18:07] Joel Meow: (true new england directions!)
-Joel

Welcome Laturite ...
Connecting to server. Please wait...
Connected to server. An agent will be with you shortly
Welcome to America Online's Live Help Area. A Customer Care Consultant
will be with you shortly.
AOLTechAMS has joined this session!
Hello, notstupid. Welcome to Live Technical Support. My name is Agnes.
Laturite stated the question or problem as: i need a list of *all* the
image files that aol supports (not just the "common" ones).
Are you contacting us about the computer you are using? You said: yes.
Laturite: is there such a list?
AOLTechAMS: Pleased to meet you, Laturite. =)
Laturite: please tell me, is there such a list
AOLTechAMS: Certain files can be opened by AOL by clicking on File, then
clicking on Open and selecting the file you want to open. The following
file extensions are supported by AOL:
AOLTechAMS: chf ; au* ;html ; htm ; log ; txt ; text ; mid ; wav ; avi ;
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The session has ended!
-why? WHY?!

ANY CHANGE FROM THE EXPECTED TRACK OF THE STORM WOULD RESULT IN MORE OR LESS SNOW. -National Weather Service severe weather advisory

[10:41] Fran dot sys: too many rights, make a wrong
[10:42] Elrond320: no...too many rights make a left
[10:42] canimajorinthis2: nah... too many writes make a book
-why Frances, Bolcar and I can't be serious about *anything*.

My problem is that I work with software with bugs in it... no, bugs with software in them. -me

When you don't have anything to say, please don't say it. -my philosophy on Robertmeetings

Competency exams? You have to be competent? Oh I'm sorry, pet. There's no way you'll pass those. If you were competent, you'd have a real job. -Frances's dad's pep talk for her grad exams

I feel a kerfuffle in the force. -Bolcar, using a Merriam-Webster Word of the Day

I would have killed to see that... well perhaps he wouldn't want me to say that. -Ed, on seeing the Dalai Lama's speech at the Fleet Center

[09:47] Fran dot sys: lots of dancing
[09:47] Fran dot sys: not much plot
-Feff, on the ballet

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.' -Charlie Brown (courtesy Swetha)

The light that shone from the East provoked and challenged the West
-caption on a painting at the Imam House, Pune, India, where the Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned for many years (now a museum and ashram)

You're calling me verbose?! -Muz, Chairman of the Board of Beyond Genomics, to Robert, Chief Scientific Officer

You should tell them, you can't eat with compliments. -mom, on my getting compliments upon completion of my project, but no raise

The most animated presence in the prim, pretty new production of "Fiddler on the Roof," which opened last night at the Minskoff Theater, may well be its title character. No, not the fiddler. The roof. -Review of a production of Fiddler by Ben Brantley, published February 27, 2004

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) (courtesy Bolcar)

Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine.
Tropisms cause the ivy to twine.
Rayleigh scattering makes skies so blue.
And glandular hormones are why I love you.
-overheard, courtesy of Mariam

Cuando amor no es locura, no es amor. -Spanish Proverb (courtesy Rebecca Alperstein)

Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250 -Harper's Index, October 1989 (courtesy Herb)

archived on 15 July 2005...

[10:49] Elrond320: see...here:
[10:49] Elrond320: The Cassini spacecraft bearing down on Saturn has confirmed that its farthest moon, Phoebe, is an icy remnant of the solar system's birth more than four billion years ago, scientists said Wednesday.
[10:50] CanIMajorInThis2: aren't we all "an icy remnant of the solar system's birth more than four billion years ago"?
[10:50] Elrond320: well, maybe *you're* icy
-A conversation between Bolcar and myself


We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. -Aristotle


Many FedEx Kinko's are open 24 hours a day so you can take care of business anytime. Is this a positive thing?
[hundreds of businesspeople saying yes, but one is saying:]
No. Now I'll have to work for days on end, forgoing sleep in an effort to get more done. Eventually, I will start hallucinating that your copy machines are dogsleds and that I am Nanook of the North. Please. Reconsider."
-FedEx Kinko's ad in Forbes


Elrond320: that's right, in my precious free time, i attempt to conquer the world and lead it to enlightenment and progress
Elrond320: one settler at a time
-Bolcar, on Civiliation III


This data doesn't have much sauce.  I mean pizza. -Julie, after a tough week


Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. -Margaret Thatcher


...so sleeping is a flaw in the plan. -Bolcar, attempting to plan our Boston get-together


"The dynamics of Ocular Aberrations in Chicks" -the title of a talk at Bolcar's optics symposium


I own a timber company?  [laughter]
That's news to me.  [laughter]
Need some wood?
-President George W. Bush, during the second Presidential debate, 8-Oct-2004.


But I'm mindful in a free society that people can worship if they want to or not.
[Laura Bush] speaks English a lot better than I do. I think people understand what she's saying.
-President Bush, in a speech I've forgotten


Tastes collegy. -Julie, describing day-old Papa Gino's that sat out overnight


We all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said 'Liberal' means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on communism, soft on defense, and we're going to tax you back to the stone age, because people shouldn't have to go to work if they don't want to.  And instead of saying 'Well excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun leave-it-to-Beaver trip back to the fifties,' we cowered in the corner and said, 'Please... don't... hurt... me.'  No more.
-Bruno Gianelli, West Wing Season 3, "Gone Quiet"


Listen 'Nando, if you equate scoring a soccer goal with an orgasm, you're doing one of them wrong.
-Jack Cafferty, CNN American Morning news anchor, discussing a quote from a German soccer player named Fernando


A Gobble approach to email.

In 1621, a few hundred Pilgrims and Native Americans sat down to
celebrate a bountiful harvest. The feast lasted three days, and
included fowl, venison, fish, berries, watercress, lobster, dried
fruit, clams, and plums. There was no pumpkin pie, however. There was
also an alarming lack of user-friendly webmail services.

Now, 383 years later, it's once again time to celebrate what has come
to be known as Thanksgiving—a time to gather with family and friends
and give thanks for all that we have. We have many things to be
thankful for. But mostly, we are thankful for you—our users—who remind
us of why we work so hard all year and why we love what we do. That's
better than all the dried fruit and clams in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for making our approach to email yours.

Gobble gobble,
The Gmail Team
-Posted on the Gmail sign-in page on Thanksgiving day


I thank you and congratulate you not only for the awards we're giving
you tonight but also for the priority that these awards show toward
the importance of scientific achievement. Unfortunately, we live in a
time when science is on the defensive. A time when people believe more
in aliens than they do in stem cell research. A time when science is
taking a back seat to politics, a time when the scientific method is
being attacked in biology classes across the country, and even the
president of the United States says that on the issue of evolution,
the verdict is still out.

Let us hope that the golden age of science is not in our rear view
mirror, that the last 50 years of groundbreaking research and
development in this country was not merely a flash in the pan. I hope
your presence here tonight echoes those sentiments.
-Ira Flatow, host of NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday, at the first annual Life Science Industry Awards


How cold does it have to be for that stuff to stay like that? -John Madden, about ice


I haven't even failed once; 9,000 times I've learned what doesn't work. -Thomas Edison


[22:54] Elrond320: one second....I require cookies
-Bolcar, in the middle of a late-night philosophical discussion


If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD) (courtesy Herb)


You mean like the way we were talking about Asheen behind his back,
before he joined? Man, I don't know... we should probably be a little
less dirty. I don' t think Frances would take as kindly to that if
she found out. I mean, Bolcar, the thing you said about Asheen, the
French Maid outfit, the monkey, and the linguini....yeah. That was a
creative story - I never would have thought to put pasta *there.* But
we should tone it down for Frances.
-Konek, harassing me about joining a mailing list a bit late


I bought Jose Canseco's book... This book is amazing. I bought it and it was 175 pages, I put it on my coffee table. The next morning it was 225 pages. -Jay Leno


Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. -The Dalai Lama (courtesy Ed)


Elrond320: have you ever updated your webpage recently?
Elrond320: you should
Elrond320: I'm bored of reading the same stuff over and over