Scott
Lincoln "Omar" Davis
Nits and Grits II
Just a continuation of the previous chapter...will keep adding to as time moves along...SLD
"Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding." - Abraham Kaplan
"The fault lies not with out technologies but with our systems."
- Roger Levian
"If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life." - Thoreau
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." - Confucius
"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech." - Mark Twain
"He hasn't one redeeming vice." - Oscar Wilde
"Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence." - Ketterling's Law
"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B,' 'A' is most likely a scoundrel." - H.L. Mencken
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." - George Washington
"We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on..." - Winston Churchill
"God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday." - William Bragg
"Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they should be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision." -Unknown
"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
-George Bernard Shaw
"Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself."
-Weilers's Law
"Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse."
-Finagle's Law
"If it happens, it must be possible." - Unknown
Asked what he thought of Western civilization, M.K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea."
"Sanity is only sharing your neighbor's hallucinations." - SLD
Received From Ted Davis
12/21/99
He who laughs, lasts(perennial;
constant).
--unix fortune 17 Giugno 97 22:17 Xit
Finster's Law:
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
Given a choice between two
theories,
take the one which is funnier.
Baruch's Observation, Maslow's
Maxim:
If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail.
blithwapping:
Using anything BUT a hammer to hammer a nail into the
wall, such as shoes, lamp bases, doorstops, etc.
Booker's Law:
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
Suspicion of false motivation:
Anything is possible if you don't know
what you are talking about.
Either a thing will happen or it
won't.
Complex system:
Real problems and imaginary profits.
Cruickshank's Law of Committees:
If a committee is allowed to discuss a bad idea
long enough, it will inevitably decide to implement
the idea simply because so
much work has already been done on it.
Cutler Webster's Law:
There are two sides to every argument, unless a person
is personally involved, in which case there is only one.
Ducharme's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough
you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
Experience, n.:
Something you don't get until just after you need it.
Finagle's Second Law:
Always keep a record of data --
it indicates you've been working.
Finster's Law:
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
Fresco's Discovery:
If you knew what you were doing
you'd probably be bored.
Green's Law of Debate:
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
Hubbard's Law:
Don't take life too seriously;
you won't get out of it alive.
interest, n.:
What borrowers pay, lenders receive, stockholders own, and
burned out employees must feign.
Katz' Law:
Men and nations will act rationally when
all other possibilities have been exhausted.
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic
your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
life, n.:
That brief interlude between nothingness and eternity.
life, n.:
A whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
Madison's Inquiry:
If you have to travel on the Titanic,
why not go first class?
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
Tact, n.:
The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
Van Roy's Law:
Honesty is the best policy - there's less competition.
Miller's Law:
"To communicate a fact seemed always to lend it
fuller existence."
Excerpts from
Letters from the Earth
Mark Twain
Now then, you have the facts. You know what the human race enjoys,
and what it doesn't enjoy. It has invented a heaven, out of its own head,
all by itself: guess what it is like! In fifteen hundred eternities you couldn't
do it. The ablest mind known to you or me in fifty million aeons couldn't
do it. Very well, I will tell you about it.
1. First of all, I recall to your attention the extraordinary fact with which I began. To wit, that the human being, like the immortals, naturally places sexual intercourse far and away above all other joys—yet he has left it out of his heaven! The very thought of it excites him; opportunity sets him wild; in this state he will risk life, reputation, everything—even his queer heaven itself—to make good that opportunity and ride it to the overwhelming climax. From youth to middle age all men and all women prize copulation above all other pleasures combined, yet it is actually as I have said: it is not in their heaven; prayer takes it place....
2. In man's heaven everybody sings! The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth is able to do it there. This universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on, all day long, and every day, during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays; whereas in the earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is of one hymn alone. The words are always the same, in number they are only about a dozen, there is no rhyme, there is no poetry: "Hosannah, hosannah, hosannah, Lord God of Sabaoth, 'rah! 'rah! 'rah! siss!—boom!...a-a-ah!"
3. Meantime, every person is playing on a harp—those millions and millions!—whereas not more than twenty in the thousand of them could play an instrument in the earth, or ever wanted to.
Consider the deafening hurricane of sound—millions and millions of voices screaming at once and millions and millions of harps gritting thier teeth at the same time! I ask you: is it hideous, is it odious, is it horrible?...
All sane white people hate noise; yet they have tranquilly accepted this kind of heaven—without thinking, without reflection, without examination—and they actually want to go to it! Profoundly devout old grey-headed men put in a large part of their time dreaming of the happy day when they will lay down the cares of this life and enter into the joys of that place. Yet you can see how unreal it is to them, and how little it takes a grip upon them as being fact, for they make no practical preparation for the great change: you never see one of them with a harp, you never hear one of them sing.
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