With that he haled me before the wali and I tasted an artistic meal
of stick, till I fell in a faint.
 -- The Thousand Nights And One Night (The Tale of Ghānim Ibn Ayyūr)
    [v1 p324]
%
                    EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN
Don't be teased or humiliated. See their look of surprise when you
step right up to a urinal and use it with a smile. Get Dr. Mary Evers'
EQUAL-NOW Adapter (pat. appld. for) -- purse size, fool proof,
sanitary -- comes in nine lovely, feminine, psychedelic patterns --
requires no fitting, no prescriptions.
 -- Robert A Heinlein _I Will Fear No Evil_ p470.
%
She was alot like starbucks.
IE, generic and expensive.
 -- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/001376.html
%
Guns Don't Kill People.
*I* Kill People.
%
DIE!
 -- Maritza Campos http://www.crfh.net/d/20020601.html
%
"I was thinking seven figures," he said, "but I would have taken a
hundred grand. I'm not a greedy person." [All for a moldy bottle of
tropicana.]
 -- Sammi Hadzovic [in Andy Newman's 2003/02/14 NYT article.]
 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/14/nyregion/14EYEB.html
%
CNN/Reuters: News reports have filtered out early this morning that US
forces have swooped on an Iraqi Primary School and detained 6th Grade 
teacher Mohammed Al-Hazar. Sources indicate that, when arrested,
Al-Hazar was in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square and
a calculator. US President George W Bush argued that this was clear
and overwhelming evidence that Iraq indeed possessed weapons of math 
instruction.
%
I'd never hurt another living thing.
But if I did...
It would be you.
 -- Chris Bishop  http://www.chrisbishop.com/her/archives/her69.html
%
[Panama, 1989. The U.S. government called it "Operation Just Cause".]
I think they misspelled this. Shouldn't it be "Operation Just 'Cause"?
 -- TekPolitik http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=59669&cid=5664907
%
Sentenced to two years hard labor (for sodomy), Oscar Wilde stood
handcuffed in driving rain waiting for transport to prison.  "If this
is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners," he remarked, "she
doesn't deserve to have any."
%
It has always been Debian's philosophy in the past to stick to what
makes sense, regardless of what crack the rest of the universe is
smoking.
 -- Andrew Suffield in 20030403211305.GD29698@doc.ic.ac.uk
%
<Clint> why the hell does kernel-source-2.6.3 depend on xfree86-common?
<infinity> It... Doesn't?
<Clint> good point
%
"Facts" are the refuge of people unwilling to reassess what they hold
to be "True".
%
If you find it impossible to believe that the universe didn't have a
creator, why don't you find it impossible that your creator didn't
have one either?
 -- Anonymous Coward http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167556&cid=13970629
%
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of
the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the
benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any
curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.
 -- Adolf Hitler _Mein Kampf_ p403
%
Tell me something interesting about yourself.
Lie if you have to.
 -- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/archives/batch20.php
%
We were at a chinese restaurant.
He was yelling at the waitress because there was a typo in his fortune
cookie.
 -- hugh http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000321.html
%
Three little words. (In order of importance.)
 █████     
   █      ▌  ▞▀▖▌ ▌▛▀▘
   █      ▌  ▌ ▌▝▞ ▛▀      you 
   █      ▀▀▘▝▀  ▘ ▀▀▘
 █████  -- hugh macleod "Three Words"
%
N: Why should I believe that?"
B: Because it's a fact."
N: Fact?"
B: F, A, C, T... fact"
N: So you're saying that I should believe it because it's true. 
   That's your argument?
B: It IS true.
-- "Ploy" http://www.mediacampaign.org/multimedia/Ploy.MPG
%
UF: What's your favorite coffee blend?
PD: Dark Crude with heavy water. You are understandink? "If geiger
    counter does not click, the coffee, she is just not thick."
%
Quite the contrary; they *love* collateral damage. If they can make
you miserable enough, maybe you'll stop using email entirely. Once
enough people do that, then there'll be no legitimate reason left for
anyone to run an SMTP server, and the spam problem will be solved.
 -- Craig Dickson in <20020909231134.GA18917@linux700.localnet>
%
It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong
 -- Chris Torek
%
Filing a bug is probably not going to get it fixed any faster.
 -- Anthony Towns
%
Build a fire for a man, an he'll be warm for a day.  Set a man on   
fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
 -- Jules Bean
%
Dropping non-free would set us back at least, what, 300 packages? It'd
take MONTHS to make up the difference, and meanwhile Debian users will
be fleeing to SLACKWARE.

And what about SHAREHOLDER VALUE? 
 -- Matt Zimmerman in <20021120225004.GX14809@mizar.alcor.net>
%
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
%
You could say she lived on the edge... Well, maybe not exactly on the edge,
just close enough to watch other people fall off.
  -- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000309.html
%
Of course Pacman didn't influence us as kids. If it did, we'd be
running around in darkened rooms, popping pills and listening to
repetitive music.
%
"It's not Hollywood. War is real, war is primarily not about defeat or
victory, it is about death. I've seen thousands and thousands of dead
bodies. Do you think I want to have an academic debate on this
subject?"
 -- Robert Fisk
%
THERE IS NO GRAVITY THE WORLD SUCKS
 -- Vietnam War Penquin Lighter
http://gallery.donarmstrong.com/clippings/vietnam_there_is_no_gravity.jpg
%
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.     
 -- Robert Heinlein
%
If you have the slightest bit of intellectual integrity you cannot
support the government. -- anonymous
%
Debian's not really about the users or the software at all. It's a
large flame-generating engine that the cabal uses to heat their coffee
 -- Andrew Suffield (#debian-devel Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:34 -0500)
%
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
 -- Jeremy S. Anderson
%
"There's no problem so large it can't be solved by killing the user
off, deleting their files, closing their account and reporting their
REAL earnings to the IRS."
 -- The B.O.F.H..
%
When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I 
realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked
Him to forgive me.
 -- Emo Philips.
%
"People selling drug paraphernalia ... are as much a part of drug
trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide."
 -- John Brown, DEA Chief
%
Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly).
 -- Matt Welsh
%
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
 -- Bill Vaughan
%
I now know how retro SCOs OSes are. Riotous, riotous stuff. How they
had the ya-yas to declare Linux an infant OS in need of their IP is
beyond me. Upcoming features? PAM. files larger than 2 gigs. NFS over
TCP. The 80's called, they want their features back.
 -- Compactable Dave http://www3.sympatico.ca/dcarpeneto/sco.html
%
This message brought to you by weapons of mass destruction related
program activities, and the letter G.
%
Frankly, if ignoring inane opinions and noisy people and not flaming
them to crisp is bad behavior, I have not yet achieved a state of
nirvana.
 -- Manoj Srivastava in 87n04pzhmh.fsf@glaurung.internal.golden-gryphon.com
%
"For those who understand, no explanation is necessary.
 For those who do not, none is possible."
%
Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but
that's not why we do it.
 -- Richard Feynman
%
"I'm a rational being--of a sort--rational enough, at least, to see the
symptoms of insanity around me. And I'm human, the same as the people
I think of as victims when my guard drops. It's at least possible I'm
even crazier than my fellows, whom I'm tempted to pity.
"There seems only one thing to do, and that's get drunk"
 -- Chad C. Mulligan (John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar_ p390)
%
I leave the show floor, but not before a pack of caffeinated Jolt gum
is thrust at me by a hyperactive girl screaming, "Chew more! Do more!"
The American will to consume more and produce more personified in a
stick of gum. I grab it.
 -- Chad Dickerson
%
I never until now realized that the primary job of any emoticon is to
say "excuse me, that didn't make any sense." ;-P
 -- Cory Doctorow
%
I'd sign up in a hot second for any cellular company whose motto was:
"We're less horrible than a root canal with a cold chisel."
 -- Cory Doctorow
%
Miracles had become relative common-places since the advent of
entheogens; it now took very unusual circumstances to attract public
attention to sightings of supernatural entities. The latest miracle
had raised the ante on the supernatural: the Virgin Mary had
manifested herself to two children, a dog, and a Public Telepresence
Point.
 -- Bruce Sterling, _Holy Fire_ p228
%
Junkies were all knitted together in a loose global macrame, the
intercontinental freemasonry of narcotics.
 -- Bruce Sterling, _Holy Fire_ p257
%
America was far better suited to be the World's Movie Star. The
world's tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world's acerbic bi-polar
stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of
socially responsible centurions.
 -- Bruce Sterling, _Distraction_ p122
%
The attackers hadn't simply robbed the bank. They had carried off
everything portable, including the security cameras, the carpets, the
chairs, and the light and plumbing fixtures. The conspirators had
deliberately punished the bank, for reasons best known to themselves,
or to their unknown controllers. They had superglued doors and
shattered windows, severed power and communications cables, poured
stinking toxins into the wallspaces, and concreted all of the sinks
and drains. In eight minutes, sixty people had ruined the building so
thoroughly that it had to be condemned and later demolished.
 -- Bruce Sterling, _Distraction_ p4
%
"Ban cryptography! Yes. Let's also ban pencils, pens and paper, since
criminals can use them to draw plans of the joint they are casing or
even, god forbid, create one time pads to pass uncrackable codes to
each other. Ban open spaces since criminals could use them to converse
with each other out of earshot of the police. Let's ban flags since
they could be used to pass secret messages in semaphore. In fact let's
just ban all forms of verbal and non-verbal communication -- let's see
those criminals make plans now!"
%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
 -- Mark Twain 
%
My spelling ability, or rather the lack thereof, is one of the wonders
of the modern world.
%
There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.  
 -- Woody Allen
%
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for
the people.
 -- Oscar Wilde
%
I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like
to run their own business.  I know men that would make my wife a
better husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to
'em.
 -- The Best of Will Rogers
%
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads.
One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.
The other, to total extinction.
Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
 -- Woody Allen
%
"Because," Fee-5 explained patiently, "I was born in the fifth row.
Any fool would understand that, but against stupidity the very Gods
themselves contend in vain."
 -- Alfred Bester _The Computer Connection_ p19
%
The beauty of the DRUNKENNESS subprogram was that you could move your
intoxication level up and down at will, instead of being caught on a
relentless down escalator to bargain basement philosophy and the
parking garage.
 -- Rudy von Bitter _Software_ p124
%
Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you. If you don't
bet, you can't win.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p240
%
An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p244
%
There is no such thing as "social gambling." Either you are there to
cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it--or you're a sucker. If you
don't like this choice--don't gamble.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p250
%
In all matters of government, the correct answer is usually: "Do
nothing"
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p428
%
No amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free
[...] You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Revolt in 2010_ p54
%
LEADERSHIP -- A form of self-preservation exhibited by people with
autodestructive imaginations in order to ensure that when it comes to
the crunch it'll be someone else's bones which go crack and not their
own. 
 -- The HipCrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan 
    (John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar_ p256-7)
%
Information wants to be free to kill again.
 -- Red Robot http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=1372
%
NASCAR is a Yankee conspiracy to keep you all placated so the South
won't rise again.
 -- http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=327
%
S: Make me a sandwich
B: What? Make it yourself.
S: sudo make me a sandwich
B: Okay.
 -- xkcd http://xkcd.com/c149.html
%
Democracy is more dangerous than fire. Fire can't vote itself immune
to water.
 -- Michael Z. Williamson
%
A Democracy lead by politicians and political parties, fails.
%
PowerPoint is symptomatic of a certain type of bureaucratic
environment: one typified by interminable presentations with lots of
fussy little bullet-points and flashy dissolves and soundtracks masked
into the background, to try to convince the audience that the goon
behind the computer has something significant to say.
 -- Charles Stross _The Jennifer Morgue_ p33
%
Everyone has to die. And in a hundred years nobody's going to inquire
just how most people died. The best thing is to do it in the way that
strikes your fancy most.
 -- Kenzaburō Ōe _Silent Cry_ p5
%
The computer allows you to make mistakes faster than any other
invention, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila
 -- Mitch Ratcliffe
%
G: If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?
EB: Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and
scatter oneself over a wide area.
 -- Somewhere in No Man's Land, BA4
%
Religion is religion, however you wrap it, and like Quell says, a
preoccupation with the next world clearly signals an inability to cope
credibly with this one.
 -- Richard K. Morgan "Broken Angels" p65
%
J.W. Grant: "Bastard!"
Rico: "Yes, Sir. In my case, an accident of birth. But you, Sir,
you're a self-made man."
 -- Henry "Rico" Fardan in "The Professionals"
%
a friend will help you move
a best friend will help you move bodies
but if you have to move your best friend's body
you're on your own
 -- a softer world #242
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=242
%
The carbon footprint of a single human being is enormous.
If you think about it, your honour,
I'm an environmentalist.
 -- a softer world #283
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=283
%
Where am I? THE VILLAGE. What do you want? INFORMATION. Which side are
you on? THAT WOULD BE TELLING. WE WANT INFORMATION. INFORMATION.
INFORMATION. You won't get it! BY HOOK OR BY CROOK, WE WILL. Who are
you? THE NEW NUMBER 2. Who is Number 1? YOU ARE NUMBER 6. I am not a
number! I am a free man! HAHAHAHAHAHA.
 -- Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 with Number 2 in "The Prisoner"
%
Judge if you want.
We are all going to die.
I intend to deserve it.
 -- a softer world #421
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=421
%
Rule 6: "If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to
enough of it."
  -- Howard Tayler _Schlock Mercenary_  March 13th, 2005
     http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050313.html
%
listen, what you do in the privacy
of your neighbour's house while they're away
is your own business
 -- a softer world #511
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=511
%
Sometimes I wish I could take back all my mistakes
but then I think
what if my mother could take back hers?
 -- a softer world #498
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=498
%
Clean living is less fun
and you wind up feeling stupid
when you still die.
 -- a softer world #489
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=489
%
If god is always watching over us
who's driving?
 -- a softer world #487
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=487
%
Maybe I did steal your heart
and I am such a perfect criminal
that you never noticed
 -- a softer world #481
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=481
%
Life would be way easier
if I were easier.
 -- a softer world #473
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=473
%
I always thought
violence didn't solve anything
until one day it did.
 -- a softer world #470
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=470
%
Given that the odds of a miracle are one in one million, and events
which could be a miracle happen every second, the odds of not seeing a
miracle in a month are less than 8 in 100. Clearly miracles are not
all that miraculous.
%
"Do you think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder?" [...]
"Who isn't?"
 -- Walter Jon Williams _This Is Not A Game_ p121