From: solman@Athena.MIT.EDU
Message-Id: <9308180338.AA08275@m1-115-1>
To: jpbonsen@Athena.MIT.EDU
Cc: rdshydur@Athena.MIT.EDU
Subject: albert
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 23:38:31 EDT

"The majority of the stupid is invincible and
        guaranteed for all time. The terror of their
        tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of
        consistency."
      -- Albert Einstein


If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of progress?


It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.


	"You seem to have more than the average share of intelligence
for a man of your background," sneered the lawyer at a witness on the stand.
	"If I wasn't under oath, I'd return the compliment," replied the
witness.


Excerpted from an interview with Jessica Victor, a bartender at
The Middle East (in Central Square) [_Rolling Stone_ Issue 639,
17 September 1992, page 79]:

    Harvard students look like they stepped out of a Fitzgerald
    novel, whereas MIT students are usually rather insane. They
    look more like hippies, they're more outgoing, and they're
    generally a little _off_.


	A mosquito was heard to complain
	That a chemist had poisoned his brain
	The cause of his sorrow
	Was para-dichloro-
	 diphenyltrichloroethane


All generalizations are bad.

43% of all statistics are worthless.


I just read this off a bathroom wall:
"To be or not to be" 
			  -Shakespeare
"To do is to be"     
			  -Socrates
"To be is to do"     
			  -Sartre
"To be do be do"     
			  -Sinatra


   The word "politics" is derived from the word "poly", meaning
   "many", and the word "ticks", meaning "blood sucking parasites".


     Attorney General Robert Kennedy arrived late at a Business Council Meeting
in the Capitol, and with a straight face he attributed the delay to "a suit
filed by the Dupont Company to require the Justice Department to divest itself
of the Antitrust Division." (p 28)


Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better 
than we deserve.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.


Life is a sexually transmitted disease


Recursive, adj.; see Recursive


2. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
 But, in practice, there is.


Note that we used to refer to our phone number as 1-800-IBM-DISK.  We have
been told by IBM Corporation that we can't do this anymore.  While it is
tempting to represent IBM as a bully picking on the little guy, we do see
their point.  The use of their trademark in such a generic sense can lead
to a dilution of their identity.  (Besides, they have more lawyers than we
have disks.)  So, in the future, please think of our phone number as:

	For the amateur radio crowd: 1-800-HAM-DISK
	For all you couch potatoes: 1-800-HBO-DISK
	For purists: 1-800-426-3475
	Even: 1-800-I-AM-DISK (hear me roar)
	But not, we repeat, NOT as: 1-800-IBM-DISK

We thank you for your support in this matter.


Farmer: n. A man who is outstanding in his field.


Christmas is when kids tell Santa Claus what they want, and their parents
end up paying for it.

A deficit is when adults tell the government what they want, and their
kids end up paying for it.

--Heard on the radio, attributed to former Colorado governor Richard Lamm.


A friend introduced me to the spec he tells his machine shop to use:

   MIL-TD41 (make it like the f*&%ing drawing for once).


Given any particular problem, the number of incorrect solutions is infinitely
larger than the number of correct solutions; thus the probability of arriving
at a correct solution is zero.


They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers.  But
they also laughed at Bozo the Clown...  [attr. to Carl Sagan]


See the happy moron,    
He doesn't give a damn. 
I wish I were a moron,  
My God!, Perhaps I am!  


                         THE PLAN
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE PLAN.
AND THEN CAME THE ASSUMPTIONS,
AND THE ASSUMPTIONS WERE WITHOUT FORM.
AND THE PLAN WAS COMPLETELY WITHOUT SUBSTANCE.
AND THE DARKNESS WAS UPONTHE FACE OF THE WORKERS.
AND THEY SPOKE AMONGST THEMSELVES, SAYING:
"IT IS A CROCK OF SHIT, AND IT STINKETH."
AND THE WORKERSWENT UNTO THEIR SUPERVISORS, AND SAYETH:
"IT IS A PAIL OF DUNG, AND NONE CANABIDE THE ODOR THEREOF."
AND THE SUPERVISORS WENT UNTO THEIR MANAGERS,
AND SAYETH UNTO THEM:
"IT IS A CONTAINER OF EXCREMENT, AND IT IS VERY STRONG,
SUCH THAT NONE CAN ABIDE IT."
AND THE MANAGERS WENT UNTO THE DIRECTORS AND SAYETH:
"IT IS A VESSEL OF FERTILIZER, AND NONE CAN ABIDE ITS STRENGTH."
AND THE DIRECTORS SPOKE AMONGST THEMSELVES, SAYING ONE TO ANOTHER,
"IT CONTAINS THAT WHICH AIDS PLANT GROWTH, AND IS VERY STRONG."
AND THE DIRECTORS WENT UNTO THE VICE PRESIDENTS, AND SAYETH TO THEM,
"IT PROMOTES GROWTH, AND IS VERY POWERFUL."
AND THE VICE PRESIDENTSWENT UNTO THE PRESIDENT, AND SAYETH UNTO HIM,
"THIS NEW PLAN WILL ACTIVELY PROMOTE THE GROWTH AND EFFICIENCY
OF THIS COMPANY, AND CERTAIN AREAS IN PARTICULAR."
AND THE PRESIDENT LOOKED UPON THE PLAN, AND SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD.
AND THE PLAN BECAME POLICY.

AND THIS IS HOW SHIT HAPPENS.


What if there was no such thing as a hypothetical question?


	A common mistake people make when trying to design something
	completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of 
	complete fools.


"Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual."


An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it.
		-- James Michener, "Space"


Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
		-- Sydney J. Harris


... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the
existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god
coefficient.  (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)


A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.


There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool.  This is
obviously impossible.
				-- Richard Davisson


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other divisions of the document.  This page is not completely
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or that the page is not blank because of some other production
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[0007]  jcb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Professors_Quote_Board 12/07/87 13:12 (13 lines)
Subject: Re: Mattuck Syndrome (sleeping at unpredictable moments)
Jim Reich <cthulh> attributes the following to Mattuck's class several
years ago:

	Scene:  Mattuck, having noticed someone sleeping in class, has
		walked up the aisle in 10-250 to where the student is
		sleeping and is addressing the student next to the
		sleeping one.

	Mattuck:  Wake him up.

	Student:  YOU put him to sleep.  YOU wake him up.

	[Mattuck walks silently to the front of 10-250]
--[0007]--


skrenta@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Rich Skrenta) writes:

> tskotida@sales.GBA.NYU.EDU (The Dragon) writes:
> > I have discovered a stock selection method to generate at least an average
> > of 25% over 5 years. It is simple, no-nonsense, and infallible.
> 
> "But it is too long to write in this margin..."