To my (mild) astonishment, nobody has snagged, used, or even cyber-squatted "World's Tiniest Violin" in any of it's obvious permutations worldstiniestviolin.org, worldstiniestviolin.com, worldstiniestviolin.net, worlds-tiniest-violin.org (etc). worldstiniestviolin.mil or .gov would be entertaining, if rather ... revalatory.
I should do something about that.
An article submitted to Slashdot. It should have the elements necessary to make the cut, but you never know. Also, 27 other people may have submitted it.
The research was published in Science of the Total Environment. The little-known "sharpnose" sharks were examined because they spend their entire lives in coastal waters, and so are likely more exposed to drugs from human activities than the more cinematic species starring in "Cocaine Shark" or "Cocaine Sharks", two recent productions on the subject featuring hammerheads and tiger sharks (the "trash cans of the sea").
The likeliest source is effluent from drug processing labs inland, though the snorting population of Rio may have pissed their contribution in to the sewers too. (Which begs the question - does nobody make cocaine-reclaiming filters for users - or enterprising apartment block concierges? Yet?)
Whether cocaine is changing the behaviour of the sharks is not known. Perhaps it would affect their aim with their head-mount lasers, bringing their conquest of the land with it's tasty, tasty humans closer. Hollywood, hopefully, has (tyop!) the answers.
I was watching some thing on YouTube, about the "mysterious" "perforated batons" found across Eurasia for 50,000-odd years. Conventional theory has that they're tools for making some sort of rope - maybe plant-stem cordage, rather than sinew ... maybe also good for preparing sinew. No huge mystery there. But why are most 1- or 2 hole, but a few 3- or even 4-hole batons? Clearly not totally solved, but the "rope preparation/ handling tool" is pretty strong.
But I came up with this little rant, which is more generally applicable, and I think it's worth keeping a copy of. (YT comments use the USENET convention of *bold*, [hyphen]strikethrough[hyphen] or _italic_ AFAIK. I really ought to check up on their formatting rules.)
@YouTubeCommentator5527 "As it turns out they were invented 72.000 - 60.000 years ago"
They were invented before 72-60 kyr BP ; the oldest successfully dated finds are dated to 72-60 kyr BP.
In general, finding a technological artefact means you've found a widespread, popular, well-developed technology. The first several thousand years of a Palaeolithic "Leonardo of Ug", slaving away trying to get his "throw sticks at mammoth, but harder" device to work properly probably resulted in 1 small pile of broken prototypes outside a single ivory tower [mammoth ivory? it was used as a boulding material] at "Ug". But 10 years after he got it working, every single "Ug[X], of Ug" would have had one. A year later, their neighbours the Uggs of Ugli wanted ones, with "go-faster" stripes. Then Marketing came up with a "better" name (an atlatl - really?) ... and soon everyone on the continent had one. Including the inevitable ones that get lost.
The odds of finding those prototypes are far worse than finding the effective, widespread production model. Where is Benz's first "automobile"? One copy, in one single museum. Where are the Model-T Fords? In every second ditch, and abandoned barn ; broken by the side of innumerable roads. Everywhere.
I like that rant. I'm going to save it for re-use! Polish it a bit. If he weren't ded, yet, I'd apologise to Pterry for mis-(?)appropriating Leonardo of Quirm's Palaeolithic ancestor for a starring rôle.
From the same video, but quoting someone un-named : "the easiest way to be wrong about our ancestors is to underestimate them." Very true. Grahaam Hancock and the "Ancient Aliens" people don't dare think that, becaasue it would harm their sales.
Inevitably, there's a video. 25MB to download (plus adverts if you don't block them) to express what takes less than a line of text (all above - there is no more). Sheesh. It's also one of those incredibly annoying American drawls where you need to connect your phone to the defibrilator to get wake-up calls for a new byte of information. That is modern communications?
OK, I needed to edit that for clarity. The USENET encoding was of the form :
[tag] [no whitespace] emphasised text [no whitespace] [tag]
… and that seems to be what YT expects too. Reasonable enough - no need for wheel re-invention here. Somebody will probably try redesigning it to use picking from several thousand near-identical emojis, becauuse that is somehow "easier" than using a keyboard. [Shrug]
2023-04 - Ah-ha! (I'd probably worked this out previously, but I haven't been here for a year or so.) The badly-formed bits of table get dumped first as un-formatted text, then the table. I need to force the table wider, and accept sideways scrolling. Does table {width: 200% ; } work? Yes, considerable improvement.]Update the data rows structure too.Done. Publication/ updating date fixed too. There's some unresolved xGML entities in there, but that's minor.
Years ago, when I first started carrying a mobile computer (a Psion 5, still unmatched for convenience, working for several months on a pair of AA cells), I started to keep a database of "bons mots" which I called "Who Said What", because I was fed up of thinking "I recognise that saying, phrase, aphorism or whatever it is, but where did I hear it previously?"
Sadly,that machine has gone the way of the dodo (the screens were always the weak point), and I never did get the emulator to work well enough to get the database out of my backups. So, try again.
I found an old backup, far from up to date (only 280 rows), but the fields I have are : (a nickname) ; author surname ; given name ; publication reference ; date ; the quote itself ; my notes, and whether it is complete.
Changed theme is allowing more room for the data.
Could I do this as a separate blog, with one entry per entry and a template? I can't get internal linking to work in tr, th or td elements, not even by putting them inside a DIV element.
A little more work done. And my bottle is empty. Maybe a separate blog. But really, this screams to be a database (and one of my remaining reasons to re-implement an Psion emulator to recover from the backups. Which I did test.) so, would that be a GoogleDocs document now? A little more progress. Each time I feel a need to add something, I do a few more rows. It'll get there, or I'll run out first. Meh.
2024, and I'm adding a little bit, including how to link to my other "Penrose" pages. I also want to update the table style, to "fix" the header in the viewing window.
The next problem is how to make the table sortable, in runtime. But that probably means making it a database.
My initial approach is from https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-create-a-table-with-a-fixed-header-and-scrollable-body.html, where the table elements (THEAD, TBODY and TFOOT) are given HEIGHT and WIDTH CSS properties and FIXED and BLOCK properties appropriately ; the BLOCK then generates scrollbars. Then a little adjusting to balance everything nicely.
So ... THEAD and TFOOT should be fixed in position while TBODY is a block with scroll bars. Which they are, now.
This is a specific fix for this page, not something I'll use generally. Well, maybe the THEAD and TFOOT stuff.
Well, it's loading. A big table, and it's taking it's time to render. Sizes look like they need adjustment.
Yes, lots of adjustment. Start off with the widths. At least the headers and TBODY columns are aligning. Add a TFOOT too.
Yes, that is working for the footer. Horrible styling, for now. Overall width? Scrolling? Eventually looks like I'll have to wrap it in the DIV option.
The columns are picking up a fixed width from somewhere. And while the table is reaching version 1 (1000px) , it's not got a horizontal scroll, and it's over-spreading the blog column.
Why don't the THEAD and TBODY elements get the same border styles? Is that amenable to the "item inspector" in the debugger?
| A.K.As : | Auth. Surname : | Auth. 1st Name : | Publ/ co-Author : | Date : | Quote : | Notes : | Complete? : |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A.K.As : | Auth. Surname : | Auth. 1st Name : | Publ/ co-Author : | Date : | Quote : | Notes : | Complete? : |
| Doubt | Abelard | Pierre (the Breton) | Sic et Non (Yes & No) | 1135~ CE | Use systemic doubt and question everything.Learn the difference between statements of rational proof and those merely of persuasion. Be precise in the use of words, and expect precision from others. Watch for error, even in Holy Scripture. | Did not endear himself to the Church authorities. Founded the study of Law as we now know it. | Compl |
| Getting your bag | Adams | Douglas | Mostly Harmless | 1992 | ... she [Trisha] reflected that if there was one thing life had taught her it was that there are times when you do not go back for your bag, and there are other times when you do. It had yet to teach her to distinguish between the two types of occasion. | Compl | |
| Dent-Arthur-Dent's Prayer | Adams | Douglas | Mostly Harmless | 1992 | -Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. -Protect me from knowing that there are things that I don't know. -Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things I decided not to know about. Amen CODA: Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. | Compl | |
| Time | Adams | Douglas | The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy (www.H2G2.com) | 1977 | Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. IIRC, Ford Prefect to Dent Arthur Dent, to persuade him out of the mud in front of the house-demolishing bulldozer and into the pub, so as to get salt and alcohol to cushion the system against the shock of transporting to the planet-demolishing bulldozers. | InCompl | |
| assumptions | Adams | Douglas | ? | ? | Assumptions are things you don't know you're making. | - | In/Compl |
| headache | Adams | Douglas Noel | Hitchhikers guide | 1978 | It gives me a headache to think down to that level. | (in voce Marvin, the Paranoid Android) in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but not in the first few episodes I think ; Adams had slight differences between the radio scripts and the books. | In/Compl |
| frogs | Adams | Scott | Dilbert | 1999 | Have you noticed that when you kiss the frogs, their tongues taste of flies? | In/Compl | |
| Feeping Creaturitis | Adams | Scott | Dilbert | ca 1990 | If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet. | Isn't the name from the Jargon File? | Compl |
| authority | Abelard | of Bath | reference | early 12th C | [From the Arabs] I have learned one thing: if you are lead by authority, you are lead by a halter. | Adelard travelled widely through the Cailiphate in the 12th C acquiring a large amount of knowledge from them, culminating with a period in the newly-Christainised Toledo. | In/Compl |
| Orders to Fitzroy | Admiralty | Given name | British Penguin Classics, Voyage of The Beagle, 1989 | 1831 | [On subject of imperfect charts] Of this kind of half-knowledge we have had too much: the present state of science, which affords such ample means, seems to demand that whatever is now done should be finally done... | Do it right, once. | Compl |
| | Ager | Derek V. | The Nature of The Stratigraphic Record | 1981 | Palaeontologists cannot live by uniformatarianism alone. | - | Compl |
| Wimps use WIMPS | Albe | Frank | CIS/ Unixforum/ #336970 | 20 Jul 2000, 19:33 | Isn't a toolbar where mechanics go when the clock strikes "{BEER} Time"? | Compl | |
| Magnificent desolation! | Aldrin | Buzz | On pausing before climbing down to the Moon's surface | 20 July 1969 | Magnificent desolation! | Compl | |
| Immortality | Allen | Woody | biography? | 1975 | I don't want to achieve immortality through my work . . . I want to achieve it through not dying. | Compl | |
| complication | Anderson | Poul | ? | - | I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you look at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. | - | In/Compl |
| Haiku | Anon | - | [From R4 poetry program] | 1999 | A Haiku is a poem in 3 phrases (lines). First line is 5 syllables; second 7; third 5. One line must mention a season. | (OED leaves out last and subs "traditionally evoking images of the natural world") | Compl |
| Theory | Anon | found | 1999/09/18 | The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. | | Compl | |
| Planning | Anon | | | If you plan for a year, plant rice If you plan for ten years, plant trees. If you plan for a hundred years, teach the people. | quoted in reference to Subrahaman Chandrashekhar | Compl | |
| Guards | Anon | Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? | Who guards the Guards themselves? | In/Compl | |||
| pigsty | Anon | | | | Happy as a muc in sloc("shloch"), happy as a pig in shit. | Irish | In/Compl |
| Murphy's Law | Anon, | var | Murphy's Law; | | The Law of Constant Cussedness; Sod's Law; Finagale's Law; The Perversity of the Universe Tends to a Maximum; | Tëcke des Objekts (German- the spite of things) | In/Compl |
| Inheritance | Anon. | - | - | -- | We have not inherited the earth from our father(s), we are borrowing it from our children. | Attributed to an Amish farmer | In/Compl |
| Mistake | Anon. | - | - | - | Remember, a common mistake is still a mistake. | quote from a glyphs/ languages website by Jonathon Halabi | In/Compl |
| Research | Anon.- | - | - | - | If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research. | Allegedly, a bumper sticker. | In/Compl |
| Freiheit- Freedom | Anon. | - | 1933-1945 | Dachau - | On the roof of the admin block at Dachau KZk 1933- 1945 Es gibt einen Weg zur Freiheit. Seine Meilensteine heiße: Gehorsam - Fleiß- Ehrlichkeit- Ordnung- Sauberkeit- Nächternheit- Wahrheit-Opfersinn und Leibe zum Vaterland. - | There is one road to freedom.It's milestones are: obedience - diligence - honesty - order - Cleanliness - temperance - truthfulness - sacrifice and love of one's country. - | Compl |
| Alsace Meteorite | Anon. | - | - | 1492 | Ensisheim, Alsace, France. Inscription associated with meteorite seen to fall in 1492. Many know much about this stone, everyone knows something, but no-one knows quite enough. | - | In/Compl |
| BASIC | Anon | - | - | - | BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of 'Scientific Creationism' | In/Compl | |
| Incapable god | Aquinas | Thomas | Summa Theologica | 1255 | God cannot make the sum of the internal angles of a [plane] triangle add up to more than two right angles. | ohh, have to throw this one in Yirrell's face one day. | In/Compl |
| Three Laws of Robotics | Asimov | Issac | - | 1943 | First Law: A robot must not harm a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm;Second Law: A robot must obey orders given to it by a human being except where those orders conflict with the First Law; Third Law: A robot must protect it's own existance except where such protection would conflict with the First or Second Laws. | First explicitly quoted in 'Runaround',1943. This can be generalised to three laws of Tools -- First Law : A tool must be safe to use; Second Law : A tool must perform it's function, providing it does so safely; Third Law : A tool must remain intact in use unless it's destruction is required for safety or it's destruction is part of it's use. | In/Compl |
| Frankenstein Complex | Asimov | Issac | The Robot Chronicles | 1990 | I was an ardent science fiction reader in the 1930s and I became tired of the ever-repeated robot plot. I didn't see robots that way. I saw them as machines -- advanced machines -- but machines. They might be dangerous, but surely safety factors would be built in. The safety factors might be faulty, or inadequate, or might fail under unexpected types of stresses, but such failures could always yield experience that could be used to improve the models. | Doesn't need my input. | Compl |
| Tolerance | Atkinson | Rowan | Blackadder II | 1983 | Cold is God's way of telling us to burn more Catholics | Wasn't Ben Elton scriptwriter? | Compl |
| Maths is a religion | Barrow | John | Writer of pop.sci books, astronomy based, big bang + age of universe. | recent | If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only one that can prove itself to be one. | I'm not entirely sure that Godel's Incompletelness theorem dpes say that, but I'll leave that ot a mathematical heretical war to setle. | In/Compl |
| doggrel | Belloc | Hilaire | poetry book somewhere | 1900-ish | Decisive action in the time of need, denotes the hero, but rarely suceeds. | just nice cynicism | In/Compl |
| Science | Belloc | Hillaire | The Microbe | 1897 | But scientists, who ought to know, Assure us that this must be so. Oh! Let us never, never doubt. What nobody is sure about! | doggrel | Compl |
| Media | Biafra | Jello | The Dead Kennedys group lyrics | ca. 1980 | Don't hate the media, become the media! | - | Compl |
| Tolerence | Bible | KJV | Leviticus, c20v13 | 150AD | If an man lieth with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. | major hand-washing | In/Compl |
| Sounding Brass | Bible | KJV | 1 Corinthians 13 | ca 400 CE | If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal | [a "sounding brass" in other versions] | In/Compl |
| Sodom | Bible | - | Jude, 1:11 | 150 BCE? | Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core. | [Korah, not my boss at the time, in other editions] | In/Compl |
| visiting iniquity | Bible | - | Deuteronomy 5:9 | 400 BCE? | Exodus 20:5 for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them. 23:1 He that is wounded in the stone, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD. 23:2 A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even unto his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. | 23:3 [same for Ammonites & Moabites] | In/Compl |
| Friends | Bierce | Ambrose | Devil's Dictionary | 1925? | Think twice before you speak to a friend in need. | - | In/Compl |
| The Excuse File | Travaglia | Simon | BOfH: The Excuse File | 1999 | Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '86, Windows '98, Covid 19 ... . | ... Windows Millennium, Windows XP, Windows Vista | In/Compl |
| potted biography | Brahe | Tycho | apocryphal, but worth repeating | ca 1550 | Did lots of things: had his nose cut off in a duel; replaced it with a silver prothesis; top notch pre-telescopic astronomer; observed a supernova in 1557/8(?), the penultimate naked eye one for 430 years; died from a burst bladder following a beer session. | Aidan SEZ: Top man. Neil SEZ: This guy is buried in the Tyn Church, on Staro Mestro in Prague. After my visit there, I still enjoy Czech beer, but ensure that I always go to the toilet whenever nature calls - Neil Fletcher | In/Compl |
| Censorship | Censors | British Board of Film | J.C. Robertson, Hidden Cinema, 1989 | 1929 | So cryptic as to be almost meaningless. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable. So saying, they banned Jean Cocteau's film "The Seashell and the Clergyman". | - | Compl |
| Boring | Institute | British Standards | BS 3704 | var | How to make a good condom. | - | In/Compl |
| Knowledge Range | Brucke | Ernst | reference | 1878 | Today it is difficult for the artist to be taught the theoretical science he needs, and even more difficult for him to learn it. Leonardo da Vinci was thoroughly familiar with all the knowledge of his day; he knew geometry, mechanics, physics, physiology, anatomy, all that was known of them in his time. That is impossible now because of all the developments which the sciences have undergone. | In 1878! | In/Compl |
| Invention in social emergency | Buckminster-Fuller | - | - | 1950? | Only under the stresses of total social emergencies do the effectively adequate alternative technical strategies synergetically emerge. | word salad, with maybe a little meat buried | In/Compl |
| Lawyers | Burns | Robert/ Rabbi | ? | 1790? | How easy can the barley-bree, Cement the quarrel, It's aye the cheapest Lawyer's fee, To taste the barrel! | - | In/Compl |
| chickens, eggs | Butler | Samuel | - | - | A chicken is merely an eggs way of making another egg. | - | In/Compl |
| Optimism | Cabell | James Branch | "The Silver Stallion" | 1926 | The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. | (is this a Lone Ranger story?) This has a very Dr Pangloss air to it. | In/Compl |
| garbage | Campbell | John W. | attributed to | - | 90% of scence fiction, indeed 90% of anything, is garbage. | legendary SF editor | In/Compl |
| Science truism. | Carlson | Shawn | Sci Am v282 n1 p76 | Jan 2000 | Yesterday's discovery is today's calibration and tomorrow's noise. | - | In/Compl |
| define god | Bradlaugh | Charles | Plea for Atheism (pamphlet name) | 1890 | Late Victorian essayist, Northampton's MP for a time, Charles Bradlaugh The Bible God I deny ; the Christian God I disbelieve in. But I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you are unprepared to define god to me. | A nice rhetorical trick to undermine the majority of deists who, when challenged, will slip their definitions under fire. Play this card early, then when they bow under fire you can pull the rug from them as soon as they try to slip away. (Of course, once they define their God, you can still decry believing in it.) | Compl |
| snapping Churchill | Churchill | Winston | recounted by #10 secretary | 1941 | You must never be frightened of me when I snap. I'm thinking of the work, not of you. | gilding the frog | In/Compl |
| Possibilities | Clarke | Arthur C. | New Yorker | 1969 | If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says it is impossible he is very probably wrong. | Associated with "2001: A Space Odyssey" publicity? | Compl |
| magic | Clarke | Arthur C. | passim | passim | Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. | See also, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."-- Anon. | In/Compl |
| Caverns Measureless to Man | Coleridge | Samual Taylor | Lyrical Ballards | 1798 | In Zanadu did Kubla Khan, A stately pleasure dome decree, Through caverns measureless to man, The sacred River Aleph ran to the sea, ... And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery, | the caver's dream | In/Compl |
| A sadder and a wiser man | Coleridge | Samuel Taylor | The Rime of the Ancient Mariner | 1798 | He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn. | (last verse?) | In/Compl |
| homos | Crisp | Quentin | The Naked Civil Servant | 1968 | You can't harm me. I am one of England's stately homos. | (q.v. "How to have a Life Style"1974 and "How to Become a Virgin" 1981) | In/Compl |
| housekeeping | Crisp | Quentin | The Naked Civil Servant | 1968 | The dust doesn't get any worse after three years. | born Denis Charles Pratt, poor sod. 25/12/1908 - 21/11/1999 [when describing his notoriously dirty flat at 129 Beaufort St Chelsea] [some obits give 4 years- he probably said it frequently] | In/Compl |
| social climbing down | Crisp | Quentin | - | mid 1980's | Never try to keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper. | no source, spoken? | In/Compl |
| crass | Croesus | - | var | - | If you invade, a great empire will be destroyed | Croesus was an interesting person. Apart from being so blatently money-grubbing, and using his wealth to buy political influence (a modification of his name gives many languages the word/ meaning "crass"), he also made at least one serious mistake: he bankrolled Julius Caesar for some time, but demanded the leadership of the Eastern Army in return. He then led them on a campaign against the Persians. They won, he died. q.v. Sic Transit Gloria Mundae. | In/Compl |
| prick | Lawrence | D. H., Anon | Lady Chatterley's Lover | 1930 | Most people know of John Thomas from Lawrence. But edition #1 of "The Pearl" uses the samephrase from 1878. | my notes | In/Compl |
| philosophical illusion of self | Dagg | Frederick | reference | date | Anyone who really thinks that they are not really here can buy their own beer. | in discussions of the illusiory nature of consciousness | In/Compl |
| Obscure | Alleghri | Dante | Inferno | 1580-odd | Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous. So that by fixing on it's depths my sight--Nothing whatever I discerned therein. | A seminal description of the Windoze API, written some centuries before the dvelopment of the system. | In/Compl |
| cruel nature | Darwin | Charles | in letter to Joseph Hooker | 1856 | What a book a devil's chaplain might write upon the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! | - | Compl |
| Eyes (full) | Darwin | Charles | On The Origin of Species, Ch 6, section 3 | 1859 | Organs of extreme Perfection and Complication To suppose that the eye with all it's inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to differing distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic abberations, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to it's posessor, as is certainly the case ; if further, the eye ever varies, and the variation be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. | [last phrase "cannot be considered real" in Dawkins quotation-- a later edition?] | Compl |
| Beneficent design | Darwin | Charles | letter to J Hooker | 1870 | I can see no evidence of beneficent design, or indeed design of any kind, in the details. | - | Compl |
| free thinking | Darwin | Charles | notebook or letter? | 1880 | It seems to me (rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and Theism hardly have any effect on the public; and that freedom of thought will best be promoted by that gradual enlightening of human understanding which follows the progress of science. I have therefore always avoided writing about religion and have confined myself to science. | Compl | |
| Eyes | Darwin | Charles | In a letter long after OTOOS was published | ~1870 | The Eye, to this day, gives me a cold shudder, but when I hink of the fine known graduations, my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder. | - | Compl |
| Materialism | Darwin | Charles | notebooks | circa 1839~40 | Why is thought being a secretion of Brain more wonderful than gravity a property of matter? It is our arrogance, our admiration of ourselves. | - | Compl |
| Capital Science | Darwin | Charles | - | - | Geology is a capital science to begin with as it requires nothing but a little reading, thinking and hammering. | In/Compl | |
| meaning of meme | Dawkins | Richard | [passim], October's "Focus" mag, 2000 | 2000 | [of memes] I wanted to make the point that Darwinian selection can work wherever you have self-replicating coded information which has some power over it's own fate. | Simonyi Professor of The Public Understanding of Science | In/Compl |
| Treaties, girls and roses | de Gaulle | Charles | - | mid 1950s | Treaties are like girls and roses:�a dure ce que �a dure. [they last while they last] | - | Compl |
| ecosystems & environments | Deevy | Edward S. | in Lockley & Gillette, Dinosaur Trackways | ~2000 | Behind the history of every sedimentary rock there lurks an ecosystm, but what one sees first is an environment of deposition. | - | In/Compl |
| Posterity | Descartes | Rene | - | 1600 | I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained but also as to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovry. | - | In/Compl |
| Grass | Donne | John | - | ca 1620 | Why grass is green,or why our blood is red, Are mysteries which none have reach'd into, | my notes | In/Compl |
| Holmes - Observing | Doyle | Arthur Conan | Scandal in Bohemia | 1892 | You see, but you do not observe. | - | Compl |
| Elementary | Doyle | Arthur Conan | The Crooked Man | 1894 | 'Excellent,' I cried. 'Elementary, ' said he. | [The traditional cry of 'Elementary, my dear Watson' appears nowhere in the canon.] | Compl |
| excluded impossible | Doyle | Arthur Conan | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | 1895 | It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. | - | In/Compl |
| imagination | Doyle | Arthur Conan | The Valley of Fear | 1900 | It is, I admit, mere imagination: but how often is imagination the mother of truth? | - | Compl |
| conclusions | Doyle | Arthur Conan | Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Naval Treaty | 1895 | [The client asked Sherlock...] "You suspect someone?" [SH] "I suspect myself" [TC] "What!" [SH] "Of coming to conclusions too rapidly." | - | In/Compl |
| the dog that didn't bark | Doyle | Arthur Conan | Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes | 1898 | Lestrade: "Is there anypoint to which you wish to draw my attention?" SH: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." L: "The dog did nothing in the night-time." SH: "That was the curious incident." | - | In/Compl |
| ichnology | Doyle | Arthur Conan | A Study in Scarlet | 1891 | There is no branch of detective science so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps. | - | Compl |
| bigots, fools & slaves | Drummond | William | reference | 17th century | He who will not reason is a bigot, He who cannot reason is a fool, And he who dare not reason is a slave. | - | In/Compl |
| Alexander's Feast | Dryden | John | - | - | The King grew vain; Fought all his battles o'er again; And thrice he routed all his foes; And thrice he slew the slain. | - | Compl |
| Education | Durrell | Gerald | My family and other animals | 1935 | But I like being ignorant. Everything's so much more surprising when you're ignorant! On being sent off Corfu to get a "proper" education. | - | Compl |
| youth | Eckermann | Johann | Diary, but in what context? | 16 Aug, 1824 | We must not take the faults of our youth into our old age, for old age brings it's own defects. | - | In/Compl |
| imbeciles | Ehrlich | Paul R. | said of Julian Simon, a conservative critic. | 1970~ | The one thing we'll never run out of is imbeciles. | - | In/Compl |
| Malicious God | Einstein | Albert | Remark at Princeton | 1921 | Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaf ist er nicht (God is subtle, but he is not malicious) | Isn't that a bit early for AE at Princeton? | Compl |
| Mysticism | Einstein | Albert | "The world as I see it". NY Philosophical Library | 1934 | The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger is as good as dead. | Einstein is often associated with a degree of mysticism. | Compl |
| thinking | Einstein | Albert | Physics and Reality | 1936 | The whole of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking. | - | Compl |
| Authority | Einstein | Albert | Qtd by Banesh Hoffman in "Albert Einstein:Creator & Rebel", New York: Viking, 1973, p.24 | 1973 publ, date unkn | To punish myself for my contempt for authority, Fate made me an authority myself. | - | Compl |
| memorable name | Euripedes | - | Medea, ll 1073-1075 | 431 BCE | I understand The horror of what I am going to do; but anger, The spring of all life's horror, masters my resolve. | - | In/Compl |
| Social science and black holes | Ferris | Tim | The Whole Shebang | 1997 | Normally a black hole reveals to outside observers only three things about itself -- it's mass, rotation and electrical charge. Toss in anything you like -- encyclopedias, nuclear submarines, whole faculties of social scientists -- and the black hole, like a prisonor of war reciting only name, rank and serial number, will tell you nothing more than it's mass, it's rotation and it's electrical charge. | BUT ... you can still get information out, in a restricted sense. See the Hawking Bet. | In/Compl |
| Foolishness | Feynman | Richard | graduation class address, 1974, published in "Cargo Cult Science". | 1974 | You must not fool yourself-- and you are the easiest person [for you] to fool! | not popular! | Compl |
| Room at the bottom | Feynman | Richard | In a speech | 1963 | "There's plenty of room at the bottom"Quoted in context of nano-technology | The "foundation myth" of nanotechnology. | In/Compl |
| Reactor Design | Feynman | Richard | attributed | - | We already know how to build a Fusion reactor. 1- Dig a deep hole and fill it with salt (to act as a heat storage medium) and a hydrogen bomb. 2- Seal with concrete. 3- Detonate the bomb. 4- Drill down and extract the heat. 5- Repeat until the salt is unusable. 6- Use the site for storing radioactive waste and make a new hole. | - | In/Compl |
| Knowledge | Feynman | Richard | - | - | Scientific Knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty-- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely sure. | No biblical authority here. | In/Compl |
| Parkinsonism | Fox | Michael J. | A Lucky Man | 1990 | [My assistant] might have had a brain surgeon in the family, but I had the next best thing: a hypochondriac. | Fox on his first realisation that he'd got a significant tremor which was later diagnosed as Young Onset Parkinsons Disease. | Compl |
| evidence | Freud | Sigmund | - | - | Not even the most tempting probability is a protection against error. | Actually, this needs more examination. Are we talking about one experiment or several, about quantitative or qualitative examples. | In/Compl |
| eels | Freud | Sigmund | - | - | After the riddle of the eel's gonads, the exploration of the human psyche and the identification of the castration complex must have seemed comparatively straightforward. | Freud was a physiology postgraduate student, and attempting to find the sex organs of eels. He failed. | In/Compl |
| Meteorologists | Friedmann | Alexander | Quoted in Ferris "Whole Shebang" p. 42. | ca 1920 | Bad mathematicians become physicists; bad physicists become meteorologists. | - | In/Compl |
| Earth Power | Fyfe | W.S. | Global Change: Proceedings, ICSU Gen assy, Ottawa, Cambridge University Press, 1984. | 1984 | The Earth is powered by an internal fission reactor and a moving external fusion reactor. | See also sunglasses company slogan about "thermonuclear ray protection" | Compl |
| Duct Tape | Gaherty | Geoff | quoted sig from s.a.a. | 1999 | Duct tape is like The Force: it has a dark side and a light side and it holds the Universe together. | - | Compl |
| Occams razor | Gamow | George | Physics Today Oct 1950 | 1950 | If there is a simple curve, there must be a simple explanation. | - | Compl |
| insignificant | Gandhi | Mohadans | - | - | Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. | - | In/Compl |
| painful | Gilbert & Sullivan | - | The Mikado | 1870 | something lingering, with boiling oil in it. | A punishment described by or to the court executioner. | In/Compl |
| routing | Gilmore | John | co-founder of the EFF | 1993 | The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. | more of an aspiration than a statement, but not far from the truth | In/Compl |
| Star Trek aliens | Glashow | Sheldon (Nobel Laureate) | - | - | They all look like people with elephantiasis! | - | In/Compl |
| Mistresses | Goldsmith (moneybags) | James | reference | ca 1985 | When a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy. | famed for having 5 wives and more mistresses | In/Compl |
| Laws of Nature | Goodman | Nelson | Uniformity & Simplicity, Geol. Soc. Am Sp. Paper 89 | 1967 | whether or not Nature behaves according to law depends entirely upon whether we succeed in writing laws that describe it's behavior. | - | In/Compl |
| materialism | Gould | Stephen Jay | Ever since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History | 1980 | Matter is the ground of all existance: mind, spirit and "god" as well, are just words that express the wonderous results of neuronal complexity. | [on subject of materialism in Darwin's theory of evolution] | In/Compl |
| trust nobody | Graves | Robert | I, Claudius | ca 1928 | Trust no one my friend, no one.Not your most trusted freedman,not your most intimate friend,not your dearest child,not the wife of your bosom,trust no one.-- not even me. | Herod's Speech to Claudius. | In/Compl |
| Altruism | Haldane | J.B.S. | passim | 1945 | I will lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins | he seems to have used it, with polishing, several times. Also the "Beetles" quip. | In/Compl |
| Queer Universe | Haldane | John B. S. | - | - | The universe is not only queerer than we imagine; it is queerer than we can imagine. | Another recycled Haldanism. | In/Compl |
| beetle fondness | Haldane | John B. S. | passim- used seveal times | - | [What have you learned from evolution about God] An inordinate fondness for beetles. | used multiple times | In/Compl |
| Incontrovertable thesis | Hammerskjold | Dag | UN Secretary General | pre 1963 | The madman shouted in the marketplace; no one stopped to answer him. Thus, it was confirmed that his thesis was incontestable | but of course | In/Compl |
| Drummer Hodge | Hardy | Thomas | Drummer Hodge | - | - | its a bitter poem about the Boer War. Wait - what. Hardy was around for the Boer War? "2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928)" Seems so. | In/Compl |
| witless | Hawes | James Lee | CIS PAST/ceationism forum | 27 Sep 2000 | I resfuse [sic] to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. | He really did make the spelling mistake!! But it was probably a quote. Oh, very definitely so! QuoteInvestigator Lots of other uses from 1920s to recently. | In/Compl |
| Burning books | Heine | Heinrich | reference | 1823 | This was but a prelude; where books are burnt, human-beings will be burnt in the end. | Amongst other places, used in the museum at Dachau KZ. | In/Compl |
| Priests | Heinlein | Robert | Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love | 1974 | Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent. | - | In/Compl |
| Science or opinion | Heinlein | Robert | Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love | 1974 | If it can't be expressed in figures, it's not science, it's opinion. | - | In/Compl |
| Theology | Heinlein | Robert | Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love | 1974 | One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. | my notes | In/Compl |
| Mathematics | Heinlein | Robert | Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love | 1974 | Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. | - | Compl |
| Stupidity | Heinlein | Robert | Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love | 1974 | Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. | - | Compl |
| Capital Stupidity | Heinlein | Robert | Lazarus Long in 'Time Enough for Love' | 1960~ | Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentance is death. There is no appeal, and the execution is carried out automatically and without pity. | my notes | In/Compl |
| The Hippocratic Oath | Hippocrates | (allegedly) | reference | several hundred BCE | ... follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgement, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischevious ... with purity and holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art ... | Traditional oath of doctors on taking up the stick & snakes. No version has survived from antiquity, nor is there confidence that there ever was one. Each medical school makes up their own. | In/Compl |
| Propaganda | Hitler | Adolf | Mein Kampf? | 1925 | By the clever and continued use of propaganda, a people can even be made to mistake heaven for hell and vice versa, the most miserable life for paradise. | - | In/Compl |
| war-one-against-all | Hobbes | - | late Mediaeval philosopher | 1500? | bellum omnium contra omnes | the war of everyone against everone | In/Compl |
| Ageism | Holmes | Arthur | in a letter | ~1948 | It is perhaps a little indelicate to ask of our Mother earth her age, but Science admits no shame. | not grounds for shame but for pride | Compl |
| Arguments for Lords | Home | Alexander Douglas (Lord) | The Way the Wind Blows | 1976 | [Annotation to a ministerial brief, allegedly read to the house by a dozy peer.] This is a rotten argument, but it should be good enough for their lordships on a hot summer afternoon. | cynical cunt | Compl |
| memorable name | Hood | Thomas | November Verse | 1844 | [...] No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! November! | Flanders & Swann's inspiration? | In/Compl |
| memorable name | Houseman | A.E. | reference | 1930 ? | What shall I do or write Against the fall of night? | inspired title for A.C.Clarke's eponymous book | Compl |
| Belief | Hume | David | Enq. Concrn. Human Understanding | ca 1760 | [concerning miracles] "a wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence" | my notes | In/Compl |
| surgery | Hunter | John | surgeon at the roots of scientific medicine | ~ 1800 | Surgery is like an armed savage who attempts to get that by force which a civiized man would get by strategem. | - | In/Compl |
| slogan | Huxley | Aldous | Brave New World | 1937 | Community - Identity - Stability! | - | In/Compl |
| dead dragons | Huxley | T. H. | following the hippocampus debate | 1861 ~ | Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once. | q.v. Dryden's Alexander's Feast | In/Compl |
| ugly fact | Huxley | T.H. | - | c.1870 | a beautiful theory, killed by a nasty, ugly little fact | said in reference to Spencer's appropriation of Darwinian Natural Selection as a justification for his social engineering theories | In/Compl |
| suns & earths | Huygens | Christiaan | reference | date | What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths. | discoverer of Saturn's rings. | In/Compl |
| Have a nice day | Karley | Aidan | KGB | 2001/01/08 | May your internal demons do worse to you than your external demons! | to John Bogue | In/Compl |
| poem/ haiku | Karley | Aidan | unpublished, and probably just as well. | 2001/03/19 | Winter The cold stars sparkle Like Moon light Glistens upon the frozen snow. | - | In/Compl |
| revenge | Kingsbury | Donald | Man-Kzin Wars v.6, "The Heroic Myth of Lieutenant Nora Argamantine" | 1994 | My Father always told me that revenge was an option- but that no matter how sweet the revenge, revenge was NEVER the end of the story. | my notes | In/Compl |
| Finagle's Laws 1 | Kingsbury | Donald | Man-Kzin Wars 6 | 1994 | Finagle's n'th Law: reality can outbid your worst nightmare every time. | - | In/Compl |
| use the rich | Kingsbury | Donald | Man-Kzin Wars 6 | 1994 | That's what rich people are for. They are very useful experimental animals for us poor types. The rich pay through the nose for all the fancy new technology when it isn't very good. They're desparate to live so they pay thousands of crazy witch-doctors to kill them in fancy new ways. When the rich people stop dying, we know the product is ready for market and can be mass produced cheaply. | In the context of boosterspice. | In/Compl |
| Finagle's Laws 2 | Kingsbury | Donald | Man-Kzin Wars 6 | 1994 | Let Finagle toast God's death! | - | In/Compl |
| Ph.D. Sense | Kirschner | Robert P. | Quarterly Jnl Royal Astronomical Society v.32 p.233-244 | 1991 | Although the Universe is under no obligation to make sense, students in pursuit of a Ph.D. are. | - | In/Compl |
| cometary felines | Levy | David H. | - | 1985 | Comets are just like cats: they both have tails and both do just what they want to. | - | In/Compl |
| Inflation (really big numbers) | Linde | Andrei | in conversation with Tim Ferris (cosmologist) | 198x | In conversation about INFLATION theory, Linde was asked how big an inflationary uiverse could get. He replied by writing on a scrap of paper a ten. Then raising it to the twelfth. Big? No. That's the number you raise ten to. [TF] Er, what units are you working in? [AL] Does it matter? it's cm, not light years, but it doesn't make much difference. Only 18 parts in 10^12. [TF] Errr. No significant difference between a cm and a light year. Right. Of course, combinatorial mathematicians don't use such small numbers. They invent their own notations for big numbers. After all, the universe above doesn't have enough material to write their numbers in scientific notation. | my notes | In/Compl |
| uniformitarianism | Lyell | Charles | Principles of Geology, v.1, p.164 | 1830- 33 | When we are unable to explain the monuments of past changes, it is always more probable that the difficulty arises from our ignorance of all the existing agents, or all their possible effects in an indefinite lapse of time, than that some cause was formerly in operation which has ceased to act. | my notes | In/Compl |
| evil | Macgiavelli | Niccolo | Discorsi Supra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio | 1517 | It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits when they have free scope. | as expected | Compl |
| flattery | Machiavelli | Niccolo | Il Principe, ch 23 | 1513 | There is no other way for securing yourself against flatteries except that men understand that they do not offend you by telling you the truth; but when everybody can tell you the truth, you fail to get respect. | - | Compl |
| People | Machiavelli | Niccolo | Il Principe, ch 9 | 1513 | He who builds on the people builds on mud. | lovely | In/Compl |
| Population | Malthus | Thomas | On Population | ca.1820 | The order of generation proceeds by something like a geometrical progression. The increase of provisio, under circumstances even the most advantageous, can only assume the form of an arithmetic series. Whence it follows, that the population will always overtake the provision, will pass beyond the line of plenty, and will continue to increase till checked by the difficulty of procuring subsistance. | my notes | In/Compl |
| famous drug smuggler | Marks | Howard | Loaded mag | Dec 1998 | Thank God for Viagra. Now we can all act in blue movies. | - | In/Compl |
| BBC political editor | Marr | Andrew | press | April 2001 | Whiskey is not, properly speaking, alcohol, but a form of instant philosophy. | - | In/Compl |
| Cargos | Masefield | John | SALT-WATER POEMS | 1902 | Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amythysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. | - | In/Compl |
| media | McLuan | Marshall | - | 1960s | The Medium IS the Message | advertising or art guy | In/Compl |
| pinstripe | McNab | Andy | Last Light | 2001 | Real crooks wear pinstripe. | ex-SAS author | In/Compl |
| Astrology idiocy | Mencken | H.L. | - | - | If you set out to think of the stupidest idea possible, you would inevitably come up with astrology. | I don't know - homeopathy gives it a good run for it's money. | In/Compl |
| fundamentalists | Menken | H.L. | reference | 1920 | Heave an egg out of a [train] window, and you willhit a Fundamentalist almost anywhere in the US today. | Obviously pre-Amtrak collapse. | In/Compl |
| Pelican | Dixon | Merritt | - | 1910 | A wonderful bird is the Pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican. | (bestiary?) | In/Compl |
| The Doors | Morrison | Jim | An American Prayer | 1969 | The Hitch-hiker stood by the side of the road And levelled his thumb In the calm calculus of reason. | Part of the 'Indian Dream' unfinished work. | In/Compl |
| Freedom | netannounce@deshaw.com | - | What is USENET? pt 1 | 1998-01-16 | Freedom of the press is for those who own one. | my notes | In/Compl |
| Amphioxus Song | The Newcomer | a man on the Net | reference | 1996 | [Chorus] It's a long way from Amphioxus, It's a long way to us, It's a long way from Amphioxus, To the meanest human cuss It's good bye, fins and gill slits, Hello! Lungs and Hair, It's a long, long way from Amphioxus, But we all came from there A fish-like thing appared among the Annelids one day, It hadn't any parapods or setae to display. It hadn't any eyes or jaws, or ventral nervous chord But it had a lot of gill slits, and it had a notochord. [Chorus] It wasn't much to look at, and it scarce knew how to swim. And Nereis was very sure it hadn't come from him, The molluscs wouldn't own it, and the arthropods got sore, So the poor thing had to burrow in the sand along the shore. He burrowed in the sand before a crab could nip his tail. He said "Gill slits and myotomes are all to no avail. I've grown some metapleural folds, and sport an oral hood. And all these fine new characters don't do me any good!" [Chorus] He sulked a while, down in the sand without a bit of pep. Then he stiffend up his notochord and said "I'll beat 'em yet! Let 'em laugh and show their ignorance; I don't mind their jeers Just wait until they see me in a hundred milion years!" My notochord shall turn into a chain of vertebrae As fins, my metapleural folds will agitate the sea. My tiny dorsal nervous chord shall be a mighty brain. And the Vertebrates will dominate the animal domain! [Chorus] | - | In/Compl |
| non-catastrophism | Newell | N.D. | GSA special paper on uniformitarianism. | 1967 | The adage that "anything that can happen, will happen" cannot be construed to mean that anything that might happen, has indeed happened. | Im not sure that exactly follows. At least, in a universe with a finite previous lifetime. | Compl |
| on the shoulders of giants | Newton | Issac | letter to Robert Hooke, 5 Feb 1676 | 1676 | If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. | Plagiarised from Bernard of Chartres."However, Bernard of Chartres was quoted in 1159 as saying 'that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size." | Compl |
| Indifference | Niem�ller | Martin ("Pastor") | reference | 1947 +/- | First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist- so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats but I was not a Social Democrat- so I said nothing. Then came the trade unionists but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews but I was not a Jew- so I did little. Then when they came for me there was no one left who could stand up for me. | the line about trade unionists is often forgotten. | In/Compl |
| The Abyss | Nietzsche | Friedrich | Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 | 1860 | Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. | - | In/Compl |
| madness | Nietzsche | Friedrich | Beyond Good and Evil | 1860 | Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. | He ended up in a nut house. | In/Compl |
| paranoia | Niven | Larry | "Flatlander" short story | 1967 | If you don't understand it, it's dangerous. | - | Compl |
| ethical contradiction | Niven | Larry | Flatlander, short story | 1967 | RE: Outsiders. "They have to be so far above suspicion that any species they deal with will remember their unimpeachable ethics a century later" | BUT the Outsiders are interstellar traders who travel at sub-light speeds (though they do have FTL communications and can sell FTl drives). Contrast this opinion with that of the Monks in one of the early Draco Tavern stories (4th Profession?), where the STL interstellar traders are willing to bomb suns and destroy their back route of civilisations. That universe has FTL travel too. | In/Compl |
| Weapons | Niven | Larry | Madness has it's Place | 1990 | Then again ... kinetic energy was likely to be the ultimate weapon, however the mass was moved. | Energy considerations don't lie. | In/Compl |
| advice accepted | Niven | Larry | The Burning City ch 67 | 2000 | I will not answer for advice not taken. | - | In/Compl |
| Book profits | Niven | Larry | NivenList | 2001/06/02 | I get a slightly higher percentage of the hardback, which sells for a lot more than the paperback. | [re: margins on hardbacks vs softbacks] | Compl |
| a sword | Nixon | Richard Milhouse | Interview with David Frost | 19 May 1977 | I brought myself down. I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in. | my notes | Compl |
| Whitewash | Nixon | Richard Milhouse | Speech 30 April 1973 | 1973 | There can be no whitewash at the White House. | No, really! | In/Compl |
| Americans are beyond irony | O'Rourke | P.J. | - | 1980's? | America is a country where the people are too lazy to learn the facts, much less face them. | before Trump? | In/Compl |
| Occam's Razor | Occam | William of | - | 13th C | Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity [but] there are many things that God does with more that he could do with fewer.[Latin] entitia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum. | Q.V. Actualism, q.v. Colebach's Telepaths Dance "Churga's Wtsai", MKW8s | In/Compl |
| Rage | Orton | Joe | Head to Toe, 1961 | published posthumously, 1971 | Cleanse my heart, Give me the ability to rage correctly. | - | Compl |
| Advertising | Orwell | George | Keep the aspidestra flying. | ca. 1940 | Advertising- the rattling of a stick inside a bucket of swill. | Compl | |
| Brevity | Parker | Dorothy | Aphorisms | 1916 | Brevity is the soul of lingerie, as the Petticoat said to the Chemise. | (cf Shakespeare in Hamlet: Brevity is the soul of wit.) | In/Compl |
| Adultery | Parker | Dorothy | Of the office she shared with Robert Benchley | 1917 | An inch smaller and it would have been adultery. | - | In/Compl |
| One Perfect Rose | Parker | Dorothy | R�sum� | 1937 | A single flow'r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messanger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -One perfect rose.I knew the language of the floweret; "My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose." Love long has taken for his amuletOne perfect rose. Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get One perfect rose. | valentine for CMF, about 2001 | In/Compl |
| Might as well live | Parker | Dorothy | Résumé | 1937 | Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. | - | In/Compl |
| McCarthyism | Parker | Dorothy | When being investigated by FBI for looking left. | 1952 | Listen, I can't even get my dog to stay down. Do I look to you like someone who could overthrow the government? | - | In/Compl |
| Horticulture | Parker | Dorothy | Résumé | quoted 1970 | You can lead a horticulture but you cannot make her think. | - | In/Compl |
| On the verge | Pasteur | Louis | reference | ca 1870 | I feel I am on the verge of mysteries, and the veil is getting thinner and thinner. | - | In/Compl |
| plural nouns | Peel | John | Home Truths | 1999 | Plural noun for [Scots] headmasters : a lack of principles. | - | Compl |
| McLuhan, not | Pete-Classic | - | Slashdot sid=02/07/11/1912239 | 2002-07-11 | Web Designers : You aren't artists and the medium isn't the message. The message is the fucking message. | - | In/Compl |
| Brains | Philips | Emo | American comic 1960 ? | Quoted in SciAm letters 2000/04 | I used to think the brain was the most important organ in the body, until I realised who was telling me that. | Should have listened to his vagina. | In/Compl |
| nothing new in art | Picasso | Pablo | after visiting the gallery at Lascaux | 1955 | We have invented NOTHING. What has been discovered in art techniques in the last 15000 years. | - | Compl |
| Genetic determinism | Pinker | Stephen | quoted by Richard Dawkins | 1995 | [I, personally] have no desire to have children, and if my selfish genes don't like it, they can go and jump in the lake. | psychologist & linguist | In/Compl |
| a sparrow fall | Pope | Alexander | An Essay on Man | ~1800 | Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. | IF (big IF) that date is ccurate, that's a reference to Democritus's Classical atoms, not Dalton's chemical atoms of about 1802. | In/Compl |
| peace definition | Pournelle | Jerry | in interview with Geoffrey Landis | 1997 | Peace is a condition we deduce from the fact that there have been intervals between wars. | Despite him being a very militaristic guy. | In/Compl |
| haste | Pournelle & Stirling | - | The Asteroid Queen | 1990 | Wisdom of Thrintun, "Haste is not speed" | - | In/Compl |
| War fought with brains | Prachett | Terry | The Fifth Elephant, p59 | 1999 | [Vetinari, the Patrician]"Tell me, Leonard [of Quirm, genius]," he said. "Has it ever occurred to you that one day wars will be fought with brains?" Leonard picked up his coffee cup. "Oh dear. Wouldn't that be rather messy?" he said. Vetinari sighed again. "Not perhaps as messy as the other sort." | in the run-up to the War of Koom Valley (trolls vs Dwarves, Reprise? | In/Compl |
| Look in the mirror | Pratchett | Pterry | The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents | 2001 | You pretend that rats can think and I'll pretend that humans can think. | - | In/Compl |
| Speciesist | Pratchett | Pterry | The Amazing Maurice and his educated rodents | 2001 | I don't know about intelligent species. We're dealing with humans here. | - | Compl |
| Talking ... Listening | Pratchett | Pterry | The Amazing Maurice and his educated rodents | 2001 | You're all talking? [Affirmative] So ... who's doing the listening? | - | Compl |
| and afterwards | Pratchett | Pterry | The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents | 2001 | Would killing you have made anything BETTER for us? | - | Compl |
| shouting | Pratchett | Pterry | The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents | 2001 | It's just all a lot more complicated than I ever thought it would be! Because after you've learned to shout you have to learn not to! | - | In/Compl |
| fixed ways | Pratchett | Pterry | The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents | 2001 | ... some minds you couldn't change with a hatchet. | - | In/Compl |
| Skin Rash, Continental drift | Pratchett | Terry | Equal Rites, p.188 | 1987 | It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking at the one under their feet. That is because they've got the time-span all wrong. From stone's point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backwards and forwards in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices it's disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well. | Geologist's Mantra | In/Compl |
| Discworld Fossils | Pratchett | Terry | Equal Rites, p. 198 | 1987 | Fossils were quite well known on the Discworld, great spiralled shells and badly-constructed creatures that were left over from the time when the Creator hadn't really decided what he wanted to make and was, as it were, just idly messing around with the Pleistocene. | hopeful monsters | In/Compl |
| SCIENCE | Pratchett | Terry | Wings | 1990 | SCIENCE: A way of finding things out and then making them work. Science explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it's wrong. There is a lot more science than you'd think. From "A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome" by Angalo de Haberdasheri | - | Compl |
| terror1 | Pratchett | Terry | Moving Pictures | 1990 | [1]- It looks worse than you can imagine [2]- I can imagine some pretty bad things! [1]- That's why I said worse. | - | In/Compl |
| terror2 | Pratchett | Terry | Moving Pictures | 1990 | "Working with the methodical calmness of bowel-twisting terror..." | - | In/Compl |
| 4 horsemen | Pratchett | Terry | Interesting Times | 1994 | The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse are Death, War, Famine and Pestilence; The Four Horsemen of The Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty Cough, Red Nostrils and Lack of Tissues; The Four Horsemen of Holidays are Storm, Gales, Sleet and Contra-flow. The Four Horsemen of Public Relations are Misinformation, Rumour, Gossip, and Denial. | - | In/Compl |
| Hostile ground | Pratchett | Terry | Interesting Times | 1994 | "Nothing to worry about, the ground's not hostile." Rincewind didn't believe him. He'd had the ground hit him very hard many times. | - | In/Compl |
| causes worth dieing for | Pratchett | Terry | Interesting Times | 1994 | "But there are causes worth dieing for", said Butterfly. [Rincewind]"No there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!" [Butterfly]"Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?" [Rincewind]"Continuously." | - | In/Compl |
| Further Education | Pratchett | Terry | Hogsfather p142 | 1996 | [DEATH is filling in for the Hogsfather] -The Hogsfather reached into his sack and produced . a sword. It was four feet long and glittered along the blade. -The mother took a deep breath. -'You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!' -IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BESAFE.-'She's a child!' shouted the manager. -IT'S EDUCATIONAL. -'What if she cuts herself?' -THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON. | - | In/Compl |
| Little lies | Pratchett | Terry | Hogfather, p.422, | 1996 | Death to a.n.other -YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. - So we can believe the big ones? - YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. | - | Compl |
| Education | Pratchett | Terry | Hogsfather, p 40 | 1996 | Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on. | my notes | In/Compl |
| Oh Shit | Pratchett | Terry | The Fifth Elephant, p46 | 1999 | The midden has hit the windmill, Igor. | - | Compl |
| morals & religion | Pratchett | Terry | The Fifth Elephant, p133 | 1999 | Ordinary golems would not harm a human being because they had magic words inside their head that ordered them not to. Dorfl had no magic words but he didn't harm people because he'd decided that it wasn't moral. | for a single paragraph to distinguish between religion and morality, this is pretty good. | Compl |
| Mythology | Pratchett | Terry | reported at dinner of the Folklore Society | 1999 | Mythology is usually the folklore of the winning side. | - | In/Compl |
| Be afraid. Be very afraid. | Pratchett | Terry | Hogsfather | 1996 | Time. Valde time. In Latin. | "Time" was one of the nastier people of Hogsfather's assassins | In/Compl |
| Pets | Pratchett | Terry | Dibbler in Small Gods (or Interesting times?) | 1987 | Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course. | (Year of the Notional Serpent), Cut-My-Own-Throat Dhblah a.k.a. Disembowel-Myself-Honorably Dibhala-san (-san?!) | In/Compl |
| experience | Pratchett | Terry | Sergeant Stronginthearm (Dwarf of the Watch), (Cent. Fruitbat) | 1999 | My bum has been a bum for a very long time, but I don't have to listen to anything it says. | - | In/Compl |
| agendas | Pushkin | Aleksander | - | 1820 ? | Everything is on the agenda. | of the use of emotional experiences by artists. | In/Compl |
| Flying pigs | rcallon@baynetworks.com | Given name | The 12 Fundamental Truths of Networking | 1996 | (3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necesarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it coulld be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead. | self-explanatory | Compl |
| Principles | Richardson | Grady | sig on the Niven mailing list | 1966, reused ~2000 | It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. | Very unlikely to be original- I tihnk I've seen it elsewhere. Googling, I get it as the title of an artwork by "James Gill" in 1966, with the sub-title "Alfred Adler, 1870-1937." According to the Smithsonian, "From the series Great Ideas of Western Man., 1966, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.5 x 76.2 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Container Corporation of America, 1984.124.105" | Compl |
| vegetarian practices | Robinson | Kim Stanley | Icehenge, section 3 | 1984 | He adhered to the dietary laws of his home, the asteroid Icarus, which decreed that nothing eaten should be the result of the death of any living system. | Interesting take on things. Not necessarily vegan though (dairy easily, eggs quite possibly, even easier unfertilised eggs). | Compl |
| Exuberation | Robinson | Kim Stanley | Icehenge, section 3 | 1984 | "I'm on a planet! The first planet I ever stood on, and it's Pluto!" said the character doing exactly that! | - | In/Compl |
| Sex | Rotten (aka. Lydon) | Johnny | reference | ca 1979 | "two minues of squelching" | my notes | Compl |
| betting | Runyon | Damon | quoted in Scientific American | 1999 | The battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift. but that's the way to bet. | Suitably cynical. | In/Compl |
| Tourmaline's chemistry | Ruskin | John | in 'The elements of Dust: Ten Lectures for Little Housewives' | 1891 | more like a Mediaeval Doctor's prescription than the making of a respectable mineral. | Hadn't seen too many micas then, had he. Deerite, Howieite and Zussmanite were well in the future. | Compl |
| The Life That I Have | Sachs | Oliver | The Code Poem, apparently written for an SOE agent going into France | 1940-odd | the life That I Have Is the Love that I Have | Even I can remember two lines. | In/Compl |
| The Sagan Criterion | Sagan | Carl | passim | ca. 1980 | Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. | Corollary: Extraordinary results require extraordinary scrutiny. | Compl |
| Absence | Sagan | Carl | passim | 1975 ? | Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. | Deep, and deeply misunderstood. | In/Compl |
| the past | Santayana | George | Final panel in Dachau KZ museum | 1905 | Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. | It has been quoted many times since. | In/Compl |
| Wake up | Scott | Ridley | Roy Batty, mutinying replicant in 'Blade Runner' | 1982 | Wake up- time to die! | Based, very loosely, on a PHilip K. Dick short story, then novellised. But the full quote ("tears in the rain", here) is much more interesting. | Compl |
| Hamlet's Soliloqy | Shakespeare | William | Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, l.56 | 1601 | To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of disprized love, the laws delay, The insolence of office, and the spurnss That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But dread that something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all; Znd thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. | my notes | In/Compl |
| Maggots | Shakespeare | William | Hamlet, act 4, scene 3 | 1599- 1601 | KING Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius? HAMLET At supper. KING At supper where? HAMLET Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. That’s the end. KING Alas, alas! | See also, Ilkley Moor, bar t'at. | Compl |
| Blastéd heath | Shakespeare | William | King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2 | 1605/6 | Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout. Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought- executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o'the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man![...] Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, called you children, You owe me no subscription: then let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man. | Suitable for stormy hillwalking. | Compl |
| an ill wind | Shakespeare | William | Henry VI PArt 1, 2, 3, various scenes. | 1591- 1595 | [an] Ill blows the wind that profits nobody. | At least three occurrences, two in H6parts 1-3 | In/Compl |
| sound and Fury | Shakespeare | William | Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5 | 1606 | She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. | Several well known phrases in that speech, by Macbeth, on hearing of Lady Macbeth's death. | In/Compl |
| words and wind | Shakespeare | William | The Comedy of Errors | 1594 | A man may break a word with you, Sir; and words are but wind; And break it in your face, so he break it not behind. | A comedy of mistaken identities. | In/Compl |
| personal character, DOTA | Shaw | George Bernard | Pygmalion | 1913 | PICKERING: Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you a man of good character where women are concerned? HIGGINS [moodily]: Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned? | Actually, Higgins is not lusting after Liza, just after her vocal naïvete. | In/Compl |
| Mr Doolittle, the undeserving poor | Shaw | George Bernard | Pygmalion | 1913 | I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him and I drink a lot more. | Doolittle has a long soliliquoy on the deserving (versus undeserving) poor. | Compl |
| Criminals | Simpson | Bart & Lisa | TV series | 1999 | Bart : "Inside every hardened criminal beats the heart of a ten year-old boy." Lisa : "And vice versa." | - | Compl |
| an invisible hand | Smith | Adam | The Wealth of Nations | 1776 | [of an actor in the world of laissez-faire economics] He generally indeed neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it . . . He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. | - | In/Compl |
| evolution | Spiegelman | Art ? | - | - | The nucleic acids invented human beings in order to be able to reproduce themselves on the Moon | Dawkins would be all "Extended Phenotype" over this. | In/Compl |
| Neils steensen | Steno | Nicolaus | Prodomus | 1669 | [translated from Latin] in Nature there is no reduction of anything to nothing. | Reprinted with commentary by John Garrett Winter, U. Mich. Humanistic Series, v.XI, part II, New York & London, Macmillan | In/Compl |
| Those about to die | Suetonius | - | Lives of the Caesars, Claudius | ca 100AD | Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant! Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you. | [The Rincewind version is Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, I'm going to die!] | Compl |
| ad infinitum | Swift | Jonathan (Dean) | On Poetry | 1733 | So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet in his kind, Is bit by him that comes behind. | - | Compl |
| Banal evil | Tax Accountant | Steve | Alt.Bin.Pratchett | 2002-07-24 | In terms of villany, there is an evil inherent in banality (I'm a tax accountant, so I should know!) | in discussion of the Auditors in ToT | Compl |
| Networking giblets | Tea & Watt | Kevin & Stuart | Virtual Access / Chatter | 1999-09-23 22:20:11 | KT : It [Time & Chaos] is also, apparently, networkable, but that's an arcane world to me, full of black arts, interpreting chicken giblets etc. SW : got a degree in the chicken gibs dept, robots & computers get thru a hell of a lot of chickens. | We know that feeling. | Compl |
| In Memoriam A.H.H. | Tennyson | Alfred (Lord) | some book of peotry | 1850 | Man, Who trusted God was love indeed, And love Creation's final law - Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With Ravine, shrieked against his creed. | Frequently mis-thought to be part of "evolutionary" writing, it's a poem that was published most of a decade before Darwin's Origin | Compl |
| fire | Pratchett | Terry | 1991-ish | date | Give a man some fire and he's warm for the evening. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | no notes | In/Compl |
| dog Latin | Pratchett | Terry | in voce Gaspode | 1990-ish | Semper in faecibus sumus, sole profundum variat. | We're always in the shit, only the depth varies. | In/Compl |
| Restraint | Theucidedes | - | idem | -500 | Of all the displays of power, restraint is that which impresses men the most. | no notes | Compl |
| Marry in haste | Thomas | Elizabeth | A New Litany | 1722 | From marrying in haste, and repenting at leaisure; not liking the person, yet liking his treasure: Libera nos. | no notes | Compl |
| Bombs & Jesus | Thompson | Hunter S | Showdown in the Pig Palace, in Generation of Swine | 1970 ? | A Democratic victory would not change the world, but it would at least slow down the berserk white-trash momentum of the bombs-and-jesus crowd. Those people have had their way long enough. Not even the Book of Revelation threatens a plague of vengeful yahoos. | 46 years before the Tangerine Shitgibbon | In/Compl |
| Un-wisdom | Tiresias | - | amongst other, Sophocles | 400 BCE | It is but sorrow to be wise when wisdom profits not ... | A blind prophet, apparently | In/Compl |
| Research | Twain | Mark | attributed | - | The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it. | my notes | In/Compl |
| randomised | Twain | Mark | - | - | There are too many stars in some places and not enough in others, but that can be remedied presently, no doubt | my notes | In/Compl |
| re Lenny Bruce | Tynan | Kenneth | - | 1970 ? | Constant chafing and irritation produces the pearl. It is a disease of the oyster. | - | In/Compl |
| Democracy | Ulyanov | Vladimir Ilich (Lenin) | - | 1919 | No, Democracy is not identical with majority rule. Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another. | Now that's one which many democrats won't like. Very uncomfortable for them. | In/Compl |
| Survival of the fittest | various | - | var | var | - | Many people talk about the " survival of the fittest". They miss the point that Darwin (and realities including bacterial resistance) talked about "survival of those types MOST FITTED TO SURVIVE THE CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES". There is no absolute "fittest". | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #1 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #2 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #3 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #4 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #5 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #6 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #7 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 197 | In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #8 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #9 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #10 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1791 | The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #11 | - | - | - | 1798 | The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #12 | - | - | - | 1804 | The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;--The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; --the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #13 | - | - | - | 1865 | () Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #14 | - | - | - | 1868 | Section 1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two- thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5 The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment#15 | - | - | T- | 1870 | Slaves can vote, if they have a penis. Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #16 | - | - | - | 1913 | () Income tax The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #17 | - | - | - | 1913 | The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures. When vacancies happen in the representation of any state in the Senate, the executive authority of such state shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, that the legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct. This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #18 | - | - | THE BILL OF RIGHTS | 1919 | Prohibition Section 1 After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2 The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #19 | - | - | - | 1920 | Female Emancipation. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #20 | - | - | - | 1933 | ELection procedures. Section 1 The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3rd day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. Section 2 The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3rd day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. Section 3 If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. Section 4 The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them. Section 5 Section 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article. Section 6 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #21 | - | - | - | 1933 | Section 1 The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2 The transportation or importation into any state, territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #22 | - | - | - | 1951 | Section 1 No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. Section 2 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #23 | - | - | - | 1961 | Wash.DC gets enfranchised Section 1 The District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a state, but in no event more than the least populous state; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the states, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a state; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment. Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #24 | - | - | - | 1964 | Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #25 | - | - | - | 1967 | Section 1 In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. SectSection 2 Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. Section 3 Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. Section 4 Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| US Constitution Amendment #26 | - | - | - | 1971 | Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age. Section 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. | Some of these have not had the desired (?) effect. | In/Compl |
| defend | Voltaire | François Marie Arquet | attributed by S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire, 1907 | 1694- 1778 | I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. | often mis-quoted | In/Compl |
| atrocities | Voltaire | François Marie Arquet | - | 1750? | Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. | - | In/Compl |
| lowering the tone | Wagner | Mike | Mudman of Ninian South | 10 Feb 2000 | [response to expression of mild letchery about chanteuse]Would you crawl ten miles to eat peanuts out of her shit? | but who was the singer? | Compl |
| Calvin & Hobbes | Watterson | Bill | Calvin & Hobbes | 1987 | [Calvin to Hobbes] It says here that religion is the opiate of the masses. What do you suppose that means? [TV in corner to itself] It means Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet. | - | In/Compl |
| Pointless Universe | Weinberg | Steven | Quoted in Sci Am June 2000, p 92 | 2000 | the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless | - | In/Compl |
| Air travel safety | Weir | Andrew | New Scientist # 2198 and a book. | 07 Aug 1999 | Commonly the air industry quotes a safety record of 0.03 deaths per 100M km travelled, compared to rail at 0.1. But the distances aircraft travel makes this misleading, and it ignores the takeoff/ landing concentration of deaths. Comparing JOURNEYS instead, per 100M journeys, trains kill 2.7 people, cars 4.5 people and planes 55. | from The Tombstone Imperative-- The truth about Air Safety, 1999, Simon & Schuster | In/Compl |
| Electron's Charge? | Wheeler | John | in conversation with Richard Feynman, recounted in Feynman's 11 Dec 1965 Nobel Lecture | originally 1940s | W : "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass. F : "Why?" W : "Because they are all the same electron!" [Suppose the world line of a particle were knotted or tangled complexly (including effects from inflation of the universe, so not limited to one light cone). Then in any one cross section through the universe on a light cone, the particle will appear in many places in the spatial time slice. Also, when the particle traverses the time plane in one sense, it will present one charge, mass, spin etc, but when travelling in the opposite sense (e.g. from past to future instead of the reverse), it will present these parameters reversed. I.E. the anti-particle. | Which raises a question for me : if this is an accurate representation, what happens when particle and anti-particle meet. Is a loop of 'particular' string formed, or a loop of the knot cut. Would the annihilation energy be the release of strain from the knot/ angle? | In/Compl |
| History | Wilde | Oscar | Intentions | 1891 | The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. | - | In/Compl |
| Democracy | Wilde | Oscar | Sebastian Melmoth | 1891 | Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of of the people by the people for the people. | - | In/Compl |
| Truth | Wilde | Oscar | The Importance of Being Earnest | 1895 | The truth is rarely pure, and never simple. | - | In/Compl |
| De Profundis | Wilde | Oscar | De Profundis | 1987? | The bond of all companionship, whether in companionship or in friendship, is conversation. | - | In/Compl |
| dying words | Wilde | Oscar | - | 1899? | Either this wallpaper has to go, or I do. | - | In/Compl |
| Fiction | Wilde | Oscar | The Importance of being Ernest | ca. 1890 | MISSPRISM: the good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. | cynic! | In/Compl |
| Wilde experience | Wilde | Oscar | Lady Windemere's Fan (Act 3) | - | Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes. | - | In/Compl |
| Hangovers | Wodehouse | P.G. | in voce Bertie Worcester | 1930? | I woke this morning with a hangover when a cat STAMPED into the room. | - | In/Compl |
| Wilde ignorance | Wilde | Oscar | The Importance of Being Earnest (Act 1) | - | Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. | In/Compl | |
| PGP | Zimmerman | Phillip K | 1994 | PGP is for people who prefer to pack their own parachutes. | In/Compl | ||
| Reducto ad Absurdium | Zeno of Elea | ca 400 BC | A flying arrow must keep traversing one half of the remaining distance to it's target in order to get there, and it will take a finite time to do so. But the distance can be halved infinitely, so it will take an infinite number of finite amounts of time to get to the target. This demonstrates by "reduction to absurdity" that motion is impossible. What Zeno was actually refuting was the assertion of Pythagoras that nature is made of many things and not of one. | Compl | |||
| Be silent | Wittgenstein | Ludwig | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus | 1922 CE | Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. | A posh way of saying, "if you don't know (or refuse to elucidate) what your'e talking about, STFU. | Compl |
| Roy Battys Soliloquy | Hauer | Rutger | Blade Runner | 1982 | I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die. | Hauer drastically re-wrote his lines form what the scriptwriter gave him - and the scriptwriter swallowed it on set. Allegedly. Since then, Hauer's version has gained screen (and tattoo) immortality. (I may have a double-entry here.) | Compl |
| Roy Batty's Eyes | Scott | Ridley | Blade Runner | 1982 | Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes | Chew is an eye designer for Tyrell Corp ; Roy is one of their replicants, back on Earth after a career as a "space marine". | Compl |
| mnemonic | Surname | Given name | reference | date | quote | It looks as if I''ve ve finished the baccklog, and can start adding new stuff. Then I need to work out how to sort it. Or convert to a database. | In/Compl |
| Penrose tilings | Karley | Aidan | personal work | 2020-22 | See this blog entry. | I'd come to some conclusions about how to "relatively" easily do it. But I can't afford materials to either do it, or make jigs. The "fat and thin" rhombus method seems most approachable. | -- |
| Tenet Square | Anon | Y. Mouse | n/a | unclear | "SATOR, AREPO, TENET Opera, Rotas" is a word puzzle sitting at the intersection of a lot of forms. It is palindromic - in two directions. It has relations to "magic squares". It has been acused of holding mystical meaning (though the Christian interpretation only dates to the 6th century). It has been known and cited throughout history, but the oldest example is from Pompeii, discovered in 1925. One translation is that "The farmer Arepo holds the wheel" - referring to the wheel on a Roman era ploughshare.
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
From Wiki : SATOR (nominative noun; from serere, 'to sow') sower, planter, founder, progenitor (usually divine); originator; literally 'seeder'. AREPO : unknown word, perhaps a proper name, either invented to complete the palindrome or of a non-Latin origin TENET : (verb; from tenere, 'to hold') he/she/it holds, keeps, comprehends, possesses, masters, preserves, sustains. OPERA : (ablative [see opera] singular noun) service, pains, labor; care, effort, attention. ROTAS : (rotās, accusative plural of rota) wheels." | Notes | InCompl |
| A.K.A | Surname | 1st Name | Publ | Date | Quote | Notes | Complete? |
