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...you can put me in the 'wary of deepening the government's role in higher education' column. So far their meddling in the marketplace...

Don't worry, eliminating market failures such as by reducing information asymmetry is the exact opposite of "meddling in the marketplace."

I forgive you, but it's sad when members of Congress wouldn't know a market failure if it slapped them upside the head. As another example, you'll have a tough time finding a Republican member of Congress who is able to define the term, "negative externality."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" --Upton Sinclair

I'm not even sure what the stock market *does*. I don't think many people do. Including the people who run it.

You can make that statement with nearly every human endeavour. Nearly everything (computer, cars, etc), rely on so many layers of abstraction that nobody really knows what is going on...

Sadly, it is the illusion of knowledge and the illusion of control that dominate most things that we as a species do (stock market included)...

The superficial reason for the stock market is to employ middlefolk who match those wanting capital with those who have capital (kind of like a grocery store matches those wanting food with those that harvest food). Of course the grocery store mostly functions to restrict the type of food available so that most folks don't have to think and just buy what is available and choose among the most shiny, and get on with their life...

You might imagine that kind of setup is rife for manipulation by the middlefolk... However, in reality nobody knows how it really works or can actually control it. Even the middlefolk.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. Voltaire

This discussion suggests this is a spurious quote, like most attempts to lend prestige to a banal remark by attaching this writer's name to it.

"The spurious quote, like most attempts to build prestige from mediocrity, requires attaching things to it."
-Voltron

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. Voltaire

This discussion suggests this is a spurious quote, like most attempts to lend prestige to a banal remark by attaching this writer's name to it.

Are you suggesting Dr. Joel Fuhrman is lying (or self-deluding) about this patient? It only takes one anecdote to prove a possibility:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/HeartDisease.aspx
"John Pawlikoski is a typical patient I see everyday. I am reporting his case here because he has been my patient for 10 years now, so I can report on his long-term results. He first came to see me at the age of 65 with a history of steadily worsening angina. His chest pains interfered with his daily life, so he was unable to perform physical work. He had a stress thallium test which suggested multi-vessel coronary artery disease. He then underwent a cardiac catherization, which revealed a 95 percent stenosis of the left anterior descending artery and had diffuse blockages throughout the left circumflex. He had normal heart function. His cholesterol was 218, with an LDL of 144. He weighed 180 pounds. He was on two medications - one for high blood pressure and nitroglycerin to relieve chest pains.
Within a few weeks of following my dietary recommendations, his chest pains ceased, and he no longer required nitroglycerin. In two months, his weight dropped to 152, a loss of 28 pounds in eight weeks. He remains exactly at 152 pounds today, 10 years later. He has been entirely well these last ten years and is extremely physically active. He takes no medication, and his blood pressure is normal. His LDL cholesterol runs about 80, and his stress test has normalized too. He has no signs or symptoms of heart disease."

Or that Esselstyn is lying (or self-deluding) about these patients?
http://www.heartattackproof.com/patientprofiles.htm

More lies, including by a comment here which might be a paid shill?
"Caldwell Esselstyn MD - Reverse Heart Disease Study"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X31QKDhQUY
"yycman1 wrote: I'm 45, and it will be one year in Nov. since I switched to a vegan diet to address my high cholesterol and blood pressure. ï After just 5 months, I was off 5 different medications...2 for high cholesterol, 2 for high blood pressure and one for prostate. My doctor was so impressed, he told me I made him want to eat better. A vegan diet really does work to reverse cholesterol and blood pressure issues. I was inspired by Bill Clinton to try this. I also lost 18 lbs. without exercising. Amazing!"

Or that Ornish is lying or self-deluded here?
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/features/can-you-reverse-heart-disease
"In his 2007 book The Spectrum, Ornish describes patients waiting to undergo a heart transplant -- those with the worst possible damage -- who enrolled in his program while on the transplant list. Some of them, he says, improved so much that they no longer needed a transplant.
"Our studies show that, with significant lifestyle changes, blood flow to the heart and its ability to pump normally improve in less than a month, and the frequency of chest pains fell by 90% in that time," Ornish says. "Within a year on our program, even severely blocked arteries in the heart became less blocked, and there was even more reversal after five years. That's compared with the natural history in other patients in our study, in which the heart just got worse and worse.""

And T. Colin Campbell is full of it, too?
http://www.tcolincampbell.org/courses-resources/article/reversing-heart-disease-with-diet/category/cardiovascular

Still, as Upton Sinclair said:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not und

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." - Alexis de Tocqueville

This is a spurious quotation (and a pretty obvious one). Please don't perpetuate those.

George Santayana once may have said "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana and that would be a terrible shame consider the loss of both life and data.

And all it took is one man, Bin Laden.

And don't forget his friend Bin Invading Iraq.

Google cannot find this quote now, but in the year 2000 Soros donated money to run against Bush Jr because when Bush was giving a speech to soldiers he said "We will bring freedom to [other countries]". All I can find now is the reelection of 2004.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Part_3:_Burning_Bright
The movie has the line "Calling all citizens" and then "Let each one stand at his front door.... Look and listen."

In "Brief History of Time" Stephen Hawking states that "Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc^2. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

I have to disagree with you a bit. The US Constitution is government 2.x. It is production code that has had some patches applied.

Government 1.0 didn't work out so well and had to be scrapped: See Articles of Confederation

A further rewrite instead of patching would be risky. There is no guarantee that a rewrite would be better, and a considerable chance it would be far worse given the feckless politicians now available to perform a rewrite.

I think the current US Constitution could be compared to Algol: Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors. -- C. A. R. Hoare

The second amendment isn't ultimately about hunting. It is about the final defense of the American people against tyranny, whether from home or abroad.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. --- Noah Webster

The Swiss have that figured out as well.

In World War II, the Swiss had defenses no other country had. Let's begin with the rifle in every home combined with the Alpine terrain. When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German soldiers, a Swiss replied: shoot twice and go home. Switzerland also had a decentralized, direct democracy which could not be surrendered to a foreign enemy by a political elite. Some governments surrendered to Hitler without resistance based on the decision of a king or dictator; this was institutionally impossible in Switzerland. If an ordinary Swiss citizen was told that the Federal President--a relatively powerless official--had surrendered the country, the citizen might not even know the president's name, and would have held any "surrender" order in contempt. -- Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook

0. This ruling will be appealed.

BTW, your sig is taken from a variation of a narcotics anonymous quote.

Kind of a funny quote for them. When I do drugs I expect the same result as before, not a different one.

0. This ruling will be appealed.

BTW, your sig is taken from a variation of a narcotics anonymous quote.

If you read the complete original quote it is clear that his meaning was more nuanced than it appears in those selected lines.

You left out some of that quote, including the clarifying sentence in the middle of the two you quoted, and a meaningful bit at the end:

We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today

And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

JFK wasn't stating there should be no secrets, but that keeping them should be well justified. I don't think his administration published American war plans, nuclear force readiness reports, or the encryption keys for military and diplomatic communications, for example.

Too many people here are distorting history and mangling quotes to try to justify the extremist position that government should have no secrets. That is dangerous nonsense. Good democratic government should be transparent, but that doesn't mean that every citizen gets to see everything. Some things should be limited to the legislature or parliament, and even then perhaps to only specific designated members.

Being politely voted out of the White House is not the same as being thrown out by the military. Gives no incentive for the next guy to hold onto his words.

As Seneca the Younger said: "Ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor" (Might is right, fear oppresses laws). This applies mostly to those who consider themselves rulers.
Or, according to Lucius Accius: "Oderint, dum metuant" (Let them hate, as long as they fear). This applies mostly to those who are ruled.
Ancient wisdoms which still apply, whether you're referring to Egypt or the USA, or just about anywhere.

Being politely voted out of the White House is not the same as being thrown out by the military. Gives no incentive for the next guy to hold onto his words.

As Seneca the Younger said: "Ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor" (Might is right, fear oppresses laws). This applies mostly to those who consider themselves rulers.
Or, according to Lucius Accius: "Oderint, dum metuant" (Let them hate, as long as they fear). This applies mostly to those who are ruled.
Ancient wisdoms which still apply, whether you're referring to Egypt or the USA, or just about anywhere.

It's been, what, 50 years now and Kissinger has never as much been indicted for war crimes?

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." - Tom Lehrer.

Political satire has been beaten, bloodied, bludgeoned into unconsciousness, and dumped unceremoniously in an unmarked grave by the antics of almost every US administration since Nixon. The amount of ammunition provided by them for satirists is stupendous; the failure of anyone notable to use it satirically is shameful.

"easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts."

"PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?"

In a lot of ways, 3d printers already are as easy to use...

tl;dr

The exception that proves the rule http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Best summaried by Mr Tom Lehrer...

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down, that's not my department," says Wernher von Braun

Or of course the antectodal fictional situations exist too..

Our studies indicate the weapon is totally useless in warfare.
It's not intended for use in your kind of warfare. It's the perfect peacetime weapon. That's why it's secret.
So it's both immoral *and* unethical?
Yes.

....
Let the engineers figure out a use for it. That's not our concern.
Maybe somebody already has a use for it, one for which it's perfectly designed.

Knowledge is power. The problem isn't spying, it's who has access to the information. I say: Spy on everyone, and let everyone have access to the information. It might even help with unjust censorship laws -- Like in the UK where they want to sensor porn by default... If we can look in the public spy data and show that everyone is looking at porn, but don't openly admit it, then we shouldn't enact such retarding laws.

Capturing such data could be huge tools for transparency but since the public isn't given access to the data, it's only useful for oppression. Right now the Free Syrian Army (which sprang forth from protests for democracy) is fighting against Syrian Soldiers who believe the rebels want a genocide because their dictator controls their information. If the two sides' soldiers were allowed to share information then it would be much harder for the dictator to convince soldiers to fight, and they could have peace talks and perhaps come to a compromise which would give the people more actual control of the government... Bashar al-Assad controls the information, and only through it can he wield and preserve his power.

Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation, and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than they thought.
-- Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We must Dissent"

Information, the first principle of warfare, must form the foundation of all your efforts. Know, of course, thine enemy. But in knowing him do not forget above all to know thyself. The commander who embraces this totality of battle shall win even with inferior force.
-- Spartan Battle Manual

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

Everything I need to know I learned from Alpha Centauri

Dangerous subversive thinking these days it seems:

Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither. Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

Widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin on the internet, sometimes without the second sentence, it is not found in any of his known writings, and the word "lunch" is not known to have appeared anywhere in english literature until the 1820s, decades after his death.

Any operating system without a browser is going to be fucking out of business. Should we improve our product, or go out of business? -- Bill Gates

Of course, what you don't often hear is the response to that question, where they decided through intensive bureaucratic meetings to compromise between the two positions and make a browser, but make it such a bad browser that it would slowly drive them out of business. The rest is history.

"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre",

for which one possible translation is:

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu

German. But you can switch to Japanese if you prefer.

Schroedinger was a mystic. Read some of his quotations about Nirvana and Hinduism at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger

Here's a sample:

The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject" for the observing mind. ... For the subject, if anything, is the thing that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy."

Another sample:

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.

Another:

Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents -- their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.

Andrew Cleland and Aaron O'Connell have recently done experiments putting a macroscopic object in a superpositional state.

O'Connell's PhD dissertation: http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/theses/OConnell2010.pdf

In O'Connell's words, from http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/v464/n7287/nature-2010-03-18.html:

the swing both swings back and forth and stays perfectly still at the same time.

In conclusion: 1) Schroedinger had mystical beliefs, which is relevant when you bring up his ulterior motives for the "cat" analogy; 2) modern experiments demonstrate superposition on a macroscopic scale.

Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

-- U.N. Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

(My nominee for best quote by any fictional character)

> Never talk when you can nod and never nod when you can wink and never write an
> e-mail, because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#On_sex

"On sex
[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.
For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent's will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants).
http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
Link
There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue.
Link
I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
http://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html"

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Go here for more

1. Your fallacy is assuming Privacy is mutually exclusive with Protection. It is not.

2. This issue has already been discussed to death a thousand times before:

      "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."

Which is better know as:

* Those who would trade a little bit of freedom for temporary safety deserve neither.
* They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
* Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
  -- http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

As much as I may agree with the sentiment, you probably shouldn't use that quote to back it up - it is not a genuine Jefferson quote.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

It seems the spin is "there was an error, therefore there is never a problem with debt" - this really seems to be missing the original point.

That really seems to be a straw man, as no one has said "there is never a problem with debt", except maybe Dick Cheney.

then why not reduce all taxes to 0%, and fund government exclusively through deficit spending?

Why not instead deal with the fact that austerity is the wrong cure for the disease, and the data points used as an excuse have been shown to be false. Every country that has tried it has seen unemployment skyrocket while the standard of living plummets.

You should read more Krugman, who makes the simple point that while long term debt can be a problem, causing a Great Depression with deficit terrorism is a far larger problem.

"I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests." -- PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf

"I was really, really bad at writing parsers. I still am really bad at writing parsers." -- PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf

"For all the folks getting excited about my quotes. Here is another - Yes, I am a terrible coder, but I am probably still better than you :)" -- PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf

Any programmer reading the stuff this guys says should become properly terrified of PHP. If they aren't, I don't want to use any software they work on.

"there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it" and replaced it with "a platform for a smaller government."

Absolutely it's inflammatory. But there is an element of truth to what he said. When you have a nation that vote themselves more stuff at the expense of the productive members of society, that nation is on a paved path to ruin.

I have relatives that voted straight party ticket for Democrats this last election. I asked why. One of them said he really loved Romney and disliked Obama. However, he couldn't afford to lose his "benefits". Truth of the matter is that he's an indentured servant whether he admits to it or not.

Never ask from the government which can so easily take away.

Excellent point. There is a quote running around that apparently tends to be mis-attributed but is nonetheless quite insightful and worrisome.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler#Misattributed
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

I've also see a similar quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. The source isn't my concern, the politicians on either side of the aisle having the power to but votes and the long term implications for the solvency of the U.S. is.

"Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?"

So ... many ... great ... quotes!.

Shodan was one of the best computer game villains ever!

I'd expect somebody in the computer field to tinker around with machines

And herein lies the problem: CS is not "in the computer field", it is a branch of mathematics. The confusion stems from the unfortunate naming we use (in other languages it is more appropriately called something like "Computational Science" or "Informatics").
Or, in the words of Michael R. Fellows, "Computer science is not about machines, in the same way that astronomy is not about telescopes. There is an essential unity of mathematics and computer science".

A computer is a tool that a CS may use, not the subject of the field.

That said, most CS undergrads set out to become programmers, "software developers" or suchlike. They may use the knowledge from the CS program but their focus will often be the computers, not the math. Therefore, to be well-rounded professionals in their field of work, they will need knowledge and experience from several areas of study -- both abstract and concrete.

it's not like IRQs are windows 98 specific and are never used anymore.

They are pretty much specific to the PC-compatible architecture.

But that aside, such hardware-related topics are the domain of "Computer Engineering" field, a branch of EE.
I am pretty sure that Donald Knuth, arguably the most influential "Computer Scientist" alive, has no idea about IRQs.

I might not expect a biologist to be able to milk a cow, but they should at least have an idea where the milk comes from.

That is because the source of milk is general knowledge known by every child over the age of 3.

Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love" notwithstanding, math and science are getting more and more specialized. A molecular biologist, for example, doesn't even need to know what a cow is.

But even if your analogy was valid, I bet that your "CS guy" knew what an interrupt is, but was not familiar with the specific implementation of the cascaded 8259A PICs used in the PC/AT architecture at the time.

I always liked this

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/System_Shock#William_Bedford_Diego

"It does not stop at a mere single mutation. The form I have been promised is more beautiful than even that. They tell me I will float through the air and strike at the foes of our biomass with my mind! With our mind... my cup runneth over!"

It's even better with the voice change mid way through just before the change from "my mind" to "our mind".

how about "never give a sucker an even break", later used by WC Fields?

Fields wrote the screenplay for his movie of the same name, so yes, that was him. He was a nasty drunk himself in real life, kind of an a**hole because of drink. Here's a link of W.C. Fields quotes, and below that one that he didn't say, but was attributed to him.

http://www.mindspring.com/~hsstern/maewest/fields.htm

Anyone who hates children and dogs can't be all bad. Although a very commonly attributed to Fields himself, this is derived from a statement which was actually first said about him by Leo Rosten during a "roast" at the Masquer's Club in Hollywood in 1939, as Rosten explains in his book, The Power of Positive Nonsense (1977) "The only thing I can say about W. C. Fields ... is this: Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad."

http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._C._Fields#section_2

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment." Woddy Allen

Yes, but eventually, people have to settle for what they can get, not what they want.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment."
Woddy Allen

Felicity Kendal.

Deliciously Pert.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

"It's already done... " - Fitz

I miss that series..

But we also don't have strict parking laws either for parking tanks.

I didn't realize Schroedinger was so mystical. From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger:

Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.
          - Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore ISBN 0521437679

No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors ... This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.
          - Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore

My personal favorite: "God knows I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth."

Remember, best block, no be there.

If Sam Kinison were alive today, he'd apply his philosophy on world hunger and say:

You want to help end extinction-level meteors? Stop sending up shit to blow them up. Don't send them another one, send up huge orbit-altering rockets. Send the UN a guy that says, "You know, we've been coming up with a plan to blow up meteors for about 35 years now and we were blowing stuff up, and we realized there wouldn't BE extinction-level meteors if you people would live where the METEORS AREN'T! YOU LIVE INSIDE AN ASTEROID BELT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING ASTEROID BELT!! Stop wasting rockets by launching them at each other. You too, North Korea... don't give me that look. We're going to do this together in one shot.

The most-effective solution is don't be where the meteor is going to be. This worked well for me the other week. Giant meteor fell in Siberia and I wasn't there.

The context of that quote and the character that spoke it says quite a bit about the ethics of our courts.

"Most people don't realize that this big deficit spending problem started when the $787B "one time stimulus" became part of the baseline budget and was re-spent"

1) that "one time stimulus" spending was initiated by Bush, and continued by Obama's administration. BOTH parties at the time considered it the right thing to do to avoid an even worse economic situation from developing. We'll never know just how bad it might have gotten if no stimulus had been implemented, but the consensus is: a lot worse;
2) the "big deficit spending" problem began in the 2000s, during the implementation of something now known as the "Bush era tax cuts", which still exist for most people. It reversed the budget balance or surpluses that had existed in prior years (notice the sharp turn in the graph at about 2001), and the budget has consistently been on the negative side ever since. This was also the time when, according to the VP of the day, "deficits don't matter". Coincidentally, all three branches of the federal government were controlled by one party at the time and approved the changes.
3) We can argue endlessly about which change (stimulus or tax cuts without service cuts) was worse, but it's a shared problem that did NOT begin in merely 2008, and it's rather telling that your "zero point" for comparison is 2001.

Americans need to wake up and do one or two things: realize they need to spend less and make due with fewer services, realize they need to spend more for the services they insist on having. Or some sensible combination.