I'll be moving to Redwood City, CA in a week, so forgive me if I don't get a regular post out every day between now and then. As a substitute offering, some items from my (offline) quotesfile:

"It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that delivers better performance but requires more thought."
   -- E. T. Jaynes

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards!"
      -- Steve Jobs

"Saving a drowning child is no more a moral duty than understanding a syllogism is a logical one."
      -- Sam Harris, The End of Faith

"Don't ask why (again, long story), but the number 5,479,863,282.86 has been stuck in my head for as long as I can remember."
      -- Ultimatum479

"I've met these people, the ones from the glossy magazines. I've walked among them. I have seen, firsthand, their callow, empty lives. I have watched them from the shadows when they thought themselves alone. And I can tell you this: I'm afraid there is not one of them who would swap lives with you at gunpoint."
      -- Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

"Before you can get to the end of this paragraph, another person will probably die because of what someone else believes about God."
      -- Sam Harris, The End of Faith

"Someone walking down the street with absolutely no scars or calluses would look pretty odd. I suspect having a conversation with someone who'd never taken any emotional or mental damage would be even odder. The line between "experience" and "damage" is pretty thin."
      -- Aliza, from the Open-Source Wish Project

"Fear and lies fester in darkness. The truth may wound, but it cuts clean."
      -- Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Avatar

"I never make a prediction that can be proved wrong within 24 hours."
      -- Louis Rukeyser

"You have been asking what you could do in the

...

brian3

brian3

brian3

brian3

brian3

brian3