Last modified 12 Feb 2009 |
Wit and Widsom
Richard Feynman •
People who wish to analyze nature without using mathematics must settle for a reduced understanding.
Psalm 111:2 •
The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.
[Inscription over the entrance to the Cavendish Laboratory of Physics, Cambridge]
Bertrand Russell •
No opinion should be held with fervour. No one holds with fervour that seven
times eight is fifty-six, because it can be known that this is the case.
Fervour is only necessary in commending an opinion which is doubtful or
demonstrably false.
Albert Einstein •
[Academic] reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from
its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain
too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son •
Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded
with any other. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are
with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not
merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. If you
are asked what o'clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and
unasked, like the watchman.
David Khmelnitskii •
Who are these heroes!?
Ernest Rutherford •
All science is either physics or stamp collecting
Jan Tschichold, The Form of the Book •
Today, good taste is often erroneously rejected as old-fashioned because the
ordinary man, seeking approval of his so-called personality, prefers to follow
the dictates of his own peculiar style rather than submit to any objective
criterion of taste.
Joseph Long •
When I was your age we didn't have integration. We had to add up differential units by hand.
• Of course Einstein's wrong! I played craps with God just yesterday.
Applied Optics •
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed.
Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, 'Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light
of seven days.' Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we
from the Sun, and in addition 49 times as much as the Earth from the Sun,
50 times in all. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)4 = 50,
where E is the absolute temperature of the earth, gives H as 525 C.
The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed.... [However] Revelation 21:8
says 'But the fearful, and unbelieving...shall have their part in the lake
which burneth with fire and brimstone.' A lake of molten brimstone must be
at or below [its] boiling [temperature], 444.6 C. We have, then, that Heaven,
at 525 C, is hotter than Hell at, 445 C.
UNIX Jokes, Phrack, vol.3, no.36
- % rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent
- % ar m God
ar: God does not exist
- % "How would you rate Quayle's incompetence?
Unmatched ".
- % ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.
- % If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.
- % make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.
- % sleep with me
bad character
- % got a light?
No match.
- % man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.
- % ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.
- % \(-
(-: Command not found.
- $ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!
- $ drink <bottle; opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found
- $ mkdir matter; cat >matter
matter: cannot create
UNIX Joke, Oliver Serang
- hostname$ ./disbelief
^Z disbelief suspended
Shortest physics joke •
'What's new?' 'E/h.'