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The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.
There. Is. No. Long-Term. Data. Storage. Solution. There is only a series of short-term solutions punctuated by data migration from one medium to the next.
Being an atheist doesn’t mean that life isn’t important. It means that we get to create our own sense of importance. The human scale is where we live. It’s what we have. And if we decide that that’s the most important scale for us, there’s nobody out there to tell us otherwise.
Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.
A reg exp is a thing of beauty but it is not a joy forever. Instead, it makes my head hurt.
There are no secrets in life, just hidden truths that lie beneath the surface.
TV: Dexter
I find people around me are all making some kind of connection, like friendship or romance but human bonds always lead to messy complications; commitment, sharing, driving people to the airport. Besides if I let someone get that close, they’d see who I really am and I can’t let that happen. So, time to put on my mask.
TV: Dexter
Everyone hides who they are at least some of the time. Sometimes you bury that part of yourself so deeply that you have to be reminded that it’s there at all, and sometimes you just want to forget who you are altogether.
TV: Dexter
Tonight’s the night. And it’s going to happen again, and again. It has to happen. Nice night.
TV: Dexter
People fake a lot of human interactions, but I feel like I fake them all, and I fake them very well, that’s my burden, I guess.
TV: Dexter
Python is executable pseudocode. Perl is executable line noise.
Book: “Thinking in Python” by Bruce Eckel
At heart, this really is a math problem. Last time these talk shows were off the air for any length of time was after September 11th. And at that time, most shows were off for about a week. So if my math is correct, the Writer’s Strike is now nine times worse than September 11th.
TV: The Daily Show: 7 Jan 2008
If you want to tell people the truth, make ‘em laugh; otherwise, they’ll kill you.
I burned up many chips and circuits. I discovered how electronic components work: They are full of smoke. If the smoke gets out, they don’t work anymore.
When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Ideas rot if you don’t do something with them. I used to try to hoard them, but they rotted. Now I just blog them or tell people about them. Sometimes they still rot, but sometimes someone finds them useful in one way or another.
If it wasn’t for the Enlightenment, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. You’d be standing in a smock throwing turnips at a witch.
If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.
Debating a religionist is like playing tennis with someone who lowers the net for their shots and raises it for yours.
Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr’s death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise…without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
It’s possible to be a conservative without appearing to be an idiot.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Don’t let other people belittle your ambitions. Only small people do that. Truly great people make you feel that you, too, can also become great.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
The difference between science and fuzzier subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, not an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.
If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They’ll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve their dignity and their equality as a human being, they must not bow their neck to any dictatorial government.
Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn, persistent illusion.
I claim the right to contradict myself. I don’t want to deprive myself of the right to talk nonsense and I ask humbly to be allowed to be wrong sometimes.
Organized religion is dangerous and a mass psychosis.
All that was required of them (i.e. the brain-washed masses) was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
Book: 1984
Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists. Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn’t add up. Either they’re stupid, or they’re lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they’ve got a motive! Everybody knows that an atheist can’t get elected.
“You know, there’s nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Yeah, that’s called recursion and that would lead to infinite fear, so thank you.
When you’re writing a novel you’re working at the most extreme limit of your capabilities. What you’re doing is beyond logic, so far out at the limits of what you can do that there’s no hope of your having a short and manageable simulation of the process by which to figure out what you’re doing, it’s computationally irreducible. When you get into this zone, out on the very surface of your brain, you become sensitive to the tiniest chaotic emanations of the world outside. At times it feels as if the world, feeling your sensitivity, gladly dances back. Dosie-do. Keep your eyes peeled.
Article: A Writer’s Toolkit
Geeks get it done. Nerds don’t.
TV: The Colbert Réport: 17 Jan 2007
The only long-term effect of copy protection is to ensure that those who defeat it are immortalized.
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
Doesn’t information itself have a liberal bias?
TV: The Colbert Réport: 27 Nov 2006
You’re putting words in my mouth just like you put artificial facts in your head.
TV: Late Night with David Letterman - 27 Oct 2006
You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.
TV: Doctor Who - from the 4th doctor in the episode “The Face of Evil”
Natural selection is about as non-random a force as you could possibly imagine.
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