John Cowan cowan@ccil.org I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith. --Galadriel, LOTR:FOTR John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. --The Hobbit John Cowan cowan@ccil.org At times of peril or dubitation, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Perform swift circular ambulation, With loud and high-pitched ululation. John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan One time I called in to the central system and started working on a big thick 'sed' and 'awk' heavy duty data bashing script. One of the geologists came by, looked over my shoulder and said 'Oh, that happens to me too. Try hanging up and phoning in again.' --Beverly Erlebacher John Cowan Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz. --Calvin, giving Newton's First Law "in his own words" There is / One art John Cowan No more / No less http://www.ccil.org/~cowan To do / All things With art- / Lessness --Piet Hein One art / There is John Cowan No less / No more http://www.ccil.org/~cowan All things / To do With sparks / Galore --Douglas Hofstadter John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Charles li reis, nostre emperesdre magnes, Set anz totz pleinz ad ested in Espagnes. John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan .e'osai ko sarji la lojban. Please support Lojban! http://www.lojban.org Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! John Cowan Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. --Coleridge (tr. Politzer) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org "You need a change: try Canada" "You need a change: try China" --fortune cookies opened by a couple that I know John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan You tollerday donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty anglease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! `Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Please leave your values Check your assumptions. In fact, at the front desk. check your assumptions at the door. --sign in Paris hotel --Cordelia Vorkosigan Not to perambulate John Cowan the corridors http://www.ccil.org/~cowan during the hours of repose in the boots of ascension. --Sign in Austrian ski-resort hotel John Cowan cowan@ccil.org "Mr. Lane, if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have to do will be to send me a telegram asking and it will be done." "Mr. Hearst, if you ever get a telegram from me asking you to do anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery." John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan "Any legal document draws most of its meaning from context. A telegram that says 'SELL HUNDRED THOUSAND SHARES IBM SHORT' (only 190 bits in 5-bit Baudot code plus appropriate headers) is as good a legal document as any, even sans digital signature." --me Knowledge studies others / Wisdom is self-known; John Cowan Muscle masters brothers / Self-mastery is bone; cowan@ccil.org Content need never borrow / Ambition wanders blind; http://ccil.org/~cowan Vitality cleaves to the marrow / Leaving death behind. --Tao 33 (Bynner) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Consider the matter of Analytic Philosophy. Dennett and Bennett are well-known. Dennett rarely or never cites Bennett, so Bennett rarely or never cites Dennett. There is also one Dummett. By their works shall ye know them. However, just as no trinities have fourth persons (Zeppo Marx notwithstanding), Bummett is hardly known by his works. Indeed, Bummett does not exist. It is part of the function of this and other e-mail messages, therefore, to do what they can to create him. Deshil Holles eamus. Deshil Holles eamus. Deshil Holles eamus. Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening, and wombfruit. (3x) Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! --Joyce, Ulysses, "Oxen of the Sun" cowan@ccil.org Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor tidings sent from far John Cowan coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that http://ccil.org/~cowan O'Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word cowan@ccil.org to hear that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for friend so young, James Joyce, Ulysses algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. "Oxen of the Sun" John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today. --Specht v. Netscape A: "Spiro conjectures Ex-Lax." John Cowan Q: "What does Pat Nixon frost her cakes with?" cowan@ccil.org --"Jeopardy" for generative semanticists http://www.ccil.org/~cowan John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Assent may be registered by a signature, a handshake, or a click of a computer mouse transmitted across the invisible ether of the Internet. Formality is not a requisite; any sign, symbol or action, or even willful inaction, as long as it is unequivocally referable to the promise, may create a contract. --Specht v. Netscape All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part John Cowan that cooks with lard and goose fat, the part http://ccil.org/~cowan that cooks with olive oil, and the part that cowan@ccil.org cooks with butter. --David Chessler John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. --Isaac Newton John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan If he has seen farther than others, it is because he is standing on a stack of dwarves. --Mike Champion, describing Tim Berners-Lee (adapted) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves. --Murray Gell-Mann John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand. --Gerald Holton John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. --Hal Abelson John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. --Brian K. Reid John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Thor Heyerdahl recounts his attempt to prove Rudyard Kipling's theory that the mongoose first came to India on a raft from Polynesia. --blurb for Rikki-Kon-Tiki-Tavi John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Humpty Dump Dublin squeaks through his norse Humpty Dump Dublin hath a horrible vorse But for all his kinks English / And his irismanx brogues Humpty Dump Dublin's grandada of all rogues. --Cousin James Only do what only you can do. John Cowan --Edsger W. Dijkstra's advice to a student in search of a thesis John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague. --Edsger Dijkstra De plichten van een docent zijn divers, John Cowan die van het gehoor ook. cowan@ccil.org --Edsger Dijkstra http://www.ccil.org/~cowan A mosquito cried out in his pain, John Cowan "A chemist has poisoned my brain!" http://www.ccil.org/~cowan The cause of his sorrow cowan@ccil.org Was para-dichloro- Diphenyltrichloroethane. (aka DDT) No, John. I want formats that are actually John Cowan useful, rather than over-featured megaliths that http://www.ccil.org/~cowan address all questions by piling on ridiculous cowan@ccil.org internal links in forms which are hideously over-complex. --Simon St. Laurent on xml-dev What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the John Cowan sound of a [Ww]all that people have stopped cowan@ccil.org banging their head against? --Larry http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Business before pleasure, if not too bloomering long before. --Nicholas van Rijn John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan He made the Legislature meet at one-horse John Cowan tank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that cowan@ccil.org hardly nobody could get there and most of http://www.ccil.org/~cowan the leaders would stay home and let him go --H.L. Mencken's to work and do things as he pleased. Declaration of Independence Some people open all the Windows; John Cowan wise wives welcome the spring cowan@ccil.org by moving the Unix. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --ad for Unix Book Units (U.K.) (see http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/unix3image.gif) John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Be yourself. Especially do not feign a working knowledge of RDF where no such knowledge exists. Neither be cynical about RELAX NG; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment in the world of markup, James Clark is as perennial as the grass. --DeXiderata, Sean McGrath You are a child of the universe no less John Cowan than the trees and all other acyclic http://www.ccil.org/~cowan graphs; you have a right to be here. cowan@ccil.org --DeXiderata by Sean McGrath John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan "The exception proves the rule." Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample proves my theory." Latin students think "'Probat' means 'tests': the exception puts the rule to the proof." But legal historians know it means "Evidence for an exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases not excepted from." Evolutionary psychology is the theory John Cowan that men are nothing but horn-dogs, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan and that women only want them for their money. cowan@ccil.org --Susan McCarthy (adapted) We call nothing profound cowan@ccil.org that is not wittily expressed. John Cowan --Northrop Frye (improved) First known example of political correctness: John Cowan After Nurhachi had united all the other http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Jurchen tribes under the leadership of the cowan@ccil.org Manchus, his successor Abahai (1592-1643) issued an order that the name Jurchen should --S. Robert Ramsey, be banned, and from then on, they were all The Languages of China to be called Manchus. If you have ever wondered if you are in hell, John Cowan it has been said, then you are on a well-traveled http://www.ccil.org/~cowan road of spiritual inquiry. If you are absolutely cowan@ccil.org sure you are in hell, however, then you must be on the Cross Bronx Expressway. --Alan Feuer, NYTimes, 2002-09-20 John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos --Lithuanian proverb Deus dedit dentes; deus dabit panem --Latin version thereof Deity donated dentition; deity'll donate doughnuts --English version by Muke Tever God gave gums; God'll give granary --Version by Mat McVeagh Said Agatha Christie / To E. Philips Oppenheim John Cowan "Who is this Hemingway? / Who is this Proust? cowan@ccil.org Who is this Vladimir / Whatchamacallum, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan This neopostrealist / Rabble?" she groused. --George Starbuck, Pith and Vinegar My confusion is rapidly waxing John Cowan For XML Schema's too taxing: cowan@ccil.org I'd use DTDs http://www.ccil.org/~cowan If they had local trees -- I think I best switch to RELAX NG. My corporate data's a mess! John Cowan It's all semi-structured, no less. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan But I'll be carefree cowan@ccil.org Using XSLT On an XML DBMS. Henry S. Thompson said, / "Syntactic, structural, John Cowan Value constraints we / Express on the fly." cowan@ccil.org Simon St. Laurent: "Your / Incomprehensible http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Abracadabralike / schemas must die!" Híggledy-pìggledy / XML programmers John Cowan Try to escape those / I-eighteen-N woes; http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Incontrovertibly / What we need more of is cowan@ccil.org Unicode weenies and / François Yergeaus. Winter: MIT, John Cowan Keio, INRIA, cowan@ccil.org Issue lots of Drafts. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan So much more to understand! Might simplicity return? (A "tanka", or extended haiku) XQuery Blueberry DOM John Cowan Entity parser dot-com cowan@ccil.org Abstract schemata http://www.ccil.org/~cowan XPointer errata Infoset Unicode BOM --Richard Tobin With techies, I've generally found John Cowan If your arguments lose the first round http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Make it rhyme, make it scan cowan@ccil.org Then you generally can Make the same stupid point seem profound! --Jonathan Robie A poetical purist named Cowan [that's me: cowan@ccil.org] Once put the rest of us dowan. [on xml-dev] "Your verse would be sweeter http://www.ccil.org/~cowan If it only had metre And rhymes that didn't force me to frowan." [overpacked line!] --Michael Kay Long-short-short, long-short-short / Dactyls in dimeter, John Cowan Verse form with choriambs / (Masculine rhyme): cowan@ccil.org One sentence (two stanzas) / Hexasyllabically Challenges poets who / Don't have the time. --robison who's at texas dot net Even a refrigerator can conform to the XML John Cowan Infoset, as long as it has a door sticker cowan@ccil.org saying "No information items inside". http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Eve Maler And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic tenebrous ultimate gods --the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep. (Lovecraft) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org [W]hen I wrote it I was more than a little John Cowan febrile with foodpoisoning from an antique carrot cowan@ccil.org that I foolishly ate out of an illjudged faith http://ccil.org/~cowan in the benignancy of vegetables. --And Rosta I am expressing my opinion. When my John Cowan honorable and gallant friend is called, cowan@ccil.org he will express his opinion. This is http://www.ccil.org/~cowan the process which we call Debate. --Winston Churchill They do not preach John Cowan that their God will rouse them cowan@ccil.org A little before the nuts work loose. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan They do not teach that His Pity allows them --Rudyard Kipling, to drop their job when they damn-well choose. "The Sons of Martha" John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Is it not written, "That which is written, is written"? John Cowan cowan@ccil.org "Not to know The Smiths is not to know K.X.U." --K.X.U. John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is dramatically overdescribed. Still other languages are simultaneously overdescribed and underdescribed. Welsh pertains to the third category. --Alan King Eric Raymond is the Margaret Mead John Cowan of the Open Source movement. cowan@ccil.org --Bruce Perens, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan some years ago Yes, chili in the eye is bad, but so is your John Cowan ear. However, I would suggest you wash your cowan@ccil.org hands thoroughly before going to the toilet. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --gadicath You escaped them by the will-death John Cowan and the Way of the Black Wheel. cowan@ccil.org I could not. --Great-Souled Sam http://www.ccil.org/~cowan I suggest you solicit aid of my followers John Cowan or learn the difficult art of mud-breathing. cowan@ccil.org --Great-Souled Sam http://www.ccil.org/~cowan So they play that [tune] on John Cowan their fascist banjos, eh? cowan@ccil.org --Great-Souled Sam http://www.ccil.org/~cowan All Norstrilians knew that humor was John Cowan "pleasurable corrigible malfunction". cowan@ccil.org --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrilia Real FORTRAN programmers can program FORTRAN John Cowan in any language. --Ed Post cowan@ccil.org May the hair on your toes never fall out! John Cowan --Thorin Oakenshield (to Bilbo) cowan@ccil.org John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan It's the old, old story. Droid meets droid. Droid becomes chameleon. Droid loses chameleon, chameleon becomes blob, droid gets blob back again. It's a classic tale. --Kryten, Red Dwarf There are three kinds of people in the world: John Cowan those who can count, cowan@ccil.org and those who can't. In my last lifetime, John Cowan I believed in reincarnation; http://www.ccil.org/~cowan in this lifetime, cowan@ccil.org I don't. --Thiagi Do I contradict myself? John Cowan Very well then, I contradict myself. cowan@ccil.org I am large, I contain multitudes. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan Micropayment advocates mistakenly believe that efficient allocation of resources is the purpose of markets. Efficiency is a byproduct of market systems, not their goal. The reasons markets work are not because users have embraced efficiency but because markets are the best place to allow users to maximize their preferences, and very often their preferences are not for conservation of cheap resources. --Clay Shirky If you understand, John Cowan things are just as they are; http://www.ccil.org/~cowan if you do not understand, cowan@ccil.org things are just as they are. Do what you will, John Cowan this Life's a Fiction cowan@ccil.org And is made up of http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Contradiction. --William Blake LEAR: Dost thou call me fool, boy? John Cowan FOOL: All thy other titles http://www.ccil.org/~cowan thou hast given away: cowan@ccil.org That thou wast born with. John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org All "isms" should be "wasms". --Abbie A rabbi whose congregation doesn't want John Cowan to drive him out of town isn't a rabbi, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan and a rabbi who lets them do it cowan@ccil.org isn't a man. --Jewish saying MEET US AT POINT ORANGE AT MIDNIGHT BRING YOUR DUCK OR PREPARE TO FACE WUGGUMS John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Values of beeta will give rise to dom! John Cowan (5th/6th edition 'mv' said this if you tried http://www.ccil.org/~cowan to rename '.' or '..' entries; see cowan@ccil.org http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html) After fixing the Y2K bug in an application: John Cowan WELCOME TO cowan@ccil.org DATE: MONDAK, JANUARK 1, 1900 http://www.ccil.org/~cowan It was impossible to inveigle John Cowan Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Into offering the slightest apology For his Phenomenology. --W. H. Auden, from "People" (1953) Dream projects long deferred John Cowan usually bite the wax tadpole. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --James Lileks The Imperials are decadent, 300 pound John Cowan free-range chickens (except they have http://www.ccil.org/~cowan teeth, arms instead of wings, and dinosaurlike tails). --Elyse Grasso In politics, obedience and support John Cowan are the same thing. --Hannah Arendt http://www.ccil.org/~cowan John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan O beautiful for patriot's dream that sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law! --one of the verses not usually taught in U.S. schools Is a chair finely made tragic or comic? Is the John Cowan portrait of Mona Lisa good if I desire to see cowan@ccil.org it? Is the bust of Sir Philip Crampton lyrical, http://ccil.org/~cowan epical or dramatic? If a man hacking in fury at a block of wood make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not? --Stephen Dedalus John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org 'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.' --the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out. --Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God" John Cowan But that, he realized, was a foolish John Cowan thought; as no one knew better than he cowan@ccil.org that the Wall had no other side. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Arthur C. Clarke, "The Wall of Darkness" The man that wanders far cowan@ccil.org from the walking tree http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --first line of a non-existent poem by: John Cowan John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org In might the Feanorians / that swore the unforgotten oath brought war into Arvernien / with burning and with broken troth. and Elwing from her fastness dim / then cast her in the waters wide, but like a mew was swiftly borne, / uplifted o'er the roaring tide. --the Earendillinwe John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht. --Albert Einstein One Word to write them all, John Cowan One Access to find them, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan One Excel to count them all, And thus to Windows bind them. --Mike Champion Andrew Watt on Microsoft: John Cowan Never in the field of human computing cowan@ccil.org has so much been paid by so many http://www.ccil.org/~cowan to so few! (pace Winston Churchill) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1. I doubt if the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940 Income tax, if I may be pardoned for saying so, John Cowan is a tax on income. --Lord Macnaghten (1901) cowan@ccil.org A witness cannot give evidence of his John Cowan age unless he can remember being born. cowan@ccil.org --Judge Blagden http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Where the wombat has walked, John Cowan it will inevitably walk again. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan (even through brick walls!) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen. I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number. --Bilbo John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me. I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider. --Bilbo to Smaug I don't know half of you half as well John Cowan as I should like, and I like less than half cowan@ccil.org of you half as well as you deserve. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Bilbo You let them out again, Old Man Willow! John Cowan What you be a-thinking of? You should not be waking! cowan@ccil.org Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking. http://ccil.org/~cowan "But I am the real Strider, fortunately," John Cowan he said, looking down at them with his face cowan@ccil.org softened by a sudden smile. "I am Aragorn son http://www.ccil.org/~cowan of Arathorn, and if by life or death I can save you, I will." --LotR Book I Chapter 10 By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair, you shall cowan@ccil.org have neither the Ring nor me! --Frodo http://www.ccil.org/~cowan They tried to pierce your heart John Cowan with a Morgul-knife that remains in the http://www.ccil.org/~cowan wound. If they had succeeded, you would become a wraith under the domination of the Dark Lord. --Gandalf BALIN FUNDINUL UZBAD KHAZADDUMU cowan@ccil.org BALIN SON OF FUNDIN LORD OF KHAZAD-DUM http://www.ccil.org/~cowan But you, Wormtongue, you have done what you could for your true master. Some reward you have earned at least. Yet Saruman is apt to overlook his bargains. I should advise you to go quickly and remind him, lest he forget your faithful service. --Gandalf John Cowan It was dreary and wearisome. Cold clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers. --"The Passage of the Marshes" http://www.ccil.org/~cowan John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Big as a house, much bigger than a house, it looked to [Sam], a grey-clad moving hill. Fear and wonder, maybe, enlarged him in the hobbit's eyes, but the Mumak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not walk now in Middle-earth; his kin that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth and his majesty. --"Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit" I marvel at the creature: so secret and John Cowan so sly as he is, to come sporting in the pool cowan@ccil.org before our very window. Does he think that http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Men sleep without watch all night? We are lost, lost. No name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty. Only hungry: yes, we are hungry. A few little fishes, nassty bony little fishes, for a poor creature, and they say death. So wise they are; so just, so very just. --Gollum cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan But the next day there came no dawn, John Cowan and the Grey Company passed on into the cowan@ccil.org darkness of the Storm of Mordor and were http://www.ccil.org/~cowan lost to mortal sight; but the Dead followed them. --"The Passing of the Grey Company" John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan You cannot enter here. Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go! --Gandalf Kill Gorgun! Kill orc-folk! John Cowan No other words please Wild Men. cowan@ccil.org Drive away bad air and darkness http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with bright iron! --Ghan-buri-Ghan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless. For living or dark undead, I will smite you if you touch him. And it was said that ever after, if any John Cowan man looked in that Stone, unless he had a cowan@ccil.org great strength of will to turn it to other http://ccil.org/~cowan purpose, he saw only two aged hands withering in flame. --"The Pyre of Denethor" There is no real going back. Though I John Cowan may come to the Shire, it will not seem cowan@ccil.org the same; for I shall not be the same. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest? --Frodo "Well, I'm back." --Sam John Cowan John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Does anybody want any flotsam? / I've gotsam. Does anybody want any jetsam? / I can getsam. --Ogden Nash, No Doctors Today, Thank You John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Original line from The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold: "Only on Barrayar would pulling a loaded needler start a stampede toward one." English-to-Russian-to-English mangling thereof: "Only on Barrayar you risk to lose support instead of finding it when you threat with the charged weapon." As you read this, I don't want you to feel John Cowan sorry for me, because, I believe everyone cowan@ccil.org will die someday. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --From a Nigerian-type scam spam At the end of the Metatarsal Age, the dinosaurs John Cowan abruptly vanished. The theory that a single cowan@ccil.org catastrophic event may have been responsible http://www.ccil.org/~cowan has been strengthened by the recent discovery of a worldwide layer of whipped cream marking the Creosote-Tutelary boundary. --Science Made Stupid John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan If a soldier is asked why he kills people who have done him no harm, or a terrorist why he kills innocent people with his bombs, they can always reply that war has been declared, and there are no innocent people in an enemy country in wartime. The answer is psychotic, but it is the answer that humanity has given to every act of aggression in history. --Northrop Frye John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures. --Samuel Gompers Principles. You can't say A is John Cowan made of B or vice versa. All mass http://www.ccil.org/~cowan is interaction. --Richard Feynman John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan [R]eversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually [before Darwin] defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had to do with the [evolution]ists; and stood up for the possibility of [evolution] among the orthodox --thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness. --T. H. Huxley John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. --Thomas Henry Huxley Work hard, John Cowan play hard, cowan@ccil.org die young, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan rot quickly. John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org [P]olice in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV cop shows. When it's explained to them that they are in a different country, where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. --Neal Stephenson How they ever reached any conclusion at all is starkly unknowable to the human mind. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --"Backstage Lensman", Randall Garrett While staying with the Asonu, I met a man from John Cowan the Candensian plane, which is very much like cowan@ccil.org ours, only more of it consists of Toronto. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes What has four pairs of pants, lives John Cowan in Philadelphia, and it never rains http://www.ccil.org/~cowan but it pours? cowan@ccil.org --Rufus T. Firefly You know, you haven't stopped talking John Cowan since I came here. You must have been http://www.ccil.org/~cowan vaccinated with a phonograph needle. cowan@ccil.org --Rufus T. Firefly I could dance with you till the cows John Cowan come home. On second thought, I'd http://www.ccil.org/~cowan rather dance with the cows when you cowan@ccil.org come home. --Rufus T. Firefly John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Monday we watch-a Firefly's house, but he no come out. He wasn't home. Tuesday we go to the ball game, but he fool us. He no show up. Wednesday he go to the ball game, and we fool him. We no show up. Thursday was a double-header. Nobody show up. Friday it rained all day. There was no ball game, so we stayed home and we listened to it on-a the radio. --Chicolini Clear? Huh! Why a four-year-old child John Cowan could understand this report. Run out cowan@ccil.org and find me a four-year-old child. I http://www.ccil.org/~cowan can't make head or tail out of it. --Rufus T. Firefly on government reports Ambassador Trentino: I've said enough. I'm a man of few words. Rufus T. Firefly: I'm a man of one word: scram! --Duck Soup John Cowan Go, and never darken my towels again! John Cowan --Rufus T. Firefly http://ccil.org/~cowan The Unicode Standard does not encode John Cowan idiosyncratic, personal, novel, or private http://www.ccil.org/~cowan use characters, nor does it encode logos or graphics. cowan@ccil.org Take two turkeys, one goose, four John Cowan cabbages, but no duck, and mix them http://www.ccil.org/~cowan together. After one taste, you'll duck cowan@ccil.org soup the rest of your life. --Groucho You're a brave man! Go and break through the John Cowan lines, and remember while you're out there cowan@ccil.org risking life and limb through shot and shell, http://ccil.org/~cowan we'll be in here thinking what a sucker you are! --Rufus T. Firefly Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettes John Cowan of a creatific thinkerizer. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Peter da Silva Using RELAX NG compact syntax to John Cowan develop schemas is one of the simple http://www.ccil.org/~cowan pleasures in life.... --Jeni Tennison John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org The Penguin shall hunt and devour all that is crufty, gnarly and bogacious; all code which wriggles like spaghetti, or is infested with blighting creatures, or is bound by grave and perilous Licences shall it capture. And in capturing shall it replicate, and in replicating shall it document, and in documentation shall it bring freedom, serenity and most cool froodiness to the earth and all who code therein. --Gospel of Tux John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org 'Tis the Linux rebellion / Let coders take their place, The Linux-nationale / Shall Microsoft outpace, We can write better programs / Our CPUs won't stall, So raise the penguin banner of / The Linux-nationale. --Greg Baker John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Arise, you prisoners of Windows / Arise, you slaves of Redmond, Wash, The day and hour soon are coming / When all the IT folks say "Gosh!" It isn't from a clever lawsuit / That Windowsland will finally fall, But thousands writing open source code / Like mice who nibble through a wall. --The Linux-nationale by Greg Baker John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org There are books that are at once excellent and boring. Those that at once leap to the mind are Thoreau's Walden, Emerson's Essays, George Eliot's Adam Bede, and Landor's Dialogues. --Somerset Maugham He played King Lear as though John Cowan someone had played the ace. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Eugene Field What asininity could I have uttered John Cowan that they applaud me thus? http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Phocion, Greek orator Is not a patron, my Lord [Chesterfield], John Cowan one who looks with unconcern on a man http://www.ccil.org/~cowan struggling for life in the water, and when cowan@ccil.org he has reached ground encumbers him with help? --Samuel Johnson John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. --Oscar Wilde John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender. --Philip Guedalla John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Female celebrity stalker, on a hot morning in Cairo: "Imagine, Colonel Lawrence, ninety-two already!" El Auruns's reply: "Many happy returns of the day!" Here lies the Christian, John Cowan judge, and poet Peter, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Who broke the laws of God cowan@ccil.org and man and metre. John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Heckler: "Go on, Al, tell 'em all you know. It won't take long." Al Smith: "I'll tell 'em all we *both* know. It won't take any longer." Mark Twain on Cecil Rhodes: John Cowan I admire him, I freely admit it, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan and when his time comes I shall cowan@ccil.org buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake. Samuel Johnson on playing the violin: John Cowan "Difficult do you call it, Sir? cowan@ccil.org I wish it were impossible." http://www.ccil.org/~cowan John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan If a traveler were informed that such a man [as Lord John Russell] was leader of the House of Commons, he may well begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshiped an insect. --Benjamin Disraeli John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Rather than making ill-conceived suggestions for improvement based on uninformed guesses about established conventions in a field of study with which familiarity is limited, it is sometimes better to stick to merely observing the usage and listening to the explanations offered, inserting only questions as needed to fill in gaps in understanding. --Peter Constable John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Lope de Vega: "It wonders me I can speak at all. Some caitiff rogue did rudely yerk me on the knob, wherefrom my wits yet wander." An Englishman: "Ay, belike a filchman to the nab'll leave you crank for a spell." --Harry Turtledove, Ruled Britannia John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org [T]here is a Darwinian explanation for the refusal to accept Darwin. Given the very pessimistic conclusions about moral purpose to which his theory drives us, and given the importance of a sense of moral purpose in helping us cope with life, a refusal to believe Darwin's theory may have important survival value. --Ian Johnston Barry thirteen gules and argent on a canton azure John Cowan fifty mullets of five points of the second, cowan@ccil.org six, five, six, five, six, five, six, five, and six. --blazoning the U.S. flag http://www.ccil.org/~cowan John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. --John Donne John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org SAXParserFactory [is] a hideous, evil monstrosity of a class that should be hung, shot, beheaded, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake, buried in unconsecrated ground, dug up, cremated, and the ashes tossed in the Tiber while the complete cast of Wicked sings "Ding dong, the witch is dead." --Elliotte Rusty Harold on xml-dev Unless it was by accident that I had John Cowan offended someone, I never apologized. cowan@ccil.org --Quentin Crisp http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Si hoc legere scis, nimium eruditionis habes. John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers, philologists, psychologists, biologists and neurologists, along with whatever blood can be got out of grammarians. - Russ Rymer Newbies always ask: John Cowan "Elements or attributes? http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Which will serve me best?" cowan@ccil.org Those who know roar like lions; Wise hackers smile like tigers. --a tanka, or extended haiku John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan The penguin geeks is happy / As under the waves they lark The closed-source geeks ain't happy / They sad cause they in the dark But geeks in the dark is lucky / They in for a worser treat One day when the Borg go belly-up / Guess who wind up on the street. John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Any sufficiently-complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. --Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming (rules 1-9 are unknown) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. --Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee That you can cover for the plentiful John Cowan and often gaping errors, misconstruals, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan and disinformation in your posts cowan@ccil.org through sheer volume -- that is another misconception. --Mike to Peter Your worships will perhaps be thinking John Cowan that it is an easy thing to blow up a dog? http://www.ccil.org/~cowan [Or] to write a book? --Don Quixote, Introduction cowan@ccil.org On the Semantic Web, it's too hard to prove John Cowan cowan@ccil.org you're not a dog. --Bill de hOra http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Time alone is real John Cowan the rest imaginary like a quaternion --phma http://www.ccil.org/~cowan When I'm stuck in something boring John Cowan where reading would be impossible or (who loves Asimov too) rude, I often set up math problems for cowan@ccil.org myself and solve them as a way to pass http://www.ccil.org/~cowan the time. --John Jenkins Babies are born as a result of the John Cowan mating between men and women, and most http://www.ccil.org/~cowan men and women enjoy mating. cowan@ccil.org --Isaac Asimov in Earth: Our Crowded Spaceship A few times, I did some exuberant stomping about, John Cowan like a hippo auditioning for Riverdance, though cowan@ccil.org I stopped when I thought I heard something at http://ccil.org/~cowan the far side of the room falling over in rhythm with my feet. --Joseph Zitt Don't be so humble. You're not that great. John Cowan --Golda Meir cowan@ccil.org The experiences of the past show John Cowan that there has always been a discrepancy cowan@ccil.org between plans and performance. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Emperor Hirohito, August 1945 Why are well-meaning Westerners so concerned that John Cowan the opening of a Colonel Sanders in Beijing means cowan@ccil.org the end of Chinese culture? [...] We have had http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Chinese restaurants in America for over a century, and it hasn't made us Chinese. On the contrary, we obliged the Chinese to invent chop suey. --Marshall Sahlins We pledge allegiance to the penguin John Cowan and to the intellectual property regime cowan@ccil.org for which he stands, one world under http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Linux, with free music and open source software for all. --Julian Dibbell on Brazil, edited Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never John Cowan see a more wretched hive of scum and cowan@ccil.org villainy --unless you watch the http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Jerry Springer Show. --georgettesworld.com Well, I have news for our current leaders John Cowan and the leaders of tomorrow: the Bill of cowan@ccil.org Rights is not a frivolous luxury, in force http://www.ccil.org/~cowan only during times of peace and prosperity. We don't just push it to the side when the going gets tough. --Molly Ivins As we all know, civil libertarians are not John Cowan the friskiest group around --comes from cowan@ccil.org forever being on the qui vive for the sound http://www.ccil.org/~cowan of jack-booted fascism coming down the pike. --Molly Ivins John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Economists were put on this planet to make astrologers look good. --Leo McGarry John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan The present impossibility of giving a scientific explanation is no proof that there is no scientific explanation. The unexplained is not to be identified with the unexplainable, and the strange and extraordinary nature of a fact is not a justification for attributing it to powers above nature. --The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "telepathy" (1913) John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan This great college [Trinity], of this ancient university [Cambridge], has seen some strange sights. It has seen Wordsworth drunk and Porson sober. And here am I, a better poet than Porson, and a better scholar than Wordsworth, somewhere betwixt and between. --A.E. Housman A rose by any other name John Cowan may smell as sweet, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan but if you called it an onion cowan@ccil.org you'd get cooks very confused. --RMS John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Nobody expects the RESTifarian Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise ... surprise and tedium ... tedium and surprise .... Our two weapons are tedium and surprise ... and ruthless disregard for unpleasant facts.... Our three weapons are tedium, surprise, and ruthless disregard ... and an almost fanatical devotion to Roy Fielding.... John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan The whole of Gaul is quartered into three halves. --Julius Caesar John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Half the lies they tell about me are true. --Tallulah Bankhead, American actress John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Sound change operates regularly to produce irregularities; analogy operates irregularly to produce regularities. --E.H. Sturtevant, ca. 1945, probably at Yale Cash registers don't really add and subtract; John Cowan they only grind their gears. cowan@ccil.org But then they don't really grind their gears, either; they only obey the laws of physics. --Unknown John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan There was an old man Said with a laugh, "I From Peru, whose lim'ricks all Cut them in half, the pay is Look'd like haiku. He Much better for two." --Emmet O'Brien John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that optimum or inadequate performance in the trend of competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. --Ecclesiastes 9:11, Orwell/Brown version The first thing you learn in a lawin' family John Cowan is that there ain't no definite answers cowan@ccil.org to anything. --Calpurnia in To Kill A Mockingbird Possession is said to be nine points of the law, John Cowan but that's not saying how many points the law might have. cowan@ccil.org --Thomas A. Cowan (law professor and my father) John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org "After all, would you consider a man without honor wealthy, even if his Dinar laid end to end would reach from here to the Temple of Toplat?" "No, I wouldn't", the beggar replied. "Why is that?" the Master asked. "A Dinar doesn't go very far these days, Master. --Kehlog Albran Besides, the Temple of Toplat is across the street." The Profit "The serene chaos that is Courage, and the phenomenon cowan@ccil.org of Unopened Consciousness have been known to the John Cowan Great World eons longer than Extaboulism." "Why is that?" the woman inquired. "Because I just made that word up", the Master said wisely. --Kehlog Albran, The Profit http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Even the best of friends cannot John Cowan attend each others' funeral. cowan@ccil.org --Kehlog Albran, The Profit http://www.ccil.org/~cowan You annoy me, Rattray! You disgust me! John Cowan You irritate me unspeakably! Thank Heaven, cowan@ccil.org I am a man of equable temper, or I should http://www.ccil.org/~cowan scarcely be able to contain myself before your mocking visage. --Stalky imitating Macrea I now introduce Professor Smullyan, John Cowan who will prove to you that either cowan@ccil.org he doesn't exist or you don't exist, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan but you won't know which. --Melvin Fitting Normally I can handle panic attacks on my own; John Cowan but panic is, at the moment, a way of life. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Joseph Zitt John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan It's like if you meet an really old, really rich guy covered in liver spots and breathing with an oxygen tank, and you say, "I want to be rich, too, so I'm going to start walking with a cane and I'm going to act crotchety and I'm going to get liver disease. --Wil Shipley John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Today an interactive brochure website, tomorrow a global content management system that leverages collective synergy to drive "outside of the box" thinking and formulate key objectives into a win-win game plan with a quality-driven approach that focuses on empowering key players to drive-up their core competencies and increase expectations with an all-around initiative to drive up the bottom-line. --Alex Papadimoulis We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do, John Cowan What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must; Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust. --Bokonon John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux, de rapport nyait pas. --Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit" John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Historians aren't constantly confronted with people who carry on self-confidently about the rule against adultery in the sixth amendment to the Declamation of Independence, as written by Benjamin Hamilton. Computer scientists aren't always having to correct people who make bold assertions about the value of Objectivist Programming, as examplified in the HCNL entities stored in Relaxational Databases. --Mark Liberman John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Most people are much more ignorant about language than they are about [other subjects], but they reckon that because they can talk and read and write, their opinions about talking and reading and writing are as well informed as anybody's. And since I have DNA, I'm entitled to carry on at length about genetics without bothering to learn anything about it. Not. --Mark Liberman John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Any day you [see] all five woodpeckers is a good day. --Elliotte Rusty Harold An observable characteristic is not necessarily John Cowan a functional requirement. --John Hudson cowan@ccil.org Man has no body distinct from his soul, John Cowan for that called body is a portion of the soul cowan@ccil.org discerned by the five senses, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan the chief inlets of the soul in this age. --William Blake John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Statistics don't help a great deal in making important decisions. Most people have more than the average number of feet, but I'm not about to start a company selling shoes in threes. --Ross Gardler If I read "upcoming" in [the newspaper] John Cowan once more, I will be downcoming http://www.ccil.org/~cowan and somebody will be outgoing. cowan@ccil.org John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Uneasy lies the head that wears the Editor's hat! --Eddie Foirbeis Climo John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org if if = then then then = else else else = if; John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Would your name perchance be surname Puppet, given name Sock? --Rick Moen "Repeat this until 'update-mounts -v' shows no updates. John Cowan You may well have to log in to particular machines, hunt down cowan@ccil.org people who still have processes running, and kill them." Let's face it: software is crap. Feature-laden and bloated, written under tremendous time-pressure, often by incapable coders, using dangerous languages and inadequate tools, trying to connect to heaps of broken or obsolete protocols, implemented equally insufficiently, running on unpredictable hardware -- we are all more than used to brokenness. --Felix Winkelmann Note that nobody these days would clamor for fundamental laws John Cowan of *the theory of kangaroos*, showing why pseudo-kangaroos are cowan@ccil.org physically, logically, metaphysically impossible. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Kangaroos are wonderful, but not *that* wonderful. --Dan Dennett on zombies John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org One of the oil men in heaven started a rumor of a gusher down in hell. All the other oil men left in a hurry for hell. As he gets to thinking about the rumor he had started he says to himself there might be something in it after all. So he leaves for hell in a hurry. --Carl Sandburg La mayyitan ma qadirun yatabaqqa sarmadi John Cowan Fa idha yaji' al-shudhdhadh fa-l-maut qad yantahi. cowan@ccil.org --Abdullah al-Hazred, Al-`Azif http://www.ccil.org/~cowan No saves, Antonio, loke es morirse en su lingua. Es komo John Cowan kedarse soliko en el silensyo kada dya ke Dyo da, komo cowan@ccil.org ser sikileoso sin saver porke. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Marcel Cohen, 1985 John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org The native charset of SMS messages supports English, French, mainland Scandinavian languages, German, Italian, Spanish with no accents, and GREEK SHOUTING. Everything else has to be Unicode, which means you get only 70 16-bit characters in a text instead of 160 7-bit characters. How comes city and country to be filled with drones John Cowan and rogues, our highways with hackers, and all cowan@ccil.org places with sloth and wickedness? http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --W. Blith, Eng. Improver Improved, 1652 Almost all theorems are true, John Cowan but almost all proofs have bugs. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Paul Pedersen I Hope, Sir, that we are not John Cowan mutually Un-friended by this cowan@ccil.org Difference which hath happened http://www.ccil.org/~cowan betwixt us. --Thomas Fuller, Appeal of Injured Innocence (1659) John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Sir, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many? --George Bernard Shaw, to a man booing at the opening of _Arms and the Man_ John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Fundamental thinking is ha-ard. Let's go ideology-shopping. --Philosopher Barbie John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan The peculiar excellence of comedy is its excellent fooling, and Aristophanes's claim to immortality is based upon one title only: he was a master maker of comedy, he could fool excellently. Here Gilbert stands side by side with him. He, too, could write the most admirable nonsense. There has never been better fooling than his, and a comparison with him carries nothing derogatory to the great Athenian. --Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan "Make a case, man; you're full of naked assertions, just like Nietzsche." "Oh, i suffer from that, too. But you know, naked assertions or GTFO." --heard on #scheme, sorta John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan The internet is a web of tiny tyrannies giving an illusion of anarchy. --David Rush Being understandable rather than obscurantist poses certain risks, in that one's opinions are clear and therefore | John Cowan falsifiable in the light of new data, but it has the | cowan@ccil.org advantage of encouraging feedback from others. --James A. Matisoff weirdo: When is R7RS coming out? John Cowan Riastradh: As soon as the top is a beautiful cowan@ccil.org golden brown and if you stick a toothpick in it, the toothpick comes out dry. www.ccil.org/~cowan John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Pour moi, les villes du Silmarillion ont plus de réalité que Babylone. --Christopher Tolkien, as interviewed by Le Monde John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Awk!" sed Grep. "A fscking python is perloining my Ruby; let me bash him with a Cshell! Vi didn't I mount it on a troff?" --Francis Turner And they pack their lyrics till they're so damn dense John Cowan You could put 'em in your yard and you could use 'em for a fence. --Alan Chapman, "Everybody Wants to Be Sondheim" www.ccil.org/~cowan "Why yes, I'm ten percent Jewish on my manager's side." John Cowan --Connie Francis http://www.ccil.org/~cowan