“To expedite our path to a future-state design, we have asked Deloitte Consulting’s Higher Education practice to assist SJSU in developing a shared service model to deliver human resources and finance administrative services with the goal of improving service quality and experience.”—San José State University president Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson in a missive to her minions. Bureaucratic gobbledygook meets bureaucratic incompetence. Isn't it the job of the university administration (which has ballooned beyond belief) to figure out how to deliver services? If they can't do that and have to rely on overpriced consultants (which the university can ill afford), how about culling the ranks of clueless clerks?
“The C.C.P.’s favorite phrase, ‘win-win,’ actually meant that China won twice.”—Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, advising Mr. Trump to stick to his talking points when meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It didn't work.
“Eastern Kentucky is well-known for people coming and going. They start up companies, then they disappear.”—former AppHarvest worker Anthony Morgan. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance was on the board of this “vertical farming” startup that went bankrupt shortly after going public in 2021.
2024-08-13 “Millions of American drivers wanted to buy a car, not a comprehensive surveillance system that unlawfully records information about every drive they take and sells their data to any company willing to pay for it.”—Ken Paxton, attorney general of Texas, suing General Motors for that odious practice.
2024-08-13 “That doesn’t mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details, but your product is incredible.”—Donald Trump, in an interview with Elon Musk.
2024-08-13 “You know the biggest threat is not global warming when the ocean's gonna rise one-eighth of an inch in the next 400 years and you'll have more oceanfront property. The biggest threat is not that—the biggest threat is nuclear warming.”—Donald Trump. I assume he means nuclear war, indisputably a major threat. But surely, it is elementary geometry that higher water levels mean less oceanfront property.
2024-08-05 “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”—Vice presidential candidate JD Vance on the book jacket of “Unhumans”, which describes leftists in stark terms: “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman.”
2024-07-31 “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”—Donald Trump, trying to wrap his head around the concept that someone might have parents with different skin tones and national origins.
2024-07-30 “I love you. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”—Donald Trump, addressing a group of Christian conservatives
2024-06-30 “It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building.”—Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his opinion upholding outdoor sleeping bans. It's only 130 years ago that Anatole France wrote: The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. (La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.)
2024-06-30 “He is the choice of the Democratic voters”—Ron Klain, advisor to President Biden, explaining why he was not advising a that Biden step back from the race after senior moments in the presidential debate. I am struggling to see how the Democratic voters enter the picture. What choice did the party give them in the primaries?
2024-06-10 "If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking, do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted? Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?—Donald Trump, at a campaign rally, sounding even less coherent than Joe Biden. Which caused widespread anxiety amongst Republicans on how to find a more capable replacement before it was too late. Ok, I made up that part.
2024-03-30 I was delighted to find out about Stein's law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
2024-02-09 "Given Apple's extensive privacy disclosure, no reasonable user would expect that their actions in Apple's apps would be private from Apple. "—From this court filing, in which Apple seeks to dismiss a law suit by some of its customers who had just those expectations.
2023-08-04 Peeling off the No USB sticker from this HP inkjet printer reveals...a working USB port. Why doesn't HP want you to use it? Could it be because then they can't upsell their cloud services?
2023-08-04 “On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on day one and be ready to go.”—US Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, planning his version of Gleichschaltung.
2023-08-04 “Yes.”—Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's ex-business partner, responding at a congressional hearing to a question by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-NY, whether it was “fair to say that Hunter Biden was selling the illusion of access to his father”.
2023-07-20 “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”—Social Studies standard of the Florida Board of Education. Given that presumably the standards mostly focus on the horrors of slavery, this seems an exceedingly odd detail to mandate for inclusion in instruction.
2023-07-07 Under the headline "Soon you will be able to register a change of address by smartphone", the Berlin tenants union breathlessly reports: "The model is Hamburg. There you can use your government ID card with chip function. You do need a code that you receive by postal mail from your new residence's city hall. And your landlord needs to turn in a signed certification of occupancy. Then you will receive a sticker from the federal printing office. So far, the service works for people who are 18 or over, childless, and unmarried." That's German automation at its finest. If you (1) went through the byzantine activation process, (2) managed to use the crazily complex app, (3) figured out how to apply for that code from your destination city, (4) found the planets in perfect alignment so that the landlord's certification was properly recorded, (5) received the sticker from the federal printing office, (6) are 18 or over, (7) childless, and (8) unmarried, then you are all set.
2023-05-13 "In a city of millions, commercial traffic must flow. The citizens want to be supplied."—Manja Schreiner, Berlin transportation chief, arguing against a 30km/h speed limit as it exists in (presumably insufficiently supplied) London.
2023-03-24 “That’s right, we don’t need a Chinese company stealing our data and spying on us. That’s a job for American companies.”—Al Franken on a proposed ban of TikTok
“You know, life is always right; it is the architect who is wrong.”—Modernist architect Le Corbusier, commenting on owners' extensive modifications of his designs at the Quartier Moderne Frugès.
"We don't have that many traffic signs in stock."--German transportation minister Volker Wissing, explaining why a temporary speed limit on the autobahns was impractical, even though the country suffered acute fuel shortages after the Russian attack on the Ukraine.
“Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the
government? This was a surprise to America’s Finest
News Source and an uncomfortable learning experience for its editorial team.”—From an amicus brief filed by the satirical magazine The Onion, arguing that a man, jailed for four days over a web page satirizing the local police department, should be able to sue for damages.
2022-09-08 “Our system for allowing citizens to access the ballot through the exercise of direct democracy is an elaborate one that requires exacting detail” —Michigan Supreme Court Justice Brian Zahra, arguing that millions of Michigan voters couldn't possibly have understood what they were voting for when they asked for an abortion rights initiative to appear on the November ballot.
To the right you can see how it was supposed to be formatted, and how it actually appeared.
“I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences... We just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can’t continue the GOP charade.”—Virginia Thomas, wife of US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, in a message sent to then President Trump's chief of staff shortly after Trump's election loss.
The delays will not be at Dover. They will be at Calais.—Jacob Rees-Mogg, predicting post-Brexit traffic flows in 2018.
“Yes, of course I got that wrong. I got it wrong for the right reason. The point I was making was that the only delays would be caused by the French if they decided not to allow British people to pass through freely.”—2022 clarification.
Defund the FBI. But her emails. Mar-a-Lago merch from both sides of the political aisle.
"I mean, he's taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I'd say that's pretty smart. He's taking over a country, really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people and just walking right in."—Real estate pro and former US president Donald Trump, commending the sagacity of Russia's president Putin.
“To say there were slaves is one thing, but to talk in detail about how slaves were treated, and with photos, is another.”— Tina Descovich, a leader of “Moms for Liberty”. Perhaps the kind of liberty that's ok with slavery.
“Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens.”—Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, concocting a novel twist on the name for the Nazi secret state police.
"Underlying everything else in this dispute is a single, simple question: Who decides how much protection, and of what kind, American workers need from Covid-19? An agency with expertise in workplace health and safety, acting as Congress and the president authorized? Or a court, lacking any knowledge of how to safeguard workplaces, and insulated from responsibility for any damage it causes?"—From the dissenting opinion in which the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court held that OSHA cannot make employers require their employees to be vaccinated.
"Such bad experience. Clipper card is already bad but virtual card on the phone never works. Agents at stations are not well informed and will ask you to go kick rocks."—A reviewer of the San Francisco Bay Area Clipper App. I have never seen so many one star reviews in one place.
2021-08-12 "There is a virus here, it kills people. The only way we prevent it is get vaccinated, get masks, do social distancing, washing your hands all the time, and not just to think about, 'Well my freedom is being kind of disturbed here.' No, screw your freedom. Because with freedom comes obligations and responsibilities, you cannot just say, 'I have the right to do X, Y and Z,' when you affect other people, that is when it gets serious. It's no different from a traffic light, you put a traffic light at an intersection so someone doesn't kill someone else."—Arnold Schwarzenegger, not falling in line with the orthodoxy of the Republican party.
2021-08-01 “I saw myself as an adviser. I didn’t want to sacrifice my early 20s to work at a corporation.”—Reece Robinson, son of M. Richard Robinson Jr, deceased CEO of publisher Scholastic Inc., who left his company shares to his “partner and closest friend” Iole Lucchese, Scholastic’s chief strategy officer. His brother Ben described himself as: “I fish the fish and cull the deer...the poet laureate who hasn’t told his story yet.” Both sons were surprised at the terms of the will, particularly since one of them had told his father about his “desire to be a member of the Board.”
"Since January, vaccine acceptance on the part of Facebook users in the US has increased by 10-15 percentage points (70% → 80-85%) and racial and ethnic disparities in acceptance have shrunk considerably (some of the populations that had the lowest acceptance in January had the highest increases since)...The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed."—Guy Rosen, VP of Integrity of Facebook, in a self-serving press release filled with double speak (2021-07-17). The contents may be unremarkbable. The memorable part is the title of the VP.
"Biden pushing a vaccine that is NOT FDA approved shows covid is a political tool used to control people.
People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations.
You can’t force people to be part of the human experiment."—Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- GA) via Twitter (2021-07-07)
Es gibt Probleme. Aber das liegt nun auch in der Natur der Sache" (There are problems. But that's just the way it is.) Berlin mayor Michael Müller, reacting to criticism of the hotline for distributing Astra-Zeneca vaccine that would otherwise go to waste. The phone system is so unbelievably horrible that it makes the IRS look like saints. Forcing everyone to listen to lengthy "Datenschutz" statements, then putting them on a 30 minute hold only to drop their call? That's just the way it is.
"Your eyes are like two rainbows and a rainbow of eyes. I can’t help but stare." "I once worked with a guy that looked just like you. He was a normal human with a family. Are you a normal human with a family?"—Pickup lines generated by an artificial intelligence program. More AI generated pickup lines
"Wir sind doch Logistikweltmeister" (But we are world leaders in logistics)—German secretary of health Jens Spahn, trying to instill hope for the botched COVID immunization rollout. This man lives in denial, in a city that is plagued by a multitude of construction projects that are interminably delayed and wildly over budget.
“By the end of the meeting, the findings were crystal clear to everyone and they gave a ringing endorsement of moving forward fast.” Martin Elling, a leader for McKinsey’s North American pharmaceutical practice, about a presentation to the Sackler family that recommended to reward pharmacies for pushing opioids. It projected that in 2019, for example, 2,484 CVS customers would either have an overdose or develop an opioid use disorder.
“This is the banality of evil, M.B.A. edition,” Anand Giridharadas, a former McKinsey consultant who reviewed the documents
2020-10-28 "In California, you have a special mask. You cannot under any circumstances take it off. You have to eat through the mask. Right, right, Charlie? It's a very complex mechanism. And they don't realize those germs, they go through it like nothing."—Donald Trump at a campaign rallye (Video). Brilliant satire? Fake news? Who knows?
2020-10-15 "You're not someone's crazy uncle who can retweet whatever."--Television moderator Savannah Guthrie to Donald Trump. This was widely reported in the German press but made barely a ripple in the U.S.
2020-09-19 “Data privacy for 100 million American TikTok users will be quickly established by moving all American data to Oracle's Generation 2 Cloud data centers, the most secure cloud data centers in the world. Based on decades of experience securing the world's most sensitive data, Oracle's Generation 2 Cloud fully isolates running applications and responds to security threats autonomously. This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American users or trying to influence them with disinformation.ekejechb
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In addition to its equity position, Walmart will bring its omnichannel retail capabilities including its Walmart.com assortment, eCommerce marketplace, fulfillment, payment and measurement-as-a-service advertising service.”—Gobbledygook from Walmart about the Tik-Tok deal. And I am not talking about the random letters. What does it even mean for the cloud to "autonomously" respond to security threats? And what exactly is Walmart bringing to the table?
2020-09-16 “You'll develop, you'll develop herd, like a herd mentality. It's going to be, it’s going to be herd-developed, and that's going to happen. That will all happen. But with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly.”—Donald Trump, who knows a thing or two about herd mentality, explaining the imminent demise of COVID-19,
2020-08-11 “What’s happening is we’re having a standardized approach by people saying we need to listen to the experts. Listening to the experts to set policy is an elitist approach. I’m fearful of an elitist approach. I am also fearful it leads to totalitarianism, especially when you say, ‘We are doing it for the public good.’”—Idaho politician, state Sen. Steven Thayn, R-Emmett, pointing out the dangers of listening to experts and being concerned about the public good.
2020-07-24 Today, the United States had more newly reported Coronavirus cases per capita than all but four countries. More impressively, if one considered each U.S. state a country, the top ten list was made up entirely from U.S. states.
2020-07-15 “We have great agreements where when Biden and Obama used to bring killers out, they would say don’t bring them back to our country, we don’t want them. Well, we have to, we don’t want them. They wouldn’t take them. Now with us, they take them. Someday, I’ll tell you why. Someday, I’ll tell you why. But they take them and they take them very gladly. They used to bring them out and they wouldn’t even let the airplanes land if they brought them back by airplanes. They wouldn’t let the buses into their country. They said we don’t want them. Said no, but they entered our country illegally and they’re murderers, they’re killers in some cases.”—President Trump at a press conference, commenting on ... your guess is as good as mine.
2020-07-13 “Well, you know that we have one of the lowest mortality rates anywhere. If you know, Biden and Obama stopped their testing; they just stopped it. You probably know that. I’m sure you don’t want to report it. But they stopped testing. Right in the middle, they just went, “No more testing,” and on a much lesser problem than the problem that we have, obviously with respect to—this is the worst thing that’s happened since probably 1917. This is a very bad—all over the world. It’s 188 countries right now. But, no, we are—we test more than anybody, by far. And when you test, you create cases. So we’ve created cases. I can tell you some countries, they test when somebody walks into a hospital sick or walks into maybe a doctor’s office, but usually a hospital. That’s the testing they do, so they don’t have cases, whereas we do—we have all of these cases. So, you know, it’s a double-edged sword.”—President Trump about testing for the Corona virus in the U.S, whose mortality rate at that time exceeded that of 179 countries.
2020-06-23 “Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing, we would show fewer cases!”—Donald Trump, proposing a novel solution to the coronavirus crisis.
“America has to step up its game. The last three are of Indian decent [sic]”—A tweet commenting on the makeup of the U.S. spelling bee finalists.
2020-03-30 “The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”—Donald Trump, arguing against voting reform measures that would make it easier for everyone to vote during the Coronavirus crisis, and confirming that his party would be unable to govern without vote suppression.
2020-02-26 “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be close to zero.”—Donald Trump. A month later, the U.S. was #1 in Coronavirus cases. It's no good arguing against exponential growth.
2019-07-31 "At high schools in the richest school districts — the top 1 percent as measured by census income data — 5.8 percent of students held a 504 plan, more than double the national average of 2.7 percent. Some wealthy districts had 504 rates of up to 18 percent. A larger percentage of white students held a 504 plan than students of any other race."—The New York Times, reporting that rich white people have more learning disabilities than the rest of the population. Are they as a group more mentally challenged, or are they gaming the system?
2019-07-26 "We need to acknowledge something that is both obvious and uncomfortable. You don't own the street in front of your home! We, the public, own the streets in front of your home and my home. Our streets belong to everyone so that everyone can get from here to there with as little fear of getting killed as possible. I get that people like living on pretty streets. Arguing for aesthetic appeal while bodies are being lifted off the pavement is a bad look and it's a worse argument. I also love Denver's history. But not more than your life or mine. The people who are arguing that making our streets safer ruins our history need to be honest. They are not really arguing for historical preservation. They are asking for preservation of the present. Because this is the history of South Marion Street Parkway. A dirt street, a horse and a carriage, a drainage ditch down the center. " (Shows historical photo with those features.) "I don't hear the people fighting the protected bike lanes there calling for cars to be banned, calling for parking to be eliminated, all in the name of history. No, they just don't want any more accommodations for cyclists. These preservationists of the present want the status quo, not history. The status quo that makes it all to easy for drivers to kill our neighbors."--Denver newscaster Kyle Clark's long rant about residents arguing against a bike lane on the grounds that the street (in which an automobile driver had just killed a cyclist) was a "historic district".
2019-07-11 “Even if government officials were patronizing the hotel to curry the president’s favor, there is no reason to conclude that they would cease doing so were the president enjoined from receiving income from the hotel. The hotel would still be publicly associated with the president, would still bear his name and would still financially benefit members of his family.”—A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals, finding that currying favor doesn't violate the emoluments clause if it is funneled through a business owned by the officeholder's family.
2019-05-29 Uber lets its drivers know that some of their peers actually choose to obey the law. Traffic safety is important, but what's more important for Uber is to preserve the fiction that drivers are independent contractors who choose how to run their business.
“We will not tolerate any business model that results in obstruction of the public right of way or poses a safety hazard.”-- Ed Reiskin, chief of the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Agency. What might that threat be? Delivery trucks and Uber drivers blocking bike lanes? No--the city wouldn't interfere with their business model. The new menace is rental scooters.
“Tomorrow is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. We obviously have a very long history with the government of Germany, and we have a strong relationship with the government.”—Heather Nauert, June 2018. The Trump administration was impressed enough with her knowledge of international affairs to make her the UN ambassador.
“Give me a one-handed Economist! All my economists say 'on one hand...', then 'but on the other...” —Harry Truman
“If you Google the word ‘idiot' under images, a picture of Donald Trump comes up. How would that happen? How does search work so that that would occur?”—Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. Of course I had to try it. Sure enough, Google showed many Trump images. So did Bing. And DuckDuckGo. And even Baidu.
This Thanksgiving headline gave me pause. Who felt burned—the bird or the country?
"We don't stash money on some Caribbean island."—Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. True enough. The island on which they stash their cash (more than hundred billion dollars) is in the English Channel.
Americans advance a lot of theories for why they have so many more gun deaths. The answer is lying in plain sight.—Max Fisher and Josh Keller, New York Times 2017-11-07.
"This adaptogenic potion lights up your brain and increases mental flow. Neuron velocity and vision are fine tuned by toning the brain waves, in particular the alpha waves that connect to creativity". --Label of "Brain Dust", a product from Moon Juice, self-described to be "a healing force, an etheric potion, a cosmic beacon for those seeking out beauty, wellness, and longevity". Not to mention a lighter purse. A 60 gram jar of the potion costs $55. Does it work? How could it not--the ingrendients are lion's mane, shilajit, astralagus, rhodiola, stevia, and maca.
“Barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese and also try [sic] to add $7 plus $7.”, “I guess if you were a white person who has no clue what mochi is, this would be fine for you.”, “… if you are white trash, this is the perfect night out for you!”—June Chu, dean of a Yale University residential college, in Yelp reviews of local businesses. I think she was compensating for the drivel she had to produce for her day job, such as “Many studies continue to indicate differences between white American college students and those from ethnic minority groups. Thus, when we as advisers only advocate following one’s passion, we should ask of ourselves if we are microaggressors, telling students that is the only right way to engage in education.”
Johan Slattavik posted this photo on the Facebook site of the Norwegian "Fatherland First" group with a comment "What do people think of that?" Predictably, there were lots of comments about frightening Muslim burqas. Of course, they are bus seats, and frankly, as a San Francisco resident and long-suffering MUNI passenger, I am envious of how clean and comfortable they look.
“This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers.”—United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz, commenting on the forcible removal of a doctor from a full flight to make room for a United employee, after no passenger took the airline's last and final offer to volunteer for a later flight and an $800 coupon. He apologized the next day, after the internet was awash with suggestions to reaccommodate him out of his job.
My students would be in trouble if they paraphrased an article like Judge Gorsuch did.
“At what point do we accept the fact that throwing money at the problem isn’t the solution?”—U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy de Vos. That's rich coming from a person who, unlike most of us, has the option of throwing money at every vexing problem that life brings.
“Well, I think if you’re an older man, you can generally say you’re not going to need maternity care.”—Press Secretary Sean Spicer, explaining why maternity care is an optional service under the proposed American Health Care Act.
“There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less [sic]. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”—HUD Secretary Ben Carson. “Were the slaves really thinking about the American dream? No, because they were thinking, ‘What the hell just happened?’ ”—Whoopi Goldberg, commenting on Mr. Carson's narrative and simultaneously describing the sentiment of many contemporary Americans.
“I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”—President Trump, meeting with state governors in February 2017.
Forty-four years ago, a rapid transit line was first proposed that connects the outerlands (where I live) to downtown San Francisco. “I really can not understand what is the rush.”--David Heller, President, Greater Geary Boulevard Merchants, January 2017.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless she persisted.”—Senate majority leader McConnell, invoking a procedure to cut off a speech by Sen. Warren, and handing her an awesome Twitter hash tag.
“As far as the question as to how many votes it affected, I can’t really tell you that, which is obviously incredibly disheartening to see that happen. It’s really important that people have a lot of confidence in their vote.”—Westmoreland County GOP Chairman Michael Korns, on the rumored tendency of voting machines to switch Republican votes to Democrats. As a confidence-boosting measure, these voting machines do not leave a paper trail.
Ms. Kardashian spread these statistics on Twitter. Statistics have a liberal bias.
"If only people with at least [sic] 4 grandparents born in America were voting, Trump would win in a 50-state landslide."—Ann Coulter, tweeting the most compelling argument for expanding immigration.
“He’s like Captain Quint in the original movie Jaws. He’s vulgar, he’s salty, he might even get drunk… He’s the guy who’s gonna save your butt and save your family. And so at the end of the day, when he kills the shark, you’re happy about it.”—Mike Huckabee, appearing on Megyn Kelly's television show. When Ms. Kelly pointed out that Quint was eaten by the shark, Mr. Huckaby admitted: “Look, any analogy can fall apart, Megyn.”
"If you are a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system."—Billionaire Peter Thiel, commenting on the sad state of the U.S. legal system that favors the multi-digitters and the causes they find worthy.
How long does one bag last? 2 cats: 60 days, 3 cats: 45 days, 4 cats: 30 days. This cat doesn't buy it. Shouldn't it be 40 days for 3 cats?
"If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner."—Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group "Latinos for Trump". As Mr. Trump said: "When Mexico sends its people, they are not sending their best."
"Under those eight years, before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office," Rudy Giuliani, former governor of New York, promoting Donald Trump's national security plan. Oddly, he forgot all about the World Trade Center attack. It's not so long ago that Joe Biden said of Mr. Giuliani that there were "only three things he mentions in a sentence: A noun, a verb and 9/11."
“We’re in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he’s given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative...What happens is the judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that’s fine.”—“Honest Donald” Trump, about judge Gonzalo Curiel who will preside over a class action lawsuit of former students of Trump University. The judge was born north of the border wall, in Indiana.
"I alone can fix this".--Donald Trump about the rigged political system in the U.S. In Germany, where we have experience with this kind of thinking, we have a word for it: Größenwahn.
“He has spent his life surrounded by Manhattan elites who have never shopped in a Target. Of course he doesn’t get the outrage.”—Penny Young Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, outraged by Donald Trump's opinion that it's ok for transgender people to use the bathroom of their current gender and not that of their birth. I haven't been in a Target for a while either. Do they check your birth certificate at the bathrooms?
“Last week, after the paper endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States in a bizarro editorial, I resigned. It’s not quite falling on my sword, more like leaning gently on a butter knife.”—Joshua Stein, former food critic of the New York Observer.
“This was the first time that the Department of Justice had ever approved such an intercept of this type.”—An F.B.I. agent, summarizing a 2003 case in which the FBI installed malware on computers to carry out surveillance on Americans suspected of violating the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. In 2016, there is much discussion about the government's need to break encryption in order to spy on terrorists. That means “terrorists, animal research protesters, and everyone else”.
Thanks, NRA. Someone had to say it.
“These guys I work with, all they are talking about is buying guns,” he said. “Guns. Guns. Guns. I don’t understand it. You can only fire one at a time.”--Ricky Watson, a Wisconsin factory worker who is not surprised by his senator's portrayal of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland as being "hostile toward your Second Amendment rights" (presumably, the right to form a single-person militia).
"Lucca is like an uninteresting woman in a beautiful dress, who is good with children." / "If Lucca were a man, he’d make a great husband...casual, comfortable and reliable, but puts on a clean shirt for dinner." PDX Food Dude, reviewing a restaurant from two points of view. Not all readers saw the point. "So what is the rating? Is it good or is it mediocre? I am confused."
“To suggest from the outset that UC decisions regarding admissions were designed to ‘disadvantage Californians,’ as opposed to mitigate the impact of a 33% budget cut, is a rush to judgment that is both unfair and unwarranted.”--Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California system, displaying outrage at a state audit that found a ten-year increase of in-state admissions of 10% and out-of-state admissions of 432%. If she had displayed similar outrage towards the budget cuts, this outrage might have been more warranted.
Here is Windows, interrupting a weather forecast with a reminder that now would be an excellent time to upgrade to Windows 10. At least it's not Clippy: “Hi, it looks like you are on live TV!”
"Can you definitely say you will support the Republican nominee, even if he is Donald Trump?"--Bret Baier at the Republican presidential debate, March 4, 2016. Rubio: "I'll support Donald if he's the Republican nominee." Cruz: "Yes because I gave my word that I would." Kasich: I will support whoever is the Republican nominee for president. So much for the "Anyone but Trump" movement.
“Since Missouri holds the rank as one of the strictest abortion regulation states in the country, it is logical we borrow similar restrictions to lower our horrific gun violence rates.”--State Rep. Stacey Newman, who proposes House Bill 1397 which says that before Missourians could buy a gun, they’d have to:
Meet with a licensed physician to discuss the risks of gun ownership at least 72 hours before attempting to buy a gun and obtain a written notice approval.
Buy the gun from a licensed gun dealer located at least 120 miles from the purchaser’s legal residence.
Review the medical risks associated with firearms, including photographs of fatal firearm injuries, and the alternatives to purchasing a firearm, including “materials about peaceful and nonviolent conflict resolution,” with the gun dealer orally and in writing.
Watch a 30-minute video about fatal firearm injuries. (This requirement mirrors House Bill 124 from last year, which would have required women to watch a video with information about abortion they’re already required to receive from doctors orally and in writing.)
Tour an emergency trauma center at the nearest qualified urban hospital on a weekend between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when gun violence victims are present, and get written verification from a doctor.
Meet with at least two families who have been victims of gun violence and two local faith leaders who have officiated, within the last year, a funeral for a victim of gun violence who was under the age of 18.
"Transgendered left activist"--Presidential candidate Ted Cruz about Robert Louis Dear, who killed three people and injured nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Of course, the killer was a bible-thumping gun nut.
“Why do people take such an instant dislike to Ted Cruz? It just saves time.”—an insider of the Bush 2000 campaign. The GOP is a big tent, but it's not that big.
"We're in a difficult time in our country and I don't think more government is necessarily the answer to this. I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It's very sad to see. I resist the notion--I had this challenge as governor, 'cause we had, look, stuff happens, there's always a crisis. And the impulse is always to do something and it's not necessarily the right thing to do." -- Jeb Bush, Republican presidential candidate, about the "stuff" that happened to a bunch of kids who were murdered in yet another mass shooting. Clearly, their right to life doesn't count in comparison to the right of the gun industry to sell their murderous wares, and the right of the people, no matter how crazed, to keep and bear them.
"We are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people. We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months...There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer?" -- President Barack Obama, on yet another mass murder.
“These black streets with these brilliant white lines everywhere … believe me, it takes away from your home, from your outlook on life.”. “[The lanes] bring to mind a visual cacophony that if you look there long enough it will induce a dizzying type of vertigo.” — Objections by residents of the city of Coronado, CA, against the visual pollution of bike lanes.
“What they were investigating was whether he brought a device to school with the intention of creating alarm,”—Police chief Larry Boyd of Irving, standing behind the officers who handcuffed and detained Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year old kid in Irving, Texas, who brought a circuit board with blinking lights and buzzing sounds to show to his physics teacher. What Mr. Boys was trying to say is that the police aren't so dumb that they consider everything with blinking lights is a potential bomb. But he's just digging himself in deeper. Now he says that it's ok if they rough up any punks who are tinkering with circuits. It's not all bad, though. In addition to a valuable civics lesson, Mr. Mohamed is getting an invitation to the White House.
"Usually it's about 50/50, but sometimes it's roughly half and half."—A respondent to the question "Just wondering is there a rough ratio of hens to roosters born?" on the site. I guess it's more satisfying to have fifty of each than half a hen and half a rooster.
“You have endured pain, you have endured the attacks, you have endured hatred,” Mr. Ted Cruz, a GOP presidential candidate to Betty Odgaard of Iowa, commenting on her refusing to rent their wedding event space to a gay couple. It's apparently ok for the gay couple to endure pain and the hatred of Ms. Odgaard.
“I like fish, but I’m not giving up my lawn for some smelt. Let those fish die up north. There’s a cycle of life.”—Donna Fena of Fresno, CA, who uses 14,000 gallons of water a month for a lawn, pool, and koi pond.
“Don't you think there may have been a few things—while I agree that that was a significant development—a few things maybe a little more important, like Nixon's opening to China, for example? The decision to go after Osama bin Laden? Do you really think that was the most significant foreign policy statement of your lifetime?”—TV journalist Bob Schieffer, responding to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's assertion that the most significant foreign policy decision of his lifetime was Reagan's decision to fire striking air traffic controllers, which, according to documents released from the Soviet Union, scared them into tearing down the Berlin wall. As Mr. Walker helpfully observes: “I think foreign policy is something that’s not just about having a Ph. D.” It seems plausible that a Ph. D. would be a hindrance, since it would presumably be harder to set aside logic and facts.
SF tech culture is focused on solving one problem: what is my mother no longer doing for me? —Aziz Shamin, commenting on the fact that San Francisco tech startups, rather than trying to change the world, have a laser-sharp focus on the lower strata of the 1% that lacks their own butler, chauffeur, cook, or personal problem solver.
"Though Pope Francis heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations unscientific agenda on the climate."--Joseph Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that has just discovered its love for science.
“This is Marin County. They’re not rednecks. They’re not ignorant. They practice a mindful stupidity.”—Jon Stewart in a Daily Show segment about Marin County parents who don't have their children vaccinated.
"His brain is so unique."—Fara Wiles, a home-schooling Pennsylvania mother about her ten-year old son, after allowing him to take a Minecraft break after he spent ten minutes on his biology workbook. Ms. Wiles is herself uniquely equipped for the education profession, having been home-schooled herself and having had the benefit of a semester of community college before she gave birth to her son. He, by the way, will not have any trouble graduating. Pennsylvania just removed requirements for portfolio review and standardized testing of home-schooled children. Parents can now "certify" that the children have completed high school and even issue their own graduation certificates.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”—Isaac Asimov
Incompetence
is bliss . . . as Justin
Kruger and David
Dunning observed. "We found again and again that people who perform
poorly relative to their peers tended to think that they did rather
well."
"I told him, 'Son, what is it with you? Is it ignorance or apathy?' He
said, 'Coach, I don't know and I don't care."—Frank Layden, Utah Jazz
president, on a former player
"Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society:
violence punctuated by committee meetings."--George F. Will,
journalist
Millions of Mexicans have no desire to learn English or become U.S.
citizens. . . Rather than assimilate, they create their own radio and TV
stations, newspapers, films and magazines". -- Pat Buchanan, 2002,
member of an unassimilated fringe group with its own media outlets, and
descendant of German immigrants
"Measures of great temper are necessary with the Germans. Those who come
hither are generally of the most ignorant, stupid sort of their own nation,
and . . . 'tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they entertain. .
. . Few of their children in the country learn English . . . Advertisements
intended to be general are now printed in German and English; the signs in
our streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only
German." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1753, presciently cautioning against
ignorant, stupid German immigrants and their descendants
“We do cow-milking contests in Wisconsin. I usually lose to a
17-year-old woman who grew up on a dairy farm, who's wearing like a sash
and tiara.”—GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. I am just
terrible at interpreting these statements. In the ignorance-is-bliss party,
I suppose it is desirable to be dumber than someone who knows what she is
doing. Then again, Ryan slyly let it slip that she is 17, making her
ineligible to be vice president, so he may be a pretty crafty fellow after
all.
“Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature
because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.”—G.
W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Dec. 20, 2000. More
Bushisms...
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more
likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage
of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made
them.”—Bertrand Russell
“Since a student is more likely to make mistakes when writing compound
and complex sentences, avoid them. Meet TAAS writing standards by using at
least one adjective per sentence and one metaphor per paragraph.” Let me
rephrase this for readers who are recent graduates of Texas public schools:
“Long sentences are hard. They make you make very bad mistakes. Make your
sentences as easy as cherry pie. Then you will always be
correct.”—Jerry Jesness, a Texas teacher discussing the Texas Assessment of
Academic Skills
The essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well.
— Phil Wadler
"Why armored vehicles in a Midwestern inner suburb? Why would cops wear camouflage gear against a terrain patterned by convenience stores and beauty parlors?"—Walter Olson of the Cato Institute. I don't often find myself in agreement with the Cato Institute, but this fellow has hit the nail on the head. It's time to update the gear to blend in to work in suburban strip malls.
Who would Jesus deport?—T-shirt worn at a rally at the gates of the Port Hueneme Naval Base by a supporter of migrant children from Central America. I was glad to see that there are Americans who have a heart and not just empty beer cans to throw at buses filled with children. But shouldn't it be “Whom would Jesus deport?”
But oh boy the Federal Circuit are really making the Supreme Court look like a Genius Bar. / This is an opinion written by judges whose understanding of software comes from reading other judges' opinions about software. / We had one of the most technically accurate opinions replaced by an opinion that doesn't really understand what an API is. —Reactions by a techie tweeter and two law professors about the federal appeals court ruling overturning the outcome of the Google / Oracle lawsuit (remarkable for the fact that the trial judge knew how to code).
"It is easier to sell things
and not make money than it is to sell things and make money."—Colin Gillis, senior tech analyst at BGC Partners, about the fact that Amazon has huge revenue but no profit.
"Why wasn't the best talent hired in the first place? The federal government has computer experts who can track every phone call every American makes every day, but it couldn't manage to get this right?"—Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times, about President Obama's assurances that "some of the best IT talent around the country" was at work around the clock to fix the healthcare.gov web site
“What does that mean for Medicare? What does that have to do with anything?”—Texas GOP Rep. John Culberson, who told a reporter that Obamacare is “a violation of our most sacred right as Americans to be left alone”, only to be asked “What does that mean for Medicare, then?” Apparently he realized that many of his supporters were old and not keen on being left alone by their government when it came to subsidized health care.
“We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is.”—Indiana GOP Rep. Marlin Stutzman, one of the radical wing of his party that shut down the government as a shortcut to the tedious democratic process of changing an unloved law. Thugs hate it when they are “disrespected”.
“Why is America going to war with Siri? She's just an iPhone
app.”—A caller to the Power 105.1 radio station in New York City in
September 2013, expressing his reluctance for the US to enter yet another war (in Syria)
“Lisp is still #1 for key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and
condescension”—Verity Stob
“It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this
information won't be used. This is the nature of secret government
organizations. The only way to protect the people's privacy is not to allow
the government to collect their information in the first
place.”—Wolfgang Schmidt, the former chief of the Stasi, the East
German secret police under communist rule.
“Rodney Davis will win and the love child of the D.N.C. will be back in
Shitcago by May of 2014 working for some law firm that needs to meet their
quota for minority hires. The truth is Nancy Pelosi and the DEMOCRAT party
want this seat. So they called RINO Timmy Johnson to be their pack mule and
get little queen to run. Ann Callis gets a free ride through a primary and
Rodney Davis has a battle. The little queen touts her abstinence and she
won the crown because she got bullied in school, boohoo...kids are cruel,
life sucks and you move on....Now, miss queen is being used like a street
walker and her pimps are the DEMOCRAT PARTY and RINO REPUBLICANS…These
pimps want something they can’t get, the seat held by a conservative
REPUBLICAN Rodney Davis and Nancy Pelosi can’t stand it. Little Queenie
and Nancy Pelosi have so much in common but the one thing that stands out
the most... both are FORMER QUEENS, their crowns are tarnished and time has
run out on the both of them.” — An email, sent by Jim Allen, a county
chairman of the Grand Old Party, to his party's faithful, predicting that
their candidate, Mr. Davis, will prevail against his opponent, Ms. Harold,
whose major flaws seem to be that she is (a) a woman, (b) not bad looking,
being a former Miss America, and (c) black.
It's sobering that some people think they can win elections by sending
out emails like that. And maybe they have.
<@insomnia> it only takes three commands to install Gentoo
<@insomnia> cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootstrap.sh && emerge system && emerge vim && vi /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6
<@insomnia> that's the first one
“Happy Easter @google just downloaded Bing! You can
take you [sic] Chavez doodle and your insulting snub to all Christians and
go away”—Annie Milliron,
one of many expressing her unhappiness about Google's “doodle” image
for March 31, 2013 that celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez. The San
Francisco Chronicle wonders why in 2011, when Google
honored the chemist Robert Bunsen, there wasn't a similar outcry. But
actually, that's because the Chronicle hasn't yet figured out that the
Easter date isn't fixed. March 31, 2011 (or maybe March 30) was Bunsen's
birthday, but Easter was on April 24, 2011.
“To free up disk space, Outlook
Express can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes”—That's
the message on the dialog box that prevents this museum exhibit from
working. Maybe Windows XP isn't the best choice as an embedded system for
an unattended museum exhibit? (Extra credit if you know what the bubble on
the bottom right says.)
“I have thought a lot about why Gabe ran toward me when he could have
run away. Service was part of his life, but it was also his job. The
senators who voted against background checks for online and gun-show sales,
and those who voted against checks to screen out would-be gun buyers with
mental illness, failed to do their job.” —Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,
contrasting the behavior of her aide, Gabe Zimmermann, who came to her
rescue and was murdered, with the craven acts of the senators who, loving
the dollars of the death lobby more than anything, voted
against any form of kill control. (No, I won't use “gun
lobby” or “gun control” any more. It's time to call a spade a
spade.)
“I’ll vote for the ban because maintaining the law and order is more
important than satisfying conspiracy theorists who believe in black
helicopters and false flags. I’ll vote for the ban because saving the
lives of police officers, young and old, and innocent civilians, young and
old, is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.”—Senator Harry
Reid of Nevada, explaining why he will vote in favor of banning assault
weapons. I had to Google for “false flag” and found this
link. There are some very strange people out there.
“ The effort ought to be to find consensus, that there should be
rewards politically for a consensus-oriented approach that solves problems.
On the other hand, passing legislation that doesn’t solve the problem
isn’t going to solve any problems, either. I’d be wary of simple
solutions to complex problems. This is a complicated issue.”—Jeb Bush,
the former governor of Florida and brother of the similarly eloquent former
president. The issue at hand, you ask...Not that it matters, given the
universality of the sentiment, but it was gun control.
“If only someone were there with a gun and the right training, this
tragedy would most certainly have been avoided.”—Online comment to a
San Francisco Chronicle article about the fatal shooting of author Chris
Kyle and his friend at a Texas gun range.
“I definitely have nothing to say about gun control. That’s so out of
the parameter of what we’re about.”—Jeanne Monahan, president of the
March for Life Education and Defense Fund.
A reader informed me that on a military base all firearms are safely locked away, so that in fact this man wasn't "surrounded by guns". I suppose the military, who presumably knows something about firearms, considers this safer than the alternative.
“When these laws were conceived, there was no social media, there was
no Google maps” —County clerk Dennis J. Sant, bemoaning the fact that a
newspaper legally published a Google map of gun-toting citizens.
Apparently, it hadn't occurred to the fellow that the second amendment was
conceived in a time when there were no assault rifles that could kill
dozens in an instant.
"This is the beginning of a serious conversation. We won't be taking any
questions." —Closing remarks at the NRA press conference suggesting that
armed schoolguards will protect kids more effectively than gun control.
Soon they'll suggest that we arm our soldiers to reduce the threat of base
shootings.
“It’s time for the president to stand up and lead...His job is
not just to be well-meaning. His job is to perform and to
protect the American public.” —New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
reminding President Obama that shedding tears in front of the television
cameras will do little to stop the death of tens of thousands from handguns
every year.
“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has five pages of
regulations about ladders. Ladders kill around 300 Americans a year, and
guns 30,000.” —New York Times commentator Nicholas D. Kristof, asking
why we can't regulate guns like cars or ladders. Well, even I know the
answer to that. The second amendment to the constitution doesn't say “A
well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to (climb Ladders | drive Cars), shall not be
infringed.”
“If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and
shut that whole thing down.”—Congressman Todd Akin,
running for the U.S. Senate, explaining why abortion should not be legal
even in the case of rape.
“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize
that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible
situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to
happen.” —Republican senator Richard Mourdock, explaining why
abortion should not be legal even in the case of rape. (Yes, I realize I
broke the chronological order, but I felt it was instructive to place these
comments, bizarre as they may be, next to those that deal with the
slaughter of tens of thousands, which doesn't seem to be particularly
troublesome to the “life is that gift from God unless it meets its end at
the barrel of a gun” ilk.)
“One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the
product's very name has become a misnomer. Windows no longer supports
multiple windows on the screen. Win8 does have an option to temporarily
show a second area in a small part of the screen, but none of our test
users were able to make this work. Also, the main UI restricts users to a
single window, so the product ought to be renamed Microsoft
Window.”—Jakob Nielsen, analyzing the usability of Windows
8
"We've
seen $900 million in cuts over the last four years. We need to
reach out directly to the people of California with a
simple, creative, flexible logo that symbolizes the university as a whole
and how it affects their lives."— Steve Montiel (2011 salary: $108,016),
media relations director for the office of the UC Berkeley President,
explaining why a university with less funding needs a crappier logo.
"Incompetent, dangerous, socialist....They are not just buzzwords, those
are accurate descriptions of our commander in chief. He [Romney] should
be very aggressive, and he should be adamant in his attacks on Obama's
record, which is so dismal, his plan or lack of a plan of Obama's to get us
out of these woeful times. Yes, he needs to be severely aggressive
in his articulation."—Sarah Palin, advising Mr. Romney to find a
path to victory. I read this by chance on Yahoo News, next to tantalizing
links to “Bizarre Tentacled Snakes Born at National Zoo” and “ Women
Face Their Fears By Skydiving in Their Underwear”. There seems to be a
whole other world out there, populated by severely aggressive articulators,
tentacled snakes, and underwear divers.
“The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of
them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they
want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic
vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And
women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel that they are
entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give
them things?”—Bill O'Reilly from Fox television on election night,
analyzing the incoming vote tallies.
“We have a choice: we can become a shrinking regional party of
middle-aged and older white men, or we can fight to become a national
governing party. And to do the latter we have to fix our Hispanic problem
as quickly as possible, we’ve got to accept science and
start calling out these false equivalencies when they occur within our
party about things that are just not true, and not tolerate the
intolerant.” —Republican strategist John Weaver.
“It depends on the day. It depends on the hour. It depends on the
weather. It depends whether the sun is shining. It depends what the polls
say. It depends on who’s looking. It depends on who’s asking. With
these guys, it always depends.” — Vice President Joe Biden, describing
contradictory statements from the Romney/Ryan camp on withdrawing troops
from Afghanistan.
“More often than not, when I asked ... what issues they would pay
attention to as they made up their minds, I was met with a blank stare, as
if I’d just asked them to name their favorite prime
number.”—Journalist Chris Hayes, interviewing undecided voters
in the 2004 election.
“People who are right a lot of the time are people who often change
their minds.”—Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. Maybe he was talking
about Mr. Romney? Personally, I have often changed my mind as I thought
more about an issue, so I think that's a good thing.
Or is it?
“Whole binders full of women”—What former governor Willard Mitt
Romney got when he made a concerted effort to find women to serve on his
cabinet. Another comment that went viral, simultaneously offending women
and foes of affirmative action.
“Brought to you by the letters F and U”—Response on a
discussion board of the San Francisco Chronicle, commenting on Willard
Mitt Romney's remark that he “loves Big Bird” but he’s not willing to
“borrow from China” to subsidize public television.
“I'm with Stupid”—Suggested caption on a discussion board of the
San Francisco Chronicle for this image of Willard Mitt Romney visiting a
Chipotle restaurant, which, according to the Chronicle article, has gone
“viral”.
From the “shooting fish in a barrel” department, here comes, who
else, Willard Mitt Romney, with another quotable quote: “I appreciated
the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don't think she
knows just how worried some of us were. When you have a fire in an
aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no — and you can't
find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because
the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a
real problem. So it's very dangerous. And she was choking and
rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and
copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she's safe and
sound.”—When my wife told me about this, I said, so what, I know
all about sarcasm. It's one of the services I offer. But when I saw the
actual quote, I cringed. When you make a sarcastic comment, you can't lay
it on too thick. If he had stopped after "It's a real problem”, with a
pause in the delivery, that would have been just right. Anything more, and
you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
My wife doesn't buy the sarcasm theory. She really thinks the fellow
has no clue about basic chemistry. Not so, I say—he is a true
conservative and wants to bring the phlogiston theory back to its rightful
place. (Pause.)
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for
the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with
him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims,
who believe the 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. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it
to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are
people who pay no income tax. ”—Willard Mitt Romney, GOP presidential
candidate, at a fundraising event. Sure, it's meanspirited, but worse, it's
also muddleheaded. It's true that 47% of households pay no income
tax, but 2/3 of them pay payroll tax, and at a higher rate than what Mr.
Romney enjoys. And if these 47% all really are self-declared victims who
will automatically vote for the president, why does he even bother with
fundraising, given that there is no shortage of tax-paying voters who
aren't fond of Mr. Romney either?
“[Romney] will find out that first reports from the battlefield are
always incorrect. This should be his mantra, so he can speak in a
deliberate manner, and not have to repent at his leisure
later.”—Richard Armitage, the former deputy Secretary of State
under President George W. Bush. “
“We're moving forward. San Jose Convention Center.” The arrows tell a
different story, pointing downward and to the left.
“Of course we would have also liked to see the back teeth covered.
It’s nice to smile; it’s nice to chew. But we have to take what we can
get at this point.”—Dr. Michael Wasserman, the president-elect of the
Massachusetts Dental Society, commenting on the fact that Medicaid only
pays for restoring front teeth.
“There were books I wished I could have gone back and actually
read. But I had to produce 70 pieces of content a week to pay my
bills.”—Brittany Walters-Bearden, a freelancer who was paid for
producing “reviews” for Amazon.
“I’m not a business,” GOP presidential candidate Willard Mitt
Romney, who thinks that corporations are people too but that, unlike them,
he shouldn't have to release more than two years worth of tax returns when
he is for sale.
“Man up, Willard, and let the public know that you are one high-earning
dude with a genius tax preparer. After all, you are trying to sell us on
your business acumen.” — Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown,
pointing out the inconsistency between Mr. Romney's unwillingness to share
those returns with his electorate, and his claim that what makes him more
electable is that acumen. I found it interesting that Mr. Brown refers to
the candidate as “Willard”, indeed his first name, but also the name of
this
movie with the tag line “Where your nightmares end...WILLARD
begins.”
“Corporations are people, my friend.” —Mitt Romney,
presidential candidate for the Republican party. That's odd. I thought
that corporations were created to shield the people who own them from
liability. Maybe they evolved.
“He’s been on this evolution since November 2010, and it’s been
getting kind of awkward,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human
Rights Campaign, commenting on President Obama's evolving views on gay
marriage. “The word evolution signifies change that has an ending
at some point.”—Really? That's news to me. I thought
evolution, at least in the Darwinian sense, just keeps plodding on.
“There are 40 individuals here who prove we still have the
capability in this country to cultivate the next generation of innovators,
thinkers, scientists, and entrepeneurs.”—Frank Otellini, Intel
President and CEO,speaking at
the Intel Science Fair. The top three winners: Nithin Tumma, Andrey
Sushko, and Mimi Yen. So what does that prove about the capabilities of
this country? We are welcoming to highly qualified immigrants, and make it
possible for their children to succeed. That's great, but it's an odd
strategy for cultivating the next generation of scientists.
“Obama has a world view that elevates the earth above man”—Rick
Santorum, GOP presidential candidate. Just curious...where does he think
he'd be without the earth?“
This is not class warfare. It’s math.”—President Obama, defending
the “Buffett rule” that people who make at least a million dollars a
year should be taxed at the same rate as a middle-class taxpayer. It's not
clear how calling it “math” will mollify the bleeding-heart
conservatives who have rallied to the defense of the long-suffering upper
class.
“The trustees find themselves in an intolerable position. The Fund for
which they are responsible is caught between an irresistible force —
obligations to retirees which it cannot pay — and an immovable object —
the government, which has persistently failed to pay its debt to the Fund.
The trustees' attempt to find a solution to this dilemma is creative and
praiseworthy even though I am inclined to rule that it cannot succeed.
Congress did not intend that the Bankruptcy Code could solve all problems,
least of all the financial problems of governmental units.”—The
judge who ruled that the pension fund of the Commonwealth of the Northern
Marinara islands can't declare bankrupcy. As an underpaid professor in
a public university who hasn't jumped ship because he is promised a
pension, I couldn't agree more with the judge.
“I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college,
because of their indoctrination mills,
absolutely,”—Rick Santorum, GOP presidential candidate. Being a mullah
at one of the minor madrassas myself, I can attest to have seen the
indoctrination with my very eyes. Students are forced to use facts and
logical inference, and most cruelly, think before they open their
mouth.
“Oh no, he is not that at all. He was first in his class at Yale and
first in his class at Harvard Law School. I think it would be wrong to
present a common man as a representative of the people of Ohio.” Senator
Taft's wife at a campaign rally when asked whether her husband is a common
man. The Tafts got a standing ovation.
“Until last year, Social Security took in more payroll taxes than it
paid out in benefits. It lent the surpluses to the rest of the government.
Now that Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in,
Social Security can simply collect what the rest of the government owes it.
This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years...[To keep it solvent
beyond that], the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax has
to be raised to $180,000. Do that, and Social Security would be fully
solvent over the long term.”—Robert Reich, disputing Rick Perry's
assertion that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
On global warming:
“Created by a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated
data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” —
Rick Perry, GOP presidential candidate
“The greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many
years.”—Ron Paul, GOP presidential candidate
“A beautifully concocted scheme .... just an excuse for more
government control of your life.”—Rick Santorum, GOP presidential
candidate
“I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call
me crazy.”—Jon Huntsman, GOP presidential candidate. Seems like he's
the one who is not crazy.
“The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put
Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not
settled yet to me is just nonsense. Just because you have a group of
scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for
a spell.” — Rick Perry, GOP presidential candidate. On a positive note,
it is nice to know that he knows the name of a scientist.
My wife saw this as she perused the
Restauration Hardware catalog. She laughed out loud at the bogus math.
She's just an ordinary gal from Vietnam, where apparently the socialist
public schools have done a decent job, during a period of severe post-war
deprivation, of instilling mathematical common sense in their citizens.
This country, not so much.
“Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same
way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and
brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish. ”—Neal Stephenson
The first five years of emacs are the worst; after that, it's just difficult - Bill Venables
According to Chinese custom, the
number “8” is supposed to bring you luck. But apparently not in the
Airline Hotel in Shenzhen, where traveller Bernhard Ting saw these entries
in the room telephone directory.
"Why should the government be in the business of telling us how we can
defend ourselves? These politicians need to remember that these rights
aren't given to us by them. They come from God. They are God-given rights.
They can't be infringed or limited in any way. What are they going to do:
limit it two or three rounds. Having lots of ammunition is critical,
especially if the police are not around and you need to be able to defend
yourself against mobs." —Erich Pratt, director of communications for Gun
Owners of America, interviewed after a Tucson man shot 19
people in less than a minute and was subdued before he was able to
start the second round. Nobody took advantage of Arizona's liberal gun laws
to defend themselves in the way Mr. Pratt envisioned.
“The public is being sold a big lie — that our problems owe to unions
and the size of government and not to fraud and deregulation and vast
concentration of wealth. Obama’s failure is that he won’t challenge
this Republican narrative, and give people a story that helps them connect
the dots and understand where we’re going.” —Robert
Reich, Professor of Economics at Berkeley and former Secretary of
Labor
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by
definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament]: 'Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion
of ideas that could provoke such a question."—Charles
Babbage
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
”—Daniel Patrick Moinyhan
“Since his arrival in August 2008, Whitmore guided the SJSU community
through two challenging fiscal years, and appointed the university's first
vice president for information technology and first director of
sustainability. Whitmore also appointed Provost and Vice President for
Academic Affairs Gerry Selter, who oversees the university's largest
division, with over 1,800 faculty members.”—From the press release
announcing his resignation after two years of inaction and listing the
totality of his “achievements”. Just imagine how much less challenging
the fiscal years would have been without paying the salaries for all these
administrators.
“Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to
vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this
country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you
made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not
bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but
we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”—Barack Obama,
discussing why the Democrats should vote for the health care bill.
“But former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the
Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform.
Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern
times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon
Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of
civil rights legislation in the 1960s.”—Washington Post 2010-03-21
Now fabrications about “death panels” and oxymoronic claims that
“government needs to take its hands off medicare” flow freely on the
internet, driving thousands of zombielike protesters to Washington to argue
that access to health care will undermine their fundamental freedom
to have their insurance canceled if they get sick. — Lawrence
Krauss, Scientific American December 2009
“Graphs have a liberal bias.”—An anonymous blog comment regarding
this graph:
“When the banks did well, their employees were paid well. When the
banks did poorly, their employees were paid well. And when the banks did
very poorly, they were bailed out by taxpayers and their employees were
still paid well.”—Mario Cuomo, New York State Attorney General, in his
report
on compensation in the banking industry.
“The incumbent will work closely with the President on developing an
on-going, all-encompassing and coordinated sustainability infrastructure
that promotes multidisciplinary collaboration amongst all university
constituents and community partners.” From SJSU President John Whitmore's
job announcement for the Faculty-in-Residence for Sustainability position
within the Office of the President. Students are turned away and the
campus infrastructure crumbles, but the adminstration is too busy to notice
as it merrily grows its ranks.
"Let me start off by saying that in 2000 I said, 'Vote for me. I'm an
agent of change.' In 2004, I said, 'I'm not interested in change—I want
to continue as president.' Every candidate has got to say 'change.' That's
what the American people expect." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.,
March 5, 2008
“ ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct
answer is, he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a
Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there
something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no.
That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old
Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”—Colin
Powell, 2008-10-19
New York Times 2008-10-24
“I’m grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent Capital for pointing out that
the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Palin becoming president
if the Republican ticket wins the election is about 1 in 6 or 7. That’s
the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or
being delayed on two consecutive flights into Newark airport.”—Roger
Cohen, New
York Times 2008-10-02.Actually, I think that Newark is doing pretty
well.
“That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re
ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers
looking to bail out. But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who
are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up
our economy. Helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation too,
shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health
care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany
tax reductions and tax relief for Americans and trade—we’ve got to see
trade as opportunity, not as competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs
being created in the trade sector today—we’ve got to look at that as
more opportunity.”—Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, responding
to the question whether the $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial
system is a good idea. U.S. News and World Report columnist Robert
Schlesinger called the statement a “talking points machine gone out of
control.”
“I think I might be able to explain some of Sarah Palin's appeal. She's
the "American Idol" candidate. Consider. What defines an "American Idol"
finalist? They're good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny
personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they're darned
near the real thing. There's a reason "American Idol" gets such high
ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey,
that could be me up there on that show!”—Roger Ebert,
Sun-Times Movie Critic
“GNU Emacs is getting all the superdelegates. That warmonger VIM is
sitting back and laughing at us. But XEmacs just won't quit!”—Steve
Yegge, blogging
on Emacs vs. XEmacs.
“Make English America's offical
[sic] language”. A protester in Houston. Right on...and vote this
clown off the island.
"No laws were broken."—University of California spokeswoman Marie
Felde. "She did not receive anything special."—UC spokesman Paul
Schwartz—both are defending the cash-strapped campus' decision to pay
police chief Victoria Harrison (who is 54 years old) a $2.1 million
retirement package and hire her back for $194,000 per year. What about
the law of common decency?
“When you have a big, significant businessman like myself, why
wouldn’t you want to help move things along? What else would they do?
They waste so much time with legislation.”—Donald R. Diamond, an
Arizona real estate developer, discussing Senator McCain's efforts on his
behalf that made him earn
millions of dollars.
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use
regular expressions.' Now they have two problems."— Jamie
Zawinski
"Writing code has a place in the human hierarchy worth somewhere above
grave robbing and beneath managing." — Gerald Weinberg
“Our competitiveness as a nation in coming decades will be determined
not only by our financial accounts but also by our intellectual accounts.
In that respect, we’re at a disadvantage, particularly vis-à-vis East
Asia with its focus on education. From Singapore to Japan, politicians
pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because
intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States,
almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less
worldly and erudite than they are”—Nicholas D.
Kristof. Here is one example of quintessentially American
anti-intellectualism, reported by Dan
Mitchell: The city of Sebastopol, Calif., was all set to offer
free wireless Internet service. Then last week the City Council rejected
the idea after several residents complained that the radio waves pose a
health hazard. “I have had health challenges, and my body cannot
handle Wi-Fi,” one resident was quoted as saying. “It gives me
headaches and makes me very sick.” Why give free access to
information, just so that some punk kid can do their science homework? Let
the Koreans do that.
“We know exactly how you feel.” Caption in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The picture shows Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili listening to
President Bush at the NATO Summit in Bucharest.
“On March 20 there were 19 public seats -- 325 fewer than required
under the 1985 formula”—John King, San Francisco Chronicle. San
Francisco developers must include public spaces in their projects. Some are
very pleasant, others a slap in the public face. If you live in SF, check
out this
and this site.
“How could a 6 000-page document be fast-tracked?”—The first entry
on ISO's FAQ about
ISO 29500. The answer contains this memorable sentence: “It should be
noted that it is not unusual for IT standards to run to several hundred, or
even several thousand pages.” That may be true, but those don't get
fast-tracked. Look at this graph by Rob
Weir showing the lengths of ECMA fast-tracked standards. Can you spot
the outlier?
When an organization starts dishing out bullshit like this, you know
that they know that they have lost all credibility.
"I think ISO/IEC 26300 (ODF 1.0) can be compared to a neat house built on
good foundations which is not finished; 29500 (OOXML) is a baroque
cliffside castle replete with toppling towers, secret passages and ghosts:
it is all too finished." — Alex Brown, head of the ISO work
group responsible for OOXML
“Open XML is already widely available and is being used by Apple and
Novell. It is in the Palm operating system, and in the Java and Linux
operating environments.” Tom Robertson, Microsoft’s general manager for
interoperability and standards, on Office Open XML, as quoted in the New
York Times on 2007-09-05. If quoted correctly, this is a baldfaced lie.
There is currently no Java or Linux product or library that comes close to
reading or writing OOXML. Clearly it is not “in the Palm operating
system”. When a company dishes out bullshit like that, you know that they
know that they have lost all credibility.
"If a proposal with this low of a quality level is approved as-is, then
by what criteria can we disapprove of any proposal in the future?" -- IBM's
published comment on the proposed ISO standard for OOXML,
which, in 6000+ pages, sets a new low for a standards document, as
explained here,
here,
and here.
This table, due to Rob
Weir, shows Microsoft's engineering genius at work. To the untrained
eye, OOXML appears to be the result of mediocre coders going to town with
half-baked ideas. However, it actually demonstrates Microsoft's ability
to innovate. Contrast this with ODF pathetically settling for boring
consistency. Also note that OOXML is firm in the knowledge that there is
only one true text orientation. If left-to-right text was good enough for
Jesus, it is good enough for ISO. Once again, ODF's politically correct
waffling ("end") is truly pathetic.
“After 10 full years inside the GOP, 90 days among honest criminals
wasn't really any great ordeal.”—Allen Raymond, who ran dirty tricks
operations for the Republican party. He served jail time for running a
phone bank that made calls, purportedly on behalf of the Democratic
candidate, that were designed to anger voters.
“Audiences rarely complain about too little embellishment but are
easily distracted and offended by too much.” — Robert Gaskins, the
inventor of PowerPoint, CACM
December 2007
“So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in
demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin
again.” — Francis Bacon. That is how I feel about debugging a
computer program.
“The researchers also know from their surveys that the happiest of
happy Americans are Republicans, social butterflies, and bigots.”—Sue
M. Halpern, reviewing books
about happiness. That puts McGovern's strategy in perspective.
“McGovern is often blamed for taking a Democratic Party that
represented the working man and refashioning it into a party of blacks,
women, gays, environmentalists, college professors, criminals, movie stars,
software engineers and personal-injury lawyers.” — Timothy Noah, in a
New York Times book review of Bruce Miroff. The Liberals' Moment, The
McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party.
On the face of it, that strategy doesn't sound all that stupid. Don't
blacks and women easily outnumber non-black men? But what do I know—I am
both a college professor and a software engineer.
“Creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any
circumstance. Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect because our
society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people
do. They die first.” -- John Tanner, chief of the civil rights division
of the Bush Justice Department, arguing that minority voters were not
widely disenfranchised by laws requiring photo identification because many
members of minorities died before reaching old age.
Why is this man smiling?
This is Charlie Reed, the chancellor of the California State University
system, whom the trustees gave a generous salary raise, from $377,000 to
$421,500. The principal “achievements” of his “leadership”? Student
fees have doubled in 5 years, the campuses are more overcrowded and
dilapidated than ever, and he engaged in a long and brutish fight over
faculty salaries (average: $71,159 per year) that he only settled after an
administrative law judge agreed with all faculty arguments. Of course,
the fish rots from the head, and one may well wonder why the
governor (annual salary: $206,500) doesn't appoint a better set of
trustees.
"They are using public money and playing with it like it's monopoly
money," --State Senator Jackie Speier about the decision of California
State University to hire former chancellor Barry Munitz to teach one course
per year in the English department at a salary of $163,776, far more than
any other CSU professor.
“I have never heard them basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil
supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive.”—Alan
Greenspan, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank
“What this ruling will do is send a message to companies that if they
establish a good market position with a successful product, they will be
forced in Europe to essentially give up that product to their
competitors”—Robert Kramer, a vice president of public policy for
the CompTIA trade organization. Microsoft was held to violate European
law by failing to disclose file server communications protocols and by
interfering with a competitive market for music players.
"Let's have a moment of silence for all those Americans who are stuck in
traffic on their way to the gym to ride the stationary bicycle." -- Earl
Blumenauer, Oregon Congressman
"After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful
distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his
position and I accept his decision," George Bush, 2007-08-7, from Texas,
where he is vacationing.
"28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433
taxpayers, saving them almost $1.9 million each...The nearly 90 percent of
Americans who make less than $100,000 a year saved on average $318
each on their investments. They collected 5.3 percent of the total
savings from reduced tax rates on investment income."—New York
Times, 2007-08-22, explaining why you don't feel richer after the
recent frenzy of tax cutting.
"So...what does the F12 button do? Does it do anything? Is it a joke
button". — Jon Stewart, interviewing
Bill Gates on the Daily Show. Mr. Gates replied: "I'd stay away from it
if I were you."
“If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly
winning.”—Billionaire Warren
Buffet, opposing obscene tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
“Ledbetter should have filed an E.E.O.C. charge within 180 days after
each allegedly discriminatory pay decision was made and communicated to
her.”—Justice Samuel Alito, ruling against Lilly M. Ledbetter in her
pay discrimination suit with Goodyear Tire. Apparently, this man had never
held down a job.
"Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next
American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months
while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives."—Cindy
Sheehan, Memorial Day 2007
"Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they
sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of
violence on TV every night ... And one thing we want during this war on
terror is for people to feel like their life's moving on."—George Bush,
responding to Jim Lehrer's question why he hadn't asked Americans to
sacrifice anything for the war.
"If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you
need to intervene here, you don't say, 'I read a science
fiction novel that says it's not a problem.' You take action." Al
Gore, responding to a challenge of his testimony on global warming by Rep.
Joe Barton, R-Texas.
“It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of
reason as to administer medication to the dead.”—Thomas Jefferson,
anticipating Fox
News.
“Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the
Earth is warming because of man-made problems?”—National Journal
asked this question to 113 members of Congress. If the results are
representative of the political parties as a whole, they are truly
disturbing. 95% of Democrats and 13% of Republicans agreed with the
scientific consensus. A country is in big trouble when it has a political
party representing about half of the population that is fundamentally
disassociated from the scientific process.
"The operation itself —
the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for
enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding
of Iraq — is costing more than $300 million a day"—David
Leonhart, comparing the annual cost of the Iraq war with the annual
cost of unfunded domestic programs, such as expanding preschool.
“More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with
sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees. So, if we want
to be the massage capital of the world, we're well on our way”—Jeffrey
Immelt, CEO of General Electric
“To be honest, I think it's a little delusional.” — Rep. Trent
Skaggs, a member of the Missouri House Special Committee on Immigration
Reform, explaining why he refused to sign the committee report. The report
states that “30 years of abortion and expanding liberal social
welfare policies have produced a shortage of workers.”
"Public companies
spend 10% of their earnings to compensate their top 5 executives." -- Clara
Jeffrey
“The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a
market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm
personal gesture by the individual to himself.” —John Kenneth
Galbraith
"There are two options for the escapee -- Macintosh and Linux. I like the
Mac. OS X is an addictive shiny thing, the hardware is toothsome and if you
can afford to join its gated enclave the lawns are well-mown, the security
guys courteous and your fellow inmates stylish and bright. But I can't
afford it. Truth to tell, I get a little scared by the evangelical chaps on
the corner." -- Rupert
Goodwins, contemplating his choices after he realized that he no longer
wanted to be a "battery hen" that is kept in a smelly cage to "lay golden
licensing fees".
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard Aiken
"It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline,
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self
critical?" -- Alan
Perlis
"Time for an oil change and lip
service" -- Caption in the San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 2006.
After asking President Bush for a Federal Trade Commission
investigation into oil prices, House Speaker Dennis Hastert left a press
conference in the hydrogen-powered car at left, then stopped, got out and
climbed into an SUV.
"And then to the rarest treasure, Golden Gate Park on a car-free Sunday
morning, the air wet and clean, the meadows green with the promise of
spring. Not a single automobile: The silence is deafening, you can actually
hear the branches dripping moisture, squirrels scrambling through the
underbrush -- and the birds! Hundreds of redbreasted robins bobbing across
the lawns, now that there are no cars to frighten them. On Stanyan, the
families are renting bikes and heading into the winding trails. Slowly it
dawns on them that they can use the main drive and the roads. For once the
world does not belong to the automobile. The bicycle is king again and the
rider may go where fancy dictates without looking nervously over his
shoulder. You are even allowed, for a few unrealistic minutes, to reflect
on how pleasant life would be if the car were banned from San Francisco."
-- Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, January 28, 1973
"We took this photo
of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much
more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day
the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and
shouts about it - in part becase many journalists are opposed to the U.S.
effort to fight terrorism." -- From the "truth tour" section of the
campaign web site of Howard Kaloogian, the former GOP assemblyman running
for the seat vacated by disgraced 50th Congressional District Rep. Randy
Cunningham. The picture was actually taken in Istanbul, Turkey.
"Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the
Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on
the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." --Jamie Raskin,
professor of Constitutional Law at American University's Washington College
of Law, in his testimony in the Maryland State Senate on the
constitutionality of proposed anti-gay legislation. He responded to Senator
Nancy Jacobs's question: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only
between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"
"One of the bureau's highest domestic terrorism priorities is
prosecuting people who commit crimes in the name of animal rights or the
environment."--Robert S. Mueller III, FBI director, on the indictment of
members of two environmental groupswhose actions caused substantial
property damage, expanding the reach of the "terrorism" label well
beyond "Friends of Osama". (January 11, 2006)
"This is basically what we do. This is what homeland security is all
about."--Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, about the
secret FBI monitoring of radiation levels at Islamic mosques, businesses
and homes. (No suspicious radiation levels have been found.)
"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact
that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point
should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative
hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to
misrepresent well-established scientific propositions." -- Judge John E.
Jones III, a Republican appointed by Bush Jr., in his decision that was
unconstitutional for the Dover, PA school district to present intelligent
design as a scientific alternative to evolution in high school biology
courses
"Other than what I expressed, that's--scientists, a lot of
scientists--don't ask me the names, I can't tell you where it came from. A
lot of scientists believe that back through time, something, molecules,
amoeba, whatever, evolved into the complexities of life we have
now."--William Buckingham, curriculum chair of the Dover, PA school
board and proponent of teaching "intelligent design" in the schools under
his tutelage, responding in a court deposition to the question: "Do you
have an understanding, in very simple terms, of what 'intelligent design'
stands for?"
"Fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian."--The biologist J. B. S. Haldane,
when asked what might disprove evolution. The scientifically astute reader
will appreciate that this is just one of many possible answers. What, on
the other hand, might disprove "intelligent design" to the satisfaction of
its proponents?
"Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution
in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random
variation and natural selection - is not. . . . Scientific theories that
try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and
necessity' are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an
abdication of human intelligence." -- Christoph
Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of
Vienna.
In 2000, 17 percent of university bachelor degrees in the U.S. were in
science and engineering compared with a world average of 27 percent and 52
percent in China. -- from a study
written by Richard Freeman at the National Bureau of Economic
Research
"The most intelligent thing the U.S. government can do is to beef up the
education system...The K-12 system does a good job of weeding out any
students interested in math and science. We prepare them to be lawyers and
consultants instead." -- Craig
Barrett, Intel's chief executive officer,October 2003
"During the past six years, when 35,000 additional students enrolled at
CSU [California State University] campuses, full-time faculty grew by just
1 percent, while CSU managers and administrators jumped by 30 percent.
These numbers will surprise no one who teaches undergraduates in the United
States. Assistant deans and vice chancellors sprout like weeds in
academic life." -- San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 2001 "I am pleased to announce that on September 7, Jennifer C. Cauble
joined us as the first-ever associate vice president for university
marketing and communications. In this newly created position, Jennifer will
direct the university's Office of Marketing and Communications, formerly
known as the Office of Communications and Public Affairs." --Robert Ashton, Vice President, University Advancement Division, San Jose
State University, September 21, 2005.
"At the recommendation of the search committee and following a regional
search, I a pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Bradley Davis as the
Assistant Associate Vice President for Faculty Affairs." — Joan
Merdinger, Associate Vice President for Faculty Affairs, San Jose State
University, September 15, 2006, announcing the appointment of yet another
junior birdman with a vice presidential title.
"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you
could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in
this country, and your crime rate would go down."--William Bennett,
former secretary of education, on his radio show "Morning in
America".
"Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not
a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory
command. Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our
success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our
troops are armed."--U.S. District Judge Alvin
K. Hellerstein, rejecting government arguments that releasing war
images would provoke terrorists and incite violence against U.S. troops in
Iraq.
"I had been programming in assembler for more than 5 years before I
started programming in C. I remember that my first C program looked very
much like assembler
void function() {
asm { // all code here :) } }"
A programmer on yet
another Java forum thread about programmers who can't truly appreciate
object orientation because of their C background. I thought this would have
killed the discussion, but it went on for another 110 postings.
"In the next two months, it would be better if we just do the
fundraising"--California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, telling the
Republican National Committee to hold
their fundraising after the 2005 "special election" to avoid "donor
fatigue". In that special election, held at considerable expense to the
taxpayer, fatigued donors, and Mr. Schwarzenegger's own pocket book,
Californians get to vote on four issues that are so important that they
can't wait for the next regular election. (1) Extend from two to five years
the time it takes for school teachers to get tenure (2) Have retired judges
redraw voting districts (3) Allow the governor to take money from schools,
local governments, and state employees in a "fiscal emergency" and (4)
Require unions to get written permission from members for every political
expenditure. It is a true blessing to live in a state that has no
bigger problems than these.
"When a guy tries to chop your arm off and then offers to shake your
hand, it's hard to be forgiving." Ben Tulchin, a Democratic
pollster, on the reluctance of democrats to collaborate with Governor
Schwarzenegger, all of whose propositions lost in the special
election.
"I don't think he wanted to see the world. He wasn't that kind of mouse.
But he's seeing it now, whether he wanted to or not.''--Caroline
Nielsen, 11-year old owner of a stuffed plush mouse that escaped
after being tied to a helium ballon
"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in
Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the
people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is
working very well for them." Barbara Bush, in a BBC interview, on
hurricane Katrina refugees
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." --
George W. Bush. Apparently the National Geographic did, in this October
2004 article: "The chances of such a storm hitting New
Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing.
Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this
century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying
coasts at greater risk."
"A new subway line will be completed to my neighborhood later this year,
and I'm hoping many other people will ride it so that the traffic
will get better. I'll keep driving my car, though."--Yu
Quiang, a salesman living in a Shanghai suburb, explaining why he is
confident that the government will improve the traffic situation.
In 2006, just 123 of the nation's 2.2 million farms will be subject to
estate tax. -- from a study by
the Congressional Budget Office, confirming that eliminating the estate tax
is a gift to the hyper-rich and, contrary to President Bush's
claims, has nothing to do with the "destruction of family farms".
"Since 1980, U.S.
government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of
working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism
has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich
to bankruptcy 'reform' that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic
policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron
era."--Paul Krugman in a New York Times editorial
"I've never had that happen to me before. It's supposedly random. My
registration was expired because I had been out of town, and it was my
first day back. They wouldn't let me go in [to the Midtown Tunnel which
connects the New York City borough of Queens with Manhattan]. But he said
to take the bridge instead. And I didn't understand that logic. If
you're a suspect, don't take the tunnel, take the bridge?" Actress
Natalie Portman, who was stopped by New York police recently, and has
blamed her newly shaved head on raising suspicions with officers.
"The war in Iraq was sold to the American public the way a cheap car
salesman sells a lemon. Dick Cheney assured the nation that Americans
in Iraq would be 'greeted as liberators.' Kenneth Adelman of the Pentagon's
Defense Policy Board said the war would be a 'cakewalk.' And Donald
Rumsfeld said on National Public Radio: 'I can't say if the use of force
would last five
days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last
any longer than that.'"--Bob Herbert in a New York Times editorial
"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons
of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq
had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims,
that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world,
contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and
American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not
be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
"--British MP George Galloway, in U.S. Senate
testimony, May 2005, speculating on why U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman
falselyaccused him of owning a company that profited from oil
trades with Iraq.
"There are several lessons to be learned from the Rhind papyrus. The
most obvious is that instruction in mathematics has changed hardly at all
since the subject was discovered. Teachers have been passing mathematics on
to the next generation in much the same way over the centuries: problem,
solution, practice. As all the teachers of mathematics know, the method
does not always work, but if there is a better way, no one has found it in
four thousand years of looking." -- Underwood Dudley, 2002, in a book review of the
world's first mathematics textbook
"Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet. Here's an example.
Go to Amazon.com. Buy a book without using SSL. Watch the total lack of
chaos." -- Bruce Schneier, 2005, when asked whether
disclosure of an algorithm to crack SSL would create chaos on the
internet.
"It is possible to give an illusion of knowledge by teaching the
technical words which someone uses in a field (which sound unusual to
ordinary ears) without at the same time teaching any ideas or facts using
these words." -- Richard Feynman, 1965, in an article about elementary
school mathematics textbooks.
"You know, the only trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they're too
damn greedy. " -- Herbert Hoover,
31st President of the USA
"We don't want to feed the monster. We want to feed the private
sector, and we want to starve the public sector." -- California
governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sacramento Bee, January 19, 2005. Mr.
Schwarzenegger is himself fed by the private sector, to the tune of $28
million in his first year in office, twice the amount raised by his
much-maligned predecessor, Gray Davis.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. "--Max Planck,
as cited by Michael
Kölling in the SIGCSE 2005 "Objects First has Failed" debate.
"These students are very smart. They are smart enough to work the system
and to get through high school without doing the work." -- Betsy
Gilliland, coordinator of the freshman writing program at San Jose State
University, commenting on high school students who admit to never reading
novels and relying on Cliff notes and TV to pass their English
classes
"If you look closely, you'll see the communist menace has
infiltrated governments everywhere. Ever notice those free photons as you
walk the city at night? Ever think about the poor streetlamp companies, run
out of business because municipalities deigned to do completely what
private industry would do only incompletely? Or think about the scandal of
public roads: How many tollbooth workers have lost their jobs because we no
longer fund all roads through private enterprise? Municipal buses compete
with private taxis. City police departments hamper the growth at
Pinkerton's. It's a national scandal." -- Stanford law professor
Lawrence Lessig, congratulating
the Pennsylvania State government for outlawing public funding of
WiFi
"Children across our country don't have health care. We're the richest
country on the face of the planet, the only industrialized nation in the
world not to do it." -- John Kerry.
"If every family in America signed up, it would cost the federal
government $5 trillion over 10 years. It's an empty promise. It's called
bait-and-switch." -- George Bush. Both
statements are from the third presidential debate. $5 trillion over 10
years is about $1,700 per person per year. The following is from the Oct.
14 San Francisco Chronicle:
Country
Health expenditure per person per year
Health expenditure as %age of GDP
Description of Health Care System
France
$2,567
9.6
Universal care funded through
mandatory health insurance provided by Social Security, with
private supplemental coverage filling gaps.
Germany
$2,820
10.8
All individuals are enrolled in
government-approved health insurance plans partly financed by
employer and employee contributions, although high- income workers
may buy private insurance instead.
Japan
$2,131
8
A dual system in which workers
enroll in insurance programs through their jobs, while all others
join Japan's national health insurance plan.
U.K.
$1,989
7.6
A publicly funded National Health
Service provides free care, with the option of private insurance
for those wanting treatment outside the state system.
U.S.
$4,887
13.9
Federal and state governments pay
most of the cost of care for seniors and the poor, with employer or
individually financed insurance available for others. About 45
million people lack coverage.
"I will set a different tone. I will restore civility and respect to our
national politics. ... I will work with Republicans and reach out to
Democrats ... I will treat the other party with respect, and when we make
progress, I will share the credit. ... I will unite our nation, not divide
it. I will bring Americans together." -- George W. Bush. More about how Bush operates...
"We need to do something about these frivolous lawsuits that are running
up the cost of your health care and running good docs out of business.
We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of
business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across
this country."--George W. Bush, President
of the United States of America, commenting on the rising cost of health
care.
"As a kid, I saw the Socialist
country that Austria became after the Soviets left" -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California,
speaking at the 2004 Republican convention about his youth.
According to the CIA world
book, Austria has a "well-developed market economy", 2003
unemployment rate of 4.3% (United States: 6.2%), with 3.9% of the
population below the poverty line (United States: 12%).
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we." -- President George
W. Bush, at a signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill,
August 2004
"You can't impose democracy. That in itself is an oxymoron." -- Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State in the
Clinton Administration, The Boston Globe, January 18, 2004
"It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to
stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high
TCO, our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties."
-- Microsoft C++ General Manager Aaron
Contorer in a 1997 memo to Bill Gates
``If San Jose State threw out Division I football, I'd write them out of
my will, never step foot on the campus again and resign all the boards I'm
on because they would become just another
mediocre state university.'' Ed
Mosher, class of 1952, a donor who serves on several university
committees.
"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not
vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the
White House because God put him there for a time such as this." —Lt. General William G. Boykin, Deputy
Undersecretary of Defense, The New York Times , October 17, 2003
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day
it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful
mind on something like that?"—Barbara Bush on 'Good Morning America', New
York Times , January 13, 2003
``The first time I hosted the Oscars 13 years ago, things were different
from today: Bush was president, the economy was tanking and we'd just
finished a war with Iraq.''--Billy
Crystal, hosting the 2004 Oscars
"Mr. Speaker, yesterday against the roar of Japanese cannon in Hawaii our
American people heard a trumpet call; a call to unity; a call to courage; a
call to determination once and for all to wipe off of the earth this
accursed monster of tyranny and slavery which is casting its black shadow
over the hearts and homes of every land." -- Representative Charles A. Eaton, Republican
of New Jersey, 1941
"And if we don't go at Iraq, that our effort in the war on terrorism
dwindles down into an intelligence operation. We go at Iraq and it says to
countries that support terrorists, there remain six in the world that are
as our definition state sponsors of terrorists, you say to those countries:
we are serious about terrorism, we're serious about you not supporting
terrorism on your own soil." -- Senator
Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, 2002.
"I feel I did exactly what I was supposed to
do" -- San Jose police
office Chad Marshall, testifying how he felt threatened by Bich Cau Thi Tran,
4-foot-9 and 98 pounds,
holding a vegetable peeler, and promptly shot and killed her.
"During its investigation, the board was surprised to receive
presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The
board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an
illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at
NASA." -- From the report of the
independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster.
"It's always a great mystery to me why Freud shows up on these 'great
people with great ideas' lists. Not a single one of Freud's ideas have led
to a scientific discovery. They aren't scientific ideas. They may be good
ideas for bad novels, but they were bad ideas for good science" -- James McGaugh, Director of UC Irvine's Center
for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
"As the leading middleweight of the 2003 California State Sumo Series and a serious, well-educated,
nonpartisan candidate for governor, I will attack the 800 lb. gorilla of
big government." -- Kurt E. "Tachikaze"
Rightmyer, Candidate for Governor of California
"Bill Prady is an award-winning television comedy writer and producer who
will bring the skills he's learned creating sitcom episodes to Sacramento.
If elected, he pledges to solve all the state's problems in twenty-two
minutes and forty-four seconds with two commercial breaks and a hug at the
end. -- Bill Prady, Candidate for
Governor of California
"Dear Voters, Please vote for me, thus breaking the Seventh Seal and
incurring Armageddon" -- Trek Thunder
Kelly, Candidate for Governor of California
These are all from the official voter information guide. Too
bad you can only vote for one!
"Finally, a candidate who can explain the Bush administration's
positions on civil liberties in the original German." -- TV commentator Bill Maher, on Arnold
Schwarzenegger's candidacy for governor of California
"What is an impeachable offense?
Lying about Sex? No! Lying to Wage War? Yes!" -- From the marquee of the Grand Lake movie
theater, Oakland, CA, July 2003
"Feeling safe is not the same thing is being safe." -- John Gilmore, explaining the rationale behind
his challenge to the ID
requirement at airport checkin
"We don't talk about work/life balance. We educate people on how to enjoy
their lives and make Microsoft part of their lives" --Steve Harvey, HR Manager at Microsoft UK, May
2003
"The California lottery has done more to hurt public education than
almost anything" -- Jack O'Connell,
California Superintendent of Public Education, May 2003, complaining about
the public perception that lottery revenues fund much of public education.
In the 2001/02 school year, the state spent $7,119 per student. The
lottery portion was $135.
"In liberating Iraq, [the US] worked very hard to protect infrastructure
in Iraq and to preserve the valued resources of Iraq for the people of
Iraq." -- White House spokeswoman Claire
Buchan, April 2003, responding to the resignation of three members of the
White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee over the looting of
Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities. Perhaps the valued
resource she had in mind was oil
"The average American worker earns only about $40,000 per year; why does
the administration, even on its own estimates, need to offer $500,000 in
tax cuts for each job created? If it's all about jobs, wouldn't it be far
cheaper just to have the government hire people?" -- New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, April
2003, analyzing the {lie/myth/hope} that the Bush administration's $726
billion tax cut proposal will create 1.4 million jobs
"The INS is moving fast". -- Attorney
Alex Park, commenting on the uncharacteristic efficiency with which the
immigration service is deporting 275 immigrants whose green cards were
processed by a corrupt INS official, Leland Sustaire who accepted over
$500,000 in bribes from immigration consultants. In an odd reversal
of what would commonly be perceived as justice, Mr. Sustaire avoided jail time by naming the
immigrants who apparently had no idea that their green cards were processed
illegally.
"I don't know about the legality, but whether a third party could keep
feature parity with Visual Studio is a concern. It's an insurmountable
problem for the Mono Project. The
chance that another company could reach feature parity and stay current
with Microsoft's Visual Studio platform is extremely small. The CLI [common
language interface] and C# is managed by ECMA, but the bulk of the value of the .Net framework is
Windows Forms and that is not part of the standard." -- Thom Robbins, a senior technology specialist
for Microsoft, during a panel at Web Services Edge East, March 2003,
shedding light on Microsoft's interaction with standards bodies.
"No president has taken more flak over his language than George W. Bush
-- not Eisenhower, not even Harding. That's understandable enough; Bush's
malaprops can make him sound like someone who learned the language over
a bad cell phone connection." -- Stanford linguist Geoff
Nunberg
[New houses] "are so vast and magnificent that their
inhabitants seem to be only vermin that infest them." -- Henry David
Thoreau, 1854, anticipating monster homes and starter castles.
"There's no equivalent to the versatility of Microsoft Word, Excel and
PowerPoint. Toolbars and menus customize themselves to the way I work. I
wouldn't know how to function without the Track Changes and Comments
features of Word." -- An enthusiastic "convert" who gave up the
Macintosh for Windows XP. Microsoft wanted to counter the popular "switch" ads from
Apple ("I used to think it was my fault that Windows doesn't work...").
Faced with the challenge of locating a real person who made the switch in
the other direction, they instead hired a freelance writer to pose as
convert. ("Apple's switchers tend to be plain spoken. By contrast,
Microsoft's convert sounds a bit like Microsoft's own marketing
department." -- News.com)
The Associated Press found the writer by looking at the hidden information
in the Word document linked to the web ad. Investigative reporters wouldn't
know how to function without the Metadata
feature of Word...
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design:
One way is to make it so simple there are obviously no deficiencies, and
the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies." -- Tony Hoare, Turing Award Lecture 1980
"Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other
civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The
technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab
mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of
self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of
tolerance and civic leadership. And perhaps we can learn a lesson from his
example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not
inheritance." -- HP CEO Carly Fiorina, in a speech on technology
and business, anticipating Walter Hewlett's proxy
fight. Walter Hewlett thought that HP should focus on the printer
business and not low-margin PCs. Maybe he never had to hook up a HP printer
and deal with the technobabble
of the HP tech "support".
"Allen zu gefallen ist unmöglich" (To be liked by everyone is
impossible) -- Inscription on the side panels of the entrance door to
the Schiffergesellschaft
(Guild of the Blue Water Captains) in Lübeck
“We buy junk and sell antiques. Some fools buy, some fools sell.” Truth
in advertising, from the Far Eastern
Economics ReviewTravellers' Tales column
"We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However, when you start from
zero, it takes a long while." -- Stephen Yeo, a marketing director at
terminal manufacturer Wyse, explaining his company's underwhelming
success
"No wonder I think they're evil." -- President George W. Bush,
defending his "axis of evil" statement, upon learning that North Korea's
Peace Museum displays two axes used to kill American soldiers in the
Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas in 1976.
Bruce Fordyce, 10-time winner of the grueling Comrades Marathon in South
Africa, was once asked how he could possibly beat 15,000 other competitors
year after year. He replied that he only ever planned to beat one
man-–the one who came second.
"If we really wanted to accomplish something, we shouldn't be teaching
our allies how to use PowerPoint. We should give it to the Iraqis. We'd
never have to worry about them again." -- Peter Feaver, a military
expert at Duke University, wondering if the U.S. military is misusing the
presentation software.
"The reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and
said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions
of machines.", Bill Gates, claiming--with apparent ignorance of
computing history--Microsoft's significance in the open source
movement
"Yes, Mr. Gates, recently you have helped open source succeed -- in much
the same way Osama bin Laden has helped beef up airport security lately. ",
Eric Raymond, author of the open source manifesto "The Cathedral and the
Bazaar", responding to Mr. Gates' claim.
"More than anything else, [Windows] XP reminds me of a tourist trap. You
arrive in a foreign city, and a handsome stranger walks up to you and says
he will show you around the city. He offers to take you to the very best
shops and restaurants. But you soon realize that he is taking you only to
places that are owned by his relatives or by someone who gives him a
kickback." , Tom Regan, Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
“There is one overriding factor that makes Linux virtually unassailable
by all closed-source competition: Your investment in Linux is protected by
the best software warranty on earth, the GNU General Public License.” --
Nicholas Petrerley, InfoWorld
“Some of the most successful OSS [open source software] technology is
licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that
any software that incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL
will itself become subject to the GPL. . . .This viral aspect of the GPL .
. . fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software
sector”—Craig Mundie, Microsoft Senior Vice President , in a speech
at NYU on May 3, 2001, expressing his chagrin that Microsoft doesn't
make a dime when someone uses free software.
“[Mundie] wants you to forget about all the work done by people like
Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other people who
have done a lot more for humanity than most companies have ever done. And
those people did it for the love of the art, not for some petty
'intellectual property rights'”.—from Linus Torvalds'reaction
to Mundie's speech
“The daily life of the cowboy was among the least glamorous of American
occupations. Cowboys were stoic and rarely complained, even when suffering
excruciating pain. When evaluated on this trait, the term cowboy
programmer appears at its most oxymoronic, since no programmer ever
left a complaint unvoiced.”—Bill (Tex) Curtis, in IEEE Software
March/April 2001, pp. 110-112.
“Real Programmers consider 'what you see is what you get' to be just as
bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in Women. No, the Real Programmer
wants a 'you asked for it, you got it' text editor--complicated, cryptic,
powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be
precise.”—From a classic article on Real
Programmers
“My new computer has a truly fascinating feature: Whenever I try to
turn it off, the following message, which I am not making up, appears on
the screen: An exception 0E has occurred at 0028:F000F841 in VxD---.
This was called from 0028:C001D324 in VxD NDIS(01) + 00005AA0. It may be
possible to continue normally. Clearly, this message is not of human
origin.” -- Dave Barry
, explaining why he is a big
fan of technology .
If your computer has the same symptoms, and you found this page through a
search engine, please don't send me email asking for help. I don't
know how to fix this, and can do nothing but share your pain.
“There are no deleted items. To delete an item, right-click on a
message and choose Delete. Do you want Outlook Express to delete some items
for you?” -- Microsoft Outlook Express 5.0, trying to help when a user
inspects a Deleted Items folder that is empty .
More bad user interface design in the Interface
Hall of Shame ...
Are you a vi user? Do you wish you too had an animated assistant to aid
you with the cryptic vi command set, similar to the ever-popular Microsoft
Office paperclip? Check out Joel Ray Holveck's Vigor —a version of vi with an
animated paperclip. It warns you before you embark on dangerous commands
(Are you sure you want to move left?) and just like the real thing, it
won't let go until you click the Ok button. See the screen shots for
more... As Iliad, the author of the User Friendly comic strip told
Joel: "You are a sick, sick person, and I admire that greatly. " More paperclip
jokes...
Japanese office users got a cute office lady, Saeko Sensei, instead of Clippy.
“In America, the guy with the most supreme court votes
wins”—Attorney Mark Levine . Check out his Layman's
guide to the Supreme Court Decision in Bush v. Gore and learn all about
states' rights, equal protection, irreparable harm, the December 12
deadline, the intent of the voter, and courts changing the rules of the
election after the fact.
“Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the
problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many
complexities”—The Supreme Court of the United States, in its Gore
vs. Bush opinion , trying to limit the scope of the “Gore
exception” to the doctrine of states' rights
“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the
votes decide everything”—Josef Stalin, anticipating the Florida vote
count
“The other side talks about being the party of diversity and the party
of inclusion. How do they figure this? This is what I want to know. Unless
they define diversity as two guys at the head of the ticket that are from
two different oil companies.” -- Rob Reiner, actor and director,
discussing the Republican party
“This trial has developed, in the most remarkable manner, the insane
love of speaking among public men...We have been wading knee deep in words,
words, words...and are but little more than half across the turbid stream.
I verily believe that there are fierce impeachers who, if the alternative
of conviction of the President, coupled with their silence; and an
unlimited opportunity to talk, coupled with his certain acquittal, were
before them, would instantly decide to speak.”—James Garfield, then
a U.S. senator, about the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson . (From
William Rehnquist's excellent book “Grand Inquests”, William Morrow
1992)
"Translations are like women. If they are pretty, chances are they won't
be very faithful."--Steven Seymour, interpreter whose misinterpretations
embarrassed President Carter in Poland, 1978
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no
meaning."--Aristoteles Onassis
“My severance package is in shareholders' best
interests.”—Vincent Pluvinage, CEO of Preview Systems on June
12, 2001, commenting to the Wall Street Journal on his $1.7 million
severance package, which includes forgiving a $937,000 loan for company
shares whose value failed to rise under his leadership.
“In public services, we lag behind all the industrialized nations of
the West, preferring that the public money go not to the people but to big
business. The result is a unique society in which we have free
enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.”—Gore
Vidal
A federal judge ruled on January 20, 2000, that it is illegal under the
“Digital Millenium Copyright Act” to make available the source code for
removing DVD protection. It is also illegal to provide a hyperlink to that
source code, even if the code is stored on a server elsewhere. But
apparently it is legal to provide the URL in plain text
—that's protected speech. I can also tell you (but not give you a
hyperlink) how to use a search engine to give you those links (presumably
thereby violating the DMCA). For example, type this into your browser:
google.com/search?q=DeCSS . How about singing the source code? Or
a dramatic reading? Dave Touretsky's gallery
explores these and other options.
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" ("Whereof
one cannot speak thereof one must be silent") -- Ludwig
Wittgenstein , philosopher
"An Associate Professor with a Ph.D. who has completed a six-year
probationary period and received tenure and promotion through the rigorous
peer review process is paid less than a California prison guard with only a
high school diploma and six years of experience. And Governor Wilson
negotiated an additional 12-percent pay increase for prison guards this
year!" -- Terry Jones, President, California Faculty Association,
December 1998
"If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of
discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudoscientific
theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be
seen as the desperate effort to 'normalize' formally the disturbance of a
discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightned claims of its
enunciatory modality." -- Homi K. Bhabha, English Professor at the
University of Chicago, in “The Location of Culture”. This quotation
won second prize in the 1998 Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal
Philosophy and Literature . More bad writing...
"Remote Method Invocation (RMI) enables the programmer to create
distributed JavaTM technology-based to Java technology-based applications".
-- An anonymous tech writer at Sun who wanted to write "Java-to-Java"
but had to conform to the Java trademark usage
requirements
"That's a bit like comparing apples to hand grenades." -- Bill Roth,
Sun's product line manager for Java 2 Enterprise Edition, when asked
whether XML will replace Java
"That's like saying the Titanic owed something to the iceberg". --
Paul Begala, a White House adviser, reacting to a suggestion that
Republican senators owed it to their House colleagues not to dismiss the
Clinton impeachment case.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the Net
and he won't bother you for weeks." -- Anon.
"If he were a swimming instructor, he would row everyone in the middle of
a cold, eel-infested lake, and shove them in. Whoever made it back to shore
would know how to swim. Strangely, I have come to regard that as a good
thing." --A SJSU computer science student in my programming languages
class.
"I'm in your CmpE46 class and I am having trouble trying to download the
program files from your website onto my computer. . . . Could you please
give me detailed instructions (not using the words 'directory', 'files', or
other technological terms) so that I can download these programs." --
A SJSU computer engineering student in my CS1 class
You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know
which end is up. — C. A. R. Hoare
Guy Steele gave a memorable
speech at OOPSLA ninety-eight. Read the speech and you will know why I
need to tell you that a fact or set of facts is said to be memorable
if it is worth keeping in mind. Also check out this
presentation.
if new true friend not protected for explicit private union, break
case and try using this —Nathan
Myers. Remarkably, this sentence is composed entirely of reserved
words of ISO C++.
"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true--I no longer know how to use my
telephone."--Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++
"The cost [of the C standard document] is $130.00 from ANSI . . .the
Annotated ANSI C Standard, with annotations by Herbert Schildt . . . sells
in the U.S. for approximately $40. It has been suggested that the price
differential between this work and the official standard reflects the value
of the annotations." -- The
Usenet C FAQ
Everyone knows that the use of GOTO statements in programming is
considered harmful. The classic INTERCAL
language uses COME FROM, a safe and convenient alternative. There
is also an object-oriented
version , with CLASS and LECTURE keywords. More bad
languages...
Peeling off the No USB sticker from this HP inkjet printer reveals...a working USB port. Why doesn't HP want you to use it? Could it be because then they can't upsell their cloud services?
2020-07-24 Today, the United States had more newly reported Coronavirus cases per capita than all but four countries. More impressively, if one considered each U.S. state a country, the top ten list was made up entirely from U.S. states.
2019-05-29 Uber lets its drivers know that some of their peers actually choose to obey the law. Traffic safety is important, but what's more important for Uber is to preserve the fiction that drivers are independent contractors who choose how to run their business.
This Thanksgiving headline gave me pause. Who felt burned—the bird or the country?
Americans advance a lot of theories for why they have so many more gun deaths. The answer is lying in plain sight.—Max Fisher and Josh Keller, New York Times 2017-11-07.
Johan Slattavik posted this photo on the Facebook site of the Norwegian "Fatherland First" group with a comment "What do people think of that?" Predictably, there were lots of comments about frightening Muslim burqas. Of course, they are bus seats, and frankly, as a San Francisco resident and long-suffering MUNI passenger, I am envious of how clean and comfortable they look.
“Well, I think if you’re an older man, you can generally say you’re not going to need maternity care.”—Press Secretary Sean Spicer, explaining why maternity care is an optional service under the proposed American Health Care Act.
Forty-four years ago, a rapid transit line was first proposed that connects the outerlands (where I live) to downtown San Francisco. “I really can not understand what is the rush.”--David Heller, President, Greater Geary Boulevard Merchants, January 2017. 
Ms. Kardashian spread these statistics on Twitter. Statistics have a liberal bias.
How long does one bag last? 2 cats: 60 days, 3 cats: 45 days, 4 cats: 30 days. This cat doesn't buy it. Shouldn't it be 40 days for 3 cats?
"I alone can fix this".--Donald Trump about the rigged political system in the U.S. In Germany, where we have experience with this kind of thinking, we have a word for it: Größenwahn.
Here is Windows, interrupting a weather forecast with a reminder that now would be an excellent time to upgrade to Windows 10. At least it's not Clippy: “Hi, it looks like you are on live TV!”
Who would Jesus deport?—T-shirt worn at a rally at the gates of the Port Hueneme Naval Base by a supporter of migrant children from Central America. I was glad to see that there are Americans who have a heart and not just empty beer cans to throw at buses filled with children. But shouldn't it be “Whom would Jesus deport?”
“To free up disk space, Outlook
Express can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes”—That's
the message on the dialog box that prevents this museum exhibit from
working. Maybe Windows XP isn't the best choice as an embedded system for
an unattended museum exhibit? (Extra credit if you know what the bubble on
the bottom right says.)
A reader informed me that on a military base all firearms are safely locked away, so that in fact this man wasn't "surrounded by guns". I suppose the military, who presumably knows something about firearms, considers this safer than the alternative.
"We've
seen $900 million in cuts over the last four years. We need to
reach out directly to the people of California with a
simple, creative, flexible logo that symbolizes the university as a whole
and how it affects their lives."— Steve Montiel (2011 salary: $108,016),
media relations director for the office of the UC Berkeley President,
explaining why a university with less funding needs a crappier logo.
According to Chinese custom, the
number “8” is supposed to bring you luck. But apparently not in the
Airline Hotel in Shenzhen, where traveller Bernhard Ting saw these entries
in the room telephone directory.
“Make English America's offical
[sic] language”. A protester in Houston. Right on...and vote this
clown off the island.
“We know exactly how you feel.” Caption in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The picture shows Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili listening to
President Bush at the NATO Summit in Bucharest.
Why is this man smiling?
This is Charlie Reed, the chancellor of the California State University
system, whom the trustees gave a generous salary raise, from $377,000 to
$421,500. The principal “achievements” of his “leadership”? Student
fees have doubled in 5 years, the campuses are more overcrowded and
dilapidated than ever, and he engaged in a long and brutish fight over
faculty salaries (average: $71,159 per year) that he only settled after an
administrative law judge agreed with all faculty arguments. Of course,
the fish rots from the head, and one may well wonder why the
governor (annual salary: $206,500) doesn't appoint a better set of
trustees.
"The operation itself —
the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for
enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding
of Iraq — is costing more than $300 million a day"—David
Leonhart, comparing the annual cost of the Iraq war with the annual
cost of unfunded domestic programs, such as expanding preschool. 
"Public companies
spend 10% of their earnings to compensate their top 5 executives." -- Clara
Jeffrey
"Time for an oil change and lip
service" -- Caption in the San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 2006.
After asking President Bush for a Federal Trade Commission
investigation into oil prices, House Speaker Dennis Hastert left a press
conference in the hydrogen-powered car at left, then stopped, got out and
climbed into an SUV.
"We took this photo
of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much
more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day
the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and
shouts about it - in part becase many journalists are opposed to the U.S.
effort to fight terrorism." -- From the "truth tour" section of the
campaign web site of Howard Kaloogian, the former GOP assemblyman running
for the seat vacated by disgraced 50th Congressional District Rep. Randy
Cunningham. The picture was actually taken in Istanbul, Turkey.
"What is an impeachable offense?
Lying about Sex? No! Lying to Wage War? Yes!" -- From the marquee of the Grand Lake movie
theater, Oakland, CA, July 2003
[New houses] "are so vast and magnificent that their
inhabitants seem to be only vermin that infest them." -- Henry David
Thoreau, 1854, anticipating monster homes and starter castles.
“We buy junk and sell antiques. Some fools buy, some fools sell.” Truth
in advertising, from the Far Eastern
Economics Review Travellers' Tales column
Japanese office users got a cute office lady, Saeko Sensei, instead of Clippy.