QOTD

Some of the right wing blogs are saying that this starts a slippery slope to a single payer system, and the end of the HMO industry as we know it.

God, they’re optimistic.

via mccarty.tim

QOTD

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well-educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.

– from “The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” by Neal Stephenson

QOTD

Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

– Bertrand Russell

QOTD

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.

–Dave Barry

QOTD

Clay tablets were heavy and tended to shatter.
Papyrus crumbled but at least it was flatter.
Parchment was handsome but prone to decay.
Paper with acid will just melt away.
Magnetic disks are erased in a trice.
Something that lasts, really lasts, would be nice.

— David Drake

QOTD

If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.

— Albert Szent-Györgi (1893-1986) U. S. biochemist.

QOTD

“Intuition, like a flash of lightning, lasts only for a second. It generally comes when one is tormented by a difficult decipherment and when one reviews in his mind the fruitless experiments already tried. Suddenly the light breaks through and one finds after a few minutes what previous days of labor were unable to reveal”

–’Cryptonomicon’, Neal Stephenson