“Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he’s not only Prime Minister, he’s not only a brilliant military commander, he’s not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he’s also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he’s supposed to be the hero, but it’s not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.” (squid314, reviewing the old-school television series, World War II)
“Love and approval and acceptance are good. The love and approval and acceptance you have to beg for are not.” (Naomi Dunford on the difference between hungry and starving)
“Life can be cruel, it’s up to you to punch it in the face.” (Steve Schwartz, on fixing problems effectively)
“We’re not far enough along in our plans for world domination that we can afford to turn anyone away.” (Skud, speaking at OSCON)
“It feels good to be playing again. Who needs a life anyway?” (NannyOgg, on resuming the one true board game)
“You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.” (Leon Trotsky, who did after all win the revolution)
“Training wheels are a best practice—for learning how to ride a bicycle. They’re not a best practice for riding the tour de France.” (cashto, on not writing unit tests)
“No. This is not your fault. Out of all the dozens of FUBAR missions we’ve had, ironically, this is the one that’s not your fault. We were betrayed. There was nothing you could do.” (Uhura to Kirk, How many roads? by Deastar)
“Welcome to REVISION: THE GAME! You are in a WRITER’S ROOM. There is a desk here. There is a chair here.“
“In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people. First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. In every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization.” (Jerry Pournelle)
“Normal is broke.” (Dave Ramsey, according to Megan McArdle)
“One of the biggest problems with categorizing things in advance is that it forces the categorizers to take on two jobs that have historically been quite hard: mind reading, and fortune telling.” (Clay Shirky, on hierarchical ontology)
“I saw two kittens riding a goat. Goats are great for transportation.” (How to Use Apostrophes)
“The dispirited scientists of the LHC have announced that this will create a 24-month delay while tiny bits of hamster are cleaned out of the tunnels and anti-hamster-materialization fields are installed in the collider.” (Eliezer Yudkowsky, reporting live)
“Any sufficiently advanced riddle is indistinguishable from gibberish.” (Parson ruminates on conversing with a spellcaster, Erfworld)
“Urgent before big.” (rule 16 of kyu go, according to Vultur)
“In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.” (Munz, Hudea, Imad and Smith, Mathematical Modelling of a Zombie Infection, Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, chapter 4, pp 135-156, Nova Press 2009)
“I assert no copyright nor do I claim any rights, and if you ask questions or for other support, I may just laugh cruelly.” (Tim Bray, shooing a hunk of feral Ruby out into the public domain)
“Akrasia is what happens when we maximize our hedons at the expense of our utilons.” (from a post on Less Wrong)
“Zero-sum settings are relatively harmless: you minimax and that’s it. It’s the variable-sum games that make you nuke your neighbour.” (from a review of Thomas C. Schelling’s Strategy of Conflict)
“On the first day of training, the Order gives Foreman a sword. It’s smooth, polished wood, with a dull edge, not sharp enough to cut. Foreman tries very hard not to take that as an insult.” (The Old Path, a fic by thedeadparrot for foreman_fest)
“But if we’ve learned anything from fantasy books, it is that any cabal of ancient wise men destroyed by their own hubris at the height of their glory must leave behind a single ridiculously powerful artifact, which in the right hands gains the power to dispel darkness and annihilate the forces of evil.” (Yvain, introducing the concept of verifiability to this fallen, lesser age)
“…You can get 80% of what the customer wants in a remarkably short time. The next 10% of what they want is possible, but takes a lot of effort. The last 10% is flat out impossible because you can’t get “underneath” all the tooling and frameworks. And users want 100% of what they want…” (Neal Ford, quoting Terry Dietzler)
This evening I wandered around the web and tripped over:
