Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite read more

Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite symmetry, dramas of violence and death, mobility, self-sacrifice and, yes, rococo sex.

'Twas thus by the glare of false science betray'd,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.

'Twas thus by the glare of false science betray'd,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.

In a manner which matches the fortuity, if not the consequence, of Archimedes' bath and Newton's apple, the 3.6 million read more

In a manner which matches the fortuity, if not the consequence, of Archimedes' bath and Newton's apple, the 3.6 million year old fossil footprints were eventually noticed one evening in September 1976 by the paleontologist Andrew Hill, who fell while avoiding a ball of elephant dung hurled at him by the ecologist David Western.

A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. He sits on a hot read more

A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. He sits on a hot stove for a minute, it's longer than any hour. That is relativity.

FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in read more

FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
PL/I --'the fatal disease'-- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and read more

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a read more

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

There is no national science just as there is no national
multiplication table; what is national is no longer read more

There is no national science just as there is no national
multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickels in the machine.

You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickels in the machine.