Hardly a year passes that fails to find a new, oft-times exotic, research method or technique added to the armamentarium read more

Hardly a year passes that fails to find a new, oft-times exotic, research method or technique added to the armamentarium of political inquiry. Anyone who cannot negotiate Chi squares, assess randomization, statistical significance, and standard deviations is less than illiterate; he is preconscious.

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something read more

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians.

I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians.

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs read more

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.

If you walked into Netscape headquarters with a plain old modem from CompUSA they'd think it was a garage-door opener.

If you walked into Netscape headquarters with a plain old modem from CompUSA they'd think it was a garage-door opener.

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If read more

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.

By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But read more

By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above.