[5291] in Central_America
! Re: New quotes for Fri Feb 4
gsstark@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (gsstark@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Feb 4 17:49:20 1994
.plan from someone here
$ finger jerry@piglet.cs.mcgill.ca
[piglet.cs.mcgill.ca]
Login name: jerry In real life: Jerry KUCH
Directory: /u5/ugrad/jerry Shell: /usr/local/bin/newcsh
Never logged in.
Project: THVRSDAY AD INFINITVM.
Plan:
Newer Sayings:
--------------
"I like Jonestown because it's a great example of (1) Peer
pressure gone horribly wrong (2) Natural selection at its
finest (3) Support for my theory that incredibly self
destructive and stupid things can be socially acceptable,
that is conventional wisdom is stupid if one's surrounded
by idiots."
-- J. Bliss
"Saturday night, hanging 'round the fireside,
Spider real cutie, yes I'll try it.
Twenty-three years on a meat-free diet,
Beetles, crickets, gonna get you sickest.
Here's a little sucker and you oughta try it,
Gooood, gooood Daddy Longlegs,
Lots more fun than Peggy Sue... <THUD!>"
-- Buddy Holly, hanging upside down
from tenement ceiling. "Young
Ones," episode: "OIL."
"People do acquire a little brief authority by equipping
themselves with jargon: they can pontificate and air a
superficial expertise. But what we should ask of educ-
ated mathematicians is not what they can speechify about,
nor even what they know about the existing corpus of
mathematical knowledge, but rather what can they now do
with their learning and whether they can actually solve
mathematics problems arising in practice. In short, we
look for deeds, not words."
-- J. Hammersley,
"On the enfeeblement of
mathematical skills by
'Modern Mathematics' and
similar soft intellectual
trash in schools and
universities," Bulletin
of the Inst. of Math. and
Appl. 4, 4 (October 1968).
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants
were standing on my shoulders."
-- Harold Abelson
"I know this better than I can possibly make clear,
so I won't."
-- Attributed (in parody) to
David Navas, who really
did say something pretty
close to this once. :-)
"In the U.S., most of the general public---including a high
percentage of teachers and an even higher percentage of school
board members and educational bureaucrats---is prescientific,
in the sense of having no rational understanding of the
intellectual processes that go into scientific advances or their
application to the real world. On the other hand, like the
classical Cargo Cultists, they realize that technology is
associated with economic wellbeing, and that something must be
done so that youngsters will later be able to reap the benefits
of the 'computer age.' The natural response then is to
fetichize computers and fit them into the familiar world of
traditional mindless school math."
-- Michael R. Fellows and Neal Koblitz
"Combinatorially Based Cryptography
for Children (And Adults)"
University of Victoria, Department
of Computer Science, Technical Report
DCS-213-IR
