 fortune index all fortunes
| | #10131 | | Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
| | | #10132 | | Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers,
etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these
things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in.
Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a
kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock. This
proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also
damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in
incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
| | | #10133 | | Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
| | | #10134 | | Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.
| | | #10135 | | Always think of something new; this helps you forget your last rotten idea.
-- Seth Frankel
| | | #10136 | | Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing that way.
| | | #10137 | | An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it.
-- James Michener, "Space"
| | | #10138 | | An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out). The American said with a nervous laugh,
"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
"I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
| | | #10139 | | An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
-- David Letterman
| | | #10140 | | An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows
he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great
restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment
after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next
time." Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect,
with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems,
is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
are particular and not generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile."
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
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