Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read.

Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the read more

The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the way it spread and, above all, democratized knowledge. Provide you could pay and read, what was on the shelves in the new bookshops was yours for the taking. The speed with which printing presses and their operators fanned out across Europe is extraordinary. From the single Mainz press of 1457, it took only twenty-three years to establish presses in 110 towns: 50 in Ita!0 in Germany, 9 in France, 8 in Spain, 8 in Holland, 4 in England, and so on.

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to read more

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea at first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those read more

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

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.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in read more

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.