Trust the Computer
Trust the computer, the computer is your fiend.
— Unknown
I have always been one to create my own reality. My mom has told me that, as a child, I would often raise my hand and say, “I reject that.”
I found this letter on the tubes today. Apparently this letter was never sent, but it makes me think as much as it makes me smile.
If I wished to put a curse on a nation, I would invoke the gods to decree that it be governed by those who consider themselves to be the only true patriots in it.
I have always loved to collect intangible things. One of my favorites collections consists of opening lines of great novels. Who can forget “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . ” Other greats include “Who is John Galt?” Or “Howard Rork laughed.” My all-time favorite opening line comes from Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides: “My wound is geography.”
But lo, I digress. By far my largest stash of immaterial things are the countless quotes, words of wisdom, poems, and pithy sayings I have collected over the years. I have a library card catalog filled with hand written 3×5 cards with quotes accumulated from the days before computers had entered my life. In the intervening years I have made several vain attempts to catalog my precious to no avail. The first installment came and went in a HyperCard stack that is long gone. A Microsoft Access database of pearls of wisdom sits unused on an old Windows machine somewhere in the house. …
A skeptic is not one who doubts, but one who examines.
— Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic and historian
Magic is a vanishing art.
— Bumper Sticker
Talent is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher