ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though,
We are not now that strength which in elder days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield Lord Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses.

No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.

At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest. Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow

Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly. Horace (65-8 BC)

Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of this world, all things are weighed by the false scale of custom. Byron

Character is destiny. Heraclitus (540?-480? BC)

Coincidences are spiritual puns. G. K. Chesterton

I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.

Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool. Kelvin Throop III

They condemn what they do not understand. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Be always displeased with what thou art, if you desirest to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest. But if thou have enough thou perishest. Always add, always walk, always proceed. Neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate. St. Augustine

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity. Alvy Ray Smith

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Philip K. Dick

"I don't think so," said René Descartes. Just then, he vanished.

I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out.

"I begin to see," Old Drake said heavily. "Pain is a trap. That was why you put the broken glass in your shoes that time. Fear of poverty is a trap. That's why you tried begging on the streets. You're trying to become a Superman, like those crazy boys in Chicago, the 'thrill killers.' What else have you done?"
"A lot." Robert shrugged. "Enough to be canonized as a saint, or to be burnt as a diabolist. None of it seems to add up, though. I still haven't found the way." He suddenly made a new effort, and the chains slipped to the floor. "Simple yoga and muscle control," he said without pride. "The chains in the mind are much harder." Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!

The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do. McCloctnik the Lucid

A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion. H. L. Mencken

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. John Ciardi

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. William James

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein — it rejects it. P. Medawar

A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work. Anatol Holt

But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense — the debate about angels on pinheads — makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number. S. J. Gould, Wide Hats and Narrow Minds

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. Sydney J. Harris

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. Jules de Gaultier

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. Walt Disney

Celestial Chorus

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. Galileo Galilei

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe. Lao Tsu

Call on God, but row away from the rocks. Indian proverb

The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately, and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable that those who are combined to destroy a people's liberties practice every art to poison their morals. Samuel Adams, 1772

There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4-6

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of —
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. John Gillespie Magee Jr., High Flight

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved. Galileo Galilei

Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but — live for it. Colton

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not. Otto von Bismark (1815-1898)

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Winston Churchill

Cult of Ecstasy

Philosophy is the highest music. Plato

If you wish to travel back in time, music is the surest and most gentle of all roads. Jim Fiebig

Life is too important to take seriously. Corky Siegel

Euthanatos

Entropy isn't what it used to be.

If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?

I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
Like a bright exhalation in the evening
And no man see me more. Shakespeare

Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them. Ed Howe

Iteration X

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science-fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? Kelvin Throop III

Nephandi

'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall. William Shakespeare

Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of Earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They wait serene and primal, undimensioned and by us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and the guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod Earth's fields and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold them as They tread... They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known them, and what man knows Kadath?... Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can He spy them only dimly. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, where the spheres meet. After summer is winter; and after winter, summer. They ruled once where man rules now; where man rules now, they shall rule again. Abdul al-Hazred, Al Azif

New World Order

The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion... In a free society these institutions must be wholly free — which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state. Alan Barth

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be. Lao Tsu

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny... In war, then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges. William Ellery Channing

The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use. Abraham Lincoln

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. George Orwell

Order of Hermes

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. Socrates 470?-399 BC

The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics. Plato 428-348? BC

Sons of Ether

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. Wernher von Braun

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. R. A. Heinlein

Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself. Vilfredo Pareto

Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

Technocracy

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..." Isaac Asimov

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. Henri Poincair'e

It's bad luck to be superstitious. Andrew W. Mathis

Irrationality is the square root of all evil. Douglas Hofstadter

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life — so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. Matt Cartmill

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. Albert Einstein

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets. Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) Venus on the Half Shell

One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God. J. Gustav White

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. Vannevar Bush

Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer... we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Werner Heisenberg

Accurate reckoning — the entrance into the knowledge of all existing things and all obscure secrets. Ahmed the Scribe (17th century BC)

God doesn't play dice. Albert Einstein

If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress. David Rockefeller

Verbena

All ye assembled at my shrine,
Mother Darksome and Divine;
Mine the Scourge and mine the Kiss
Here I charge you with this sign.

All ye assembled in my sight
Bow before my spirit bright.
Aphrodite, Arionhod,
Lover of the Horned God,
Mighty Queen of Witchery and night,
Morgan, Etoine, Nisene,
Diana, Brigid, Melusine;
So am I named by old of men,
Artemis and Cerridwen,
Hell's Dark Mistress, Heavens Queen.

No more shall ye know slavery,
Who give true worship unto me.
Ye who tread my round on Sabbath night,
Come ye naked to the rite
In token that ye be truly free.

I teach ye the mystery of rebirth;
Work ye my mysteries in mirth.
Heart joined to heart and lip to lip,
Five are the points of fellowship
That bring ye ecstasy on earth,
For I am the circle of rebirth. A Goddess invocation

Virtual Adepts

Some people say computers never make mistakes. The truth is, computers are very fast and very accurate. So they make very fast, very accurate mistakes. Dr. Jack Simpson Jr.

A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact. Gigo

A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The undergraduate was then Enlightened.

A mind would require many modifications to operate effectively after being rescued from the limitations of a mortal body. Natural human mentality is tuned for a life span's progression from impressionable plasticity to self-assured rigidity, and is thus an unpromising material for immortality. It would have to be reprogrammed for continual adaptability to be long viable. As a computer program, your mind can travel over information channels, for instance encoded as a laser message beamed between planets. Hans Moravec, Mind Children

At the instant of the Omega Point, life will have gained control of all matter and forces not only in a single universe, but in all universes whose existence is logically possible; life will have spread into all spatial regions in all universes which could logically exist, and will have stored an infinite amount of information, including all bits of knowledge which is logically possible to know. The totality of life at the Omega Point is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient! John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

The more society becomes information instead of material objects, this question of whether a person can copy things will make the difference between a world of universal prosperity or a world of constant rat race. Richard M. Stallman

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: "What sort of programmers work for other companies? They behaved badly and were unconcerned with appearances. There hair was long and unkept and their clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed out hospitality suite and made rude noises during my presentation."
The manager said: "I should have never sent you to the conference. Those programmers live beyond the physical world. They consider life absurd, an accidental coincidence. They come and go without knowing limitations. Without a care, they live only for their programs. Why should they bother with social conventions? They are alive within the Tao."

Void Engineers

Ad astra per aspera. (To the stars by aspiration.)

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. Wernher von Braun

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams