Quotes
- "I'd like to change the world, but they won't give me the source code."
-- Anon
- "This isn't flying, it's falling with style!" -- Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story
It doesn't matter what you do, it's how you do it (or it doesn't matter if
you screw up, so long as you do it well).
- "I'd rather be happy than right any day." -- Slartibartfast, The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Unfortunately this doesn't make good science.
- "Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are." --
Anon.
Most of the time it would be easier to find out their composition if they didn't
twinkle, but that's life.
- "What do we want? Procrastination! When do we want it? Next
week."
- "I am the Supreme Being, I'm not entirely dim." -- Time Lords.
Never underestimate what your supervisor knows.
- "If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?"
"Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter
oneself over a wide area." -- Somewhere in No Man's Land, BA4
Accept that some things are just inevitable.
- "For every action there is an equal and opposite distraction."
Eyes front, fingers on keys, and something might eventually get done.
- "Black holes are where God divided by zero." -- Anon
Always check whether your model is physically representative.
- "Out of my mind... back in five minutes." -- Anon
Take a little time to think.
- "What's the speed of dark?"
Never underestimate the ingenuity of idiots.
- "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines"
Don't overcomplicate things.
- "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism."
You'll never convince everyone.
- "The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average number of
legs." -- E. Grebenik
Think about what your statistics really mean.
- "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
-- Rollo May
He clearly never did undergraduate lab work.
- "If the radiance of a thousand suns\ were to burst into the sky,\ that would be like\ the splendor of the Mighty One"
-- Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Sunds (1958)
1000 solar luminosities means different things to different people.
- "An object at rest cannot be stopped!"
-- courtesy Aaron Clark
The first law of procrastination.
Astronomical food for thought:
- Roughly once every minute that you stand outside on a clear summer's day (or winter's day if
you're antipodean), a photon of visible light from the Sun will be scattered off your body and begin
a 520-year journey through space, before hitting the star Betelgeuse.