recently noted quotes

the raven snored gently on top of his skull, counting dead sheep. -- terry pratchett [soul music]

what answer will make socrates shut up? -- gregory house

traveling via plane is feeling more and more like the yearly exam with the doctor: remove everything, turn your head and cough. -- thom hogan [bythom]

note to our institutional review board: no undergraduates had their DNA sequenced in the writing of this essay. -- cozma shalizi [yet more on the heritability and malleability of IQ]

yakka foob mog. grub pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. chumble spuzz. -- calvin [explaining newton's first law of motion in his own words.]

hmm, my burp tastes like ice cream! -- eren yigit [my very own version of calvin]

don't buy this book. stick your brain in a blender first. -- p z myers [review of the spiritual brain]
[i have skimmed this peculiar collection of pseudo-random ink spots on tortured wood pulp, and i agree that it is mind-numbingly awful. it was, as if guided by some divine force, stacked next to another steaming pile of awfulness, coulter's if democrats had brains, they would be republicans... sigh]

atheism has no problems, to my mind, in being more interesting than religion and absolutely no problems at all in being truer or more dignified. But it's quite hard for it to deliver an equivalent to the consoling satisfaction many people find in a church service or friday prayers, in part because the withdrawal of false consolation is at its core. -- thomas sutcliffe [dawkins - what can't he be blamed for?]

ahh, this is microsoft, hiding the useful bits under an advanced tab! -- anonymous

so my final piece of advice to dembski is that he quits pestering the biologists. -- olle häggström, professor of mathematical statistics [uniform distribution is a model assumption, essentially a thorough dismantling of dembski's latests quasi-mathematical attempts to sustain "intelligent design" comedy]

love of new ideas is a myth; we prefer ideas only after others have tested them. -- scott berkun [the myths of innovation]

belief itself is the food of the gods. -- terry pratchett [small gods]