From: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/09/14/percy-percy-me/

Dork Matter – Substance that causes geeks to gather in clumps at parties.

Dork Energy – Strange force that causes normal people to be repelled
from geeks at parties.
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/11/MN1VRFE7P.DTL

Meteor viewing tips:
Take someone with whom you like to sit in the dark.
From: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=13A1F1BC-E7F2-99DF-33EC6224FE9F9772&pageNumber=2&catID=2

The Marquise du Châtelet on Women's Education

"I feel the full weight of the prejudice which so universally excludes
us from the sciences; it is one of the contradictions in life that has
always amazed me, seeing that the law allows us to determine the fate
of great nations, but that there is no place where we are trained to
think.... Let the reader ponder why, at no time in the course of so
many centuries, a good tragedy, a good poem, a respected tale, a fine
painting, a good book on physics has ever been produced by women. Why
these creatures whose understanding appears in every way similar to
that of men, seem to be stopped by some irresistible force, this side
of a barrier. Let the people give a reason, but until they do, women
will have reason to protest against their education....

If I were king ... I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it
were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all
human rights, especially those of the mind.... The new education
would greatly benefit the human race. Women would be worth more and
men would gain something new to emulate.... I am convinced that either
many women are unaware of their talents by reason of the fault in their
education or that they bury them on account of prejudice for want of
intellectual courage. My own experience confirms this. Chance made
me acquainted with men of letters who extended the hand of friendship
to me.... I then began to believe that I was a being with a mind."

SOURCE: The Marquise du Châtelet, from the preface (written about 1735)
to her translation of Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees.
From: Allen Brown

Q: How do you silence an Italian? A: Tie up his hands.
Q: How do you silence an Engineer? A: Take away his pencil and paper.
From: Alan Batie

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But
it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used
to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical
numbers.
From: www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/07/24/asteroid.encounter.ap/index.html

Last month an asteroid the size of a soccer field missed the
Earth by 75,000 miles less than one-third of the distance to
the moon in one of the closest known approaches by objects of
its size. Scientists said if it had hit a populated area, it
would have released as much energy as a large nuclear weapon.
From: Gary Oliver

A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth.
A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged.
A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music.
A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning.
From: Gary Oliver

I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...
From: Jeff Loats

"Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic!"
From: http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/99feb9.html

Mr. Bell, after careful consideration of your invention, while it
is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that
it has no commercial possibilities.
From: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/07/17/1355244.shtml

Inertia makes the world go 'round
From: John Beaderstadt

Beady's First Law of Social Harmonics:
"Never let the engineers write the instructions."
From: Peter Stickney

Pound for pound, the most voracious predator is the Amoeba.
From: JamesOberg

As the bumper sticker reads: "God forgives, man forgives, nature never."
From: Gary Oliver

Handy Guide to Modern Science:
1. If it's green or it wiggles, it's Biology.
2. If it stinks, it's Chemistry.
3. If it doesn't work, it's Physics.
From: From Tom Neff

1918-1988: Richard P. Feynman's span on Earth.
1992: Angels finally understand Physics!
From: anonymous

Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is
not the reason we are doing it"
From: Tanuki the Raccoon-dog

Factotum: What do you do with the hazardous waste?
Wizard: Pour it down the drain.
Factotum: Isn't that dangerous?
Wizard: No, we wear rubber gloves.
From: Thorfinn

Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
From: Norman UNsoliciteds

Science:
The Dinosaurs were so stupid, they couldn't
even devise the means of their own extinction,
they had to wait for Nature to do it for them.
From: Maurice Aubrey

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is
broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year.
Not all bits have equal value.
From: Martien Verbruggen

75% of the people make up 3/4 of the population.
From: Thorfinn

"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
than the both put together."
From: anonymous

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
From: Justin Banks

Polar bear: a Cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
From: Mark-Jason Dominus

Some reporter once asked Einstein for the formula for success in life.

Einstein said that he would characterize it as being of the form
`X + Y + Z', where X was work and Y was play.

What about Z? asked the reporter.

Z, replied Einstein, is keeping your mouth shut.
From: Paul D. Smith

"Please remain calm... I may be mad, but I am a professional."
From: Nix

`One reason why life is complex is that it has a real part and
an imaginary part.'
From: Patrick Kellum

"Pity there are no Martians to witness the spectacle of a kind of 15-foot
beach ball suddenly falling out of the sky and bouncing all about."
From: Jarkko Hietaniemi

There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
It is 'dead'.
From: Piers Cawley

If a `religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains
unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not
only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one.
From: Graham Barr

Originality is the ability to conceal your source.
From: Frank Sergeant

Speaking of statistics, I'm sure you are aware that, on average,
every person in the United States has only one testicle.
From: Nitin Borwankar

Statistics show that most people are in the majority,
while a few are in the minority.
From: TRUTH IS. BELIEF IS NOT REQUIRED.

It is now proved beyond a doubt that smoking is one of the leading
causes of statistics.

:^) We're making progress. Things are getting worse at a slower rate.:-)
From: anonymous

29% of all statistics are made up on the spot
From: Mike Linnig

97.43% of all statistics are made up;
most of them (83.6 percent) are wrong.
From: Chris Long

"In a study of schoolboys, an educator discovered a correlation
between size of feet and quality of handwriting. The boys with
the larger feet were, on the average, older."
From: anonymous

Every great scientific truth goes through three
stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible.
Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly
they say they always believed it.
From: "Bill Butler"

Back in the 1970s we didn't have the space shuttle to get all excited about.
We had to settle for men walking on the crummy moon.
From: Dave Close

[Fiber optics is] "a faster, more reliable system that
transmits telephone calls and data at the speed of
light (186,000 miles per hour) compared to copper wire
lines that transport information at the speed of sound
(30,000 feet per second)."

From: "J. A. Viehweg"

I read recently that human beings use only 15% of their brains
capacity. Makes you wonder what they do with the other 75%.
From: "Larry 'Daffy' Daffner"

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will
not understand what he finds.
From: Wayne Hayes

If the Earth is the size of a pea in New York, then the Sun is a
beachball 50m away, Pluto is 2km away, and the next nearest star is
in Tokyo. Now shrink Pluto's orbit into a coffee cup; then our
Milky Way Galaxy fills North America.
From: Jonathan A. Bishop

"Yippee! That may have been a small one for Neil,
but it was a big one for me."
--- Pete Conrad
From: Kent Williams

"Science has come with wonderful ways to cure sick people one at a
time, and to kill healthy people thousands at a time."
From: William Bradley

"ATTENTION: Despite any other listing of product contents found
hereon, the consumer is advised that, in actuality,
this product consists of 99.9999999999% empty space."
From: Mark Rosenau

Some of the more environmentally aware dinosaurs were worried about
the consequences of an accident with the new Iridium enriched fusion
reactor. "If it goes off only the cockroaches and mammals will
survive..." they said.
From: Ron "Asbestos" Dippold

Join the glaciologists for a nuclear winter now!
From: Simon Travaglia, Analyst/Programmer

If another scientist thought your research was more important than
his (or hers), he would drop what he is doing and do what you are
doing.
From: Stephen W. Hill

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
From: anonymous

"Scientists study the world as it is;
engineers create the world that never has been."
From: Draconis

"Life is but one of the many properties of the carbon atom."
From: Mark A. Horton

"We may note that, for the purposes of these experiments, the symbol
"=" has the meaning "may be confused with."
From: anonymous

Invest in entropy -- it always increases!
From: Frank R. Chloupek

"Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm.
Charm ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last, but up
and down are forever."
From: David Holland

"Do you have a moment?"
--
"Yes. Unfortunately, it's a moment of inertia."
From: Eric D. Hendrickson

We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
From: Andrew Robert Ellsworth

"Atlas does no work holding up the earth because he's not moving
the earth."
From: Ron DuFresne

"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
From: Ron DuFresne

OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
From: Urban Fredriksson

"It's like the '64 Air Force mission to the moon --
you want to be on the cutting edge, you gotta live with the secrecy."
"What Air Force mission to the moon?"
"See?"
From: Ram Samudrala

"God does not [play] dice." --- Einstein
"God does play dice." --- Quantum Mechanics
"God does play dice, but it's loaded." --- Chaos
From: Michael Boesch

"God not only plays dice,
He sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen."
From: Mark Crispin

Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
From: Steven Grady

"Old people don't need companionship! They need to be isolated and
studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might
be extracted for our personal use!"
From: William K. McFadden

CAUTION: Don't look into laser beam with remaining eye.
From: John Harres

"The light works," he said, indicating the window, "the
gravity works," he said, dropping a pencil on the floor.
"Anything else we have to take our chances with."
From: Hans Mulder

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore
all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
From: BROWN A

"No scientist is ever right, they just can't be proved wrong
at the time!"
From: Mark Clear

"I bought one of those new portable entropy generators.
Soon as I turned the darn thing on it fell apart!"
From: Kathy Bergsma

"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing
on the shoulders of giants."
"In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand."
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were
standing on my shoulders."
From: Ketil Z Malde

If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants.
From: Sharad Singhai

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was
standing on the shoulder of giants.
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants
were standing on my shoulders.
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
From: Tom Christiansen

"We stand on the shoulders of giants and kick
their ears whenever we feel like it."
From: RHOEFELM

Enjoy Nature ... from the top of the food chain.

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