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  fortune index  all fortunes 
  
 |  |  | #2846 |  | "We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting" --Stanley Sutton
 
 |  |  |  | #2847 |  | Weekends were made for programming. - Karl Lehenbauer
 
 |  |  |  | #2848 |  | "Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
 forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
 the railroad yards."
 - H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters
 of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
 
 |  |  |  | #2849 |  | ...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
 years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
 descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
 do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
 flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
 things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
 established as our planet's shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
 to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
 cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
 into doubt.
 - Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer,
 Vol XII No. 2
 
 |  |  |  | #2850 |  | This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
 no wires, no controls.
 - Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
 
 |  |  |  | #2851 |  | Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
 and tears.  ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires
 us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
 inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
 contrary to habit...
 - Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
 
 |  |  |  | #2852 |  | Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other.  There is
 no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and
 make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.  Actually, of course, this
 is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the
 assumption will have to be rejected.  But it is important also to see that we
 have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and
 there is no real evidence opposed to it.  Our failure to solve a problem so
 far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot logically be a determinist in
 physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
 - D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior:  A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
 
 |  |  |  | #2853 |  | Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
 not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
 of individual human brains.
 - Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
 Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
 
 |  |  |  | #2854 |  | ... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of the person making the claim, not the critic.  It is not the responsibility
 of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
 responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
 or colored lights never healed anyone.  The skeptic's role is to point out
 claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidcence and to
 provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
 the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...
 - Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
 
 |  |  |  | #2855 |  | "Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist." - Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
 
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