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"Right now I feel that Ive got my feet on the ground as far as my head is concerned." -- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky

When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect. -- Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy

"The Amiga is the only personal computer where you can run a multitasking operating system and get realtime performance, out of the box." -- Peter da Silva

I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations... If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of such machinery impracticable... And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country. In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not be economized by the aid of machinery. -- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television." -- The New Mighty Mouse

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldnt be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didnt understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about. -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_

...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable, challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self. That seems all the better reason to assume that cyberpunk art & music is essentially mindless garbagio. Willy certainly addressed this idea in "Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girls observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself, rather than its output. -- Eliot Handelman