Category: Aphorisms

Perhaps this explains why quantum physics doesn’t cover all the bases:

In text:

Our thick gravity echos frantic insect thoughts

Sometimes you must roll with the spelling; the subconsicous has its own rules.

An odd critter control technique:

We generally capture and deport spiders, figuring that they’ll do much better outside than in. Judging from the collection of insect hulls under some of the webs, though, that may not be entirely correct.

For what it’s worth, we don’t even have a chandelier…

In text:

I wish damage on the curious chandelier spider.

A tragedy that hasn’t yet happened:

In text:

Lunar morning / walk / gloved / pull rip it / breath / shattered / exit march

Haldeman’s haunting Dying Live on CNN helped move the idea along…

Some years ago I picked up three different magnetic word assortments for the refrigerator, spread them out, and watched insights emerge as my Shop Assistant and I rearranged them. Now that she’s a Larval Engineer, their quantum states have collapsed and I can extract some Subconscious Wisdom…

For those of you following along through screen readers, the text is:

I burp shredded flavor modification

do you think it brought new insight

• Never get a tattoo where the judge can see it

I suppose if you don’t understand the wisdom in that, there’s no point in trying to explain it. Perhaps this will suffice: put the slip of paper you were taking to the tattoo artist in a safe place, fast-forward two decades, then look at it again before flipping the read-only bit.

And “If you can read this, roll me over” tattooed above your rump is never appropriate…

• If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.

That’s from Richard Feynman, who should know a thing or two about science and experiments.

The full quote, from a book review in Skeptical Inquirer (Sept/Oct 2011, p 57):

If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, how smart you are, who make the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

We’ve all encountered folks with beliefs that simply don’t match up with reality; some of them are us. Many such beliefs are non-falsifiable, sometimes carefully phrased that way, making experiment irrelevant.

• Do what’s right and sleep well at night

Father Vaughn taught that precept to everybody he managed: he expected complete technical and personal honesty. That meant you did your best, reported the facts, and didn’t tell different versions of the same story to different people.

It was painful to watch him in meetings with his manager who had, shall we say, a tendency to skew the truth in certain situations.

Dilbert is a documentary of what happens when you don’t live by that rule…