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#11748 09/06/06 02:16 PM
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"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

-- Edsger Dijkstra, Computer Scientist,
father of "Structured Programming"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra

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#11749 09/06/06 03:11 PM
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"It [Intelligent Design] is not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one. It might be worth discussing in a class on the history of ideas, in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies, or in a comparative religion class on origin myths from around the world. But it no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for "both theories" would be ludicrous. Similarly, in a class on 20th-century European history, who would demand equal time for the theory that the Holocaust never happened?"

--Richard Dawkins


When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
--S. Lewis
#11750 09/06/06 08:33 PM
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TFF, your link is entertaining.

"Teaching BASIC should be a criminal offense."

I am glad I did not know that. In about 1978 I taught myself BASIC, used it a great deal, and never tried to go on to something better. Not my major interest.
jjw

#11751 09/07/06 01:37 AM
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Dear jjw,

I'm glad you found it amusing. BASIC was also my first language. I learned back in 1975 or 1976. Our HS had a pdp-8 (marketed as an Edusystem 25) minicomputer. It operated on actual core memory and we interfaced to it via a control panel of switches, and two teletypes (110 Baud).

The teletypes had tape-punch/readers. There was no disk space. We loaded the OS by punching in a bootstrap loader and putting in the OS tape (paper tape). It took maybe 30 to 45 minutes to boot up.

#11752 09/07/06 06:36 AM
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Those were the good old days....I learned fortran IV on an IBM 360/44 which had less power than the PC I'm running on right now. We had a Pascal compiler that was done as a graduate program by one of the grad students and it was a little off kilter. Sometimes it would work and other times it burped out the strangest stuff. I haven't used either Pascal or Fortran IV since. I have used the skill of flow-charting that I learned then, though. That has come in handy on occasion. I look back and think, "Why, oh why didn't I go into computers back then?" I got too soon old and too late smart, I guess. Lack of female role models might have had something to do with it, too.

#11753 09/07/06 11:37 AM
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'I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way."

Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote this in his essay, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution," originally published in "The American Biology Teacher, March 1973, and available here:
http://www.2think.org/dobzhansky.shtml

For more info on Dobzhansky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

#11754 09/08/06 02:58 AM
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"ʺI do not choose to speak or write more clearly than I think.ʺ

-- Niels Bohr,
http://www.physics.harvard.edu/holton/CandorIntegrity.pdf

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1922/bohr-bio.html

#11755 09/11/06 09:28 PM
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"Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery."
- Enrico Fermi

http://www.diracdelta.co.uk/science/source/f/e/fermi%20enrico/source.html

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1938/fermi-lecture.pdf

#11756 09/12/06 11:59 AM
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"We accepted the products of science; we rejected its methods."

-- Carl Sagan, "Who Speaks for Earth?", the last chapter of Cosmos

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan_cosmos_who_speaks_for_earth.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

#11757 09/13/06 02:24 PM
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"The dung-mimicking insect is well protected, but can there be any edge in looking 5% like a turd?"
-- Stephen J. Gould, Ever Since Darwin, p. 104.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould

#11758 09/13/06 08:17 PM
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"If at first it doesn't accelerate, get another booster."
Wehrner von Braun on the failed mission of the TX3 rockets

#11759 09/14/06 02:13 PM
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"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. "
-- Marie Sklodowska Curie, first person to win two nobel prizes.

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95nov/curie.html

#11760 09/15/06 12:46 PM
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"Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?"
-- Oliver Heaviside

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside

#11761 09/19/06 04:23 PM
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"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

-- Albert Einstein in "Out of My Later Years"

#11762 09/22/06 05:25 PM
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"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."
-- Werner Heisenberg

http://www.notablebiographies.com/He-Ho/Heisenberg-Werner.html

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1932/heisenberg-bio.html

He wrote a book called "Physics and Beyond" which is my favorite (auto-)biography of a scientist.

#11763 09/24/06 11:58 AM
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"It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure." -- Albert Einstein

http://www.humboldt1.com/~gralsto/einstein/quotes.html


Darkness is but the sum total of Creation inclusive of the Light.
#11764 09/25/06 06:48 AM
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Let's not forget my fave, also attributed to Einstein - "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what does an empty desk indicate?"

#11765 10/02/06 02:53 PM
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"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
-- Wernher von Braun

(I've seen and heard this quote dozens of times, but I don't know the original source for it.)

http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/bio.html

#11766 10/10/06 01:00 AM
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"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science."
-- Henri Poincar

#11767 10/10/06 04:19 AM
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Nice one TFF

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