1996 Quotes

“There are no hard problems, only problems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence. Move the smallest bit upwards [in intelligence] and some problems move from "impossible" to "obvious." Move a substantial degree upwards, and all of them will become obvious.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky

“If only religion were an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens

“Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine—some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone—but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.”
― Alan J. Perlis, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

“A few months ago, I was sitting morosely at my desk, wondering why I had ever agreed to review Barbara Bush: A Memoir for an English newspaper. The experience was proving to be a degradation of the act of reading. Imagine, if you will, being strapped into a chair and made to listen to Liberace playing the piano for hour upon hour. Or imagine being fed chocolate dinner mints, like a hapless goose, until you are on the verge of explosion. Such was my lot.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and unanticipated consequences.”
― Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

“Dripping charnel
 grounds of light -
I examine hope &
 fear -
blue-black body
 monster of
enlightenment -
call me Youthful
Lightning Bolt -
 tired I slump -
desire's already
 here - I don't
care -
my wrathful
rosary coiled
     snake
  on my cushion -
 I close my tired
  eyes -
 sleep has been
 troubled but
  my mother's
 cancer hasn't
 spread -
     still I
 am the Cemetary
King”
― Marc Olmsted, What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost? Poems from 3-year Retreat

“No vale la pena agitar el frasco de las garrapatas. Esto es un juego, como todo lo que vale en la literatura. La palabra es una y la misma; la novela, digan lo que digan, viene de siempre y continúa. Rompiéndola, prevalece. En efecto, si no hay nada nuevo bajo el sol, es porque lo viejo vale para la novedad.”
― Ignacio Padilla

“In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a "correct" algorithm. Considering an algorithm to be inadequate for the first reason but not for the second illustrates the difference between mathematics and engineering.”
― Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

“Dream: I look for
 Lama Lodrö Kagyu
 teacher friend
 hearing
he's ill & I'm ill, too -
 I enter his room
and he says "I've
been trying to find
you - I wanted you
 to know illness
is just phenomena”
― Marc Olmsted , What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost? Poems from 3-year Retreat

“Every reader should ask himself periodically ``Toward what end, toward what end?'' -- but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.”
― Alan J. Perlis, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

“The rise of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) in the USA population can be traced back to President Bill Clinton. While memorable for sexual foreplay with Monica Lewinsky, EHS people associate him with the 1996 Telecommunications Act that prohibits the protection of human health and safety from the known biologically toxic effects of wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation.”
― Steven Magee

“I think the case is so strong that I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body.”
― David H. Souter

“Do you know that the USA corporate controlled government changed the laws in 1996 to remove all liability for damaging human health by the wireless radiation industries?”
― Steven Magee

“When you set of expectations alters, the valence of phenomena instantly changes”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“When your set of expectations alters, the valence of phenomena instantly changes.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“In terms of action, Dzogchen is not limited by any rules; therefore, no action is forbidden as such. Rather, Dzogchen practice aims at bringing immediate Awareness into every action, and the manifestation of that Intrinsic Awareness is one's true will. Awareness and intention are not at war with each other but are integrated. In the state of contemplation, the Bodhicitta compassion is natural and spontaneous; it is not contrived or created by mind. But this is true only when we are in the state of contemplation. The state of Rigpa is beyond karma and its consequences, beyond good and evil, but our ordinary dualistic consciousness is most definitely not. Being primordially pure, Rigpa is beyond selfish motivations, and all its actions are spontaneously self-perfected. All this is true of contemplation, but if we merely claim to be a Siddha, announcing proudly, 'I am in a state of Rigpa!' and do as we like, following every impulse and indulging all transient desires, we merely delude ourselves and will suffer the karmic consequences. To think we are in the state is not the same as actually being in the state. The only rule in Dzogchen is to be aware. Dzogchen teaches us to take responsibility for our actions, and this is what awareness means. We are always aware of what we do and also of the consequences that each action entails. Integration with movement is not at all the same as attachment, for the latter represents a lack of awareness.”
― John Myrdhin Reynolds, The Golden Letters: The Tibetan Teachings of Garab Dorje, First Dzogchen Master