You have not demonstrated 5 uses of a vacuum cleaner in published works.

—Robert Kaye

“The apartment downstairs is free as in malloc, not as in beer.”

Overheard is on NPR right now. “What are those things on, er, I don’t watch TV...” “Sitcoms?” “Yes, that’s it.”

Here’s a great bit from this month’s Crypto-Gram:

Those who calculate chances may perhaps find that not one death (or the destruction of one house) in a hundred thousand happens from that cause, and that therefore it is scarce worth while to be at any expense to guard against it. But in all countries there are particular situations of buildings more exposed than others to such accidents, and there are minds so strongly impressed with the apprehension of them, as to be very unhappy every time a little thunder is within their hearing; it may therefore be well to render this little piece of new knowledge as general and well understood as possible, since to make us safe is not all its advantage, it is some to make us easy. And as the stroke it secures us from might have chanced perhaps but once in our lives, while it may relieve us a hundred times from those painful apprehensions, the latter may possibly on the whole contribute more to the happiness of mankind than the former.

—Benjamin Franklin, on his invention of the lightning rod

Isn’t it crazy how people wrote back then? I think I could have gotten along well with it.

“All IT arguments are based on rationalizing what the user has already chosen for social or emotional reasons.” —Don Marti