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Memes about the concept “Thing”

21–31 of 31

Dr. Frankenstein as Scientific Hubris

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the Thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful Engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect…

The Parable of the Alchemist

And if again he descend to the consideration of those arts which are deemed curious rather than safe, and look more closely into the works of the alchemists or the magicians, he will be in doubt perhaps whether he ought rather to laugh over them or to weep. For the alchemist nurses eternal hope and when the thing…

Movement According to Aristotle

241b 34 Every moving thing must be moved by something. For if it does not have the source of its motion in itself, it is clear that it is moved by something else (for another 40 thing will be the mover); but if it is in itself, let AB be taken, which is moving in its own right, and not by means of some part of it…

A Neutral Witness

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.

Bernie Cosell on Java

Java didn't feel right. My old reflexes hit me. Java struck me as too authoritarian. Thats one of the reasons why I mentioned that Perl felt so good, because it's got the safety and the checks but it is so damn multidimensioned that the artist part of me has a lot of free board to express things early and to think…

Ken Thompson on Obfuscation in Modern Code

Suppose someone describing something to me from postulates like. "Here's a computer and here are the op codes." I can visualize the structure of programs and how things are efficient or inefficient based on those op codes, by seeing the bottom and imagining the hierarchy. And i can see the same thing with programs. If…

On the Nature of Things...

No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings-the things thus grow Until we know and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know. Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go…

Knowing VS Speculation

One day I'll be convinced there's a certain type of symmetry that everybody believes in, the next day I'll try to figure out the consequences if it's not, and everybody's crazy but me. But the thing that's unusual about good scientists is that while they're doing whatever they're doing, they're not so sure of…