this file stopped growing in 1997. those without attribution are mine. the best error message can't be produced by the user. the dewey decimal system is a fractal curve through the infinite dimensional space of human knowledge. unix is an exponential algorithm with a seductively small constant. but what if the standard is stupid? take one sexually inept wage slave, one dissatisfied female, two or (if preferred) three small television addicts; marinate in a mixture of freudism and dilute christianity; then bottle up tightly in a four-room flat and stew for fifteen years in their own juice. [ aldous huxley, *Island*, found in christopher alexander's *the pattern language* ] the ultimate ecological niche is to be cultivated by another species. we are the [a!] bootstrap phase for intelligence. you cannot be beaten without wishing to beat someone else. [A S Neill] the child is expected to sit on a hard seat, not to move, scrape his feet, or gaze out the window, to listen, to answer questions by raising his hand, to draw neat lines in a book and write or script-print on a single blue line in exactly the same way as all his peers. he may be permitted to ask questions but, for the most part he is expected to conform. the teacher teaches, the child listens. he soon appreciates the advantages of conformity. [ O A Oeser, *Teacher, Pupil, and Task*, quoted by Robert Sommer in *Personal Space* ] is it a psychological game if you fool yourself? on the side of nationalism are ranged all the powers of poetry and song, language and literature, self-love and pride; in its service are gathered the strongest emotions, worthy as well as base; loyalty and love as well as lust and hate. on the other side we have only the cold light of the human intelligence, warmed by the small fire of complete unselfishness. but on this side is truth, and on this side is God, and either it will prevail or we shall go down into utter darkness. [ kenneth boulding, quoted by Robert Wright in *Three Scientists and Their Gods*] messages of immediate importance: id cards enclosed - if stopped by the police, you must have this card with you. [ my insurance packet ] to keep an open mind and at the same time a firm enough belief in certain essential metaprograms is not easy; in a sense we are all victims of the previous metaprograms which have been laid down by other humans long before us. [ Lilly in *programming and metaprogramming in the human biocomputer* ] responsibility starts with a satisfactory coalition between one's self and the demanding 10^12 cells of one's own body. [ Lilly, ibid ] our contemporary western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so-called pleasure. [ dr erich fromm huxley's bnwr p 38 ] the reason people so often lie is that they lack imagination: they don't realize that the truth, too, is a matter of invention. [ antonio machado, in *discrete thoughts* ] nothing is true everything is permitted [ Hassan I Sabba (?) ] through three cheese trees three free fleas flew. while these fleas flew, freezy breeze blew. freezy breeze made these three trees freeze. freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze. that's what made these three free fleas sneeze. [ Dr Seuss ] As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only indirectly inspired by ideas coming from "reality", it is beset with very grave dangers. It becomes more and more purely aestheticizing, more and more purely l'art pour l'art. This need not be bad, if the field is surrounded by correlated subjects, which still have closer empirical connections, or if the discipline is under the influence of men with an exceptionally well-developed taste. But there is a grave danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance, that the stream, so far from its source, will separate into a multitude of insignificant branches, and that the discipline will become a disorganized mass of details and complexities.... [ von Neumann, in *the works of the mind*, found in *computing the future* ] information is free. the only question is: are you?