Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Aphorisms 10

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.

How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?

OK, so what's the speed of dark?

I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

How a man lives echoes in eternity (the film Gladiator)

Albert Einstein used to say, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. - Sherlock Holmes

Statistics are no substitute for judgment. - Henry Clay.

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I work in a statistical shop. Some wag posted an item similar to your last aphorism. It was, with one foot in a bucket of boiling water, and one in ice, the statistician was quite comfortable.

However, if you view the boiling pot at 212 degrees, and the freezing one at 32 degrees, the mid-point would be 122 degrees, rather uncomfortable.

So the last one is not a valid point, even when made humorously.

Terry Hamblin said...

But in my case it was a very slow oven. We were cooking meringues.