During World War II, when combat rations were tinned, meat hashes were a common entrée because they worked well with the filling machines. “But the men wanted something they could chew, something into which they could ‘sink their teeth,’” wrote food scientist Samuel Lepkovsky in a 1964 paper making the case against a liquid diet for the Gemini astronauts. He summed up the soldiers’ take on potted meat: “We could undoubtedly survive on these rations a lot longer than we’d care to live.” (NASA went ahead and tested an all-milkshake meal plan on groups of college students living in a simulated space capsule at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1964. A significant portion of it ended up beneath the floorboards.)
NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.
And if, by the end [of this book], you reckon you might still disagree with me, then I offer you this: you'll still be wrong, but you'll be wrong with a lot more panache and flair than you could possibly manage right now.
Some piously record 'In the beginning God', but I say 'In the beginning hydrogen'.
People say we are playing God. My answer is: If we don't play God, who will?
The human digestive tract is like the Amtrak line from Seattle to Los Angeles: transit time is about thirty hours, and the scenery on the last leg is pretty monotonous.
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.
If after hearing my songs just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps to strike a loved one it will all have been worth the while.
With great power comes great dissipation.
Also unfortunately, Congress is far too busy asking if baseball players are really as strong as they seem and trying to choke bankers with wads of cash to grant more funds to such trifling matters as the avoidance of space bullets, so they won't give NASA the money
Do you remember his science project, Harry Sue, on the trajectory of spitballs? I tell you, that modest little display taught our students more about physics than I could accomplish in a weeklong unit at the middle school
No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them
Newton said, 'If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants.' These days we stand on each other's feet!
Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed: It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe.
Constipation ran Presley's life. Even his famous motto TCB— 'Taking Care of Business'— sounds like a reference to bathroom matters.
It's called the FATLOSE trail. FATLOSE stands for 'Fecal Administration To LOSE weight,' an example of PLEASE— Pretty Lame Excuse for an Acronym, Scientists and Experimenters.
The definitive study of the herd instincts of astronomers has yet to be written, Fernie said, but there are times when we resemble nothing so much as a herd of antelope, heads down in tight formation, thundering with firm determination in a particular direction across the plain. At a given signal from the leader we whirl about, and, with equally firm determination, thunder off in quite a different direction, still in tight parallel formation. (quoting an observation made by astronomer J. Donal Fernie)
New Rule: Instead of using their $10 billion atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider to re-create the Big Bang by melting atom parts in temperatures a million times hotter than the sun, scientists should not do that. I'm just sayin' it sounds dangerous. I'm as interested as the next guy in determining the origin of matter, but first couldn't we solve some simple mystery, like why some-detector batteries always die at four a.m.?
At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn.
Our friend Dirac has a creed; and the main tenet of that creed is: There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
