Friday Quotations: You Don't Want to Know Where They'd Put the Extension Cord

"We speak (and hear) --- and for 5000 years have preserved our words. But, we cannot share vision. To this oversight of evolution we owe the retardation of visual communication compared to language. Visualization by shared communication would be much easier if each of us had a CRT in the forehead."
---1987 report of the National Science Foundation, Visualization in Scientific Computing

For the non-computer historian in the crowd, CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube, which looks like this:


Imagine one of those shoved right above your eyes. It's sort of an entry from the steampunk school of cyborgs.

At any rate, this is supposed to be the day of the glorious return. And it is. Sort of. Unfortunately, there's been a change of schedule. My oral exam hasn't quite happened yet. Apparently, when I read the department regulations--"all oral defenses will be held within two weeks of the written examination"--I missed the fine print: "except when they aren't." So the exam's scheduled for Monday. And though I complain, it works out better for me; I could really use this weekend to study. But that also means there may not be much content till Monday rolls around. Please stay tuned; the future will hold witty insights, book reviews, trip details, and other scintillating bits of information. For now, however, just reflect on the wisdom of the computer scientists of yesteryear.

Later Days.