It's not every day that you're somewhere technical and you come across something else: some humour, or knowledge, or wisdom, just something other than what you were expecting to find in that technical place. The effect is always surprising (pleasantly so) and refreshing (a welcome respite from the technical slog). Some of the finest exponents of this rare art are
Andy Tanenbaum (for instance his book on
Computer Networks manages to incorporate quite a bit of humour without sacrificing technical accuracy) and
Donald Knuth (his technical prose is almost always exemplary in its erudition and elegance--most famously displayed in that cult computer science classic,
The Art of Computer Programming, or TAOCP as it's known in the acronymophilic nerd community).
So you can imagine my shock, and delight, when I was in a technical place recently, a linuxy
one as it happens, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I stumbled across wisdom:
The price of freedom is responsibility, but it's a bargain, because freedom is priceless. - Hugh Downs
1 comment:
Indeed it is, more so if you consider that it has cost other people's lives. The conundrum, thus far unanswered, is the fact that freedom so precious is nearly always taken for granted, nonetheless!
LCS
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