Tech Quotes for v43 new tech plans
- Thread starter Thunderbrd
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BackseatTyrant
Queer Anarcho-Transhumanist
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I feel like it'd be a greatly missed opportunity, if none of rifling techs didn't feature the quote about chekov's gun.
"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep."
– Anton Chekov
– Anton Chekov
With the contributions on this thread, plus help from Discord, here is the current collection of suggested quotes for the new techs in v43.
Polling has begun and will determine the quotes to be used, so pick your favorite!
We'll go right on down the line until all the techs have a selected quote.
Some only have one quote at present, so if you find another that you think would be a good fit, post away.
*bold quote--selected quote from a completed poll
TECH_FRONTIERING
Washington [D.C.] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country. — attributed to Horace Greeley
Go west.
-Pet Shop Boys
TECH_SEWING_MACHINES
The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.
-Mason Cooley
Today I'll bake, tomorrow I'll brew,
The next I'll fetch the queen's new child;
Still no one knows it just the same,
That Rumpelstiltskin is my name.'
Today I dance alone
tomorrow with a child.
Oh, it's hard to play my game,
Rumpelstiltskin is my name!
TECH_MEDICAL_INSTRUMENTATION
When there's no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon's only tool.
-Paul Kalanithi
At first I was queasy; I'll never forget the sound of the scalpel cutting a body open. But it was so cool trying to work out how these people died.
-Jonathan Davis
Let me alone: I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm, so the sooner it's off the better.
-Horatio Nelson
TECH_CRANK_WEAPONS
"Charge your gun!"--Wind-Up Guns scene from Futurama
It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine gun which could by its rapidity of fire enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished.
-Richard Jordan Gatling
TECH_TYPEWRITERS
Give 1 million monkeys 1 million typewriters and they'll eventually type the entire works of William Shakespeare.
-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I had one typewriter for 50 years, but I have bought seven computers in six years. I suppose that's why Bill Gates is rich, and Underwood is out of business.
Andy Rooney
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
David Gerrold
“THE WRITING BALL IS A THING LIKE ME:
MADE OF IRON YET EASILY TWISTED ON JOURNEYS.
PATIENCE AND TACT ARE REQUIRED IN ABUNDANCE
AS WELL AS FINE FINGERS TO USE US.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
TECH_CEMENT
Everything in Russia is made of cement - phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.
-Ian Frazier
As a child, I used to have a secret dread - and a recurring nightmare - of the whole world becoming city, being covered with cement and buildings and streets. No more country. No more woods.
-William Stanley Merwin
I came from a real tough neighborhood. I put my hand in some cement and felt another hand.
-Rodney Dangerfield
TECH_MECHANICAL_REAPERS
Our field is the world.
-McCormick Harvesting Machine Company ad, 1875
By 1850 the McCormick reaper was known in every part of the United States, and at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London it was introduced to European farmers. Although mocked by The Times of London as "a cross between an Astley Chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying machine," the reaper took the Grand Prize.
-Mitchell Wilson, "Cyrus McCormick," britannica.com
They hired men with scythes so sharp,
To cut him off at the knee,
See how they served Sir John Barleycorn,
They served him bitterly.
-John Barleycorn, English folk song
Safety restrictions offline. Harvesting servos engaged.
-Foe Reaper 4000, Hearthstone
TECH_PADDLEWHEEL
I am a person who would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting, if the madam would stand it. I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time.
-Mark Twain
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. [...] These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
-Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
The sidewheel river packet is the most beautiful creation of man.
-Ellis C. Mace
TECH_BARREL_RIFLING
It'll shoot the fleas off a dog's back at 500 yards, Tannen! And it's pointed straight at your head!
-Dr. Emmett Brown, Back to the Future: Part III
One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.
-Anton Chekhov
Bolt actions speak louder than words.
-Craig Roberts
A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
-Theodore Roosevelt
I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.
-Sitting Bull
When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.
-Dick Gregory
People often ask me how I feel about my invention being used to kill people every day and the AK being a common weapon of ethnic conflicts. I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.
-Mikhail Kalashnikov
TECH_STELLAR_PARALAX
The wonder is not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.
-Anatole France
The senses deceive us about objects that are very small or distant.
-Rene Descartes
TECH_POSTAGE
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
-Josh Billings
Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
-Josh Billings
The President of today is just the postage stamp of tomorrow.
-Gracie Allen
The postage stamp is a flimsy thing
No thicker than a beetle's wing
And yet it will roam the world for you
Exactly where you tell it to.
-E.V. Lucas
TECH_EVOLUTION_THEORY
Biology is the most powerful technology ever created. DNA is software, protein are hardware, cells are factories.
-Arvind Gupta
Our world is built on biology and once we begin to understand it, it then becomes a technology.
-Ryan Bethencourt
Biology sometimes reveals its fundamental principles through what may seem at first to be arcane and bizarre.
-Elizabeth Blackburn
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
-Theodosius Dobzhansky
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science - in all of biology.
-Bill Nye
Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.
-Jared Diamond
Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.
-Richard Dawkins
TECH_ANTISEPTICS
Bearing in mind that it is from the vitality of the atmospheric particles that all the mischief arises, it appears that all that is requisite is to dress the wound with some material capable of killing these septic germs, provided that any substance can be found reliable for this purpose, yet not too potent as a caustic.
-Joseph Lister
In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War, watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300% mortality.
-Sam Kean, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons
...all that is requisite is to dress the wound with some material capable of killing these septic germs, provided that any substance can be found reliable for this purpose.
-Joseph Lister
TECH_BREACH_LOADING
That breech loader has killed everything but a train engine, and now it's done that too.
-Patrick D. Smith, A Land Remembered
You know your weapons. It's a lever-action, breech loader. Usual barrel length's thirty inches. This one has an extra four. It's converted to use a special forty-five caliber, hundred and ten grain metal cartridge, with a five-hundred forty grain paper patch bullet. It's fitted with double set triggers, and a Vernier sight. It's marked up to twelve hundred yards. This one shoots a mite further.
-Matthew Quigley, Quigley Down Under
TECH_NAVAL_SCIENCE
The influence of the government will be felt in its most legitimate manner in maintaining an armed navy, of a size commensurate with the growth of its shipping and the importance of the interests connected with it.
- Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History
The best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship.
-Chester Nimitz
Row row row your boat, gently down the stream...
TECH_MAGAZINES
In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.
-Erwin Rommel
A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
-Frederick Douglass
TECH_AMUSEMENT_PARKS
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
-Walt Disney
We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.
-Walt Disney
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
-Walt Disney
Mr. Six It's Playtime Commercial
I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.
-Bill Moyers
TECH_HEAVY_ORDNANCE
In the drumfire, bravery no longer exists: only nerves, nerves, nerves. When anyone is exposed to such trials and tribulations he is no longer of any use as an attacker or defender.
-Anonymous German soldier about the Battle of Verdun
An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
-Howard Tayler, Maxim #3, The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
-Norman Cousins
Artillery is the God of war.
-Joseph Stalin
TECH_PENICILILIN
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.
-Muhammad Ali
Nature makes penicillin; I just found it.
-Alexander Fleming
TECH_INNOVATIVE_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
Obsolete weapons do not deter.
-Margaret Thatcher
Once technology existed, it was impossible to control. Tanks got bigger. Guns fired more rounds. Bombs did more damage.
-Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves
I know not with what weapons WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
-Albert Einstein
TECH_SEMI_AUTOMATIC_WEAPONS
Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.
-Marian Wright Edelman
Got a brand new semi-automatic weapon with a laser sight
Oh, I'm prayin' somebody tries to break in here tonight.
-"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Trigger Happy"
I was handed a chocolate bar and an M-1 rifle and told to go kill Hitler.
-Jack Kirby
TECH_PARTISAN_TACTICS
By the middle of 1943 partisan resistance to the Germans and their allies had grown from the dimensions of a mere nuisance to those of a major factor in the general situation. In many parts of occupied Europe the enemy was suffering losses at the hands of partisans that he could ill afford.
-Basil Davidson
The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.
-Henry Kissinger
Insurrection by means of guerrilla bands is the true method of warfare for all nations desirous of emancipating themselves from a foreign yoke. It is invincible, indestructible.
-Giuseppi Mazzini
Guerrilla leaders win wars by being paranoid and ruthless. Once they take power, they are expected to abandon those qualities and embrace opposite ones: tolerance, compromise, and humility. Almost none manages to do so.
-Stephen Kinzer
TECH_SUPERCHARGER
It increases power and torque, it doesn't restrict engine revs and at full chat a supercharger can sound apocalyptically good. Sure, there are drawbacks, but we love them with all our hearts.
-Matt Kimberley, "Who Invented The Supercharger And How Has It Changed?"
TECH_MANEUVER_WARFARE
Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
One who sets the entire army in motion to chase an advantage will not attain it.
-Sun Tzu
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
-Winston Churchill
TECH_ASSAULT_WEAPONS
In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.
-Erwin Rommel (this was already selected for Magazines)
I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.
-Mikhail Kalashnikov
As long as the peace-makers are armed with assault rifles, it's highly unlikely we'll ever have peace.
-Wayne Gerard Trotman
TECH_HIGH_ALTITUDE_PHOTOGRAPHY
I can see my house from here.
TECH_MILITARY_INDUSTRIALISM
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex." President Eisenhower's farewell speech, January 17, 1961
TECH_GUIDANCE_SYSTEMS
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't.
TECH_AIRCRAFT_RADAR
Gagarin's death was shameful not just because of the loss of a national hero in muddled circumstances, but because of the dangerous flaws revealed in the Soviet military technology of his time. Obviously their radar systems were not capable of simultaneous mapping of aircraft heights and positions, nor of positively identifying one target from another. The implications of this were highly alarming.
-Jamie Doran
In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.
-Dennis Quaid
Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
-Freeman Dyson
I never got tired of watching the radar echo from an aircraft as it first appeared as a tiny blip in the noise on the cathode-ray tube, and then grew slowly into a big deflection as the aircraft came nearer. This strange new power to “see” things at great distances, through clouds or darkness, was a magical extension of our senses. It gave me the same thrill that I felt in the early days of radio when I first heard a voice coming out of a horn...
-Robert Hanbury Brown
TECH_RADIO_JAMMING
In radio, you have two tools. Sound and silence.
-Ira Glass
Over the years a number of different jamming techniques have been tried--white noise jamming, bubble jamming, jamming by broadcasting a competing program on the same channel, etc. Cold war jamming was a particularly virulent strain, usually taking the form of a loud "buzz saw" noise.
-Jerome S. Berg, Broadcasting on the Short Waves, 1945 to Today
In a fit of techno-patriotism, some ham geeks tried to cleanse the airwaves of the Russian Woodpecker by sending out a jamming signal. Their collective effort was dubbed the Russian Woodpecker Hunting Club and was, by most accounts, successful.
-Alexander Nazaryan, "The Massive Russian Radar Site in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone"
Ooh yeah! All right! We're jammin'; I wanna jam it wid you. We're jammin', jammin', And I hope you like jammin', too.
-Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Jamming"
"The radar...it appears to be jammed."
TECH_RADAR_MINIATURIZATION
Every time you warm something in an oven, you use a device that helped change the course of history during World War II [...] The cavity magnetron helped scientists and engineers in Great Britain, the US, and other countries to build compact, efficient radar sets that could spot enemy planes, ships, and even submarine periscopes miles away in the dark.
-ethw.org/Cavity_magnetron
But the greatest treasure of all was the prototype of a piece of hardware called a cavity magnetron, which had been invented a few months earlier by two scientists in Birmingham. [...] It was a valve that could spit out pulses of microwave radio energy on a wavelength of 10 cm. This was unheard of. Nothing like it had been invented before. The wavelength for the radar system we were using at the start of the war was one-and-a-half metres. The equipment needed was bulky and the signals indistinct. The cavity magnetron was to be the key that would allow us to develop airborne radar.
-Angela Hind, "Briefcase 'that changed the world,'" BBC Radio 4's The World in a Briefcase, Feb. 2007
TECH_SWEPT_WING
The introduction of the German swept wing research to aeronautics caused a minor revolution, especially after the dramatic successes of the B-47 and F-86. Eventually almost all design efforts immediately underwent modifications in order to incorporate a swept wing.
-Mitch Williamson, "Weapons and Warfare: Swept Wing"
Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today, but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes. There were probably at least 30,000 different things tried, and when they crash and kill the pilot, don't try that again.
-Burt Rutan
The Hunter shrieked again, and with one powerful sweep of its wings, it propelled into the air.
-Daniel Blackaby, Earthly Trinity
TECH_SOCIAL_JUSTICE
It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.
-MLK JR
That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.
-Chief Standing Bear, Standing Bear v. Crook, 1879
TECH_DISCO
"Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% from the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... heyyy!"
"Uhm, your fish are dead"
"Yeah I know, I can't get them out of there."
-Disco Stu and Homer
TECH_SPACE_PROBES
Hello from the children of planet Earth.
-Golden record aboard the Voyager probes
There is nothing so far removed from us to be beyond our reach, or so far hidden that we cannot discover it.
-Rene Descartes
Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.
-Christa McAuliffe
TECH_HARD_ROCK
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll.
-AC/DC
TECH_FLY_BY_WIRE
Digital fly-by-wire has unshackled designers from the rules of the 1950s and 1960s, so you end up with vehicles like the Space Shuttle, the B-2 bomber, and the F-117. You couldn't have these kinds of aircraft without a fly-by-wire system.
-Ken Szalai
Everyone on the program knew that what we were doing was going to be a major breakthrough in flight control.
-Gary Krier
TECH_VIDEO_GAMES
I think everyone can enjoy games.
-Shigeru Miyamoto
TECH_POWER_PROJECTION
I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.'
-Theodore Roosevelt
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
-Margaret Thatcher
Projecting weakness will not make us safer or discourage attacks against us. We need to show leadership and strength by demonstrating that we will not tolerate violent acts against our people, and we will not leave our citizens or our interests vulnerable to an attack.
-Tom Rooney
TECH_SYNTH_POP
"I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers... They use my tools."
-Robert Moog
TECH_INFRARED_OPTICS
As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see in infrared,
How I hate the night.
-Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe, and Everything
TECH_PRECISION_STRIKE
This lightweight precision targeting system allows dismounted combat operators to locate and mark targets in all weather and lighting conditions, with the precision required for GPS-guided and laser-guided munitions.
-Dr. Mark Hutchins
We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time--we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
TECH_STRATEGIC_DEVELOPMENT
A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.
-Lee Bolman
Always start at the end before you begin.
-Robert Kiyosaki
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
-Michael Porter
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
-Winston Churchill
TECH_NIGHT_VISION
The bullets don't care how dark it is.
-Unknown
TECH_GLOBAL_POSITIONING_SYSTEMS
Right now there are thirty-one satellites zipping around the world with nothing better to do than help you find your way to the grocery store.
-Ed Burnette
TECH_GRUNGE
"With the lights out, it's less dangerous! Here we are now, entertain us!"
Curt Cobain, Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit
TECH_SPEECH_RECOGNITION
"Hello computer."
-Montgomery Scott (Star Trek: The Voyage Home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hShY6xZWVGE)
TECH_FLIGHT_MANAGEMENT
The chances that your tombstone will read 'Killed by Asteroid' are about the same as they'd be for 'Killed in Airplane Crash.'
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.
-Dennis Quaid
Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
-Freeman Dyson
A FMS can be thought of as a master computer system that has control over all other systems, computerized and otherwise. As such, it coordinates the adjustment of flight, engine, and airframe parameters either automatically or by instructing the pilot to do so. Literally, all aspects of the flight are considered, from preflight planning to pulling up to the jetway upon landing, including in-flight amendments to planned courses of action.
-https://www.flight-mechanic.com/flight-management-system-fms/
TECH_BATTLE_SPACE_THEORY
Technology enables warfighters to control all domains; carry out tactical actions in the physical, moral, and mental realms; and accumulate tactical results to achieve strategic objectives.
-Joanne C. Lo, Theory of Battle Space Technology--Introduction
In battle, there are no more than the planned and the surprise, yet the combination give rise to endless possible maneuvers.
-Sun Tzu
TECH_REFLECTIVE_ENGINEERING
No engineer can go upon a new work and not find something peculiar, that will demand his careful reflection, and the deliberate consideration of any advice that he may receive; and nothing so fully reveals his incapacity as a pretentious assumption of knowledge, claiming to understand everything.
-John B. Jervis
What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems...there's no law of physics preventing them.
-Michio Kaku
TECH_SMART_PHONES
"An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. [...] These are not three separate devices. This is one device, and we are calling it, iPhone.
-Steve Jobs from the very first iPhone presentation
TECH_COMPOSITE_ROUNDS
Doesn't matter how good your bullets are if you don't aim carefully.
-Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law
TECH_COMPUTER_FLIGHT_DESIGN
Any pilot who can be replaced by a computer should be.
-Dr. Earl Wiener, #28 of Wiener's Laws, July 2013
It's like the saying among airline pilots that the best flying team has three components: a pilot, a computer, and a dog. The computer is there to fly the plane, the pilot is there to feed the dog. And the dog is there to bite the human if it tries to touch the computer.
-Hannah Fry
TECH_MODULAR_ORBITAL_CONSTRUCTION
I think the International Space Station is providing a key bridge from us living on Earth to going somewhere into deep space.
-Peggy Whitson
Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.
-Felix Baumgartner
TECH_PROGRAMABLE_FLAK
We are getting closer to not being able to dodge the bullet.
-Ken Weinberg
TECH_TURRET_AUTOMATION
A pair of robot guns sat silently, their motion scanners alert and humming. C gun surveyed the empty corridor, its ARMED light flashing. Through a hole in the ceiling at the far end of the passageway, fog swirled in. Water condensed on bare metal walls and dripped to the floor. The gun did not fire on the falling drops. It was smarter, more selective than that, able to distinguish between harmless natural phenomena and inimical movement.
-Alan Dean Foster, Aliens
TECH_HYPERSONIC_BALLISTICS
The stresses and heat generated by a 10,000-pound glide vehicle traveling at 5 to 15 times the speed of sound are so great a sharp turn would rip the weapon apart. Yet even a slight adjustment can make these weapons unpredictable and nearly impossible to intercept.
-Abraham Mahshie, "Hypersonics Defense," Air Force Magazine, Jan. 2022
TECH_MAGNETIC_LAUNCH
EMALS uses an approach analogous to an electro-magnetic rail gun, in order to accelerate the shuttle that holds the aircraft. That approach provides a smoother launch, while offering up to 30% more launch energy potential to cope with heavier fighters. It also has far lower space and maintenance requirements, because it dispenses with most of the steam catapult's [...] systems.
-Ryan White, "Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS)"
TECH_INFORMATIONAL_WARFARE
World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.
-Marshall McLuhan
And knowing is half the battle.
-G.I. Joe
The nineteenth-century liberals overlooked, and the twentieth-century liberals decline to face, the fact that teaching everyone to read opens minds to propaganda and indoctrination at least as much as to truths.
-James Burnham, Suicide of the West
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups...So I ask, in my writing, what is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.
-Philip K. Dick
The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is difficult to verify their authenticity.
-Internet meme "attributed" to Abraham Lincoln (or any famous person)
TECH_SUPPRESSION_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
"Suppressing fire!"
-Cyril Figgis, Archer
TECH_LOW_GRAVITY_ENGINEERING
Space music'd be really something...but they don't have no gravity up there. You couldn't have no downbeat!
-Miles Davis
The microgravity [...] that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings.
-Laurel Clark
TECH_MICROGENERATORS
What does it mean to be a microgenerator? Basically, it means generating your own power from solar, wind, hydro, fuel cells, or biomass. You're producing energy on a small scale, hence, you're a microgenerator!
-ATCOenergy blog, "Big Reasons to Love Micro-Generation" (https://energy.atco.com/en-ca/blog/micro-generation.html)
I ride my bike for transportation a great deal--occasionally I ride it for fun. But I also have a generator bike that's hooked up to my solar battery pack, so if I ride 15 minutes hard on my bike, that's enough energy to toast toast, or power my computer.
-Ed Begley Jr.
The power of the sun...in the palm of my hand!
-Dr. Otto Octavius, Spider-Man 2
TECH_RAPID_DESCENT_CONTROL
"Not to worry, we are still flying half a ship."
-Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith)
www.youtube.com
TECH_ELECTRICAL_WAR_ENGINES
Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels.
-Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla, one of Colorado's famous residents, always believed that the gasoline engine made no sense.
-Kimbal Musk
Everything's science fiction until someone makes it science fact.
-Marie Lu
TECH_LIGHT_RAILGUN
Velocitas eradico.
-US Navy railgun project, late 2000s
One of their light walkers carried a weapon of lethal effect. It fired a form of ultra-high velocity projectile. I saw one [of] our tanks after having been hit by it. There was a small hole punched in either flank--one the projectile's entry point, the other its exit. The tiny munition had passed through the vehicle with such speed that everything within the hull not welded down had been sucked out the exit hole, including the crew. We never identified their bodies, for all that remained of them was a red stain upon the ground, extending some twenty metres from the wreck.
-Major Kane, Warhammer 40,000
TECH_ORBITAL_STRIKES
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
-Ripley, Aliens
"We now have the technology to produce a space-based weapon system which can perform the same mission for less cost. The space system is also much less vulnerable and can respond faster to any location on the globe than a dozen carrier task forces spread throughout the oceans of the world. The proposed name for this weapon is THOR, for it would literally give the United States the power to call down lightning bolts from the heavens upon its enemies" http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/planetaryattack.php#projthor3
Polling has begun and will determine the quotes to be used, so pick your favorite!
We'll go right on down the line until all the techs have a selected quote.
Some only have one quote at present, so if you find another that you think would be a good fit, post away.
*bold quote--selected quote from a completed poll
TECH_FRONTIERING
Washington [D.C.] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country. — attributed to Horace Greeley
Go west.
-Pet Shop Boys
TECH_SEWING_MACHINES
The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.
-Mason Cooley
Today I'll bake, tomorrow I'll brew,
The next I'll fetch the queen's new child;
Still no one knows it just the same,
That Rumpelstiltskin is my name.'
Today I dance alone
tomorrow with a child.
Oh, it's hard to play my game,
Rumpelstiltskin is my name!
TECH_MEDICAL_INSTRUMENTATION
When there's no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon's only tool.
-Paul Kalanithi
At first I was queasy; I'll never forget the sound of the scalpel cutting a body open. But it was so cool trying to work out how these people died.
-Jonathan Davis
Let me alone: I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm, so the sooner it's off the better.
-Horatio Nelson
TECH_CRANK_WEAPONS
"Charge your gun!"--Wind-Up Guns scene from Futurama
It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine gun which could by its rapidity of fire enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished.
-Richard Jordan Gatling
TECH_TYPEWRITERS
Give 1 million monkeys 1 million typewriters and they'll eventually type the entire works of William Shakespeare.
-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I had one typewriter for 50 years, but I have bought seven computers in six years. I suppose that's why Bill Gates is rich, and Underwood is out of business.
Andy Rooney
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
David Gerrold
“THE WRITING BALL IS A THING LIKE ME:
MADE OF IRON YET EASILY TWISTED ON JOURNEYS.
PATIENCE AND TACT ARE REQUIRED IN ABUNDANCE
AS WELL AS FINE FINGERS TO USE US.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
TECH_CEMENT
Everything in Russia is made of cement - phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.
-Ian Frazier
As a child, I used to have a secret dread - and a recurring nightmare - of the whole world becoming city, being covered with cement and buildings and streets. No more country. No more woods.
-William Stanley Merwin
I came from a real tough neighborhood. I put my hand in some cement and felt another hand.
-Rodney Dangerfield
TECH_MECHANICAL_REAPERS
Our field is the world.
-McCormick Harvesting Machine Company ad, 1875
By 1850 the McCormick reaper was known in every part of the United States, and at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London it was introduced to European farmers. Although mocked by The Times of London as "a cross between an Astley Chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying machine," the reaper took the Grand Prize.
-Mitchell Wilson, "Cyrus McCormick," britannica.com
They hired men with scythes so sharp,
To cut him off at the knee,
See how they served Sir John Barleycorn,
They served him bitterly.
-John Barleycorn, English folk song
Safety restrictions offline. Harvesting servos engaged.
-Foe Reaper 4000, Hearthstone
TECH_PADDLEWHEEL
I am a person who would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting, if the madam would stand it. I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time.
-Mark Twain
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. [...] These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
-Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
The sidewheel river packet is the most beautiful creation of man.
-Ellis C. Mace
TECH_BARREL_RIFLING
It'll shoot the fleas off a dog's back at 500 yards, Tannen! And it's pointed straight at your head!
-Dr. Emmett Brown, Back to the Future: Part III
One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.
-Anton Chekhov
Bolt actions speak louder than words.
-Craig Roberts
A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
-Theodore Roosevelt
I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.
-Sitting Bull
When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.
-Dick Gregory
People often ask me how I feel about my invention being used to kill people every day and the AK being a common weapon of ethnic conflicts. I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.
-Mikhail Kalashnikov
TECH_STELLAR_PARALAX
The wonder is not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.
-Anatole France
The senses deceive us about objects that are very small or distant.
-Rene Descartes
TECH_POSTAGE
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
-Josh Billings
Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
-Josh Billings
The President of today is just the postage stamp of tomorrow.
-Gracie Allen
The postage stamp is a flimsy thing
No thicker than a beetle's wing
And yet it will roam the world for you
Exactly where you tell it to.
-E.V. Lucas
TECH_EVOLUTION_THEORY
Biology is the most powerful technology ever created. DNA is software, protein are hardware, cells are factories.
-Arvind Gupta
Our world is built on biology and once we begin to understand it, it then becomes a technology.
-Ryan Bethencourt
Biology sometimes reveals its fundamental principles through what may seem at first to be arcane and bizarre.
-Elizabeth Blackburn
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
-Theodosius Dobzhansky
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science - in all of biology.
-Bill Nye
Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.
-Jared Diamond
Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.
-Richard Dawkins
TECH_ANTISEPTICS
Bearing in mind that it is from the vitality of the atmospheric particles that all the mischief arises, it appears that all that is requisite is to dress the wound with some material capable of killing these septic germs, provided that any substance can be found reliable for this purpose, yet not too potent as a caustic.
-Joseph Lister
In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War, watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300% mortality.
-Sam Kean, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons
...all that is requisite is to dress the wound with some material capable of killing these septic germs, provided that any substance can be found reliable for this purpose.
-Joseph Lister
TECH_BREACH_LOADING
That breech loader has killed everything but a train engine, and now it's done that too.
-Patrick D. Smith, A Land Remembered
You know your weapons. It's a lever-action, breech loader. Usual barrel length's thirty inches. This one has an extra four. It's converted to use a special forty-five caliber, hundred and ten grain metal cartridge, with a five-hundred forty grain paper patch bullet. It's fitted with double set triggers, and a Vernier sight. It's marked up to twelve hundred yards. This one shoots a mite further.
-Matthew Quigley, Quigley Down Under
TECH_NAVAL_SCIENCE
The influence of the government will be felt in its most legitimate manner in maintaining an armed navy, of a size commensurate with the growth of its shipping and the importance of the interests connected with it.
- Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History
The best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship.
-Chester Nimitz
Row row row your boat, gently down the stream...
TECH_MAGAZINES
In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.
-Erwin Rommel
A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
-Frederick Douglass
TECH_AMUSEMENT_PARKS
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
-Walt Disney
We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.
-Walt Disney
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
-Walt Disney
Mr. Six It's Playtime Commercial
I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.
-Bill Moyers
TECH_HEAVY_ORDNANCE
In the drumfire, bravery no longer exists: only nerves, nerves, nerves. When anyone is exposed to such trials and tribulations he is no longer of any use as an attacker or defender.
-Anonymous German soldier about the Battle of Verdun
An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
-Howard Tayler, Maxim #3, The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
-Norman Cousins
Artillery is the God of war.
-Joseph Stalin
TECH_PENICILILIN
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.
-Muhammad Ali
Nature makes penicillin; I just found it.
-Alexander Fleming
TECH_INNOVATIVE_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
Obsolete weapons do not deter.
-Margaret Thatcher
Once technology existed, it was impossible to control. Tanks got bigger. Guns fired more rounds. Bombs did more damage.
-Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves
I know not with what weapons WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
-Albert Einstein
TECH_SEMI_AUTOMATIC_WEAPONS
Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.
-Marian Wright Edelman
Got a brand new semi-automatic weapon with a laser sight
Oh, I'm prayin' somebody tries to break in here tonight.
-"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Trigger Happy"
I was handed a chocolate bar and an M-1 rifle and told to go kill Hitler.
-Jack Kirby
TECH_PARTISAN_TACTICS
By the middle of 1943 partisan resistance to the Germans and their allies had grown from the dimensions of a mere nuisance to those of a major factor in the general situation. In many parts of occupied Europe the enemy was suffering losses at the hands of partisans that he could ill afford.
-Basil Davidson
The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.
-Henry Kissinger
Insurrection by means of guerrilla bands is the true method of warfare for all nations desirous of emancipating themselves from a foreign yoke. It is invincible, indestructible.
-Giuseppi Mazzini
Guerrilla leaders win wars by being paranoid and ruthless. Once they take power, they are expected to abandon those qualities and embrace opposite ones: tolerance, compromise, and humility. Almost none manages to do so.
-Stephen Kinzer
TECH_SUPERCHARGER
It increases power and torque, it doesn't restrict engine revs and at full chat a supercharger can sound apocalyptically good. Sure, there are drawbacks, but we love them with all our hearts.
-Matt Kimberley, "Who Invented The Supercharger And How Has It Changed?"
TECH_MANEUVER_WARFARE
Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
One who sets the entire army in motion to chase an advantage will not attain it.
-Sun Tzu
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
-Winston Churchill
TECH_ASSAULT_WEAPONS
In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.
-Erwin Rommel (this was already selected for Magazines)
I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.
-Mikhail Kalashnikov
As long as the peace-makers are armed with assault rifles, it's highly unlikely we'll ever have peace.
-Wayne Gerard Trotman
TECH_HIGH_ALTITUDE_PHOTOGRAPHY
I can see my house from here.
TECH_MILITARY_INDUSTRIALISM
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex." President Eisenhower's farewell speech, January 17, 1961
TECH_GUIDANCE_SYSTEMS
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't.
TECH_AIRCRAFT_RADAR
Gagarin's death was shameful not just because of the loss of a national hero in muddled circumstances, but because of the dangerous flaws revealed in the Soviet military technology of his time. Obviously their radar systems were not capable of simultaneous mapping of aircraft heights and positions, nor of positively identifying one target from another. The implications of this were highly alarming.
-Jamie Doran
In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.
-Dennis Quaid
Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
-Freeman Dyson
I never got tired of watching the radar echo from an aircraft as it first appeared as a tiny blip in the noise on the cathode-ray tube, and then grew slowly into a big deflection as the aircraft came nearer. This strange new power to “see” things at great distances, through clouds or darkness, was a magical extension of our senses. It gave me the same thrill that I felt in the early days of radio when I first heard a voice coming out of a horn...
-Robert Hanbury Brown
TECH_RADIO_JAMMING
In radio, you have two tools. Sound and silence.
-Ira Glass
Over the years a number of different jamming techniques have been tried--white noise jamming, bubble jamming, jamming by broadcasting a competing program on the same channel, etc. Cold war jamming was a particularly virulent strain, usually taking the form of a loud "buzz saw" noise.
-Jerome S. Berg, Broadcasting on the Short Waves, 1945 to Today
In a fit of techno-patriotism, some ham geeks tried to cleanse the airwaves of the Russian Woodpecker by sending out a jamming signal. Their collective effort was dubbed the Russian Woodpecker Hunting Club and was, by most accounts, successful.
-Alexander Nazaryan, "The Massive Russian Radar Site in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone"
Ooh yeah! All right! We're jammin'; I wanna jam it wid you. We're jammin', jammin', And I hope you like jammin', too.
-Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Jamming"
"The radar...it appears to be jammed."
TECH_RADAR_MINIATURIZATION
Every time you warm something in an oven, you use a device that helped change the course of history during World War II [...] The cavity magnetron helped scientists and engineers in Great Britain, the US, and other countries to build compact, efficient radar sets that could spot enemy planes, ships, and even submarine periscopes miles away in the dark.
-ethw.org/Cavity_magnetron
But the greatest treasure of all was the prototype of a piece of hardware called a cavity magnetron, which had been invented a few months earlier by two scientists in Birmingham. [...] It was a valve that could spit out pulses of microwave radio energy on a wavelength of 10 cm. This was unheard of. Nothing like it had been invented before. The wavelength for the radar system we were using at the start of the war was one-and-a-half metres. The equipment needed was bulky and the signals indistinct. The cavity magnetron was to be the key that would allow us to develop airborne radar.
-Angela Hind, "Briefcase 'that changed the world,'" BBC Radio 4's The World in a Briefcase, Feb. 2007
TECH_SWEPT_WING
The introduction of the German swept wing research to aeronautics caused a minor revolution, especially after the dramatic successes of the B-47 and F-86. Eventually almost all design efforts immediately underwent modifications in order to incorporate a swept wing.
-Mitch Williamson, "Weapons and Warfare: Swept Wing"
Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today, but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes. There were probably at least 30,000 different things tried, and when they crash and kill the pilot, don't try that again.
-Burt Rutan
The Hunter shrieked again, and with one powerful sweep of its wings, it propelled into the air.
-Daniel Blackaby, Earthly Trinity
TECH_SOCIAL_JUSTICE
It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.
-MLK JR
That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.
-Chief Standing Bear, Standing Bear v. Crook, 1879
TECH_DISCO
"Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% from the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... heyyy!"
"Uhm, your fish are dead"
"Yeah I know, I can't get them out of there."
-Disco Stu and Homer
TECH_SPACE_PROBES
Hello from the children of planet Earth.
-Golden record aboard the Voyager probes
There is nothing so far removed from us to be beyond our reach, or so far hidden that we cannot discover it.
-Rene Descartes
Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.
-Christa McAuliffe
TECH_HARD_ROCK
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll.
-AC/DC
TECH_FLY_BY_WIRE
Digital fly-by-wire has unshackled designers from the rules of the 1950s and 1960s, so you end up with vehicles like the Space Shuttle, the B-2 bomber, and the F-117. You couldn't have these kinds of aircraft without a fly-by-wire system.
-Ken Szalai
Everyone on the program knew that what we were doing was going to be a major breakthrough in flight control.
-Gary Krier
TECH_VIDEO_GAMES
I think everyone can enjoy games.
-Shigeru Miyamoto
TECH_POWER_PROJECTION
I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.'
-Theodore Roosevelt
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
-Margaret Thatcher
Projecting weakness will not make us safer or discourage attacks against us. We need to show leadership and strength by demonstrating that we will not tolerate violent acts against our people, and we will not leave our citizens or our interests vulnerable to an attack.
-Tom Rooney
TECH_SYNTH_POP
"I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers... They use my tools."
-Robert Moog
TECH_INFRARED_OPTICS
As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see in infrared,
How I hate the night.
-Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe, and Everything
TECH_PRECISION_STRIKE
This lightweight precision targeting system allows dismounted combat operators to locate and mark targets in all weather and lighting conditions, with the precision required for GPS-guided and laser-guided munitions.
-Dr. Mark Hutchins
We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time--we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
TECH_STRATEGIC_DEVELOPMENT
A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.
-Lee Bolman
Always start at the end before you begin.
-Robert Kiyosaki
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
-Michael Porter
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
-Winston Churchill
TECH_NIGHT_VISION
The bullets don't care how dark it is.
-Unknown
TECH_GLOBAL_POSITIONING_SYSTEMS
Right now there are thirty-one satellites zipping around the world with nothing better to do than help you find your way to the grocery store.
-Ed Burnette
TECH_GRUNGE
"With the lights out, it's less dangerous! Here we are now, entertain us!"
Curt Cobain, Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit
TECH_SPEECH_RECOGNITION
"Hello computer."
-Montgomery Scott (Star Trek: The Voyage Home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hShY6xZWVGE)
TECH_FLIGHT_MANAGEMENT
The chances that your tombstone will read 'Killed by Asteroid' are about the same as they'd be for 'Killed in Airplane Crash.'
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.
-Dennis Quaid
Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
-Freeman Dyson
A FMS can be thought of as a master computer system that has control over all other systems, computerized and otherwise. As such, it coordinates the adjustment of flight, engine, and airframe parameters either automatically or by instructing the pilot to do so. Literally, all aspects of the flight are considered, from preflight planning to pulling up to the jetway upon landing, including in-flight amendments to planned courses of action.
-https://www.flight-mechanic.com/flight-management-system-fms/
TECH_BATTLE_SPACE_THEORY
Technology enables warfighters to control all domains; carry out tactical actions in the physical, moral, and mental realms; and accumulate tactical results to achieve strategic objectives.
-Joanne C. Lo, Theory of Battle Space Technology--Introduction
In battle, there are no more than the planned and the surprise, yet the combination give rise to endless possible maneuvers.
-Sun Tzu
TECH_REFLECTIVE_ENGINEERING
No engineer can go upon a new work and not find something peculiar, that will demand his careful reflection, and the deliberate consideration of any advice that he may receive; and nothing so fully reveals his incapacity as a pretentious assumption of knowledge, claiming to understand everything.
-John B. Jervis
What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems...there's no law of physics preventing them.
-Michio Kaku
TECH_SMART_PHONES
"An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. [...] These are not three separate devices. This is one device, and we are calling it, iPhone.
-Steve Jobs from the very first iPhone presentation
TECH_COMPOSITE_ROUNDS
Doesn't matter how good your bullets are if you don't aim carefully.
-Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law
TECH_COMPUTER_FLIGHT_DESIGN
Any pilot who can be replaced by a computer should be.
-Dr. Earl Wiener, #28 of Wiener's Laws, July 2013
It's like the saying among airline pilots that the best flying team has three components: a pilot, a computer, and a dog. The computer is there to fly the plane, the pilot is there to feed the dog. And the dog is there to bite the human if it tries to touch the computer.
-Hannah Fry
TECH_MODULAR_ORBITAL_CONSTRUCTION
I think the International Space Station is providing a key bridge from us living on Earth to going somewhere into deep space.
-Peggy Whitson
Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.
-Felix Baumgartner
TECH_PROGRAMABLE_FLAK
We are getting closer to not being able to dodge the bullet.
-Ken Weinberg
TECH_TURRET_AUTOMATION
A pair of robot guns sat silently, their motion scanners alert and humming. C gun surveyed the empty corridor, its ARMED light flashing. Through a hole in the ceiling at the far end of the passageway, fog swirled in. Water condensed on bare metal walls and dripped to the floor. The gun did not fire on the falling drops. It was smarter, more selective than that, able to distinguish between harmless natural phenomena and inimical movement.
-Alan Dean Foster, Aliens
TECH_HYPERSONIC_BALLISTICS
The stresses and heat generated by a 10,000-pound glide vehicle traveling at 5 to 15 times the speed of sound are so great a sharp turn would rip the weapon apart. Yet even a slight adjustment can make these weapons unpredictable and nearly impossible to intercept.
-Abraham Mahshie, "Hypersonics Defense," Air Force Magazine, Jan. 2022
TECH_MAGNETIC_LAUNCH
EMALS uses an approach analogous to an electro-magnetic rail gun, in order to accelerate the shuttle that holds the aircraft. That approach provides a smoother launch, while offering up to 30% more launch energy potential to cope with heavier fighters. It also has far lower space and maintenance requirements, because it dispenses with most of the steam catapult's [...] systems.
-Ryan White, "Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS)"
TECH_INFORMATIONAL_WARFARE
World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.
-Marshall McLuhan
And knowing is half the battle.
-G.I. Joe
The nineteenth-century liberals overlooked, and the twentieth-century liberals decline to face, the fact that teaching everyone to read opens minds to propaganda and indoctrination at least as much as to truths.
-James Burnham, Suicide of the West
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups...So I ask, in my writing, what is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.
-Philip K. Dick
The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is difficult to verify their authenticity.
-Internet meme "attributed" to Abraham Lincoln (or any famous person)
TECH_SUPPRESSION_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
"Suppressing fire!"
-Cyril Figgis, Archer
TECH_LOW_GRAVITY_ENGINEERING
Space music'd be really something...but they don't have no gravity up there. You couldn't have no downbeat!
-Miles Davis
The microgravity [...] that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings.
-Laurel Clark
TECH_MICROGENERATORS
What does it mean to be a microgenerator? Basically, it means generating your own power from solar, wind, hydro, fuel cells, or biomass. You're producing energy on a small scale, hence, you're a microgenerator!
-ATCOenergy blog, "Big Reasons to Love Micro-Generation" (https://energy.atco.com/en-ca/blog/micro-generation.html)
I ride my bike for transportation a great deal--occasionally I ride it for fun. But I also have a generator bike that's hooked up to my solar battery pack, so if I ride 15 minutes hard on my bike, that's enough energy to toast toast, or power my computer.
-Ed Begley Jr.
The power of the sun...in the palm of my hand!
-Dr. Otto Octavius, Spider-Man 2
TECH_RAPID_DESCENT_CONTROL
"Not to worry, we are still flying half a ship."
-Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith)
Not to worry, we’re still flying half a ship
www.youtube.com
TECH_ELECTRICAL_WAR_ENGINES
Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels.
-Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla, one of Colorado's famous residents, always believed that the gasoline engine made no sense.
-Kimbal Musk
Everything's science fiction until someone makes it science fact.
-Marie Lu
TECH_LIGHT_RAILGUN
Velocitas eradico.
-US Navy railgun project, late 2000s
One of their light walkers carried a weapon of lethal effect. It fired a form of ultra-high velocity projectile. I saw one [of] our tanks after having been hit by it. There was a small hole punched in either flank--one the projectile's entry point, the other its exit. The tiny munition had passed through the vehicle with such speed that everything within the hull not welded down had been sucked out the exit hole, including the crew. We never identified their bodies, for all that remained of them was a red stain upon the ground, extending some twenty metres from the wreck.
-Major Kane, Warhammer 40,000
TECH_ORBITAL_STRIKES
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
-Ripley, Aliens
"We now have the technology to produce a space-based weapon system which can perform the same mission for less cost. The space system is also much less vulnerable and can respond faster to any location on the globe than a dozen carrier task forces spread throughout the oceans of the world. The proposed name for this weapon is THOR, for it would literally give the United States the power to call down lightning bolts from the heavens upon its enemies" http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/planetaryattack.php#projthor3
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Osk21
Barbarian Killer win Peace thru War!
I love these ideas. Does every have a copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and a thesaurus? I think this thread will make version 43 a greatly enhanced C2C game. I can't wait for the version that will make multimap happen. I would still like to see The Loch Ness Monster somewhere on the map. Also an Elite Hospital like the Mayo Clinic or Walter Reed the could be founded by someone like Clara Barton, who could travel the World.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
So this is the list of the techs we need buttons and quotes for (and anyone who wants to take a stab at the pedia descriptions is very welcome to as well):
TECH_FRONTIERING
TECH_SEWING_MACHINES
TECH_MEDICAL_INSTRUMENTATION
TECH_CRANK_WEAPONS
TECH_TYPEWRITERS
TECH_CEMENT
TECH_MECHANICAL_REAPERS
TECH_PADDLEWHEEL
TECH_BARREL_RIFLING
TECH_STELLAR_PARALAX
TECH_POSTAGE
TECH_EVOLUTION_THEORY
TECH_ANTISEPTICS
TECH_BREACH_LOADING
TECH_NAVAL_SCIENCE
TECH_MAGAZINES
TECH_AMUSEMENT_PARKS
TECH_HEAVY_ORDNANCE
TECH_PENISCILIN
TECH_INNOVATIVE_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
TECH_SEMI_AUTOMATIC_WEAPONS
TECH_PARTISAN_TACTICS
TECH_SUPERCHARGER
TECH_MANEUVER_WARFARE
TECH_ASSUALT_WEAPONS
TECH_HIGH_ALTITUDE_PHOTOGRAPHY
TECH_MILITARY_INDUSTRIALISM
TECH_GUIDANCE_SYSTEMS
TECH_AIRCRAFT_RADAR
TECH_RADIO_JAMMING
TECH_RADAR_MINIATURIZATION
TECH_SWEPT_WING
TECH_SOCIAL_JUSTICE
TECH_DISCO
TECH_SPACE_PROBES
TECH_HARD_ROCK
TECH_FLY_BY_WIRE
TECH_VIDEO_GAMES
TECH_POWER_PROJECTION
TECH_SYNTH_POP
TECH_INFRARED_OPTICS
TECH_PRECISION_STRIKE
TECH_STRATEGIC_DEVELOPMENT
TECH_NIGHT_VISION
TECH_GLOBAL_POSITIONING_SYSTEMS
TECH_GRUNGE
TECH_SPEECH_RECOGNITION
TECH_FLIGHT_MANAGEMENT
TECH_BATTLE_SPACE_THEORY
TECH_REFLECTIVE_ENGINEERING
TECH_SMART_PHONES
TECH_COMPOSITE_ROUNDS
TECH_COMPUTER_FLIGHT_DESIGN
TECH_MODULAR_ORBITAL_CONSTRUCTION
TECH_PROGRAMABLE_FLAK
TECH_TURRET_AUTOMATION
TECH_HYPERSONIC_BALLISTICS
TECH_MAGNETIC_LAUNCH
TECH_INFORMATIONAL_WARFARE
TECH_SUPPRESSION_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
TECH_LOW_GRAVITY_ENGINEERING
TECH_MICROGENERATORS
TECH_RAPID_DESCENT_CONTROL
TECH_ELECTRICAL_WAR_ENGINES
TECH_LIGHT_RAILGUN
TECH_ORBITAL_STRIKES
@Spacer_J & others : This is the clean list of new techs - some are actually in the game but will be moved so greatly that they needed new quotes and/or definitions and probably even new buttons with the buttons currently there going to techs that will take their spots perhaps. Anyhow, if you could show us which quotes have won out in the quote voteoffs we've done so far, we can start taking submissions here and on Discord for the tech quotes as well. I've also asked Dr Avel to help with the buttons to get this moving along and this list is somewhat for his benefit as well.
Also, again, we're going to need pedia entries written for these - I'll see if I can't get some help on that level as well so if anyone wishes to contribute there, even if just to collect information online into something that works for the pedia, great!
TECH_FRONTIERING
TECH_SEWING_MACHINES
TECH_MEDICAL_INSTRUMENTATION
TECH_CRANK_WEAPONS
TECH_TYPEWRITERS
TECH_CEMENT
TECH_MECHANICAL_REAPERS
TECH_PADDLEWHEEL
TECH_BARREL_RIFLING
TECH_STELLAR_PARALAX
TECH_POSTAGE
TECH_EVOLUTION_THEORY
TECH_ANTISEPTICS
TECH_BREACH_LOADING
TECH_NAVAL_SCIENCE
TECH_MAGAZINES
TECH_AMUSEMENT_PARKS
TECH_HEAVY_ORDNANCE
TECH_PENISCILIN
TECH_INNOVATIVE_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
TECH_SEMI_AUTOMATIC_WEAPONS
TECH_PARTISAN_TACTICS
TECH_SUPERCHARGER
TECH_MANEUVER_WARFARE
TECH_ASSUALT_WEAPONS
TECH_HIGH_ALTITUDE_PHOTOGRAPHY
TECH_MILITARY_INDUSTRIALISM
TECH_GUIDANCE_SYSTEMS
TECH_AIRCRAFT_RADAR
TECH_RADIO_JAMMING
TECH_RADAR_MINIATURIZATION
TECH_SWEPT_WING
TECH_SOCIAL_JUSTICE
TECH_DISCO
TECH_SPACE_PROBES
TECH_HARD_ROCK
TECH_FLY_BY_WIRE
TECH_VIDEO_GAMES
TECH_POWER_PROJECTION
TECH_SYNTH_POP
TECH_INFRARED_OPTICS
TECH_PRECISION_STRIKE
TECH_STRATEGIC_DEVELOPMENT
TECH_NIGHT_VISION
TECH_GLOBAL_POSITIONING_SYSTEMS
TECH_GRUNGE
TECH_SPEECH_RECOGNITION
TECH_FLIGHT_MANAGEMENT
TECH_BATTLE_SPACE_THEORY
TECH_REFLECTIVE_ENGINEERING
TECH_SMART_PHONES
TECH_COMPOSITE_ROUNDS
TECH_COMPUTER_FLIGHT_DESIGN
TECH_MODULAR_ORBITAL_CONSTRUCTION
TECH_PROGRAMABLE_FLAK
TECH_TURRET_AUTOMATION
TECH_HYPERSONIC_BALLISTICS
TECH_MAGNETIC_LAUNCH
TECH_INFORMATIONAL_WARFARE
TECH_SUPPRESSION_WEAPON_SYSTEMS
TECH_LOW_GRAVITY_ENGINEERING
TECH_MICROGENERATORS
TECH_RAPID_DESCENT_CONTROL
TECH_ELECTRICAL_WAR_ENGINES
TECH_LIGHT_RAILGUN
TECH_ORBITAL_STRIKES
@Spacer_J & others : This is the clean list of new techs - some are actually in the game but will be moved so greatly that they needed new quotes and/or definitions and probably even new buttons with the buttons currently there going to techs that will take their spots perhaps. Anyhow, if you could show us which quotes have won out in the quote voteoffs we've done so far, we can start taking submissions here and on Discord for the tech quotes as well. I've also asked Dr Avel to help with the buttons to get this moving along and this list is somewhat for his benefit as well.
Also, again, we're going to need pedia entries written for these - I'll see if I can't get some help on that level as well so if anyone wishes to contribute there, even if just to collect information online into something that works for the pedia, great!
I have been updating the preliminary list of quotes that I posted here earlier as the polls go along (bolding the winners), but here's a clean list of the winners to this point:
TECH_FRONTIERING
Washington [D.C.] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country. — attributed to Horace Greeley
TECH_SEWING_MACHINES
The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.
-Mason Cooley
TECH_MEDICAL_INSTRUMENTATION
Let me alone: I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm, so the sooner it's off the better.
-Horatio Nelson
TECH_CRANK_WEAPONS
It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine gun which could by its rapidity of fire enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished.
-Richard Jordan Gatling
TECH_TYPEWRITERS
Give 1 million monkeys 1 million typewriters and they'll eventually type the entire works of William Shakespeare.
-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
TECH_CEMENT
As a child, I used to have a secret dread - and a recurring nightmare - of the whole world becoming city, being covered with cement and buildings and streets. No more country. No more woods.
-William Stanley Merwin
TECH_MECHANICAL_REAPERS
By 1850 the McCormick reaper was known in every part of the United States, and at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London it was introduced to European farmers. Although mocked by The Times of London as "a cross between an Astley Chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying machine," the reaper took the Grand Prize.
-Mitchell Wilson, "Cyrus McCormick," britannica.com
TECH_PADDLEWHEEL
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. [...] These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
-Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
TECH_BARREL_RIFLING
It'll shoot the fleas off a dog's back at 500 yards, Tannen! And it's pointed straight at your head!
-Dr. Emmett Brown, Back to the Future: Part III
I could make a new thread with the winners posted and keep that updated, if that's easier to find.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Nice! I bet we could run more polls at once as well to speed things up a little though you've been doing a fantastic job of it so far and its a fun thing to come and vote on. I'm not sure how long we should wait for the audio submissions but I know there's more interest than are reacting in the first day of calling for them too.
Thanks! Glad to hear that. The audio submissions should be a lot of fun, as well.
CreativeCaprine
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2016
- Messages
- 39
So Barrel Rifling isn't going to have a sound clip from Back To The Future?
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
I suppose we could vote on that clip vs the other fan recorded ones - I'd like it if a ding was added to it though. WOULD be hard to do better than the Doc and we haven't been avoiding copyright issues here.
CreativeCaprine
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2016
- Messages
- 39
This took WAY longer than it should have, but I have finally thrown these uploads together.
https://youtube.com/shorts/su3iXL3r5lw
https://youtube.com/shorts/XdbhoUBh7MA
https://youtube.com/shorts/z7BQv7BAsxg
https://youtube.com/shorts/XdbhoUBh7MA
https://youtube.com/shorts/z7BQv7BAsxg
