(3089/898) It always takes longer

45) Item. One of the most effective forms of industrial or military sabotage limits itself to damage that can never be thoroughly proven - or even proven at all - to be anything deliberate. It is like an invisible political movement; perhaps it isn't there at all. If a bomb is wired to a car's ignition, then obviously there is an enemy; if public building or a political headquarters is blown up, then there is a political enemy. But if an accident, or a series of accidents, occurs, if equipment merely fails to function, if it appears faulty, especially in a slow fashion, over a period of natural time, with numerous small failures and misfirings- then the victim, whether a person or a party or a country, can never marshal itself to defend itself.

Philip K. Dick
A Scanner Darkly (1977)

46) Unfortunate indeed is the man who works for a firm covered by insurance, for even his slightest injury may result in cancer.

R. Crane
"The Relationship of A Single Act of Trauma
to Subsequent Malignancy" (1959)
quoted by Peter W. Huber in
Galeilo's Revenge: Junk Science
in the Courtroom (1991)

47) Ah yes, once upon a time there was an age in which people went [to an event] to enjoy themselves, unencumbered by technology, with the memory of the event retained within our own heads. Today we use our artifacts to record the event, and the act of recording them becomes the event. Days later we review the event, peering at the tape, film, or video in order to see what we would have seen had we been looking. We then show the recorded event to others so they too can experience what we would have seen had we been looking. Even if they don't care to experience it, thank you.

The technologies for recording events lead to a curious result. Vicarious experience, I call it. Vicarious experience, even for those who were there. ...

Of course, a vicarious experience is never the same as a real one. We are so busy manipulating, pointing, adjusting, framing, balancing, and preparing that the event disappears. The artifact becomes the event.

Donald A. Norman
Turn Signals Are The Facial
Expressions of Automobiles (1992)

48) [Douglas] Hofstadter's Law says: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law". ...

Hofstadter's Law (revised):

It always takes longer
It always costs more
It will always be harder
There will always be more
There will always be less
than you expect,
even when you take into account
Hofstadter's Law

Donald A. Norman
Turn Signals Are The Facial
Expressions of Automobiles (1992)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and idea (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 886 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.