Hawk

“Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder'.”
― Geoffrey Willans, Whizz for Atomms

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you *play* with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.

After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn't paying any attention; he wasn't supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly - while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation.

Absolutely useless. We *had* tables of arc-tangents. But if you've ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the *delight* in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“So the captain, the first officer and the ship's doctor and sometimes the engineer all beam down to a planet. Together."
"The entire complement of the senior officers?"
Billy nodded
"And who has the command of the ship?"
"I don't know. Junior officers I guess."
"If they worked for me I would have them court-martialed. That sounds like a dereliction of duty."
"I know. I know. I always thought it odd myself. But that's not the point."
"What is the point?"
"They're usually accompanied by a guy in the red shirt. Always a crew member you've never seen before. And as soon as you see the shirt, you know he's going to die.”
― Michael Scott, The Enchantress