This is just another reason why I love wikipedia and humans who write articles for it. Personally, I heard the Stephen Hawking’s Betrand Russel/little-old-lady version first.
Update:
In conjunction with the above, I have subsequently found the best web site in the known universe. May I present to you http://members.tripod.com/TheoLarch/turtle.html
I found the following randomly on www.facebook.com:
“What would your own album look like if you were in a band? Follow the directions below and find out
1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
5 – Post it to FB with this text in the “caption” or “comment” and TAG the friends you want to join in.”
A particularly pertinent and poignant pontification.
Can you detect my vandalism? EDIT: The answer is “no” because I have been caught. No more funny Nim Chimpsky quotes.
Also, ironic jingosim for fun. And not ironic jingoism for your critical consideration.
Finally, why Robert Smithson is pertinent to my interests:
I was looking at some wikithings. I found Wikisource, which, from what I can gather, is an online database of public domain texts. Public Domain in the US is confusingly defined here. For a more practical breakdown, look here.
If you’ve read around Wikisource, you will find that one way to help out is to throw a Scan party.
To celebrate works by a particular person which are entering the public domain, you get a bunch of people together and enter their texts into Wikisource.
I propose Edmund Husserl, the German thinker who died on April 26, 1938.
Edmund Husserl heavily influenced Martin Heidegger, who wrote Being and Time which, in turn, heavily influenced Jerzy Kosinski, who then wrote Being There, which was then turned into a film of the same name by Hal Ashby, which starred Peter Sellers, who is my favorite actor and who I will be portraying for Halloween.
So, Husserl scan party on April 26th, 2008.