Inspiration

On thinking ahead, from the novel "Artifact" by Greg Benford, a "hard" sci-fi writer who is also a physicist:

"There was a great mathematician named Hilbert, who telegraphed Berlin saying he had proved the outstanding unsolved problem in mathematics, a thing called Riemann's conjecture.  It has to do with the roots of a well known function.

He sends this telegram to Berlin, where he's going to give a speech. Everybody gets excited.

So Hilbert shows up and talks, and says nothing about the problem.

Somebody comes up to him after the speech and says, 'What about Riemann's conjecture? What's the solution?'

Hilbert says he hasn't got one. He was taking his first airplane trip to Berlin, and was pretty nervous, so he sent the telegram in case he got killed."

"The child who follows you from room to room isn't being difficult. They're reminding you that you are their favorite place to be."

- unknown

During a temporary shutdown of operations at a large plant, trained police dogs were hired to protect the building from vandalism. A company executive who was unaware of the new regime arrived at the plant early one morning.

As he was walking down the corridor to his office, he came face to face with one of the dogs, accompanied by his trainer.

The dog reacted to the presence of the stranger by baring his teeth and uttering a menacing growl. The executive froze to the spot. The trainer shouted in an authoritative tone the command: "Sit!"

The unnerved executive promptly sat down on the floor.

"The greatest enemy of learning is knowing."

- John C. Maxwell