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A serious public debate about the validity of astrology? A serious believer in the White House? Two of them? Give me a break. What stifled my laughter is that the image fits. Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward science. Facts, like numbers, roll off his back. And weve all come to accept it. This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not that long ago, it was Reagans support of Creationism....Creationists actually got equal time with evolutionists. The public was supposed to be open-minded to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense. The same people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of laetrile to eye of newt to the movement of planets. We lose the capacity to make rational -- scientific -- judgments. Its all the same. -- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers Group

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too." -- W. Somerset Maugham

"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific." -- Jane Wagner

Mausoleum: The final and funniest folly of the rich. -- Ambrose Bierce

In space, no one can hear you fart.

If its working, the diagnostics say its fine. If its not working, the diagnostics say its fine. -- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank. -- Woody Allen