Though its light-collecting mirror is modest by terrestrial telescope standards . . . its precision focus and perch above Earth's distorting atmosphere make Hubble's observations the benchmark by which all other observatories are measured.

Why do my readers and informants so delight in bloopers and boo-boos, fluffs and flubs, and goofs and gaffes? […] The humor in bloopers lies, in part, in the listener's awareness of the speaker's vulnerability. It is the very artlessness of linguistic lapses that makes them so endearing and makes us feel superior.

Scales have proliferated like tribbles in quadra-triticale: just intonations, equal temperaments, scales based on overtones, scales generated from a single interval or pair of intervals, scales without octaves, scales arising from arcane mathematical formulas, scales that reflect cosmological or religious structures, scales that come from the heart.

He had referred to the danger of over-illumination when speaking on an earlier paper in the Congress, and he felt sure that the greater use of spectacles on the other side of the Atlantic was in some measure due to the intense illumination in factories and offices, from which we in this country had been saved to some extent by the greater prevalence of older methods of lighting.