20 Years Ago

"Few people truly want raw data. They seek information, taste, even wisdom. Filtering the Net stream is essential, and finder software continues to improve beyond the simple key-word seekers of today. But these still take our scarcest resource: time."
—Gregory Benford, "alt.fans"

"The ceremony [Robin Shahar] and her partner engaged in was purely religious, and did not involve the sort of civil marriage that is at issue in Hawaii and the District of Columbia. If you can get fired for having a marriage ceremony in your own church which your government finds distasteful, what other kinds of religious ceremonies might states want to punish people for?"
—David Link, "Gay Rites"

"Until Woodrow Wilson's election in 1912, the Republicans tended to be the big-government party, favoring high tariff barriers to help corporations. But because the federal government was very small, Republicans kept generating budget surpluses. Instead of cutting tariffs or other taxes, they thought up new things…to do with the extra money."
—Martin Morse Wooster, "Whither Welfare?"

—January 1996