What I've learned

• There's not enough time.
• There are two kinds of people: those that divide people into two kinds, and those that don't.
• There are two kinds of religious doctrine: esoteric and exoteric. If you buy into the exoteric kind, you still have hope for enlightenment in the next life. But then, so does a spider. If you buy into the esoteric kind, you may have some explaining to do someday.
• The wiggly lines in Feynman diagrams have something to do with photons.
• You have to let a little bit of your breath out before you squeeze the trigger.
• Rub her feet.
• Some things are very very hard to figure out. That doesn't mean they can't be figured out.
• Malthus was right.
• Nuclear physics is a lot like life.
• "Justice" is a higher value than "fairness", and one shouldn't confuse the two.
• When a thermal kicks one of your wings up, you have to turn into it right away. Then watch the vario to center yourself.
• Spengler was right.
• It's a lot harder to design a fighter aircraft than it is to talk about designing one.
• If you find yourself tumbling uncontrollably through space, spread your arms and arch your back. Pretty soon you'll be facing the ground. But when the altimeter drops below 2500 feet, you'd better pull anyway.
• Dante is overrated.
• A pencil eraser can be used to clean oxidation off of electrical contacts.
• There is something to holiness. But it has almost nothing to do with costume.
• Women are great.
• Take three lights on a night dive. If the first one fails, abort the dive. If the second one fails, abort the dive. If the third one fails, abort the dive. Or borrow your buddy's light.
• Volkwagen Beetles don't stop well from 80 mph.
• Neither do turbocharged, intercooled RX-7s without antilock brakes.
• Slavery was America's "original sin".
• Don't dive with someone who won't loan you a light on a night dive.
• Some things aren't well-represented by symbols.
• "Truth" is an especially slippery notion.
• Never leave your wingman.
• Computers are cool. But they don't work as well as we think they should.
• Most people can't find the United States on a world map, or name more than five of the ten commandments, or know the derivative of exp(x).
• Test pilots are crazy enough to bet their lives that a whole bunch of other people have done their jobs right.
• Religious doctrine can be useful even if it's not exactly true.
• Some things are just too cruel to put in black and white.
• Little things like boundary layers make a difference whether big things like airplanes can fly.
• The morphology of physical theories has not been adequately dissected.
• When the core is stable but the tailpipe pressure drops suddenly, forcing the nozzle area to slew down, it probably means the afterburner has blown out.
• The Eightfold Way is not just a symmetry principle.
• Everything is a many-body problem.