Quote of the day

If Moses showed up as a Republican candidate you'd get headlines like:

"How many drowned during that Red Sea crossing? Cover up?"
or
"Mana from Heaven laced with deadly preservatives"

- Chucklepants

Quote of the day

Yeah, from "God, No!" again.

"The Eskimos—or as I think they’re called, the Inuits, or maybe the correct term is now “Frozen-Ass Aboriginal North Americans,” I don’t know—do not have twenty-something words for snow. That’s not true. But the Brits do have more than a hundred and fifty terms for male masturbation. If you’re in England and someone uses a verb and you don’t know what it means, it probably means jacking off. For jilling off, female masturbation, our brothers and sisters across the pond stick to “auditioning the finger puppets.” In the good old US of A, if you have a plural noun and you don’t know what it means, it probably means breasts.

Jillette, Penn (2011-08-16). God, No! (pp. 48-49). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Quote of the day

Basically, we don't have any macro models that really work, in the sense that models "work" in biology or meteorology. Often, therefore the measure of a good theory is whether itseems to point us in the direction of models that might work someday.
 Noahpinion

Quote from Dave Barry, in Language Log:

"The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels. All the streets have names like Kal'ia'iou'amaa'aaa'eiou, and many street signs spontaneously generate new syllables during the night."

My own explanation for this was the Hawaiians were once united with the Czechs, divorced, and in the settlement one got the vowels and the other the consonants.

Favorite mistranslation involving goats....

This has been around for a while....a question posted to a computer oriented help group:

This is question, engish is faulty therefore the right excused is 
requested.  Thank google to translate to help.  SORRY!!!!! 

At often, the goat-time install a error is vomit.   To how many times like
the wind, a pole, and the dragon?   Install 2,3 repeat, spank, vomit blows 

14:14:01.869 - INFO
[edu.internet2.middleware.shibboleth.common.config.profile.JSPErrorHandlerB eanDefinitionParser:45]
- Parsing configuration for JSP error handler. 

Not precise the vomit but with aspect similar, is vomited concealed in fold of
goat-time lumber?   goat-time see like the wind, pole, and dragon?  This
insult to father's stones?    JSP error handler with wind, pole, dragon with
intercourse to goat-time?  Or chance lack of skill with a goat-time? 

Please apologize for your stupidity.  There are a many thank you 

Hypotheses included anything from a parody to an attempted back-translation:

Often, I get a program error on install. How much do I have to configure? I tried a re-install 2 or three times, and it brings up errors.
Not the same error, but similar: are errors hidden in the program log? A problem with the calling object? JSP error handler configuration connection at runtime? Or perhaps a misunderstanding of the program?

Sensitivity

Haven't blogged as such for ages, mostly just posted items on Facebook.  Makes sense for bits you just want to pass along without much commentary of your own.

Here's an item from back when (via, no surprise, Marginal Revolution) to break that more-or-less silent streak.  You've probably heard about sensitivity workshops - some unhappy college student says something racist or otherwise insensitive and is sentenced to some sort of re-education, usually without the accompanying risk of death common in Maoist days.  The item is about the opposite, humorously suggesting workshops for people in how NOT to be offended:

Exercise #3: An Awkward Moment.  Stand before the group and tells a story about a time you inadvertently gave offense.  After each story, the group chants, "It was no big deal!"

That's the sort of affirmation I could live with.

Chimps gone wild....

They may not be all that great at acquiring human language, but they do pretty well at those obscene gestures.

Things you learn reading Mary Roach's "Packing for Mars"....

Regarding the fittings for urine collection in space suits: "To avoid mishaps caused by embarrassed astronauts opting for L when they are really S, there is no S.  'There is L, XL, and XXL', says Hamilton Sundstrand suit engineer Tom Chase."

Programmers vs. System Administrators (or NOT vs.)

I love this post describing the difference between programmers and system administrators:

Programmers are like vampires. They're frequently up all night, paler than death itself, and generally afraid of being exposed to daylight. Oh yes, and they tend think of themselves (or at least their code) as immortal.

System Administrators are like werewolves. They may look outwardly ordinary, but are incredibly strong, mostly invulnerable to stuff that would kill regular people -- and prone to strange transformations during a moon "outage".

Haven't posted an XKCD for a while....

But I was sharing his work with my brother-in-law David (also known as "Fred", his vanity plate reads "YABADO"), and so:

Original here.

How would you like it if your spouse bought THIS?

Another great "Markets in Everything" post from MR.

MR brings home the headline bacon.....

Indeed, these two are more than worthy:

Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts

and
Mongolian neo-Nazis: Anti-Chinese sentiment fuels rise of ultra-nationalism



Click through above for details such as

Their right hands rise to black-clad chests and flash out in salute to their nation: "Sieg heil!" They praise Hitler's devotion to ethnic purity.

But with their high cheekbones, dark eyes and brown skin, they are hardly the Third Reich's Aryan ideal. A new strain of Nazism has found an unlikely home: Mongolia.

Things you didn't know about men and women.....

If this sounds odd (excerpt):

Given that men are, on average, physically weaker than women: It's hard to see how they're going to win wars without troops, and survive walking the streets without alpha females willing to protect them. Among alpha females, chivalry is dead. If beta females are chivalrous, so what? Even if beta females had the courage to pull a rapist off of her victim, would she have the fortitude? Considering that the beta female wouldn't even be physically fit enough to join the U.S. Army, it's hard to imagine her stopping a wolf pack.

it has been regendered. HT Prettier Than Napoleon

Quote of the day

Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened.
- internet wisdom forwarded to me by John Wurtenberg that didn't use the word "hell"

Dialog of the day

You'll have to follow the HT to see how

As an aside, I cannot refrain from relating another anecdote, which is told of Gore Vidal. In a TV interview he was asked: "Was your first sexual experience with a man or with a woman?" To which he replied: "I was too polite to ask."

fits into the Kagan confirmation hearings.

It's been a while since I put up an XKCD....

...and they are always so, so good.....

Quote of the day

"The difficult thing with quotes on the internet is verifying them" - Abraham Lincoln

Quote of the day

"For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."

- Molly Ringle, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton winner, HT MR

Whores and Holes - two great things that go great together

But they don't sound THAT much alike....unless they are black, and you are the NAACP.

If you're not going to click on the links to get the full story (and you should), Hallmark recalled an audio card with an astronomical theme (which included "black holes") because somebody in the NAACP thought it sounded like "black whores". You can judge for yourself if you follow the links.

Vuvuzela virtuoso visiting Eastman Theatre?

Seems unlikely, but clearly so far the biggest winner at the World Cup is this delightful little instrument - and the biggest losers are those condemned to have to hear it unwillingly. Perhaps, as with garlic, the solution is "If you can't beat them, join them."

Now we can not only see any web site to the background of vuvuzela sounds, youtube has added a gadget (soccer ball shaped) that lets you mix the audio of the clip with the appropriate sounds.

Another loser would be astrology, after France rather convincingly showed that it is NOT useful when selecting your soccer team.


Update: the horror!