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move along, nothing to see here

"The mark of a truly great mind isn't whether you're right or wrong. It's how well you can weasel out of a jam." -- Cecil Adams, author of The Straight Dope

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want." -- Bill Watterson, in Calvin and Hobbes, 1988

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -- Albert Einstein

"Are you offering me the dreary exile of your imagination?" -- Jean Genet, The Maids

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning." -- Jane Austen in Persuasion

"Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment." --Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters, 1990

“I took advantage of a pigeon once.” -- overheard at choir practice

“Symptoms of "Pathological Science"
1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3. There are claims of great accuracy.
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
6. The ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually into oblivion.”
From a lecture by Irving Langmuir, in 1953. Transcript published in Physics Today, October 1989.

"Women have girlfriends so they don’t have to die of loneliness, waiting for a guy to start a significant conversation." -- Rhonda Raskin

"A subtle joke about a man's character can ruin a reputation faster than an obvious lie." -- Texas Bix Bender in A Cowboy's Guide to Life

"Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch." -- Jane Austen in Mansfield Park

"One thing is for sure, the sheep is not a creature of the air. They have enormous difficulty in the comparatively simple act of perchin'. (Baaa baaa... flap flap flap ... whoosh ... thud.) Trouble is, sheep are very dim. Once they get an idea in their 'eads, there's no shiftin' it." -- Monty Python

"When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age?" -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Modal auxiliaries: any one of the verbs that combine with the main verb to express necessity (must), obligation (should), permission (may), probability (might), possibility (could), ability (can), or tentativeness (would)." -- from Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.

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Thanks for the good quotes

"The Red Cross is demanding access to the analogies currently being tortured." Kal, on the Straight dope Message Board, Sept08

"One look at her and you can tell her attic is either empty or filled with frightening toys." -- Mr. Blue Sky

"The mark of a truly great mind isn't whether you're right or wrong. It's how well you can weasel out of a jam." -- Cecil Adams, author of The Straight Dope

“If wishing for a return to "each holiday in its own good time" makes me a Grinch, well then pass the Who Hash. Harrumph” -- Scarlett67

"You're probably going to spend ten, twenty, or more years of your life working for a company that'd kill you and sell your organs if it got the CEO a third gold-plated bathtub for himself and his hookers." -- GMRyujin 29April04

"You can be talented, well-trained, highly experienced, and a loyal employee and they'll still ship your job overseas if it'll let the CEO get more hookers on bath night. And they'll probably make you train the guy taking your job." -- GMRyujin 29April04

"I'm just saying that if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck,...etc. But then again, it could just be Elton John in a duck suit. We'll just have to wait and see." -- Starving Artist

"I stopped trying to drown my sorrows years ago when I learned that all sorrows can float, several can tread water, some can swim, and a few can perform CPR on their fellow sorrows." -- pinkfreud

Well, normally, I'd comment with Hanlon's Razor, which runs, Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. However, in this case, I think the corollary applies: Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
- "darksasami," on LiveJournal

"It's called a remote because it always is."
-Sitnam's dad

"As I told my son once, sometimes you just have to get out of the way and let people be stupid. You can't fix her, accept her for what she is, a flawed human being in need of therapy, and don't let her stop you from what you want to be." Ivylass, on the SDMB 16dec08

"Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment." –Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters, 1990

Still looking for my gruntle, lost 13June01. Current reward offered $.04.
"I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." W. Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

"Don't be fooled into thinking that people bitching about their job constitutes hating their job. People have a certain about of bitching and moaning inside them that has to be expelled before they die. No matter how good a person's life is, they have a preset Whining Rate that they have to keep up. If a real professional whiner were given $25 million, a mansion, free boats, servants and exemption from taxes for the rest of his life, six months from now he'd be complaining that his car-servant doesn't wax the Lambourghini right and his Thursday hooker's blowjobs are getting a bit predictable."

My time, my effort, my infinite patience and understanding. -- Jackie in Risky Business 1983

"It never gets easier, you just go faster." - Greg Lemond

"It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years." Tom Lehrer

"If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything." -Fred Menger, chemistry professor (1937-)

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit fact." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in _A Scandal in Bohemia_

"Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...and the only one that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor."--Wehrner von Braun

Never underestimate the perversity of inanimate objects.

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." -- Oscar Wilde

Of course I always think I am right. If I thought I was wrong I would have changed my mind already.

Then the French conquered England, and our spelling was launched on its road to incomprehensibility.
Sunspace in http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=538859

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

-- B. Shaw

"I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."
- Helen Keller

Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself: “Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.”
- Lillian Carter (mother of President Jimmy Carter)

I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered until I read the description in the catalog: “not good in a bed, but fine against a wall.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.
- George Burns

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
- Mark Twain

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
- Groucho Marx

I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
- Alex Levine

My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.
- Rodney Dangerfield

Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
- Spike Milligan

I don't feel old. In fact, I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap.
- Bob Hope

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.
- W. C. Fields

Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty, but everything else starts to wear out, fall out or spread out.
- Phyllis Diller

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-find.html
Boyfriend becomes dependant on me for survivial

http://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-ruined-modern-world.html

Denser'n a neutron star on Stupid Day.
-- iampunha on http://www.giraffeboards.com/showthread.php?t=13378

"The biggest problem with being smart is that you don't feel smart--it just _feels_ like everyone _else_ is _deeply_stupid_." --Shot From Guns, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12718843#post12718843

Every time someone admits they're dead and hollow inside, a corporate executive gets his wings.
-- Cat Whisperer, on the SDMB

There is a moral shortcut that's often taught to children: The right thing to do is often shown to be the most onerous of the choices presented. The shortcut that becomes ingrained on an emotional level is that in the future, the choice that causes oneself the most pain is automatically going to look like the morally right choice. This is a false guide, and one that causes huge amounts of damage. Not only to the person suffering under it's weight, but also for their friends and family. -- OtakuLoki in http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=600340

I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)

-- Franz Wright

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

"Those the law does not protect, the law will not long restrain." - Greatsword (http://greatsword.livejournal.com/178556.html?mode=reply)

Congress is the crucible of stupid, where mere idiocy is burned away to reveal only the purest dumb.
said by Really Not All That Bright in http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=511831&page=142

I have decided that being an adult is all about putting on your happy face while silently hating almost everything and everyone. -- Solfy, http://www.giraffeboards.com/showthread.php?t=30617&page=5

http://xkcd.com/1259/ I'll remember your bee, flowers

http://xkcd.com/1141/ "next year"

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.”

― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

Andre Malraux once asked a parish priest who had been taken confession for fifty years, what he had learned about mankind. The priest replied, “First of all people are much more unhappy than one thinks…and then the fundamental fact is that there is no such thing as a grown up person.”

"How abominably unjust to persecute a man for such an airy trifle as that! ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ was his attitude now." --Beatrice Evelyn Hall (under the pseudonym, S. G. Tallentyre)

http://www.themarysue.com/voltaire-beatrice-evelyn-hall/

"... the difference between left and right wingers is that while both agree that a perfect system is impossible, left wingers would rather let some people defraud the system than have any truly needy people go without help, while the right wingers would rather have some needy people go without help than allow anyone to defraud the system."
posted by TonySinclair on the SDMB

Keeping toxic people in your life to please others is a recipe for perpetual dysfunction and unhappiness.
--Qadgop the Mercotan (SDMB)

Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.

Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.

― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

I am neither impatient nor lazy, but damn, I wish I were further along than this. Job 19:23, people: aka the Writer's Lament. "Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!"
--desperance (Chaz)

"When a person tells you that you have hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't." - Louis C.K.

CK Louis: "Full? The meal is not over when I'm full. The meal is over when I hate myself."

Originally Posted by Jophiel in http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=782813

We don't want the have-nots asking for things because it puts the haves in the uncomfortable situation to say "No". To make it easier on the haves, we shame the have-nots into silence.

"Just like you never point a gun at anything you do not intend to shoot, you never put anything in the oven you do not intend to bake." --Chronos
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=817599

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move along, nothing to see here

Nice.

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ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF by B. Shaw

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I hear the sound of wings

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on asking for things

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