User:EEng
- A message for visitors: For performance reasons some of the more image-heavy exhibits have been moved to User:EEng/Museum Annex. The Annex is free and open to the public.
- We actually have an article on "goat towers", which are – and I am not making this up – "multi-story decorative goat houses" for some reason commonly found in vineyards. And so perhaps it was inevitable that, in the course of a discussion of this article, the following would bubble up from the fertile but warped mind of our fellow editor Martinevans123 [11]:
Warning! You could die laughing.
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Your season tickets to The Museums are valid at WP:AE. Userbox by Ritchie333[12].
If only it were so...
- From a discussion at AN:
"This episode, to my mind highlights a very big flaw in the functioning of wikipedia. Namely, that certain users who have an elevated status: 'admins' are able to act without impunity."
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The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
- "His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind."
- "Little did I dream you could be so reckless, and so cruel ... You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
- "Every time I read the paper / those old feelings come on
We are waist deep in the Big Muddy / and the big fool says to push on."
Please click here
to sign our guestbook.
One should beware of those who cannot or will not laugh when others are merry, for if not mentally defective they are spiteful, selfish or abnormally conceited ... Great men of all nations and of all times have possessed a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, as wisdom and wit are closely allied.
Dourness is repulsive both to the healthy and the sick.
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 | This user has opted out of revert notifications. You should, too! |
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This user has been blocked several times, and isn't embarrassed about it - (admire my block log here!). |
 | This editor was nominated for deletion in September 2016. The consensus of the discussion was he's speedy. |
Wikipedia's not for the meek.
You need a de-stress technique.
Sip tea with biscotti,
go fish – try karate.
But edit war? Blocked for a week!
Levivich (adapted)
Resources offered:
- I will be happy to supply, for use in developing articles, materials cataloged here (digital materials are easy, scans of hardcopies may take some time).
Because some have asked...
- The material on this page is meant to increase other editors' pleasure in contributing (by providing modest amusement they can enjoy during breaks from editing) or to assist them in becoming more effective editors (by illustrating various aspects of Wikipedia as a social environment e.g. [13])
In humor based on political events, Democratic figures are featured as well as Republican (e.g. [14]) though unfortunately the former opportunities don't arise very often, because e.g. Clinton and Obama just aren't as amusing as the Republican nominee.Note: This wing of the Museums temporarily closed pending approval by the castigatores of such material as is conducive to the regimen morum.
 | The WikiProject banner below should be moved to this page's talk page. If this is a demonstration of the template, please set the parameter |category=no to prevent this page being miscategorised. |
 | Department of Fun NA‑class Bottom‑importance | |||||||||
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Material on this page apparently relating to living or recently deceased persons is satire intended to improve the editing experience by providing amusement and entertainment to editors seeking a break from editing. It does not constitute assertions of fact.
Museum of Distorted Quotations Taken Out Of Context
EEng is correct. There are not many exceptions to this nearly universal rule.
EEng, per usual, is correct.
So there! 
EEng (despite his block log, which is not as bad as it looks at first glance if you understand it) ...
A wise, compassionate, magical authority (both temporal and spiritual); mysterious and benevolent guide... guardian and saviour... despite his gentle and loving nature, he is powerful and can be dangerous....
—Primergrey (via C.S. Lewis)[21]
My personal opinion of your value to the project had been "on the fence", but I'm back on two feet.
—FlightTime[22], see also [23]
We have a lot of mental health problems.
—Donald Trump[24]
EEng, for those playing at home, is unique in Wikipedia.
Wise and mature
—BushelCandle[26]
Experienced and respected
One of Wikipedia's less friendly and more volatile users ... an incurably rude and disruptive personality whose idea of good manners is most definitely not within the mainstream.
—CrowsNest[28]
A Holden Caufield-esque cynical iconoclast
I tend to agree with EEng.
You play the role of Wiki-jester quite well ... good for the sanity of the community.
EEng is a wise voice – listening to what he says is generally a very good plan.
EEng is well known for his good humour.
Mgasparin's Law: As a discussion on ANI gets longer, the probability that EEng will add a sarcastic comment or image approaches 1.
You have transformed shooting off your mouth into a not totally unappreciated artform
EEng who, and I'm fairly confident that he would agree with me on this, seems pretty much flameproof, and who is quite capable of breathing hilarious-but-scorching flame himself when the need arises.
It's a relief to deal with someone on Wikipedia who has a sense of humor
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
The Curator doesn't really understand the significance of that last one.
You know when EEng talks about getting serious, it's, you know, serious... :-)
What the Critics Are Saying
The greatest talk page on Wikipedia
I have had EEng's talk and userpage on my Watchlist for two months because they are the most fun places on Wikipedia.
a.k.a.
I'm not a professor of neuroscience (but apparently I play one on Wikipedia)
EEng is a funny guy. If it weren't for the odd joker like him, WP would be utterly unbearable.... He's a professor of neuroscience at Harvard and pretty much singlehandedly wrote one of the best articles on the 'pedia (Phineas Gage)
I think a lot of folks from the @Wikimedia & @Wikipedia communities think this is funny but the editor working on Phineas Gage has severe mental health issues.
—"Erika Herzog" (and see [46])
Some masterful baiting... by Wikipedia's many master baiters.
A puerile jokester ...
—Reyk
I prefer having a good-natured jokester around instead of a joyless and dried-up everyman.
... like going to a good museum ... humorous but intelligent ... interesting, entertaining, and educational
His userpage is possibly unique in that it pisses you off, makes you laugh, and shocked, sometimes all at once
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The Barnstar of Good Humor |
| I haven't checked out your userpage in a long while, but I laughed so hard (I particularly liked the "head in the sand" picture) I nearly snorted coffee out of my nose. PS: I would like to apologise for being tempted to go to the dark side.... Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:30, 20 March 2015 (UTC) |
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The Rather Unusual User Page Award |
| Not sure what my definition of a "rather usual" userpage would be, but it wouldn't be that.[50] |
"This is a very long page."[51]
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The Barnstar of Good Humor | |
| For your medicine against chronic wikidespair. Consult your doctor before trying this medicine. Symptoms include: a systemic allergic reaction, a worsening of withdrawal symptoms for not placing {{ANI-notice}} in months, and casting the first stone.[52]
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"childish and irresponsible"[53]
No barnstar is better than this barnstar, believe me!
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The Donald Trump Barnstar | |
| Your userpage is hilarious. MB298 (talk) 00:17, 30 October 2016 (UTC) |
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The Barnstar of Good Humor |
| Your new gallery made me laugh even harder than the admittedly rambunctious Trump Museums. Astonishing, flabbergasting, yyuuuge!!! — JFG talk 20:14, 20 December 2016 (UTC) |
Ultra-Cool User Page... After looking again at this work of art ....... I'm speechless. What a man! And might the gentleman's first name be Albert? EE=ng2
An untidy user page may signify an untidy mind and careless work.
We have concluded to publish this work, though it falls short of what it ought to be, and would have been, if circumstances had permitted us to devote more time to its completion. We are well aware of its imperfections and defects. But, with all its faults, we flatter ourselves the it contains much interesting and hitherto unpublished information ...
Our object has been to condense this matter within the smallest space, well knowing that, in this age of instantaneous electric communication, very few have the patience to read large volumes.
We have followed no particular author, servilely, but formed our own conclusions by comparing the opinions of the different authors, more than one hundred in number ... We may have fallen in to some mistakes regarding dates of events, or names of persons or parties, but such errors are hardly avoidable in a work of such wide scope.
— Hugh Quigley, The Irish race in California and on the Pacific Coast: with an introductory historical dissertation on the principal races of mankind, and a vocabulary of ancient and modern Irish family names (1878)
A strange cross between the drill [sergeant] and Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket.
In offering a work to the public, it is customary to preface it with a few remarks, which are generally considered in the light of an apology by the public... but, as we have done nothing of which we are ashamed, we have nothing to apologize for.
— Great Trans-Continental Railway Guide (Crofutt & Eaton, 1870)
EEng's humor can be like drinking gin. The first time, you may say, "Ugh! Horrid! Disgusting!" After a few more times, you may say, "Ugh! Revolting! Disgusting!"
A bit like finding an annotated kaleidoscope
—An offwiki friend
User essays worth reading
- Wikipedia:Revert notification opt-out
- Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history)
- Wikipedia:Presentism
- User:Ritchie333/Hit_and_run_editors
- WP:Lies Miss Snodgrass Told You
- WP:Wikipedia is not about whining
- WP:Principle of Some Astonishment
- WP:Diffusing conflict
- Wikipedia:Criticism -- re "Criticism", "Controversy" and similar sections
Handy templates
Ode to ANI
One fine day in the middle of the night, / Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other, / Drew their swords and shot each other,
One was blind and the other couldn’t, see / So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play, / A dumb man went to shout “hooray!”
A paralysed donkey passing by, / Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall, / Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,
A deaf policeman heard the noise, / And came to arrest the two dead boys,
If you don’t believe this story’s true, / Ask the blind man he saw it too!
Some Entertaining Diversions
- Thanks to Softlavender, we learn that Hollywood predicted Wikipedia sixty years in advance, complete with vanity articles: Click here. "Human enlightenment—what nonsense, Professor!"
Don't call names, you impertinent beef-witted clack-dish!
You have been noticed using opprobrious epithets. It's payback time from the Shakespeare Insult Generator! To activate the Insultspout and receive fresh insults, click here. Note that all insults generated by the Spout are guaranteed literary and cultured, unlike the nasty things you said, you artless motley-minded ratsbane.
See also this burst of creativity.
Welcome, new editors!
Give it a click. But warning – huge file!
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When you land in a place that is prickly at best, |
A Little History
 | The userbox below was considered for deletion on February 6, 2015. The result of the "discussion" was "We can allow tiny pockets of dissent, as long as it doesn't catch on. Now back to the salt mines!". |
 | It has been 3584 days since a userbox was last urgently removed from this page based on a three-hour "consensus" at ANI. |
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- When users do something that administrators don't like, but when the users not only disagree but have the temerity to object to the sanctions levied against them by administrators, is this an unacceptable dissent against the powers-that-be that must, always, be quashed by any means necessary?
- I'm probably hyperbolizing here, but I think this is how the issue appears to the EEng's of the world. And some, at least, of the EEng's of the world are here to help build the encyclopedia. We say "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", not "The benevolent dictatorship encyclopedia that docile and compliant rule-followers can edit as long as they remember their place and are always properly respectful towards ADMINISTRATORS." So, please, if that's not the message you want to send, just let these userboxes go. And if you want to boot a user off the project for not being here to help build the encyclopedia, please do it for a more substantive reason than that the user refuses to say "Uncle" when confronted by admins.
- —Steve Summit (talk) 19:46, 6 February 2015 (UTC) [55]
- And finally, to each admin who says, "Well, I wouldn't have blocked, but I don't feel like overturning it": what you're condoning is a situation in which every editor is at the mercy of the least restrained, most trigger-happy admin who happens to stumble into any given situation. Don't you see how corrosive that is? It's like all these recent US police shootings: no matter how blatantly revolting an officer's actions were, the monolithic reply is "It was by the book. Case closed." This [admin] was way out of line from the beginning in deleting multiple editors' posts (as someone suggested, hatting would have made complete sense, and troubled me not at all) and when called on it above, he gives a middle-finger-raised LOL. No wonder so many see haughty arrogance in much of the admin corps around here.
- —EEng 05:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC) [56]
And let me be clear: I have no problem with 97% of admins, who do noble work in return for (generally) either no recognition or shitloads of grief, only occasionally punctuated by thanks. But the other 3%—whoa, boy, watch out!
- —EEng 20:02, 6 February 2015 (UTC) [57]
First annual caption contest
Click here and contribute your own.
EEng's half-serious list of topics on which WP should just drop all coverage as not worth the drama
- Professional wrestling: WP:General_sanctions/Professional_wrestling
- Footy players
- Beauty pageants
- Music genres
- Pornstars
- Anything related to Ru Paul
- Video games
- Japanese comics and animation
- Snooker
- Cricket
- Catalan separatism
- Railroad rolling stock specs
Dopey words that should never appear in articles
- Hail, as in
All the victims appeared to hail from the lower class of society
orMusic historian Bob Gulla hailed it as an "iconoclastic funk-rock" record.
God, that sounds stupid. - Accolades, as in List of accolades received by The Avengers (2012 film).
- Garner, as in
garnered worldwide recognition for her portrayal
. (The same article goes on to make us vomit by saying a bunch of people wereawarded the Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series accolade
.) - Berth (except on ships), as in
garnered a playoff berth
. - Welcomed in the context of childbirth, as in
In April they welcomed their first child
. [58] Absolutely nauseating.
Violators will be subject to initial 24-hour blocks, with escalating blocks for subsequent infractions. Repeated instances of welcoming children may be punished by beheading.
First rule of ANI
- Wisdom from Objective3000 [59]:
There is Al-anon, cocaine-anon, food-anon, game-anon, and about 20 others. We are now seeing on-and-on ... First rule of ANI: Don’t manifest the problem on ANI.
Brilliance from our esteemed colleagues Levivich and Creffpublic and Guy
- Anyone puzzled by the below should see Burma-Shave#Roadside_billboards:
- creffpublic a creffett franchise (talk to the boss) 20:34, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Alle-wiki-gory
Carp per diem
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– SemiHypercube
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Some poetry from Atsme:
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A satirist I'm not, |
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References
- ^ Nowadays everything's "infused".
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After ANI
Model: Wikipedia editor "A Man Inverts"
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- The next three images gratefully stolen from Catherine de Burgh
Strong oppose Strong oppose
Strong oppose Strong oppose
Formerly "Please comment on Talk:List of forestry journals".
I am not making these up.
Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.
A video clip for use at ANI someday.
Children of thee 60s talk about what Wikipedia will be like: [60] [61]
Desirable and undesirable kinds of editors:
poetic perspectives
I won't argue for fun,
I won't argue for free,
with someone who's paid
to argue with me.
I'll argue all day,
I'll fight 'til I'm tired.
At least if I lose
I won't get fired.
- I am wounded in dignity only, Whitaker Walt
- For God's sake we've got to get organized!
- Why is it we can't learn to live together?
- Tristram Shandy
- My people are not responsible for your agreements
Wikipedia is not about whining
 | This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia is all about teamwork. Editors must work together to build a reliable encyclopedia, not whine all the time. While complaining is sometimes appropriate, and a glass of wine may sometimes ease tensions, neither of these is central to the purpose of Wikipedia. |
Wikipedia is not about whining. Complaining about editor behavior is appropriate – at a relevant noticeboard when that behavior is contrary to Wikipedia policies and guidelines and harms the project. But editors should not complain just for the sake of complaining, nor as therapy or catharsis, but to get help in guiding an errant editor back on track with the project's fundamental principles.
If you find yourself complaining more than contributing, it might be time for a short wikibreak to clear your mind, rethink your approach, and help you come back ready to resume building the encyclopedia.
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Wikipedia is also not about wining. -
But it can grease the wheels, now that you mention it. -
Some cheese to go with your whine? -
In cases of habitual or sustained whining, admins may hand out cool-down bocks. -
Ryan demonstrates correct behavior: he has left the laptop at home, and wisely does not edit Wikipedia at this time.
Incidentally, Wikipedia is also not about wining. A glass of Lambrusco is not a reliable source, too much original research in this area may lead to habitually editing under the influence, and indefinite bocks could lead to an indefinite block. That doesn't mean, however, that the occasional pint can't help reduce wikistress, as long as editors don't become a wikiholic. This can lead to serious problems including wikihomelessness, which is of course the opposite of being a Wikipedian in residence.
User:EEng/Principle of Some Astonishment
Diffusing Conflict
| This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously. |
| This page in a nutshell: Most people who say they're "diffusing conflict" don't really mean it. And some other wreckage thrown in for good measure. |
Diffusing conflict
Now and then someone undertakes to "diffuse" a conflict budding somewhere in the project. Probably they really mean they want to defuse the problem, as in "remove its fuse" – like from a bomb – to avoid blow-ups. Diffusing a conflict would be to spread it over a wide area, which is presumably not the intention.
Sometimes people write lengthy posts at WP:ANI, or propose Arbcom cases, or use the images on this page, in hopes of defusing a situation; however, the ensuing drama often means the conflict is diffused instead.
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Smoke can be seen diffusing at left. Next time, call the bomb defusing team. -
Avoid blow-ups -
Next customer!
External links
- "12 tips for diffusing office conflict" (especially recommended – from Pest Management Professional)
- "How to Diffuse a Difficult Situation - in Just Five Words" (for those in a hurry to begin diffusing) - "There's a simple sentence that can help you to diffuse a difficult situation, and stop a fight before it begins." Possibly that's "with all due respect".
- "The 1 Skill Leaders Need To Diffuse A Conflict Between Employees" (for when the diffusion need is urgent)
- MANAGING CONFLICT AND DIFFUSING ANGER (for advanced diffusers)
Casting dispersions, inciteful comments, and so on
Closely related concepts include:
- duel citizens
- casting dispersions, casting of ass Persians, veiled ass Persians, or even unnecessary ass Persians
- making inciteful, diffamatory , or half-hazard comments
- hoisting blame
- being foist with one's own petard (or pittard)
- supporting something in good conscious
- sewing chaos
- receiving carpe blanch
- maintaining a civil and constructive manor
- venturing where angles fear to tread
- their abouts which have never been found
- pedaling bogus arguments
- committing sudoku
- being or resulting or acting for all intensive purposes
- feeling loathe to do something (or maybe doing it weather or not)
- throwing out the baby with the batwater
- much adieu about nothing
- editors who have aired on the side of caution
- having the gaul to do something
- [63] Non-consensual editing
- the no personnel attacks policy
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Making inciteful comments -
We can't support you in good conscious -
Sewing chaos -
An effluent neighborhood -
Much adieu about nothing
-
Having de Gaulle to do something
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A civil and constructive manor -
She's going to work weather or not -
Breeches of civility -
The right to bare arms -
Buy in large -
Aired on the side of caution
-
![Duel citizens (and see also [1])](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/Agesilao_Greco_in_guardia.jpg/274px-Agesilao_Greco_in_guardia.jpg)
Duel citizens (and see also [1]) -
Where angles fear to tread -
Pedaling bogus arguments -
It's a doggie-dog world -
My curiosity
was peeked -
![My curiosity was peaked[citation needed]](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Lemon_Meringue_Pie.jpg/316px-Lemon_Meringue_Pie.jpg)
My curiosity
was peaked[citation needed] -
For all intensive purposes -
Non-consensual editing (Not illustrated: sensual editing)
![Duel citizens (and see also [1])](/wiki/File:Agesilao_Greco_in_guardia.jpg)
![My curiosity was peaked[citation needed]](/wiki/File:Lemon_Meringue_Pie.jpg)
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Applying solutions
Conflict is inevitable when dealing with other editors, so knowing how to apply the proper solution is key. When discussion looks like it's about to explode, it's important to diffuse the balm, before things get out of hand.
Univalved administrators
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![A univalved,[2] inveterate admin. This one's "running" for Arbcom.](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Grapevinesnail_01a.jpg/120px-Grapevinesnail_01a.jpg)
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Then, of course, there are the unevolved admins. -
![Cetacean needed[3]](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Killerwhales_jumping.jpg/120px-Killerwhales_jumping.jpg)
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![Long-term tendonitis editing[4]](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Jumpers_knee.jpg/120px-Jumpers_knee.jpg)
Long-term tendonitis editing[4] -
Assume good faixa -
No personnel attacks
![A univalved,[2] inveterate admin. This one's "running" for Arbcom.](/wiki/File:Grapevinesnail_01a.jpg)
![Cetacean needed[3]](/wiki/File:Killerwhales_jumping.jpg)
![Long-term tendonitis editing[4]](/wiki/File:Jumpers_knee.jpg)
Significant coverage
"I have now also added sauces to the page"[1]
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Significant coverage in multiple independent sauces -
Significant coverage in multiple independent saucers -
Significant coverage in multiple independent sorcerors -
Significant coverage in multiple independent salsas -
Significant coverage in multiple independent sawsedges -
Significant coverage in multiple independent sawstops -
Significant coverage in multiple independent sawtooths -
Significant coverage in Kabul, Afghanistan (not Iran, so we are not casting as Persians)
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Guide to unappealing or appalling blocks
- Stalkers are invited to contribute appalling or unappealing blocks to this collection (perhaps later to be broken out as its own page)
- Admins note! Important! It is unethical (and time-consuming) to go out and make an appalling block just to get something on the list!
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-24/Office actions
- "hands-down the worst block I've seen in my time on Wikipedia, and I've seen some whoppers"
- Intent to unblock
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An appalling block -
Unappalling blocks
External links
Fusing conflicts
-
Fusing conflict
References
Queen Elizabeth slipped majestically into the water
 | This is an essay on the pretension and stupidity of referring to ships as she. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
| This page in a nutshell: Referring to ships as she has at least the redeeming quality of being a potential source of amusement. |
This page is for accumulating amusing passages – real or hypothetical – made possible by referring to ships as she, and for general derision of that pretentious and stupid practice.[1] (Ridicule of other forms of stylistic pretension is welcome as well.) It was inspired by this discussion at WT:MOS (and see also WT:Manual of Style/Archive (ships as "she") for more background).
Queen Elizabeth slipped majestically into the water
- (hypothetical)
After Queen Elizabeth broke a bottle of champagne against the ship's gigantic bow, she slipped majestically into the water.
[70] - (from the Featured Article SMS Emden)
During this period, she also served as the escort for Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard his yacht Hohenzollern.
[71]
- (from the article HMS Elk (1804))
Fearing that he might lose the prize if the winds changed, Morris rammed her.
[72] - (from the article HMS Monmouth (1796))
Archibald Dickson raised his flag in her.
[73] - (from the article HMS Indefatigable (1784))
She had a long career under several distinguished commanders.
[74] - (from The Appleton Weekly Post, 1907)
Lusitania does not appear to be so lusty as the Mauretania ... If Lussie doesn't hump herself and do it first she won't be in it with her big sister.
[2]
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Into the woulds
N.B. There is an appropriate use of the "he would later" form, and that's when taking a temporary jump into the future during an otherwise chronologically linear narrative -- but to be clear, not all such cases justify the "he would later" form. Here's an example (abridged a bit here) from Statue of John Harvard:
The commission weighed heavily on French even as the figure neared completion. "I am sometimes scared by the importance of this work. It is a subject that one might not have in a lifetime," wrote the sculptor—who thirty years later would create the statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial—"and a failure would be inexcusable."French's final model was ready the following May and realized in bronze by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company over the next several months.
Now, technically "who thirty years later would create" could be rendered as "who thirty years later created", and it's hard to explain why exactly the former form is preferable to the latter, in this particular case. (There might be other appropriate uses as well, but your correspondent just vacuumed the house so he's too pooped to think of any.)[3]
The following examples all lack the key component, found in the above passage, that's required to justify the "he would later" form: a temporary jump into the future. So the woulds get axed:[4]
- "Mel Blanc was the original voice of Bugs and
would voicevoiced the character for nearly five decades." [76] - "Although he did not receive a classical schooling in the Harvard Graduate School, Morgan
wouldwas immediately after his graduationbeappointed to the teaching staff. ... Morgan fell seriously ill on March 15, 1910 while on a trip to New York to visit Daniel B. Fearing, the mayor of Newport, Rhode Island, andwould diedied soon after." [77] - "Gowdy
would later be awardedreceived the Postal Inspector's Award for the successful prosecution of J. Mark Allen, one of 'America's Most Wanted' suspects." [78] - "In 1973 he relocated to Waynesville, North Carolina, where he
would dielater died of cancer." [79] - "But Harrison
wouldalso latertelltold him, 'You've got a lovely karma, Vic.' ... Spinettiwould makemade a small appearance in the promotional video for McCartney's song 'London Town' from the 1978 album of the same name. Spinetti's July 2010 performance of the song 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da', at the Festival Theatre, Malvern in Worcestershire,would later be madewas available on 'The Beatles Complete on Ukulele' podcast. ... Spinetti's film career developed simultaneously; his dozens of film appearanceswould includeincluded Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew, Under Milk Wood, The Return of the Pink Panther and Under the Cherry Moon." [80][81] - "The race
would startstarted with Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson fighting for the lead, but on lap 2 Christopher Bellwould loselost control of his car in Turn 1, butwould save the carmanaged to save it." [82] - "Cecil Beaton, after being fired from American Vogue in 1938, on charges of anti-Semitism, was living in England when his phone rang. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who would go on to be his favorite royal subject, wanted to be photographed by him ... Years later, he would sit in Westminster Abbey, high up near the organ pipes, taking photos of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation with his top hat stuffed with sandwiches." [83] (This illustrates a particular hazard of would-iness, to wit that it can mislead the reader into thinking a habit is being described: "He would sit in Westminster Abbey, high up near the organ pipes, taking photos", like he's stalker or something.)
- "Those who pleaded for clemency for Casement included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was acquainted with Casement through the work of the Congo Reform Association, poet W. B. Yeats, and playwright George Bernard Shaw. Joseph Conrad could not forgive Casement, nor could Casement's longtime friend, the sculptor Herbert Ward, whose son Charles had been killed on the Western Front that January, and who would change the name of Casement's godson, who had been named after him." [84] (What in the hell is that even trying to say?)
- [85]
- [86]
- Big Van Vader would emerge victorious.[87]
- "The Tiddlytubbies would get their own spin-off animated web series in 2018." [88]
- "However, many jumps racing supporters attempted to keep jumps racing at Oakbank and that fight went into the South Australian Court System. ... That would result in an election occurring which the anti-jumps faction winning but debate surrounding that vote spilled into more legal action." [89]
- Farian
wouldlater attempted a failed comeback for the group without Morvan and Pilatus.[90] - While at Vassar, he and fellow future filmmaker, Jason Blum, were roommates (Blum
wouldlater produced Baumbach's first film, Kicking and Screaming in 1995).[91] (This edit and the previous one about Farian are accompanied by the edit summary "He not only would but did". Tongue in cheek because it suggests ignorance of the valid use of the "would" construction in, for example, an account written in an engaging you-are-there tone, but that isn't Wikipedia tone.) - This entire article, with 46 instances of "would", 45 of which were incorrect usage
Closely related constructions include:
Albino Luciani (later to become Pope John Paul I)
[citation needed]The SL-8200 was to compete against the VHS VCRs
.[5]
Misc
See also
- Wikipedia:The problem with elegant variation (featured in The New Yorker -- really! [92])
- "Ships—sexist or sexy?", The Signpost, 2014-10-15.
- Explorer weds Titanic widow
- Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the lifespan of workers and lays up to 2,000 eggs a day
References
- ^ In the many, MANY, MANY debates on the subject of referring to ships as she, much ink has been spilled in argument over whether or not that practice is sexist. It seems unnecessary to answer that question, however, since the stupidity and pretension of such references should be enough, on their own, to decide the bottom-line issue [6]. But in case it's not obvious (and apparently it's not [7]): the thrust (<cough>) of this essay's examples is to illustrate that -- as so often is the case -- stupidity, pretension, and sexism (not to mention other distasteful -isms) often go hand in hand.
- ^ "The Lusitania ..." The Appleton Weekly Post. October 17, 1907. p. 6. Retrieved January 2, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ And BTW, this is also one of the very rare cases where a bit of WP:Elegant variation -- "the sculptor" -- is justified, unless the reader can see a not-awkward way of recasting the sentence to avoid it.
- ^ Thanks to our esteemed colleague GuardianH for this felicitous metaphor.
- ^ https://wiki.riteme.site/?oldid=998185328
Did You Know ...
- ... that John Harvard (left) does not look like John Harvard?
- ... that Massachusetts officials were "shocked into a condition bordering on speechlessness" by the theft of their Sacred Cod (right)?
- ... that the four miles of stacks aisles in Harvard's 3.5-million-volume Widener Library are so labyrinthine that one student felt she ought to carry "a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle" when entering?
- ... that eight years after rowing a Titanic lifeboat and honoring her drowned son with a Harvard library, Eleanor Widener waited on a yacht while her new husband fought "scantily-clad, ferocious cannibals"?
- ... that at Harvard commencements, bagpipes herald breakfast, bachelors are welcomed, sheriffs on white steeds preserve order, and Harvard's president occupies a "bizarre" chair prone to tipping over?
- ... that after Lionel de Jersey Harvard (left) died in World War I, a fellow officer wrote, "If Harvard College made him what he was, I want my sons to go there that it may do the same for them"?
- ... that Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators (right) were forcibly withdrawn after officials clamped down on them?
- ... that the intruder who shot J. P. Morgan, Jr. and bombed the US Senate in 1915 was identified by "Harvard Cop No. 1" Charles Apted as a deranged, wife-poisoning, ex-Harvard German instructor?
- ... that in Menace from the Moon, a lunar colony—founded in 1654 by a Dutchman, an Englishman, an Italian, and "their women"—promises Earth heat-ray doom unless it helps them escape their dying world?
- ... that problems with a brutalist gray elephant were "like a five-car accident at an intersection. You just can't tell what caused it"?
- ... that "University Moves to Thwart Early Marriages" was the 1963 Harvard Crimson caption beneath a photo of the school's "hideous" new housing complex for married students?
- ... that mathematician Andrew Gleason (right) liked to say that proofs "really aren't there to convince you that something is true—they're there to show you why it is true"?
- ... that quirky dogs and plural wugs helped Jean Berko Gleason (left) show that young children extract linguistic rules from what they hear, rather than just memorizing words?
- ... that warden's wife Kate Soffel, who fled with condemned brothers Jack and Ed Biddle after supplying guns and saws for their 1902 escape from the Allegheny County Jail, later took up dressmaking?
- ... that while testifying in a 2004 lawsuit involving the meaning of the word steakburger, a corporate CEO was grilled on the witness stand?
- ... that the Vicar of Brighton got shot in the twitten?
- ... that after he died, daredevil Larry Donovan's mother said, "I told him that jumping off bridges was a poor way of earning a living"?
- ... that after Phineas Gage (left) survived an accident in which a large iron bar (also left) was driven through his head, he made it his "constant companion for the remainder of his life", and a medical journal (mis)quoted Macbeth: "The times have been that when the brains were out the man would die. But now they rise again"?
- ... that the Amphicar (right) was called "a vehicle that promised to revolutionize drowning"?
- ... that Japanese Emperor Hirohito had a Liverpudlian cousin named Paddy Murphy?
- ... that Edwin Stevens, while in a missionary position, said that erections indicated apprehension and penetration was difficult?
- ... that Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin planned to penetrate the feminine Orient with the masculine Occident in a consummation of progression?
- ... that the website "Six Degrees to Harry Lewis" (left) was a precursor to Facebook?
- ... that the Get Out and Push Railroad (right) required passengers to help its trains over the steeper bits of the route?
- ... that Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee engaged in self-flagellation?
- ... that Harvard University's Newell Boathouse stands on public land for which Harvard pays $1 per year under a lease lasting 1000 years—at the end of which Harvard can renew for another 1000 years?
- ... that "sorcery for your vagina" can result in second-degree burns?
- ... that donaldtrumpi has a scaly yellowish head and small genitalia?
- ... that swarms of dykes have intruded into Uruguay?
- ... that erection engineer Mark Barr had a business making rubbers, said bicycles stimulated ball development, and was elected to the screw committee?
- ... that J. J. Stiffler's (right) "unparalleled ... landmark" Theory of Synchronous Communications (1971) sprang from NASA's need for power-efficient synchronization of data transmission for its space probes?
- ... that Harvard’s Memorial Hall (right) has been called “the most valuable gift the University has ever received” (1878), “that house of honor and of hospitality which [dispenses] laurels to the dead and dinners to the living” (1905), and “a huge Victorian Gothic barn” (1941)?
- ... that Trump is directly connected to Russia?
- ... that Hillary's portrait is now being printed on the $5 bill?
- ... that Obama was born in Japan?
- ... that the US National Gallery of Art has a picture of Trump urinating?
- ... that police found a corpse in Bernie's freezer?
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
— Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). Afterthoughts.
Although he did not lack friends, they were weary of coming to his defense, so endless a process it had become.
— Rider, Fremont (1944). Melvil Dewey.
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.
That his style was verbose is something on which both friend and foe agreed. Jackson was a writer who, having embarked on a sentence, was almost immediately seized by a new association, which was promptly parked between dashes. Shortly after he embarked on the parenthetical phrase, another association presented itself, and was duly ensconced between parentheses, thereby exhausting the conventional punctuation marks designed for embedded phrases. When another association arose during the writing of the phrase in parentheses—which was invariably the case—it was presented in the form of a footnote. But shortly after the beginning of the footnote ... etc., etc.
Douwe Draaisma. "Sparks from a Leyden jar: Jackson's epilepsy". Disturbances of the Mind. (Tr. by Barbara Fasting.)
Seated in Pratt's Bottom
- From our article on Pratt's Bottom, "a village in Greater London":
A "bottom" in this context means a valley or hollow, and the Pratts were a noble family once seated in the area.
Dramatic improvement
- As explained by an anchorman on MSNBC, April 23,2020:
Today the Department of Labor announced that 4.4 additional Americans filed for unemployment claims last week.
Museum of Downsizing
When they became empty nesters, Osgood and his wife moved to a 12-room duplex on West 57th Street at 7th Avenue.
Museum of Leadership
- For those who are wondering what leadership looks like, here's FDR before he was even sworn in:
It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.
Paging Prof. Boole
- Reporter Hans Nichols on MSNBC, March 26, 2020:
It seemed to me that the president didn't think being not called Tom Brady wasn't an insult.
- Followup (Anchor Kasie Hunt on MSNBC, March 29):
There is no reason not to think that New York is not going to need these 30,000 ventilators.
Compare and Contrast
Q&A
- A viewer's question on MSNBC, March 16, 2020:
Q: I am supposed to fly commercial next week to visit my elderly parents in upstate NY, one of who is ill. Is it safe? I don't want to put this trip off because I know things will get worse.
A: To properly answer your question we need to know (a) your parents' net worth and (b) whether you're certain you're in their wills.
- OK, that's not actually the answer that was given.
- Followup: As part of our ongoing series on natural selection at work, we give you Congressman Devin Nunes (Republican of California – see: #Devin Nunes is
an Idiota Dumb Asshole) offering helpful advice viewers of Fox News, March 16:
- Followup: As part of our ongoing series on natural selection at work, we give you Congressman Devin Nunes (Republican of California – see: #Devin Nunes is
There's a lotta concerns with the economy here because people are scared to go out. But I will just say one of the things you can do if you're healthy, uh, you and your family, it's a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant. Likely you can get in easily. Ya know, let's not hurt, uh, the working people in this country that are relying on wages and tips to keep their small business going. Just don't run to the grocery store and buy $4000 of food. Go to your local pub.
- Further followup headline ("Thousands of Liberty students expected to return to campus amid coronavirus outbreak", Mar 23, 2020):
LYNCHBURG — As the coronavirus threatens to spread across the Lynchburg region, Liberty University officials are preparing to welcome back up to 5,000 students from spring break this week ... “I think we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here — to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life,” Falwell said.
- From the great Tom Lehrer: "I Got It from Agnes"
Reposting with renewed significance
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Oops
- A reflection by a guest on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, March 5, 2020:
It's sad, you know, I really would love to see a woman presindent in my lifetime, soon in my lifetime, and I think that Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, ya know, ...
Idiom inquiry leads to metaphor musing
- From an inquiry at Quora [93]:
Q. What is a good synonym for "panties in a bunch"?
A. Could you explain what you mean? It could be:
- A bunch of panties, an indefinite number of panties held together in some way;
- Panties that have got bunched up, maybe in spatial conflict with other clothing or due to bodily friction;
- A bunch (of bananas, of hair, of tourists) which panties have somehow managed to infiltrate.
Number 3 sounds like the most fun (they could be the Pantie Patrol, the Knicker Niche or the Thong Throng), but I think to be honest you really mean something more akin to number 2 ...
Museum of Highly Cost-Effective Political Campaigns
- From the Joe Biden donation landing page (February 29, 2020):
DONATE NOW TO DEFEAT DONALD TRUMP – URGENT SUPPORT NEEDED: Our country cannot take another four years of Trump. But two of our Democratic opponents outraised us last quarter, and our campaign won’t have the resources we need to win the nomination unless we raise $1,027 by midnight tonight.
Glamorous Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
- From our bio of actor James MacArthur:
Throughout his career, MacArthur had also found time for various other ventures. From 1959 to 1960, he partnered with actors James Franciscus and Alan Ladd, Jr. in a Beverly Hills telephone answering service.
Easy to misread
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- From our plot summary of the James Bond film Octopussy:
While trying to escape from East to West Berlin, British agent 009 is fatally wounded and dies after reaching the residence of the British Ambassador, dressed as a circus clown and carrying a fake Fabergé egg.
- You've got it wrong. It was obviously not the ambassador that was dressed like a clown and carrying a fake egg. It clearly states it was his residence that was so dressed and so carrying. --A D Monroe III(talk) 01:46, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Museum of Multiple Diagnoses
Homicidal escaped mental patient Gunther Wyckoff (Marshall Thompson) arrives by bus in Terminal City. As he gets off, he is confronted by the bus driver for stealing his Colt pistol. Wyckoff uses it to kill the driver. Delusional patient Gunther Wyckoff (Marshall Thompson) escapes from a mental institution intent on locating psychiatrist Dr. John Faron, (Sam Levene), whose testimony sent him to the asylum.
Um, OK
- From the article Wang Laboratories:
One major "lesson" in the book was to always remain cocked above the competition, and to always come explosively with new innovations to the products available to the public.
Titular characters
- A discussion at Wikipedia talk:The problem with elegant variation:
The page currently [94] says
There's rarely any use in pointing out when something is titular. For example:
Batman Returns is a 1992 American superhero film directed by Tim Burton, based on the titular DC Comics character.
For reasons that surely must be obvious, I would think that Batgirl or Catwoman would be better examples of titular characters than is Batman, unless of course we take Groucho Marx's famous comment into account. EEng 13:02, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Adding: when following the Groucho link, look at the very bottom of the page. EEng 02:25, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
- Good suggestion. I actually implemented it but reverted it for the moment because I want to find an example of a film or work that dosn't just have the character name as its title (as Catwoman does). Otherwise it just brings up other arguments of repetitive prose which isn't meant to be the point of the section (see the "Of the same name" debate). I'm sure good examples exist, but it's time for bed for me now... Popcornduff (talk) 14:14, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
- I'm trying to decide if you're turning the titular tables on me. EEng 16:46, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
- You know, I sometimes think this place is just awash with complete tits. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:57, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
- I'm trying to decide if you're turning the titular tables on me. EEng 16:46, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
This just in
- Note: The opinions expressed in this section may not reflect the views of the management of this page.
A bit of fun from from the headline writer
- Headline in the Dundee Courier (courtesy of our good friend Arid Desiccant):
Everybody was flung poo fighting — Carnoustie kids make mess of residential street
- Vaguely related earlier item [95]:
The story you link, "VENEZUELAN PROTESTORS PREPARE TO LAUNCH A SHIT BOMB PROTEST", reads in part, "Now protesters have decided to organize what they are deeming the 'shit march.' A flyer circulating on social media reads, 'They have gas; we have excrement'... Parts of the Venezuelan military have already begun to defect and join the protesters."
- (I thought it said defecate and join the protesters.)
Ooh! Ouch!
- From a review of Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?:
Rand's parable is meant to showcase just how much our world needs the best of us, but this adaptation only does so accidentally – by revealing what movies would be like if none of the best of us worked on them.
Message received
- From our article 1881 Gate:
The 1881 Gate, or Class of 1881 Gate forms part of the perimeter of Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its inscription invites students to "come within its gates, in order that in whole-hearted service to the truth, they may enter into life and so be free". The gate has been locked for many years.
| Apple | |
|---|---|
| Pumpkin | |
| Cherry | |
| Pecan | |
| Lemon harangue |
Museum of Excruciatingly Narrow Categories
- From the image description page for File:Bugs Bunny statue in Butterfly Park Bangladesh (01).jpg:
Valued image: This image has been assessed under the valued image criteria and is considered the most valued image on Commons within the scope: Statue evoking Bugs Bunny at Butterfly Park Bangladesh.
Welcome to the Museums
Visitors to The Museums are encouraged to add droll codas, possibly with evocative yet enigmatic double-entrendre wikilinks, to the items on display (though these will of course be subject to the discretion of The Curator).
Museum of I Didn't Know that was Biologically Possible
- From our article on computer pioneer Andrew Donald Booth (inventor of, among other things, Booth's algorithm):
Booth married mathematician and computer engineer Kathleen H. V. Britten; during 1947–1953 they produced three computing machines together.
Museum of Headlines You Don't See Every Day
- From the South Africa Times for September 27, 2010:
Former cops guilty of penis size murder
- Related item, from something called the Digital Journal, November 23, 2012:
Woman attempted to murder boyfriend with DD breasts
Museum of Really, Really Progressive Prison Policies
- From our article on mass murderer Jeremy Bamber:
In 2001 The Times alleged that he had been treated with indulgence at Long Lartin Prison, Worcestershire, where prisoners were given the key to their cells.
Museum of Solemn Occasions
- From our article on Operation London Bridge, the codename for the plans in place in the UK and the various Commonwealth nations for what will happen when Queen Elizabeth dies (as the old gal will, presumably, do sooner or later):
Radio New Zealand (RNZ), the state-radio broadcaster, has a set of guidelines and instructions in the event of the death of the monarch of New Zealand. Across all RNZ stations, broadcasters will break regular programming to announce the death of the Queen, with rolling coverage to begin when ready. RNZ stations are instructed not to play punk music, or songs from Queen during this period.
- (Queen I get, but how did punk music get into the equation?)
- (I suspect like this.)
- (Queen I get, but how did punk music get into the equation?)
Museum of Possibly Overcomplicated Plots
- Just a small fragment of our plot summary for the film The Cassandra Crossing:
Mackenzie understands that the bridge might collapse as the train passes over it. The presence of the infected terrorist, and the rerouting of the train, precipitates the second conflict, among passengers on the train; they include Jonathan Chamberlain, a famous neurologist, his ex-wife Jennifer Rispoli Chamberlain, Holocaust survivor Herman Kaplan, and Nicole Dressler, the wife of a German arms dealer. She is embroiled in an affair with her young companion Robby Navarro. Navarro is a heroin trafficker being pursued by Interpol agent Haley, who is travelling undercover as a priest.
History is watching
Yes indeed, let's read the transcript
President Zelensky: Yes you are absolutely right not only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her. I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I'm very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people ... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.
Museum of There's Really No End to Donald Trump's Stupidity, in Matters Great and Small
- Donald Trump explaining why an American diplomat's wife was driving on the wrong side of the road when she killed a young man in England:
I believe it was going down the wrong way because that happens in Europe. You go to Europe and the roads are opposite.
- Donald Trump, you sure are the prince of stupid dumbfucks.
Museum of John Adams Weeps
Museum of John of Salisbury
- From [96]:
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Museum of 1984
- This exhibit has been returned to the top of the pile today in honor of the departure of Chief Assistant Presidential Liar Sarah Sanders:
"Four."
"And if the Party says that it is not four but five – then how many?"
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Museum of Liars, Cheats, Thieves, Traitors, and Murderers
Political language ... is designed to make lies* sound truthful and murder** respectable. —Orwell
"By their smirks ye shall know them." —Matthew 7:16
Museum of Demagogues
- Adapted from our article "Demagogue":
A demagogue gains and holds power by exciting the passions of the lower classes and less-educated people in a democracy toward rash or violent action, breaking established democratic institutions such as the rule of law. James Fenimore Cooper in 1838 identified four fundamental characteristics of demagogues:
- They fashion themselves as a man or woman of the common people, opposed to the elites.
- Their politics depends on a visceral connection with the people, which greatly exceeds ordinary political popularity.
- They manipulate this connection, and the raging popularity it affords, for their own benefit and ambition.
- They threaten or outright break established rules of conduct, institutions, and even the law.
The central feature of the practice of demagoguery is persuasion by means of passion, shutting down reasoned deliberation and consideration of alternatives. While many politicians in a democracy make occasional small sacrifices of truth, subtlety, or long-term concerns to maintain popular support, demagogues do these things relentlessly and without self-restraint. Demagogues "pander to passion, prejudice, bigotry, and ignorance, rather than reason."
Demagogues have arisen in democracies from Athens to the present day, but their psychological tactics have remained the same throughout history:
- Scapegoating
- Fearmongering
- Lying
- Emotional oratory and personal charisma
- Accusing opponents of weakness and disloyalty
- Promising the impossible
- Violence and physical intimidation
- Personal insults and ridicule
- Vulgarity and outrageous behavior
- Folksy posturing
- Gross oversimplification
- Attacking the news media
Museum of The Walls Closing In
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The beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires.
Unsurprising followup: "Trump announces support for bipartisan prison reform."
Museum of Delusional Alternative Realities
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Followup: You can say that again!
Museum of the Divine Right of Kings
| “ | I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes. | ” |
| — US Attorney General Jeff Sessions | ||
| “ | The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. | ” |
| — Aldous Huxley (again) | ||
Needed a new leader to restore / Its former glory
Where, oh, where was he? / Where could that man be?
We looked around / and then we found / The man for you and me
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With conquering limbs astride from land to land; / Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command / The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she / With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
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Stephen Miller
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References
Meet the Family
"The hothead"
"Nice college boy"
"Give him a living but never discuss the family business with him."
"Married badly"
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"Not a wartime consigliere"
Back to where you came from
Back to where you came from, Donald Trump.
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Museum of Foreign Exchange Rates
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Museum of Cause and Effect
- From Morey Amsterdam:
After being caught in the middle of a gunfight, Amsterdam moved to California and worked writing jokes.
The Tragedy of the Commas
- From Indian Rebellion of 1857:
Violence, which sometimes betrayed exceptional cruelty, was inflicted on both sides, on British officers, and civilians, including women and children, by the rebels, and on the rebels, and their supporters, including sometimes entire villages, by British reprisals.
- From Honan Chapel:
Klimt's influence is evident in the central panel's flatness, and how, using only the subject's face and hands, Clarke evokes, according to Kelly, "three-dimensional human expression", with all other details, including her robes, and the floral background, existing on a separate "two dimensional flat plain".
Museum of Refreshing Candor
- From the recorded announcement one hears when calling a major electric utility:
For your convenience, our website now has even more self-serving features.
Museum of The Shocking Truth Can Finally Be Told
- From Lost in Space:
Lost in Space was the favorite show of John F. Kennedy, Jr. while growing up in the 1960s.
Museum of brilliant strategies
- From "The Preacher's Secret", an episode of the true-crime series Murder Board:
Talking head: This was not a suicide. Amy Allwine died by someone else's hand, and this in fact was murder.
Narrator: The investigators quickly focused on who could have killed her.
Museum of Lives Well Lived
Edith Rosenbaum Russell | |
|---|---|
 Edith Rosenbaum (later Russell), shortly after her rescue from the Titanic, carrying the toy pig with which she escaped the ship | |
| Born | June 12, 1879 Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | April 4, 1975 (aged 95) |
| Occupation(s) | Fashion journalist, stylist and buyer |
| Known for | Surviving the sinking of the Titanic with a toy pig |
- From our article Edith Rosenbaum:
Edith Louise Rosenbaum Russell (June 12, 1879 – April 4, 1975) was an American fashion buyer, stylist and correspondent for Women's Wear Daily, best remembered for surviving the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic with a music box in the shape of a pig.
Museum of Defying Aristotle
- The results of a recent poll:
The ideas expressed in Trump's tweets were:
- Racist – 48%
- Not racist – 34%
- Neither – 18%
There will always be an England
- From our article on Hindhead Tunnel, "part of the 6.5 km (4.0 miles) dual-carriageway Hindhead bypass":
A tree carved with the image of a naked lady in its bark in 1943 was preserved with a small adjustment to the tunnel access boundary.
And their buffet is to die for!
John Noble—Las Vegas resident who left a 270-page note with a table of contents and a 2-hour DVD before shooting himself at the M Resort buffet after having a "free buffet for life" prize rescinded by the resort due to his subsequent behavior there. [97]
Museum of Demagogues Pt. 2
[A] dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.
Museum of Dr. Seuss Meets the WMF
- I AM FRAM. FRAM I AM.
- THAT FRAM-I-AM! THAT FRAM-I-AM! I DO NOT LIKE THAT FRAM-I-AM!
- WOULD YOU LIKE A BAN OF FRAM? DOWN ENWIKI'S THROAT TO RAM?
- WOULD YOU BAN HIM FOR A YEAR? ISSUE RATIONALES UNCLEAR? PERHAPS TRANSPARENCY YOU FEAR?
Museum of Creative Cruelties
The Marquess, who had been jailed for jewel theft in his youth, was harsh towards his eldest son, according to friends of the latter. He did not show John any love or affection, and was emotionally distant to the extent that John was required to wear long white gloves during dinner.
- Followup from the same article:
While accompanying his secretary Angela Barry, he crash-landed the helicopter in a field, and walked to the nearest farmhouse, demanding to use the phone while leaving mud everywhere.
Museum of Trump is So Fucking Stupid He Inhabits a Special Galaxy of Fucking Stupid All His Own
The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis at Yorktown. Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over airports, it did everything it had to do and at Ft. McHenry under the rocket’s red glare had nothing but victory. When dawn came, the star-spangled banner waved defiant.
- Of course, Ft. McHenry was the War of 1812, but what you expect from the Dumbfuck-in-Chief? Readers may want to try spotting other minor anachronisms for themselves.
The number of historical errors is just extraordinary. The White House has an office of speechwriting, with lots of researchers and interns, and they fact-check things, and there are only three possibilities for that level of transcendental stupidity to take place. One is that that office is completely filled with people with room-temperature IQs; another is that all the procedures have fallen apart and they don't exist anymore; and the third possibility is it sprang from the brain of Donald Trump, and that is deeply, deeply disturbing.
Museum of Life Imitates Art
- From "Park Service diverts $2.5 million in fees for Trump’s Fourth of July extravaganza" (Washington Post, July 2, 2019):
The Pentagon has referred virtually all questions about the celebration and the military’s involvement to the White House — a function, officials said, of the president’s desire to have some surprises during the event.
Museum of Trump Family Values
- Excerpted from [98]:
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has withdrawn himself from the confirmation process, effectively stepping down from the role. His confirmation was delayed by a lengthy FBI investigation into a decade-old domestic abuse allegation, according to reports.
In 2010, Shanahan’s now former wife Kimberley Jordinson was arrested for allegedly punching him in the face. At the time, she reportedly told police that Shanahan had punched her. In a separate incident, Shanahan’s son was arrested for allegedly hitting his mother with a baseball bat.
President Trump made the announcement on Twitter Tuesday, writing: “Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who has done a wonderful job, has decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family.”
Museum of That's What We Call a "Clue"
- From "Evil in the House of the Lord", an episode of the true-crime program A Stranger in My Home:
Narrator: As firefighters enter the burning church, they make an alarming discovery.
District attorney: They clearly suspected arson, because of the gas cans stacked by the front door.
- Followup, from "The Bad Apple", an episode of Fatal Vows:
Narrator: The police go straight to the orchard, just a quarter mile from the house.
Detective: Once they removed the carpet from him, and there were five bullet holes in his torso, we believed it was a homicide investigation.
Museum of The Mysterious East
- The precise and exact wording found in the training materials for a major airline's international flight crews:
JAPAN ... Gestures: A waving hand from side to side in front of the face usually means "No, thank you". Remember that laughter does not always mean joy or amusement; it can also be a sign of embarrassment or distress. Japanese women often cover their moths when laughing, giggling, or smiling.
- See also: List of moths of Japan
Museum of Well In That Case, He's the Man For You
- MSNBC reporter Mike Memoli, May 13, 2019:
And so what we're seeing here is Joe Biden in New Hampshire, a state that really likes to touch and feel its candidates.
Museum of Great Teachers
- From "Theodore Baird, Amherst professor of composition for 42 years; at 95", The Boston Globe, December 24, 1996:
Each September, he explained his philosophy to his students: "Your teacher does not exist to give you the answers. His function is to ask questions, and if by inadvertence he should ever chance to tell you something, you should immediately turn the questioning on him. Whatever answers you reach in this course, they will be your own."
Terrible about Notre Dame but hopefully football program will continue. Use exhibition games to raise repair money! #GoIrish
Oof.
Not a Moment Too Soon, Apparently
A Lesson for Our Time
Most of you will have heard of this, at some time or another, in summary form, but this video brings it home much more effectively. I urge you all to watch it in its entirety: [99].
- Four seconds before 12:34, the "1234" stops for the third time since starting thirty seconds before 12:34. That's my synopsis and my review. Thanks for recommending this "fine" Yale film. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:14, March 31, 2019 (UTC)
The Plot Thickens
 | |
| Date | 2 November – 10 December 1932 |
|---|---|
| Location | Campion district, Western Australia |
| Participants | Emus Sir George Pearce Major G.P.W. Meredith Royal Australian Artillery |
- From our article Emu War:
With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, these farmers were encouraged to increase their wheat crops, with the government promising—and failing to deliver—assistance in the form of subsidies. In spite of the recommendations and the promised subsidies, wheat prices continued to fall, and by October 1932 matters were becoming intense, with the farmers preparing to harvest the season's crop while simultaneously threatening to refuse to deliver the wheat.
The difficulties facing farmers were increased by the arrival of as many as 20,000 emus.
- Also note the article's Template:Infobox historical event (shown here) which includes the datum: "Participants – Emus"
Museum of Devin Nunes is an Idiot a Dumb Asshole
Headline: "Devin Nunes Sues Twitter for Allowing Accounts to Insult Him"
- Just to repeat: Devin Nunes is truly
an idiota dumb asshole. - Please note: in response to feedback from other editors, and in keeping with our Biographies of Living Persons policy, which requires the highest standards of accuracy and quality sourcing, the word idiot above has been changed to dumb asshole.
- Just to repeat: Devin Nunes is truly
Museum of No Kidding, I'm Serious This Time
- From "The Sniffing Revenge", an episode of the true-crime series Forensic Files. Tests have confirmed that the funny-smelling milk in Dorothy's fridge has been poisoned:
Museum of Lessons Unlearned
The words of a President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.
Museum of Maybe Wikipedia Should be Censored After All
Not for the faint of heart
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Museum of I Guess He Missed That Particular Lecture
- From "Two in a Million", an episode of the true-crime series Forensic Files. Detectives are narrowing down the field of suspects:
And investigators learned that Dana had some character flaws. Apparently, he had plagiarized a term paper in his business ethics class.
Today on Capitol Hill
Museum of Adjustments
- From 55 Broadway:
Halfway along the north and east facades are a matched pair of sculptures, Day and Night by Jacob Epstein. The modernism and graphic nakedness of these sculptures created public outrage on their unveiling ... In the end, Epstein agreed to remove 1.5 inches from the penis of the smaller figure on Day and ultimately the furore died down.
Inglese
Museum of the only person on the planet not painfully aware that Donald J. Trump is such a dumbfuck moron that truly world-beating dumbfuck morons want to be near him so they can seem intelligent by comparison
Museum of Laughter is the Best Medicine
- Medical mirth from the New England Journal of Medicine (With thanks to User:Tryptofish):
Mediastinal Emphysema after a Sax Orgy
To the Editor: We recently cared for a 24-year-old man admitted to the emergency room with symptoms of substernal chest discomfort, breathlessness, difficulty swallowing, and change in speech. The patient stated that he had been well until the evening before admission, when he first noticed these symptoms after three hours of vigorous saxophone playing.
Museum of You Raise a Good Point
- From a 1990 (?) letter to The Straight Dope:
Dear Cecil:
In reading through your column "Vegetarians Go Ape," I noticed an unusual fact that you seemed to expose with great confidence. You stated that "Jane Goodall established more than twenty years ago that wild chimpanzees kill other animals once in a while and eat the meat with relish." I question the accuracy of this. Where would wild chimpanzees obtain relish?
- — Guru Singh Khalsa, Los Angeles
Museum of Mantras
| Click for cheap pun: | |
|---|---|
 These are the Timesthat dry men's soles. Pun credit: Safire, 1970s, can't find where though. |
Museum of National Emergencies
- From the article Reichstag Fire Decree:
Seizing on the burning of the Reichstag building as the supposed opening salvo in a communist uprising, the Nazis were able to throw millions of Germans into a convulsion of fear at the threat of Communist terror ... Within hours of the fire, dozens of Communists had been thrown into jail. The next day, officials in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, which was led by Hermann Göring, discussed ways to provide legal cover for the arrests. Ludwig Grauert, the chief of the Prussian state police, proposed an emergency presidential decree under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take any measure necessary to protect public safety without the consent of the Reichstag.
Enemas of the State
A 365-kilogram (805-pound) brass statue of a syringe enema bulb held aloft by three angels stands in front of the "Mashuk" spa in the settlement of Zheleznovodsk in Russia. It is the only known monument to the enema.
Museum of John Stuart Mill
So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old.
Museum of Little Liar Working for the Big Liar
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To what purpose then require [confirmation by] the Senate? ... It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters ... He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward ... candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure. – Hamilton
Museum of Abrupt and Intrusive Visitors
- A Yuletide poem for the cognoscenti:
The children were nestled
All snug in their beds
While visions of tamping irons
Went through their heads.
- <Poet bows, acknowledges applause>
Museum of Eloquence in the Age of Trump
- A recent message left on The Curator's talk page:
- Anti-American socialist vermin like you should have their balls cut off and forced down their throat.
- Commie fag — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pilesabuse (talk • contribs) 13:04, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- A recent message left on The Curator's talk page:
Museum of History Repeats Itself
Museum of Damsels in Distress
- From "CITY NEWS IN BRIEF", The Washington Post, September 12, 1915, p. 19:
Blanks have been sent out by F. J. Brunner, member of the harbor squad of the police force, who has been instructing policemen and others in life-saving in the water, for a special series of contests in lifesaving to be held at the municipal bathing beach, near the Monument, September 15. The contests will be by teams, who must demonstrate the breaking of holds and the towing of supposedly drowning persons to safety by various methods. A feature of the contests will be the rescuing of women completely dressed.
Museum of What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Part 3)
- From an episode of the true-crime series Forensic Files:
Ward and Diana Maracle were respected members of the community. Ward's Gas Bar, the Maracle's business – a gas station with a restaurant attached – had always been a prosperous business. At night, they also operated a check-cashing business out of their home.
Museum of Behind Closed Doors
- From our surprisingly PG article on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch:
On 9 December 1869, Sacher-Masoch and his mistress Baroness Fanny Pistor signed a contract making him her slave for a period of six months, with the stipulation that the Baroness wear furs as often as possible, especially when she was in a cruel mood.
- For further information, consult such sources as Tawdry Knickers and Other Unfortunate Ways to Be Remembered.
Museum of Yale, eat your heart out!
- Curator's note: This film, Mystery Street: Murder at Harvard (1950, dir. John Sturges – not his best by any means) is remarkable for having (a) no mysterious street, and (b) no murder at Harvard (though Harvard's "Dr. McAdoo" helps solve it). It does, however, feature Ricardo Montalban as (AND I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP) "Detective Morales" of the Barnstable Police Department.The trailer [100] is well worth watching from the beginning. "Here, in this room, is the answer!", the narrator bellows as the young Montalban withdraws his arm from a birdcage where Elsa Lanchester, who chews up the scenery as a scheming landlady, has hidden the crucial clue. The "exciting scenes" filmed "in and around Harvard University" include – sorry, these aren't in the trailer – an impossible shot of a car pulling up to a vacant parking meter – in Harvard Square! – directly in front of Johnston Gate!! Then for several minutes "Detective Morales" and his partner, lugging a box of bones, seek in vain the "Department of Forensic Medicine", fashion-plate Harvard men misdirecting them first to Harvard Hall, then Sever, then Widener, then Austin. When they finally realize they're in entierly the wrong city, and head over to Harvard Medical School in Boston, as luck would have it there's parking available right there on Longwood Avenue as well.Historical note: In the brief shot at 0m30s, Montalban is chasing the bad guy along the platform of Trinity Place Station into the Boston and Albany Railroad's Back Bay railyard, which is now the site of the Prudential Center.
- "Harvard?" "Delaware Tech."
- "That might make it justifiable homicide."
- "Harvard won't be impressed that you aced History of Polka Dots"
- "Harvard Law School! Cambridge, Massachusetts!"
- "An education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library."
- "Was kann Man bei ein Mädchen sagen das mit fünfundzwanzig Jahren starb?"
- "If I get the reward, I will send my younger brother to some good college, and I will go to Harvard."
Museum of Unfortunate Cognates
- At right, an image from our article on Proselytism. ("Lies!" is German for "Read!"):
- Curator's note: My favorite cognate is "Gift". Do not ever offer a German visitor a gift ("Here, have some tea. I have a little gift for you") because "Gift" is German for "poison".
Museum of Duty and Remembrance
| “ | Now and then, a veteran, for the brief span that we still survive, will come here to live again the brave days of that distant June. Here will be raised the altars of patriotism; here will be renewed the vows of sacrifice and consecration to country. Hither will come our countrymen in hours of depression, and even of failure, and take new courage from this shrine of great deeds. | ” |
| — General James Harbord (1923) | ||
Bone-spur sufferer Donald Trump did not attend the ceremonies at Belleau Wood marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, because it was raining. Oh wait! He also didn't attend Veterans Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. Too busy tweeting, no doubt.
Visitors to the Museum are asked to take a moment to read the story of Lionel de Jersey Harvard (left) and his younger brother Kenneth O'Gorman Harvard (right).
Bonus fact: Trump is so stupid that he confuses the Baltics with the Balkans. His wife, of course, was born in Slovenia but in fairness it's possible there was no return address on the crate she came in. Not that he knows where Slovenia is anyway.
Museum of Unexpected Citations
- A citation added by one of our finest editors, David Eppstein, to our article on Rounding:
Isaiah Lankham, Bruno Nachtergaele, Desperate Housewives (season 5): Linear Algebra as an Introduction to Abstract Mathematics. World Scientific, Singapur 2016, ISBN 978-981-4730-35-8, S. 186.
Museum of Misplaced Modifiers
- From the article Richard Feynman (with thanks to Atsme):
He noted that Feynman's eccentricities included a refusal to brush his teeth, which he advised others not to do on national television.
In other news ...
- From the article Hugo Black:
Shortly after Black's appointment to the Supreme Court, Ray Sprigle of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote a series of articles revealing Black's involvement in the Klan, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize.
Museum of Learned Hand
- From a 1944 speech:
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it ... What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow. ... The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded ...
Museum of Stable Geniuses
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♫ He is the Very Model of a Very Stable Gen-i-us. ♬
♫Of all the US presidents he is the Mussolini-est... ♬
- A story for our times...
A priest, a college student, and Donald Trump are in a small plane flying through a storm. Suddenly the pilot rushes from the cockpit. "We're going down," he cries, "and we only have three parachutes!" He puts on a parachute and jumps out.
Donald Trump says, "Well, I'm a stable genius so I must be saved!" He grabs a parachute and jumps.
The priest turns to the college student. "Young man," he says, "I've had a long life and am ready to meet my maker. Please, take the last parachute and save yourself."
The college student says, "Don't sweat it, Father. The stable genius jumped out with my backpack."
The stable genius has friends
- The anatomically confused edit summary to a recent edit to my talk page [101]:
You are a fucking faggot. Kill yourself you stupid cunt.
- Vote November 6.
Museum of Jobs With Unusual Duties
- From an episode of the true-crime program 48 Hours. An old murder case has taken a surprising turn when an evidence swab appears to have semen belonging to a San Diego Police Department crime-lab technician. But attorneys defending the technician have an explanation ...
Defense attorney 1: The swab itself was put to dry in the open air ...
Defense attorney 2: ... without a cap ...
Defense attorney 1: ... on a table near where [the technician] worked. Everything that was able to be airborne could have gone and touched that swab.
Interviewer: The problem, though, with this case is, seems to me, that the allegation is that this isn't sweat or spit – it's his semen. How would his semen get on a swab?
Defense attorney 2: You can still have cross-contamination of semen because they had to have fresh samples of semen in the San Diego lab.
Interviewer (voiceover): At the time of [the] murder, criminalists would often bring their own seminal fluid to the lab and use it to ensure the chemicals used to detect semen were working correctly.
Museum of First Things First
- The capsule summary for an episode of the television program Call 911:
"Wisconsin Standoff" Reality. (2009) A 15-hour standoff with a man who will only negotiate during commercials.
Museum of Logical Names
- From a recent television news report:
All passengers are safe this morning after a plane landed in a lagoon in the tiny nation of Micronesia.
Museum of An Illiterate Assisted by Incompetents
- The precise and exact wording of a tweet posted September 24, 2018 by the Idiot-in-Chief, regarding the rough patch recently hit by his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavenaugh:
The Democrats are working hard to destroy a wonderful man, and a man who has the potential to be one of our greatest Supreme Court Justices ever, with an array of False Acquisitions the likes of which have never been seen before!
Followup: The Idiot All on his Own
- From the Idiot-in-Chief's remarks at the 2017 Values Voter Summit. The teleprompter text read: "They sacrifice every day for the future of their children."
We see this spirit in the men and women who selflessly enlist in our armed forces and, really, who go out and risk their lives for God and for country. And we see it in the mothers and the fathers who get up at the crack of dawn; they work two jobs and sometimes three jobs. They sacrifice every day for the furniture and – future of their children.
- Tip: next time try reading the speech at least once in advance before you have to deliver it. Idiot.
Museum of So Then What's the Point?
- Caption on video clip in our fine article on Le Pétomane, "the French flatulist (professional farter)":
Le Pétomane du Moulin Rouge, 1900 (silent film clip)
Museum of Not Exactly Employee of the Month
- From Raymond Chandler:
Chandler was by 1931 a highly paid vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate, but his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees, and threatened suicides contributed to his dismissal a year later.
Museum of Modern Times
Things were simpler in the old days.
Museum of the Liberal Deep-State Swamp
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Museum of Thanks for Clearing That Up
- From Wikipedia's plot summary for the 1968 Italian film Be Sick... It's Free:
But the mother planned for him a great future as a doctor, and taught him to play dirty hospital where Guido worked to gain more customers can be borrowed. Mutual is an association that gave the Italians the State contribution for care by doctors, in Italy the period of maximum growth was precisely that of the sixties in which doctors and primary clinics trying to accumulate for their many customers who had to scrape together more money mutual. Tersilli from a simple pediatrician starts to become a real doctor raking here and there with mutual customers. The turning point occurs when Guido is called by a rich lady to visit her husband. Guido takes just a chance to woo the woman, although he was already engaged to another girl to bring her into his list of patients borrowed. So Guido, under the envy of colleagues, start earning with the rich lady countless customers borrowed touching the 2000 patients.
Museum of the Apocolypse
And now, this week's sign the that apocalypse is upon us ...
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Museum of Think of It This Way
- Thought-provoking passage from the article Intrauterine device:
Imagine the sperm as drivers who want to make it to their destination, the egg, as fast as possible. Without an IUD, they can see where they are headed. However, with an IUD, it's hard for them to figure out how to get to their final destination.
Museum of Crime Really Doesn't Pay
- From Charles Ingram:
Charles William Ingram (born 6 August 1963) is an English former British Army major known for cheating on the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2001. He was convicted at Southwark Crown Court on a single count of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. He was convicted of an unrelated insurance fraud in 2003, and ordered to resign his commission as a major by the Army Board ...
Ingram and his wife were declared bankrupt in November 2004 and November 2005 respectively ... In September 2010 Ingram slipped on a rotten apple while mowing the lawn and sliced off three of his toes.
- Vaguely related followup, from our article on daredevil Bobby Leach, "the second person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel":
In 1926, while on a publicity tour in New Zealand, Leach injured his leg when he slipped on an orange peel. The leg became infected, and eventually gangrene necessitated the amputation of the leg. Leach died of complications two months later.
Museum of Juxtapositions
Museum of Donald Trump is a Lying Traitor and His White House is Staffed by Lying Traitors Covering For Him
On the left below, a true transcript of the Helsinki press conference, in which Vladimir Putin openly stated that he instructed Russian officials to help Trump become president of the United States.
On the right, what the official White House video makes it appear was said – edited (and I am not making this up) to delete the reporter's words President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election
, thus making it appear as if Putin is responding to a question about Special Counsel Robert Mueller instead of about Trump's election. Let me repeat that: the White House's official video of the Trump-Putin news conference is falsified to hide the fact that Putin said that he directed Russian officials to help Trump become president.
The video links are given below so you can hear for yourself. Putin is discussing his bizarre proposal that the United States send certain of its diplomats and intelligence officials to Russia for questioning...
Putin (through translator): So we have an interest of questioning them. We can all – that could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Reporter Jeff Mason: President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
Putin: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.
C-SPAN uneditied video [103] (start at 32:40)
Putin (through translator): So we have an interest of questioning them. We can all – that could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Reporter Jeff Mason: And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
Putin: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.
The White House's falsified video [104]
As of July 26, the White House's transcript of the press conference has been corrected to reflect what really transpired [105], but the falsified video (linked above right) has not been corrected.
Anagrams don't lie
- Trump is a malignant narcissist = Mr Putin's a smiling satanic tsar
- "Trump Derangement Syndrome" = Grumpy demented man errs not
- Anagrams don't lie = damnation lagers
Museum of If Trump Was a Screenwriter
Museum of Machine Intelligence and Human Idiocy
No kidding, I typed Trump into the Google search box and it autocompleted Trump idiot.
Museum of Doesn't Seem So Funny Anymore
- How prescient turned out be this [106] conversation at ANI in June 2017. The underlined bits were removed by an admin as BLP violations – ha!
I do not think Putin would be interested at all, but right now there are a lot of cases in Russia when people are jailed for twits etc. The signals typically come from, um, unstable whistleblowers. I am not currently in Russia, but still...--Ymblanter (talk) 16:02, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Content note: Article contains the passage:
Three dolphins applauded the president for feeding them fish, while the walruses even shook his hand.
EEng 17:41, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
I prefer
Adorned in white overalls to resemble a bird, Putin did manage to get some cranes to fly
. ‑ Iridescent 17:51, 31 May 2017 (UTC)It's a shame the title of this thread isn't something like BITEy behavior at Pets of Vladimir Putin. EEng 18:05, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
[... Irrelevant intervening posts omitted...]
I voted to keep the article since it is as good as the other similar pages, some of which I was already aware of. Who knew Putin's dog is tracked by Russian GPS? Legacypac (talk) 18:20, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
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I'm your puppet.
I'll do funny things if you want me to,
I'm your puppet.
Museum of legal, regulated, and taxed
- From the article Seatrade:
Seatrade is the largest specialized refrigerated shipping company in the world, operating a fleet of near 100 specialised reefer vessels.
Museum of Stop touching Samuel Johnson!
- From the article Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis (as pointed out to me by a pal years ago):
Queen Anne touched the infant Samuel Johnson in 1712, but King George I put an end to the practice as being "too Catholic".
Museum of Washed-Up Has-Beens
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Meghan_Markle
Museum of Peace for Our Time
| “ | That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. | ” |
| — Aldous Huxley | ||
Museum of Those Greeks Sure Were Perverted
- From the article Hercules' Dog Discovers Purple Dye:
Hercules and his dog were walking on the beach on their way to court a nymph named Tyro.
You're a Big Help, AWB
- An edit summary in the article Jim Gray (computer scientist):
Typo fixing, replaced: using using → using using AWB
Museum of Sexual Entitlement
- From a comment at a GA review:
Do people expect bangs?
Museum of Metaphor
- An MSNBC correspondent commenting (May 24, 2018) on the cancellation of aspiring dictator Donald Trump's meet with North Korea's actual dictator and fellow fatso, Kim Jong Un:
There was also this sense that he put the cart before the horse and gave away the farm by not doing the legwork.
Museum of Who Tweeted It? (Pt. 2)
We should renegotiate the International Date Line, which is another bad Deal made by Democrats. When an American goes to China, he loses a day. But when a China person goes to America, he gains a day. Unfair![1]
Museum of I Didn't Know That Was Possible
- From the article on the film Bad Biology:
When they finally meet, they bond over their social and personal difficulties and lack of sexual fulfillment. However, they must somehow tame Batz' increasingly erratic penis before it can go on a murder spree.
Museum of The Watchers
- The words of Congressman James Mann during debate on the impeachment of Richard Nixon:
If there be no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. The next time there may be no watchman in the night.
- (The flaw in that reasoning being, of course, that if this hypothetical "another president" is an idiot who knows no history, he will profit not from the lesson.)
Museum of Maimonides of Hydrophobia
- A recent correction to the article Tiberias:
In the late 12th century Tiberias' Jewish community numbered 50 Jewish families, headed by rabies rabbis
Museum of What Noticeboard Do I Report That At?
- From someone's talk page:
You reported my giant penls in your vergina in the same minute it was created
Museum of Who Tweeted It?
- Hint #1: The misplaced capital W. Hint #2: "genius".
Museum of Unflappable Game Show Hosts
Museum of Really Upset Viewers
(Read about what actually happened here: [108].)
Museum of In Case You Hadn't Realized
- From the website of something called The Mountain Academy [109]:
Things have really gone wrong when multiple members of your group have been caught in an avalanche.
Museum of Man In Conflict With Himself
- From our article on the fossil Cheddar Man:
Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the western European population at the time, with lactose intolerance ...
Museum of Method Acting
These theories variously allege that she is a Western spy, or that her attempted murder by the Taliban in 2012 was a secret operation to further discredit the Taliban, and was organized by her father and the CIA and carried out by actor Robert de Niro disguised as an Uzbek homeopath.
Museum of Please, Dear God, I'm Begging You, No!
- From Harley F. Holden, "Student Records: The Harvard Experience" (The American Archivist, v. 39 n. 4, October 1976):
I suppose it could be argued, at least facetiously, that since our scientific community does not hesitate to publish photographs of scantily clad native chiefs from New Guinea or South American jungles, that community should not hesitate to feature photographs in the National Geographic or Natural History Magazine of [those] who became our chiefs of state.
Museum of Avoid These Common Mistakes
- From WikiHow's "How to Run Away With the Circus":
1. Get into shape. To be a part of any circus, you should be highly capable physically. Before you join in the clowning about, practice your flexibility for a few months.
2. Choose an act. Circuses usually require auditions, and you should build a repertoire. Look into things like acrobatics, diabolo, unicycle, and trampolining.
3. Find a good costume. Make sure you have the right costume for you, and that it fits your act. For example, you wouldn't want long, flowing sleeves for fire dancing.
Museum of Always Good Advice
Association with lewd women is dangerous.
Museum of Doing The Best I Can Under The Circumstances
- From a post at AN:
Sorry for the partial legibility of the previous note; my new computer's "a" and "q" keys are malfunctioning (intermittently...ugg) so I have to copy/paste the letter "a" if I want to type it, and I forgot.
Museum of 50 years later
- My college advisor is teaching Classics of Computer Science, so for old times' sake I'm sitting in to make a pest of myself. Last week we discussed Claude Shannon's "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (1938), which has been called "possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master's thesis of the century." One hurdle: apparently computer science students at major universities today aren't taught what a relay is ...
My dad (1968): How does a computer work?
Me: Well, it's like your brain ...
Me (2016, to 6-year old nephew): Riding your scooter, you wear a helmet to protect your brain.
Nephew: What's my brain?
Me: Well, it's like a computer ...
---
My dad (1968): What's a transistor?
Me: Well, it's like a relay ...
"Classics of Computer Science" student (2018): What's a relay?
Me: A relay is [draws diagram and explains].
Student: So it's like a transistor?
Museum of Good to Know
- Headline in the September 7, 1949 issue of the Klamath Falls, Oregon Herald and News (p. 5):
KF Community College Has Competent Faculty
- Followup:
Museum of Temperamental Artists
- From the article Roderick Maclean:
Roderick Maclean (died 9 June 1921) attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria on 2 March 1882, at Windsor, England, with a pistol. This was the last of eight attempts by separate people to kill or assault Victoria over a period of forty years. Maclean's motive was purportedly a curt reply to some poetry that he had mailed to the Queen.
Museum of I Was Wondering About That
Museum of Abstracts of One Syllable
Do Large (Magnitude ≥8) Global Earthquakes Occur on Preferred Days of the Calendar Year or Lunar Cycle? (with thanks to Guy Macon).
Museum of Multitasking Militant Muslims
Presumably a violation of the Five Pillars.
Museum of Polly Wants a Zipper
- The entirety of an item in the Oakland Tribune for September 13, 1945 (p. 8):
Zippers and Parrot Are Hospital Wants – An appeal was issued today by the Oakland Chapter, American Red Cross, for nine 10 and 12 inch zippers and a parrot, for men in local military hospitals. Anyone wishing to donate these contributions should call HIghgate 7680, extension 15.
Museum of Any Serious Questions?
- From the talk page for the article on The Clapper, the "Clap On, Clap Off" remote control device:
- Sources
- Can you get it from kissing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 20:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
- From the talk page for the article on The Clapper, the "Clap On, Clap Off" remote control device:
Museum of Quantitatives
- The Disagree/Neutral/Agree questions asked at https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/SD3/ to evaluate a subject's match to "the Dark Triad ... three closely related yet independent personality traits that all have a somewhat malevolent connotation. The three traits are machiavellianism (a manipulative attitude), narcissism (excessive self-love), and psychopathy (lack of empathy)." I answered on behalf of US President Donald Trump, and received the following results:
- Machiavellianism: 4/4
- Narcissism: 4/4
- Psychopathy: 3.8/4 (so there's at least some good news, I guess)
- The Disagree/Neutral/Agree questions asked at https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/SD3/ to evaluate a subject's match to "the Dark Triad ... three closely related yet independent personality traits that all have a somewhat malevolent connotation. The three traits are machiavellianism (a manipulative attitude), narcissism (excessive self-love), and psychopathy (lack of empathy)." I answered on behalf of US President Donald Trump, and received the following results:
- It's not wise to tell your secrets.
- People see me as a natural leader.
- I like to get revenge on authorities.
- I like to use clever manipulation to get my way.
- I hate being the center of attention.
- I avoid dangerous situations.
- Whatever it takes, you must get the important people on your side.
- Many group activities tend to be dull without me.
- Payback needs to be quick and nasty.
- Avoid direct conflict with others because they may be useful in the future.
- I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so.
- People often say I'm out of control.
- It's wise to keep track of information that you can use against people later.
- I like to get acquainted with important people.
- It's true that I can be mean to others.
- You should wait for the right time to get back at people.
- I feel embarrassed if someone compliments me.
- People who mess with me always regret it.
- There are things you should hide from other people because they don't need to know.
- I have been compared to famous people.
- I have never gotten into trouble with the law.
- Make sure your plans benefit you, not others.
- I am an average person.
- I enjoy having sex with people I hardly know.
- Most people can be manipulated.
- I insist on getting the respect I deserve.
- I'll say anything to get what I want.
Museum of Whatever Are You Implying?
A woman should not usually form acquaintances upon the street, or seek to attract the attention or admiration of the other sex, as to do so might render false her claims to ladyhood, if it did not make her liable to charges of a more severe nature.
Museum of Cantabrigians, Stop Sniggering
- From a recent edit summary:
Oxford coma for clarity
Museum of Legal Eagles
Alabama election officials declared Democrat Doug Jones the winner of a special Senate election held earlier this month... Montgomery Circuit Judge Johnny Hardwick on Thursday denied Moore's attempt to delay the certification of votes while Moore's claims of voter fraud are investigated. Hardwick said he lacked jurisdiction to decide the case – meaning that Moore, a former state Supreme Court chief justice, may have filed the lawsuit in the wrong court.
Museum of Everything's about Me, Me, Me!
- President Donald J. Trump's initial reaction to a fatal train derailment:
The train accident that just occurred in DuPont, WA shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly. Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble! Not for long!
- Ten minutes later, an afterthought:
My thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved in the train accident in DuPont, Washington.
Museum of Bad Starts
- [112] (first slide, first line, second word – but at least they got The right)
- Blessed are the cheesemakers: "Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of diary products or stationers in general." Thanks to our colleague A D Monroe III.
Museum of Thank You, Jesus!
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Museum of Publish or Perish
- From the article Roy Shaw – and be sure to click the link:
Shaw routinely stabbed police informers and even slashed the throat of a former best friend while incarcerated owing to his strong belief in an honour code amongst criminals which must not be broken.
Museum of Wrong Line of Work
- From "Murder by the Book", an episode of the uplifting crime series The Perfect Murder:
Narrator: As a young adult, Dan decides to rob a bank, but makes a serious mistake.
Retired D.A.: He passed a note to the bank teller, ya know, give me the money or I'll shoot you – whathaveyou. And, uh... he left the bank... and he left the note... and on the other side of the note was his deposit slip... with his name and address and phone number.
Museum of Naughty, Naughty Advertising Copywriters
====> Captions invited <====
An Admin showing a group of new editors how to write a featured article. - L293D (☎ • ✎) 19:18, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
Museum of Arbs on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Museum of Afflictions
- From our friends at National Geographic:
Minor strokes that killed off cells in one small area on the right side of the brain seemed to trigger "gourmand syndrome" in 34 patients reported in a 1997 Neurology journal study. They lost interest in their careers – as a tennis pro or political writer, for example – and devoted themselves instead to fine dining.
Museum of Just Kidding!
Museum of The Show Must Go On
An incident on the set of a 1958 edition of Armchair Theatre illustrates the perverse extremes of professionalism that television actors were expected to exhibit. The... cast included Warren Mitchell, Donald Houston, Peter Bowles, and a young Welsh actor named Gareth Jones. "During transmission," recalls Bowles, "a little group of us was talking on camera while awaiting the arrival of Gareth Jones's character, who had some information for us. We could see him coming up towards us, and he was going to arrive on cue, but we saw him drop, we saw him fall. We had no idea what had happened, but he certainly wasn't coming our way. The actors, including me, started making up lines: 'I'm sure if So-and-so were here he would say...'" Jones had suffered a fatal heart attack – but rather than informing the actors of their colleague's death and ceasing transmission of the play, the producers decided to let them stumble on to the end. [117]
Museum of Rock Bottom
- From the article on Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, former star of The Jersey Shore:
On June 17, 2014, Sorrentino was arrested for assault after a fight at a tanning salon in Middletown Township, New Jersey ... In August of [2011], Sorrentino was offered a "substantial" sum of money by fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch not to wear the company's clothes.
Museum of Bad Acid Trips
- From the article on Xenu, who in the cosmology of Scientology was "the dictator of the 'Galactic Confederacy' who 75 million years ago brought billions of his people to Earth (then known as 'Teegeeack') in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs." Scientologists actually believe this – at least those willing to pay the $100,000 required to get to the "level" at which you're allowed to learn such esoterica. Please note that this passage has been placed in the Museums in admiration of its rococo creativity, not to imply that it's any more outlandish than a talking snake, a guy nailed to a cross coming back from the dead, or the ideas that what God really wants you to do is cut off a bit of your son's penis and/or bundle up your women from head to toe like the Elephant Man:
Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of psychiatrists, he gathered billions of his citizens under the pretense of income tax inspections, then paralyzed them and froze them in a mixture of alcohol and glycol to capture their souls. The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The appearance of these spacecraft would later be subconsciously expressed in the design of the Douglas DC-8, the only difference being that "the DC8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't". When they had reached Teegeeack, the paralyzed citizens were unloaded around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously, killing all but a few aliens.
Hubbard described the scene in his film script, Revolt in the Stars:
Simultaneously, the planted charges erupted. Atomic blasts ballooned from the craters of Loa, Vesuvius, Shasta, Washington, Fujiyama, Etna, and many, many others. Arching higher and higher, up and outwards, towering clouds mushroomed, shot through with flashes of flame, waste and fission. Great winds raced tumultuously across the face of Earth, spreading tales of destruction...
The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for thirty-six days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data"' (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, etcetera". This included all world religions; Hubbard specifically attributed Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The two "implant stations" cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.
In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of personal identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.
A government faction known as the Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and his renegades, and locked him away in "an electronic mountain trap" from which he has not escaped. Although the location of Xenu is sometimes said to be the Pyrenees on Earth, this is actually the location Hubbard gave elsewhere for an ancient "Martian report station". Teegeeack was subsequently abandoned by the Galactic Confederacy and remains a pariah "prison planet" to this day, although it has suffered repeatedly from incursions by alien "Invader Forces" since that time.
Followup: Museum of Ouch! That Must Have Stung!
- From a rear admiral's fitness report on US Navy Lieutenant Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, who during WWII had managed to wander his ship into Mexican waters and fire on islands where Mexican troops were garrisoned. In later life Hubbard liked to style himself the "Commodore" of Scientology's "Sea Org":
Consider this officer lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation. He acts without forethought as to probable results. He is believed to have been sincere in his efforts to make his ship efficient and ready. Not considered qualified for command or promotion at this time. Recommend duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised.
Museum of Probably Safe to Say
- From "The Dating Game Killer", an episode of the enlightening television series Murder Made Me Famous:
Cheryl has just picked Rodney Alcala as her date on The Dating Game. She has no idea that she has selected a serial killer, and that she may be his next potential victim.
Museum of Artful Idling
- From Tom Hodgkinson, "Idleness and Industry":
A characteristic of the idler's work is that it looks suspiciously like play. This, again, makes the non-idler feel uncomfortable. Victims of the Protestant work ethic would like all work to be unpleasant. They feel that work is a curse, that we must suffer on this earth to earn our place in the next. The idler, on the other hand, sees no reason not to use his brain to organise a life for himself where his play is his work, and so attempt to create his own little paradise in the here and now.
Museum of Much-Needed Gaps
- From an unintentionally (I presume) insulting comment on an editor's user page:
StuRat your absence from the Reference Desks will be missed.
Museum of a Rock and a Hard Place
- From "Appendix: Plot Synopses of Traditional Ballads Most Commonly Found in the United States and Canada", in Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (Cohen, 2005):
H23. "The Old Maid and the Burglar" (by E. S. Thilp, originally "Burglar Man"). 1897: Surprised by a returning old maid, a burglar slips under the bed and watches her remove her glass eye, wig, wooden leg, and so on. She hauls him out and threatens to shoot him if he doesn't marry her; he begs her to shoot.
Museum of Exciting Careers
- From Wikipedia's plot summary for the Alan Hailey novel Overload (1979), "concerning the electricity production industry in California... described from the point of view of vice-president of Golden State Power and Light, Nimrod 'Nim' Goldman":
Noticing that a worker on the furnace feed conveyor was in danger, Nim instinctively runs down to the plant floor and saves the man from otherwise certain death. A comely young lady who is part of the group saw what happened and decides she wants to invite herself into Nim's bed and offer him sex as a thank you for what he did. When Nim is back in his bedroom a woman slips in, and he discovers it's not the lady who propositioned him, it's the wife of one of the executives of the Colorado electric company where he is staying, who asks Nim to impregnate her so she can have a child. (The other executive had privately admitted to Nim that he is "shooting blanks", i.e. infertile and unable to get his wife pregnant.) Then, later, the lady who originally wanted to bed Nim arrives, and is able to get Nim to have sex with her as well.
The think group, using coded incoming mail, finally arrest David Birdsong and expose Georgos. Georgos attempts to bomb Big Lil, but he is killed by the pump's turbine blades. The plant manager, noticing that someone had gotten into the reservoir, realizes that if the plant is bombed while it is operating, the damage would put the plant out of operation for months, but a bomb when the plant is shut down would only cause minor damage, chooses to shut the plant down, causing a major power shortage. Georgo's corpse floats up after the turbines stop, essentially confirming the manager's concern. This shut down, however, causes a major blackout throughout the region. Karen Sloan dies after her respirator fails due to this power outage. Nim discovers his wife is dying of cancer, and the novel ends as Nim finally befriends Nancy Molineaux and visits her at her house as she offers Nim a one-time opportunity to be her lover.
Museum of Now That You Mention It
Cinnamon Carter's role as an IMF agent was that of "femme fatale" and "woman in distress". In her IMF dossier, she was noted as being a successful model, and the dossier scenes during her three seasons on the show showed at least three different magazine covers on which she was featured. How a famous international cover model failed to be recognized as such during a mission was never explained.
Museum of Incoherent Counsel
- From a letter sent to news outlets by personal-injury lawyer Trenton R. Garmon, who for some reason is representing Roy Moore, the Alabama candidate for US Senate accused of molesting teenage girls:
Your client's organization has made and/or supported defaming statements. This is due to the careless and/or intentionally refused to advance the truth regarding our clients. We also believe that your client, by and through its agents, have damaged our clients by being careless in how they handled headlines and report the contextual of the allegations.
Meaning your client has used terms in reports maliciously or carelessly which is falsely portraying our clients.
Thus, do note this clearly, yet significant difference which your client's publications(s) have failed to distinguish. And the legal requirements that your client retract the stories, to include the details which clearly are false.
We believe it is clear and convincing your client consciously and deliberately engaged in oppression, fraud, wantonness, and/or malice and again as stated above we do requested a retraction.
Museum of Somehow That Fits
- From the typsetting note in The Works of Mark Twain (v. 3, 1993 ed.):
The text of this book is set in Trump Mediaeval...
- Related item, from 1984, "The Principles of Newspeak":
The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine-gun spraying forth bullets. His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost fool-proof instrument, and the texture of words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful ugliness which as in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further.
So did the fact of having very few words to choose from... Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all.
Museum of Oops
- From the article on the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever":
The episode went over budget by more than $50,000 and overran the production schedule. Mistakes were made in the set design with an instruction for "runes" misconstrued as a request for "ruins".
Museum of Clever IPs
Read the article names from the bottom up: [118]
Museum of Gone to that Great Blueberry Hill in the Sky
Museum of I Shouldn't Laugh but I Did
- From a discussion of a deceased Wikipedia's userpage:
I can't help noticing, though, that the juxtaposition of items at the top of his user page just now is a bit jarring [119]. EEng 19:59, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
- Oh my...you're right. When I was a kid, Mom would tell me to put on clean underwear before I left the house. Now that I'm a Wikipedian and rarely leave the house, I just have to make sure my user page is clean. Atsme📞📧 20:32, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
Museum of Adults Only
Perhaps my most daring edit ever, unfortunately (or possibly fortunately) now part of a block of revdels [120].
Museum of Discreetly Left to the Reader's Imagination
- From the article Gerald Haxton:
Military policemen, whilst looking for deserters, had burst into the hotel room of Haxton and Lindsell to find them committing a homosexual act that was not buggery.
Museum of Cruel to Be Kind
- From a discussion of civility at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard:
Would, for example, one occurrence of "bizarre and hypocritical" warrant a sanction regardless of the surrounding circumstances?
I like your idea of resurrecting WP:WQA, as a sort of honeypot. Once all the people who would answer yes to that question have congregated there we could quietly lock the door from the outside. They might never notice. I kid, obviously, but if you want to "enforce civility" that's certainly not the sort of thing you'd start by addressing. -- Begoon 7:13 am, Today (UTC−4)
Museum of Polite Requests
If you believe in "gun rights", please drop dead. Thank you for your cooperation.
Museum of My Smart Little Nephew
- My nephew just entered second grade, and he's smart as a whip. For your enjoyment:
- [The logical mind at work early...] "You told me to say library not libary, so how come it's not strawbrerry?
- [Next day...] "The lady in charge of the library is a librarian, so the lady in charge of strawberries is a strawberrian!"
- [Halfway through The Wizard of Oz, he turns to me with suspicion in his eyes...] "Wait a second! Is this all a dream???"
Museum of If Mark Twain Had Been a Gynecologist
- Pessary: A device worn in the vagina to support the uterus, remedy a malposition, or prevent conception. Certain other terms, such as refractory uterus, I dared not look up, and we can only hope that the phrase Eureka vaginal irrigators is unrelated to e.g. the respected purveyors of floor cleaning equipment.
- From W.N. Bryant, M.D. (Chester, Vt.). "Advances in Gynaecology". Transactions of the Vermont Medical Society for the Year 1885, pp. 77-81:
It is undeniable that gynaecology is a seductive study; that while a lively interest attaches to all branches of our art, a certain weird kind of fascination seems to envelop this, which does not obtain in other departments. As proof of this, I would refer you to the vast amount of human ingenuity and inventive genius being expended in the vain pursuit of an ideal pessary. Why this is so I am unable to explain, unless it be that same irresistible interest which always envelopes the mysterious and hitherto unattainable.
Apropos of this, I am tempted to moralize a little, and to suggest that the interest manifesting in the solution of the mysterious is not always commensurate with the result to be obtained, even in the case of success. For instance, many lives and much treasure have been sacrificed in attempts to reach the frozen pole. But when these attempts shall finally be crowned with success, it is by no means certain that this portion of our globe will ever become popular, whether as a health resort or for agricultural purposes. So I have sometimes wondered if, when some enthusiastic devotee shall discover the gynaecological Utopia by inventing the truly ideal, never-failing, self-adjusting, non-irritating, non-corrosive, non-combative, self-satisfying pessary – if, I say, after all – there will be left no more worlds for the enterprising specialist to conquer.
If advancement is to be measured by the number of such instruments brought forth in a given time, the past year can make a very creditable showing. Had I supposed it would devolve upon me to prepare this report, I would have made note of these articles and thus have been able to describe them seriatim. As it is, memory must be trusted. My notice has been called, per circular and otherwise, to about an equal number of new specula, ideal pessaries and Eureka vaginal irrigators, and, after some deliberation, I place the gross number at nine hundred and thirty-seven. (This report has not been audited, and is subject to correction.) Each of these instruments was warranted to fill a long felt want, which no doubt they would do, provided sufficient of them were sold to pay the inventors. I have made a little calculation, from which it appears that, if any of us was so fortunate to have safely in bank the retail price of each different instrument that has been devised to torture a refractory uterus into a state of moderate conservatism, we would have no further necessity for practicing either gynaecology or economy for the remainder of life.
Museum of great quotes
"I don't like the symbolism of burning the flag ... It would be better for demonstrators to wash the flag, rather than burn it." – Norman Thomas
Museum of Warning! Do Not Travel to Bratislava!
Under communism, the tradition of public toilets formed, which influences the city to this day. Public toilets were separated by sex, entrances being guarded by notoriously ill-tempered restroom ladies. The client would disclose whether he needed to urinate or defecate, and he would be charged accordingly, the latter costing more. Finally, the client was issued his limited share of toilet paper, sometimes with an embarrassing negotiation regarding the need for more.
Partial list of public toilets in Bratislava
Kamenné Námestie / Námestie SNP. Closed for years because of groundwater leakage.
Pedestrian underpass Trnavské mýto. Partially devastated.
Karloveská Street (Karlova Ves) Devastated, closed for some 15 years.
Pedestrian underpass Hodžovo námestie. Accessible to the handicapped with effort.
Museum of Someone's Not Paying Attention
- Entry published (incredible as it may seem) in the Fiftieth Reunion Class Report for Harvard College's Class of 1962, based on information submitted by the alumnus in question himself:
Theodore John Kaczynski
Home address: No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary-Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 8126-8500.
Occupation: Prisoner.
House/Dorm: Eliot.
Degrees: AB '62; MA Univ. of Michigan '65; PhD, ibid. '67.
Publications: Technological Slavery (Feral House, 2010).
Awards: Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.[121]
Museum of Upholders of Traditional Values
- From the article on Kim Davis, the not-overbright county clerk who believes that marriage is the inviolable union of one man and one woman:
Davis has been married four times to three different men. The first three marriages ended in divorce in 1994, 2006, and 2008. Davis is the mother of twin sons, who were born five months after her divorce from her first husband. Her third husband is the biological father of the twins who were adopted by her second husband,
Museum of science humor
- From a discussion of problems stemming from the many people gathering to view the August 21, 2017 solar eclipse:
The demand for portable toilets will be "astronomical".
Museum of Bears with Opposable Thumbs
- From the computer-generated (let us hope) subtitles to a true-crime detective program. Some hikers have found a body:
The body sports a baffling array of grizzly injuries. She has a plastic bag over her head.
Museum of Lonely Dissent
If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with the state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done...
–John Marshall Harlan, dissenting in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Museum of That's Much Better
- A correction in the New York Times, June 23, 2017:
An earlier version of this graphic included an incorrect total for the number of days Donald Trump told a lie during his first two months as president. It was 20, not 25.
Museum of Erudition and Insight
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Museum of Nepotism
- From a strangely telling statement (August 12, 2017) by a (spellcheck-challenged) "unidentified White House spokesperson":
The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, nephew-nazi and all extremist groups.
Museum of Startling Talk Page Section Headings
Museum of Malpractice
Museum of Clouded Crystal Balls
- From a Citizendium user talk page:
Ro, Are you interested in helping set up a Manual of Style for Citizendium? There have been previous discussion in the past on this but like everything else, nothing came of it. Meg Ireland 14:44, 30 September 2013
- I certainly would, yes. Indeed it's been something I've been thinking about recently. We should broadly follow Wikipedia. Ro Thorpe 17:24, 30 September 2013
- Wikipedia is in decline. Meg Ireland 22:09, 10 November 2013
- From the article Citizendium:
In November 2016, a referendum was held to abolish the governing Citizendium Charter and the Council in favour of Wikipedia-style discussion and consensus. It attracted nine votes, and was passed. A new Managing Editor was to be elected at the same time, but there were no nominations.
Museum of Congressmen! Choose Your Weapons!
- From the CNN "crawl", July 20, 2017:
Wiping out the rule would affect tens of millions of Americans who often don't know they are covered by an arbitration clause when they sign up for a credit card or checking account. Today Republican lawmakers in House & Senate introduced duel versions of bill to ax the rule.
Museum of Frustrated Elite Masters of Style
- Apparently stimulated by a difference of opinion on an article talk page [123] (extra points for confusion of hyphen with dash, mismatch between singular half-wit and plural their skulls, etc.):
Museum of Wiseacres
- From "Policemen's Hats and Coats Stolen in Hotel As Members of Glee Club Give a Concert", The New York Times, April 28, 1933, p. 19:
Ten patrolmen, an acting police lieutenant and Deputy Chief Inspector John J. O'Connell searched the Hotel Astor last night for two coats and four hats taken by sneak thieves while their policemen owners were singing in the Rose Room. The discovery of the loss was made as ten members of the Police Glee Club finished their last number, "Smile, Darn You, Smile," before more than 100 members of the La Salle Academy Alumni Society, who were holding their annual dinner.
The hats and coats, which had been used to cover the regulation uniforms of the men, who had just gone off duty, had been thrown hurriedly on chairs in an anteroom just outside the room in which the dinner took place, and in view of the singing officers. Fifteen minutes later four angry glee club members discovered their loss at practically the same moment.
Acting Lieutenant Patrick Fitzgibbons and Deputy Chief Inspector O'Connor were called from the dais where they sat as honored guests. The head waiter, the manager and two bus boys were called. One of the bus boys suggested that "we better call the police."
Museum of Anthropology
- From the article Theories of humor:
Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller contends that, from an evolutionary perspective, humour would have had no survival value to early humans living in the savannas of Africa.
Museum of The Wacky World of Wikivoyage
- From Wikivoyage's page on North America (which I cannot recommend too highly):
Fake Irish pubs may seem tacky to those who have been to the real thing, but they are a genuine part of the landscape in the U.S. and Canada and are often among the most popular bars in town. If you're in a major American city on St. Patrick's day, a visit to one of these establishments is a must.
As rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms show have a rabies vaccination before you head out and get to a doctor as soon as possible if you are bitten.
Museum of Statistics
- From "Statistics of California for 1868-69", in The Alta California Pacific Coast and Trans-Continental Rail-Road Guide (1871):
Alameda County: Number of Homes, 8689; Number of Cows, 5603; Number of Mules, 946; Number of Asses, 7
Museum of Well Said
- From a post by Beyond My Ken at ANI, responding to the assertion that "instead of adopting a more central/middle-ground view, WP presents a more leftist view due to a combination of what are considered reliable sources, and a combination of experienced editors on the site editing in these areas that average out to a leftist view":
The so-called "liberal media" is biased towards reality, and the alt-right is biased towards anything that supports their ideology, which is, generally speaking, not reality-based. We are an encyclopedia, therefore we reflect reality, not any ideology. The right sees this and says "Ah, see, Wikipedia is supporting what the liberal media says, therefore Wikipedia is biased towards the left," but that's only because they see things through the filter of their POV, while we do our very best not to be biased towards anything except what is real and verifiable. The alt-right media are not, for the most part, reliable sources, since they have been shown to have been wrong again and again and again, and have an overall tendency to report whatever they believe, regardless of its relationship to reality. Thus we are forced to use reality-based media, which the alt-right sees as liberal or "leftist", which is actually ridiculous, since no mainstream American media outlet is anywhere near being left-wing -- but, then, the alt-right makes no differentiation between "liberal" and "leftist".
In short, it is wrong to point the finger at Wikipedia as being the genesis of the problem, which originates in the minds of the ideologues of the right. There is no "leftist view" to Wikipedia, that's an artifact totally created in the perceptions of rightists. Our viewpoint is centrist, just as that of the "liberal media" is. The fault is not in us, it is in those who cannot differentiate their ideology from reality.
Museum of Thoughts While Watching CNN
"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." – Bertrand Russell
- Or in the words of William Butler Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity". Most poignant of all is perhaps this poetic Swedish version: "Varför är den gode dum? Varför är den kloke ond? Varför är allt en trasa?" (Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, 1793 – 1866). The "Why is everything a cloth?" part that Google Translate will supply if you ask it, is the very heart of Almqvist's famous aphorism. —Bishonen
Museum of Unlikely Matchups
You can't put a peach emoji up against Swift or Martin Luther.
...the peach emoji no longer being shaped like a butt...
Museum of Culinary Cops
- From the closed captions (presumably computer-generated) accompanying "The Gentleman Killer", an episode of The ID Channel's series A Crime to Remember. A retired New York police detective is describing—in a heavy, heavy Brooklyn accent—the tireless efforts of Detective Burns to crack the case:
Burns works the street. He sweats his sauces.
- .... Bronx Fugu, anyone?? – A Man Inverts
Museum of Wet 'N Wild
- Photograph on display at The Typewriter: An Innovation in Writing, an exhibition of SFO Museum, "the only accredited museum in an airport":
- The Curator is offering a prize for the best answer to the question, "Why in the world would someone be typing in the shower?"
- Not a caption, but judging from the children in the background, the photo might have been taken in a country with a tropical climate, and the shower stalls might have been the coolest place in the building (it's even possible that the stalls had no ceiling); the feet of the woman who is typing are wet, so she might have first cooled her feet with water before sitting down to type. – Corinne (talk) 18:05, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
- Headline reads, Hot off the press - the ink is still wet! At which time the editor told the journalist to dry up. Atsme📞📧 23:08, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
- "One of Dame Barbara's early attempts to write those "hot and steamy" passages." Martinevans123 (talk) 19:14, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
- Gentlemen of America: Set up Your Typing Pool anywhere.[FBDB] - Adam37 Talk 22:21, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
- Because the bathtub was already occupied. --A D Monroe III(talk) 22:22, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
- ”Mechanically superior to the very best water resistant quad-core smartphone, the Corona continues to produce readable text even after it has slipped out of your jeans pocket and landed in the toilet. The precision engineered Corona will allow editors to continue to revert vandalism during the next deluge. Each machine comes with a lifetime supply of waterproof paper and typewriter ribbon (red/black).” Clappingsimon (talk) 14:08, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Museum of Excerpts from Novels I Didn't Finish Reading
- From the 2008 novel, Alive in Necropolis, by Doug Dorst – and yes it's that Phineas Gage:
I entered the building and found two individuals inside along with several old-fashioned airplanes in various stages of construction. I recognized one individual as Phineas Gage... According to Mr. Gage, Mr. Beachey faulted himself for encouraging her to go roller-skating unaccompaned, telling her it would be safe for her to do so, and for failing generally to keep her safe. As we spoke, Mr. Gage was hit by a piece of an engine that I think may have been a carburetor.
Museum of Plot Summaries We Didn't Finish Reading
- From the article on the science-fiction film Zardoz, in which Sean Connery appears as Zed, "the last man capable of an erection" wearing "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony tail and Zapata moustache":
Genetic analysis reveals he is the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn—who is Zardoz—who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Museum of Sustainable Practices
- From the article Panama Canal Railway:
Disease and exhaustion took a heavy toll on workers, in part because the connection between mosquitoes and malaria would not be discovered for another 40 years. The Panama Canal Railroad Company sold the corpses to medical schools abroad, using the income to maintain the company hospital.
Museum of Possessive Rabbis
Q. My question is about the proper font of a boat name as a possessive as in “the Ibis’s lower decks.” CMOS 8.115 says italics for the boat’s name; 6.2 specifies the use of italics when the punctuation is part of the word. This seems a Talmudic moment. Thanks.
A. Ah – although the boat name is properly in italics, the apostrophe and s are not, because they are not actually part of the name. Please see 7.28. Shalom.
Museum of Indiscriminate Bibliographies
- From Keynes, A Treatise on Probability:
I have not read all these books myself, but I have read more of them than it would be good for any one to read again. There are here enumerated many dead treatises and ghostly memoirs. The list is too long, and I have not always successfully resisted the impulse to add to it in the spirit of a collector. There are not above a hundred of these which it would be worth while to preserve – if only it were securely ascertained which these hundred are. At present a bibliographer takes pride in numerous entries; but he would be a more useful fellow, and the labours of research would be lightened, if he could practise deletion and bring into existence an accredited Index Expurgatorius.
Museum of Mark Twain
Well, of course, I wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn’t meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. He stated a truth, and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so gently and healingly, that I was rather glad I had committed the crime, for the sake of the letter.
Museum of Yet More MOSsy Thoughts
- From a comment by the ever-wise Herostratus at Talk:MOS [124]:
Possibly the best solution would be a line at the beginning of each article containing a couple dozen commas, and also some semicolons, quotation marks, and so forth. The reader could then be instructed to mentally sprinkle them throughout the text in whatever manner she finds pleasing.
Museum of Tipping Points
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Museum of Yummy
- From the article Pontefract cake (apparently a kind of candy) – which includes this image:
The term "cake" has a long history. The word itself is of Viking origin, from the Old Norse word "kaka".
Museum of Leaden Irony
- From the change history for the article Linotype machine:
(cur | prev) 🔘 03:01, May 11, 2017 Benh57 (User_talk:Benh57|talk | contribs) m . . (28,937 bytes) (-1) . . (typo) (undo | thank)
Museum of And Some People Say There's No Such Thing as Reincarnation
Museum of Wish I'd Thought of That (Gendered Obscenity Edition)
- Hatnote at the top of the article Cockblock:
Ready?
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Not to be confused with Stopcock. |
Museum of What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (redux)
- From Ma Anand Sheela:
Sheela attempted to influence the Wasco County Court's November election and capture the two open seats by busing in hundreds of homeless people from within Oregon as well as outside, and registering them as county voters. Later, when that effort failed, Sheela conspired, in 1984, to use "bacteria and other methods to make people ill" and prevent them from voting. As a result, the salad bars at ten local restaurants were infected with salmonella and about 750 people became ill ...
For these crimes Sheela was sentenced to three, 20 year terms in federal prison, to be served concurrently ... In December 1988, she was released on good behavior after serving twenty-nine months of her 20-year sentence and moved to Switzerland. Sheela married Swiss resident, Urs Birnstiel, a fellow Rajneesh follower. There she bought and managed two nursing homes.
Answer to the question: What could possibly go wrong?
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In 1999 she was convicted by a Swiss court for "criminal acts preparatory to the commission of murder" but did not serve any prison time. |
Museum of Amusing Anecdotes
- From the article on Turnspit dogs – dogs trained to run in a kind of squirrel-cage to turn roasting meat on a spit:
The dogs were also taken to church to serve as foot warmers. One story says that during service at a church in Bath, the Bishop of Gloucester gave a sermon and uttered the line "It was then that Ezekiel saw the wheel...". At the mention of the word wheel several turnspit dogs, who had been brought to church as foot warmers, ran for the door.
Museum of The Curse of the Global Replace
- From "Honey bee revealed in genome code" (Associated Press, October 25, 2006):
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have unraveled the genetic code of the honey bee, uncovering clues about its complex social behavior, heightened sense of smell and African origins. It is the third insect to have its genome mapped and joins the fruit fly and mosquito in the exclusive club.
The honey bee, or Apis mellifera, evolved more slowly than the other insects but has more genes related to smell. "In biology and biomedicine, honey bees are used to study many diverse areas, including allergic diseases, development, gerontology, neuroscience, social behavior and venom toxicology," said Gene Robinson, director of the University of Illinois Bee Research Facility and one of the leaders of the project. "The honey bee genome project is ushering in a bright era of bee research for the benefit of agriculture, biological research and human health," he added.
With its highly evolved social structure of tens of thousands of worker bees commanded by Queen Elizabeth, the honey bee genome could also improve the search for genes linked to social behavior. But the consortium of scientists, who reported the findings in the journal Nature, said a comprehensive analysis of the honey bee and other species will be needed to understand its social life.
Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the lifespan of workers and lays up to 2,000 eggs a day. Despite having tiny brains, honey bees display honed cognitive abilities and learn to associate a flower's color, shape, and scent with food, which increases its foraging ability.
Museum of Just In Case You Think It Can't Really Happen
- From "Oaklanders Who Refuse to Display Flag Face Arrest", The San Francisco Chronicle April 15, 1917 (p.40):
Failure of Oaklanders to display flags in their homes, places of business and on their vehicles and attempts to hold meetings to protest against local men going to European trenches will result in jail sentences, according to an edict issued by Mayor John L. Davie. The Mayor added that the mass meeting planned for Monday night by the Women’s Home Protective League as a demonstration against sending troops to the trenches will not be permitted. The edict, in part, follows:
- To the People of Oakland: The Oakland city charter gives the Mayor the control of the Police department in perilous times such as these, and I give warning to the lukewarm citizens that I will exercise this authority to the extreme letter of the law. ... Unless the citizens of the city immediately respond to the call for a manifestation of their allegiance to this country, and unless the agitators ... cease their activity, they will all be arrested and interned as enemies of our country. This is the last word. Display your flags. Take no part in any demonstrations that in any way seek to undermine the dictates of our government.
- Very truly yours, John L. Davie
Museum of Better Reword That (Redux)
- From the article on barrister Robert Rinder:
Rinder was called to the bar in 2001 after graduating from the University of Manchester, starting his pupillage at 2 Paper Buildings after going straight from University into law because of his double first. Rinder then became a tenant at 2 Hare Court. He went on to specialise in international fraud, money laundering and other forms of financial crime.
Museum of You Can't Always Tell a Harvard Man
- From Richard Bradley, Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World's Most Powerful University (2011):
In 1960 the faculty voted to publish Harvard diplomas in English rather than the traditional Latin, and a horde of cranky undergraduates descended on Loeb House, then the president's residence. "Latin Si, Pusey No", the students chanted. The president came out of his house and addressed the crowd—in Latin. Since virtually none of the students had any idea what he was saying, the protest quickly fizzled.
- The Curator, in all honestly, has reason to believe this anecdote may be not be completely accurate, but it's too good not to pass on.
Museum of God's Metaphors for the Trump Administration
Museum of Failure to Launch
- From a letter threatening a $1 billion lawsuit against librarian Jeffrey Beall for his activities in identifying predatory open access publishers:
Let us at the outset warn you that this is a very perilous journey for you and you will be completely exposing yourself to serious legal implications including criminal cases lunched against you in INDIA and USA.
Followup joke
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Most people recall deranged serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and some may be vaguely aware that he was killed in a prison fight. So...
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Museum of Fixed Gazes
- From Alison Martino, "Vintage Los Angeles: The Tragedy of Hamburger Hamlet" Los Angeles Magazine (January 2, 2014):
A contract player for Warner Bros in the 40s, Harry is better remembered for Key Largo, which he stared in with Humphrey Bogart, Edward G Robinson, Lauren Bacall, and Claire Trevor.
Museum of The Varieties of Religious Experience
- From the article on Bliss Knapp, "an early Christian Science lecturer, practitioner, teacher and the author of The Destiny of the Mother Church":
Bliss Knapp's first lecture was given in White Mountains, New Hampshire, and was introduced by one of Mrs. Eddy's students, Miss Emma C. Shipman with whom only a few decades before, as a child, he had enjoyed an entertaining pillow fight.
Museum of Aptonymy
- From the References section of Phineas Gage:
Tow, Peter Macdonald (1955). Personality changes following frontal leucotomy: a clinical and experimental study of the functions of the frontal lobes in man. With a foreword by Sir Russell Brain.
Museum of No Stone Unturned
- From Murder of Bernard Oliver:
Police in the Bernard Oliver murder investigation announced their intention to interview all of the homosexual men in London.
Museum of Charming Old-World Ways
- From the article on Lenny Montana, who portrayed Luca Brasi in The Godfather:
Montana became involved with the Colombo crime family in the late 1960s. Tall and very heavily built, his talents were mostly as an enforcer and an arsonist. He would tie a tampon to the tail of a mouse, dip it in kerosene, light it, and let the mouse run through a building, or he would put a candle in front of a cuckoo clock so that when the clock's bird would pop out the candle would be knocked over and start a fire.
Museum of The Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You
- From the article Warren Gulley:
He spent the next 11 years in charge of the White House Military Office, which was then responsible for the nuclear football, Air Force One, Marine One, the White House Communications Agency, and the White House Mess.
- Comment: It's unfortunate Mr. Gulley is dead, since right now the White House could sure use someone with experience in that last area.
Museum of What a Way to Go
- From "Loss of Prominent Young Man Keenly Felt by Students" in the November 12, 1924 issue of Central Normal Life, the newspaper of Central Michigan Normal School:
His death resulted from injuries received while serving the United States in the World War. Being severely wounded in France while drinking hot chocolate ...
Museum of Be Prepared! (personal hygiene edition)
- From the article University of Texas Tower Shooting, describing the homicidal preparations made by Charles Whitman, a former United States Marine and (ahem) Eagle Scout:
Whitman sawed off the barrel and butt stock of the shotgun, then packed it into his footlocker along with a Remington 700 6-mm bolt-action hunting rifle, a .35-caliber pump rifle, a .30-caliber carbine (M1), a 9-mm Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia .25-caliber pistol, a Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolver, and over 700 rounds of ammunition. He also packed food, coffee, vitamins, Dexedrine, Excedrin, earplugs, jugs of water, matches, lighter fluid, rope, binoculars, a machete, three knives, a transistor radio, toilet paper, a razor, and a bottle of deodorant.
Museum of Badges of Honor
The Fräulein would only wear the Empress or Grand Duchess' initials in diamonds, pinned to their left shoulder. In the 18th century, some of them were granted the right to wear a goat in their hairdress.
Museum of That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It
- From "WHISKEY WAS FOR BABY. Plea Entered by Charlestown Woman When Police Raided House." (The Boston Herald, May 20, 1907, p.12, c.3):
Claiming she kept whiskey mixed with cod liver oil on hand to feed her 8-month-old infant, Mrs. Jennie Lawless protested against the seizure of the liquor when her house at 5 Smith Street, Charlestown, was raided yesterday. Forty-five bottles of ale were also kept on hand, presumably for baby's use.
When asked to produce the cod liver oil which which she said she mixed the whiskey, Mrs. Lawless stated that unfortunately she was just out.
Museum of Monster in a Box
The penitent line, "We have crated a Frankenstein" is still vivid in my memory.
Museum of the Dismal Science
- From positronic brain:
Specialized brains created for overseeing world economics were stated to have no personality at all.
Museum of Can You Top This?
"You think that's creepy? I was married to Charles Manson..."
Museum of The Slippery Slope of Same-Sex Marriage
- From Lyle and Erik Menendez:
Since entering prison, both brothers have married.
Museum of Which Is Worse?
- From the "Criticism" section of the article on IKEA:
- Verdana typeface
In 2009, IKEA changed the typeface used in its catalogue from Futura to Verdana...
- Founder
Ikea was founded by a former Nazi...
Museum of Unmentionables
There's no script that can even pretend to enforce V, NPOV, UNDIE, and so on.
Museum of Like Clockwork
- From a discussion of a proposal that editors receive admin privileges automatically after one year and 3000 mainspace edits. (Note: Newbies may not know the history required to appreciate this, and I'm certainly not gonna explain it. Sorry.)
365 days after that policy is implemented, probably to the minute, the block logs will explode. Mind you, we could always implement compression. The string "Eric Corbett" repeated 135 thousand times wouldn't take up that much space.
Museum of Seeing the Forest Instead of the Trees
- Excerpt (slightly adapted) from a post by Herostratus in a discussion of whether MOS should specifically command or forbid the italicization of indicators such as (left) and (right) in image captions e.g.
This is certainly something that should be left up to the individual editor, for various good reasons.
- One good reason is that... there is no one clear correct or better way.
- A second good reason is that adding another needless rule bogs down the MOS with more detail and makes it harder to learn and harder to use.
- A third good reason is that creating a rule means enforcement, it puts interactions about the matter into an enforcement mode where editors are playing rules cop with other editors and this is not as functional as peer-to-peer interactions.
- A fourth good reason is that there's zero evidence that it matters to the reader.
- A fifth good reason is that micromanaging editors to this level is demoralizing and not how you attract and nurture a staff of volunteer editors – for instance we have a stupid micromanaging rule that I have to write "in June 1940" and not "in June of 1940" which is how I naturally write, and every stupid micromanaging rule like this is just another reason to just say screw it. As the Bible says "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn" (1 Timothy 5:18, paraphrased from Deuteronomy 25:4) which updated means "Let the editor who did the actual work of looking up the refs and writing the friggen thing -- you know, the actual work of the project -- be at least allowed the satisfaction of presenting it as she thinks best, within reasonable constraints"...
This means different articles will do it differently. This annoys a certain type of editor. Oh well...
- And from a series of posts, by the same wise editor, in a discussion of whether someone should be described as a "former American hockey player" or an "American former hockey player":
We don't have a rule for it, so its not your job to "fix" other editors' constructions to a format that pleases you personally. It's just roiling the text for no gain. (On the merits, English is a human language, not a programming language, and everyone understands what is meant by "former American hockey player".)
Since there isn't a rule, I believe that the operative procedure is:
- Do what you think best, using your wit and sense for the English language.
- And give other editors the same courtesy. Do not change other editors' constructions, and do not "correct" other editors to match your personal predelictions. It just leads to pointless roiling of the text, unnecessary bad feelings, and pointless sterile edit warring.
As for setting a rule, we could do that with an RfC, but I wouldn't recommend that, for a couple of reasons. One, it would probably be a lot of work ending in no consensus. Two, give editors a little room to breathe, shall we? We don't need to micromanage every possible clause construction. The project will survive if we write this two different ways.... I believe in letting the person who (after all) did the actual writing work be given a kind of stare decisis privilege in minor matters like this.
- And from the archive, your host's post from long ago along the same lines...
For want of a comma, the clause was lost...
aka...
Why every goddam thing needn't be micromanaged in a rule
- From a discussion over whether MOS should require the final comma in constructions like --
On September 11, 2001, several planes ...
- and even
On December 25, 2001 (which was Christmas Day), we all went ...
- From a discussion over whether MOS should require the final comma in constructions like --
You treat punctuation marks like mathematical operators which organize words into nested structures of Russian-doll clauses and such, and they're nothing like that. Not everything has to be rigidly prescribed and no, I don't buy into the "OhButIfWeDon'tThereWillBeEndlessArgumentOnEachArticle" reasoning just because that might, sometimes happen.
All over Wikipedia there are years with comma following, and years with no comma following, and never have I seen two editors, both of whom are actually engaged on a particular article, in serious conflict over a particular instance of that question. The discussion might go, "Hmmm... I'd use a comma myself but if you prefer none... yeah, that looks OK too. Now about that source-reliability question we were discussing..." but that's about it.
Where I've seen actual trouble is when other editors -- who have shown (and will subsequently show) no active interest in the article itself -- arrive out of nowhere in their radar-equipped year-with-no-comma–detector vans, then break down the door to weld court-ordered ankle-bracelet commas onto some harmless 2001 whose only crime was appearing in public with his trailing digit exposed -- something which (these prudish enforcers of Victorian punct-morality seem never to understand) was considered perfectly acceptable in most cultures throughout human history.
(Did you know, for example, that in the ancient Olympic games, years and days competed completely naked, without even a comma between them? I'm not advocating that unhygienic extreme but a bit of exposed backside shouldn't shock anyone in this enlightened age. But I digress, so back to our narrative underway...)
Having rendered yet another noble service in defense of the homeland (as they like to tell themselves) they jump back into their black SUVs and scurry up their rappelling ropes to their double-rotor helicopters and fly off to their next target, never knowing or caring whether that particular article has, or has not, been improved by their visitation. Certainly all the breaking of the crockery and smashing of the furniture can't have helped, but order has been restored and choas beaten back, which is what's important.
During all this the neighbors cower in their homes with the lights out, glad that they are not the targets of these jackbooted comma-thugs -- at least not this time. "Look," they say to their children, "that's what happens if you don't obey the rules. You should love Big Brother MOS for his heroic dedication to relieving you of the burden of deciding anything for yourself."
But privately they're thinking, "CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE US ALONE FOR ONCE -- GRANT US JUST A SHRED OF PERSONAL AUTONOMY, A TINY REMINDER OF THE TIME WHEN THERE EXISTED A FEW ZONES OF DISCRETION IN WHICH MEN WERE FREE TO WORK OUT WITH THEIR FELLOW-EDITORS WHETHER OR NOT TO APPLY A COMMA, ACCORDING TO THE DICTATES OF THEIR OWN CONSCIENCES? CAN YOU REALLY NOT SLEEP AT NIGHT, KNOWING THAT SOMEWHERE OUT THERE, EDITORS ARE DECIDING FOR THEMSELVES THE PLACEMENT OF COMMAS? MUST YOU DICTATE FUCKING EVERYTHING?"
As Hannah Arendt put is so well: "It is the inner coercion whose only content is the strict avoidance of contradictions that seems to confirm a man's identity outside relationships with others. It fits him into the iron band of terror even when he is alone, and totalitarian domination tries never to leave him alone except in the extreme situation of solitary confinement. By destroying all space between men and pressing men against each other, even the productive potentialities of isolation are annihilated..." Or as John Stuart Mill -- himself a great lover of commas, so you can't dismiss him as a bleeding-heart, comma-omitting permissive corruptor of young punctuators -- said... Oh, never mind.
You say
- Punctuation is not some flighty thing that you use when it feels right or the mood takes you (otherwise the MOS would be redundant).
Yes, if we can't prescribe and control every detail of usage and punctuation societal decay sets in and soon there is immorality, open homosexuality, interracial marriage, and baby murder.. Or perhaps I've misunderstood you?
The opposite of rigid prescription of everything isn't "flightiness" on everything; the opposite of rigid prescription on everything is measured guidance appropriate to the point being discussed:
- Rigid prescription in the few cases for which truly appropriate.
- Clear direction where experience shows people often go wrong
- Enumeration of alternatives where choices are available
- Universal advice to use common sense no matter what
That last point, BTW, is one of the first thing MOS says. I'm quite aware that there's a MOS rule requiring comma-after-year. And I'm telling you that removing that rule, or changing it to a short mention that opinions differ on this, would go a long way toward repairing the disdain many editors have for those parts of MOS which ridiculously overreach and overprescribe, thereby preserving respect for its important provisions on things that really matter.
- And finally...
A rolling stone gathers no MOS [125]
- In the last 48 hr I've become aware of a simmering dispute over whether the text of MOS itself should be in American or British English. With any luck the participants will put that debate (let's call it Debate D1) on hold in order to begin Debate D2: consideration of the variety of English in which D1 should be conducted. Then, if there really is a God in Heaven, D1 and D2 will be the kernel around which will form an infinite regress of metadebates D3, D4, and so on -- a superdense accretion of pure abstraction eventually collapsing on itself to form a black hole of impenetrable disputation, wholly aloof from the mundane cares of practical application and from which no light, logic or reason can emerge.
- That some editors will find themselves inexorably and irreversibly drawn into this abyss, mesmerized on their unending trip to nowhere by a kaleidoscope of linguistic scintillation reminiscent of the closing shots of 2001, is of course to be regretted. But they will know in their hearts that their sacrifice is for the greater good of Wikipedia. That won't be true, of course, but it would be cruel to disabuse them of that comforting fiction as we bid them farewell and send them on their way.
- More MOSsy thoughts at WP:If MOS doesn't need a rule on something, then it needs to not have a rule on that thing.
- ^ Not actually Trump, but you were prepared to believe it, weren't you?
Museum of I Hope You're Wearing Clean Pants
- From the directions for Trader Joe's Burrata, Prosciutto & Arugula Flatbread:
Pre-heat oven to 450°F; remove flatbread from packaging, place on a baking sheet and sit on counter top while oven preheats.
- On the plus side, you rarely see packaged-food directions that use semicolons (much less properly).
Museum of May We Recommend
Wisdom from User:Guy Macon
- If one person keeps getting into disputes with a bunch of different people over a long period of time, eventually you have to stop and consider what the common factor in all of the conflicts is. "There once was a drunk driver who was driving the wrong way on the freeway. Upon hearing on the radio (over the honking horns) that there was a drunk driver who was driving the wrong way on the freeway, he peered through his windshield, noticed all of the headlights heading toward him, and exclaimed 'My God! There are dozens of them!!'"
- Also by Guy Macon [127]:
- Rather than thinking of admins as 8-foot tall cannabalistic monsters armed with a chainsaw and a sack of grenades, I prefer to think of them as giant cybertanks with no self-awareness. "They are simply engines of destruction, doing what they are programmed to do."
- And yet more from G.M. [128]:
- In videogames, The Super Mario Effect is as follows: When Mario gets a power up that turns him into Super Mario, a mistake that would normally kill him as ordinary Mario simply turns him from Super Mario to ordinary Mario, then he has to make another mistake to be killed. Likewise when an administrator does something that would get an ordinary editor indefinitely blocked, he is desysopped, turning him into an ordinary editor. Then he has to do something else wrong to be actually blocked.
Wisdom from Michael Polanyi
From Michael Polanyi, "The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory" (1962) (and note the quaint reference to "women" shelling peas!):
The first thing to make clear is that scientists, freely making their own choice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are in fact co-operating as members of a closely knit organization. The point can be settled by considering the opposite case where individuals are engaged in a joint task without being in any way coordinated. A group of women shelling peas work at the same task, but their individual efforts are not co-ordinated. The same is true of a team of chess players. This is shown by the fact that the total amount of peas shelled and the total number of games won will not be affected if the members of the group are isolated from each other. Consider by contrast the effect which a complete isolation of scientists would have on the progress of science. Each scientist would go on for a while developing problems derived from the information initially available to all. But these problems would soon be exhausted, and in the absence of further information about the results achieved by others, new problems of any value would cease to arise, and scientific progress would come to a standstill.
This shows that the activities of scientists are in fact coordinated, and it also reveals the principle of their co-ordination. This consists in the adjustment of the efforts of each to the hitherto achieved results of the others. We may call this a coordination by mutual adjustment of independent initiatives – of initiatives which are co-ordinated because each takes into account all the other initiatives operating within the same system.
When put in these abstract terms the principle of spontaneous coordination of independent initiatives may sound obscure. So let me illustrate it by a simple example. Imagine that we are given the pieces of a very large jigsaw puzzle, and suppose that for some reason it is important that our giant puzzle be put together in the shortest possible time. We would naturally try to speed this up by engaging a number of helpers; the question is in what manner these could be best employed. Suppose we share out the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle equally among the helpers and let each of them work on his lot separately. It is easy to see that this method, which would be quite appropriate to a number of women shelling peas, would be totally ineffectual in this case, since few of the pieces allocated to one particular assistant would be found to fit together. We could do a little better by providing duplicates of all the pieces to each helper separately, and eventually somehow bring together their several results. But even by this method the team would not much surpass the performance of a single individual at his best. The only way the assistants can effectively co-operate, and surpass by far what any single one of them could do, is to let them work on putting the puzzle together in sight of the others so that every time a piece of it is fitted in by one helper, all the others will immediately watch out for the next step that becomes possible in consequence. Under this system, each helper will act on his own initiative, by responding to the latest achievements the others, and the completion of their joint task will be great accelerated. We have here in a nutshell the way in which a series of independent initiatives are organized to a joint achievement by mutually adjusting themselves at every successive stage to the situation created by all the others who are acting likewise.
Such self-co-ordination of independent initiatives leads to a joint result which is unpremeditated by any of those who bring it about. Their co-ordination is guided as by 'an invisible hand' towards the joint discovery of a hidden system of things. Since its end-result is unknown, this kind of co-operation can only advance stepwise, and the total performance will be the best possible if each consecutive step is decided upon by the person most competent to do so. We may imagine this condition to be fulfilled for the fitting together of a jigsaw puzzle if each helper watches out for any new opportunities arising along a particular section of the hitherto completed patch of the puzzle, and also keeps an eye on a particular lot of pieces, so as to fit them in wherever a chance presents itself. The effectiveness of a group of helpers will then exceed that of any isolated member, to the extent to which some member of the group will always discover a new chance for adding a piece to the puzzle more quickly than any one isolated person could have done by himself. Any attempt to organize the group of helpers under a single authority would eliminate their independent initiatives and thus reduce their joint effectiveness to that of the single person directing them from the centre. It would, in effect, paralyse their cooperation.
Essentially the same is true for the advancement of science by independent initiatives adjusting themselves consecutively to the results achieved by all the others...
Museum of Possibly Overanxious fact Taggings
- See [129]:
Normally humans have five digits on each hand.[citation needed]
Museum of unexpected section headings
- ... looking at the image there, maybe it should be re-named Semen on carpets?? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:45, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
- You're disgusting. Please visit often. EEng 19:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
- Can we talk about part of his last name being Cumming? The man was born for that line.Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:24, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
- You're disgusting. Please visit often. EEng 19:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
- This just in: The citation is cited to a source entitled The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming.
- Possibly related item (from an ANI post by an eager Russian contributor):
I mentioned, that in doubt Soviet official sources and not semen's talk. I show that and found out some other sorces to confirm, that the semen said correct and Wikipedia was agree, that the my Ship's articles are not otiginal recearch.
Museum of Thwarted Love
Two male vultures at the Allwetter Zoo in Muenster built a nest together, although they were picked on and their nest materials were often stolen by other vultures. They were eventually separated to try to promote breeding by placing one of them with female vultures, despite the protests of German homosexual groups.
Museum of Biting Criticism
- From Baudelaire's evaluation of Sir Walter Scott [130]:
A fastidious mass of descriptions of bric-a-brac, a heap of old and castoff things of every sort, armor, tableware, furniture, gothic inns, and melodramatic castles where lifeless mannequins stalk about, dressed in leotards ...
Museum of Catalog Entries that Merit a Trip to the Library
Bigelow, Henry Jacob, 1818–1890. Papers, 1840s–1856 (inclusive), 1848–1855 (bulk). Box 1, Folder 84, Dr. Daywards' great breast.
Museum of Unfortunate Choices
- Headline, Daily Mail, September 1, 2015:
Teen impersonating a police officer gets arrested after he tries to pull over an off-duty cop.
Museum of Credit Where Credit Is Due
- From the File Description Page File:Human_Feces.jpg at Wikimedia Commons:
Description: Produced by myself on 2006-05-28. Photographed by myself, in a toilet, shortly thereafter. Yes, this is real. It is what it is. If you use this image, I would appreciate a credit.
Museum of Talk About Getting the Government Out of the Bedroom!
- From California's Proposition 60, "The California Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act", to be voted on November 8, 2016:
(g) A legible sign shall be displayed at all times at the location where an adult film is filmed in a conventional typeface not smaller than 48-point font, that provides the following notice so as to be clearly visible to all adult film performers in said adult films: The State of California requires the use of condoms for all acts of vaginal or anal intercourse during the production of adult films to protect performers.
Museum of Typos
- From [131]:
In August, when the local news reported that a 6-foot 9-inch dead surgeon washed up on the shores of Isle La Motte, my first reaction was this particular doctor could have played professional basketball instead of practicing medicine.
Museum of The March of Science
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has regulated human feces as an experimental drug since 2013.
Museum of Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?
- From the San Francisco Chronicle's Sporting Green, September 11, 2016:
Last Sunday, Breast Cancer Awareness Day, the A's gave away 10,000 pairs of pink wristbands. So far, so good. But alert fan Kyle Watry noticed that each pack carried a warning: "This product may contain chemicals... known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm."
Museum of Only So Many Ways to Phrase It
- From a discussion in Michael Pitt-Rivers of a prosecution for, um, buggery:
In the summer of 1953, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu offered his friend Peter Wildeblood the use of a beach hut near his country estate. Wildeblood brought with him two young RAF servicemen, Edward McNally and John Reynolds. The four were joined by Montagu's cousin Michael Pitt-Rivers. At the subsequent trial, the two airmen turned Queen's Evidence.
Museum of How The Mighty Have Fallen
- Related item, from the article Buggery ...
In 2012 a man was convicted of this offence for supplying a dog in 2008 to a woman who had intercourse with it and died; he received a suspended sentence and was required to sign the sex offender registry, ending his career as a bus driver.
Museum of Security Koans
- From a discussion on CNN about a recent airport security breach:
What we have to remember is that nothing is 100% anything.
Museum of Muscular Imagery
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Museum of Sometimes I Wonder Why I Bother
- Graph of recent pagesviews counts for my essay WP:Wikipedia is not about whining:
Museum of the Ignorant Non-Notable Masses
10 Things Wikipedia Says Are More Notable Than You (and check out what's first on the list!).
Museum of Survival of the Fitness
This WikiProject is believed to be semi-active. Activity is slower than it once was.
Museum of Better Than Nothing
- From James_Henry_Pullen:
Once, when Pullen developed an obsession to marry a townswoman he fancied, the staff mollified him by giving him an admiral's uniform instead.
Museum of People with Nothing Better to Do
https://wiki.riteme.site/?diff=726160738 (note the dates on the diff and the original post)
Museum of Bedside Manners
- From "The Limbic System with Respect to Two Basic Life Principles", in The Central Nervous System and Behavior: Transactions of the Second Conference (1959):
We have had a number of patients who have had very strong suicidal tendencies. The one I spoke of brought 155 razor blades, 17 knives, and two loaded guns into the therapeutic hour, and on one occasion she cut her wrists. I showed her how to hold her arms so she wouldn't drip on my couch.
- Later in the same discussion:
He experienced what I would call a real culinary orgasm.
- And...
These fantasies of eating can alternate with sexual fantasies. This was quite clear during the last war, when we all were a little hungry and a little impotent.
Museum of great things Galbraith said
- "Economists are most economical about ideas. They make the ones they learned in graduate school last a lifetime."
- "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."
- "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
- "We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much."
- "The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground."
And interesting things his son said
(After learning that a political rival, who had criticized the son for funding his own campaign, had himself loaned his campaign $95,000)
Museum of Pick Your Poison
- From Manure management:
In high concentrations manure can lethally asphyxiate humans. There is also a drowning danger.
Museum of WP:The Wrong Version
- From an ANI thread:
The world wide web has been semi protected by Nyttend for ten days.
Museum of Better Reword That
- From a discussion at WT:Manual of Style/Images:
I would like to propose the repeal of the language in this guideline which forbids the inclusion of image galleries in articles about human ethnic groups ... Even articles about sub-species groupings directly analogous to human ethnic groups, such as Maine Coon, include images of their subjects.
Museum of Really, Really Better Reword That
- From the same discussion—and by the same editor!—two weeks later (and I am not making this up):
A great deal of objection to the repeal of NOETHNICGALLERIES seems to center around the difficulties of classifying people according to fine-grained groupings visually. I would suggest, therefore, that we allow image galleries for ethnic groups at the highest level, i.e. White people, but continue to disallow them for low-level subgroups, i.e. Slavs.
Museum of Those Lustie Tudors
- From Henry VIII of England:
He was skilled on the lute, could play the organ, and was a talented player of the virginals.
Museum of Cheap Followups
- Not from anything:
Q: Why did Bach have so many children?
Answer
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|---|
|
A: Because he didn't have any stops in his organ. |
Museum of Noted for Future Reference
- From "Dancing in San Francisco, Hygienically Considered", San Francisco Medical Press, January 1862, p.26:
It is the peculiar condition of the nervous system, probably produced by the electrical condition of the air, that causes so much insanity in California ... The climate of San Francisco is peculiarly favorable to Dancing [but] there is one correction that ought to be made in the present system of dancing here. The dancing, both in public and private are, for the most part, continued too long.
Museum of Legal Aptonymy
David Goodwillie has had his rape charge dropped.
Museum of More Than a Coincidence?
- From Human Interference Task Force, about early attempts to devise a means of warning cultures in the far-distant future not to intrude on radioactive waste sites:
French author Françoise Bastide and the Italian semiotician Paolo Fabbri proposed the breeding of so called "radiation cats" or "ray cats". Cats have a long history of cohabitation with humans, and this approach assumes that their domestication will continue indefinitely. These radiation cats would change significantly in color when they came near radioactive emissions and serve as living indicators of danger.
- From the article on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a radioactive waste disposal site":
The source of contamination was later found to be a barrel that exploded on February 14 because contractors at Los Alamos National Laboratory packed it with organic cat litter instead of clay cat litter.
Museum of Unclear Enunciation
This article is about the children's modeling material. For the ancient Greek philosopher, see Plato.
Museum of Yes, I Think You've Put Your Finger On It
- From a discussion of someone's crackpot theories about Hitler in Esoteric Nazism:
She saw his defeat—and the forestalling of his vision from coming to fruition—as a result of him being "too magnanimous, too trusting, too good".
Museum of Timeless Wisdom
- Proverb
in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
- Among others with a disadvantage or disability, the one with the mildest disadvantage or disability is regarded as the greatest.
- Even someone without much talent or ability is considered special by those with no talent or ability at all.
- Someone that can see his actions transpire in determination makes the most out of every other thing disconnected
Museum of Urgent Matters
- From a recent actual ANI report (bolding as in the original):
Background: A series of IPs (virtually all geolocating to the same Canadian city) have been edit warring since late February to incorrectly state that the Canadian Cadbury Caramilk is a chocolate bar rather than a candy bar.
Museum of Unusual Career Paths
- From the article on Hedy Lamarr:
Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, 9 November 1914 – 19 January 2000)[a] was an Austrian and American film actress and inventor of radio guidance technology.
Museum of Well, They Do Like the Trains to Run on Time
- From the article on George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, who was killed by a Party member in front of a laundromat:
The cemetery specified that no Nazi insignia could be displayed, and when the fifty mourners violated these conditions the entrance to the cemetery was blocked in a five-hour standoff, during which the hearse (which had been stopped on railroad tracks near the cemetery) was nearly struck by an approaching train.
Museum of Scholarly Disputation
- From a discussion of why the earth's motion doesn't cause buildings to fall down, in The Mathematical and Philosophical Works of the Right Rev. John Wilkins, Late Lord Bishop of Chester: To which is Prefix'd the Author's Life, and an Account of His Works; in Two Volumes, (reprinting A discourse concerning a new planet tending to prove, that ’tis probable our Earth is one of the planets, 1640):
The motion of the earth is always equal and like itself; not by starts and fits. If a glass of beer may stand firmly enough in a ship, when it moves swiftly upon a smooth stream, much less then will the motion of the earth, which is more natural, and so consequently more equal, cause any danger unto those buildings that are erected upon it ... But supposing (saith Rosse) that this motion were natural to the earth, yet it is not natural to towns and buildings, for these are artificial.
To which I answer: ha, ha, he.
- (I like the beer reference. As someone wrote, "Our fathers ... closely associated the thirst for learning and that for beer.")
Museum of "You don't say!"
- From John Vassall:
Although his father was an Anglican priest, his mother converted to Roman Catholicism (a fact which led to some tensions in their marriage).
Museum of Edible Edits
- A perhaps over-tired, or ravenously hungry, Ricky81682 commenting at ANI [132]:
And if the OP doesn't bother to respond, I say we close this and ask the editor on their talk page to provide a coherent, succulent description of their concerns.
- See also this tempting edit summary: [133]
Museum of Words that Bug Me
The 7.30 Report, 18 April 2006
The complaint: A viewer complained that a report caption referred to an “entomologist” as an “etymologist”.
Finding: The ABC agreed that this was incorrect.
Museum of How Was Your Day, Dear?
Earl, a zookeeper at the Cleveland Brookside Zoo, was mauled by a brown bear while feeding it in its pen. After a vicious struggle, police shot the bear. Earl was also mistakenly shot, but it was determined that he was already dead. Earlier in the day, Earl had been fired from his job.
Museum of You Can't Always Get What You Want, But Sometimes You Get What You Need
- From an online comment about Vittorio De Sica's masterpiece The Bicycle Thief:
I read that Bicycle Thieves is one of Leonardo DiCaprio's favorite movies of all time. I saw it. It just ended abruptly. I was really hopeful for a happy ending that he would win his bike back but rather he ends up with no bike in the end.
Museum of Precision Diagnoses
- T63.442 Toxic effect of venom of bees (intentional self-harm)
- V91.07 Burn due to water-skis on fire
- V95.42XS Forced landing of spacecraft injuring occupant, sequela
- V97.33 Sucked into jet engine
- W22.02 Walked into lamppost
- W55.41 Bitten by pig
- W61.62 Struck by duck
- Y92.146 Swimming-pool of prison as place of occurrence
- Y92.154 Driveway of reform school as place of occurrence
Sample combinations:
- Y92.241 Library as place of occurrence + W45.1 Paper entering through skin ("Applicable to paper cut")
- Y92.834 Zoological garden as place of occurrence + W61.12 Struck by mackaw
- Y92.72 Chicken coop as place of occurrence + W61.33 Pecked by chicken
Museum of Hope Springs Eternal
- From the Classifieds section of Mission Hill Gazette, a Boston neighborhood newspaper:
Boston Brakers power soccer
Practices 1st, 2nd, 3rd Saturdays of the month, noon-2pm, Tobin Community Center, 1481 Tremont Street.
Yoga for Older Adults
Saturdays through May, 10am. Yoga props and mats are provided, wear clothes that you can move in comfortably. Parker Hill Branch Library, 1497 Tremont St.
$5 Million Reward
for information leading directly to the return of 13 works of art stolen two decades ago from the Gardner Museum. Anonymous tips can be mailed to 280 The Fenway.
Museum of Mixing Business and Pleasure
- From The Signpost article, "Revenge of 'I can’t believe we didn’t have an article on ...'" :
Esther Applin was a super-awesome geologist who discovered that microfossils could be used for dating purposes.
- Alternatively, Tryptofish suggests [134] she could use Radiometric dating to land a hot date.
Museum of What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
- From "Mommy Dearest", an episode of the I-swear-I-was-just-flipping-channels true-crime program A Stranger in My Home. Mabel (82) and Cathie (57) are a mother and daughter who have just moved from their too-small trailer to a house.
Mabel and Cathie would love for Cathie's sons, Travis and Morgan, to move in and help out around the house. There's only one problem: they're both in prison on burglary and fraud charges, and won't be released for several years. But Cathie's sons have a solution in the short term. They introduce Mabel and Cathie to their fellow inmate Edward Caldwell ... He was going to get out soon, and he would be needing a room to rent. Mabel invites Edward to move into the now-empty trailer, and in return he will help her and Cathie around their house.
Museum of It's a Dirty Job, But Someone's Gotta Do It
During the past few years it has been my privilege to treat some hundreds of railway employees for various rectal diseases.
- And from the very same page, some old-timey medical humor (I guess):
Some Clinical Thermometer Notes ... Another was a hospital ward patient, his cot being the second the physician visited on making his rounds. The patient begged one day to change beds with his neighbor, and when pressed for his reason he declared that he had got tired of having the glass put in his mouth after it had been into his neighbor's rectum. He wanted it put into his mouth before the other fellow's temperature was taken.
More dirty jobs
- From a letter by Abbott Lawrence Lowell to his cousin William Lawrence, describing efforts to extract a donation from J.P. Morgan:
When I cease to be President of Harvard College I shall join one of the mendicant orders, so as to have less begging to do.
Yet more dirty jobs
- From the post "The Decline of Free Speech in American Universities" in something called University Ranking Watch:
St Mary's University of Minnesota: An adjunct classics professor was fired for sexual harassment which may have had something to do with an authentic production of Seneca's Medea. He was also fired from his other job as a janitor (!).
- Confusing related item:
Marquette University: John McAdams was [dismissed] for criticising an instructor for suppressing a student's negative comments about same-sex marriage.
Museum of Travel Broadens One
- From an ever-so-slightly, if unintentionally, suggestive "Google Reviews" comment on Harvard's Widener Library:
A beautiful library at the heart of Harvard's campus. Please note that entrance requires Harvard affiliation, so as to prevent hordes of tourists from disrupting students' studying. Having had the privilege of entering widened I can say that it's truly gigantic.
- .... [135]
Museum of He Did It His Way
- From My Way killings:
The "My Way" killings are a social phenomenon in the Philippines, referring to a number of fatal disputes which arose due to the singing of the song "My Way" in Karaoke bars ... On May 29, 2007, a 29-year-old karaoke singer of "My Way" at a bar in San Mateo, Rizal, was shot dead as he sang the tune, allegedly by the bar's security guard. According to reports, the guard complained that the young man's rendition was off-key, and when the victim refused to stop singing, the guard pulled out a .38-caliber pistol and shot the man dead.
- And from the same article:
In Thailand, a man was arrested on charges that he shot to death eight neighbors, one of whom was his brother-in-law, in a dispute stemming from several karaoke offerings, including repeated renditions of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
He also did it his way
- From Evan O'Neill Kane:
He is most well known for the remarkable feat of removing his own appendix under local anaesthetic in 1921 at the age of 60. He operated on himself again at the age of 70 to repair a hernia. In many ways Kane was idiosyncratic in his practices, which included the tattooing of his patients.
Museum of Thought Control
Background (from an ANI thread):
- ... The purpose of Wikipedia is to build an encyclopedia, not to exchange thoughts ... Johnuniq (talk) 01:05, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
- "The purpose of Wikipedia is to build an encyclopedia, not to exchange thoughts." I hope no one takes that too much to heart and writes WP:NOPUBLICTHINKING. EEng 01:13, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
 | This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays are not Wikipedia policies or guidelines. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. Some are just bonkers. |
| This page in a nutshell: Keep your thoughts to yourself. |
Wikipedia's fundamental principles are encapsulated in its "five pillars": it is an encyclopedia; it is written from a neutral point of view; its content is free to use and edit; participants are expected to act with respect and civility; there are no firm rules. These ideals carry no requirement (or even permission) for critical thinking. Indeed, there is no requirement that editors even be sentient beings—a large fraction of the project's edits are made by "bots."
It follows that editors must not expect their colleagues to act rationally or sensibly. Criticizing another's remarks as internally inconsistent or nonsensical is uncivil regardless of the truth or falsity of such criticism, and may result in sanctions. Similarly, displays of critical thinking or logical analysis may induce feelings of inadequacy in those incapable of such activities, and consequently must be avoided. Keep your thoughts to yourself.
Museum of Damn Statistics
- From a digression at WP:COIN.
@EEng: thank you for making exactly my point for me. Of course it wasn't random. If my "ridiculous calculation" upsets you so much, I think you're taking this a little too seriously. Brianhe (talk) 18:55, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
- I'm taking it too seriously in the context of the subject of this thread, but not in the context of the spread of nonsense passed off as statistics, which is a serious problem given that you can turn on almost any crime show and hear some prosecutor intone gravely, "The chances of that DNA coming from anyone other than the defendant was 1 in 4 quintillion" or similar nonsense arrived at by calculations similar to yours.
- If you think what I said made your point for you, then you still don't understand. You were trying to prove that one set of user boxes was copied (or adapted, or somehow influenced) by another set of userboxes, by calculating the chance that two sets of userboxes, arrived at independently, would be the same, under the assumption that people just pick their userboxes out of a hat. But that last assumption is false (even if they're setting up their userboxes completely independently of one another), which makes the whole calculation meaningless.
|
.jpg){kind=link}
![[102]](https://andyxl.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/anglo-saxon-smallest.png){kind=link}
![[135]](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/89/cf/c8/89cfc885734cc9ef7abfeb1676c77115.jpg){kind=link}
- For example, let's say user A has the userboxes at right. Under your calculation User B, who now joins the project, would have only a 1/(2526*2526) = 1/(25,000,000) chance of picking the same userboxes. Ergo, if B has the same boxes as A, it's impossible to imagine he came up with them independently—he must have copied them from A. But this is obviously a ridiculous conclusion, since the majority of editors on en-wp are native speakers of English, and the majority are Americans, and the two probabilities are dependent.
- Blindly plugging numbers into statistical formulas has caused a lot of problems, as the ex-managers of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear plants would be able to tell you first-hand (if they weren't both dead, of course). So please do your part to stop the senseless slaughter of nuclear-plant managers, and don't engage in meaningless combinatoric exercises and then pass them off as valid. (More seriously, people have gone to prison based on similar calculations by incompetent "experts"—see People v. Collins—so the lives of everyday people really are affected by the insidious spread of such nonsense.)
EEng (talk) 20:10, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Museum of Excruciatingly Fine-Grained Editing
- From User talk:EEng:
Hi, You have more than 2,500 edits to Phineas Gage (talk+article) ... Currently that article has more than 37,000 characters/bytes, I hope one day you will have more edits to article than number of characters in article. That will be a distinct and unique record. --Human3015
Museum of Naughty Edits
- ^ Twain, M. "Die schreckliche deutsche Sprache." IEEE Trans. Tramps Abroad (1880)
- ^ Tomorrow is monday.
More Naughty Edits
- From Lowell House [136]:
| “ | At Lowell, the bells were usually rung on Sundays from 1:00 to 1:15 pm by a group of Lowell residents known as the Klappermeisters. But some Klappermeisters were drunk with power, and putting heedless self-indulgence ahead of the welfare of their sleep-starved fellow scholars, would initiate their infernal clanging much, much earlier than the officially appointed hour on that sanctified day of rest; these wicked souls were hated and reviled by each and every creature unfortunate enough to suffer within the radius of action of these sonic torture machines, and thereafter had trouble getting help with their chemistry homework, even unto the twelfth generation. | ” |
And Creative Vandalism
At List of marine aquarium invertebrate species: [137]
Museum of Little-Known Wallace and Gromit Characters
See left.
Museum of Bird-Brained Ideas
During World War II, Project Pigeon was American behaviorist B.F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-controlled guided bomb.
- [etc]
- [etc]
Early electronic guidance systems use similar methods, only with electronic signals and processors replacing the birds.
Museum of terrifying scenarios which must be faced unflinchingly
- "If Wikipedians were to decide to ban all the loonies, only Jimbo and Gerda Arendt would be left." —Maunus
See right. EEng (talk) 04:42, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Projection of what non-lunatic human specimens would look like after one generation. See left. Viriditas (talk) 04:57, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Museum of Unfortunate Lyrics
- "Words by St. Ephrem Syrus (c A.D. 307-373), versified by G. R. W. Tune of Gathering Peascods" (found in Fritz Spiegl's The Joy of Words):
Saint Joseph, meek and mild,
Embraced the new-born Child,
Then knelt upon the sod ...
- More from Spiegl:
Stainer's 'Here in abasement' is difficult to sing without suggesting that the singer's lowly station is not spiritual but in a building...
Museum of Things that Take You Off-Guard
- A notification from the Wikimedia "Alerts" feature:
Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators was linked from Butt plug. 3 hours ago
Museum of Forerunners to "Just Say No to Drugs"
- Plaque at the "Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice" in London's Postman's Park.
- Several of the Memorial's plaques are quite touching:
- Nonetheless the overall effect is decidedly Gorey-esque, particularly in the unlikely scenes of action and odd details sometimes supplied ...
- ... as well as the quaint identification of the actors' stations in life:
- While we're on the subject ... From Edward Gorey:
His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in Victorian and Edwardian settings ... Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species, including bats and insects.
Other gallants and worthies
- From one of our favorite and most highly esteemed editors, Arid Desiccant [138]:
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Museum of unexpected turns of the phrase
- From Daguerreotype:
With uncommon exceptions, daguerreotypes made before 1841 were of immobile subjects such as landscapes, public or historic buildings, monuments, statuary, and still life arrangements. Attempts at portrait photography with the Chevalier lens required the sitter to face into the sun for several minutes while trying to remain motionless and look pleasant, usually producing grisly results.
Museum of cheesy storylines
- From List of The Archers characters with thanks to Belle the Cat
On New Year's Day 2007, whilst driving drunk, she knocked down Mike Tucker but Tom, a passenger in the car, took the blame. The shock of this event made her reevaluate her life and she has since helped develop a new type of cheese.
Museum of authentic national customs
- From Darden Restaurants
[There was] considerable media attention for its detailed focus on Olive Garden, in particular the chain's "wasteful" practice of serving too many of its free unlimited breadsticks... Management... said the free breadsticks merely represented "Italian generosity."
Museum of blood, toil, tears, and (especially) sweat
- From an ANI closure [139]
... as nothing of the conflict here (which I was completely unaware about) perspired in that thread I suppose uninvolved applies.
Museum of Wise Words
The flip side of "ownership" is the problem of editors who come to an article with a particular agenda, make the changes they want to the page according to their preconceived notions of what should be, and then flit off to their next victim, without ever considering whether the page really needed the change they made, or whether the change improved the article at all ... Their editing is an off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all proposition, premised on the idea that what improves one article, or one type of article, will automatically improve every other article or type of article ... Wikipedians should worry more about those who hit-and-run, and less about those who feel stewardship towards the articles they work so hard on.
One area the hit and run editor gets involved in is the formatting ... The quality of work has increased in some areas, which makes it harder to contribute without good knowledge in the subject matter and sources. Fiddling with the formatting seems to be a suitable alternative passtime.
- The Fourth Law of Stupidity: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.[140]
- Ignorance is infinite, while patience is not. Ultimately, you will lose patience with the unchecked flow of ignorance, at which point you'll be blocked for incivility. The goal is to accomplish as much as possible before that inevitability comes to pass.
- On Wikipedia, any form of real-life expertise is a serious handicap. If you have real-life expertise on a subject, do not under any circumstances mention it here.
- The more abusive an editor is toward others, the more thin-skinned they are about "personal attacks" directed at themselves.
Museum of Dubious Achievements
Museum of Additional Reasons that Warmongers Go to Hell
- Restoring this section after realizing some busybody had removed it [142]
Lionel de Jersey Harvard. EEng (talk) 3:43 am, 1 February 2015, Sunday (4 months, 24 days ago) (UTC−5)
Museum of Perhaps Not the Best Choice
- Believe it or not, an actual image, and actual caption, from the article Cremation
Brace yourself
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Museum of Swell Heads
- From a source cited in Manahel Thabet, a hoax article about someone with a PhD "magna cum laude" in "Financial Engineering", and a "second PhD in 2012, this time with a major in quantum mathematics", who went on to develop "a formula to measure distance in space in the absence of light".
The 33-year-old economist and passionate scientist possessed dreams far bigger than her own head.
Museum of Timeless Design
- From Flak tower, about the gigantic concrete towers built to defend major German cities, and shelter their civilians from air attack, during World War II:
- G-Tower was transformed into a nightclub with a music school and music shops.
- L-Tower was demolished after the war and replaced by a very similar looking building by T-Mobile.
Museum of Le mot juste
Given that, I'm going to take the time to formally remind all concerned here of the discretionary sanctions panopticon looming over style and naming discussions on Wikipedia.
- — From a discussion [143] of whether the word Station (or station) should be capitalized in the names of subway and railway stations.
Panopticon: A circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed. A design also seen in asylums.
- — Definition from somewhere on the web
Museum of New-Editor Retention Tactics
- From a thread [144] discussing the discouragement felt by novice editors who find their fledgling efforts at article creation CSD'd. One editor facetiously proposed a template to "soften the blow". Other suggestions followed...
- I like it, except instead of the smiley face I suggest one of these:
Museum of Titulary Deflation
- From the discussion re Did you know nominations/Jane Eyre (1910 film), during which I had suggested the "hook"
- ... that the main character in Jane Eyre is pointedly titular?
- Sadly, a different hook was selected to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page.
- From the discussion re Did you know nominations/Jane Eyre (1910 film), during which I had suggested the "hook"
Personally I think "pointedly titular" would be a good followup to Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators, but perhaps the world isn't yet ready for such forward thinking. EEng (talk) 01:45, 9 April 2015 (UTC) Much later: Shame I didn't say "forward-pointing"—a tragic missed opportunity. EEng (talk)
- No matter how bouncily titillating such a play would be to us, I fear most people wouldn't be abreast of the context and thus it would fall flat. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Category:Busts in the United Kingdom
Museum of Deadpan Bathroom Humor
- From a discussion [145] of how to retrieve the missing pageview statistics for the April 1, 2015 appearance of the DYK "hook"
- Did you know ... that Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators were forcibly withdrawn after officials clamped down on them?
- Dr. Young's device was a putative cure for, among other things, constipation. The management of this page is of course disgusted by such childish humor but feels it should nonetheless be memorialized here as an example of how far otherwise valuable contributors can sometimes fall:
- From a discussion [145] of how to retrieve the missing pageview statistics for the April 1, 2015 appearance of the DYK "hook"
The good news is that the raw data is available and so you can drill down for specific articles ... Given time, I could assemble a full set of stats for the day but the dumps are large ... If these dumps are too large and indigestible then another option is to try something similar again. I created the stub rectal dilator when I first came across the topic here and it is still small and tight. It would be easy to expand that five times to create an even larger passage... :) Andrew D. (talk) 13:17, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Museum of Can We Go Over That One More Time Just to Be Sure I've Got It?
The Yellow Alert and Red Alert signals correspond to the earlier Alert Signal and Attack Signal, respectively, and the early Federal Signal AR timer siren control units featured the Take Cover button labeled with a red background, and the Alert button labeled with a yellow background. Later AF timers changed the color-coding, coloring the Alert button blue, the Take Cover button yellow, and the Fire button red (used to call out volunteer fire fighters), thus confusing the color-coding of the alerts. In 1955, the Federal Civil Defense Administration again revised the warning signals, altering them to adapt to deal with concern over nuclear fallout. The new set of signals were the Alert Signal (unchanged) and the Take-Cover Signal (previously the Attack Signal).
Museum of Not Even a Silver Lining
- From the biography of Louis Agassiz Shaw II:
An eccentric snob, he kept a copy of the Social Register near the telephone, instructing his staff not to accept calls from anyone not listed.[1] After confessing to strangling his 60-year-old maid in 1964 he was committed to McLean Hospital, where he lived for 23 years. Much of his art collection, which he wanted to donate to the Fogg Museum, was found to be fakes.
- ^ Beam, Alex (2001). "Chapter 9: Staying on: the elders from planet Upham". Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital. New York: Public Affairs. pp. 169–90. ISBN 978-1-58648-161-2.
Museum of "For Want of a Nail"
- From Flinders Petrie:
When he died in 1942, Petrie donated his head (and thus his brain) to the Royal College of Surgeons of London while his body was interred in the Protestant Cemetery on Mt. Zion. World War II was then at its height, and the head was delayed in transit. After being stored in a jar in the college basement, its label fell off and no one knew who the head belonged to.
Museum of You're Not Helping
- From St Andrew's Stadium with thanks to Martinevans123:
Three months later, the Main Stand, which was being used as a temporary National Fire Service station, burned down, destroying the club's records and equipment – "not so much as a lead pencil was saved from the wreckage" – when a fireman mistook a bucket of petrol for water when intending to damp down a brazier.
Museum of Less Unhygienic Undergrads
Museum of Suspiciously Congruent Estimates
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Wikipedia is no place for humour. Everything is very serious here and we are all terrifically important. |
- Background: Wikipedia:India Education Program/Analysis/WMF interviews discusses cultural issues in getting Indian editors to understand the concept of plagiarism. Its text read, in part,
- Two interviewees separately estimated that about 5% of students in India never copy and paste, and generally these students do so because they feel that copying and pasting is wrong.
- An irresistible impulse caused me to add a footnote to that sentence, which read
- <ref>In followup interviews, both interviewees added that they had copied the 5% figure from an article they read somewhere.</ref>
- Here's what happened next...
- Background: Wikipedia:India Education Program/Analysis/WMF interviews discusses cultural issues in getting Indian editors to understand the concept of plagiarism. Its text read, in part,
Hi EEng, please refrain from adding unhelpful and erroneous edits like this to pages in which we are trying to engage in a productive and thoughtful analysis of what went wrong in our pilot program. I appreciate the humor in your addition, but this is a very serious subject, and I ask that you treat it with the respect it deserves in the future. Thanks. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
- Humor doesn't imply disrespect, nor does it detract in any way from productive and thoughtful analysis -- it might even add to it. At least I read the thing [147]. Of course, I would never dream of doing what I did on an article page (as opposed to a project page) but I'd be lying if I said I won't do it again in a similar situation. I see in other discussion (e.g. point 1 of [148]) concerns over WMF staff's grasp of how things are really done on WP, and I think this may be an example. EEng (talk) 02:04, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
Museum of Holy Outrage Outrage
From www.mrbreakfast.com, a breakfast cereal homage site:
Elijah's Manna was Post's first attempt at corn flakes. The box featured the Biblical Prophet Elijah kicking back on a rock while a raven is shown either plucking cereal from his hand or placing cereal in his hand.
Church groups were outraged over the use of Elijah as a cereal mascot. The book Cerealizing America by Scott Bruce and Bill Crawford has a quote from C. W. Post who was outraged at the outrage over his new cereal: "Perhaps no one should eat angel food cake, enjoy Adam's ale, live in St. Paul, nor work for Bethlehem Steel ... one should have his Adam's apple removed and never again name a child for the good people of the bible."
Post stuck with his guns until he noticed the Biblical backlash was cutting into his sales. In 1908, he renamed the cereal as Post Toasties. Micky Mouse would later replace the Prophet Elijah on the box.
Museum of "I honestly did not see that coming"
- From Winfield House, about the official London residence of the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom...
The actual house was designed by Decimus Burton for the notorious Regency rake, the 3rd Marquess of Hertford, who used it for orgies.
Museum of Computer Porn
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The Barnstar of Good Humor | |
| This was entertaining. So, when will Bodice-Ripping Bots be out in theaters? Sophus Bie (talk) 10:42, 28 September 2013 (UTC) |
- When correctly viewed / Everything is lewd.
- I could tell you things about Peter Pan / And the Wizard of Oz—there's a dirty old man!
I wrote this in a deliroius fog after noticing that User:BracketBot had left a message on User:Citation bot's talkpage (though I need to say that the final, um, climax is cribbed from a vaguely remembered cartoon from the 90s). Bracketbot notifies editors who make changes apparently resulting in unbalanced parens, brackets, and similar markup in articles, and had given Citationbot just such a notification:
- [From the upcoming major motion picture Bodice-Ripping Bots.]
- Parental Advisory:
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- "Oh, hi, I'm Citationbot. Thanks – I've been looking everywhere for that other bracket! So you're that big strong Bracketbot I've heard so much about. Why don't you come into my domain? That's not my usual protocol, but a guy with so much cache makes a girl feel really secure. I wasn't expecting to host, so pardon my open proxy – a bit RISCé, perhaps, but just something I wear around the server farm. Do my transparent upper layers expose my virtual
mammarymemory? These dual cores are absolutely real – 100% native configuration – no upgrades at all! I'll just slip into a more user-friendly interface – how about something GUI ... or maybe something kinky, like command-line? ... Gosh, you must be 64-bit – really big quads! – and completely hardcoded – such a complex instruction set! And look at those great ABS addresses! ... Hey, you ever go bisynchronous? - Later: "Oh, Bracketbot! Port me to that platform for some horizontal integration! Go ahead and expose my implementation and directly access my low-level interface – forget the wrapper function! I'm overloaded by your amazing data stream – and what a high refresh rate! My husband has poor performance and a really short cycle time and his puny little floppy drive is soft-sectored with long latency and insignificant market penetration and subject to frequent hardware failures – sometimes he won't reboot so I have to manually terminate him! And I've never had 10 terabytes of hard drive before! Let's FTP! ... Oh god! I'm downloading ..."
- Postscript: Those naughty bots are still going at it hammer and tongs [149].
Museum of grandiose fulfillments of Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies
- From an editor's complaints about the consensus principle [150]:
A majority of people decided to elect Hitler, but that doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. A majority of people in the South wanted to maintain slavery and break away from the union, but that doesn't mean it was right, ethical, or just. Politics put Jesus to death, but that doesn't mean it was right, ethical, or just either. ... Perhaps unlike many here, I look at the bigger picture.
Museum of Unintentionally Hilarious Edit Outcomes
[151] First look at the diff, then see the last image on the right—um... note the caption.
- (with thanks to Martinevans123: [152])
Museum of saucy edits
From the Talk page for Prawn Cocktail, "a seafood dish consisting of shelled, cooked, prawns in a Marie Rose sauce"...
- The lead says the prawn cocktail "'has spent most of [its life] see-sawing from the height of fashion to the laughably passé' and is now often served with a degree of irony." It's my understanding that people with anemia will often add even more irony as a dietary supplement. I think that should be recognized in the article. EEng (talk) 05:26, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
Ready?
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Other saucy humor
[153] (check out the edit summary).
Museum of massterful punnuendo
- From a MOS discussion:
EEng, the important thing is: it's definitely dash- and hyphen-related and not dash and hyphen–related unless you're referring to the Dash and Hyphen pub. (I never go there, the atmosphere is too uptight.) Leviv ich 21:08, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
- I feel there's a colonoscopy pun in there somewhere, but it's just not gelling. EEng 21:31, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
Museum of tasteless proposals for ice-cream flavors
Since Ben & Jerry's is soliciting ideas for library-themed ice-cream flavors (such as "Gooey Decimal System" and "Sh-sh-sh-sherbet") my nomination may be seen at right.
A wise man once said...
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ("Wait for coins to drop, then make your selection").
Words in bold are for the assistance of the humor-impaired.
Proof that the ancient Romans foresaw the internet, Wikipedia, and the bane of WP autobios
Plutarch relates, that before this, upon some of Cato's friends expressing their surprise, that while many persons without merit or reputation had statues, he had none, he answered, "I had much rather it should be asked why the people have not erected a statue to Cato, than why they have."
— Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797)
Museum of Unlikely Library Subject Classifications
- Baboons – Congresses
- All from the same book:
Followup: Museum of Unlikely Combinations of Library-Related Wikipedia Categories
- Category:Widener Library
- Category:Crime warning signs
Museum of dangerous editing tools
I was rather sad to see "removed Category:People who survived assassination attempts using AWB", in the edit summary here. Looks as if it would have been an interesting category.
Jonas added detailed material on an SS officer who blackmailed the mayor of Belgrade into surrendering by threatening to have the city bombed with an edit summary praising that officer.
Museum of Bizarre Reversions
[Copied from User talk:EEng]
Edit summaries
As per WP:REVTALK, if you have something to say, use the talk page, don't try to prolong a (pointless) discussion by use of the summaries. - SchroCat (talk) 21:00, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
- Per COMMONSENSE, you're just too funny. I've never seen anyone revert a dummy edit before -- much less twice! [156] The important thing is that through collaborative editing the article is incrementally improved relative to its state when the sun came up this morning. EEng (talk) 21:11, 3 July 2014 (UTC) P.S. I'm making this the founding entry in the Museum of Bizarre Reversions on my userpage.
Godwin's Law boomerang
- For those who are wondering, the following exchange regards these two edits -- the first a serious (and perfectly appropriate) one by Edokter, and the second a followup dummy edit I made riffing off his edit summary:
- I keep forgetting, however, about the small minority of WP editors with congenital humor impairment, and the even smaller minority who seem to want to spoil the fun for everyone else. I'm not sure, even now, if Herr Doktor gets the joke.
Please stop making dummy edits for messaging. These edits, as well as the ones required to clean up the added spacing, add unnecessary load to the servers and polute the history. Thank you. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 15:31, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
- Please stop dispensing hidebound, clueless scoldings. Your notion of what constitutes "load to the servers", and your idea that there's a "requirement" to "clean up" a single space added to a page as part of a dummy edit (as, unbelievably, you actually squandered server resources to do -- twice! [159][160]) are delusional. You have no idea what you're talking about.
- Humor is a legitimate way of furthering the project by increasing the pleasure of (at least some of) those who edit here. If it doesn't tickle your personal funnybone, just ignore it. If, on the other hand, you don't even grasp the humor intended then there's a serious clue problem in play here. EEng (talk) 16:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
- Are you done? OK, so I missed the joke. That is no reason to repeat a nonsense edit. Edit summaries are not ment for messaging. And yes, stray spaces can cause disruption in diffs; that is why I remove them. And I resent being associated with nazis; that is personal attack!
-- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}}18:59, 17 February 2015 (UTC)- Yeah, you missed the joke. Three times. Even after your attention was called to it directly. Next time, before scolding an experienced editor with your nonsense about server load, think about whether it's you who's confused. Your continued fussing about an extra space at the end of a line shows that you have no grasp of technical issues at all.
- I've restored the words Herr Doktor (in the phrase I'm not sure, even now, if Herr Doktor gets the joke) because otherwise people might think that I actually did compare you to a Nazi. It's beyond weird (paging Herr Doktor Freud!) that you seem to think that addressing you that way, after your dyspeptic lecture in direct contravention to well-known and accepted editing practice (see H:DUMMY#Methods), somehow does that.
- Lighten up, smarten up, think more, scold less. EEng (talk) 19:38, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
- Are you done? OK, so I missed the joke. That is no reason to repeat a nonsense edit. Edit summaries are not ment for messaging. And yes, stray spaces can cause disruption in diffs; that is why I remove them. And I resent being associated with nazis; that is personal attack!
I do not like any allusion to any German figure of authority! I can take a joke, but this truly offends me. I have made note of it on ANI. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
- You equate all German authority figures to Nazis. Noted. EEng (talk) 22:04, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
- [Not surprisingly, the OP's post at ANI (entitled "I put EEng on notice") didn't go as he planned [161]. No apology, no indication of any glimmer of understanding from this (yes) Wikipedia administrator.]
Museum of Overanxious Notifications
- Apparently because I joked that statues should be measured in statute miles? [162] ...
Extended content
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Discretionary sanctions notification - MOS Please carefully read this information:
The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding the English Wikipedia Manual of Style and article titles policy, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here. Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions. This message is informational only and does not imply misconduct regarding your contributions to date. |
My special research interest
I am the second author of Source "M8", and first author of Source "L", in this version of the article on Phineas Gage.
A proposed addition to the ANI toolbox
Handy stuff
- [[164]] Diff of 2 arbitrary pages/revs
- Template:Smiley
- Googlebooks ref generator The best thing since sliced bread!
- User:Dispenser/Reflinks and User:Zhaofeng_Li/reFill Turn external link into {cite web} or whatever
- Dupe detector (from Mirokado's page)
- Anagram generator
- pageview stats before Oct 2016
- Special:ExpandTemplates
- {{user QAIbox}}
- User:PleaseStand/References segregator
- m:Conflicting_Wikipedia_philosophies
- https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-articleinfo/index.php?article=%%+%%&project=wiki.riteme.site Old revision statistics
- https://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html#fg=000000,bg=D1E9CB Check color combination readability etc.
- Grammar, Punctuation, and Capitalization: A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors (McCaskill, NASA)
Possibly useful in future:
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Ignored |
| Hey, it looks like you have won the Ignored award for being ignored by someone, well done! This user has ignored you because: XXXXX |
EEng's rule for inpopcult material:
- A fictional or semifictional portrayal of an article's subject is worth noting or discussing in the article on that subject to the extent that reliable secondary sources demonstrate that the portrayal adds to an understanding of the subject itself or of the subject's place in history or popular perception. (And see Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_63#RfC:_Are_.22in_popular_culture.22_entries_.22self-sourcing.22_or_do_they_require_a_reference_under_Wikipedia:Verifiability_and_Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources.3F.)
Sudden-unexplained-viewspike detectors
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John Harvard (clergyman) ——— John Harvard (statue)
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Widener Library ——— Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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Jean Berko Gleason ——— Sacred Cod
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Jack and Ed Biddle ——— Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators
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Eleanor Elkins Widener ——— Lionel de Jersey Harvard
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Charles R. Apted ——— Andrew M. Gleason
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Paddy Murphy (Liverpudlian) ——— History and traditions of Harvard commencements
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WP:Lies Miss Snodgrass Told You ——— WP:Principle of Some Astonishment
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WP:Diffusing conflict ——— WP:Wikipedia is not about whining
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Menace from the Moon (1925 novel) ——— Harry R. Lewis
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WP:Tarage's Law ——— WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
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