(no subject)

Q: Are you scottish?
A: Yes.
Q: Where are you from?
A: Scotland.
-- From an ceilidh. (Actually, that didn't happen, but it's how I heard it in my head, ok?)

Lesbian Speed Dating Pastiche Video via Vyvyan via Feanalwa A: I'm sorry, I'm just not ready for a relationship right now.
Lesbian Speed Dating Pastiche Video via Vyvyan via Feanalwa Q: ... How about now?

GINI: Mmm, sex. It makes anything better.
FERRET: Not prison.

Q: You might not claim it was the best of all possible sonnets, but it was a spectacular local maximum.
A: Aww! That's not only a lovely compliment, it's a maths related lovely compliment.

"I probably should give the cow the benefit of the doubt."
-- bugshaw.

"My Census Bureau contact tells me that the authors of the data file have seen the wisdom of my point of view, in spite of my unconstructive and unhelpful feedback (I said 'Wow, that is an incredibly terrible idea')
-- Mark Dominus

"[Readers[1]] may not have heard about it, because it concerns (a) India, (b) Australia, and (c) cricket. For Americans who are not international news junkies, the quantity of news encountered about any of these three topics in a week will typically amount to zero."
-- Geoffrey K. Pullum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_(game)
Mornington Crescent (game)
[box: All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear.]

DM: 'you are an evil dice...I like that'

GM: 'It's semi-evil! Evil-esque.'

Q: So we have four and a half elves?
A; Whats the exchange rate?
Q: How many of us would we need to swap to get a dragon?
DM: What would the rest of you do once you'd swapped yourselves?
Q: We could take turns playing it.
A: Or play bits of it. I'll be the left wing.
A: Flap! Flap!

[1] Interestingly, the original referred to American readers, but taken out of context, I thought it a lot funnier when the country in question wasn't emphasised.

Followup #1: 50 States

Aha! I hoped I'd find someone talking about that QI episode and here it is.

http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=10008&start=12&sid=8da3f18e501905ad74133159e6526839

(Worryingly, MY post is now practically the top hit for the subject.)

Thoughts:

* I don't blame QI. Although its a shame I think they were misleading, the look on Alan Davies face when he gets a "do you know the obvious" question wrong to flashing and buzzing is worth it

* And he lost about 30 points guessing wrongly (the highest score was about 2, the lowest, about -30) so it didn't make any difference.

* And he was successfully funny, which is the real point.

* There's a few more nuggests. The CIA thinks there are fifty states, and you would think they have grim-faced men in charge of collecting this sort of intelligence.

* The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has this to say: "Massachusetts, like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, is called a 'Commonwealth'. Commonwealths are states." He seems like the kind of person that ought to know.

* If the question could be phrased in such a way as to ask whether they are *called* states (a bit like asking how many countries are kingdoms, perhaps) then 46 could be the best answer.

* However, I don't think 46 is the pedantic answer. It's the answer at a very very specific level of pedantry. Sufficiently pedantic to be aware that four of the states are not entitled states, and consider that more important than what the most obvious and useful answer is. But insufficiently pedantic to consider that they are, in fact, states, and thus the literally correct answer, whether they're also commonwealths or not, is 50.

* I have a love/hate relationship with that level of pedantry. I lived in it for a while (some would say between the ages of 4 and 21). I have a lot of sympathy -- it's a genuine effort to spread correctness and knowledge of obscure topics. However, I also feel obliged to help combat it, and expand people's perceptions into more pedantic and more helpful responses.

* And, while googling, I show its not universal, but intelligent, knowledgeable people do give the 46 answer.