Quotulatiousness

July 20, 2018

No end in sight for our national fake poutine crisis

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Food, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

A few key posts from the Twitters to illustrate the problem:







QotD: The modern mission of the university

Filed under: Education, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

God makes a portion of each generation intelligent well above the average, and despite the best efforts of our state school systems, His handiwork is hard to suppress. The task of the modern progressive university is therefore to corrupt and unbalance the intelligent; to pit their minds against their common sense; to adapt their brains as a useful putty — a kind of “semtex” or plastic explosive to press into the folds and corners of the society the progressive must destroy to rule.

David Warren, “Halls of memory”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-10-01.

July 16, 2018

Monty Python RAF Banter

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

bakerco502
Published on 30 Apr 2007

secretly why I put a RAF impression together hahah

I’ve also disabled comments because people were starting to turn it into a pissing contest over who did what during the war.

July 6, 2018

Funny British Army Recruitment Video

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Matsimus
Published on 9 Jun 2018
Some old school British Army recruitment video which was very well made but also just hilarious lol!

Hope you enjoy!!

(DISCLAIMER: This video is for entertainment purposes only. The views and opinion come from personal experience or information from public accessible sources.)

July 5, 2018

QotD: Vegetarians

Filed under: Food, Health, Humour, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.

Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It’s healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I’ve worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold.

Oh, I’ll accomodate them, I’ll rummage around for something to feed them, for a ‘vegetarian plate’, if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine.

Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential, 2007.

June 30, 2018

Adventures in Sicilian non-verbal communication

Filed under: Europe, Humour, Italy — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

At El Reg, Alistair Dabbs recounts some tales from a recent trip to Italy:

This isn’t the first time I have strayed into a Twilight Zone of cross-lingual and intercultural bafflement during this vacation. Throwing caution to the wind a few days earlier, I’d rashly allowed Google Maps to plot a walking route from the centre of Palermo to La Zisa. Why I did this, I cannot say, especially given my poor experience of Google Maps’ walking routes in the past. This is, after all, the app that once directed me to walk through the centre of an unlit Hyde Park at 2am and whose audio inexplicably but routinely barks “Turn left!” when you’re supposed to turn right.

On this occasion, Google Maps decided to take me on a scenic tour of the city’s most impoverished slums. Given that what few pavements existed along the way were knee high in refuse and canine excretia, it was less of a walking route than a wading route. The final 100 metres appeared to be some kind of theme park attraction along the lines of Disney World’s “Pirates of the Caribbean”, except this was “Dope-addled Inbreds of the Mediterranean”.

To access this den of iniquità, I had to pass through one of those pedestrian gates design to stop cyclists from riding through it. It was blocked by a tweenager who’d been trying to ride his bicycle through it and got stuck. The unlikely resolution of such an attempt was emphasised by two obvious challenges: it was an adult bike and the boy was so fat that he looked like an inflatable sofa. Both the bicycle and his body were at least two sizes too big for him.

By waving his arms around, he indicated that I was welcome to pass through the gate. By waving my arms back at him, I indicated that I would certainly do so after he had extricated himself. This attracted some shifty onlookers who helpfully grunted and waved their arms around at both of us until eventually we were all gesticulating like delegates at a semaphore convention.

Fearing an unfortunate outcome from this clash of cultures in unfamiliar territory, I coaxed the fat kid and his bike out of the gate and taught him to play the banjo he was carrying, ending with a spontaneous duet between the two of us. It was only by sheer luck that I’d remembered to pack my bagpipes.

June 21, 2018

QotD: Statistics

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

If the devil is in the details, and if the details can be hidden from view by lumping them all into various aggregate statistics, then among the biggest fans of the uncritical use of aggregate statistics will be the devil.

Don Boudreaux, “Devilish”, Café Hayek, 2016-08-29.

June 17, 2018

Blackmailing the Bishop – Blackadder – BBC

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

BBC Comedy Greats
Published on 11 Jan 2010

The baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells comes to collect a debt, but finds himself the victim of a fiendish plot.

June 16, 2018

Who will think of the children Australian civil servants???

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Government, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

A tale from Catallaxy Files that’s sure to tug on your heartstrings:

In Canberra today, the Australian Greens announced a new tax fairness policy to remedy a design fault in the current system.

According to the Greens, it seems that it is only Australian public servants (local, state and Federal) who have been able to negotiate salary increases. As a consequence, because of their increased salaries, public servants are constantly pushed into higher tax brackets with the result that impost of bracket creep disproportionately falls on them.

Independent economic research has confirmed this phenomena. The Australia Institute economists have models showing that up to 80% of Commonwealth bracket creep tax receipts are paid by Australian public servants.

The Australian Greens believe that just because public servants earn more than private sector workers, they should not be required to pay more tax. Australian Greens’ Treasury spokesperson Adam Bandt said:

    Australian public servants should not be forced to carry the brunt of government spending, including spending on other public sector salaries. This is a role for the private sector. It is manifestly unfair that just because public servants have been able to extract additional salaries that they should be forced into higher tax brackets.

In response, the Australia Greens have announced the Tax Equalisation and Redistribution Designation (TERD). Under the TERD, full-time, part-time and casual public sector workers will be subject to a separate tax schedule with a flat 15% rate for income above $500,000. Public servant income below $500,000 will be tax free.

Of course, it would be even simpler for accounting purposes just to exempt the civil service from paying tax at all — we might expect that to be a Green Party policy plank in a year or two (or even our own NDP, who have a lot of support from our unionized civil service).

Reminder: Catallaxy Files is not a parody site … although this particular story is a parody. Not following Australian politics closely, I only twigged when they got to the acronym for the program…

June 15, 2018

QotD: Churchill on Montgomery

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Humour, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

There was a brief firestorm in Britain when a photograph appeared in the press of Montgomery and Gen. Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, the commander of the Afrika Korps and the highest-ranking German captured at Alamein. After his capture Thoma was brought to the Eighth Army command post, where Montgomery accorded him the respect of one honorable professional soldier to another. The two dined that night, and the photograph of the two generals led Brendan Bracken to send Churchill a memo criticizing Montgomery’s naïveté and noting that it created a bad impression with the public. Churchill merely commented: “I sympathize with Gen. von Thoma. Defeated, humiliated, in captivity, and,” after pausing for effect, “dinner with General Montgomery.”

Carlo d’Este, Warlord: A life of Winston Churchill at war, 1874-1945, 2008.

June 13, 2018

Scandinavian love

Filed under: Europe, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Blatantly stolen from a Facebook post that’d been shared many times:

Misinformed – Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Misinformed
Published on 25 Jan 2018

There are 21 facts in this video

June 2, 2018

QotD: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In the early hours of April 20 1995, police knocked on the door of McArthur Wheeler and arrested him for holding-up two Pittsburgh banks the previous day. Wheeler could hardly have been surprised that the police were on to him: wearing no mask or disguise, he had ambled into the banks during business hours and brandished a gun in full view of security cameras. Nevertheless, he was astonished, protesting “but I wore the juice!” Wheeler had formed the erroneous belief that lemon juice rendered people invisible on video.

Wheeler is now a legend in psychology, since it was his regrettable escapade that inspired two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, to figure out whether we have a good sense of our own strengths and weaknesses. Dunning and Kruger set tests of grammar, logic and even having a sense of humour to a group of undergraduates. Then they asked them how they stacked up to others in the group. Was their grasp of logic and grammar better or worse than average? Were they better able than other students to distinguish funny from unfunny jokes?

Most students thought that they were above-average logicians, grammarians and wits but the Dunning-Kruger effect is not mere overconfidence. The competent people in the study had a reasonable grasp of where they stood in the pecking order. The incompetent ones were blissfully unaware of their incompetence. The good students knew that they were good; the bad students had no clue that they were bad.

Perhaps because Dunning and Kruger opened their 1999 research paper with the story of McArthur Wheeler, the Dunning-Kruger effect has now become a popular insult in some corners of the internet. We chuckle at people who are far too stupid to know that they are stupid. Unfortunately, such mockery misses the subtlety and universality of the effect. All of us are incompetent in some areas. When we stray into them, the Dunning-Kruger effect may be lurking.

The fundamental problem is a person trying to diagnose his own incompetence is — almost by necessity — likely to be missing the skills needed to make that diagnosis. Not knowing much grammar means you’re poorly placed to diagnose your ignorance of grammar.

Tim Harford, “Can trivia help us to be less ignorant of our own ignorance?”, TimHarford.com, 2016-09-06.

May 29, 2018

Us vs Millennials

Filed under: Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Owen Benjamin
Published on 7 Mar 2017

If you’re like me you’ve felt very alienated by how fast the world changes and how different each generation becomes. Hopefully this video helps you understand what’s happening.

hugepianist.com for tour dates and podcasts
@owenbenjamin twitter
@owenbenjam instagram
whydidnttheylaugh@gmail.com
write to me! I get very lonely. Feed the bear.

May 26, 2018

Remy: The Longest Time (TSA Version)

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

ReasonTV
Published on 25 May 2018

Remy prepares summer travelers for groping season.

“The Longest Time” parody written and performed by Remy. Background vocals and Mastering by Ben Karlstrom. Video produced and edited by Austin Bragg.
—–
LYRICS:
Whoa-oo-aa-ooah
For the longest time
If you book a ticket for a flight
Stow your baggage and some of your rights
Travel, you’re hoping
But first you’ll get a groping
And you’ll be waiting for the longest time

My last job? I guess it paid the bills
This pays more for using the same skills
At first we hound you
Then we put our arms around you
And you’ll be waiting for the longest time

Whoa-oo-aa-ooah
For the longest time

Supervisors try to sneak bombs by
Of 100, 80 make it by
I like those chances
I forgot how nice your pants is
I haven’t touched them for the longest time

I had other jobs at the start
I said to myself “just follow your heart”
Now I know the woman that you are
I’ll swab your Magic cards
And you’ll miss your connection…

Who could guess what consequence this brings
We have issues keeping nicer things
Our record’s so bad I think you ought to know this summer
you’ll be waiting for the longest time

Whoa-oo-aa-ooah
For the longest time

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