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Shakespearan Love Mug | $10.95
“Doubt that the stars are fire,
doubt that the sun doth move,
doubt truth to be a liar,
but never doubt I love.”
William Shakespeare had a lot to say about love, and many of those things are right here on the Shakespearan Love Mug from the NeatoShop. What a great gift to express your feelings for Valentine’s Day! Or anytime at all, if you want to be really classy. The Shakespeare Mug is just one of many message mugs for all occasions at the NeatoShop. Order yours today!
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It’s time for another movie quote quiz from mental_floss! In today’s Lunchtime Quiz, you are challenged to sort your Farrelly Brothers films. You’ll be given quotes, and you try to recall if each is from Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, or There’s Something About Mary. I’ve seen two of the three, but I kept mixing them up and scored only 36%. You will do better! Link
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It’s not a case of “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” but rather a case of “if you like this kind of movie, the odds are good that you’ve watched all three of these films.” In today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you’ll be given movie quotes from Zoolander, Anchorman, or Blades of Glory. The challenge is to remember which film each is from. Let us know how you do on his one! Link
You may have seen all the movies of the ’90s, but that’s been a few years now. Test your memory with today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You’ll be given 12 different movie quotes, and for each one, decide whether it’s from Reality Bites, Empire Records, or Singles. I scored 42%, which is honestly not bad for someone who hasn’t seen any of the movies. Link
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If the Industrial Age was ruled by industrialists and the Atomic Age
was epitomized by nuclear scientists working in secret government installations,
then the Information Age we live in today is surely the era of the geek.
Just take a look at the titans of industries (computer nerds), Hollywood
blockbusters (comic book superheroes), and pop culture (Interweb memes)
- they’re all geeky! But in order to live under the reign of our new geek
overlords, one must learn to speak like one.
Stephen H. Segal
(no, not that one)
is our guide in learning geekspeak. He has compiled and edited some 200
of the most powerful and oft-cited quotes from geek culture. His book,
Geek Wisdom: The
Sacred Teaching of Nerd Culture by Quirk
Books, is not only an invaluable guide into geekdom (or is it geekhood?
Help me out here, nerds!), it’s also indispensable if you have to go undercover
and penetrate a secret geek society.
For example:
“Fear leads to anger; Anger leads to hate;
Hate leads to suffering.”
-
Yoda, The Phantom Menace
Yoda was paraphrasing the first great African American geek, George Washington
Carver, who said a century ago: “Fear of something is at the root
of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.”
Carver, a scientist plying his trade in a time when the intellectual
inferiority of black people was simply assumed, knew something about suffering.
Born into slavery, kidnapped as an infant, threatened repeatedly with
lynching throughout his life, and rejected from school after school due
to his race, Carver eventually went on to become one of the best-known
American researchers in the biological and agricultural sciences.
Widely rumored to be gay, Carver spent his life confronting and overcoming
the fears of others, earning an iconic place in geek history. Yoda might
be the fictional guru we like to quote, but Carver is the real one whose
life reverberates through our culture.
“The spice must flow.”
-
Dune
Economic systems are bigger than people. That’s why distribution of the
precious mind-expanding spice, mélange, that is the lifeblood of
galactic society in Frank Herbert’s Dune must continue unimpeded.
That’s why, when Paul Atreides – the young nobleman who finds himself
hailed as a prophesied savior – asserts his messianic will over the hitherto-powerless
throngs of poor wretches living amid the spice mines of Arrakis, he causes
commerce to grind to a standstill across a thousand planets, bringing
the entire universe to heel.
more …
There’s a story that Zhou Enlai, the premier of Communist China from 1949-1976, was once asked for his impressions of the long term effects of the French Revolution. Zhou famously responded that it was “too soon to tell”, which has been taken as a testament to the value of having an expansive view of history and China’s intellectual history of doing so. The problem with this anecdote is that it’s not true:
The former premier’s answer has become a frequently deployed cliché, used as evidence of the sage Chinese ability to think long-term – in contrast to impatient westerners.
The trouble is that Zhou was not referring to the 1789 storming of the Bastille in a discussion with Richard Nixon during the late US president’s pioneering China visit. Zhou’s answer related to events only three years earlier – the 1968 students’ riots in Paris, according to Nixon’s interpreter at the time.[...]
At a seminar in Washington to mark the publication of Henry Kissinger’s book, On China, Chas Freeman, a retired foreign service officer, sought to correct the long-standing error.
“I distinctly remember the exchange. There was a misunderstanding that was too delicious to invite correction,” said Mr Freeman.
He said Zhou had been confused when asked about the French Revolution and the Paris Commune. “But these were exactly the kinds of terms used by the students to describe what they were up to in 1968 and that is how Zhou understood them.”
Link (registration required) via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Indiana University
Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division is a group of World War II heroes you might know from the book or the miniseries Band of Brothers. They fought at the D-Day Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and Operation Market Garden, and liberated concentration camps, yet they came home and went on with their lives. No one knew much about what they did until the book came out. But these men gained quite a bit of wisdom from their war experiences, tempered by age, which they gave us in their stories. The Art of Manliness took some of those quotes and made them into a series of awesome motivational posters. Link -via Gorilla Mask
If you’ve been keeping up with actor Charlie Sheen’s very public meltdowns, or if you are a fan of Hunter S. Thompson’s philosophical remarks, you should do well on this quiz. You’ll be given a quote, and all you have to do is decide which man said it. Simple! I got 12 out of 15 right. Link
They call me Mister Neatorama!
This toy from the Surrealist is a movie quiz in that you are challenged to recall what movie the quote is from. But the quote is not quite the same, because it’s also a generator that will insert words of your choice into those quotes. Have fun with the Movie Quote Generator Quiz either way! Link -via the Presurfer
Jack Kennedy was president of the United States from January 1961 to November 1963. Jack Donaghy is a character on the TV show 30 Rock. In today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you’ll be given quotes, and you decide which Jack said it. It’s not as easy as you think -especially for someone who either hasn’t seen the TV show or can’t remember the presidency. I scored 67%, because I haven’t seen the TV show. Link
We just love to quote our favorite movies. Think you’ll do well when someone else picks the films? That’s the challenge in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You’ll be given a movie quote, and you have to decide what movie it’s from. Simple! I scored 80%, far better than the current average. Link
The Art of Manliness blog has an excellent post turning the wits of Winston Churchill into stylish motivational posters.
I'd like to see Brett and Kate McKay of AoM Blog turn these favorite Churchill quotes of mine into a poster:
Bessie Braddock: Sir, you are drunk.
Churchill: And you, madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober.
and
Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your tea.
Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.
Bang It Out posted this list of 55 “Random Thoughts of People Our Age” that contains a lot of true, yet funny things about the age of blooming technology, and the social awkwardness of living in that world as a blooming person. A few gems:
#11. I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.
#25. While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.
#29. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
#32. Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!
#44. I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.
All people have little truths about modern life they like. Any of these strike your funny bone, or any to add?
(Image: Wikipedia) Thanks, Jared!
For more Bizarro, definitely checkout Dan Piraro’s website and blog
Love it or hate it, Twitter has certainly taken the web by storm. In just a few short years, the social networking/micro-blogging website has grown to be one 50 most popular website in the world.
As much as I am fascinated with Twitter (though I’m a bad Twitterer, Neatorama’s Official Twitter is not as frequently updated as the blog), I’m more interested about what other people say about Twitter.
Here’s a quickie 10 most interesting Twitter Quotes (some are from people who, ironically, don’t tweet):
"oh this is going to be addictive" – Dom Sagolla, Twitter co-creator
“The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful” – Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard law professor and Internet expert (Source)
“Twitter lets me hear from a lot of people in a very short period of time.” – Robert Scoble, blogger (Source)
“Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite ‘The Iliad.’" – Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer and journalist (Source)
"Whoever said that things have to be useful?"
– Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and
CEO
"For the uninitiated, here’s how Twitter works – I have no f***ing idea. I have no idea how it works – or why it is." Jon Stewart, comedian and host of The Daily Show
"Facebook is to 2007 as Twitter is to 2009. It’s the most open communication platform out there" – Roger Kondrat, social media consultant (Source)
"The people drawn to Twitter are people on the cutting edge, the real nerds who are resentful of the fact that the general population have found and taken over Facebook" – Steve Dotto, host of Dotto Tech (Source)
"HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY" – Oprah, yes that Oprah, on Twitter
"Ummm . . . I don’t think it’s as big of a dilemma as people seem to think. We haven’t focused on it yet and I can’t say for sure how it’s going to work." – Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and CEO, on how Twitter will make money
A list of more or less funny quotes by famous persons such as Albert Einstein, Fredrick Nietzsche, Sarah Silverman and George Carlin (above photo).
