When Did English Conflate Kids (Baby Goats) and Kids (Human Children . . . From the OED, there are also several unrelated words spelled and pronounced the same: (1) a bundle of twigs for burning or embedding in a bank to give firmness to loose soil (unknown origin, first appeared c 1350); (2) a seed-pod of a leguminous plant (unknown origin, first appeared c 1722); (3) a small wooden tub for domestic use (unknown origin; first appeared 1769); (4) nonsense, often in
Name the movie from this half remembered bit-- again? Keeping in mind that I do, in fact, conflate old memories, I looked around a bit I think I may be confusing some actor in the 1972 movie The Getaway with Jerry Stiller Did some bad guy suck on Sally Struther’s blembas in this movie? Yes, he did The cuckolded husband was played by Jack Dodson (“Howard Sprague” on Andy Griffith)
The Bad Seed, Different Ending? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope I know that this has been discussed before on the Dope, but it’s been a while Yesterday, I finally watched my recording of TCM’s Halloween presentation of the movie, The Bad Seed I’ve watched it many times before I know the infamous ending was a bow to the Hays Code which would not allow criminals to get away with their crimes The result was the most blatant Deus ex Machina in film
Strength of balsa wood vs. strength of steel - Straight Dope Not addressed directly by any poster above is that the term “strength” has a lot of different meanings There’s tensile strength, shear strength, compressive strength, torsional strength just to start And then there’s the various flavors of hardness, which a lot of non-technical folks conflate with “strength”
Lost in Space backstory: Who was Dr. Smith working for? There’s a great interview with Harris in ehich he talks about “The Great Vegetable Rebellion” (the one with the 6’ carrot man) The show’s writer, Peter Packer (great name, byw) had gone to Harris’ dressing room with a draft of the script He didn’t want to show it to Harris at first Harris asked him why Packer said that he had just plain run out of ideas Harris read the
Is AI overhyped? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board Misunderstanding of AI Capabilities: People often conflate narrow AI (which performs specific tasks) with general AI (which could perform any intellectual task a human can) This confusion can lead to overestimation of AI’s current abilities
Rude to not eat in front of people? - Straight Dope I suppose I shouldn’t conflate the idea of rudeness with the ethical right of anyone else to give a damn, but to the extent that they differ, “rude” has no meaning beyond “some people pulled the idea out of their ass that others shouldn’t do this and deemed themselves superior to those who didn’t comply,” so I’ll stand by it
The law for people born on leap days - Straight Dope German physicist, art commentator, and irrepressible punster George Christoph Lichtenburg (1742-1799) pointed out, you can determine the birthday of even a person born on Leap Day if you go by astronomical dating:
NEW Stupid Republican Idea of the Day (Part 3) - Straight Dope Tennessee pastor proclaims 'curse' on new Barbie movie The new Barbie movie has made one person very unhappy: Tennessee pastor Kent Christmas, who took to his congregation at the Regeneration Nashville megachurch to condemn and proclaim "holy judgment" upon the film, reported PinkNews on Monday “I curse