h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Suppose that I make a caption about a convention of women with white skirts, which this woman is going to? What if there actually *was* such a convention?

Personally, I find the possibility that you would accidentally furnish the Post with real information to be remote in the extreme.

I hope you aren't also saying that deliberate furnishing of real information would be remote. I've provided plenty of information that wasn't later "corrected," so I must just be sensitive.

How much do we really know about reality? I think the phenomenologists had some good points to make. I use whatever information I think I have, and hope other people will correct me when I am wrong, or when other people need to learn from me.

Theodore Roosevelt said something about doing the wrong thing being better than doing nothing. I wait to be corrected on this.

Not only did he not say it - at least, according to the W*k*quote researchers, who are usually pretty honest - but the man who did (a biographer of TR's) must have been an idiot. I often disagree with Mr Roosevelt, but I doubt even he would have said that.

Quotes are the living end on the internet. Always distrust them.

Aha, John Oliver still has his quote generator online. You might enjoy it.

http://www.definitelyrealquotes.com/

It would be hard to get through life without being an idiot from time to time. I didn't produce the exact "quote" attributed to T.R. I figured that you would have fun with it, and you did.

One of the hazards of having been a reference librarian is that I have zillions of loose "facts" circulating in my head. Now that I'm ten years retired, any misinformation I may have unintentionally given out will hopefully have been forgotten, or not have done a lot of harm.

Every morning I get up and hope that any mistakes I make are either small, or provide me with something to learn from. It's not a heroic aim, but I keep to myself and only loose my factoids on people like you, who are strong enough to get some amusement from them. Sometimes I I find something that someone else can use.

I'm too sensitive. I know it. I use the cognitive tools I learned form last Summer's sessions. I have a huge book to consult, but I find it depressing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a train to catch. It's going to the Big Rock candy Mountain

I know that one. It's next to the Rock Island Line. (Or it was, in my six-year-old record collection.)

I had to look up that TR 'quote' - but those sites do that all the time. I know why: once, I interviewed online for a job with one of those 'dictionary' sites, and concluded that their morals were lax and their fact-checking nonexistent. They wanted speed with the copy-and-paste. That's how this stuff gets started.

Good thing we do better on h2g2!

Anyway, what's this book you're talking about? Sounds interesting.

"Anxiety and phobia workbook"

http://www.amazon.com/Anxiety-Phobia-Workbook-Edmund-Bourne/dp/1572248912

I have some fears about the book. I'm suggestible. Suppose I "catch" phobias just by reading about people who have them?

I need to write a story about heroes.

Yeah, do that! (Write about heroes, I mean.)

And I know what you mean. A lot of people shouldn't read medical advice books for exactly the same reason. There should be a word for catching things from reading about them.

On the other hand, I'm probably one of the few people who reads Oliver Sacks and exclaims, 'Oh, good! Now I know the name for that thing I've got!'

No lie. Things I didn't know the name for, but knew I had: prosopagnosia, Charles Bonnet syndrome, secondary narcolepsy. That man was a gift to the world.

I once asked my ophthalmologist about the Charles Bonnet symptoms, and she just looked at me really strangely. 'Oh, okay, that's not an optical problem, then,' I said.

"Anti-gravity lifts"
Ha! Victorian hype for "the rich male of the era" to afford mirrors on shoes to what is now called "up-skirting"

PS; Didn't need it in the 1970's = mini-skirts

"There should be a word for catching things from reading about them".

Doesn't that fall under Hypochondria?

I thought hypochondria was only for physical diseases, but I may be wrong on that. Aha, I find 'somatic symptom disorder', the terminology is getting fancier. Which they are now classing as a mental disorder, so we're in a vicious circle here...

"NO disrespect to anyone of course"

I've not got Hypochondria, I know I'm poorly

Those who know you understand.