The feeling when you're innocently studying Icelandic and suddenly—

Psst! Want to see the worst author dis of all time?

Via Obvious Plant.

Neuroscientist Twitter Battle!

A group of neuroscientists did battle in an epic Twitter Rap Free-for-All. Check it! [Scientific terms explained in brackets.]

DEAN BURNETT: My flow is so powerful it’s basically exponential
Yours don't make the threshold for a single action potential. 

[An "action potential" is the signal sent by a neuron.]
 

LOUIS: I speak hard truth my words are metallic,
Your rhymes are brainless like an acephalic.  


[Acephalic = without a head]


DB: If your rhymes taste metallic then I hate to confuse ya
But that's a symptom of dysgeusia.
 

[Dysgeusia is a distortion of taste perception.]
 

LOUIS: You think that scares me? Here's something to amaze ya, 
Your weak comprehension makes me diagnose aphasia.
 

[Aphasia describes a variety of communication disorders.]
 

DB: You repeat and add nothing like a Celine Dion ballad. 
Basically demonstrating classic word salad. 


[See Sarah Palin.]
 

LOUIS: Celine's a low blow I expect no better, 
 

From a weak-ass rhymer who's cephalically wetter. 


[“Water on the brain” reference.]
 

DB: You want to step to me, like a fly in a spider's parlor?
I'll make you so scared you'll rip out your amygdala.
 

[Removal of the amygdala typically removes the fear response.]
 

AIDAN HORNER: You don't know left from right, I'm fricking awesome
Your rhymes so disconnected, someone's cut your corpus callosum.
 

[The connection between left and right brain hemispheres.]
 

SALLY PRICE: Ya hissing & dissing like a pair of morons; 
It's clear the spirochaetes ate all your neurons.
 

[Spirochaetes are a bacteria that can infect the brain.]
 

DB: Morons & neurons don't rhyme, I'm afraid. 
If your flow was a cat, it'd have to be spayed.
 

SALLY PRICE: You stutter like you got dysdiadokinesis; 
I'm puttin’ it down to your tertiary syphilis.
 

[Dysdiadokinesis - impaired ability to perform alternating movements.]
 

DB: My words are quite clear as anyone can see. 
That you struggle to read them suggests maybe ADHD.

This is a shortened version of the battle; here’s the whole thing! ‪

One, two, three, four, let's have a Twitter war!

The authors Mat Johnson and Adam Mansbach just had a Twitter war with “Yo novel” jokes. Behold!

—MJ: Your books so long, they make Donna Tartt's “The Goldfinch” look like a haiku. 

—AM: That novel you wrote in second person is still waiting for a second person to read it. 

—MJ: Your Amazon ranking is featherweight. 

—AM: The good news about your novel is, you can add any number of vampires without decreasing the book's literary merits at all. 

—MJ: Your book got a bad review on Reading Rainbow. 

—AM: The middle-aged professor having an affair with his student is by the far the most original part of your novel. 

—MJ: Your audio book is 12 hours long but the last four are the narrator snoring. 

—AM: The Library of Congress filing info in the front of your book reads "1. Pretentious BS–Fiction 2. Dillettantes–Fiction." 

—MJ: Your book killed Borders.

There's no fun anymore in the New Zealand Parliament

In the New Zealand Parliament, debates can be fiery. The keep things polite, members are banned from using certain insults and phrases. The Kiwis’ banned language includes:

• Retardate worm
• Energy of a tired snail returning home from a funeral
• Fungus farmer
• Blowfly-minded
• Quasi-parsonical
• Kind of animal that gnaws holes
• His brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides
• Frustrated warlord

Yet interestingly, this phrase is allowed: Scuttles for his political funk hole”! (Via, photo via.)

1, 2, 3, 4— time to have a Twitter war!

These two gentlemen are having a Twitter war. And it's a good one!

Kerry: You still don’t understand what happened at the end of “Usual Suspects.”

Glenn: Ross is your favorite “Friends” character.

Kerry: You don’t understand buttons.

Glenn: You don’t like the yellow blanket because “it’s a bit too scratchy”.

Kerry: You get confused between AAA and AA batteries.

Glenn: Driving gloves wearer.

Kerry: You wear running shoes to do cross-training.

Glenn: Your family dread dinner and it’s all due to your obsession with the moistness of meat.

Kerry: You smell of yesterday.

Glenn: You wave at people who have the same make of car as you.

Kerry: YOU HAVE NEVER FOUND WALDO.

Glenn: You use the word ‘holiday’ as a verb.

Kerry: Your knowledge of two-letter words which are valid in Scrabble is at best mediocre.

Glenn: You say you’re allergic to certain foods, but really you just don’t like them.

Kerry: You put toilet paper on the holder so it hangs down at the back.

Glenn: Sock-mark legs haver.

Kerry: Gap non-minder.

Glenn: “Definately” speller.

Kerry: You get all excited when you see a man wearing a wig.

Glenn: You make your family sit through DVD previews.

Kerry: Children throw wet bread at you in the street.

Glenn: You actually believe it’s butter.

Kerry: You say you read “Game Of Thrones” but you haven’t even seen the TV show; you just sat naked on an egg pretending to be a dragon.

Glenn: You think irony and coincidence are the same.

Kerry: Your rendition of the “Single Ladies” dance routine goes wrong 2 minutes 34 seconds in, when you wobble your left thigh instead of your right.

Glenn: In a game of rock, paper, scissors, you’re the one that does fire. (Okay, one more from you and then call it quits?)

Kerry: QUITTER.

Photo via.

The Youtube Insult Generator adds injury.

From here.

“She has more fights about stuff that doesn’t matter than a YouTube comments section.” 

—Jeff Winger, Community

Yes, YouTube commenters are often insulting meanies. (That's why I use this add-on for my YouTube visits!) For kicks, a guy made something called the YouTube Insult Generator. You enter a term and it finds insults on YouTube related to that. (WARNING: That means all of the insults that come up are stupid, and some can be inappropriate.)

Okay, let's get this Insult Generator warmed up. How about starting with something off the wall, like Mexican food:

Okay, that was a little weird, although I like "You have been burned by cheese". Okay, let's try "books":

"You trust people with no nose hair"? That's gold. Writers are next...

"You used to work at Borders" is just COLD. Okay, I've got to do it...

You call those INSULTS? Heheh. Let's see what you have to say about writer Dale Basye. He should get some fiery epithets!

Huh? "No insults found"? Oh, $@#!&

Who are you calling a "face-ache"?

The Chambers Dictionary has a new edition coming out this this week, and it includes a list of interesting insults using creative vocabularly. Like these!

• Candle-waster: Someone who studies late.
• Chawbacon: A country person.
• Face-ache: An ugly or disagreeable person.
• Humgruffin: A terrible person.
• Ink-jerker: A professional author or journalist.
• Propeller-head: An obsessively studious or technologically minded person.
• Quidnunc: An inquisitive, gossiping person.
• Rantipole: A wild, reckless person.
• Young fogey: A young person who adopts old-fashioned opinions, appearance, etc.

Via.

Pecksniffian Guttersnipes Need Not Apply

While members of the U.K.’s House of Commons often mount savage verbal attacks on each other, the actual words they can use are surprisingly tame. That’s because these legislators are not allowed to call each other cheaters, liars, or drunkards, and they must always preface remarks by saying, “The honourable gentleman/lady.” Of course, there are ways around these types of rules. Winston Churchill once accused a rival of “terminological exactitude.” (Translation: "Liar!")

As referenced in the House of Commons website and Sarah Lyles’ excellent The Anglo Files, other words that are unbecoming of a Parliamentarian include:

• blackguard
• blowhard
• coward
• git
• gutternsnipe
• hooligan
• political skunk
• rat swine
• stool pigeon
• traitor
• Pecksniffian cant (Pecksniff was the hypocrite in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit)

I think many Americans envy the raucous spectacle that the Parliamentarians put on. Each member seems capable of an eloquent speech at the drop of a hat, as opposed to the dreary monologues that U.S. senators and representatives subject us to on C-SPAN. Perforce, members of the House of Commons have to pay attention, be prepared, and must possess fully-functioning frontal lobes.

More fascinating bylaws from the H. of C.:

The style of debate in the House has traditionally been based one of cut-and-thrust; listening to other Members' speeches and intervening in them in spontaneous reaction to opponents’ views. It is thus very different from the debating style in use in some overseas legislatures, where reading of set-piece speeches from a podium or from individual desks is more common.

This style of debate can make the Commons Chamber a rather noisy place with robustly expressed opinion, many interventions, expressions of approval or disapproval and, sometimes, of repartee and banter…..Speakers have taken care not to bridle the traditional vigour and forthrightness of the expression of opinion in the House, for the style of the House of Commons has never thrived on excessive politeness and restraint. The profound deference towards Ministers and Prime Ministers apparent in some overseas parliaments is generally lacking in the Commons.

To maintain the spontaneity of debate, reading a prepared speech is not allowed though using notes is…..Ministers do have notes on possible supplementary questions, drawn up by their Civil Servants to aid them in providing answers to Parliamentary questioning.