Textbook Examples

So. It's been a while since I posted anything amusing. Well, I don't have too much time to come up with anything right now, so I'll steal from other people instead.

What follows is a collection of amusing quotes from textbooks. At least, I thought they were amusing. Hope you do, too:

*********

Linguistics

Proving that written English is not a phonetic language...
"I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Some may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
So now you are ready, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, it’s said like bed, not bead;
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother."

The role of context...
“Pragmatics also tells us about language use. It tells us that calling someone a son of a bitch is not a zoological opinion, it’s an insult. It tells us that when a beggar on the street asks do you have any spare change? It is not a fiduciary inquiry, it’s a request for money.”


Basic Reasoning

Regarding truth tables...
“Now that’s the sort of fun you can have for hours, without gaining weight, spending money, or risking infection.”

Discussing classes (categories)...
“(Notice that everything outside the circle need not be an optimist; many people and seals—and almost all rocks, turnips, volcanoes, and radioactive isotopes—are neither pessimistic nor optimistic; but they are still non-pessimists.”

More about classes...
“(Anything outside all three circles is non-S, non-P, and non-C: it is a non-seal, non-pessimist, non-cribbage-cheater. And I trust that most of us—with perhaps a few unsavory exceptions—fall into that category).”

What better way to close than with a quote about statistics...
“Unfortunately, many people—particularly politicians and advertisers—lean on statistics the way a drunk leans on a street lamp: for support, rather than illumination.”