I didn’t get the message either. But then, I’m not allowed at the water cooler any more, not since the little misunderstanding with the goldfish.
No, it’s just great to have some celebrities around. Like diamonds02, who I’m pretty sure was Sarah Palin before she got banned.
Sarah Palin was banned? How about Michelle Bachmann, who posts (posted?) under the pseudonym ZPGZealot? Can she still post?
I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. 
First, I want to voice appreciation for the many many Dopers I’ve read who are very intelligent, expert in one or more fields, good-spirited, friendly, patient, etc. I can’t mention all of you by name. You make these forums great. (Perhaps the insolent morons serve a useful purpose by helping display the high-quality Dopers in contrast!)
And there are many fine Dopers who may not be top experts, but are still very intelligent, and have good writing skills and humor. I wish I could emulate you, but I’ve poor social skills … and no one ever even laughs at my attempts at humor. 
I was surprised at all the anti-Terr comments. He’s not one of my favorite Dopers, but wouldn’t make my Ten Most Annoying List. I just wanted to Pit him for one particular insult against me: automatically assuming I also know nothing on a subject about which he knows nothing.
A few remarks about deltasigma:
I used to value the articles in the N.Y. Times but on a few occasions where they wrote on subjects where I was knowledgeable, their errors were almost unbelievable. That deltasigma’s knowledge was only buzzword-level was brought home by his stupid post in GQ recommending to use a Poisson distribution in a totally inappropriate context. I’m certainly not a top statistics expert but even I saw the stupidity of that in a split-second.
I also post on subjects where I’m not expert, but I think I exercise better self-control than he does. For example, in the recent thread asking about French’s base-20, I immediately remembered that Basque used base-20. Not because I’m a linguist – I’m most definitely not – but because European prehistory, ancient mathematics, and historical linguists are all subjects in which I’ve done much layman’s reading. I waited for the experts to comment on the Basque connection, and spoke up after a few days only when they didn’t.
deltasigma, OTOH, posted his stupid gibberish about the Poisson distribution immediately, doubtless trying to impress. We’re impressed all right.
deltasigma started a BBQ Pit thread just to Pit himself, but reasonable Dopers are trying to carry on an intelligent conversation there despite his noise, so I’ll comment here instead of hijacking that thread. He knows a factoid about auctions used for price discovery, and trots it out (but in Jeopardy’s question form :smack: ) as if it were a Gotcha. But, as usual, he gotcha’d only himself: Not only was that irrelevant to my point but it implies deltasigma is unaware that QE activities affect interest rates. Duh … that’s part of their purpose, you imbecile.
I have my own psychological problems and replying endlessly to idiots who insult me is one of them. :rolleyes: But there’s an excellent chance I’ll add deltasigma to my tiny Ignore list, so this may be my last riposte.
Strange. **BigTard **must be on vacation. He usually gets his half cents worth in on these kind of threads.
That was rather insolent of you!
“Misunderstanding?” Sure, let’s go with that word. 
Or, hell, not starting his OPs in the middle of unrelated threads (seen him do that a few times).
He’s working on it. Expect to read his diatribe in six months or so.
I can give an executive summary now:
“You guys are all MEAN!”
This is turning into an All-Star Pit thread!
Not to dispute the intent of the OP, but at a 95% confidence interval I would think that the margin of error for the question “Do you think Terr is a moron?” would be 3.94% rather than 4%. Have you simply rounded this up, because I agree that for the response rate to, “Do you think Terr is an imbecile?” the correct margin of error is 2.36%.
Simply curious.
Rather than give in to laziness, shouldn’t there be separate pittings for each insolent moron?
Instead of 95% confidence, I use 95.45% confidence for the calculation. This gives … well, added confidence. :smack:
I’ll plead guilty to your choice of insolence or moronity. But please just pick one; I don’t want to be joined into the indictment.
Why can’t it be both?
Still not as dumb as humpy.
I AM THE KING OF THE IDIOTS!!! And I work hard to maintain that reputation. Now I find that when my flock is assaulted, that I am utterly left out of the fun. Derp der der.
Yes, *of course you are. *You’re right, as always, Your Majesty. Now get back to scrubbing the grout between those tiles with your toothbrush. They’re not going to scrub themselves, you know.
Yes, there’s a good boy. Such a good Your Majesty. Here’s a cookie! GOOD dog!
Wait, when did Chief Pedant, brasil84 and Aji de Gallina were mentioned?