In the illustration for the teleportation column on page 198 of Triumph of the Straight Dope, Slug apparently forgot the “except after C” sub-clause of the “I before E” rule, because the teleport receptor is labeled “RECIEVE”.
Which brings up another point. You “I-only-read-the-online-columns” people no doubt weren’t aware of this fact, because the online column doesn’t include the illustration. Well, I’ve got news for you – Cecil Adam’s columns are not fully realized until they are expertly edited and illustrated. A text-only version of a Cecil column is incomplete at best, and may in fact be dangerous, IMHO. If “a picture is worth a thousand words”, then a Slug Signorino illustration is worth an order-of-magnitude more words, thus arguably comprising the greater part of the Straight Dope experience.
Granted, the Straight Dope books aren’t free. Of course, “free” is worth what you pay for it. Isn’t it worth skipping a few meals in order to save up the money to buy an official, sanctified, Straight Dope volume? (Five volumes total, each in a different color, comprising a rainbowed “Five-fold Path to Enlightenment”, with additional folds planned at some point in the future). Wait – there’s more! The later volumes also include various extracts from the old AOL board, plus a bunch of other stuff, which appears nowhere online.
At the next get-together, when everyone else is discussing the Ed Zotti Bizarre magazine interview from Triumph of the Straight Dope, do you want to be sitting there in embarrassed silence, until everyone turns toward you, and then…