One might even say it’s a big bang theory.
He’s wrong that someone with two Ph.Ds shouldn’t have to apologize for being a jerk. I don’t remember the whole context, but Leonard sent him over to Penny’s at some point to make nice after he had pissed her off, and while he’s waiting at the the door, he says something like “I have 2 Ph.Ds; I shouldn’t have to do this.”
Frankly, I’m surprised Sheldon has two Ph.Ds, because that means he managed not to totally piss of two entire dissertation committees, making everyone quit, and leaving him with an ABD degree.
Sheldon can lie when he feels it’s in his best interests to do so. He often rationalize the reason for the lie so it’s simply the logical thing to do. He is terrible for lying for other people, though.
And as for “Assuming we could dance, which we can’t…”, I can easily imagine Sheldon applying the “Royal We”. And perhaps the writers wrote that episode before the writers wrote the one where he got shanghaied into taking the girls to a dance hall.
The only incorrect part of the sentence I quoted is that it should be “leprechaun,” not “dinosaur.” (Coincidentally, I happened to watch the episode later that same day.) Penny used “was” correctly. This is not subjunctive, but conditional.
“I don’t care if he was the king of England!” > conditional. Whether he was the king of England or not, I don’t care either way.
“If he had been the king of England, he likely wouldn’t have had a career in physics.” (Note the use of past tense subjunctive – had been – since Feynman is dead.) Subjunctive. Feynman was not the king of England; therefore, this is a statement contrary to fact.
I’ll defer to you, because I’m not even sure that’s the sentence I was thinking of. Sheldon is always correcting people’s grammar and usage, and has been wrong more than once, there was just one specific one I half-remembered-- on top of which, he is always misusing that damned reflexive pronoun. He really should stick to physics.
I hope this isn’t old enough to be considered a zombie, because Sheldon just made another blunder when he stated that ears don’t cross hemispheres.
They don’t, neurologically, the way arms and legs do, and most of the information from your left ear is processed in your left hemisphere, but actually, each ear has a major and minor nerve: the major one goes to the same hemisphere as the ear, while the minor one crosses hemisphere, so ears actually send information to both hemispheres. It’s a trick that helps us locate sound in space.
Also, according to a Nova program that just aired, what Sheldon consistently refers to as his “eidetic” memory is actually called Hyperthymesia, or sometimes HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory). That when people can recall dates of events from years ago, and details like what other people were wearing at events they attended, who pitched a ballgame they saw three years ago,and in what order, etc. Sheldon may have and eidetic memory too, but that is something else. Eidetic memory is what people who can look at a Rubik’s cube for a minute, and then solve it blindfolded have. They can remember all the positions of the pieces, and know where they are moving to.
Neither of these are a function of intelligence, as they have been observed in mentally retarded people, and are generally spread over the Bell curve along with distribution of IQs, although people with superior intelligence will certainly find them useful as tools.
There’s another kind of superior memory, which I can’t find the name for after a few minutes of Googling, and I don’t feel like pursuing it further, but people who have it can remember large passages of dialogue from books or movies verbatim after hearing them once, and recall conversations from a long time ago. They can remember what other people said about something four years ago when the person himself can’t recall. Also not a function of intelligence, as it has been observed in retarded people, but can be useful to intelligent people, who can, for example, handle a heavy course load in school because they don’t have to read something several times to recall it, so their study time is less.
My Og… a forum full of Sheldons.
A lot of Sheldon’s errors are probably due to the writers not being binge watchers of the show. They’re more concerned with being funny instead of accurate.
I work for an accounting education firm, and we get newsletters. One article talked about TV characters that fit client types. Sheldon Cooper definitely fits the category of clients who are picky about every detail, rule and regulation, and accounting has them in legion.
Sheldon was wrong playing bongos walking down the stairs.
Sheldon was wrong in thinking that the women you see in GTA were raising money for stem cell research.
I’m hard pressed to think of a non-LARP roleplaying system that would be more interesting to watch than D&D - it’s all going to come down to describing actions and doing something to resolve them. No matter what, it’s going to be talk talk roll dice (or draw a card, or consult a chart, or whatever) talk talk some more.
Most of what Sheldon says about language is prescriptivist. A lot of it is dubious or wrong (e.g. the fictitious nauseous/nauseated distinction), but it fits his personality type perfectly that he would think language follows static formulae that he can lecture people about.
That’s true, but at least most of his prescriptivist dictum is actually correct in that you could look it up in Fowler’s, and it would agree. His use of the reflexive pronoun is often non-prescriptivist, is my point.
I’ve always pronounced it with two: coi-tus [kɔɪ t̬əs]
How do you pronounced it as three syllables? Co-eat us? [koʊ it əs]
Something I caught in a rerun the other night – it was the episode where the girls joined the guys while they were playing D&D. Sheldon wasn’t wrong about something, but missed an opportunity to correct Amy. The group had just slain a dragon and afterwards someone decided it would be funny to cast a love spell on Sheldon and Amy’s characters and see what they do. Amy ran off to Sheldon’s room in anger/embarrassment. Sheldon went back to talk with her, and they soon began to role-play their love scene. During one of Amy’s turns she says something like “I remove your armor.” Except that Sheldon had previously established that he was an umpteenth-level magic user, so he wouldn’t be wearing armor.
My wife called me a nerd when I pointed this out. 
In the third season, he’s arguing on the phone with a Thai restaurant. To make a point, he lectures them on something that King Rama IV of Siam did in the mid-18th century. Well, no, he meant the mid-19th century, specifically the years 1851-68, the years of King Rama IV’s reign. (King Rama IV was the Yul Brenner character in The King and I.) He did say mid-18th century – we backed it up to check.
Also, I grew up in Texas and don’t remember much about “Texas” chili having beans or not having beans. I don’t think I ever heard a differentiation between Texas and Mexican chili, not that I can remember.
I always heard it as the difference between Texas and New Mexico chili. And I always heard the beanless version called Texas chili.
That would make more sense, but even then I don’t recall hearing that difference when I grew up in West Texas or when I lived in Albuquerque. What I did hear in Albuquerque was the difference between the wonderful New Mexico Mexican cuisine and the bland Tex Mex garbage, which it is. I don’t like beans myself though and will not eat chili with beans.
I consider myself a trivia expert, but ask me the names of all three Baldwin brothers or questions like that and I’d fail miserably.
They finally settled on 14 for when Sheldon’s father died, but it was a movable feast for a while. In one episode, he says he was in Germany (or some German speaking country) when he was 15, and his mother was there with him, but she had to go home and help his father, because the house slipped off the concrete blocks again.
Oh, just for the record, as i recall it, Sheldon does NOT have two Ph.Ds, though he has two doctorates. He has a Ph.D and an Sc.D (Doctor of Science).