Anyone know the record?
What’s the record for quickest failure at deflection of a thread’s direction?
Tears before bedtime.
but what about being Mostlydead?, mostly dead is slightly alive…
C’mon, you know with the above quote it was only a matter of time before someone had to make the obligatory Princess Bride reference here, right? 
Ouch. The OP stuck his neck out and got it chopped off. This is like watching a train wreck.
You were wrong dude. Let the thread sink into the abyss. I have seen people fight these types of no-way-to-win fights before just for the sake of their pride and it never comes out good.
Dude, he admitted that he was wrong. Look up at post number 19.
If he were completely dead he’d only be good for one thing.
What’s that?
Going though his pockets looking for loose change.
MacTech, you beat me to it by half of an hour. Grrr…
The rest of you boys have fun stormin’ the castle. 
This is almost the dumbest thread I’ve ever seen. 
I just figured out to pay off the national debt, feed the hungry, house the homeless and give free cable to the masses!
Here’s what we do. Sell tickets to the Rose Bowl stadium for $99.95. Pay-per-view would be around $69.95. Then cue up Snakespirit on the 50 yard line.
Then have someone start talking to him in Ebonics!!!
Oh man, this would be uglier than self-immolation. Imagine the wroldwide DVD sales!
Woo hoo! For years now, I’ve been arguing with people – waaaay too many people – that there is nothing wrong with using the phrase “almost exactly”. Now, I rarely use this phrase myself, having long been aware of the ruckus that inevitably arises upon its utterance. I don’t feel the need to deliberately start semantics debates in casual conversation. Nonetheless, it bugs the shit out of me that every time somebody says it, some self-declared Grammar Policeman (and no, I’m not talking about you, Snakespirit, this is an untargeted, fairly polite Pit thread and you’ve already admitted your error) will chime in by saying, “You know, it’s [grammatically/logically] incorrect to say that.” When asked why, as the ‘offender’ nearly always does (ha!), the person replies, “Something is either exact, or it isn’t. Therefore, saying it is ‘almost exact’ has no meaning whatsoever.”
Ok, so something is either exact, or it isn’t. That is correct. The thing my friend was discussing was not exact. It was, however, extremely close to a state of exactness, hence his use of the phrase, “almost exactly”. This term falls squarely under the category of ‘not exact’, which is one of the two categories we agreed to be in existence, but adds much-needed clarification as to its proximity to said state.
Your next claim was that “almost exact” is a logically meaningless statement. I assume this is because the term ‘almost’ is not an absolute, whereas ‘exact’ is. If we are allowed only to define things in terms of absolutes, then the only thing we can determine when comparing two objects is that they are either exactly alike, or that they are not. If the only result we are allowed to obtain from a comparison of two unlike objects is that they are Not Exactly Alike, the comparison is rather useless in the first place, since all we’ve accomplished is to eliminate one possibility from an infinite set. That sounds like a fairly meaningless statement to me. If, on the other hand, we allow ourselves the idea that they are Almost Exactly Alike, we can limit our range of options to whatever bounds we feel are appropriate under an agreed-upon definition of the word ‘almost’. In conclusion, the term “almost exactly” is only meaningless if you contend that the word ‘almost’ has no definition. Would you like to have a look in the OED, or should I?
Sorry if I’m being somewhat long-winded with this rant that’s only partially related to the OP, but this topic has been bugging me for quite some time. The spiel above, by the way, is a pretty close approximation of what I actually say to people who feel compelled to argue about this, and you should see the looks I’ve gotten when I finish. They’ve run the gamut from annoyance to utter perplexion, but I haven’t yet had anybody continue the debate. Shame, really. I enjoy trouncing people that feel obligated to interject their vast knowledge about matters that A) don’t concern them and B) are too insignificant to have mentioned anyhow. And if you do feel that you absolutely must do this, please make sure you’re at least correct. It’ll save you a whole lot of embarrassment.
Oh, you hate me, you HATE me, you really hate me!
OK gang. Thanks.
For appropriate corrections.
For the humility.
For making asses out of yourselves.
And, most importantly,
For fighting ignorance.
I’m outa here, you can keep on if you like.
It’s unlikely I’ll stop being an asshole (Practice makes perfect, and I’m still working on it. Got a long way to go, and some of you have me way outdistanced.) but at least now I’ll be a better asshole. This was real fun; better than Great Debates, even, and I sure burned off a lot of steam.
Hey, I resemble that remark!
From Websters:
Bolding Mine.
I agree people use ‘very unique’ when it’s meaningless, but I’m not sure it’s ALWAYS meaningless. If I have 1000 apples, 998 are the same colour of green, one is very slightly off that colour, and one is red, two apples are unique, but one is ‘almost not unique’, so it could make sense to say the other is ‘more unqiue’, wouldn’t you say?
This just has to be a tagline for somebody.
Its almost too unique to not be just about totally awesome.
Fuck, now I can’t use penultimate anymore.
Here’s one: you can’t be half pregnant, or a little bit pregnant… but you can be very pregnant.
But I can! Yours is about to be the penultimate post in this thread.
Shit!!! matt_mcl, how dare you?
Snakespirit, Perhaps this should be in a sticky somewhere: when you argue logic with minty green, you will almost always be humiliated.
He [Arthur Dent] had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy