Another word for "pedant" is "right".

[andrewducker]

Charles Babbage once wrote to Tennyson saying:

In your otherwise beautiful poem one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born

If this were true the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest that the next edition of your poem should read:

Every moment dies a man
Every moment 1 1/16 is born

Strictly speaking the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

Which just goes to show that if they'd had the internet then, things would have been exactly the same.

Also, I love the phrase "sufficiently accurate for poetry".

From

Comments

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Charlie was a riot, wasn't he?

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I am doomed; now I find my brain reading Babbage in the voice of the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy.

-- Steve is both relieved and chagrinned by this stunning proof that the Internet only makes it easier to express human traits already present.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

He was taking the piss, wasn't he? Surely?

[dpolicar]

I wonder what it says that my reaction to this is "Well, wait, back up... how long is a moment, and to how many significant figures are we measuring it?"

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if I could nitpick about using single quotation marks rather double quotation marks in your subject line, the situation is complicated enough that I didn't think I could pull a victorious nitpick out of it.

I think 'pedant' and 'right' are both examples of mentions in your subject line, but I'm not going to swear to it. On the other hand, the subject is pedantic enough to be worth mentioning bringing up.

There's also a possibility that both words are mentions, but the use of 'word' in the subject line may make quotation marks redundant.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

that you belong in a Discworld novel?

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

On a similar note to your last, a favourite expression of my dad's is "close enough for folk music". I always lined that one.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Probably. Sidney Padua writes an irregular, but very good, comic about Babbage, and some of his real-life hobbies were... unusual.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

I heartily approve of this!

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

"sufficiently accurate for poetry"

In an alternative reality this is one of the numeric precision options for a real data type in SQL server.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

A memorable phrase indeed. But one (at least this one) has to wonder if it's possible to have Geekish Poetry, or if the two words/concepts are mutually exclusive. But then, I'm neither a Poet nor a Geek (or much of a Pedant)... though, hey, I sometimes Pontificate pretty well.

[andrewducker]

I think that pontificating pedantry has a poetry all its own :->