While I'm still away at TAM8...the 100 greatest movie insults of all time

David Colquhoun is right. Science bloggers should never be paid. Especially for such a beggarly money as $100-$200 a month.

It seems that Svetlana Pertsovich wishes a different quote from Casablanca were included.

Ugarte: Rick, think of all the poor devils who can't meet Renault's price. I get it for them for half. Is that so... parasitic?

Rick: I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/quotes?qt0429946

Oh, fuck Gone with the Wind.

They missed my Woody Allen favorite: "No, I don't think you're paranoid. I think you're the opposite of paranoid. I think you walk around with the insane delusion that people like you."

... And also, pretty much every line that comes out of Larry David's mouth in the wonderful Whatever Works.

hmm weird, my comment is being held for moderation. Are swear words moderated?

you have to register with Colquhoun's blog to comment.
So I'll comment here, because I can't remember my wordpress login.
If I have a blog, and it's a quality work and scientifically accurate, why should I not be paid for it ?
even if it's just a small stipend, I'm providing my time and effort. You aren't writing for publication in peer reviewed journals, but for public consumption. So long as it's clear that you don't produce articles at the will of whoever's paying the top banner this week (right now it's marriot hotels) then I see no conflict of interest.

Insults? Who would sling insults around this place? I see only nice civilized and scientifically minded folks who know how to engage in courteous but lively debates.

Oh, I meant here, but all is good now. Don't know what happened.

Turtle Dude, grow a spine or get off the internets.

@Chris

Please stop humping my leg.

As long as you are not subject to editorial oversight what does it matter if you are paid or not? You are free to criticize Seed media and it's advertisers so there is no conflict of interest.

Scienceblogs has been a favorite site of mine for several years. It's a great collections of voices that appeals to my confirmation bias - I want to know what's real in the world. There is lots of junk out there on the net. I know enough about a few sciences to discern the kooks from the rational thinkers. But medicine isn't one of my strong topics. So it has been very helpful to me to find voices like yours collected in one place. I would never foun you if you had not been here.

"Logorrheic" reminds me of "diarrhea" -- I know I'm not the only one.

Definitely NSFW but very funny video.

Although I prefer the ones that gently slip the knife in before giving it a good hard twist.

@James, since they both use the extension -rrhea meaning flow or discharge, especially excessive flow or discharge, that is not surprising.

However, considering the alternative, I much prefer the excessive discharge of words.

In doing a bit of etymological poking around, I stumbled on this little tidbit courtesy of answers.com:

Columnist Frank Rich of The New York Times crafted a clever sentence featuring the word logorrhea (thus implicitly rebuking those guilty of logorrhea â excessive, incoherent wordiness):

"Despite the lachrymose logorrhea of television anchors and the somber musical fanfares, the country was less likely to be found in deep mourning [for the death of President Gerald Ford] than in deep football."
Link: The Timely Death of Gerald Ford - New York Times

Posted January 8, 2007.

I didn't realise bloggers at ScienceBlogs get paid.
Goddamn!
I'd hate to drop Orac off my daily read, but this does concern me. Perhaps I'll read what Orac has to say on this before I make my decision. 8)

I'd hope that SciBloggers would be paid some fraction of the ad revenue that accrues from visits to their blogs. This really doesn't seem any different from an independent blog with ads, except that ScienceBlogs.com takes a cut in return for managing the ads and for the cost of hosting the blogs.

You tried in vain to lay yourselves out to appear witty, my friends. All your quotations are enough primitive and off the target. It is not surprising. Hmmm....American art was never a top in humorism...
I'll give you more proper quotation from Russian literature. There is a satirical novel "The Little Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov. There is a personage in it - Shura Balaganov the pickpocket. He had been asked: "Shura, how much money do you want to become a honest man?" Shura immediately answered:"One million!" He was given one million.
Several minutes after that event, Shura (with his million of money!) was going in tram. And... had made an attempt to steal a purse with small change from one passenger of the tram! Why? From sheer habit... ;)

Orac resembles this Shura Balaganov :) Indeed. Orac, being doctor-surgeon (well-paid category in USA, as we know) and a scientist and probably having a good salary, is not very squeamish about receiving $100-$200 from his blog. Why? From sheer habit... ;)

By the way, David Colquhoun has also found what to add to his post. Read his comment in his blog.

Though, I agree that Orac's blog is good, of course...

That's a truly sad commentary on the state of our culture. Only a handful had any wit, originality, or class -- and three of those were from when color movies were an extra-cost novelty.

I'd forgotten how fortunate I am to have grown up on Groucho Marx, Shakespeare, Churchill, Twain, and perhaps especially the literary wits of the early 20th century.

@D.C.Sessions

I agree completely.
This video was trash.

Boring video, for the most part. It's like the scriptwriters are channeling physioprof.

If you delete the clips that use "motherfucker" ... there's very little left.

Sometimes the use expletives is effective, I very much enjoyed some of the movies that were less than witty, for instance, Full Metal Jacket, Glengarry Glen Ross, Goodfellas, and Raging Bull. But a lot of those 100 were filler and certainly not memorable films or insults.

"That's a truly sad commentary on the state of our culture. Only a handful had any wit, originality, or class -- and three of those were from when color movies were an extra-cost novelty.

Last I checked Amos & Andy and Al Jolson smearing his puss with black paint also came up in an era when Technicolor was a novelty. Sad state of culture in-fucking-deed. Now you kids git offa my lawn!

Exactly.

Scientists should never be paid.

Scientists should be able to survive on purity alone.

It continues to amaze me that there are so many people who do not understand how to evaluate information independently. They only have one criterion for good vs. evil. That is money. Money is bad.

Bad.

Bad.

Bad.

Criticizing money is good.

Good.

Good.

Good.

Suggesting that there is anything between is just too complicated. We might have to actually think. We can't be expected to be capable of independent thought. Thought is also evil.

Evil.

Evil.

Evil.

Being spoon fed truth, lies, or some combination of both is divine.

Divine.

Divine.

Divine.

After all, this is what Generation Revenue has been telling us about those bad, evil vaccines. Jenny knows.

PS. Next month I will be moving my blog to a paid site. My new boss, Mephistopheles, promises me that I won't miss my soul.

OTOH, he is well aware of how blasphemous, irritating, and independent I can be. He says that he is aware of what I write and has no interest in changing that. The strange thing is that he invited me to his blog network because of the way I write.

Worst case, if I feel any editorial pressure, I can leave. I have done that with other jobs that paid a lot more.

Not that I would expect any of those passing judgment about pay for work to understand. That would involve critical judgment, not simpleminded judgment.

Screw science. Spain Wins!!!

What, Gopherus? But ... Holland got more cards. That must count for something.

Eh?

At one point, I thought a hockey game was going to break out.

Tsu Dho Nimh, I agree. If only because it was boring and repetitive. What was missing was this rant by John Astin in The Brothers O'Toole.

Chris -
Woah ... he's awesome!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVb_pwi8JfI

Agree with Tsu Dho Nimh. "Full Metal Jacket" had some classics, and they could have replaced many of the boring and repetitive insults with another line from "Full Metal Jacket," where Lee Ermey bellows, "Your parents have any children that lived??" Or "You look like you could suck a golfball through a garden hose!!" But nooo. Just a litany of common insults we have all heard a million times.

I loved it Orac. Not the best 100, but really put together well. These literary types who disliked it immensely?
If I had to spend an evening with them, I could imagine saying,
âI have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.â G.M.

Anywho, not so much an true insult in this vid., but fab. nonetheless:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8

For literary insult, it's hard to beat Margot Asquith's remonstrance to Jean Harlow, who addressed her as "MAR-got."

"No, no; the 't' is silent, as in 'Harlow'."