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Oops! The Silly Mistakes Thread


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maximus otter
 
Sort of thing you would expect in Norfolk.

If Trotsky had been in exile in Cromer then his assassin would have stuck the icepick in his own head.

According to the Standard the deceased was trying to damage a car belonging to his alleged intended victim by hitting a window with the stock of the shotgun. The impact set it off and of course it was pointing towards him.
 
Autoformatting in Microsoft Excel has caused many a headache—but now, a new study shows that one in five genetics papers in top scientific journals contains errors from the program, The Washington Post reports. The errors often arose when gene names in a spreadsheet were automatically changed to calendar dates or numerical values. For example, one gene called Septin-2 is commonly shortened to SEPT2, but is changed to 2-SEP and stored as the date 2 September 2016 by Excel.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...papers-contains-errors-thanks-microsoft-excel
 
Autoformatting in Microsoft Excel has caused many a headache—but now, a new study shows that one in five genetics papers in top scientific journals contains errors from the program, The Washington Post reports. The errors often arose when gene names in a spreadsheet were automatically changed to calendar dates or numerical values. For example, one gene called Septin-2 is commonly shortened to SEPT2, but is changed to 2-SEP and stored as the date 2 September 2016 by Excel.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...papers-contains-errors-thanks-microsoft-excel
That's more of a user error. Formatting the cells as 'text only' or putting an apostrophe before the SEPT2 text will fix the problem.
 
An elderly Florida lady did her shopping and, upon returning to her car, found four males in the act of leaving with her vehicle.

She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at the top of her lungs, “I have a gun, and I know how to use it! Get out of the car!”. The four men didn't wait for a second threat. They got out and ran like mad.

The lady, somewhat shaken, then proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and got into the driver’s seat. She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition.

She tried and tried, and then she realized why. It was for the same reason she had wondered why there was a football, a Frisbee and two 12-packs of beer in the front seat. A few minutes later, she found her own car parked four or five spaces farther down.

She loaded her bags into the car and drove to the police station to report her mistake.

The sergeant to whom she told the story couldn't stop laughing. He pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale men were reporting a car jacking by a mad, elderly woman described as white, less than five feet tall, glasses, curly white hair, and carrying a large handgun.

No charges were filed.

The moral of the story?

If you’re going to have a senior moment… make it memorable.
 
An elderly Florida lady did her shopping and, upon returning to her car, found four males in the act of leaving with her vehicle.

She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at the top of her lungs, “I have a gun, and I know how to use it! Get out of the car!”. The four men didn't wait for a second threat. They got out and ran like mad.

The lady, somewhat shaken, then proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and got into the driver’s seat. She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition.

She tried and tried, and then she realized why. It was for the same reason she had wondered why there was a football, a Frisbee and two 12-packs of beer in the front seat. A few minutes later, she found her own car parked four or five spaces farther down.

She loaded her bags into the car and drove to the police station to report her mistake.

The sergeant to whom she told the story couldn't stop laughing. He pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale men were reporting a car jacking by a mad, elderly woman described as white, less than five feet tall, glasses, curly white hair, and carrying a large handgun.

No charges were filed.

The moral of the story?

If you’re going to have a senior moment… make it memorable.

A classic legend :)

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gun-toting-grannies/
 
Well, she still ran a half-marathon, and she received the expected rewards for doing so ...
Woman runs own half marathon after mix-up with UK race

A Massachusetts woman thought she was signing up to run a half marathon near her home, not across the Atlantic Ocean.

Sheila Pereira learned too late that the Worcester City Half Marathon was actually being held in Worcester, England, and not Worcester, Massachusetts, on Sept. 15.

She decided to run 13 miles that day anyway, only on this side of the pond.

The Boston Globe reports Pereira sent the English race organizers a picture of her route from Worcester to Shrewsbury.

The 42-year-old runner’s fitness app showed she completed her own half marathon in 2 hours, 5 minutes.

After Pereira explained the mix-up, the Worcester City Half Marathon sent along a medal, a shirt and encouragement to travel the 3,000 miles to participate in person in next year’s race.
SOURCE: https://www.apnews.com/e296c6696c0842dcb84237559ce62353
 
Badger!
A good job badgers can’t read or drive
By Kris Hall
354913
(2)


ONLY owners of disabled wildlife were permitted to park in the Swan multi-storey car park last weekend, thanks to a grammatical howler by Wycombe District Council.
Temporary signs in the High Wycombe car park referring to refurbishment of the lower levels clearly went unchecked by council officials before being plastered around the busy car park.
The printed sign instructed "disabled badger holders" to park on the first floor "whilsth" workmen redecorated the lower car parks lower levels.

etc
https://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/ne..._UD0JK4sEtXip0C3vhBBLXGA79218nJ87NSNI5NXfUUR8
 
I can't help but see this as a tale of complementary dualities ...

In Austria:

Bad News: You didn't get the dress you'd ordered online.
Good News: There's no need for the dress ... You've received enough ecstasy to have your whole town dancing naked in the streets.

In Scotland:

Bad News: The package you were supposed to handle for Mad Mike the Murderous Mobster didn't contain the "goods" for which you're responsible.
Good News: The dress will come in handy for disguising yourself and getting the hell outta town.
Couple expecting dress get package full of ecstasy instead

An Austrian couple expecting a dress in the mail opened a large package that arrived at their home and instead found nearly 25,000 ecstasy tablets.

Upper Austria Police said a 58-year-old woman in Linz bought a dress online from a Netherlands retailer and opened the package she thought would contain the garment.

The box turned out to contain thousands of what she initially thought were decorate stones, but her 59-year-old husband soon suspected to be drugs.

The couple returned the package to the post office and police determined the box's contents were 24,800 ecstasy tablets, with an estimated street value of nearly $550,000.

Investigators determined the package was mistakenly delivered to the couple's home and had actually been intended for delivery to Scotland.

Police Scotland and the British National Crime Agency are participating in the probe.
SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/0...e-full-of-ecstasy-instead/9461569431257/?sl=2
 
Sometimes a mistake affords you a bigger opportunity and / or reward ...
Boy, 9, takes wrong turn during 5k, ends up winning 10k

A Minnesota 9-year-old took a wrong turn during a 5k race and ended up winning a 10k, coming out ahead of a field that was otherwise all adults.

Kade Lovell of St. Cloud was expecting to run the 3.1-mile version of the St. Francis Franny Flyer in Sartell but he missed his turn and ended up finishing first in the 6.2-mile version of the race, beating a field of competitors where the next youngest person was in their 20s.

The average age of runners in the race was 38, and the second place finisher, a 40-year-old man, finished a full minute behind Lovell.

Lovell said it was too late to turn back by the time he realized he had followed the wrong route.

"At the end where you had to turn around there's a 10k sign, I was like, 'This is not a 5k.' Once I turned around I was like, my mom is going to yell at me" ...
SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/1...ng-5k-ends-up-winning-10k/8471569942976/?sl=3
 
This is a doozy.

Long story short, a respected author based a whole book around a misunderstood legal term. The book has been withdrawn in the UK.

Naomi Wolf's book Outrages cancelled over factual inaccuracies about gay men in Britain

The US edition of Oxford-educated author Naomi Wolf’s new book Outrages is being pulped after a number of major errors were discovered.

Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalisation of Love is based on a PhD thesis that Wolf wrote in 2015, in which she claimed to have found examples of “several dozen executions” of men convicted of sodomy in Britain.

Wolf came upon the phrase “Death recorded” in Old Bailey records, and cited one case of Thomas Silver, “aged 14”, who was “actually executed for committing sodomy” in 1859.

However, the expression 'Death recorded' means the prisoner was pardoned and not executed.
There were other errors too. Sloppy work.
 
This is a doozy.

Long story short, a respected author based a whole book around a misunderstood legal term. The book has been withdrawn in the UK.

Naomi Wolf's book Outrages cancelled over factual inaccuracies about gay men in Britain



However, the expression 'Death recorded' means the prisoner was pardoned and not executed.
There were other errors too. Sloppy work.
I was listening to an item on R4 (it might have been More Or Less) some months back, where this author was being interviewed, and I clearly recall the moment when the presenter pointed out this error. Ms Wolf was taken aback, but as I recall, she took the news reasonably well!
 
Yes
I was listening to an item on R4 (it might have been More Or Less) some months back, where this author was being interviewed, and I clearly recall the moment when the presenter pointed out this error. Ms Wolf was taken aback, but as I recall, she took the news reasonably well!
Yes, I heard that too. Isn't it supposed to have been on a R3 programme though?

I have a degree and MA in criminology and spent a lot of time looking at historical sentencing so I knew something was wrong.
 
I was in next door's garden collecting apples from one of my trees (I'd leave them there, but no one seems to want to eat apples these day) and all the 'low hanging 'fruit was gathered.
So I used a long stick with a nail in the end to hook around the higher ones and pull them off.
There were two large apples side by side. I pulled on one and they both came down. One hitting me square on the bridge of the nose. Very eye watering.
 
I was in next door's garden collecting apples from one of my trees (I'd leave them there, but no one seems to want to eat apples these day) and all the 'low hanging 'fruit was gathered.
So I used a long stick with a nail in the end to hook around the higher ones and pull them off.
There were two large apples side by side. I pulled on one and they both came down. One hitting me square on the bridge of the nose. Very eye watering.

Ouch ...

You could use one of these - a wire mesh fruit picker basket you can attach to a long pole (whatever ... ).

41T67XqzxUL.jpg

They're also available as complete units (with poles), but it's cheaper to just buy the basket / picker head and add your own pole.
 
Be fair, Max. They were apples on my tree that was overhanging into their garden.

I would gladly let them have them if they had taken them. But they were just falling onto the floor and rotting.
 
Off topic (again), so I apologize, but I'm curious about the use of "floor" here. I grew up with "floor" = indoors, and "ground" = outdoors. I read (or hear) "floor" used for an outdoor location and immediately visualize linoleum tiles or other fabricated flooring in an outdoor setting. Mostly I hear British people use floor to mean outside, but not always. It makes me wonder if referring to an outdoor, earthen surface as "floor" arises from people spending most of their lives indoors, or if this predates our modern, sedentary, indoor lifestyle.
 
Off topic (again), so I apologize, but I'm curious about the use of "floor" here. I grew up with "floor" = indoors, and "ground" = outdoors. I read (or hear) "floor" used for an outdoor location and immediately visualize linoleum tiles or other fabricated flooring in an outdoor setting. Mostly I hear British people use floor to mean outside, but not always. It makes me wonder if referring to an outdoor, earthen surface as "floor" arises from people spending most of their lives indoors, or if this predates our modern, sedentary, indoor lifestyle.

Onomatopoeia - falling on the floor.
 
I grew up with "floor" = indoors, and "ground" = outdoors. Mostly I hear British people use floor to mean outside...

That’s just bad use of English, and/or people with poor vocabulary; or simply not knowing a word’s true meaning.

In a former life, l had to correct someone’s written statement. They had written “He was laying prone on the floor”, when the correct English was “He was lying supine on the ground.”

maximus otter
 
This is a doozy.

Long story short, a respected author based a whole book around a misunderstood legal term. The book has been withdrawn in the UK.

Naomi Wolf's book Outrages cancelled over factual inaccuracies about gay men in Britain

However, the expression 'Death recorded' means the prisoner was pardoned and not executed.
There were other errors too. Sloppy work.

Wolf wasn't the only one who made mistakes though, if her manuscript got past all the editors and her PhD thesis, which was the basis of her book, was approved.
Oh my! :crazy:
 
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