Prairie Home Companion Quotes

Computers can never completely replace humans. They may become capable of artificial intelligence, but they will never master real stupidity.

Never say anything bad about a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. By then he’s a mile away, you’ve got his shoes, and you can say whatever you want to.

When NASA started sending up astronauts, they discovered that ballpoint pens don’t work in zero gravity. So they spent twelve million dollars and more than a decade developing a pen that writes under any condition, on almost every surface. The Russians used a pencil.

I longed for the pitter-patter of little feet, so I got a dog. It’s cheaper, and you get more feet.

I have seen the truth and it makes no sense.

Did you know that half of all people are below average?

How many consultants does it take to change a lightbulb? I’ll have an estimate for you a week from Monday.

The drag queen walks into a Catholic church as the priest is coming down the aisle swinging the incense pot. And he says to the priest, “Oh, honey, I love your dress, but did you know your handbag’s on fire?

Sometimes I think I understand everything—then I regain consciousness.

How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? How many therapists do you think it takes to change a lightbulb?

How many pessimists does it take to change a lightbulb? Never mind. Nobody would get the joke anyway.

Woman: Did you know that women are smarter than men? Man: No, I didn’t. Woman: See what I mean?

What’s another word for “thesaurus”?

James Brown went to the pearly gates and met St. Peter who took him to a room where Jerry Garcia was playing and Jimi Hendricks and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. James Brown says, “I was worried maybe I was going to hell, but I guess not.” Jerry Garcia says “You think this is heaven?” Just then Lawrence Welk walked in and says “All right, one more time. ‘The Anniversary Waltz.’ And a one and a two and a one, two, three…

Three people were going to the guillotine. The first was a lawyer, who was led to the platform, blindfolded, and had his head put on the block. The executioner pulled the lanyard, but nothing happened. To avoid a messy lawsuit, the authorities allowed the lawyer to go free. The next man to the guillotine was a priest. They put his head on the block and pulled the lanyard, but nothing happened. The blade didn’t come down. They thought it must have been divine intervention, so they let the priest go. The third man to the guillotine was an engineer. He waived his right to a blindfold, so they led him to the guillotine and put his head on the block. As he lay there, he said, “Hey, wait. I think I see your problem.

was asking what the difference was between mime and pantomime and no one would say.

In TIME June 7, 2010 On the sustainability of the publishing industry, in the Chicago Tribune: "I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers.... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175." - 5/26/10

The teacher was asking her students what their parents did for a living, and Timmy stood up and said, “My daddy’s a doctor and my mommy’s a doctor too.” And little Sarah stood up and said, “My mommy’s an engineer and my daddy’s an accountant.” And then little Billy stands up and says, “My mommy’s a writer and my daddy plays the piano in a whorehouse.” The teacher was horrified and later she called Billy’s father, and said, “Why would you ever tell your child a thing like that?” And the father said, “Well, actually I’m a defense lawyer. But how do you explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?

Our propensity to overvalue what we own is a basic human bias, and it reflects a more general tendency to fall in love with, and be overly optimistic about, anything that has to do with ourselves. Think about it - don't you feel that you are a better-than-average driver, are more likely to be able to afford retirement, and are less likely to suffer from high cholesterol, get a divorce, or get a parking ticket if you overstay your meter by a few minutes? This positivity bias, as psychologists call it, has another name: "The Lake Wobegone Effect", named after the fictional town in Garrison Keillor's popular radio series 'A Prairie Home Companion', In Lake Wobegone, according to Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." I don't think we can become more accurate and objective in the way we think about our children and houses, but maybe we can realize that we have such biases and listen more carefully to the advice and feedback we get from the others.

After decades of research, Panksepp is convinced that most animal brains, from Oliver's to a ticklish mouse's, likely have the capacity for dreaming, for taking pleasure in eating, for feeling anger, fear, love, lust, grief, and acceptance from their mothers, for being playful, and for some conception of selfhood, an argument that might have seemed painfully unscientific just forty years ago. Panksepp believes that emotional capacity evolved in mammals long before the emergence of the human neocortex and its massive powers of cognition. He is careful to say that this doesn't mean that all animal or even mammalian emotions are the same. And when it comes to complex cognitive skills, he believes that the human brain puts all others to shame. But he is convinced that other animals have many special abilities that we don't have and this may extend to emotional states. Rats, for example, have richer olfactory lives, eagles have impressive eyesight, and dolphins can sense the world via sight, sound, sonar, and touch. These abilities may translate into more and different feelings associated with their various sensory or cognitive experiences. Panksepp believes that rabbits, for example, may have bigger or different capacities for fear while cats may have larger capacities for aggression and anger. Over the past fifteen years the cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff has published accounts of many types of animal emotions, from compassionate chimps to contrite hyenas. The primatologist Frans de Waal has written of altruism, empathy, and morality in bonobos and other apes. An explosion of recent research on dogs plumbs their ability to mirror the emotions of their owners, and studies of hormonal fluctuations in baboons after the death of their troops' babies have shown monthlong spikes of glucocorticoid stress hormones in the mothers, chemical surges that point toward a long grieving process. A number of recent studies have gone far beyond our closest relatives to argue for the possible emotional capacities of honeybees, octopi, chickens, and even fruit flies. The results of these studies are changing debates about animal minds from "Do they have emotions?"What sorts of emotions do they have and why?" Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising. As the neurologist Antonio Damasio has argued, emotions are a necessary part of animal social behavior. Consciously or not, they guide our behavior, helping us to flee from danger, seek pleasure, avoid pain, or bond with the right fellow creatures. Both dolphins and parrots, for example, can exhibit symptoms similar to human sadness and depression after the loss of a companion. They might ignore food or refuse to play with others. Other social animals, like dogs, often do the same. These emotions are consequences of a very helpful evolutionary process: attaching to others who protect you, feed you, play with you, groom you, hunt or forage with you, or otherwise make your life more enjoyable or productive. Affective states, as the emotional expressions of animals are known, are useful whether you're a prairie dog collaborating with other prairie dogs on a tunnel extension or a harried human negotiating who is going to pick up dinner on the way home from work.