MemeMachineGo!

It’s easy to find pages quoting Cicero saying:

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Unfortunately, it seems to be apocryphal.

That’s from the Stumpers-L mailing list, for librarians to ask others reference questions that stumped them. Here’s their FAQ.

1. Is there a novel with no ‘e’ in it?
2. What words in English contain no vowels (including ‘y’)?
3. What three (or more) words in English end in ‘-gry’?
4. Where can I find information on Kombucha/Manchurian Mushroom Tea?
5. There’s a brief inspirational paragraph titled “What is Success?”—Who wrote it? Was it Emerson?
6. What does the Latin phrase “uva uvam vivendo veria fit” in Lonesome Dove mean? Where does it come from?
7. What is the origin of the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child”?
8. What is the word for a product name which is now used for all products of that type (i.e. a name which has lost trademark status)? Is there a word for the process by which a name loses trademark status?
9. I have seen references to The Book of Counted Sorrows. Is this a real book?
10. I have seen the Latin phrase “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” used in various places. What does it mean?
11. What is the full text of the poem which begins “do not stand by my grave and weep”? Who wrote it?
12. There is a quotation about how a society can be judged by its treatment of children/animals/prisoners/the elderly. Who said it, and what, exactly, did they say?
13. Where does the term “blue plate special” come from?
14. If the average human body were broken down into its constituent chemicals, how much would they be worth?
15. There is a saying that there are only a few plots in all of literature. Who said that, and how many are there supposed to be?