Top Thirty Facts about Chuck Norris. Includes such zoans as “The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.”
On a similar note, one should also examine Seagalology – The Study of Steven Seagal.
And remember, “There are no disabled people. Only people who have met Chuck Norris.”
Apparently the Chalet’s secret ingredient to their Creamy Chicken soup ain’t MSG…check out the receipt. 😀
“I would advise them to look for that other guy Osama (bin Laden) … rather than comedians. I don’t think we pose much of a threat.”
– Scott Dikkers, Editor in Chief of The Onion, after the White House ordered the satirical e-newspaper to stop using the presidential seal in their political stories
“I’ve seen Phantom of the Opera. Is that a musical?”
– overheard at Reuben’s, Montreal
A guy who needs more woman:
Guy Who Performs Insane Quarter Bouncing Tricks
A guy who needs less woman:
Guy Who Made an Engagement Ring That Plays Back on a Record Player
Other than the War of 1812, that is:
Canada wins dumbest government at World Stupidity Awards; Bush wins one award.
Paris Hilton won two awards: Stupidest Woman of the Year and Stupidest Show of the Year.
The news media can be so desperate for a good story, they’ll sensationalize and make their own. People like solid, definitive statements, no matter how wobbly and contrived they really are.
A good example is when TechWeb published a story entitled “Tablet PCs Headed for Broader Use” and then publishes a contrary article called “Tablet PC Faces Uncertain Future” seven hours later, and both articles cite the same market research company.
Two different bylines, two different axes to grind.
It’s MSG, every psychosomatic foodie’s nightmare. But is “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” just a myth fueled by irrational public hysteria? The article, “If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?” seems to confirm this:
We now know that glutamate is present in almost every food stuff, and that the protein is so vital to our functioning that our own bodies produce 40 grams of it a day. Probably the most significant discovery in explaining human interest in umami is that human milk contains large amounts of glutamate (at about 10 times the levels present in cow’s milk).
(The article also triggered a huge discussion over at MetaFilter.)
What I find curious is the people claiming allergies to MSG aren’t even eating authentic Asian cuisine, but rather mushu pork and other anachronistic foodcourt flavours. Personally, if I got sick eating somewhere, I’d look at the usual suspects first: excessive grease, allergies, or maybe the cook didn’t wash his hands.
You know what else has glutamate in it? Tomatoes, parmesan cheese, walnuts, and peas. MSG makes things taste great, but as always, everything in moderation.
“If you really want to be a critical reader,” Paul Graham writes in The Submarine, “It turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but _why he’s writing about this subject at all_.”
Why? Because the news isn’t immune from fallacy or deception. For example, a good chunk of non-topical news (especially those describing buying trends) are not spontaneously generated by seasoned, pavement-pounding journalists, but are canned press releases generated by PR firms and fed to apathetic reporters to regurgitate:
If anyone is dishonest, it’s the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it’s so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all, they know good PR firms won’t lie to them.
A good flatterer doesn’t lie, but tells his victim selective truths (what a nice color your eyes are). Good PR firms use the same strategy: they give reporters stories that are true, but whose truth favors their clients.
It is also important to always check your sources, even when it comes to topical news items, as George Monbiot as found out in Junk science. After David Bellamy, a typically reputable botanist, cites an arcane statistic stating global warming is codswallop, Monbiot decides to uncover the source of the figure.
It is a fun journey, where we discover that the statistic is a forgery passed off from a quack scientist to a convicted felon, which was then published by a conspiracy loving ex-architect on his website, which in turn was cited by Bellamy, who then threw in a typo to spice up the figures even further. Nicholas Wolverson calls this “a recurring theme of those using ‘science’ to justify the continued existence of their convenient world-views”:
It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals.
It appears even the scientists themselves need to remember to keep thinking critically. Bellamy has since retracted his statements, but not before two conservation organizations gave him the heave-ho.
A lucid article by Todd Seavey on why little mixups like the birthday of the archnemesis of CSI top sleuth Grissom (a critical plot point) or the gloryless destruction of Starfleet’s finest flagship in Star Trek Generations by Klingon webcam makes my blood boil.
Yes fellow geeks, we’re talking about the dreaded continuity error:
In normal movie parlance, a continuity error means one of those embarrassing moments when, say, the bandage on an actor moves from the right hand to the left hand between scenes due to a mistake by the makeup department. For science fiction fans, though, continuity refers to the overall logical and historical coherence of our beloved fictional universes.
[…]
For you see, any story must have a certain amount of internal coherence if we are to achieve suspension of disbelief. And we must achieve suspension of disbelief. For most people, that just means that a given fictional universe must hold together for the space of two hours: if the main character in a conventional romantic comedy, possibly some movie for girls featuring Meg Ryan or someone like that, says at the beginning that she is an only child, she should not have a sister present at her wedding at the end of the movie. Stories like that – about boring, conventional people with their petty love affairs and their tawdry sex antics, people whom one could not trust when the chips were down and an Imperial Battle Droid were attacking your spaceship! – are relatively easy to keep consistent. It is only the grandeur and majesty of a fictional universe the size and complexity of one like the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, the DC Comics universe, or the Marvel Comics universe (and perhaps soap operas) that is truly difficult to maintain.
What can I say? I like precision in my fictional entertainment, just like in real life.
“My insurance company is not happy.”
– Andr