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Please stop using the slow-boiled frog meme. It's false.

So you're a lawyer and you've researched this completely or you've latched on to a snippet out of context and are misinterpreting it to favor your own prejudices. Snopes has a nice objective write up of misinterpretations of the Dick Act (Militia Act of 1903) including yours. http://www.snopes.com/politics... Specifically, the Dick Act does not void gun control laws or address any right to bear arms. Try again. BTW, for those who assume I'm against gun ownership, try again because I'm not. I just don't think the 2nd amendment is a slam dunk obvious argument in favor of a universal right to bear arms - any arms. Personally I believe I have an inalienable right to self defense.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/nevada.asp

Solyndra was wrecked by Chinese dumping, idiot

A modern Richard Guindon cartoon that best represents this Slashdot story ... an urban legend ... [1998, archived] essay on teachers' and students' increasingly virtual role in a tech society ... a mad hunt for the original 1963 New Yorker cartoon that started it all ... and an ugly mouse squeak toy.

Technically the link was with antiperspirants and not deodorants and was debunked years ago.

Jesus, using Snopes on Slashdot. What's the world coming to?

http://www.snopes.com/medical/...

http://www.webmd.com/skin-prob...

[John]

Are you referring to this discredited rumor, or something else?
http://www.snopes.com/politics...

*sigh*

"McDonalds meat is meat by product." -- Wrong. False.
"Pink Slime is 100% Beef." -- Irrelevant. McDonalds does not use it.
"Ground eyeball, etc." -- Wrong again. False.

Dude. Seriously. How hard is it to admit you're wrong? You were either ignorant of the facts, or you lied. I'll politely assume you're just ignorant, and couldn't be bothered to fact-check your statement.

Did some minimum wage employees serve some raw hamburgers? Yup. That happened. What that has to do with your BULLSHIT that they're not using beef, I have no idea.

McDonalds may suck, but they use real beef in their burger patties, lacking "pink slime" or any other additive - likely making it better beef than the bargain brand at your local grocery store.

False.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://www.snopes.com/business...

While those specifically deal with the "100% Beef" (brand, company name) legend, they're also VERY clear that the USDA is pretty strict about what you can call beef, and McDonalds meets that definition. By-products must be labeled as such.

And, in case you still don't buy it:
http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com...

QUARTER POUND 100% BEEF PATTY*:
Ingredients: 100% Pure USDA Inspected Beef; No Fillers, No Extenders.
Prepared With Grill Seasoning (Salt, Black Pepper).
*Based On The Weight Before Cooking 4 Oz. (113.4g)

"An abundance of documentation", despite the fact that the guy who created the game, who knew everyone who worked at Atari at the time, had no knowledge of it happening. What documentation do you have that's more credible than that? Made up documentation, perhaps?

I've always taken the burial as fact, (by whatever article I read of it at the time). The author was told by one who had been in the party that buried them. Difference being it was said they were taken out and disposed of "where nobody could ever find them again", never mentioned it being a garbage dump.

I looked at Snopes yet the page doesn't show for me, http://www.snopes.com/business... so I don't know what others thought of it.

Person who created the game pry wasn't the most popular person around Atari at that time.

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore...

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

Snopes

The US may not be prepared, but they can take a note from Australia's efforts when they needed to clean oil spills off penguins.

If a bank fails, the FDIC could take up to 99 years to pay depositors for their insured accounts.

This is a completely false notion that many bank customers have told us they heard from someone attempting to sell them another kind of financial product.

The truth is that federal law requires the FDIC to pay the insured deposits "as soon as possible" after an insured bank fails.

Historically, the FDIC pays insured deposits within a few days after a bank closes, usually the next business day. In most cases, the FDIC will provide each depositor with a new account at another insured bank. Or, if arrangements cannot be made with another institution, the FDIC will issue a check to each depositor.

Yes and the second Australia did, violent crime statistics went up.

Not to any significant degree, and the overall trend since then is down - http://www.snopes.com/crime/st...

Pardon my reading comprehension problems, but I don't see that in the referenced article. I see a reference to the "proportion of armed robberies involving firearms has declined", but not that violent crimes has an overall trend down. Those are two very different claims, so perhaps you are referring to something else. The article does however show that their was a marked increase (12.8%) in a "Number of victims of assault aged 65 and over", between 1996 and 1997 and that the increases continued for the next two years (all that are listed).

It appears that the whole Snopes article is missing the point of the argument that gun rights advocates make. Snopes tries to make the argument that reduction of crimes committed with guns is the goal, while the gun rights advocates are arguing that violent crimes in general are increasing and that the rate of the increase jumped when new restrictions were imposed on personal ownership of firearms.

Yes and the second Australia did, violent crime statistics went up.

Not to any significant degree, and the overall trend since then is down - http://www.snopes.com/crime/st...

Condi Rice is as black as Barack Obama's corporate lawyer wife. Condi Rice is utterly detested by her fellow black folks for going on a NYC Ferragamo shoe shopping spree and catching a Broadway Musical Comedy, Spamalot, quite literally as Hurricane Katrina came ashore in New Orleans and her brothers and sisters were fighting for their lives. Quite literally fiddling while Rome burned. You forgot, huh? Here's snopes.com to reminds you...

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/...

"...That evening, upon arriving at the Palace Hotel, I flipped on the television. Indeed, the hurricane had hit New Orleans. I called Henrietta, who said that the main issue was making sure our people were safe. She'd also convened a departmental task force because offers of foreign assistance were pouring in. I called Secretary of Homeland Security Mike Chertoff, inquiring if there was anything I could do. "It’s pretty bad," he said. We discussed the question of foreign help briefly, but Mike was clearly in a hurry. He said he'd call if he needed me. I hung up, got dressed, and went to see Spamalot.

The next morning, I went shopping at the Ferragamo shoe store down the block from my hotel, returned to the Palace, and again turned on the television. The airwaves were filled with devastating pictures from New Orleans. And the faces of most of the people in distress were black. I knew right away that I should never have left Washington."

I should point out: Coal itself is playing out in several parts of the US. Coal, like pop music, is eating itself.

My third language is actually french - my original post was repeating a joke, falsely attributed to G.W. Bush.

Thank you.

One of my favourite things is being told what the Atkins diet is by people who haven't read the book but might have observed someone eating pork rinds for lunch who is "doing atkins."

In his book Atkins urges readers to eat their vegetables with a emphasis on leafy greens. If you don't know that then either read his book for yourself or go back to watching the big bang theory and leave me alone.

As to Atkins' death, LMGTFY: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=atkins+de...
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
http://www.snopes.com/medical/...

First, there are been two main anonymous persons claiming that the birth certificate was faked based on image analysis of the short form. These have been debunked twice. The main problem with the claim is that an image analysis cannot tell you whether the birth certificate is "counterfeit" but only if the image of the certificate has been altered. Another reasoned look at the image analysis reveals that the image has been altered only in one area: where the certificate number was blacked out. The rest of the so called image analysis relies on highly flawed analysis like the fact that when zooming on a low resolution image it produces pixelation which proves the image was faked. These two so-called anonymous experts have never had their credentials vetted but their claimed expertise has shown not to withstand a true expert in the field.

When the long form was released, there were similar claims. These were debunked as well.

Second, the State of Hawaii has released and verified the long and short form certificates as far back as 2008. So according your definition of sane and rational person, they would have to discount the State of Hawaii (whose Republican governor in 2008 said Obama was born there) to believe that the birth certificates have been faked. That's not sane or rational.

neither are microwaves - http://www.snopes.com/science/...

Or, because she was smarter than her critics on foreign policy....

But hey, you can always check snopes for the actual context of her remarks on Russia...

Actually, it was a response to a reporter who asked what insights she can gain from being so close to Russia in connection with NATIONAL SECURITY not foreign policy, here answer was "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska":
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics...

It was in response to a series of questioning about Russia invading another of it's neighbors Georgia. She also warns about Russia and the Ukraine in this same interview which she was laughed at. I would think in context, her comment on this was very rational where as yours is still completely ignorant of the facts.

It's kind of like saying "What part of electricity gets light to the most in need?" Money is just an abstraction of value and a device for distributing it. Fairness isn't its job. If it was more challenging to screw the little guy in the barter system, that's only because everything is more challenging in a barter system and while I'm no great scholar of the history of barter, I'm pretty sure they still screwed the little guy when there wasn't money. Socialism and communism haven't prevented the screwing of the little guy. Fear of Hell hasn't stopped the screwing of the little guy. The information age has really just made the screwing of the little guy considerably more efficient.

At some fucking point, we have to evolve beyond this BS but it hasn't happened yet and trying to blame it on money is ultimately dodging culpability for the real problem which is us. Let's take Gene Roddenberry screwing over Alexander Courage for instance:

http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/...

That's the guy who famously believed money was the root of all evil and dared imagine a world without it. But was the problem really money or was it that he was an asshole? In a Star Trek world he could have just as easily stolen credit for doing the work. There's always something of value to steal or threaten to get what you want or to get people to give you what you want. Taking money away doesn't change that.

Obligatory link for those who don't know what the phrase means. I used Snopes instead of Wikipedia because they actually have a video snippet of the MASH episode in.

that some state legislature tried to pass a law that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter be exactly equal to three

So this is your proof that right-wingers don't want to teach children life skills?

I see where you get your nickname.

when something sound ludicrous, you should look it up instead of blindly repeating it like some half-wit parrot.

http://www.snopes.com/politics...

The quote ois accurate, so I"m not sure why you are porting it. Oh Right, you are a half-wit parrot.

"That would be up the butt, Bob."

The website was made by a company that was contracted under the bush administration to do general IT service work for the government. They did a piss poor job at substantial expense, to be sure, but it was not a no-bid contract - they were one of four eligible companies which bid on the contract for the website.

The no-bid and Michelle Obama nonsense is parroted by people who consume right wing news (propaganda) and mistakenly believe it to be true.

Yeah, $634 million and counting...

Nope. It is more like $174 million and counting (still plenty of scratch though).

For those that don't follow the link (and are unfamiliar with government contracting practices - which is most everybody): CGI Federal was a successful bidder on an HHS umbrella contract in 2007 (Bush Administration, in other words) to provide IT services to HHS, along with IBM, Computer Sciences Corp., and Quality Software Services. These same four companies were the bidders (under said long term contract) for the specific task of site implementation, and the $634 million figure is for all of the services from CGI Federal under that contract. Only 25% of that total, dating back to 2007, was for the website.

The microwave in the example does suck, even the very first microwave oven we got in the 80s did boil a glass of water in 60 seconds.

Maybe it's not the microwave, maybe the guy does not keep his dishes clean. See http://www.snopes.com/science/...

I remember when Affirmative Action was getting a lot of attention. Cue 10 years later, black girl in my class, nice girl, gets like 1380 on the SAT (better than I did) and gets into a decent college. We had some folks in my class saying she got in "because she's black." A lot of folks in my class wanted to punt those kids for being dicks, but the fact is they were there and they said it. What happens when that guy is the hiring manager looking at your CV? "Went to harvard... ...oh she's black. And a woman. Haha no, this one's below the bar, obviously."

President Obama is being criticized by the IOC for selecting three gay athletes for the Olympics, and now gay judges for the Olympic committee. Rightly so: it's well-known he did this as a political move against Russia for their anti-gay discrimination. Now whenever gays get into anything or win anything, it'll be "oh they're just gay, they get everything." We're paving the way for rationalized invalidation in a big way--anything this group of people accomplishes will be considered favoritism, thus invalid.

The same can be said about the Nobel Peace Prize, which is a joke. Obama got it for killing fewer people one year than the previous year. Al Gore got it for a slide show about Global Warming, nudging out Irena Sendler. Who gets peace prizes? Politicians like Putin and scientists who are favored pets of politicians or who have published work that favors politicians' ideals.

This is why we can't have nice things. It even comes full-circle: Women get everything because they're women. Blacks get everything because they're black. Gays get everything because they're gay. And of course white males are the elite and so we just control every-damn-thing and discriminate against everyone else. You can't escape.

I actually tend to side with Snopes, "Status undetermined" on this, and we'll probably never know for certain. That said, a lot of the key components of the story are demonstrably true, making for an awful lot of coincidences that all add credibility to it, including a retelling on Philips' own website and marketing materials of the time specifically mentioning the Furtwangler recording. Here's a link to a story by one of Philips' own engineers on the development process, documenting a sudden (and quite drastic) design change from Sony that had to have been triggered by something. All in all, I think there probably is some truth behind it, but were it a court of law most of the "evidence" would probably be classed as circumstantial, and I also suspect it may have been exaggerated after the fact by the marketing departments of Sony and Philips; it's a nice story, after all.

hey, at least he wasn't offering a Lexus (Lexus is a division of Toy Yoda)

The blockchain will soon grow disproportionally large. Right now it's probably managable, but you know what? I'm not downloading tens of gigabytes of blockchain just for the plessure of reading lols on decentralized blogs.

Nice idea though...

Apropos of nothing, where are you getting this meme?

I only ask because it doesn't happen to be true, yet it's an oft-repeated meme that everyone seems to put forth as the BitCoin "killer" flaw.

tl;dr Here's the relevant passage from that link:

It is not required for most fully validating nodes to store the entire chain. [...] the size of the unspent output set is less than 100MiB, which is small enough to easily fit in RAM for even quite old computers.

If one wanted to kill an idea, if one wanted to wage a propaganda war on an extreme viewpoint or tool, here is one way to do it.

• 1) Assume people know the basics of the system, but not the details.
• 2) Construct a "problem" consistent with the basic knowledge
• 3) Loudly advertize that "problem" and let others pick up and repeat it

It certainly seems plausible given the basics. Every transaction will add to the blockchain, and we process a whopping-big number of financial transactions every day! The blockchain will soon become unmanageable, and BitCoin will fail!

I've seen this in other arenas, including politics. Al Gore invented the internet for instance. He didn't, he never said that he did, but he did say something vaguely similar. It certainly seems plausible that this is what he did say, and boy what a gaff! It makes him look sooooo silly!

We should promote our own agenda this way - the UK spam filter, for instance. What right risible meme can we invent that is close enough to reality that people would find it plausible, repeat it, and use it to label the filter as badly conceived?

Let's use the the same techniques our opponents use. Human psychology, for the win.

Possibly on my bookshelf, or maybe in his office.

Not only is ID de-facto required to travel around this country by air, you can't ride Amtrak without an ID either.

The poor being targeted by these laws generally don't travel much.

the very good other reason — already cited — of preventing voting fraud, which you dismiss as "miniscule" problem without citing any evidence

Sorry, here you go: Snopes wrecked at least one lie-filled list that was going around.

Or maybe some more: Very little as a whole, keeping in mind those are cases and not confirmed fraud.

We are told repeatedly by the ruling classes not to worry our pretty little heads about it, but the only evidence ever offered is the low rate of fraud-prosecutions... That's a rather bizarre logic — I wonder, if GLAAD would've accepted the argument claiming there being no gays in America based on absence of applications of anti-sodomy laws.

So not only do you refuse to accept actual journalism on the matter (why bother asking for evidence, them?) but you pop off that completely nutty bit at the end there that is rather apples to oranges.

Why would you be willing to accept such claims without skepticism, is beyond me.

I do, but compared to the largely minimal hazard of vote fraud we have a far greater threat of gerrymandering and disenfranchisement being pursued aggressively by the GOP.

Am I the only one reminded of this?

Unfortunately, your summary omits or misrepresents several aspects of the article and in the process dilutes (if not entirely misses) the point, as well as making it less interesting. Honestly, it's only a single-page Snopes article- if you don't know the story already, it's worth spending a minute or two reading.

Anyway:-

(i) The "brown M&Ms" clause *wasn't* at the end of the contract- where it would have been more likely to stand out- it was (presumably intentionally) hidden amongst all the other countless (but important) technical requirements.

(ii) The clause also stated that if it was not followed *the entire show would be forfeit*. That's a rather major penalty, and one anyone who'd actually been paying atention would be almost certain to want to avoid by following it to the letter. Hence its effectiveness as an indicator.

(iii) You also omit *why* it was so essential that the technical requirements were followed closely. (I could summarise that, but I'd probably just end up rewriting paragraphs that are more effective in context anyway; just read the blooming thing! :-) )

(From article summary):- "As it turns out, this well site was listed in the contract specifications given to all bidders for the tunnel's construction. "

Looks like somebody forgot to RTFM.

Looks like they should have had a "Brown M&Ms" clause in the contract for just that reason.

And if anyone doesn't get the reference (or even more so if you think you do, but don't get what the archetypal ludicrously demanding rock band rider has to do with tunnel boring), read the linked article.

Not trying to be confrontational, just wondering how you reconciled these things.

I think they mostly do it by the expedient method of "Shooting the Messenger."

Stand over there by that wall by yourself, would you? We'll get to you in just a minute. Would you care for a cigarette?

There's the method of just ignoring and pitying you, You Poor Stupid Fool Whom I Would Not Want to be Like. I personally like the atypical story about Our Savior: "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" Reference.

Or there's the "You're attacking what I've always been taught." If you're right then everyone who cares about me is wrong, so you've just got to be wrong. And along those same lines, someones on /. got a tag line of: "A million lemmings can't be wrong!"

They did the same thing to Zimmerman a few years ago; he's one of the leading concert pianists on earth. Customs took his piano and destroyed it! Clueless! http://www.omg-facts.com/Interesting/A-Famous-Concert-Pianist-Had-His-Piano-D/53381 and http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=46850

(checks McGruber's comment) It's a mistake either way. Either it's not bamboo, and they applied the wrong rule, or it is bamboo - but a handicraft, see http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/manuals/ports/downloads/miscellaneous.pdf - and they applied the wrong rule (also, the CBP website cites the wrong table; table 3-22 is broomcorn and broomstraw, it should be citing table 3-57 instead).

Re "power corrupts", that's why I added "It doesn't even have to be intentional, that just speeds things up". Corruption occurs at both the individual and organisational level, the latter doesn't actually require malice on the part of the former (incompetence and/or unaccountability can accomplish it too), and there is a feedback loop.

Or to put it another way, "sufficiently advanced incompetence can be indistinguishable from malice in its consequence to the victim". And this sort of thing has happened before (e.g. a concert pianist travelling to the US had their piano destroyed because it smelled funny according to the agents involved).

That whole "Mormons owned Pepsi" thing is an urban legend that isn't true, just as an FYI.

Part of the reason they didn't do it when they made the landing, was because of all the hell (read: lawsuit from an atheist) that NASA caught from this reading on Apollo 8. Buzz Aldrin was (is) a deeply religious man, and observed communion in the LM after landing on the moon, after making this comment on the public radio loop:

"This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way."

He wanted the communion to be broadcast, but had the sense to ask first, and due to the lawsuit it was deemed to not be a good idea.

Whatever you do, don't heat them up using a stove.

In the UK you would call someone a paedo, not a "pedo", which is a made-up word that doesn't mean anything.

Yes, your superior spelling is responsible for superior results:

It happened to Dr. Yvette Cloete, a specialist in Pediatric Medicine at Royal Gwent Hospital in London and the OP is correct in that the police's working theory is that the attack did come about due to the confusion of the term pediatrician and the term pedophile.

In August 2000, Dr. Cloete was forced to flee her home and seek police protection after her windows and doors were spray painted with "Paedo," a common English contraction of Paedophile.

Yo Quiero Asthma Cure

Did that have anything to do with your choice to bring in the Chihuahua? Have met those that swear by it.

by anmre (2956771) Alter Relationship on Monday December 16, 2013 @05:48PM (#45705383) -- Regarding this statement "Fact is, ADHD is a legitimate diagnosis [msu.edu] that is made by psychiatrists" actually we know "fact is" that the inventor of ADHD says it is NOT legitimate-- http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/adhd.asp

Der Spiegel reported that Dr. Leon Eisenberg said "ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease." http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/adhd.asp Leon Eisenberg, the father of ADHD, is quoted as saying in Der Spiegel that "ADHD is a fictitious disease" (shortly before his death). Hmmm. It seems to me the matter of "ADHD" is just a label and revenue generator. So too with "depression" and "anxiety". Sure, there are edge cases where, yes, they need some meds. But nothing like the mass doping they are doing is called-for here. So called "ADHD" is, at best, nervous energy. Lack of focus. Such just need some control. Meditation. Prayer (ohh the non-PC word, can't believe I said it). Take a job. Do some pushups. Do some jumping jacks. Get some more (or less) sleep. Find something you enjoy. Study a martial art. Sing a song. Play some music. Paint. Work with clay. Etc. Sheesh. Everyone is subject to an onslaught of distractions. Especially these days. Even if there is some need of change (physical and/or mental and/or spiritual) all such changes to treat so-called "ADHD" are, in the vast majority of cases, a simple need for some real skills. Teach the mind to calm down. Teach the attention to focus. Sure, it take time. A black-belt is not made overnight. Experts are made, not born. Give it a try. Please. IMHO and HTH. Thanks.