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lol,,, Nope. The ACLU went to bat for some crazy woman that committed suicide about 9 months after release from an asylum. They took her case to the US supreme court and it was ordered that if they don't pose a threat to themselves or others, then they cannot be detained. This happened in the 60s and the mid 70s. This caused an evaluation of if everyone nutcase locked up and it ended up dumping a shitload of people on the street. The problem had something to do with detaining people that were perfectly fine when under medication but the ACLU's love affair got started earlier with Thorazine and some other drug.

The cut in budgeting was because the residents of the mental institutions went from full to capacity to 30% or so. When reagan was the governor of CA, he took this set of rulings along with the state mental health boards wishes and cut the budget. But this was done as governor not president. The same mental patients were being dumped all around the country when this first started happening. here is a link to a site that touches on it and Here is another that deals withCalifornia

What your referring to is actually when the homeless problem was apparent and advocacy groups started lobbying for them. It was like they wanted to redeem their earlier actions. The supposed cuts were actually cuts in increases spending that Reagan rejected. Although the increased asked for was cut, the budget was actually increased but Reagan still took flak over it.

The song "Happy Birthday to You" is under copyright.

http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp

By one extension and another, a tune first written in 1893 will not fall out of copyright until (wait for it ... wait a real long time ...) 2030.

As I sit here attempting to not be a pedant, I cannot help but link you to this page:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/signature/elementary.asp

Sorry for trolling you.

Actually, it's been revealed that the original reporting that started the "pins and razor blades in candy" hysteria in the 1982 was in fact a hoax. Further, the report found at Snopes, while not exactly "gospel", does indicate that the majority of these candy tampering stories are untrue EVEN though there are rare documented cases. In my neighborhood in a somewhat modern small-city, I got 0 trick or treaters in 2 years straight. (More candy for me!) On the other hand, one of my co-workers in a rural area 30 miles away went through 17 bags of candy this last year. Most packaged candy (which is the most common kind handed out) is not going to be tampered with easily. (Unless you own a candy wrapping & sealing machine, and have access to the printed wrappers.) And, being someone that stares at an X-ray machine screen for a living, I'm fairly certain detecting foreign objects in candy with the x-ray equipment most courthouses and police stations might use is, pardon the pun, no picnic.

In fact, Snopes has a great page on the subject of Halloween candy. According to them, there has never been a confirmed case of a stranger intentionally giving out tainted candy to children. There have been rare cases of tainted candy, but nearly all of these cases were hoaxes (in most cases perpetrated by the children themselves); the rest were either accidents or coverups for crimes committed by relatives.

That's not the Little Mermaid. That's The Rescuers.
The Little Mermaid was the supposedly phallic palace art.

That's not the Little Mermaid. That's The Rescuers.
The Little Mermaid was the supposedly phallic palace art.

And powergenitalia (PowerGen Italia) was a myth.

And powergenitalia (Powergen Italia) was the web site of "a real Italian company (Powergen Italia) which sells specialized battery products" --it says so right there on that Snopes.com page that I linked to. However, I did not actually read that page, which said that it was "false" that powergenitalia.com was the web site of another company called "PowerGen", so I just assumed that "false" meant there was no company at all that had the web URL powergenitalia.com.

And powergenitalia (PowerGen Italia) was a myth.

And powergenitalia (Powergen Italia) was the web site of "a real Italian company (Powergen Italia) which sells specialized battery products" --it says so right there on that Snopes.com page that I linked to. However, I did not actually read that page, which said that it was "false" that powergenitalia.com was the web site of another company called "PowerGen", so I just assumed that "false" meant there was no company at all that had the web URL powergenitalia.com.

the article mentions whocalled.us (one of the funnier urls I've ever seen)

I'm sure this won't help the Panty Machines make a comeback...

http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/panties.asp

http://www.herroflomjapan.com/2006/09/21/the-final-word-on-used-panty-vending-machines-in-japan/

But, there are BEER vending machines, too, not just cigarette machines. I wonder if the ID sensor will be set to deny beer to kids under 20, which I think is the legal age in Japan.

http://www.geocities.jp/m_kato_clinic/mini-age-alcohol-eng-1.html

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2037.html

Why don't you fools ever check the facts? I bet you think that the Al Gore inventing the internet thing is a real knee-slapper, too. Spreading political rumor and innuendo as if it is fact hurts this democracy because it keeps false memes in circulation and a factually informed electorate is the only defense against tyrrany. Of course, if you only care about your side winning, I guess that doesn't matter.

Good lord! What happened to Slashdot over the weekend? Why did a story from this conservative "news" site even get posted here?

For future reference: rational people do not refer to prominent Democrats as "communists". That's completely ridiculous and contributes nothing of value to polite discourse. The quote you listed is completely out of context. If you don't like Hillary Clinton, fine. But there's no reason to resort to name calling.

I, for one, do not welcome our conservatives overloads who call their political opponents traitors, communists, socialists, or un-American.

NASA did not spend a dime on the damn space pen. Both space programs initially used grease pencils (and a few other things), then starting using pens, because yes, it was safer. Educate.

Your post is full of utter bullshit. I'm not going to take time to refute it all but I will recommend that you stop making such stupid generalizations about two agencies that often have different goals. And you could at least look up some of your claims at Snopes for chrissake. No doubt you thought that was unnecessary since you felt that the proof that NASA is full of fuckups is self evident.

"You mean like a frog in a pot of water. Bring up to boil slowly, the from won't even notice he is boiling until he is dead..."

Except that it's just not so:

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

They taste exactly the same.

Tell that to van halen

I guess it's lucky, then, that Melinda French was a frisky 20-something single when she and Bill started shagging. And out of that union came Bob...

I'm sure there's a special version of Godwin's Law that only applies when Mussolini's name comes up.

I'm not sure which one applies here. Perhaps I should just apply Godwin's Law but credit it to someone else.

That's an interesting theory, but the urban legend is wrong: Hancock signed his name on the Declaration of Independence in a large script because he was the first one to sign it, and he had the whole of the rest of the page to himself. It was first printed in that form - with only two names, and one signature, on it (John Hancock, as the president of the Continental Congress, signed it on behalf of the entire Congress). The others didn't sign it until later that year, at which point they had to make sure there was room enough for everyone.

IANAHistorian, so please correct me if I got something wrong!

Um...no. Brownback is from Kansas, and the fictional urban legend is about Alabama

but Brownback came from the state so bold they redefined pi

I hear they have cyanide in their seeds...

"I had student deferments in college, and, upon taking a physical, was discovered to have a physical - uh, by virtue of what the military says, I didn't even know it existed - a physical deferment and then the lottery system came along, when they chose your lot by birtdate, and mine was high. And I did not want to go - just as Governor Clinton didn't."

I am a great fan of Irving Berlin. He would probably be upset if he knew that ASCAP would sue you for singing "Happy Birthday" in public! Yessir, that's what I'm talking about right here, see...

( about 10 yrs ago my local Chinese take away was done by environmental health for serving it)

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/chinese.asp
You are an ignorant loser. Maybe you can have Pop Rocks and Pepsi for dessert.

True, but only if X=0. LINK

...they never got the millions of dollars they expected after forwarding all those messages about Bill Gates sharing his fortune.

A local music store has a special on now, 4 CDs for $20 (Canadian, about two-fifty American). Now that's more like it. I spent $40 there this week but on old, crappy stuff that today's listener wouldn't care for. I'm still expecting the now-ripped songs to self-destruct or something in 12 months.

True, however the Gore spokepeople claim he works from home and invests in more expensive, green energy to offset his consumption.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/gorehome.asp

I don't understand why Gore is a hypocrite because he doesn't live in a biosphere and ride a solar-powered moped to his speaking engagements. I don't expect Bush to fly sorties in Iraq.

Ought not a Nobel Peace Prize winner practice what he preaches?

You know, I have to object to your grouping the /. politics section in with the apple newton and New Coke. New Coke was actually extensivly researched and thought out just executed very poorly and got one of the biggest knee-jerk reactions from the american public ever.

Meanwhile the politics section of /. is indeed just plain stupid, and I really have no opinion of the newton.

The "poor man's copyright" really offers no copyright protection. It is far too easy to fake (I can mail an empty box to myself and then open the box and put whatever I want into it and seal it back up very easily) which is why it offers no protection at all.

A court will not accept it. There's a good explanation of why over at Snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp

In the UK, it may help you, but it's not a guarantee. You're better off getting a real copyright.

Okay, it's a big fat myth in the US, but are you saying it's actually still true in Canada?

Don't you know there's a reason why they don't sing "Happy Birthday to You" in restaurants? They can be sued if they do, so instead they come up with some dippy refrain of their own.

This is a fallacy.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp

A week long "cash flow interruption" won't affect the quarterly results, especially since everyone will just postpone their purchases to next week.

Thanks, Linux clipboard. That link was supposed to go to http://www.snopes.com/religion/wellhell.asp.

To be sure. Even so, 2-4 milligrams from a broken bulb is pretty much a nonissue so long as the room is vented -- the vapors spread out and dilute themselves.

You might find the snopes article on the subject useful.

The whole Coke/New Coke/Classic Coke marketing ploy was used to make the switch [to high fructose corn syrup] with few noticing

Well, this article is floating around in email again... http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/nugent.asp
Besides, they are pretty wussy when it comes to standing up to thugs and terrorists.

That's an old maid's tale. How Stuff Works has a decent article on sneezing. So does Snopes.

Do a little research before you shoot your mouth off.
http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp

Is there some fundamental problem in teaching today that can only be solved with computers?

The symptoms match.

And, before anyone starts up with the whole "apple seed" thing - that's cyanide, not arsenic.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
We never paid a dime for the damn space pen. Fisher, the pen company, paid all the money, and made a lot more back, since it still sells space pens today.

Oh, and Russia decided pencils were a bad idea and uses the Fisher pens also.

There must be a rash of harsh convictions then:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/dixon.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Dixon

Please note that in the GW case, both the boy and the girl were both black. The conviction was not a case of a black boy going to jail for having sex with a white girl.