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I guarantee watching a few Jamie Lee Curtis movies will convince you otherwise. (sorry to drag her name and privacy into this little trollfest.)

I'm quite familiar with whitehouse.org, but it definitely wasn't that. In the Snopes article that GoofyBoy linked to above, they say that it was the http://www.gwbush.com/ site (there's nothing there worth looking at now) that he was talking about.

Here is the full story:

http://www.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=g et_topic;f=32;t=000212;p=1

Still not something the President of the United States should say, in any context.

While it might be overdue, it is certainly something that can be planned for, and won't happen immediately.

The short-term predictive capabilities for volcanologists is getting pretty good. Events such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Penetubo in the Phillipenes were extreamely accurate, and gave several days notice before they erupted. I would imagine that the same could be said about Yellowstone... even more so because so much is done to study the region on a geological basis.

The problem is that shutting down larger institutions, such as a military base or a city can take some time...witness the current efforts in Florida in anticipation of some Hurricanes that are approaching, and they have even dealt with Hurricanes there in the past. Some people have to, unfortunately, stand guard even if the environment is approaching something close to hell, just like the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier choose to stay at their post. Some people may and will die simply for that reason in a disaster, but you don't have to lose everybody, or even a sizable minority.

The real question for a Yellowstone eruption would be, where would a safe place be?

While the damage to the USA would be huge, it could be dealt with, and in fact be quite benefitial in the long run as well. Volcanic ash, once treated and organic matter (aka manure) added, can be quite fertile for growing food. Damage to the cities downwind would be a little nastier, just like the damage that Tacoma had after Mt. St. Helens' eruption. Areas close to Yellowstone would be damaged quite a bit, but for the most part there aren't any major cities nearby. (Jackson Hole doesn't qualify as one of the top 100 cities in terms of population in the USA, nor does Cody, Wyoming).

Owing to the fact that I live within 600 miles of Yellowstone, this is more than passing interest. That would be a spetacular eruption if it really was that big. It also shows that ordinary human activity is insignificant compared to the destructive forces of nature, as I doubt the entire combined world-wide nuclear arsenals could cause an explosion of that magnitude.

Actually, now that I've done some research, I find this.

I certainly agree with it, though.

Some of the factual data about the election is wrong, even if the point is still made with the real data:

Bush: 30 states
Gore: 20 states

Murder rate by counties:
Gore: 6.5
Bush: 4.1

From the good folks at snopes: link.

Claim: John Kerry's Vietnam War service medals (a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts) were earned under "fishy" circumstances.

Status: False.

There's a story on Yahoo of a man who claims to have used time travel to achieve success in the stock market. Scary thing is, he seems to have been fairly successful... Shame that it's a hoax...

History is full of people who faced more adversity than you or I know, and the ones that gave up, we don't know about as they are forgettable and forgotten. The ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and succeeded in spite of the odds, should provide enough inspiration for the rest of us.

What about the ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and unfortunately failed (as that's what happens with risk). They don't make for good copy, so the successes get more attention.

Abe Lincoln is the best example. Go read about all his failures, lost elections, failing law practice, limited [snip... see parent]

Please read this. I generally agree with what is said; namely, that Lincoln's achievements do not need embellishment with "glurge" to stand up.

BTW, I agree with some of what you said, but not the "risk-takers always win!" gloss you put on it. Sometimes you have to go in with your eyes open, accept that you might get squashed, and go ahead and risk it anyway.

And kangaroo militia.

Know how to read Farsi or C? Between the ages of 18 and 34? Who needs unemployment when you can be gainfully employed in the US Military! That's right boys and girls. Even those who deny the possibility of a draft after this election year are not ruling out the possibility of "those who could fill specialized positions in certain fields (e.g., health care, linguistics, computer technology) being conscripted."

Hmmm ... I wonder what percent of the readers these days can tell you where both of these numbers came from. Probably a lot have read where the 80 came from, but the 72?

(I have actually used IBM punch cards, and I still have a few souvenir cards hidden away in a drawer. ;-)

Of course, this relic isn't nearly as amazing as the US railroad gauge. (Not to mention the myths about where it came from.)

In any case, I'm frequently bemused by email and newsgroup messages that, in their multiple levels of quotes, show the effects of multiple line wraps at column 72. It's usually pretty easy to verify that that's what happened.

Never happened. That's just an urban legend.

867-5309 (Jenny) is the most famous of these screw-ups.

Would they have been? Remember the Tommy Tutone song "867-5309 Jenny"? Lots of people had that phone number, but noone got sued over it.

I don't guess you've heard the saga of 867-5309 then.

tunnel it transparently over ipsec ala isakmpd or frees/wan and tell Reverend^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAttorney General Ashcroft to go fuck himself (but not anywhere near singing calico cats).

<tinfoil hat>why? ipsec will give you maybe 30 seconds of chat before our buddies at ft. meade will be able to crack it </tinfoil hat>

Nope, Texas is the state where the past a resolution honoring the Boston Strangler.

From here,
"Playboy magazine has twice published their own rankings of America's top party schools:
"The 2002 list read as follows:
22. University of California, Santa Barbara

Of course, UCSB is a SERIOUS place. (Kohn stays there because the coeds are so ... serious.) :-)

Anything containing sugar and phosphoric acid will cause damage over a period of time.

There.

Heard this one from a hardware tech I once took a class with, back in the day. My job at the time involved working with a high-end standalone rackmount graphics processor, so my company had me go to a class to learn how to maintain the hardware.

Anyway, the guy says that he got this call from a helicopter manufacturer who was using his product for a glass cockpit in their latest chopper model. It seems that under certain conditions the processor would do a hard reset, leaving the pilot without instruments. Since this was a prototype, the pilot had standard instrumentation as well as the digital on-screen ones, so there was no real danger, but still the company wanted to know why the device was failing.

To make a long story short, they ran every remote diagnostic they could without coming to a solution, so the company sent the tech to the chopper plant to have a look. The chopper guys took the guy out to the prototype, and the tech's jaw fell to the ground when he realized that the chopper guys had bolted the processor into a pod on the bottom of the helicopter - And this was a rackmount unit meant for a machine room - Not for the vibration or dust of a chopper on a runway!

After a couple of test flights they figure out the problem. Above a certain airspeed, the air pressure was high enough to physically push in the reset button on the back of the processor. After he got them to install a rackmount in the cockpit, all of their problems went away.

Yeah, I know it sounds like Snopes bait, but the guy seemed otherwise reliable, and swore it was a true story.

That quote seems to be fictitious.

It may have never happened, it might not work on everyone, but I have a hunch that the Xerox lie-detector would work on Sal. (Or Sal.)

The tape of the show also "disapeared" for about twenty years. It was considered by many to be an urban legend (about which you can read more here--threr's also audio and video of it there, too. Nobody really believed that it actually happened. It was just in the last couple of years that the network copped to it actually existing. If you ever watch VH1, and they stop playing "I Love the '_0s" long enough, they'll show "Funniest Gameshow Moments" (or something like that). The clip is in shows number 1 and 2, at the very end if you're interested in seeing it. It's pretty funny.

True!

The snopes.com article discusses various issues concerning the whole case.

This did actually happen: http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/newlywed.htm

Snopes says "true" but not exactly as you stated it.

found it, he's right!

Another often-cited surprise is that the copyrights for "Happy Birthday to You" are owned by Time Warner. This is why some family restaurants have made up their own songs to wish kids a happy birthday; it's just too expensive to sing the tradition song.

See: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Music (Happy Birthday, We'll Sue)

claiming that the HIV virus, the virus that causes AIDS, is a virus that was manufactured in American laboratories between 1962 and 1978.

The US government's claim to invention may be invalidated by prior art. HIV was around before 1959 (though there is some dispute ).

If you look up the patent that supposedly proves that Gallo invented HIV, you will see that it is NOT a patent on HIV, it is a patent on a method of reproducing HIV extracted from humans and it was filed after public research on HIV. Reproducing a pathogen is an important part of conducting research, both as an amplifier for presence tests, to make large numbers of identical samples to experiment on, to allow the American Type Culture Collection to archive the virus and make copies of it, and to allow others to reproduce research. It is much better to copy one virus particle than try to extract lots of HIV, and only HIV, from blood. Now, whether patenting such a process rather than placing it in the public domain is assinine is another discussion.

All the Copyright notices by Zygote Media on many of the web sites that report this do not inspire confidence, either. "Media" in the name sure sounds more like a for-profit venture than an activist to me.

For a total of something like $1000, Boyd Graves will sell you copies of public domain government documents that supposedly support his claim. But given that he misrepresents a patent for reproducing HIV as a patent on HIV itself, your money will not be well spent. And if he sent the spams, you would be supporting a spammer.

There are many urban legends about man made HIV.

OK, if we're going to have this conversation, we need to define what we mean by "fake photograph." Yes, many photos were staged, particularly when taking photos was significantly more difficult than "point and shoot." But a staged photograph is not a fake photograph - it's still a reasonably accurate representation of reality as it existed at the time the photo was taken.

You're also quite correct that photos are routinely manipulated in the dark room. However, manipulating the color and otherwise enhancing the image is not at all what most people mean by a "fake photograph." There's a fundamental difference in those types of manipulations and putting Sarah Michelle Gellar's head on a porn star's body or putting John Kerry and Jane Fonda on the same podium together. This type of thing was possible before, but it was much, much more difficult and much less common.

Tapping on the lid doesn't even do anything for normal cans. Wait, yes it does. Hold on, no it doesn't. Shit, I don't even know.

America is amazingly lazy about these sort of issues and just as we like junk food and instant gratification, we expect our politics to be the same. Take for example Internet Petitionshttp://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/in ternet.htm. We like to bitch but never do anything about it. If anything demonstrates this more, it's the 50% voter turnout. We've become an fat, lazy, apathetic nation and as long as it doesn't directly effect "me" we could care less about it. Democracy and the free market require an involved public. How many people have called their representatives recently? Mailed (not emailed) a hand written letter about a subject? Gotten involved in a campaign or cause? Wrote a check? Obviously not many. The backlash against the FCC last time was an anomaly, and I see no evidence to the contrary. Unless America gets off it's collective duff, we better get used to seeing the umpteenth iteration of Survivor on prime-time and stories about Brittany's seventh marriage as the top headline in the news.

That's simply wrong. Here is a picture of a red St. Nicholas from 1847, long before Coca Cola was even founded. You may also check out Snopes.com.

No.

I like this one better:

Skimming Card Numbers

If your analysis of the Audio Home Recording Act were correct, then at least one major label would have already sued the developers of CDex for contributory infringement.

On the other hand, if you use a digital recorder to record everyone singing Happy Birthday to you on your birthday, the owner of the copyright to the song would not be allowed to file suit against you for infringement.

What copyright? You go ahead and believe this Snopes.com article; I've warmed up more to this analysis, which presents evidence that the simple substitution of "Happy birthday" into the lyrics of "Good Morning to All" isn't enough to create a distinct copyrightable work.

Put a frog into cold water, and slowly heat it up and he'll just sit there and boil to death without ever noticing.

If you don't draw your line early, you are susceptible to the "Boiling Frog Syndrome".

Even though frogs are not.

It's also not dessert. You know what they say about glass houses...

All the funding at NASA never went to a nobler effort than getting this man his oral sex.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. Gorsky!

I think Mr. Buffett has already made these arrangements.

"His charitable organization, the Buffett Foundation, currently has $25.3 million in assets, and these holdings are expected to swell to $36 billion when Buffett and his wife die and their shares in Berkshire Hathaway go to the Buffett Foundation, which will make it the richest charitable foundation in the world."

A Snopes Article

How, exactly, will you be showing your respect for Mr. Buffett's point of view now?

-Zipwow

Snopes is your friend.

Well, he looked more than one VC soldier directly in the eyes during battle, and shot them, so yeah, he was on the line.

The thing about the CD format chosen on the storage capacity required for Beethoven's 9th is probably an urban legend too. Probably an urban legend

> That one sounded so goofy, that it actually sounded plausible

... and it sounded plausible because (*drums*) it was true ! No, I can't fathom how the hell people would be so stupid, either. In fact, it's truly frightening to think the same guys who can't understand that a SS card with "SPECIMEN" written all over it is not genuine have the right to vote for the leaders of their country...

Well, it's possible that Japanese schoolgirls' used underwear has been RFID tagged during its product cycle already, so this is just getting closer to the source, right?

It's not a good idea to microwave an object without something to absorb the microwaves (typically water in the food you're cooking). If nothing absorbs the microwaves they may be reflected and damage the magnetron. If you want to destroy RFID's in clothing, you can add a cup of water beside it or something similar while microwaving.

If you're microwaving water beware of superheating

With regard to electronics, RFID's can be remotely killed without the use of a microwave by sending a specific signal. This allows you to target one RFID but not the one adjacent to it. You can be assured there will be consumer devices to kill RFID's. It's a hobby-project I'd like to pursue in future but there's no point until it becomes more standard.

I know you were trying to be funny, but you're wrong on two counts, a double-wammy:

First off, the swirl of toilet water being a result of the Coriolis effect is a modern myth. The real reason is simply that

Secondly, the Coriolis effect is due to the rotation of the Earth, not the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field. So, if the swirl was due to Coriolis effect, then it would only reverse direction if the entire planet reversed the direction of its rotation.

The Chevy Nova is a myth. To cite Snopes, Nova and No va are very different things in Spanish, (as different as No Table and Notable) and they wouldn't say No va anyway.

Bite the wax tadpole is pretty close though.