24 February 2011 - The Mad Filkentist (original) (raw)

06:16 am - Nice story, but probably false
This would be a great story, if true: A Seattle restaurant refuses service to all TSA employees. Curiously, though, the article doesn't name the restaurant, nor do a number of other news articles on the subject.

I'm more inclined to believe this Seattle Weekly blog article which says the story is probably a hoax. Huffington Post is also skeptical. It's hard to say where the source of the hoax is, as sites such as Consumerist and Raw Story have simply reported it as fact. An article on elliott.org seems to be the source of several citations. If they didn't even know what restaurant instituted the ban, wouldn't they want to do a little fact checking? Concern for accuracy would get in the way of churning out four more stories.

Now I'm really wondering about those 84,000 domains that were supposedly shut down.

Update: In an update to the article which looks like the source of all the others, Christopher Elliott admits he doesn't know the name of the alleged restaurant and isn't sure of the name of the person who reported the story. It looks as if one credulous blogger has passed on a made-up story that's been repeated on numerous sites.

11:30 am - Oddities of memory
Many years ago I read a book introduction by David Gerrold which declared that the book's author was a were-koala. Though I remembered that fact, I couldn't remember the book or the author. This weekend I picked it up by chance; it's Trek to Madworld by Stephen Goldin.

My selective memory was in the same state over a decade ago, when terriwells wrote the introduction to The Mad Scientist's Songbook for me. We had a running joke back and forth about whether I was a were-koala. She had read the introduction but couldn't remember the book either.

I've read the first few chapters of the novel, and it isn't ringing any bells. Maybe I read just the introduction. It's the only part of the book that's any good.