Salon interviews Dave Eggers
Until I read this Salon piece, I had no idea that there was an entire “culture that's chosen to define itself in opposition to” the McSweeney's publishing cadre. McSweeneys? Who hates McSweeney's?

Then I perused the roster of articles on Salon, and it became clear why this questionable take on McSweeney's was used as their lead. Salon was once a fun literary/arty/cultural site. Now, it’s a raving, screeching partisan left-wing rant that stands opposed to anything being done by the “other side,” in this case the right wing.

This is a trend we've noticed on many web sites and publications, whose binding principles now appear to be to simply stand in opposition to the current administration. It makes us wonder: Since when did liberalism become a reactionary doctrine?

More fun with the article:
It provides a quick peak at how little prep work a reporter may do before sitting down with a subject :

Reporter: “Didn't you republish your novel "You Shall Know Our Velocity" with a different name ["Sacrament"] and ending?"

Eggers: "No, it had a different middle, actually. Just some punctuation changes toward the end.”

93% of cab drivers don't wear seatbelts
The Globe takes a look at a study put out by emergency room doctors aimed at cabbies who don't buckle up.

"Their occupation obviously puts them at higher potential risk of injuries from a motor vehicle collision.”

Missing from the story, however, is any discussion of the number of cab drivers who are, in fact, coming into emergency rooms seeking treatment for injuries sustained in traffic accidents. Just a brief statement claiming that the Boston Police could not provide any statistics (translation- the police department declined to do the reporter's homework for him.)

At Ten Angry Men, we hate cab drivers. It irritates us to hear that cab drivers get an exemption from the seatbelt law. But rather than make them wear their seatbelts, we propose that an iron spike be installed in the center of the steering wheel. Then we’ll see how safely carefully cab drivers start driving.

So a study says that 56% of NFL players are obese
According to two researchers from UNC. If by research you mean spending 20 minutes on NFL.com:

"In the study, University of North Carolina endocrinologist Joyce Harp and student Lindsay Hecht used statistics on the NFL Web site to calculate BMIs for 2,168 NFL players, nearly all those playing in the 2003-04 season."

This is bullshit, of course. The standard used in this study - body mass index - has been discredited for years, because it does not acknowledge that muscle weighs more than fat. So, for example, Schwarzenegger would be considered massively obese, if we were to rely only on the BMI standard.

More importantly: NFL players, on average, actually live longer than the average person.

"Anecdotal evidence would suggest that NFL players die young, but research suggests otherwise."

The lesson here is clear: Don't let girls write about Football.

The last word on 9/11 conspiracy theories.
This will be the last word on this nonsense. Anyone who sends us one more email challenging the events of September 11th 2001 is dead to us forever.



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