I just picked up a book Just Curious, Jeeves. (I have to have something to tide me over until the next Straight Dope book comes out.) Basically it’s a book of answers to questions like “How many people have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge?” “Does a baby chick breathe inside the egg?” and “What’s a chitlin?”
But what really surprised me was their claim that Cecil Adams is actually some person they identified as Ed Gotti. Judging from his name, I’m assuming he’s a major figure in organized crime. Of course being the world’s smartest mafiaso, he was able to cover his tracks and his name was never mentioned when the rest of the Gotti family was taken down.
The link you provided did indeed send us to a thread where this was mentioned. That thread quickly focused on the “what can be seen from ‘space’” issue and had little to no input relating to the OP.
Going beyond the OP, as I’ve been reading this book, I’ve had a sense of deja vu. A suspiciously large amount of material in this book seems to be paraphrases of information previously published in The Straight Dope. I also think some of its from Feldman’s and Poundstone’s work.
