Okay so I admit it, some times I’m just not getting all I need from Cecil. So my eyes start to wander around the internet for something else. What are some other good internet columnists to read? Everybody knows about Dave Barry, but what some other good reads that arn’t that common? I’ll start the list with Jon Carrol at sfgate.com, he’s kind of well known for collecting Mondegreens but I enjoy his other columns a lot as well.
As Cecil’s evil twin, I feel it is my duty to tell him what you’ve been doing.
Of course, as Cecil’s evil twin, I know nothing. So… uh… what were we talking about?
I’ve been thinking about the same thing recently. What is the next best source of information? Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit?
Try the L.M.Boyd column, which is available online at the Burlington NC Times-News. Be forewarned though that Mr. Boyd may be more aggressive in discovering offbeat notions than fact-checking–possibly a good source for questions to toss to Cecil. Boyd’s column comes out more than once a week, and includes as many as a dozen factoids.
For instance, today’s (6/23/2000) column says “Statistics indicate musicians tend to die at an earlier average age than many other professionals.” Is that true? What happened to “soothing the savage breast”?
RM Mentock, I checked out the link that you provided. You have to love an online paper like that. One of the front page links was for a story “Some Stuff Just to Gross to Eat”.
Yes! And you might have noticed that “poke salad and wild creecy greens” was not on the list.
You can subscribe to L.M. Boyd’s column by email at:
http://www.lmboyd.com/lm2.htm
But my question remains:
What is a more reliable source of info: Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy?
“Win Ben Stein’s Money”
Survey-style questions such as this are best suited to our new forum, In My Humble Opinion. I’ll move the thread over there for you.
It’s the “starvation” factor.
This isn’t a columnist, but if you like questions and answers, I recommend http://www.last-word.com/
“This archive contains over 600 questions on scientific phenomena, with answers provided by our readers.”
Not a columnist either, but it may help you to appreciate what you have here.
Try Notes and Queries from the UK 'paper The Guardian. Not unlike here, it relies on questions sent in by the public. Answers, sometimes very misleading, sometimes very funny, occasionally authoritative, are also supplied by the public, usually as pithy one or two liners.
Sample question with a couple of answers:
It is a great column, but lacks the meat you get from Cecil.
picmr
L.M. Boyd! Bah! He does more to promote ignorance than to fight it. Remember the “ducks’ quacks don’t echo” that he perpetrated? Remember how Cecil debunked it? What did L.M. Boyd do? Tell us that owls and turkeys don’t echo either!
I really like Snopes. They come out with something new almost every day. Sometimes I don’t even hear the Urban Legend before I read its debunking on Snopes. (Charles Manson auditioned for the Monkees?)
Snopes is from the Valley? Like whoa!