This link: http://www.snopes.com/lost/mred.htm
It simply can’t be true.
Or am I misreading it. Whatever Mr. Ed was, he could not have been a zebra.
If they do put bogus stuff in it, it is not as reliable a reference for UL’s as we think it is.
Well, Mjollnir, you have discovered the dark secret of Snopes. Yes, they are part of the Konspiracy to keep the bootleg organ trade in business and the 100 mpg carburators offr the market. They have the Roswell aliens and a complete collectiion of cars given to “average folk” by celebrities. They are hiding the third “gry” word.
Or, the entire “Lost Legends” section is a parody.
Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Associate Curator Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
Homo vult decipi; decipiatur
Mjollnir -
A clear straightforward answer: look at the bottom of the page for the “disclaimer”. Always read the fine print.
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“These legends aren’t really lost – we’ve known where they were the whole time! We created The Repository of Lost Legends (TRoLL for short) for those of you who don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. If you have a taste for the unusual and arcane (and can suspend your disbelief just a little), sample some of these precious gems.”
Stephen
Stephen’s Website
Satellite Hunting 1.1.0 visible satellite pass prediction
shareware available for download at
Satellite Hunting
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought so.
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/001250.html
If you go through the front of the site and go to the TROLL section there’s a disclaimer. However, if you get to that page via a search link there’s no warning. I’m not seeing the disclaimer that Old Broad’s talking about.
I did get to it thru the search link, and I did not recall any disclaimer, either.
There isn’t really a disclaimer on the page itself, unless you ‘understand’ what is meant by the message to listen to what Mr. Ed has to say, i.e., "I may not have gone to college, but I’m not stupid.
No, Mr Ed wasn’t a zebra, but his VOICE was provided by a talking zebra.
After all, there’s really no such thing as a talking horse, so they had to dub his voice from somewhere.
go to the link posted in Mjollnir’s original post. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see the following:
Warning: Listen to Mr. Ed.
The “warning” is the disclaimer. What does it mean? WAG: “A horse is a horse of course of course…”
If you follow the link to the next legend about Tarzana, CA you’ll see a more obvious disclaimer at the bottom: Disclaimer: This isn’t funny or true.
General rule of thumb: If it looks too good to be true; it probably isn’t. Corollary: if it looks to weird to be true, it probably isn’t.
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Obviously, the Mr. Ed story was a joke. ANy animal expert will tell you it’s impossible to train a zebra to do ANYTHING!!!
Still, while this particular piece was never meant as anything but a joke, MANY reference books and other guides DO occasionally plant false information here and there, to trap would-be plagiarists. Example: If you buy a map of your home town, there are likely to be a few non-existent roads printed on it. That way, anyone who tried to copy the map and sell it could be nailed for copyright infringement.
The Mr. Ed story was such an obvious joke, it wouldn’t work for THAT purpose, though.
I’ve been fooled by one of their prank debunkings before, though I won’t confess which.
But the bone I have to pick with Snopes is that they claim that the folk etymology of `mad as a hatter’ is wrong, but the argument they give for that claim is clearly wrong. I have brought this up on a number of occasions, but there has been no response except that Barbara once asked me to send her the information I had. I did, and I presume she looked it over, because the Last Updated date changed, though the contents of the page had not.
http://www.snopes.com/spoons/fracture/hatter.htm
They cite, as evidence that the story is false, a dubious claim that the phrase was originally mad as an atter,' but neither they nor their source present citations. There are, however, documented uses of mad as a hatter’ from as far back as 1849.
They claim that Lewis Carroll coined the phrase, which he did not, as the 1849 citation clearly shows.
They claim that at the time Carrol was writing the word mad' did not mean insane’ and I cited an Anglo-Saxon dictionary, a Middle English dictionary and three literary sources to show that mad' has meant insane’ for as long as it has been in the english language.
I don’t think they’re ignoring me on purpose, but I know I’ve posted about this three times at least, and sent e-mail directly to Barbara once, and I’m frustrated that my irrefutable evidence isn’t even given a day in court. But, since I don’t want to appear to be some sort of obsessed loony, I have given up trying.
Johnny, the Word Detective seems to support your cause, and in fact states that the common etymology is correct. (I wouldn’t call it folk etymology because I think that implies it’s wrong.) http://www.greenapple.com/~words1/030299.html#madhatter
John, don’t feel bad – I went around for about three months telling people the “Kentucky Fried Chicken changed to KFC because the state of Kentucky wanted a royalty” – and I’m from freakin’ Kentucky! I’m afraid the snopes site has become a victim to some extent of its own success. I’ve spotted several other instances in the past where they’ve actually played a little carelessly with truth, mainly in denoting a UL as either true or false when even the evidence they provide clearly only justifies rating it as ‘undetermined’, but I’ve noticed as the site has become more and more popular that snopes has tended to let it go to his head, and he’s in real danger of succumbing to ‘False Adams Syndrome’. And even He To Whom We Attend has admitted an occasional error.
I’ll agree that I read Johnny’s posts and he makes some good points (although that’s not the name he uses on snopes), but Dennis (DIF) I don’t think you ever won an arguement that warrented changing anything. Of course since you left in a huff because your “read” posts weren’t being highlighted properly and you blamed it on their message board (never mind that the rest of us weren’t having this problem)I guess you have given up the fight.
We still want to see those “shadows in space.”
Getting back to those “lost legends” over at snopes for a moment, Spud… Take that “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” for example: what sort of evil genius comes up with that stuff?
Tammi “nursery crime” Terrell
I went back to snopes.com and re-read the site. I agree with DIF. There’s no deliberately false info, except for the pranks, but the Mikkelsons’ have definitely let their fame (such as it is) go to their heads. I can see the difference in attitudes between the older research (when snopes.com was an obscure site) and the more recent inflated-ego stuff. Kinda reminds me of Cecil…Mayby I should copy this to the “Is Cecil Real?” thread :).
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
Tammi… I thought you were dead.
Some people’s sluthing abilities really amaze/scare me. You are right though… pure genius.
p.s. wasn’t trying to be harsh on Dennis… just hoping to nudge him into coming back and adding his unique style to snopes.
By the way Tammi… there was a thread here somewhere about “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” that may interest you.
Did I get it… if so, yes, it did help.
While I did claim it was EVIL genius, Spud, I’ll concede “pure genius” based on this and past exploits.
(Funny you should mention “My Bonnie…”: Marvin and I recorded that on CT back in '68 [the B side was “On the Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond”]. Very perceptive of you.)
So this is the secret hideout? If any of you see Our Goddess, her handheld Mike, and her faulkner student, tell them it’s getting Lord of the Flies-y back home again. Oh, and it’s high time that DIF returned as well.
Yes, I am dead, and boy does my brain hurt.
Tammi “bring back, my ass” Terrell
Tammi, I still ‘drive by’ the site once in a while – however, I’ve got quite a bit of reading to catch up on and mayhaps even some real work sometime soon. I just got fed up (besides snopes not being able to keep the board up and running time after time) seeing the same dumb questions being posted instead of the poster doing the intelligent thing and checking the UL database – although, to be honest, the database leaves a lot to be desired, as well, since it seems to ‘miss’ finding things that are there even when someone enters what you’d think would be a perfectly good word or phrase to search on.
And Mr. Potatohead! MR. POTATOHEAD! The reason you “don’t think” I ever won an argument “that warrented*{sic}* changing anything” was because I never bothered to argue that much with snopes about what was posted to the database section. I also wasn’t the only one having recurrent trouble with the titles processing properly. I didn’t “leave in a huff”, either, I left because there’s so much more of interest to encounter on theseboards.
As for ‘shadows in space’ – still, as time permits, trying to find a video clip that portrays them.