Maybe Cecil should resurrect his article on hypnotizing chickens in honor of the man who invented the Internet (and practices hypnosis on birds)!
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_012.html
Dang I’m confused. Couldja dumb that down for me a little?
I tried to find a link to the story to no avail. Anyway, Gore was campaigning this week at an elementary school. He was asked by a boy how to hypnotize a chicken. The funniest part is - he knew the answer.
Gore also claimed to have invented the Internet during his Senatorial career.
Sorry for not expanding on this in my original post.
OK, I’ve been poking around for a source on the “Gore invented the internet” thing and can’t find one. Is it actually in print somewhere that Al Gore said he invented the Internet? What I remember reading is that Gore was an early supporter of a number of initiatives to expand the underlying internet technology.
“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”— Albert Gore on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” (March 9, 1999).
From the General Questions thread on the subject.
NYC IRL III
is on April 15th. Do you have what it takes?
So he didn’t say that he “invented” the Internet. Good. Let’s hope people stop saying that he did say it.
Well, he did say that he “created” it, which brings up images of him stringing cable across the USA and setting up routers…
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
Yes, America deserves a more credible president. Like someone who thinks Canada is ruled by a plate of french fires.
The key words here are “took the initiative”, meaning he introduced or sponsored legislation that allowed the funding.
Very misleading, but true.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
Delta-9 Home Page
Well, you can read it that way (and that’s obviously how the Veep prefers to think he meant it), but you can also say that the guy who installed my new screen door “took the initiative in creating a more attractive entrance to Da Ace’s domicile.” What he was doing is taking credit for making something when he should rightfully have only part of the credit.
“Took the initiative” really just means “I was really really important in seeing that X got done,” or perhaps “I was willing to do this when nobody else was.” I think the latter is untrue; the same sort of thing would still have been done even without Big Ol’ Al. And the former depends on your definition of important; obviously what he did was very helpful and was instrumental in molding the web in the early '90s, but I don’t think it’s clear that we wouldn’t still have basically the same thing absent Senator Gore.
That said, it’s certainly not the stupidest thing a politician has ever said, by any stretch of the imagination…
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
Anyway…I know how to hypnotize a garter snake if anyone wants to know.
I’d like to know if there’s a way to hypnotize all the politicians so they always tell the truth. 
Originally posted by Little Nemo:
I’m lost. Are you saying
(a) the alternative candidate (Bush) thinks Canada is ruled by a plate of french fires (fries?);
(b) even someone who thinks Canada is ruled by a plate of french fires would be a better choice for pres than Gore.
I can’t decide which way that slam is pointed.
Irishman,
you must have missed this thread last month: George Dubya Gets an Endorsement
For the record, poutine is not just a plate of French fries (“frites” in Québec) - you have to have curds and gravy for the real poutine - yum! Some affecianados swear it also has to be served in a brown paper bag - none of that fake poutine that McDonald’s sells in Québec.
and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel to toe
Speaking as someone who watches This Hour Has 22 Minutes most every week, here’s the skinny on the Jean Poutine thing:
THH22M is a weekly satirical news program on the CBC. One of their regular segments stars Rick Mercer (a Newfoundlander cut from the Dennis Miller mold) doing man-on-the-street segments in the States. And nothing against the many American inhabitants of the Straight Dope’s message boards, but let’s just say that you’re the kind of person Rick ain’t talking to.
Two previous “Talking to Americans” segments had man-in-the-street interviews where people cheered on Canada’s efforts to preserve its parliamentary building, the National Igloo, and condemned UN intervention in the former soviet socialist republic of Saskatchewan. (This latter took place on the Harvard campus, by the way. Your education dollars at work.)
Rick wasn’t really doing anything new in the Jean Poutine segment. This is just the first time that the dimwit American on the other end of the microphone happened to think that he could be the president.
Rationalize it all you want, the creation of the internet took place in the fifties. Al Bore isn’t that old, thats why so many people get a kick out of his statement.
He should be credited with creating in-(white)house campaign financing.
Okay, I’ll rationalize it all I want: in which year of the 1950s were the first mass-market ISPs created? Was it 1955 when the White House started pushing the idea that every house in the country should have a computer and modem, or 1959?
When Gore said “the Internet”, I have no difficulty believing:
A) that he meant the nashnul-sooperhighway Internet of Amazon.com and AOL, not the loose connection of academic Sun boxes and a few unclassified military computers where the influx of psu.edu students onto Usenet could actually be considered a major event;
and B) if he’d just said that instead of using the same sort of shorthand that gives us phrases like “it’s the economy, stupid” or “reformer with results”, he’d have looked a lot smarter.
Having seen some of the people Jay Leno runs into on his Jaywalking segments, I’m not surprised. Those clowns don’t know jack about American pop culture, either, much less Canadian politics.
And I’m not sure I’d have caught the Poutine/Cretien thing. But I guess I don’t have to worry since I’m not running for president.
I think I’ve come up with a formula to determine whether or not a politician is telling the truth!
This is an “open source” formula, so please
feel free to add on to it. It still needs
work because it’s only correct 99.9% of the time.
Words from politician’s mouth = a
Opposite of what politician says = b
b - a = truth
“If at first you don’t succeed, give up. Then again, I’m surprised you even tried at all”. - The Pessimist’s Book of Proverbs 1:1
No, I’m sorry, Gore sounds too stupid to ever look smart!