Originally, that word was ‘factoid’. The meaning shifted and now ‘factoid’ just means ‘small fact’.
You mean the book that claimed Johnson was caught humping the bullet hole in JFK’s neck? Krassner was a sick fuck.
Archives of “The Realist”, the magazine Krassner put out, are available here. This is the issue of “The Realist” it appears in, and this is the page where the good stuff is.
“Magnificent! Compared to the Internet, all other forms of human time-wasting shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.” – Not Patton.
handsomeharry writes:
> I think that we don’t want to admit it, but, the coincidences are really eerie, and
> that’s that.
No, they aren’t, at least to anyone who thinks about them for more than a few minutes. When you see any list of coincidences like that, you should go through the following procedure (and the Snopes article mostly does go through this): First, check out the list to see if there are any outright falsehoods in it and eliminate them. Second, see if there are exaggerations in the list and correct them. Third, calculate just how rare the supposed coincidences are. (Some supposed coincidences say nothing except that two items A and B both have property X, but property X is really quite common.) You should have at this point a list of the probabilities that the two items A and B both share the properties X_1, X_2, X_3, etc. Now look at all the various properties that the two items could be compared on. You’ll usually find that there are a vast number of properties that the two items don’t share. Only when you compare the number of properties that the two items share and the number of properties that they don’t share can you decide whether there is anything interesting in the number of properties that they share. All this is just another example of why you have to do the math before you can decide on the validity of an argument.
Negative. I avoid Snopes as I avoid Geraldo.
hh
Exactly. Why clutter up your mind with all those facts?
Like their wise denunciation of the 'In the butt, Bob." They sure had that one nailed didn’t they?
No, why bother with any site, as opposed to facts. They are no authority. They are a website.
At any rate I did just check them out, against my better judgement. I checked independentlly of their site, and found that there was no proof, on the first google page, of the Kennedy secretary. However, I did check it out some information, pre-internet, in my youth, and IIRC, there was somebody in a secretarial capacity with that name. He had two "Secretarys’ which may be totally different from secretary, in the accepted sense of the word. He may not have had a Cabinet Secretary, or a Personal Secretary, named Kennedy, and that may be all that researchers are looking for. So, no, I don’t have a cite. Yes, Snopes does quote some that there isn’t any proof, in that regard. I shall yield that I cannot prove it, and I am not married to that part of the L/K myth. My whole point, there are more glaring coincidences in the Lincoln-Kennedy assassinations than in others. The mere fact of assassination means, what, a 2 out of 45…50 presidents? 4 percent? So, let’s not get all Skeptical Uppity and say that there are just as many coincidences. etc…
It’s the glaring/eerie that are remarkable. Statistics allow for an outlier, and does not mean there is any significance in it, but there is an outlier. I’m not trying to convince anybody about any mystical connection, or anything else.
Quit crying about it.
And, again, don’t get me started on Snopes.
Best wishes,
hh
Have you not been paying attention? That’s the original reason for the list.
There isn’t anything glaring, eerie, or remarkable about the supposed coincidences.
I agree that it’s pure chance and all (I read that Skeptical Inquirer article, too), but most places don’t really list all the similarities. When I was in grammar school there was a lengthy list of them in Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact – longer than most others I’ve seen. Even without “stretching” things, there are a lot more than most folks realize., like:
– In his thirties, each man married a 24-year old woman who spoke fluent French
–Each served as a captain of a boat, and was an officer in a war
– Each president was shot in the head by his assassin. Their wives were sitting next to them, but not harmed. Yet the nearest man to each of them was injured by the assassin.
and so on, besides the “usual” lists. There’s a little cherry-picking there, but you can compile a much more impressive list of similarities than I’ve seen anyone do for other Presidents.
Lincoln was born in a log cabin.
When Kennedy was a child, he once spilled Log Cabin syrup in his father’s Lincoln.
It truly is eerie.
I have no idea. Did they miss that one? At any rate, please enlighten me to the sources you use that are always 100% accurate.
Websites can’t have facts? Really? If I show you a fact filled website will you concede that you are wrong?
Sure, websites can have facts. But there is a definite authoritative bias to paper, with type and binding and postal rates and stuff, that takes weeks or months to come out and is presumably going to hang around awhile.
Sure, paper can have lies too (even if it’s peer-reviewed scholarship). But fewer people want to play it loose in such a medium.
Just a nitpick. There have been four (not 2) presidents assassinated out of 43 (that’s nine percent). There have been 44 presidencies, but 43 people serve as President.
I know that. I was tying the two of them together, making it 4 percent, just the two of them. Or however many percent…you get the idea.
hh
Nevertheless, the assertion that websites and facts are in opposition, and therefore websites have no authority, is a ridiculous one.
So, who wants to take a cite from The People’s Almanac over Wikipedia?
That was a typo! I swear! :smack:
News Flash! John Kennedy foils Lincoln assassination attempt!
Hollywood recreation
In 1951 MGM released a fictional recreation of the alleged plot against Lincoln titled The Tall Target. Its story generally follows what is known about the Baltimore Plot, with some differences. It is a male NYPD detective named John Kennedy, played by Dick Powell, who contacts the administration about the conspiracy, and who boards the train hoping to discover whether any of the plotters are on board before they reach Baltimore. Kennedy discovers a plot that involves a riot to distract police protection away from Lincoln and a sharpshooter armed with a rifle with a telescopic sight to shoot the president-elect. Through Kennedy’s efforts, the attempt is aborted and key members of the conspiracy are identified. There actually was an NYPD officer named John Kennedy, who claimed to have the one who uncovered the Baltimore Plot, but he was not actually on scene as Powell’s character is in the film. Moreover, in real life, Kennedy was the Superintendent of the entire force. In the film, he is depicted as being a mere detective sergeant.
Well then, what does it mean? If we accept this list at face value, what’s the point being made? Are we supposed to think that there’s some secret Illuminati plan that’s killing Presidents over the centuries and also arranging the hiring of their secretaries?
It doesn’t have to mean anything. It can be merely odd or interesting.
It’s like Adams & Jefferson dying on the same day & that day being July 4th.