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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True®
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Trivia Archives
Amazing Factoid
The first non-story commentary to appear in the newsletter:
Interest in the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact on Jupiter was so intense that people couldn't get enough of it -- despite lukewarm media coverage of the once-in-a-dozen-lifetimes event.
True Joins the Web
Nearly a year old, This is True didn't even have a web site until this week.
The First Hundred
This week Jordan becomes the 100th country (that I know of) on my distribution list.
Happy Birthday, Hal!
Take a moment on Sunday to send your best wishes to the HAL 9000 computer, which was supposedly brought to consciousness on January 12, 1997 in Urbana, Illinois.
Another Myth Dispelled
This is Not an Emergency: I've had quite a few hysterical people send me an 'urgent' notice that "we" "must" flood the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in order to make it known that we do not want to allow the telephone companies to be able to charge by the minute for Internet access.
We Made It!
When I was a kid, I would sometimes wonder if I'd live to see the 21st Century. I'm not particularly old, so it wasn't a question of dying of old age first, but rather that I grew up in 1960s Los Angeles, with all the anxiety that entailed. This was an era of "duck and cover" drills in elementary schools, borne of the somewhat laughable thought that everything would be fine if you got under a desk during an "atomic war".
Echo! (Echo!)
(Heh! When I hit 'Save' on this entry, there was a net.burp and, for the first time ever, I got a duplicate post. Figures it would happen with that title, eh? :-)
Sometimes I delight in finding two or three weird stories in a short amount of time, and running them all together in the same issue. It happens more often than you might think (especially if you're not a Premium subscriber, and don't see all the stories).
Other times, the stories come out a couple of weeks apart. Such is the case this month, with two extraordinarily similar stories -- except for their outcomes.
Echo from The Past
Sometimes, life imitates art. Sometimes, art imitates life. And most of the time, you can count on criminals to imitate other criminals.
Honorary Unsubscribe Choices
Two weeks ago I ran out of time to research and write the Honorary Unsubscribe -- and then forgot to note that in the issue. The H.U. runs the following Monday in the Premium edition, and I had time to research it over the weekend, so there was an H.U. entry that week -- free edition readers just didn't see it. But it's in the archive, if you like to keep track of such things. To catch up see Hans Beck.
Tardwit
Updated:See Below |
Herb Caen: Master of the Three Dots
This story is what got me started on remembering Herb Caen -- it's from True's 17 May 2009 issue:
Facebook Protest
OK, I'm a crank. I like Facebook. I really do. But one of the things I hate about it is how all up-in-arms people get about nothing. Today, I got Yet Another "invitation" to join a group to protest Facebook's plans to start charging for using the service -- the variant I got was "NO! I WILL NOT PAY $3.99/MONTH TO USE FACEBOOK STARTING JULY 9, 2010! JOIN." Again.
Everyone Talks About the Weather
Everyone talks about the weather, but I only write about it when it's really weird!
There's No Such Thing as Writer's Block
A friend of mine asked me for some advice last week. He's preparing to leave the military, and thought writing might be his next career. Did I have any pearls of wisdom? I gave him two main pieces of advice. The second one: he must understand that there's no such thing as "writer's block."
Continue reading "There's No Such Thing as Writer's Block" »
Florida: Officially the Weirdest
Some interesting statistical analysis on True story locations from Premium subscriber Mark in (yep!) Florida:
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
It was Labor Day in the U.S. on Monday, and I was laboring. Not just to get the Premium edition out, but I put it together sitting at the Labor Day rodeo here in Ridgway, Colorado.
