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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True®
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Patrick Timoney's "Gun"
The "zero tolerance" stories just don't stop, despite court decisions and legislators demanding "common sense". A 2" hunk of plastic isn't a gun, unless you're a hysterical grade school principal who demands that 9-year-olds in your care sign confessions when they bring a toy to school.
New Project: the Mug Shot Museum
The last time I posted a police photo of someone I wrote about in True*, more than 10,000(!!) people went and looked.
On Stage with Penn & Teller
This is the sordid tale of my having been exposed to Teller's bodily fluids.
Mystery Power Outage
We have a pretty complex power system at our house in the country: critical systems (heat, fridge/freezer, and the office, including the computer network) are on backup power so we can run them for days in case of a power outage. The worst so far has been just a few hours, most recently when a pole on the edge of our property snapped when it was really, really cold (apparently the pole had rotted, and then couldn't take the cold). So I was really perplexed when I got an alert last night that the backed-up circuits had failed ...yet the rest of the house was on. Huh?!
Ed Freeman and Political Manipulation
I generally don't want suggestions for True's Honorary Unsubscribe feature; my usual problem is having far too many possibilities for the one slot each week. In July, a new trend started, and has not stopped (I got another last week): people wanting me to do an Honorary Unsubscribe write-up for Ed Freeman, a brave Vietnam War helicopter pilot who saved about 30 shot-up kids and was awarded the Medal of Honor -- the U.S.'s highest military decoration.
A Picture Worth 1,000 Anytime Minutes
Sure: a picture is "worth 1,000 words". Sometimes it's worth 1,000 minutes on your cell phone plan, as in this case. The story, from True's 27 December 2009 issue:
Avatar Movie Review
I'm not sure if I've ever done a movie review in True before, and I won't be doing them that often, but I went to see Avatar this weekend, and I was very impressed. Over the past several weeks I saw a lot of the hype for the movie, including quite a few clips, and frankly none of it attracted me. I was intrigued that several actors who weren't in the movie were promoting it, apparently not sent by the studio or James Cameron; that said more to me than anything else.
A Clever Disguise...?
Once again, a picture is worth a thousand words. But I'm not sure that in this case, two pictures are worth two thousand words!
Dell Hell and Dumb People
I know This is True is about people doing dumb things, but it still amazes me when people do dumb things to me. (But no, this is not about a dumb reader.)
Paul Clarke and British Zero Tolerance
Update:Clarke Goes Free |
Often when I include an article about "zero tolerance" in True, I hear from people outside the United States who claim some variation of "only in America!"
Not so, of course. Some of the most outrageous examples happen in the British Commonwealth countries, including England. Such was the case this week (the 15 November 2009 edition), with this outrage:
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