Hoax Museum Blog: Literature/Language

Author pretends to have book selected for Oprah’s Book Club — image Author Bill Schneider claimed on his website that his most recent (self-published) novel, Crossed Paths, had been selected for Oprah's Book Club. He also claimed that Oprah had interviewed him on her show. To prove this, he posted a full, five-page transcript of the interview.

Turns out none of this was true. A spokeswoman for Oprah Winfrey said, "He is misrepresenting himself and he has no relationship with Oprah's Book Club." Schneider, who also is director of the Office of Tourism for Provincetown, Massachusetts, now says he made "an error in judgement."

The mystery here is how he could have thought he would get away with such a stupid, obvious lie. Perhaps he figured that the publicity from having the hoax exposed would be better than no publicity at all. (If that's what he thought, he may be right.) Or perhaps he's simply delusional. The latter theory is supported by his response to the reporter from Boston's Weekly Dig who first exposed the hoax. The reporter phoned Schneider and asked him when, exactly, he appeared on Oprah: "June 18, I believe," Schneider said, "but you'll have to check with my publicist." Then he started gushing about how "your whole life changes after Oprah."

Schneider has now removed all Oprah-related claims from his website, but he's still claiming that his novel is being developed into a feature film. My guess is that he's shooting the film himself with a video camera. (Thanks, Joe)
Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007.   Comments (3)

Poe Toaster Revealed — image RainOubliette has beaten me to the punch and already posted about this in the forum, but I've been getting so many emails about it that it obviously belongs here on the front page as well.

For decades a mysterious figure has visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poe in Westminster Churchyard, Baltimore on the anniversary of Poe's birthday and placed three roses and a bottle of cognac on the writer's grave. The figure has become known as the "Poe Toaster."

Now a man, Sam Porpora, has stepped forward who claims to have been the original Poe Toaster, and to have started the tradition as a kind of promotional hoax. USA Today reports:
Porpora's story begins in the late 1960s. He'd just been made historian of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, built in 1852. There were fewer than 60 congregants and Porpora, in his 60s, was one of the youngest. The overgrown cemetery was a favorite of drunken derelicts. The site needed money and publicity, Porpora recalled. That, he said, is when the idea of the Poe toaster came to him. The story, as Porpora told it to a local reporter then, was that the tribute had been laid at the grave on Poe's Jan. 19 birthday every year since 1949. Three roses — one for Poe, one for his wife, and one for his mother-in-law — and a bottle of cognac, because Poe loved the stuff even though he couldn't afford to drink it unless someone else was buying. The romantic image of the mysterious man in black caught the fancy of Poe fans and a tradition grew. In about 1977, Jerome began inviting a handful of people each year to a vigil for the mysterious stranger. The media began chronicling the arrivals and departures of a "Poe-like figure." In 1990, Life magazine published a picture of the shrouded individual. In 1993, he left a note saying "the torch would be passed." Another note in 1998 announced that the originator of the tradition had died. Later vigil-keepers reported that at least two toasters appeared to have taken up the torch in different years.
Porpora is definitely a credible candidate for having been the originator of the tradition. However, there's some debate about whether the legend actually predates him. If it does, Porpora obviously couldn't have invented the tradition. I did a search through newspaperarchive.com, looking for any mention of the legend before the 1970s, but couldn't find anything, even though there were many stories about Poe's grave in 1949 on the 100th anniversary of his death.

Honestly, when I first saw this story it didn't seem like a hoax to me. After all, even if Porpora was the Poe Toaster, his appreciation for the writer was obviously genuine, and so the gesture was an honest one. The only hoaxy element was to add a flair of drama by hiding the identity of the Poe Toaster, and to (perhaps) fudge about how long the tradition had been going on for.

Ironically, there are doubts that Poe's body is even in the grave. In 1875 Poe's body was disinterred and moved, except that no one was quite sure which grave belonged to Poe since his gravestone had been removed. There's also a strong possibility his body had long ago been stolen by medical students for use in anatomy classes, since Westminster cemetery was a common source for cadavers.

Whether or not it's a hoax, the Poe Toaster legend recalls the "Lady in Black" legend, in which a lady dressed in black would visit the grave of Rudolph Valentino and lay a red rose on it. This tradition was said to have been started either by a Hollywood press agent or by the florist across the street from Valentino's grave.

Update: I received the following email from Jeffrey Savoye of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore:
Okay, this silly story is really getting out of hand. Sam Porpora has a long history of making things up for the sake of publicity, which in this case is rather ironic as it is itself a publicity stunt about claiming to have started something else as a publicity stunt. As noted in the AP article, there is a clipping from the Baltimore Sun from 1950 which mentions what is essentially the modus operandi of the Poe Toaster. I was only an English major, but this is clearly long before Sam is claiming to have "started" the tradition.

in the 1970s, Sam Porpora claimed that there was a mass burial grave of Revolutionary War soldiers in the catacombs of Westminster Church, where Poe is buried. It turned out that the pile of bones were from pigs, not humans and of apparently fairly recent vintage. (Hmmmmm, I wonder how those got there? In any case, I suspect that there were very few porcine participants in any of the major battles.) He also invented stories of the catacombs being used in the Underground Railroad, with a crypt on the outside being used to get into another crypt on the inside of the basement area. (Unfortunately, the basement was essentially open to the outside until the 1930s, when it was finally closed up to keep out vagrants -- thus no need for a secret tunnel in the 1850s.) The fact is that Sam makes up stories, and this is apparently just another one of them -- not the event itself but his claim that he originated it. At best, he might have termed the phrase "Poe Toaster," for which, I suppose, some credit is due. The rest of his claims should not be accepted without verifiable evidence, which he does not have.

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007.   Comments (6)

To Embiggen — Scientific American reports that a nonsense word from The Simpsons has made its way into a scientific paper. Stanford University physicist Shamit Kachru managed to slip the word "embiggen" into a journal article titled "Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking."

The word embiggen first appeared in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons. It was used by Jebediah Springfield in these lines of dialogue:
Jebediah: [on film] A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Edna: Embiggens? I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield
Ms. Hoover: I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word.
Here's how Kachru used the word in his article:
While in both cases for P anti-D3-branes the probe approximation is clearly not good, in the set up of this paper we could argue that there is a competing effect which can overcome the desire of the anti-D3s to embiggen, namely their attraction towards the wrapped D5s. Hence, also on the gravity side, the non-supersymmetric states would naively be meta-stable.
This isn't the first time joke words have made their way into usage. I think the words "hornswoggle" and "absquatulate" started out as jokes, invented by people in the midwest. But now they appear in many dictionaries.
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007.   Comments (20)

Wayne Redhart’s Amazon Reviews — Many of you may remember Amazon reviewer Henry Raddick. Sadly, Raddick hasn't reviewed any books since 2003. But a new Raddick has emerged: Wayne Redhart. At least, Redhart seems to be doing what he can to fill the void left by Raddick.

And I was quite pleased to discover Redhart has reviewed Hippo Eats Dwarf. Here's his review:

Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.
by Alex Boese
Edition: Paperback
Price: £6.26

A fine guide, 29 Jul 2007
Covering such diverse topics as the Turin Shroud and the 'death' of Elvis Presley, this is an extremely witty and informative guide to notorious hoaxes. It never fails to go into detail and often comes out with little-known facts. I had never before realised that the publication of Alan Sokal's spoof scientific-paper constituted treason, or that he was jailed for seven years (a portion of the sentence having been served in Al Capone's former cell at Alcatraz). Similarly, it was a shock to learn that John Major is a dedicated crop-circle maker, who regularly rose before 3am to create arable-mischief: while serving as Prime Minister! Amazon users may be interested to note the inclusion of Amazon.com's top 500 reviewer Henry Raddick, whose many spoof reviews are well-known across the internet. Boese spends a little time exploring the psychology of hoaxers but, despite his best efforts, he is unable to come up with an answer to the biggest question: What actually motivates these morally-bankrupt buffoons to waste everybody's time on such vapid, unfunny pranks?

I wonder what he'd have to say about Elephants on Acid?
(Thanks, Andrew)

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007.   Comments (1)


Jane Austen Rejected — Could Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated and popular writers in the English language, get published today? To find out, David Lassman, director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, typed up some opening chapters of her books, added a cover letter with plot synopses, and sent them off to publishers. He changed the titles of the works, renamed the characters, and called himself "Alison Laydee," but otherwise he didn't change Austen's prose. Here's the rather predictable result of Lassman's experiment, as described by the Guardian:
the deception was not spotted and the rejection letters thudded on to Mr Lassman's doormat, most notably one from Penguin. Its letter read: "Thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book First Impressions. It seems like a really original and interesting read." Only one person appeared to have spotted the deception, Alex Bowler, of Jonathan Cape. His reply read: "Thank-you for sending us the first two chapters of First Impressions; my first impression on reading these were ones of disbelief and mild annoyance, along, of course, with a moment's laughter. "I suggest you reach for your copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I'd guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter, and make sure that your opening pages don't too closely mimic that book's opening."
If Lassman's prose was not original to himself, neither was the hoax itself. This type of hoax has definitely been done before. It's periodically perpetrated by disgruntled authors hoping to reveal the superficiality of the publishing industry. Lassman, for instance, is nursing a grudge because his novel Freedom's Temple, "a modern take on the story of Theseus and the Minotaur," has failed to find a publisher. But though the hoax has been done before, the lesson it teaches is one that's worth repeating -- namely that relying on talent alone is probably not enough to guarantee getting published. A little bit of luck is also necessary (and having contacts inside the publishing industry doesn't hurt either).

Some recent examples of this genre of hoax, reported here: The Wraith Picket Experiment, in which chapters from the award-winning Australian writer Patrick White's novels were submitted to publishers and rejected; and Booker Prize Winners rejected, in which chapters from the works of V.S. Naipaul and Stanley Middleton were rejected by 20 publishers.
Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007.   Comments (11)

“The Secret” — Yes, it's another questionable literary enterprise. You've probably heard of "The Secret," a self-help book/cultural phenomenon. As with any such thing, it's Oprah-approved.

"The Secret" claims to reveal a Secret of the Universe, which is (SPOILER ALERT!) that you can have whatever you want, if you just think about it REALLY HARD. OK, that's a wee bit flip, but that really is the gist of the "secret."

Well, you also have to be a good person and you can't wish for bad stuff, but other than that, if you want it, you can and WILL get it.

It's all based on the "Law of Attraction," which author Laura Byrne says governs the universe. She goes on to explain, "The law of attraction says that like attracts like, and when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside, the law will use people, circumstances and events to magnetize what you want to you, and magnetize you to it."

Not to be a big Cosmic Party Pooper or anything, but if you're going to propose a Physical Law of the Universe and compare it to magnetism, just for starters you really ought to know that with magnets, OPPOSITES attract. Just sayin'

I could go on and on about why this kind of thing really pisses me off, but I'm more interested in what you all have to say. So, here's a link.

Ok, have at it!
Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007.   Comments (32)

JT LeRoy, phantom author (Updated!) — This is a weird one. A book allegedly written by a young man, JT LeRoy, made a sensation recently. JT was a truck stop hooker, got involved with drugs, was possibly transgendered and generally had a pretty screwed-up life. The book was billed as non-fiction, supposedly the true story of JT's life. Naturally, it sold very well.

Oprah loved it, the movie director Gus VanSant and other Hollywood types were interested in it. Then the JT LeRoy saga started coming apart. Funny story, turns out there is no such person as JT LeRoy.

Even funnier, also turns out that more than one person, some of them female, portrayed JT at book signings and other appearances. As you'd expect, the people who put up good money to produce a book based on "JT"'s life story didn't see the humor in the situation. They sued Laura Albert, the woman who really wrote the book and who recruited friends and relatives to play JT.

The case came to trial this week. I don't want to spoil the ending for you, so click on the link and see how the case turned out. Oh, and you're gonna LOVE Albert's lawyer's defense of her actions. It's, uh, creative, I'll give him that.

AOL News, JT LeRoy.

OK, this is annoying. The article that link takes you to had a summary of Albert's defense of her actions, but it's been changed since I originally copied the link. The gist of it is that the lawyer said that Albert suffered from "multiple personalities." Now you *might* be able to buy that, but she claims that her multiples were contagious (my term) to explain how other people portrayed "JT" when the "author" needed to make an appearance. I've found the reference elsewhere, though.

From the Augusta Chronicle:

Albert and her lawyers say the matter is more complicated.

The middle-aged Albert testified during the trial that she had been assuming male identities for decades as a coping mechanism for psychological problems brought on by her sexual abuse as a child. To her, she said, Leroy was real — something akin to a different personality living inside her, but one that was capable of transferring to the people she hired to impersonate him.


UPDATE:

If the meme of the 90's was, "I know I did something wrong, but I apologize from the bottom of my heart and, by the way, I've found Jesus," the Ought's version seems to be, "I have no idea why you think what I did was wrong. I'm a misunderstood genius unappreciated by philistines like you."

I direct your attention to:

Gawker story on J T LeRoy.
Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007.   Comments (11)

Winner and Loser Lane — The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the Lane family from New York City in which the father named one of his sons Winner and the other Loser. (Actually, the article is a few years old, but it was new to me.) At first the article struck me as sounding too weird to be true. Why would a father name his son Loser? But apparently it's true. At least, it's been reported elsewhere by credible sources, such as in this Slate.com article by the Freakonomics authors.

The story is that the father, Robert Lane, decided to call his son Winner, thinking it would give the kid a boost in life. Three years later he had another son, and on the spur of the moment decided to call him Loser. As the Freakonomics authors say about his decision, "Robert wasn't unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name's bookend effect." If the guy had a third son he should have called him "Lover." That, at least, would have fit with the last name.

The punchline to the story is that Winner Lane ended up as a loser in life, a petty criminal living homeless on the streets. Loser Lane, on the other hand, has been a success in life. He's a detective in the South Bronx.

I should add Loser Lane to my unfortunate names thread.
Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007.   Comments (12)

Quick Links: Jesus on Google Maps, etc. — image
Jesus on Google Maps
Brian Martin claims that he saw the shape of Jesus in the clouds above Mount Sinai.
(Thanks, Madmouse.)

Cat Gives Birth to 'Puppy'
Following on from the Japanese poodle scam hoax, this made me laugh.
A cat in Zhengzhou, China has supposedly given birth to a litter of four, one of which looks like a poodle. There are no pictures to accompany the article, however.
(Thanks, Robert.)

Sexism in Tetris
It seems a lot of people didn't realise the April 1st post on this computer site was a joke.
(Thanks, ponygirl.)
Posted: Wed May 02, 2007.   Comments (6)

Did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein? — A book coming out next month, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, by independent scholar John Lauritsen, argues that Mary Shelley did not write Frankenstein. Instead, Lauritsen argues, the credit should go to her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Why? For one, Lauritsen suggests Mary was too young and inexperienced as a writer to have penned a classic like Frankenstein. (She was nineteen at the time.) Lauritsen also suggests that the language of Frankenstein sounds like something Percy would have written. The Sunday Times reports:
He says some of the language, with lines such as "I will glut the maw of death", were pure Shelley, and that the young aristocrat wrote a handful of fashionable horror tales that echo the later tone of Frankenstein. Lauritsen said Shelley had many reasons to disguise his authorship, including hints of "free love" that had already driven him out of England and an undertone of "Romantic, but I would not say gay, male love". Another factor may have been the critics, who hated it. The Quarterly Review of 1818 said the story of Frankenstein, the Swiss scientist who creates a monster from body parts, only to see it run amok, was a "tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity".
Most literary critics aren't buying Lauritsen's argument. Germaine Greer, writing in The Guardian, argues that Mary Shelley must have written Frankenstein because a) the book is actually pretty badly written, as one would expect from a 19-year-old, and b) the underlying theme of the book is a very feminine one:
"The driving impulse of this incoherent tale is a nameless female dread, the dread of gestating a monster... Percy was capable perhaps of imagining such a nightmare, but it is the novel's blindness to its underlying theme that provides the strongest evidence that the spinner of the tale is a woman. It is not until the end of the novel that the monster can describe himself as an abortion. If women's attraction to the gothic genre is explained by the opportunity it offers for the embodiment of the amoral female subconscious, Frankenstein is the ultimate expression of the female gothic."
I'm inclined to believe that Mary Shelley is the true author of Frankenstein. But it is an interesting question to think about.
Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007.   Comments (16)

Quick Links: Save Boston, etc. —
Save Boston
A little game based on the Boston bomb scare.

Children’s TV Presenter Accused of Obscenity in Sign Language
Mr Tumble, a presenter on the children's BBC programme Something Special has been greeting the viewers with controversial signing. The BBC claim that the misunderstanding was due to their use of Makaton sign language, as opposed to British sign language.
(Thanks, Madmouse.)

Man Banned From Pub for Farting
Since Scotland's smoking ban came into force, an Edinburgh man's 'unbearable stench' has led to him being barred from his favourite pub.
(Thanks, Matt.)
Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007.   Comments (3)

Prank the Monkey — SUMMARY: An interesting and informative read, and one that's sure to raise a few laughs. The Museum of Hoaxes awards it four out of five banana peels.
image

Sir John Hargrave, as he’s now legally known, is host of the zug.com website. He has authored Prank the Monkey, a humourous book chronicling the various pranks, tricks and hoaxes he has perpetrated on deserving parties over the course of his prankster career.

John says: ”It’s not that I have a problem with authority; it’s that I have a problem with senseless authority. I have no problems with rules, just ridiculous rules."

Prank the Monkey certainly follows through on his reasoning. The book covers pranks involving everyone from Wal-Mart to Ashton Kutcher, from real-estate spammers to US senators.

For a full review, please click here.
Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007.   Comments (6)

Quick Links: Pig-Tossing, etc. — Pig-Tossing
A number of incidents involving animal throwing have been reported in West Point, Miss., leading one to the conclusion that the sport is the new fad for those to whom cow-tipping is just too passé.

Mayor of Lebanon Sends Chain Letter
The Mayor of Lebanon was not available to comment after he discovered that the Make-A-Wish chain letter that he sent to 33 other businessmen was a hoax.

Woman Sues Over Fake Avocado Dip
A Los Angeles woman has filed a lawsuit against Kraft, claiming that what they label as guacamole... well, isn't.
Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006.   Comments (14)

Tall-Tale Creature Haiku — A few months ago one of the site-related projects I was working on was revising the Tall-Tale Creature Gallery. Before I got totally sidetracked by having to focus on my next book, I managed to add quite a few new creatures to it. I also added a feature allowing people to post haiku about the creatures, thus returning to the theme of hoax haiku first seen here two years ago.

I didn't expect to get many haiku contributions. After all, I hadn't told anyone that I had updated the gallery, and it usually only gets a few visitors. But to my surprise people have found it and have been posting haiku. So I wanted to give a heads up about it here on the front page in case anyone else feels like trying their hand at poetry. Here are a few examples of contributions so far:

The Tree Squeak
Tree hugging tree squeek
why do you squeek so loudly
hush I cannot think.

The Haggis
Shy, furry haggis
lover of the highland glens
stay safe in your den

Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
Eight armed octopus
Swinging through the trees above
what on earth was that?

Eventually I want to integrate hoax haiku throughout more of the galleries, but that will have to wait until I have more time. Though I definitely plan to add it as a feature to the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes before next April 1, so if anyone wants to start posting haiku in the comments there, feel free to do so. A few of the hoaxes in the 'Hoaxes Throughout History' Gallery also have haiku in the sidebar: The Shroud of Turin, Pope Joan, The Feejee Mermaid, Cardiff Giant, Piltdown Man, Cottingley Fairies, Loch Ness Monster, War of the Worlds, and Bigfoot.
Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006.   Comments (16)

An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin — image The literary world has been talking about a work of fiction that managed a brief masquerade as nonfiction. The book is An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin, by Rohan Kriwaczek. As the title suggests, it tells the history of that popular genre of music, funerary violin music. The Guardian reports:
By the early 19th century, the book says, virtually every town had its own funerary violinist, but the tradition was almost wiped out in the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830s and 40s. The author, Rohan Kriwaczek, describes himself on a site on Myspace.com as being the president of the guild that represents a dwindling band of musicians dedicated to this largely forgotten art-form. But all references to the guild lead back to Kriwaczek, and several experts on the history of the violin say they have never heard of him or the tradition.
The book will be published next month by Duckworth Publishers in Britain, and Overlook Press in America. The publisher claims that it believed the book to be a work of genuine nonfiction. Or rather, it didn't care too much whether it was fiction or nonfiction because it thought the book was interesting. The hoax was "exposed" by a book-buyer in Iowa City who saw the book described in Overlook's catalog, thought it looked fishy, and brought it to the attention of David Schoenbaum, an expert in the history of the violin and also a reviewer for the New York Times. The Times then revealed the hoax.

Personally I'm thinking the publisher probably had a hand in the exposure of the hoax. What better publicity could a book get than to be "exposed" by the Times right before its debut?
Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006.   Comments (15)

Writer Behind J.T. LeRoy Comes Clean — Laura Albert, the writer behind J.T. LeRoy, has finally confessed to the hoax.

She says that her psychiatrist encouraged her to write when she was in therapy.
In terms of her attitude to perpetrating a hoax, the article says: When asked if she felt any shame about misleading people, she replied: "I bleed, but it's a different kind of shame... If knowing that I'm 15 years older than (LeRoy) devalues the work, then I'm sorry they feel that way."

Although it was fairly clear that the young man was fictional, even when Geoffrey Knoop (the partner of Laura Albert, and half-brother to LeRoy's 'public face', Savannah Knoop) confessed to his part in the scam, he said he doubted Albert would ever admit it, and was quoted as saying:"For her, it's very personal. It's not a hoax. It's a part of her."

Seems he was wrong.

Previous posts on J.T. LeRoy:
February 07 2006 Knoop Confesses JT Leroy Was a Hoax
October 10, 2005: Is JT Leroy A Hoax?
January 9, 2006: JT Leroy: An Update

(Thanks, J.)
Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006.   Comments (3)

The Betjeman Letter — British papers have been reporting details of a literary hoax. The characters involved aren't that well known (at least to me), but the punchline is kind of amusing.

Two years ago A.N. Wilson, biographer of poet laureate Sir John Betjeman, found a love letter written by the poet. Or, at least, he thought he had. Turns out the letter must have been deliberately planted to embarrass him because a journalist found a coded message inside of it. The Guardian reports:
The telltale sign that the letter is a joke is that the capital letters at the start of each sentence spell out "A N Wilson is a shit". A journalist drew the biographer's attention to the coded message last week, and after rereading the letter he admitted that it was a hoax. "Of course I saw the funny side - I laughed about it a lot when I found out," Wilson told the Guardian yesterday. "It is quite childish of somebody and I have absolutely no interest in who wrote it."
Here's the love letter, with the code highlighted:
Darling Honor,
I loved yesterday. All day, I've thought of nothing else. No other love I've had means so much. Was it just an aberration on your part, or will you meet me at Mrs Holmes's again - say on Saturday? I won't be able to sleep until I have your answer.
Love has given me a miss for so long, and now this miracle has happened. Sex is a part of it, of course, but I have a Romaunt of the Rose feeling about it too. On Saturday we could have lunch at Fortt's, then go back to Mrs H's. Never mind if you can't make it then. I am free on Sunday too or Sunday week. Signal me tomorrow as to whether and when you can come.
Anthony Powell has written to me, and mentions you admiringly. Some of his comments about the Army are v funny. He's somebody I'd like to know better when the war is over. I find his letters funnier than his books. Tinkerty-tonk, my darling. I pray I'll hear from you tomorrow. If I don't I'll visit your office in a fake beard.
All love, JB
I guess the odds of the message being there accidentally aren't very good.

This hoax falls into the category of jokes made at the expense of academics. The most famous example of this was the 1725 case of the Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer, in which Johann Beringer thought he had found some remarkable fossils on a local mountain, until he discovered that one of the supposed fossils had his name inscribed on it. The 17th-century scholar Athanasius Kircher was also the victim of a few jokes like this. One time he labored for days over a strange message he thought might be in Chinese, only to realize that the message was simply a latin phrase, written in reverse, that said "Do not seek vain things, or waste time on unprofitable trifles."
Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006.   Comments (6)

Alex Boese Quotes — Much to my surprise, I came across this page of "Alex Boese Quotes" on thinkexist.com. I was kind of flattered to find it, even though I'm sure the page was created by a computer trawling newspaper articles, and despite the fact that the three quotes (which I do recognize, and which I did say) are completely unmemorable. I think I've said some better things in my life. For instance, the first sentence of Hippo Eats Dwarf is better: "We live in a hippo-eats-dwarf world."

And what about this quote from page 12 of Hippo Eats Dwarf: "The fact is that men possess all the biological equipment necessary to produce breast milk." That's a quote worth committing to memory.

Or from page 79: "Drinking your own urine is said to help improve your immune system, give you nice skin, prevent aging, and fight gum disease. And that's just for starters."

Or from page 83: "To produce rat-milk cheese, you would need an awful lot of rats."

I notice that thinkexist has a "submit a new Alex Boese quote" link. So if anyone is interested, be my guest. Maybe you can even think of some things I should have said.
Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006.   Comments (15)

Did Einstein Consider Geography More Difficult Than Physics? —
Status: Hoax
The following quotation is widely attributed to Albert Einstein:
"As a young man, my fondest dream was to become a geographer. However, while working in the Customs Office, I thought deeply about the matter and concluded that it was far too difficult a subject. With some reluctance, I then turned to physics as an alternative."
Did he ever say it? No. Nor did he ever work in the Customs Office. (He worked in the Patent Office.) In an article in the Toronto Star, Sharon Burnside traces how the quotation became attributed to Einstein in the first place. Apparently it was actually written by Duane Marble, a faculty member at New York State University, who, a few decades ago, posted the quotation on his office door as a joke directed at the Physics faculty who worked in the same building with him. From there it spread until it became an official Einstein quote. It was finally debunked in 1997 in a series of columns in GIS World written by Jerry Dobson.

I found the Toronto Star article via Craig Silverman's Regret The Error. Craig says that he's thinking of creating a master list of erroneous attributions. If so, he should definitely add to his list the famous P.T. Barnum quotation "There's a sucker born every minute." Barnum always swore he never said it. No one is sure exactly who did say it, but a leading theory is that it was said by the owners of the Cardiff Giant who were annoyed that Barnum's fake Cardiff Giant was getting more attention than their 'real' one.

Another erroneous quotation is "It's not who votes that counts; it's who counts the votes." Often attributed to Joseph Stalin, although there's no evidence he ever said it. It's not known who did say it.
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006.   Comments (7)

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo —
Status: Linguistic puzzle
Check out these parsing challenges over at linguistlist.org. It took me a good 15 or 20 minutes to figure out why they make sense. (Though I'm sure some people will figure them out immediately.) The first one is this sentence:

Dogs dogs dog dog dogs.

It's a legitimate english sentence. To figure out how this is so, it helps to compare it to the sentence: Cats dogs chase catch mice. (They both share the same structure.)

The linguist list folks then point out that the word 'buffalo' can also serve as the basis for a similar sentence:

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

And if you consider the possibility of Buffalo in the city of Buffalo being 'Buffalo buffalo', you can get this sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Linguist list actually strings 10 'buffalo' together as one sentence, but I think only 8 can be used, since to 'Buffalo buffalo' can't be used as a verb. (via Reddit)
Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006.   Comments (33)

Page 4 of 8 pages ‹ First  < 2 3 4 5 6 >  Last ›