My folks raised me right, and you'll notice that entries involving politics, current affairs and/or religion are pretty few and far between on these pages-- there are plenty of websites written by experts on those subjects for you to peruse, and frankly, I'd rather be making people chuckle than beating them over the head with any sort of perceived bias or agenda. But, once in a great while you really need to point people to some standard fact checking facilities. Case in point: Televangelist Pat Robertson's outrageous statement about Haitians was called out and fact checked by one of the interweb's great sites, The Straight Dope. I've been a huge Straight Dope fan for 20 years, and it's a clearinghouse of information where folks can send in any question, big or small where it will be answered by a dedicated staff of researchers and outside experts. Questions in the past have included "Is time travel possible, even in theory?" (answer: yes) to "Is it true about Catherine the Great and the horse?" (answer: no) and everything in between. But on to the task at hand: The Right Reverend Pat's assertion has nearly no basis in fact, plays fast and loose with dates and names, brushes off a contemporary contradictory account, and ignores two essential points: (1.) A known fault line lies underneath the Island of Hispaniola (where Haiti is located), and a quake already leveled Port-au-Prince in 1770, some two decades before this "pact with the devil" (2.) This "pact" was to last 200 years. Well, that 200 year period ended in 1991. Oops. Folks can read this genuinely entertaining brief article for themselves here and decide for themselves. And now, I can get back to making light of Europeans.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Breaking: Beelzebub Embarrassed To Be Mentioned In Same Sentence With Televangelist
My folks raised me right, and you'll notice that entries involving politics, current affairs and/or religion are pretty few and far between on these pages-- there are plenty of websites written by experts on those subjects for you to peruse, and frankly, I'd rather be making people chuckle than beating them over the head with any sort of perceived bias or agenda. But, once in a great while you really need to point people to some standard fact checking facilities. Case in point: Televangelist Pat Robertson's outrageous statement about Haitians was called out and fact checked by one of the interweb's great sites, The Straight Dope. I've been a huge Straight Dope fan for 20 years, and it's a clearinghouse of information where folks can send in any question, big or small where it will be answered by a dedicated staff of researchers and outside experts. Questions in the past have included "Is time travel possible, even in theory?" (answer: yes) to "Is it true about Catherine the Great and the horse?" (answer: no) and everything in between. But on to the task at hand: The Right Reverend Pat's assertion has nearly no basis in fact, plays fast and loose with dates and names, brushes off a contemporary contradictory account, and ignores two essential points: (1.) A known fault line lies underneath the Island of Hispaniola (where Haiti is located), and a quake already leveled Port-au-Prince in 1770, some two decades before this "pact with the devil" (2.) This "pact" was to last 200 years. Well, that 200 year period ended in 1991. Oops. Folks can read this genuinely entertaining brief article for themselves here and decide for themselves. And now, I can get back to making light of Europeans.
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