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July 21, 2010

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The Mikkelsons were on "All Things Considered" a few months ago: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124958817 (There's a photo of them there too, if you're curious.)

Wow, good to know I would never in a million years have been able to actually guess this! For some reason, I had it in mind that the inspiration was Snoopy.

I call snopes.com my urbanlegendometer. I'm on a crusade to stop the distribution of those silly emails. When I receive such an email, I check it on snopes.com and then reply to all with the link and a suggestion to verify FIRST. After a while I received much fewer of those 'fowarded to all in a panic' emails. I hoped that senders were thinking about the content and verifying before forwarding. Nope! Turns out they just dropped me from their mailing list because I'm an obnoxious know it all. :-)

I've always wondered where the Snopes name came from. I can't believe that I didn't place it given that I was a Faulkner fan in college. Thanks for another great post, Nancy!

I have a relative who sometimes passes on this crazy stuff. A while back, she sent one with a P.S. stating that she didn't want anyone else to respond with "Snopes says...". She was vehement that Snopes doesn't know everything! A lot of these things happen! After reading these things, i delete them. (Some I look up.) Then, she polled all her relatives and friends: What do you do with these items that I ask you to pass along? Told her the truth and I rarely hear from her now.

I had a similar experience with a coworker who sent us emails on his experiences in England while he was there for a 2 month job. He was so pleased with his essays, which were as illuminating as something written by a 12 year old. "There are 800 year old castles in England! Nothing that old in the USA!" He also sent what the Snopes people call "glurge": sickening, mawkish stories meant to inspire, like the one about Alexander Fleming saving Winston Churchill twice: once when they were kids and once again with penicillin.
"Glurge" was coined by a contributor to Snopes.com and captures the concept brilliantly.
When the coworker returned to California he kept asking me what I thought of his "writings". Because we had to work together I tried to avoid the question, but he was relentless in his pursuit of praise. I finally gave a frank opinion and he dropped me from his mailing list, thank goodness.

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