Nov 29 2007
Notasmartman of the week
I hereby declare my love of Wikipedia. I must admit to hours upon hours of reading articles of varying topics from the invention of the transistor to the Great Pyramid of Giza, further examples as follows.
I recently re-read a topic of great interest to me, after all it was the 44th anniversary of this event last week, the Kennedy assassination.
An official investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), conducted from 1976 to 1979, concluded that Oswald assassinated President Kennedy as a result of a probable conspiracy. This conclusion of a likely conspiracy contrasts with the earlier conclusion by the Warren Commission that the President was assassinated by a lone gunman.
or…
An article on UFC 48 (Ultimate Fighting Championship – in laymen terms cage-fighting)
In June 2004, Sylvia returned to face Frank Mir for the vacant UFC heavyweight championship; he lost. Early on in the fight Mir trapped Sylvia’s right arm in an armbar submission attempt. As Sylvia tried to escape the hold, Mir tightened the submission and Sylvia’s radius bone snapped about three inches below his elbow. Referee Herb Dean immediately stopped the fight and declared Sylvia unable to continue. Sylvia took exception to the decision and repeatedly claimed his arm was not broken (though the break could be explicitly seen on the slow-motion replay of the fight), even touching it and moving it around to demonstrate. Later an X-ray confirmed his arm was indeed snapped.
Remind me not to get in a fight with this bloke!!!
and finally….
Although he died in 1982 I have decided to make Carl McCunn the notasmartman of the week.
Carl McCunn was a Texan who, in March 1981, paid a bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake near the Coleen River in Alaska, on the southern margin of the Brooks Range, to photograph wildlife.
McCunn flew in with 500 rolls of film, 1,400 pounds of provisions, two rifles and a shotgun, but had not arranged for the pilot to pick him up again in August. He prematurely disposed of boxes of shotgun shells in the river; used the wrong emergency hand signals to a plane that had spotted him and waved the plane off; and waited too long in the season to attempt to walk out.
In February 1982 Alaska State Troopers found his body, emaciated and frozen as hard as stone, along with a 100-page diary that documented his demise. He wrote “I think I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure.” Rather than starve, McCunn had shot himself in the head.
If you’ve gotta go, you may as well fly out to the middle of nowhere and commit suicide.
Wikipedia is ok but you cannot take everything published in it as gospel. There are glaring mistakes in many of the articles that have not been edited by the site administrators which to me makes it an unreliable source of information.
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That is true Rob B. However I submit that almost any publication the world over would not be 100% reliable in its content. Even the national newspapers and your ABC are known to publish complete drivel, from time to time.
The fact is there are no guaranteed sources of correct information anywhere. Information is always subject to human opinion and perception.
SJ
history is written by the victors not the vanquished. I think if you enjoy Wikipedia for pieces of trivia and don’t take it too seriously its a bit of fun.
why doesn’t Shirvo Jones have a Wikipedia entry??