Posts Tagged with "npr"

News of the Unusual

May 4th, 2007 at 11:44 am by Zacque
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Since I am a fan of the “News of the Weird,” a column regularly featured in everyone’s favorite free “news” publication in the KnoxVegas MetroPulse, I’ve have decided to share some exceptional news today.

Let us go north, thru Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Canadia — okay, maybe not that far — go southwest a little, and bam!  You’re in the Dairy state, Wisconsin.  Then within that state, we come to the lovely little city of Janesville, just on the state line.  Janesville is known as “Wisconsin’s Park Place”, even though it was originally founded on strong industry. Our story however comes from a different line of work entirely, one that is universal to all places nowadays: Real Estate.

Whether you are buying, selling, renting, leasing, or subletting, some truths should just be self-evident.  Never trust anyone who offers a deal that feels to good to be true.

  1. Inspect the property.
  2. If the neighborhood looks like butt, the property values should not be that high.
  3. Don’t be afraid to do a bit of research.
  4. Don’t forget, to sell a place, the worst thing you can do is have the actual owner present.  Hire an agent.

I can’t help but want to talk about the last one.  The reasoning behind it is the same as hiring an attorney, since we all now a similar adage:  The man who represents himself has a fool for an attorney.  The owner is too emotionally tied to the property to make a viable sales attempt successful. 

Now that we can be successful, let’s get on with the story.

While on location showing a home from fairfield ct homes for sale to a couple, a real estate agent heard a blood-curdling scream out of the female counterpart.  Assuming it was a mouse the husband and agent walk into the room.  To their surprise, it was not a mouse, but the owner of the property… Deceased.

All I have to say is, “Hey, the owner was trying to do the right thing… he was OUT!”

A New Place for Solid Fact?

March 14th, 2007 at 1:52 pm by Zacque
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Today, on my way back to my office I happened to catch National Public Radio’s Evening Edition. The story was about a new web reference source in response to Wikipedia. Evidently there are a group of individuals who believe Wikipedia to be too liberal. I am not saying that this group of individuals is wrong, but they came to this conclusion based on the statistics of a poll by Wikipedia editors.

There are several bits of flawed logic with this idea. The assumption that the editors of Wikipedia aren’t human because as a straight set of data this poll would leave no room for human error or a lack of honesty. These facts are statistics. Statistics by nature can be used to sway one way or another. If not lawyers wouldn’t be so profitable. However, the major problem with consevapedia.com, is the misuse of the word conservative.

The main example can be shown by comparing the definitions of the word kangaroo on both sites: Wikipedia and Conservapedia. Okay, I am fine with either of them until I get to the Origins section of the Conservapedia definition. The first thing listed is a creationist theory explanation. That in itself was fishy enough for me to check the dictionary for the definition.

The Oxford dictionary (I would have used Merriam-Webster, but the link wouldn’t pull up) states that a conservative is “(in a political context) favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.” If this is the case then where does interjecting religious beliefs into the origin of a species come into play? A true conservative world should not include religion. Religion is much more defined either one way or another.

Conservapedia.com even goes on to say “A conservative is one who adheres to principles of limited government, personal responsibility and moral virtue.” Where does this give them the right to inteject a secular religious viewpoint, much less stake a claim of moral virtue? If they are truly conservative should they not list the scientific information first?

With that in mind I would like to propose a new web address for this website: severelyscrewypedia.com

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