Clarification

Yesterday's post, about "Stars in Danger: The High Dive," received a comment from the ever-perceptive "Anonymous," who pointed out that, according to Entertainment Weekly, the name of the show is actually "Celebrity Diving."  Allow me to clarify: "Celebrity Diving" is an ABC show, premiering in March, in which B-list celebrities will learn the basics of Olympic-style diving; "Stars in Danger: The High Dive" is a Fox show, premiering in February, in which B-list celebrities will learn the basics of Olympic-style diving no I am not making this up.  Because you can never have too many programs about has-beens and never-weres falling into water, that's why.

Hope that clears things up.  Happy New Year, everyone!

Setting the Record Straight

This is fun. A British website, iCorrect.com, established by businessman Sir David Tang, allows the famous and not-so-famous to rebut accusations and "inaccuracies." So if you're Donald Trump, and a Page Six tidbit reports that you have recently patented your hair, you can instantly log onto your iCorrect account to set the record straight: You applied for a patent but were turned down on the grounds that your hair was too similar to a sea anemone and thus unpatentable. As of now, iCorrect clients are primarily members of the British jetset, but as the website expands, we hope to see a plethora of postings from Charlie Sheen or Lady Googoo or Mel Gibson or their ilk. Still, the limited numbers of postings thus far do include some saucy items. Consider this exchange between Niall Ferguson, an eminent economist and historian and New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugrman. In a blog post, Krugman claimed to have won an argument with Ferguson:

"A few months back, in a dialogue in Korea with Niall Ferguson, I suggested a macroeconomic version of Godwin’s Law: the first person to bring up the Weimar hyperinflation is considered to have lost the debate. He was, um, not happy." -- Paul Krugman on his blog, 27 December 2010.

Ferguson set the record straight:

"My response to Krugman was that there should be a new Krugman's Law: the first person to claim he has won the debate has lost the debate. So comprehensively did Krugman lose this exchange that one Korean newspaper ran the headline the next day: 'A great Nobel Prize winner humiliated like a dog in Korea.' Unhappy? You now know which of us, um, was."

AWWWWWW SUH-NAPP! ECONOMIST SMACKDOWN! Personally, we like this contribution the most: Responding to an accusation that "David Tang is a creep," Sir David replied that "This is greatly exaggerated." While the Solipsist cannot afford the $1,000 membership fee, we would like to take this opportunity to rebut some baseless accusations that have cropped up recently: 1) We do not use our cats in Satanic rituals. That's what the guinea pig is for. 2) We never claimed that Canadians were responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster--only for the failures of New Orleans' levees after Hurricane Katrina. 3) It was mayonnaise! Solipsistography "For $1,000, Site Lets Celebrities Say It Ain't So"

Correction

In yesterday's post, we spoke of the debate over whether to allow people to use food stamps to buy soda. We speculated about why government authorities, if so worried about the eating habits of the impoverished, didn't simply hand out food instead of vouchers. We wrote:

"The reason, we assume, is that the government does not want to be seen as overly patriarchal."

Of course, we meant, "paternalistic."

We regret the error, and we feel shame, and we will go sit in the box. But what we feel greater shame about is the fact that not a single Sloppist caught the mistake. Honestly, people, we've been working with you for almost two years now, attuning your ears to the cadences of fine writing and the subtleties of advanced vocabulary. And yet! Not a SINGLE one of you called us on that most egregious of sins against language and basic literacy, confusing "patriarchal" and "paternalistic."

We need to go sit in a dark room for a while.

Oops! (A Brief Post)

A "Correction" from today's Times:

"Because of an editing error, an article last Sunday about GPS driving devices misidentified the country in which the Black Forest is located. The forest, in which the author found the device particularly useful, is in Germany, not Poland."

Seems like the editors could have used the GPS device, too.

Corrections

It happens to the best of us.  And we are the best of us, so we're no exception.

We are talking, of course, about making mistakes.  It's unavoidable really.  When you consider the tremendous deadline pressure we are under to bring truth--make that, TRUTH--to the world, it's a wonder we get even half of what we're saying right.  And so, in the spirit of TRUTH, and in imitation of the great journalistic bastions to which we wish to be compared, we offer here the first in an occasional series of CORRECTIONS:

The capital of Japan is not Moosejaw.

Due to en editing error, we erroneously reported that "Mr. Simon Lepz of North Bergen, NJ, was found guilty of snatching, bludgeoning, and parboiling baby ducks."  The sentence should have read, "Mr. Simon Lepz of North Bergen, NJ, was found not guilty of snatching, bludgeoning, and parboiling baby ducks."  We apologize to Mr. Lepz's family.

There is, in fact, no 'i' in team.  We don't know how that one got past us.

Speaking of 'i's, in a report on the recreational harpooning industry, we inadvertently left out the fourth 'i' in 'pneumonoultramicriscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.'

Due to an overindulgence in cake, we were in a bit of a stupor when we composed our piece on the fauna of Madagascar.  There are not, in fact, more than 16 million species of dolphin on the island.  We meant lemurs.

Zoltan Gyongyossy is a modern Hungarian flutist.  He is not a James Bond villain.

In a piece about good dinnertime conversation topics, we should not have included, "Pooh."

We regret the errors.