Straight Dope
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Straight Dope is a popular question and answer newspaper column published in the Chicago Reader (an alternative weekly), syndicated in thirty newspapers in the United States and Canada, and available online.
The column, first published by the Reader in 1973, is written by Cecil Adams, whose real identity is unknown (Adams is a pen name). The Cecil Adams persona ranges from pedantic to profane. Editor Ed Zotti is widely believed to be the current writer of the column, though the column has a staff that assists in its production, known as the "Straight Dope Science Advisory Board". Prior editors were Mike Lenehan, now Executive Editor at the Reader, and Dave Kehr, now film critic for The New York Times.
The columns are known to cover practically any subject, frequently dissecting old wives' tales and urban legends. History, science, and inventions are the most frequently recurring topics. The column derives its name from the American idiom meaning roughly "the honest truth".
The columns are archived at the Straight Dope website, which also hosts the Straight Dope Message Board, a popular internet forum.
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[edit] Books
To date, Adams has published five collections of his columns, and his "assistant" published a children's collection in the Adams style, Know It All.
[edit] TV
In 1996, the A&E Network briefly aired a show hosted by comedian Mike Lukas called The Straight Dope, which was based on the column.
[edit] Straight Dope Message Board
The Straight Dope Message Board (abbreviated SDMB) is a vBulletin forum on the Straight Dope website. It has more than 61,000 registered members, of which about 3,500 are paid subscribers as of August 2005. It is ranked 103rd by big-boards.com in number of posts as of November 17, 2006.
[edit] Mention of Wikipedia
In the December 1, 2006 column, the accuracy of Wikipedia is questioned:<ref>http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061201.html</ref>I can confirm about 80 percent of it, putting it 79.9 percent ahead of most of the yarns that cross my desk. No doubt we can thank the cereal box, where at least you had somebody from Kellogg's (Weetabix, whoever) keeping things straight, in contrast to, say, Wikipedia, which is more the million-monkeys-with-a-million-keyboards approach.
[edit] Notes
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