Now on ScienceBlogs: Oh, no! School wi-fi is making our kids sick! (2012 edition)

ScienceBlogs Book Club: Inside the Outbreaks

« Anthropology and the Military | Main | Comatose? »

Factoid of the Day

Posted on: October 6, 2007 9:59 PM, by Jonah Lehrer

This year, California will spend three times as much operating its prisons than running the UC system.

Share on Facebook
Share on StumbleUpon
Share on Facebook

Trackbacks

Trackback URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/52390

Comments (5)

1

A factoid is "something that sounds like a fact, is thought by many to be a fact (perhaps because it is repeated so often), but is not in fact a fact."

(From The Economist Style Guide.)

Posted by: Mo | October 7, 2007 2:45 PM

2

"Factoid" meaning a phony fact was coined by Norman Mailer, who used it in his biography of Marilyn Monroe to describe the studio system's technique of creating false histories for Hollywood stars. The current most prevalent meaning is the precise opposite- a perhaps trivial but interesting fact. This meaning was popularized by CNN. It's not surprising that a TV network denatured the meaning of a word that has value in understanding how media works.

Posted by: Bloix | October 7, 2007 2:57 PM

3

With all due respect to the Economist, my (American) dictionary defines a factoid as a "brief or trivial item of news or information". Perhaps this difference in semantics is one of those minor Anglo-American differences, like theatre vs theater.

Posted by: Jonah | October 8, 2007 10:52 AM

4

Prisoners don't pay out-of-state tuition. You could probably reverse this trend if Calfornia stopped feeding their prisoners.

Posted by: tekel | October 8, 2007 11:18 AM

5

Maybe "factoid" and "factoid" are homonyms. Yeah! That's it!

Posted by: Daniel | October 9, 2007 11:29 AM

Post a Comment

(Email is required for authentication purposes only. On some blogs, comments are moderated for spam, so your comment may not appear immediately.)

ScienceBlogs

Search ScienceBlogs:

Go to:

Advertisement
Follow ScienceBlogs on Twitter

© 2006-2011 ScienceBlogs LLC. ScienceBlogs is a registered trademark of ScienceBlogs LLC. All rights reserved.