Yep. That's how I knew I came in last on my corporate team.

What was your time? (I ran mine in about 45 minutes, but "run" is a strong term for what I did.)

Ah, Christwire. I just saw it cited seriously the other day.

I read something that came up in a search result the other day that I thought was satire, but was actually a neo-nazi message board.

I manage our weekly e-newsletter and a few months ago had someone send me an article to be included ... from The Onion. Never did get straightened out if she realized that it was satire ....

Sometimes I think World Nut Daily is pulling my leg. There's definitely been times when I strongly suspected that HuffPo had to be yanking my chain.

The shrimp on the treadmill fake outrage yesterday made me want to punch people. I don't think they're pulling my leg, though.

I totally got had by Botox Mom, though.

Not quite the same thing but definitely a sickeningly near relative, I'm having to tear myself away from the comment thread of an article in my local paper, befor I rage out or burst into tears (or both) right here at the office. A high school student in an East Bay suburb got on BART with her bike on Monday, rode out to SF, biked all the way out to the Golden Gate Bridge, and jumped. Her body hasn't been recovered. And the comment thread is full of people saying, Oh, let's not allow one of our great landmarks to be held hostage by crazy people, barriers and nets are just ugly and won't save anyone, people who want to kill themselves will do it one way or another.

Except they won't, or at least the bridge-jumpers won't. There's one landmark study on the phenomenon, published in a serious peer-reviewed journal a couple of decades ago but easily findable both on and offline, that looks at all the common-sense things people "just know" about how suicide by jumping works, and then looks at the actual statistics and does long-term follow-up on the handful of jumpers who survived and on the would-be jumpers who were stopped at the last minute. It makes no sense, but the barriers do work; people fixate on one particular spot, and when that spot is blocked off they just... wander off and live. 20 years post-crisis, 94% of the surviving jumpers and almost-jumpers were still alive and had never made a second attempt.

It's a widely-available, layperson-friendly study, and every time someone loses their life to the death song of the GGB a handful of hardy souls show up in the comment threads posting links to this landmark study, pleading for people to read it and understand it. And most people just downrate the commenters without answering, and the few who do read it come back and say, "Well, that may be what the research shows, but I know in my gut that what I think is true."

I just cannot, cannot understand how someone can read that study and come away saying, "I know better." Or not even read it, just reflexively boo at anyone who points out that it exists. And then I think about all these assholes privileging a pretty view of the bridge over the life of a 15-year-old girl, and I just want to smash them all.

Oh, let's not allow one of our great landmarks to be held hostage by crazy people, barriers and nets are just ugly and won't save anyone, people who want to kill themselves will do it one way or another.

I used to think that. Then I read about that study and changed my opinion.

That's how it's supposed to work, right?

That's how it's supposed to work, right?

People dig in. I do it, and it takes awhile for me to chart a new course. I don't know why it's so important to be right about some things that have so little affect on my life. I just hate looking stupid. And it's hard to readjust and say, "oh, I thought something that isn't true, and now I have the correct information, which is good.

I equate wrong with stupid. I don't want to be any stupider than I already feel. So I'll protect bad knowledge as if it's something important, like my index finger.

nets are just ugly and won't save anyone

Didn't a safety net actually save a bunch of workers who were building that bridge?