25 years ago in reason

Absurd news bites, served fresh every day.

"It's always fun to watch a sacred cow get barbecued, especially when it's the FBI….Former Acting Director L. Patrick Gray (of Watergate burn-bag fame) and two lesser panjandara are under indictment for "conspiracy to deprive Americans of their civil rights."

-- Bill Birmingham, Brickbats

"The talk-to-your-plants fad is based on the claim that plants can perceive and feel emotions just like humans can. The main anchor for this fad was a 1968 report by C. Backster in the International Journal of Parapsychology. He stated that plants could perceive, as recorded by polygraph, the killing of brine shrimp."

-- Armando Simon, "How Science Should Deal With Pseudoscience"

"Let's quit picking on commercial television's preoccupation with sex and violence….Without TV the raw sex and brute violence that fascinates those not tutored in fine artistic renditions would be obtained in bawdy songs, humor, gossip, fantasy, dime novels, and all the other means by which human beings have managed to entertain themselves before television and before the current swarm of sociologists were let loose."

-- Tibor R. Machan, "Sex and Violence Revisited"