Link is dead for the moment. I googled for it and got this:
An article on Monday about Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students with Asperger syndrome who are navigating the perils of an intimate relationship, misidentified the character from the animated children’s TV show “My Little Pony” that Ms. Lindsmith said she visualized to cheer herself up. It is Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual, not Fluttershy, the kind animal lover.
This is kind of a related to the observation that whenever a news article is covering something you know a lot about, it is always wrong. In this case you have to wonder why they can’t get something so trivial, yet so non-obvious, correct on the first attempt. Do they even try? It’s really the non-obviousness that gets me – this can’t be a brain fart or bad handwriting in a notebook.
What probably happened was that the reporter didn’t record the pony’s name in the interview and just put one in that sounded close because someone higher up the food chain insisted on putting that pony in the story.
sounded close? That’s pretty much what I mean. There’s no way, assuming they were working in English, that Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy sounded close at any point during the process. Garbled recording or bad notes or any other excuse just can’t account for this.
100% made up.
How many other times does this happen?
Karl and Jrman,
You guys either have no imagination, or you are just mean, or both.
Here’s what could have happened: Ms Landsmith could have said “well, I think about Twilight Sparkle when I need to think about A, and I think about Fluttershy when I need to think about B, and I think about Sunlight Rainbow when I need to think about C, and oh, when I think about D, I think about the first pony and also when I think about E, and but when I’ve first been thinking about Fluttershy, then I think about Sunlight Sparkle, because of Relationship-K, and when I think about Flutterhappy too, well, too then it is better for B rather than A….” and on and on like that for 15 minutes because, after all, we are talking about a young person who has a pretty complex process for organizing her brain, and SHE knows what she is talking about, and so…
… when the reporter gets back to the newsroom, the reporter’s notebook looks like this: two columns, a column at the left of the page listing the names of the ponies, and a column at the right of the page listing the topics. Over 50 lines connect the topics with the names. Some of the lines have arrows. Some of the lines are bifurcated. Some additional ad hoc relationships are shown. The reporter had no idea a tape recorder was gong to be essential for accuracy….
Or maybe some other equally complex thing happened.
Garbled recording or bad notes or any other excuse just can’t account for this.
100% made up.
My thinking here is that the reporter didn’t have anything, not even garbled recordings or bad notes. They just remembered it was a pony, not which pony. At that point, I guess reporters just put a pony down and hope they guessed right. As you imply, this is a real confidence builder for our dependence on journalism.
On a weird, unrelated note, this is the second or third reference to My Little Pony made in unrelated social circles I’ve seen in just a couple of days as being part of what could be called “young nerd culture”. I wonder if it’s a good show?
Wow, that was deep!
Link is dead for the moment. I googled for it and got this:
This is kind of a related to the observation that whenever a news article is covering something you know a lot about, it is always wrong. In this case you have to wonder why they can’t get something so trivial, yet so non-obvious, correct on the first attempt. Do they even try? It’s really the non-obviousness that gets me – this can’t be a brain fart or bad handwriting in a notebook.
What probably happened was that the reporter didn’t record the pony’s name in the interview and just put one in that sounded close because someone higher up the food chain insisted on putting that pony in the story.
sounded close? That’s pretty much what I mean. There’s no way, assuming they were working in English, that Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy sounded close at any point during the process. Garbled recording or bad notes or any other excuse just can’t account for this.
100% made up.
How many other times does this happen?
Karl and Jrman,
You guys either have no imagination, or you are just mean, or both.
Here’s what could have happened: Ms Landsmith could have said “well, I think about Twilight Sparkle when I need to think about A, and I think about Fluttershy when I need to think about B, and I think about Sunlight Rainbow when I need to think about C, and oh, when I think about D, I think about the first pony and also when I think about E, and but when I’ve first been thinking about Fluttershy, then I think about Sunlight Sparkle, because of Relationship-K, and when I think about Flutterhappy too, well, too then it is better for B rather than A….” and on and on like that for 15 minutes because, after all, we are talking about a young person who has a pretty complex process for organizing her brain, and SHE knows what she is talking about, and so…
… when the reporter gets back to the newsroom, the reporter’s notebook looks like this: two columns, a column at the left of the page listing the names of the ponies, and a column at the right of the page listing the topics. Over 50 lines connect the topics with the names. Some of the lines have arrows. Some of the lines are bifurcated. Some additional ad hoc relationships are shown. The reporter had no idea a tape recorder was gong to be essential for accuracy….
Or maybe some other equally complex thing happened.
Garbled recording or bad notes or any other excuse just can’t account for this.
100% made up.
My thinking here is that the reporter didn’t have anything, not even garbled recordings or bad notes. They just remembered it was a pony, not which pony. At that point, I guess reporters just put a pony down and hope they guessed right. As you imply, this is a real confidence builder for our dependence on journalism.
On a weird, unrelated note, this is the second or third reference to My Little Pony made in unrelated social circles I’ve seen in just a couple of days as being part of what could be called “young nerd culture”. I wonder if it’s a good show?
Jonathan: yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJJ94uw05KQ
BTW, even if you’re color-blind, “they all look the same to me” doesn’t apply. Twilight Sparkle is a purple unicorn; Fluttershy’s a yellow pegasus.
The Bronies are a strange phenomenon. IIRC they will have a convention in Seattle next year.