9/23/2023 0 Comments Resolutioners straightdope sdmbPeople participate not out of civic duty, but because it's fun. The SDMB is a raucous, wildly entertaining house party that has kept users coming back for 22 years - "like caramel-covered crack," as one user once put it. Indeed, Adams notes, "in many ways the SDMB has become the heart and soul of the enterprise." Seven Days readers who have only known the print column may want to check it out, especially since the print version is no more. The Straight Dope Message Board (SDMB), the online community that has grown up around the column, will remain open for business." Meantime, you can go to to find the answers to such burning questions as "Why do pigeons bob their heads?" and "How do they get the little Ms on M&M's?" And, for the royalty-obsessed, "A king's wife is a queen, so why is Elizabeth II's husband still only Prince Philip?"Īs Adams writes in a sort of farewell letter on the site, "The Straight Dope homepage will continue to be updated with recycled classics. We're told the digital archive will live on and that the column might be resurrected in some as-yet-unknown fashion. The Straight Dope has given the lie to the notion of "fake news" many times over.Īfter the internet was born and the good people at the Reader established a Straight Dope website, a veritable cult of information geeks arose around it. Adams and cohorts have subsequently written some 3,400 columns, answering questions that have ranged from the ridiculous to the seriously scientific to the existential. "And so infallible answer man Cecil Adams began fighting ignorance weekly in the Straight Dope," explained a 2011 Time Out Chicago article, "laying waste to the world's most puzzling questions with deep research set down in 800 words with enough acerbic wit, humor and clarity to make even the most snoozy science jargon a good read." Of course, there was more to Adams' response than that - information about specific organizations and their convention plans. (Note to young readers who might be baffled: Look up "1968 Democratic National Convention." It can't hurt to learn something about rioting in the streets.) You can't really blame them - Chicago is an ideal convention site. God only knows what got these people so upset, but whatever it was, it seems to have blown over, since most of the associations involved have returned to Chicago since '68 or have future plans to do so. Or, as Adams put it with what would become his signature cheekiness: Did they follow through on their threats, and how much convention business has Chicago lost as a result? This was the Straight Dope's very first question:ĭear Cecil: Remember after the '68 Democratic convention a number of professional/academic associations cancelled plans for future conventions in Chicago because of what happened here. Mind you, this was well before the internet turned research into a series of clicks. Readers would write in with questions, and the column's author, with the help of a few researchers, would get to the bottom of them. According to lore, a staffer at an editorial meeting pitched the idea of a column whose author knew everything and was never wrong. The first column was published in the then-2-year-old Chicago Reader on February 2, 1973. The Straight Dope preceded Seven Days - by a lot. (The other two features? Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny, still with us and NewsQuirks, which ceased when author Roland Sweet died in 2015.) It was one of three altweekly staples that we picked up and the only syndicated content, other than a few cartoons, in an otherwise Vermont-centric publication. Longtime Seven Days readers may know that we have carried the Straight Dope since the paper's first issue on September 6, 1995. We thought you might like to know why, along with a little history of the Straight Dope and its author, Cecil Adams. If you're one of the "teeming millions" who have enjoyed reading the Straight Dope weekly in Seven Days, we have sad news: The column in our June 27 issue was the last. Straight Dope appeared in the first Seven Dayson September 6, 1995.
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