Bill Handel Steals Patterico’s Idea Coincidentally Has the Same Idea as Patterico
Xrlq phoned me yesterday as I was going in to work, to inform me that local radio personality Bill Handel stole my idea, and got himself nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. (My campaign is still on track, but action has been delayed because my potential nominator has been out of the country at a conference.)
Why did Xrlq say Handel “stole” my idea? Well, there is an interesting factor at work here. Handel’s producer is my good friend Justin Levine, who has a report on Handel’s nomination here.
However, in an e-mail, Justin tells me that it’s pure coincidence that Handel happened to come up with the same idea as me . . . unless, he says, Handel has been regularly reading Patterico without telling Justin — something Justin characterizes as “a theoretical possibility.” (Heh.)
Of course, Handel did mention Patterico on his program once — which could, on its face, support that “theoretical possibility.” But it turned out that Justin was behind that — which kind of puts us back to square one.
I think this is yet another instance where an aphorism I like to use applies: Great minds think alike — and sometimes they think like me, too.
And, after all, Justin notes: “But hey, you can still be the first Blogger to get a nomination. That would still be a badge of honor.” With Tookie Williams among my company, I’m not sure “honor” is really the word Justin was looking for.
I say the more the merrier – if only one “outsider” gets nominated then it can be dismissed as a conservative prank, but if this starts a trend re: random people getting nominated for the NPP, THAT is going to have a profound impact and shed a lot of well needed sunshine on this farce.
Scott (57c0cc) — 12/2/2005 @ 11:33 amFor the record, another blogger did a very similar thing during the Schiavo mess. You may recall (but probaby did not blog about) a doctor who testified for Schiavo that Fox and others consistently touted as a “Nobel nominated” doctor. The doctor was nominated by a legislator for the NObel Prize in Sciense — too bad for him that legislators are not eligible to make such nominations (for obvious reasons). Anyways, see this blogger’s take. http://thepoorman.net/?p=166 Not exactly yours, but quite similar.
Alito (fd5021) — 12/5/2005 @ 9:38 pm