One federal agency that remained open during the ongoing government shutdown is the U.S. Bureau of Thumb Direction Assignment, or USBTDA. For those unfamiliar with the USBTDA, these are the people who determine whether a given event represents good news (thumbs up) or bad news (thumbs down). One can visit the USBTDA website and type in any item of personal news — within seconds, bureau experts will analyze your item and assign a Thumb Direction to it: Up or Down. This service is free, fast and confidential.
I was able to access the USBTDA site a few hours ago and decided to submit a couple of items of my own, to see if the experts were still at work. Indeed they were, and here are the results:
(1) I haven’t talked with my cardiologist yet, but I did read the report from my cardiac MRI last month, and all the tests were marked NORMAL. I was happy and relieved when the USBTDA assigned Thumbs Up to this item. Now I can sleep a little better, knowing that invasive procedures are not part of my immediate future. Thank you, USBTDA.
(2) I received a response yesterday from the editor of the MDPI Games Journal about the 24-page article on The Price is Right showcase round that I submitted a few weeks ago. The editor “encouraged” me to resubmit it after “extensive revisions” but mentioned that one of the reviewers thought my article should be rejected outright. The reviewers made mostly constructive comments but I doubt I will be able to address all of their criticisms. The experts at USBTDA assigned Thumbs Down to this news item (as expected). I am not yet sure how I will respond to the editor but I don’t think I will mention the USBTDA.
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This story has a rather strange conclusion. Not content to leave matters be, I decided to submit one more piece of news to the USBTDA, namely, that the USBTDA was a figment of my imagination. When I clicked enter, the site seemed to freeze for a few seconds, then displayed an error message — something like RQ_TIMEOUT — and finally a blank page. I think what happened is that the experts could not decide whether to say Thumbs Up (thus affirming their own fictional status) or Thumbs Down (viewing their non-existence as bad news). Faced with this logical impasse, the USBTDA simply vanished. Either that, or Trump shut them down. We may never find out.
Glad about the cardionews. Deserves a thumbs up.
I’m guessing you will keep revising the piece.
As Rob said – two thumbs up for your cardiac report! And, having had a few submissions early on requested for revisions, I was always grateful for constructive criticisms. I’d say no big deal but maybe keep an eye out for plagiarism from the outlying ref!