{"id":18442,"date":"2019-01-03T01:08:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T06:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=18442"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:52","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:52","slug":"thumbs-up-thumbs-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2019\/01\/thumbs-up-thumbs-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Thumbs Up\/Thumbs Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

One federal agency that remained open during the ongoing government shutdown is the U.S. Bureau of Thumb Direction Assignment, or USBTDA.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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<\/em> or Down<\/em>.\u00a0 This service is free, fast and confidential.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Indeed they were, and here are the results:<\/p>\n

(1) I haven’t talked with my cardiologist yet, but I did read the report from my cardiac MRI<\/a> last month, and all the tests were marked NORMAL.\u00a0 I was happy and relieved when the USBTDA assigned Thumbs Up<\/em> to this item.\u00a0 Now I can sleep a little better, knowing that invasive procedures are not part of my immediate future.\u00a0 Thank you, USBTDA.<\/p>\n

(2) I received a response yesterday from the editor of the MDPI Games Journal about the 24-page article<\/a> on The Price is Right<\/em> showcase round that I submitted a few weeks ago.\u00a0 The editor “encouraged” me to resubmit it after “extensive revisions” but mentioned that one of the reviewers thought my article should be rejected outright.\u00a0 The reviewers made mostly constructive comments but I doubt I will be able to address all of their criticisms.\u00a0 The experts at USBTDA assigned Thumbs Down<\/em> to this news item (as expected).\u00a0 I am not yet sure how I will respond to the editor but I don’t think I will mention the USBTDA.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n

This story has a rather strange conclusion.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 When I clicked enter<\/em>, the site seemed to freeze for a few seconds, then displayed an error message — something like RQ_TIMEOUT — and finally a blank page.\u00a0 I\u00a0think what happened is that the experts could not decide whether to say Thumbs Up<\/em> (thus affirming their own fictional status) or Thumbs Down<\/em> (viewing their non-existence as bad news).\u00a0 Faced with this logical impasse, the USBTDA simply vanished.\u00a0 Either that, or Trump shut them down.\u00a0 We may never find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One federal agency that remained open during the ongoing government shutdown is the U.S. Bureau of Thumb Direction Assignment, or USBTDA.\u00a0 For those unfamiliar with the USBTDA, these are the people who determine whether a given event represents good news … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18442"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18466,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18442\/revisions\/18466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}