There is an acronym for the situation where someone e-mails you a question that they could have quickly and easily found the answer to themselves online…it is something like: “Data You Could Have F**king Found Yourself In One Minute,” or DYCHFFYIOM. Pronounced “Ditch-fee-EYE-um.” I actually just made that up, sort of. I think I might have stupidly asked Jed such a question awhile back, and he sent me a link in response. And if memory serves, Jed has mentioned this or a similar concept on his blog, (perhaps because of my question) but he was far too polite to mention me by name.

I was reminded of this today when I when I was reading about Hurricane Lane, which is slamming the State of Sinaloa, Mexico. From the CBS News website (via the Associated Press) today:

“By late morning Saturday, Lane was centered about 80 miles northwest of Mazatlan and was moving north at nearly 10 mph. It was just offshore. The city is the capital of Sinaloa state and is a center for the region's booming agriculture and food-processing industry.”

Unbelievable! Have they ever heard of a fact-checker at CBS or AP?! The capital of Sinaloa is Culiacan, not Mazatlan. (I only know that because of our firm’s resort in Mazatlan, not because I aspire to be Cliff Claven.)

And CBS could have found that in ten seconds on the internet, let alone one minute. Just type “Capital of Sinaloa” into Google and you get the result without even having to go to a web page.

So this was not a case of DYCHFFYIOM, but rather, DYCHFFYITS.