Plurp: A Weblog

2000.11.05 : 2000.11.11

Saturday, November 11, 2000
Blab. Referencing Dave's Most Wonderful Possible commentary on this dumb election stuff, in which he points out that the election looks pretty much like a bunch of people voting randomly for two indistinguishable candidates, a reader asks:
Dear Dr. Plurp, In respect to The Law of Large Numbers, how does Dave explain the Presidential election of 1972?
I would have to say the situations are pretty different. Unlike the current presidential election, the 1972 election (Nixon vs. McGovern, the time of Watergate and All The President's Men fame) was heavily, um, engineered by Nixon and his henchmen. The voters were not flipping random coins. Indeed, if anything, the voters were given two-headed coins.
Nixon ended up getting 47 million votes to McGovern's 29 million, losing only Massachusetts and D.C. Good engineering, perhaps, but a lousy career move, as Nixon learned just before he resigned the presidency rather than face impeachment.
Dave, however, may have a different point of view.

Plurp. Painted on the intersection near our apartment in late 1972, in the fairly radical student community in which I lived:
Don't Change Dicks
In The Middle Of The Screw
Vote For Nixon
In '72

Blab. A reader asks a stimulating question.
What was I going to type? I forget.
I was thinking just the other day about privacy, and how it is such an integral part of human consciousness that our internal experiences - our thoughts, our fears, our joys - are inherently private. They are certainly private in the sense that we need not share them with others if we do not wish to. But even more, they are so intensely internal, so deeply the stuff of our own experience that is often difficult to share them with others even when we want to.
A friend relates the story of his daughter as a small child saying, rather out of the blue:
Mommy, do you remember that dream I had last night?
Our internal experiences are so real to us, just as real in many ways as our experiences of the (shared) outside world, that we must learn at first to differentiate between them - learn that Mommy did not, in fact, experience that dream that was so vivid to us last night.
You can imagine beings that do not have such isolated consciousnesses, beings who share a collective consciousness, whose conscious experience is that of the collective of such beings, not isolated to their own separate experience. (The Borg in Star Trek are one such fanciful race.) We would appear, I think, very isolated and alone to such beings.
This aloneness defines us in important ways. It defines our uniqueness, our individuality. Sometimes, we spend long years admiring these walls that separate us from others, grateful for the privacy they afford our thoughts. Yet the walls that define this private space are also barriers between us and our compatriots. We all long (don't we?) for a soulmate, someone with whom we can share our private thoughts - our grand and foolish dreams, our greatest fears, our most enduring pleasures - a person against whom we need not build walls.
I might venture that all art - music, painting, literature, poetry - is an attempt to draw others within our walls, within the insurmountable privacy of our own dreams. It is an attempt to break down the walls between us and bring our private world into public view.
In one sense, such sharing is impossible. By our nature we are forever isolated beings. In another sense, it is essential, and we often spend our lives trying to achieve it.

Plurp. We continue to crawl through boxes in our apartment. Unable to resist, I've opened up an as-yet-tiny new addition to our Stuff section: Nostalgia. It's stuff from my misspent youth, mostly my own clumsy writing. Now I guarantee that no one will want to look at this besides me!

Yak.
The first time I saw Marla Maples she was delivered to us, clothed in nothing but balloons.

Plop. Ian informs me that I had screwed up the HTML in the table that held that lovely Plurp header up there, and indeed I had. Not only that but, on some browsers, the background of Plurp was gray, not white. Sorry about that! Both of these gaffes have been ungaffed now, I think.

Plurp.
The blue dog had
kibbles
from 1972,
squirreled away in dusty
boxes behind the
paint cans.

Friday, November 10, 2000
Blab. Referencing our rant yesterday on how ballot design can influence elections, and mentioning how Hitler took advantage of this, a reader pins us to the virtual wall:
You gotta citation on that Hitler-ballot item there? Bub?
That's Doctor Bub to you, J. Fred. But, to my everlasting shame, I do not. I have this Really Distinct Memory of reading about this in some book or other that had a picture of the ballot that Hitler used to get elected to something (Nazi Party candidate? Reich Chancellor?). The ballot was printed in old-style German script. You got to vote in favor of Hitler (large Ja beside a large circle in which you make your mark) or against him (smaller Nein beside a smaller circle).
I can't seem to find this on the Web. Nnnnph! Anyone who sends me a reference gets accolades. A Web reference gets serious bonus points. Blab me!

Blab. Referencing our discussion of what name you use for a random person, J. Fred Shirley-Harold submits this:
Random person name: Steve White
Indeed. Those who know me will agree that I am quite random, though it has not yet been established if I am truly random, or merely pseudo-random. Zorf.

Blab. Have I expressed yet my amazement that this whole random-person-name thing is, thus far, the very most popular reader-participation thingie we've ever had on Plurp? That's rather sad, isn't it?
Anyway, yet another reader stirs these muddy waters:
David Foster Wallace uses Joe Sixpack, as I recall. I like the addition of beer-drinking to the Everyman idea.
Fortunately, our reader stays within the already-established Joe theme. And we're grateful for that.

Blab. Finally, the only topologist who reads Plurp tells us:
I was lucky enough to receive an Acme Klein Bottle for my birthday in August. It's truly beautiful, and a great conversation-starter. Anyone who sees it and knows what it is on sight gets big points in my estimation of them (and particularly their intelligence).
While this seems, at first, a one-sided remark, we're sure our readers will appreciate its manifold implications.

Yow. Lunchtalk yesterday spiralled around how we could resolve the Presidential election if all this vote-recounting stuff doesn't work. Here are some of the suggestions, many of which have already been logged by the fleet-fingered Ian:

Mortal Kombat

Iron Chef (mystery ingredient: crow)

Quake III Arena

Spelling bee (but we decided this would be better with Dan Quayle)

Tag-team wrestling match (cf. Jesse Ventura)

Pistols at twenty paces (but Gore has to use a trigger lock)

Kick Florida out of the Union and use the results from the other 49 states. Florida would be kept around as a poor cousin, like Puerto Rico, as an example to the other states.

And, if we decide that simply picking one candidate or the other seems unfair in such a close race:

Time-share: Gore in the mornings, Bush in the afternoons

Gore runs the North; Bush runs the South (though someone thought this kind of thing was tried a while ago and didn't work out well)

Let Clinton stay (no one liked that, except maybe Clinton)

Use the guy who runs "Canada", whoever that is

Hire an executive search firm

Appoint both Bush and Gore as co-Presidents

Have no President for four years, to punish those naughty voters who can't make up their collective mind

We would greatly appreciate your clever (or just plain silly) suggestions. Just type them into that lovely Blab box in the left margin!

Yo. Friend John at work points out the following interesting fact. If 6 million people flipped coins to decide if they were going to vote for Bush or Gore, you expect on average that one (or the other) candidate will win by less than the square root of 6 milion, which is about 2450. Interesting, isn't it, that in Florida (population around 6 million) the difference between the two candidates is, indeed, less than 2450 ?
Hmm.

Yo. We were wondering yesterday about the origin of the term peanut gallery. As always, the Web reveals its Vaudevillian beginnings (though I learned it from the Howdy Doody Show when I was just a sprout).

Yo. As a public service, Plurp alerts our readers to the dangers of DHMO, a little-known and potentially dangerous additive to many of the foods we eat. From the official DHMO FAQ:
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:

Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.

Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.

Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.

DHMO is a major component of acid rain.

Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.

Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.

Plurp.
The blue dog
dreamed that the
same day was being
re-run, again and again and
again.

Thursday, November 9, 2000
Yow. Dave has the Most Wonderful Possible commentary on this election thing. It is the most insightful and pithy piece I've ever read on the topic. Go read it now.

Yow. Demonstrating his amazing capacity for presenting the obvious as stand-up comedy, President Clinton said yesterday:
The people have spoken, but it's going to take a little while to determine what they said.

Rant. There's this Big Controversy about the layout of the presidential ballots in Palm Beach County (Florida), and how demented or blind folks (which reportedly make up a large fraction of the population there) couldn't figure out that punching the second hole caused a vote for Buchanan, while punching the third hole caused a vote for Gore.
Despite my nasty wording, I think they have a point. If you've ever tried to do user interface design for a program by sitting in your office and developing a design that made sense to you, you have no doubt been impressed by how confused other people became when you asked them to play with your interface.
Or consider the ballot that Hitler used to get elected as Head Cheese of Germany just before starting World War II: Ja (yes) in a very large font next to a very large circle in which to express your vote, or Nein (no) in a much smaller font next to a much smaller circle.
Guess which most people chose.
The point is that the design of ballots has a crucial effect on the outcome of elections. The notion that some bozo county can use any design they want, without testing it, without validating its impartiality is, well, let's just say that it leads to situations much like we have seen this week.

Plurp. I have this theory of two-party elections that's been tumbling around in my head for years. Now I will burden you with it.
Consider two-party elections in which the candidates have a very good idea of what people think the important issues are, and how they feel about them. That is, imagine something like the current presidential election.
Think of all of the various issues on which people express political opinions as axes in a large-dimensional space. This axis represents Right-To-Life vs. Reproductive-Choice. That one represents Lower-Taxes-For-Corporations vs. Lower-Taxes-For-The-Middle-Class.
There are going to be a lot of these axes along which pretty much everyone feels the same. On the axis of Nuke-Em-All vs. Let's-Keep-Living-For-A-While, there's going to be an overwhelming majority that believe the latter. Will the two parties disagree on that? No. And since the candidates won't differ on these issues, these axes basically get factored out.
So you end up looking at the subspace spanned by the axes on which people have some significant disagreement. In a society like ours, most people will think things are pretty good as they are and, if anything needs to be changed, it probably doesn't need to be changed radically. Hence peoples' political opinions will cluster around where we are now, with some people wanting to see some movement in one direction and some in the other direction along each axis. What will the parties do? They will appeal to people who want to see movement in one direction or the other. They won't both pick the same direction, as that dilutes their ability to pick up votes.
On the issues where there is some disagreement, you expect the two parties to line up on opposite sides of the issue, and to propose changes that are in the direction they advocate, but small, incremental.
Notice that I haven't said anything about the deeply held personal convictions of the candidates. In this model, they don't really matter. Instead, the parties select, from a large pool of possible candidates, those candidates which best line up on opposite sides of the issues according to public opinion. They may or may not have deeply held convictions. All that really matters is that they attract voters from their parts of the various axes.
I also haven't said anything about consistent political philosophies. To first order, the positions chosen along the various axes could be random, uncorrelated with each other, as long as the two parties choose opposite positions. But the axes aren't really orthogonal, and there is some natural correlation of some issues with others. So there will be some natural clustering of positions. But you don't expect anything like a globally consistent and coherent political philosophy.
Thus you expect the two major candidates to agree on lots and lots of underlying issues, to disagree on the ones most relevant to voters, and to take opposite but incremental positions on those. You expect parties to be extremely sensitive to these differentiating issues, and to constantly monitor shifts in these positions as the campaign progresses. You expect the campaigns to focus on those voters, and those issues, that are more likely to be sensitive to the party's chosen position on the axes. And you don't expect much consistency in the positions, either within a given election, or from election to election.
Which, oddly enough, is pretty much what we see.

Yo.

Plurp. A friend of David's who worked for the recently-defunked Pets.com suggests a new coinage for Internet startups that go belly-up:
Dot-Gones

Blab. Hopefully in response to our inquiry about what name you use for random people, a reader sends this abbreviated response:
J. Fred Muggs
Between Fred Smith, Fred Thompson and the above entry, we conclude that the random person is named Fred.

Blab. Similarly, a reader who might be someone else, contributes:
Joe User or Joe Schmoe
... from which we conclude that the J in J. Fred Muggs must stand for Joe. Hence the nominal name for a random person is Joe Fred.

Blab. Adding more confusion to an otherwise quite confused debate, our Midwest correspondent offers this:
Dear Dr. Plurp, I usually use "Harold" or "Shirley" as example generic people. I don't actually know any Harolds or Shirleys so those names give the example an abstract- yet personal flavor for me. And I dispense with a last name because, hey, I have a hard enough time remembering first names.
- your Midwest correspondent :-)
From which the following consensus name emerges:
Joe Fred Shirley-Harold, aka J. Fred, aka Mr. / Ms. Shirley-Harold
Kindly adapt your personal terminology appropriately. Thank you.

Blab. No doubt following up on our internal voice wondering if God has ears and, if so, how many, a reader in a position to know informs us:
God has 2N ears. ROughly.
Though it is not clear if the roughness is in the figure or the ears themselves.

Plurp.
The blue dog
never understood
Hilbert spaces.
Or cricket.

Wednesday, November 8, 2000
Plurp. It sounds like this voting thing is over a day early for some reason. Curiously, the election thing doesn't seem to be over.
Let's review. Everybody who's going to vote for those political folks has already voted. But nobody knows who won. In fact, I am told that it's pretty clear that one of them (I forget which) is already known to have more votes than the others. But they still don't know who won. As best as I can tell, there's some nonlinear function than maps how many people vote in various geographic regions into who wins.
Nobody quite seems to understand it.
It's like cricket. You watch these guys toss the ball around and swing at it and run back and forth and you finally decide you know how it works. Then something weird happens and everybody's clapping or moaning and you realize you still don't have any idea what's going on.
Oh well. It's still quite a spectacle.

Plop. Incredibly, part of the delay in figuring out the results of the election seems to be the voting technology in Florida. People there vote by inserting a paper card into a machine and punching holes in it with a stylus. Then people who are probably not also employed as rocket scientists count the votes by looking at each card. One for Gore. One for Bush. One more for Gore. Did you count this one already?
Punch cards! How nostalgic.

Yo. Apropos of Ian's suggestion that we let the dead vote, we are told that the voters of Missouri have elected a dead guy as Senator. (How embarrassing must that be to his opponent?) Perhaps he already appealed to the dead vote.

Yow. There was some reporter on the news yesterday who had laser eye surgery a few days ago on TV. He used to have pretty lousy vision; now he has great vision. He was asked what was the most wonderful thing about it. He said:
My wife is so beautiful.
I really liked that, and I smiled for him.

Plop. Pets.com has gone belly-up, its distended white body floating to the top of the polluted tank of the New Economy. Now, usually, I wouldn't even mention this. After all, this silly market bubble, in which companies with no sales and few assets are worth more than General Motors is, well, let's just say it can't last forever. A day of economic reckoning must come. Maybe that's about now. Frankly, I was expecting it some time ago.
And come on - a company that delivers kibbles and bits to your little froo-froo dog or your pet spider when you go to its Web site? I don't know about you, but that never struck me as The Next Big Thing. But hey, venture capitalists are so much smarter than I am about such things, right? Well, OK, maybe not about this particular thing. (Condolences to those of you who bought Pets.com stock at $14.00. It closed today at $0.66.)
Anyhow, I wouldn't even note this, wouldn't even consume your precious eyeball-milliseconds except for one sobering fact: Bob the Sock Puppet, last seen starring at the recent Virus Bulletin Conference, is still missing. We fear that this otherwise uninteresting business failure may mean that Bob is lost to us forever.
Join us in a moment of silence.

Plurp. What do you use as a random person name? I use Fred Smith. You know, So suppose we sell this loser Pets.com stock to Fred Smith for a million dollars ... My friend Randy uses Fred Thompson, presumably not wanting to use his own last name. Does he realize that Fred Thompson is a U.S. Senator from Tennessee? I don't know.
There is an historic tradition of using John Doe and Jane Doe (or sometimes, Mary Doe). That's odd, though, isn't it? Do you actually know anyone named Doe? I don't.
Anyhow, what name do you use for a random person? Type it into that delicious Blab box in the left margin and send it to us. You may already be a wiener.

Yak.
From your lips to God's ears.
Does God have ears? And if so, how many?
Sorry. But I was wondering.

Yo. Were you aware that the blue dog almost always says something when you hold your cursor over him? Apparently some people were not, and were missing oh so very much.

Plurp.
They kept
asking the blue dog not
to chew the cards

Tuesday, November 7, 2000
Blab. Probably referencing my diatribe against the draft, My Greatest Fan says:
Dear Dr. Plurp. I am glad you didn't go to Vietnam.
Your Greatest Fan
Me too.

Blab. Unable to resist, My Greatest Fan also points us to a reference site that gathers together all variety of dictionary-like things: rhyming, anagram, thesaurus, language translation, language guessing. Yow.

Plurp. I was away from the office yesterday, hanging out in IBM Corporate Headquarters. In my absence, lunchtalk apparently turned to this election thing that's today, and to why I don't vote.
It's true. I don't. I haven't voted for, oh, maybe twenty years. In college and early grad school, I was quite politically active. I was a member of the Libertoonian Party, worked on several state platform committees, and was elected to the state judicial committee. I started a Libertoonian student organization in grad school. I went to tax protests. I gave impassioned speeches at local colleges and high schools.
And you know what? It didn't make any difference. Almost nobody listened to us, almost nobody cared. I was spending a huge amount of my time and my emotion on something that didn't make a difference.
What's more, I realized that the entire political machine thrives on the ideas that it has a mandate from the people. No matter how you vote, you are part of that mandate, and elected officials restrict your freedom and kill whomever is currently unpopular in your name.
I still wanted to see the world become a more free and more peaceful place. I still feel passionately about that. But now, I think my own talents are best directed towards this goal by creating information technology, which I believe is inevitably a liberating force for the world, ultimately far more important and wide-reaching than anything that goes on in the self-declared Seats Of Power of the world. And I believe my time and passion are more effectively focused on this rather than politics.
Now, your mileage may vary. Despite the fact that this is election day in the U.S., I'm not trying to influence your thinking one whit. Vote, if you want to. After all, it's a free country.

Yak. Minnesota Governor and Wrestlemania star Jesse Ventura in response to a question on Larry King Live asking how he thinks Nader could get 10% of the vote in Minnesota when the polls have him getting much less:
Well, the polls aren't counting the disinfected voters.
Indeed.

Yak. George Bush, at some campaign rally or other:
If Al Gore invented the inter net, how come every inter net address begins with W ? And not just one W, but three Ws !
You, like I, are greatly relieved to discover that Bush and Gore have the same deep understanding of technology.

Plurp. Speaking of Jesse, SNL had the most wonderful segment the other night in which Jesse Jackson was reciting Green Eggs and Ham as a political speech. Jackson's rhymish speaking style and Seuss' simple and repetitive meter were an amazingly convincing combination. He sounded so sincere!

Plop. In response to our challenge to prove that all four-letter combinations (e.g. ASDF, QWER) are already on the Web, Ian attempts an obvious cheat: writing a Perl script that generates all of them and then shows them to you as a Web page.
In a pained attempt to convince us that this cheat qualifies as a solution, he says:
Pedants may claim that as these lists are dynamically generated, this doesn't count. I say 'Pshaw!' and 'Eat my shorts' and 'Begone, foul fiend' to these people. The lists are 'on the web' in as much as anything else is
To which we respond: What part of already did you not understand?
Still, it is just the kind of devious subterfuge that we want to encourage, so he gets partial credit.
Proofs that all four-letter combinations are already on the Web will be praised with joyous hymns here in Plurp. So get going!

Plurp.
The blue dog
voted late
and seldom

Monday, November 6, 2000
Blab. In response to the political cartoon in which Bush says A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, so I voted for Nader, a mathematically talented reader calculates:
A vote for Nader is, of course, at most -half- a vote for Bush...
... but she doesn't show her work, so we can't really check.

Rant. In watching a program on the White House and its occupants last night on the Biography Channel (All People, All The Time), I was struck by something.
Take away the trappings, take away the suits, take away the honor guards, take away the limos and the TV cameras, take away both pomp and circumstance and what do you have?
When I was a kid, I used to think that leaders of nations got their positions because they were well suited as world leaders. They were smarter, more moral, wiser than everyone else. They knew how to walk that fine line between national defeat and world aggression, between national ambition and bureaucratic avarice. They knew what to do. They were the nation's Dads.
Then came college, and Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon's war: Vietnam. And with it "the draft", such an innocuous term for slavery in the service of political goals, for being forced at the point of a gun to kill or be killed.
Oh, sure, kids were rioting, burning down the bank in the community in which I lived. They were taking over the college campus and laying down on local freeways. And these kids were being shot and killed, both in Vietnam and in America.
But what I remember even more distinctly is that my draft number was 145. Each year, the government declared that they would draft people up to a certain number. Those with low numbers were in big trouble, and many of them were shipped off to die. Those with high numbers breathed a sigh of relief, and went about their lives.
As a person with a relatively low number this, finally, got my attention. And what I saw was that these people, these people who commanded vast armies, these people who could on a bad hair day unleash weapons to destroy all human life, these people who had decided they could call me to my death, these people were nothing special. They were not smarter than I was, not more moral, not wiser, not more likely to make the right decisions for me, for the nation, or for the world. They were simply enrobed in power, thought of by most as superior merely because they had survived a popularity contest.
But if you take away their trappings - the limos, the suits, the retinue, the state dinners - they are just dull-witted, mean-spirited, power-hungry guys who think that morality is only for those lesser beings like you and me. And who feel no compunction about taking our money, our liberty, and our lives.
And I have never looked at politics the same way since.
So if I seem distant as you engage in impassioned debate about the differences between Bush and Gore, it is not that I am disinterested. Rather, I am thinking about their similarities. And they frighten me.

Plurp.
Greetings from
the President
of the United
States.

Sunday, November 5, 2000
Blab. In apparent response to the absence of the blue dog a couple of days ago, My Greatest Fan writes:
Dear Dr. Plurp, Where is Blue Dog?? Is he dead?
Your Greatest Fan
Don't worry. Every once in a while, someone leaves that darned Internet gateway open and the blue dog gets out, running down the Information Superhighway, dodging automobile companies and Goth hackers.
We have no idea where he goes, but he invariably comes back a day or so later, muddy, ravenous and absolutely exhausted, his tongue hanging out and a silly grin from ear to ear.
We don't know exactly what he does. Our sense of propriety prevents us from asking.

Blab. In response to our challenge to prove that all four-letter combinations are already on the Web, an ambitious reader writes:
I should have evidence for you in about... six days. Hope you can wait that long...
We admire the reader's verve, and welcome a report on the solution. We wonder however, if our reader is taking a tortuous route.
Hint: The next challenge will be to prove that all five-letter combinations are already on the Web. On the proper machine (e.g. a typical Linux machine), this can be done in less than half an hour.

Blab. Our Massachusetts correspondent checks in with this.
Reading your thoughts on beauty is a beautiful experience - thought provoking and sensuous. More of this profundity in Plurpdom will be gratefully received.
MAVA
Why, thank you! It still amazes me that anyone who could avoid it really wants to hear that odd little voice in my head, but I'll keep taking dictation for it if you want.

Yak. There's a commercial on TV which, when I was not listening very carefully, seemed to say:
Bring home the wrong catheter,
and be prepared for the consequences.
It actually says cat litter. Whew.

Plurp. Meerkats are kinda cool, IMHO. Like many social animals, they have evolved a behavior in which one of them is always looking out for the others. If that one goes back to munching or snoozing, another takes its place. If you're in an area through which the Canadian geese are migrating about now, you might notice them doing the same thing - one always has its long neck stuck up in the air, watching as you walk by while the others snuffle through the grass looking for goodies.

Plurp. This election thing is pretty complicated! There's a political cartoon in the New York Times today that shows this Bush fellow being interviewed as he comes out of a voting booth, saying:
A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, so I voted for Nader.
The scary thing is: I think this makes sense.

Plurp. I was washing my hands today in the kitchen sink after Helen and I unpacked a few more boxes in our still-unfinished apartment. Suddenly, I was back, several years ago, having just checked Helen into the hospital, washing my hands in the hospital room.
Helen was in pain, and about to undergo tests. I was afraid she was going to die. I was afraid that I was going to lose her. I was trying to be strong for her. And there, washing my hands in the hospital sink, my whole life suddenly came into sharp focus.
It was a simple act. One hand cupped the other, the water flowing over my fingers, and my whole life was focused on how that water felt on my hands, and the way one hand moved over the other.
It was one of the most alive and conscious moments I have ever experienced. Then I turned off the water, dried my hands, and went out again to be with Helen.
It's hard to explain.

Plurp.

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