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2001.08.19 : 2001.08.25
Saturday, August 25, 2001
Blab. Someone who must want to sell us something writes:
Your website/weblog is one
of my favorites! Intelligent humor is hard to find elsewhere.
How oh so very kind of you!
Blab. Another digital telemarketing candidate writes:
As you may know, I happened
upon this site quite by accident. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading through
the archives and what-not. I've visited it probably in the upper reached
of...oh...10 times. Am I a "regular" now? I keep coming back for more...actually
excited to get to work...to check the PLURP. Thanks!
While we can't quite envision anyone who reads Plurp being called
regular,
we are thrilled to be the highlight of your otherwise vacant day. It is
a low bar that we continually strive to surmount.
(In fact, the Blab boxes submit reader comments anonymously,
so we don't know anything about you unless you tell us. And even then we
seldom believe you.)
Blab. A reader who, we suspect, really is trying to sell
us something, writes:
We heard that you might be
in the web design business, and as such, would really benefit from this
tool.
Imagine being able to turn on great
looking E-Commerce enabled websites in less than 15 minutes. Complete Database
and shopping cart enabled sites!
Turns you into a hosting company!
No more paying for custom CGI work!
Not only will you be able to turn
on amazing looking sites faster than ever before, you will also be able
to make a ton more money on them than you do now!
A short list of features looks like
this:
Private Labeled Website Builder/Store
Builder (Best Anywhere)
Private Labeled Shopping Cart
Private Labeled WebMail and Pop3
Service
Private Labeled Secure Server Hosting
Private Labeled Domain Name
Registration
Private Labeled Search Engine
Submission
Private Labeled Control Panel
Not only are there too many features
to go into here, but You can use this MegaTool to make you double or triple
what you are making now. I know, because I live it. If you
would like to see how I use it to make money myself, take a look at the
attatched .txt file. [Mercifully omitted - ed.]
I will be truthful with you.
There are so many features to this MEGATOOL that to show you all of them,
it takes about 30 minutes, and is best done over the phone.
I will be available to show you this
tool for the next 3 days from 11am-7pm EST.
If you want to see this amazing MegaTool
which turns you into a hosting company (if you like), cuts your design
time in half, makes E-Commerce easier than ever before, and is easier to
use than anything you've ever seen:
Call 1-888-549-xxxx or 1-954-585-xxxx.
We heard that you might be able to put together a sales pitch using proper
grammar. Obviously, we both heard wrong.
Blab. A reader sends us this object lesson.
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp
... wherein we learn that Marcie would be alive today if she hadn't been
involved in that satanic D&D game. Or if she had made her saving throw.
I know what you're involved
in. It's a spiritual warfare that you can't win without the Lord Jesus.
... or a Sword of Myth Bashing.
Want to investigate further? Read Straight
Talk on Dungeons and Dragons and Should
a Christian Play Dungeons and Dragons? by William
Schnoebelen.
And burn your dice.
Blab. And on that topic, wouldn't this be a disturbing email
to receive?
Somebody has created an artificial
lifeform called Plurp using your email address. To confirm that you want
to bring the creature to life, and get email from it, click on the following
link:
[link omitted - ed.]
Please ignore this email if you did
not request the creature or do not wish to continue.
Now the really weird thing is that we did create this artificial
creature and we did want to bring it to life. So we did.
It's alive! It's alive!
Blab. A crypto-minimalist writes:
mariam
Ummm
... ?
Blab. A reader who thinks there is only one drunk-and-nun joke
writes:
I know that it is the drunk-and-nun
joke. That much is obvious. But "coje" means something naughty in Spanish,
and babelfish won't ever produce that word for me, so I just give up.
We must admit that it took us a while to figure out what coje meant
in this context. But we did.
Blab. A reader satisfied with a C+ average writes:
Your Babelfish game is silly,
and the words (and the clue) are obscure. You'll have to either give a
better clue (how many languages? How many iterations?) or accept
the poor response for this game....
Ah, but this is just the point! The text was contributed by some anonymous
reader, without any hints at all. We hypothesize that it is some common
joke (and hence finable on the Web) translated to and from (perhaps) a
single (other) language in Babelfish. Now, we could be wrong, but that
hardly ever happens.
If we're right, the trick is to find the original text on the Web and
guess the (other) language.
But if that's too, well, taxing for some of our readers, then
we will understand it if they sit quietly while our more, um, focused
readers solve the puzzle.
Readers?
Blab. A particularly lazy reader writes:
What are the lyrics to "Sailing
to Philadelphia"?
Criminy!
Next you'll have us feeding you bon-bons in your Lay-Z-Boy recliner. Or
hitting the Enter key for you.
Yo. This
site tells us that our Rave Name is e
plurmaster. They clearly misspelled it.
 Plurp.
The blue dog's
Rave Name was
e
plurmaster
Friday, August 24, 2001
Blab. In response to our anguished
question regarding the contents of Plurp, a reader writes:
"What to do? What to
do?"
Do what you feel in your heart.
I can't believe I just typed that.
We can't either. Especially since what we currently feel in our heart has
more to do with the guacamole we had for lunch than it does with the contents
of Plurp.
Blab. In response to our moral turmoil
about what Plurp should be, a panicked reader writes:
I was APPALLED at your suggestion
that we focus ANY energy here on Planet Plurp to Important Social Issues.
That's why we have cnn.com
I visit the Planet Plurp to ESCAPE
the nagging social issues that fill our day. I'd much rather discuss
more interesting topics such as Super Cholesteral or pTangs rather than
the exploits of Fidel Castro and Congressman Condit.
Who's Fidel Castro?
 Blab.
A correspondent alerts us to:
More that you knew there
was to know about Aluminum Foil
Deflector Beanies (An Effective, Low-Cost Solution To Combating
Mind-Control) and related protective headgear.
We didn't know that.
Blab. In response to our little tiny link
to the infamous Duct
Tape Cam, an enthusiastic reader writes:
Hi Captain Plurp,
I loved the web cam. You certainly
located for your readers one lively wad of duct tape. The Handyman's
Secret Weapon!
My resourceful husband used a few
strips of duct tape to repair a hole in his sheepskin slippers- it held
for years! This approach to making repairs may be genetic, since
daughter #2 brought the "pocket
duct tape" with us on a sailing trip, "just in case we might need it".
You may want to consider purchasing
that fashionable "Duct Tape Forever" director's
cap. It could make a real impression if you wear it at your next
international presentation. It's an option.
Here are just a few of our family's
favorite quotes from The
Handyman's Corner segment of the [Red Green] show:
"To err is human. To really
mess things up you need a sledge hammer and duct tape."
"Duct tape is like the force.
It has a light side and a dark side and it holds the Universe together."
"Well you know what I always say:
'Accidents happen, otherwise alot of us wouldn't be around today to be
talk'n about it' ".
"Quando Omni Flunkus Mortiti"
(If all else fails, play dead.)
- Your Midwest Correspondent
We knew you'd like that!
Blab. A reader submits an entry to our Image
Problems contest, this time in the Surrealism category.
Can your soap do that?
We're pretty sure our soap can't do that. Can yours? And if so,
how?
Blab. In another entry in our Image Problems
contest, once again in the Gross Out category, a reader points us
at this.
Can your soap do that?
We must admit that this is the first time we've seen an actual movie of
someone's head exploding. With or without soap.
Blab. We were having a pretty good day. Then someone had to send
this:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sicohen/babelfish.html
 Just
our luck. Those guys with time machines stole our great idea of making
a contest out of reverse engineering Babelfishizations
of well known texts (and, in their case, song lyrics).
One of our favorites:
Deceleration, you move too
fast. You obtained to make the end of morning. Just giving a kick in bottom
of the round paving stones. Seeking the recreation and feeling creature
of habit.
Or:
It is been the one day night
hard, and I functioning like a dog. It is been the one day night hard,
I should sleep like a natural logarithm.
Others
are much more obscure!
Blab. A reader reminds us of this:
IBM's newest business partner
is a mustachioed Italian plumber with gorilla issues.
Deep down, don't we all have gorilla
issues? Hmmm?
Blab. A reader, steeped in mystery and lacking in context, suggests:
David's really been "phoning
it in"
Has he?
Blab. A reader gives an authoritative answer to our pressing
question, Is overnighting a word?
Of course, just like emailing,
web-hosting, or Plurping....
Oh, thank goodness. We are so relieved.
Blab. Obsessed with the number of hits the string Plurp
gets on Google, a reader with too much free time writes:
Unfortunately, Plurp is not
a fixed entity. Today Plurp came up with "340" - somehow DOWN from
343.
Of course I suspect that over time
this number will climb well above 343.
Either that, or, based on trends of
the past two days, Plurp may eventually shrivel into oblivion....
We can only hope.
Blab. Not to be overlooked, the Masked URList sends us this.
http://www.technosphere.org.uk/
Now this is cool. Somebody has created a world (the TechnoSphere)
which can be populated with artificial creatures: herbivores and carnivores
of descriptions various. The carnivores eat the herbivores. The herbivores
eat the native plants. There's sex, sort of, and things evolve.
 We
have, as you might suspect, created our own creature. Its name is Plurp.
Plurp
is a vegetarian whose interests include long walks on the beach at sunset
and Thursdays spent entirely in bed (except for the sushi).
Well, OK, not exactly. Actually, it's more of a bulbous box of jelly
rolls with delusions of grandeur.
Anyhow, you can follow the evolution of Plurp somehow or other.
We haven't figured out how just yet. But we'll let you know when we do.
Blab. A reader sends us this.
www.miniclip.com/dancingbush.htm
Are you interested in crudely fabricated images of Dubya doing various
rather silly dance steps? Have you ever fantasized about being able to
control unimportant actions of a President of These Benighted States? If
so, this site is definitely for you. Otherwise, you might want to go calculate
autocorrelation functions of various collections of strings in Google.
Blab. A reader informs us of a previously little known fact.
In the land of analog dictionaries..."the
Zebra did it".
While we are sure this is true, we have no idea what it might mean.
Blab. A reader with her ear to the grindstone reports:
Helenism: Keep your ear to
the grindstone.
Good one! And so recorded.
Blab. Using maximally complex syntax, a reader writes:
w.r.t. your (readers') musings
re: various -illions
Lookee there! A real live definition of Bajillionaire.
Yow. Synj. Still.
Plop. Honk if you're tired of Gary
Condit.
Yow.
Plurp.
I ... I've lost my brain.
It was right here. Then I turned around and ... and ... now it's completely
gone.
Ma'am, I need you to fill out a report.
But you don't understand! I have no
brain at all. It's just ... gone.
Ma'am, there's nothing I can do for
you until you fill out a report.
Plurp. Saudi
Arabia Bans Pokémon.
The religious edict [...]
said the Pokémon video game and cards have symbols that include
"the star of David, which everyone knows is connected to international
Zionism and is Israel's national emblem".
The game has been criticised in several
countries, with a Christian church in Mexico calling it "demonic", and
organisations in Slovakia saying television shows based on the game were
detrimental to children.
In Britain, police have urged parents
not to allow children out with the cards.
'Bout time. It's so good to see the governments of the world protecting
us from the deadly threat of geometric shapes and randomly imagined causal
connections. We know we'll sleep much better tonight.
Plurp. It's movie
time! (Broadband users only, prolly.)
-
Random building on a nice sunny afternoon.
By mistake, somebody detonates a grenade.
-
Random building on a nice sunny afternoon.
By mistake, somebody detonates a bomb.
-
Random building on a nice sunny afternoon.
By mistake, somebody detonates a nuclear
device.
That's one unlucky building.
Yow.
668 - The neighbor of the
beast.
That's funny.
Yow. Our pirate
name is Captain Davy Kidd.
Even though there's no legal
rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Even
though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness
and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!
That's Doctor Captain Davy Kidd to you, fishbait. And what the heck
is a reliable pirate? We're deeply offended. We think. Arr!
Plurp. Is the U.S. patent system really doing something socially
relevant? Yes, says ABC News. It's providing comic
relief.
Plurp.
Somewhere there is a large
machine that produces wire clothes hangers. Day after day, lumbering bales
stream wire off through efficient cutters and clever arms, the arms twisting
and bending the wire into foreordained shapes, after which the machine
breaths clear lacquer or white paint onto the newborn hanger, a complete
and perfect creation.
Does she regard them as her children,
her million young, this great, clanking, whizzing, devoted machine? Does
she regard with suspicion the many men who whisk them away from her, shut
them into dark boxes, remove them from her presence? Does she experience
sorrow at the rumble of the trucks as they speed away?
Does she feel a tug, somewhere deep
in her purposeful chest, as I clothe her naked child in my freshly ironed
shirt?
Zoom. Observations from a seven hour drive.
-
A standard size Igloo cooler will not
fit in the trunk of a Miata.
-
A standard size Igloo cooler will
fit in front of the passenger seat of a Miata.
-
If a standard size Igloo cooler is put
in front of the passenger seat of a Miata, there is no longer any room
for the passenger's legs or feet.
-
Being a passenger in a Miata with your
knees crammed up in your face is not nearly as much fun as it looks.
Plurp.
The blue dog's
pirate name was
Sam Bonney
Thursday, August 23, 2001
Blab. Armed with the Amulet of Linguistic Confusion,
a reader writes:
Go n-ithe an cat thú
is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat.
Gurab amhlaidh duit!
Hey! That reminds us - no one ever responded to our challenge to find
the solution to our Babelfish Puzzle.
Went a nun walking by the
street and happens next to a drunkard.
Then coje the drunkard to blows to
the poor nun.
After which drunk I leave him to the
poor nun in the finished ground one rises and he says:
- you disappoint BATMAN to Me.
The puzzle is: What original story (in English) can be submitted to Babelfish,
then translated to and then from some other language, to result in the
above fascinating bit of prose? And what language or languages are involved?
Thus far, dear readers, we have been patient, figuring that you were
still working hard at it. But we are beginning to suspect that you are
simply ignoring this wonderful puzzle. Perhaps you think it's too hard
for you. Perhaps you think it's impossible. But you know what? It's not.
(At least, we don't think it is.) So sharpen your wits and start
clicking!
(Note the non-English word coje. This may be a partial clue.)
Deposit answers here, please.
Blab. A reader contributes another entry to our Image
Problems contest.
can your soap do that ?
Interesting. Our soap does that all the time. But yeah, it would
be a pretty lousy ad campaign.
(We really do love this image!)
Blab. Responding to our desperate plea for new blogs to read,
a generous reader donates this.
I know you'll get hundreds
of submissions of new (to someone, anyway) blogs to read, but here's one
more: The Astronomy, Space,
and Science blog. An astonishing volume of stuff, gorgeous pictures,
and run by academics, so it's got to be good!
G
Thanks for the suggestion. And here we didn't even know that Astronomy
could write!
Blab. Not to be outdone by our honest product packaging photo
yesterday,
a reader points us at this.
Super. (Note the Queen Helen brand.)
Blab. A surrogate blogger writes:
[Surrogate blogging]
President
Kennedy's motivation in emphasizing a manned moon landing was political,
not scientific.
--from the news magazine
Duh.
Yes, well. It's good to see such political acumen, especially from the
peachy cheeked staff of Wired. Imagine, a politician whose motivation
is political, not scientific.
Blab. A reader gestures in the direction of George Forman's second
career as a researcher
in mobile computing at HP Labs.
I am not a boxer, but I do
own one.
Go Big George!
Blab. A normally agreeable reader complains:
I know a lot of words, but
I don't recognize "lacuna." It's a sort of "gap" in my vocabulary,
for lack of a better word.
Sorry about that! You probably need a vocabulary test like you need a hole
in the head. You know: Lacuna somata.
Blab. On the topic of Google commutators, a reader bemoans:
Today, Google is generating
1.41 million hits for both "you suck" and "suck you." This is starting
to make exactly as much sense as quantum mechanics.
In that you suck quantum mechanics, or that it sucks you? We're so confused!
Blab. All we have to do is make one innocent, offhand remark
about dimensionless constants to incite our readers to spend their entire
days preparing responses for us.
10^9 the result of handwaving?
No, not at all. Or perhaps that's how pTang arrived at it, but in
fact the constant should be the number of pages indexed by Google.
Which, currently, is 1,387,529,000, not too far off from 10^9.
If P is the number of pages indexed
by Google, then (N1/P) is the fraction of pages in Google containing the
first word, (N2/P) the fraction containing the second word, and (H/P) the
fraction containing both words. Basic probability tells us that,
if the two words are independent, the expected fraction of pages which
contains both words is (N1/P)*(N2/P). So the ratio of pages actually
containing both words to the expected number is (H/P)/[(N1/P)*(N2/P)],
which simplifies to (H*P)/(N1*N2).
Neat trick: for those search engines
which don't tell you up front how many pages they index, this can be used
to estimate that number. P=(N1*N2)/H for words that are neutrally
correlated.
That's neat!
Blab. Regarding the pTang thing, a reader writes:
Regarding the pTang thing.
Two obvious generalizations: third
and higher-order pTangs, and self-pTangs.
The intersection of those could be
ilustrated by the following: Go Google on "taco," "taco taco," and "taco
taco taco." These are self-pTang querries, the last is third-order.
Results: 446,000 275,000
277,000.
I was surpirised that the 3rd is greater
than the 2nd. [Perhaps because Taco Bell special number seven features
3 tacos, while there is no combo featuring 2?]
If the same three-way is done using
"plurp" a startling constant emerges...
Results: 343 343 343.
Hence we have the amazing discovery:
"Plurp" is a fixed point of the Nth order self-pTang.
Whodathunkit?!
Not us, that's who! We wonder what mystic Qabalistic significance we should
ascribe to the number 343.
Blab. A reader with an ample supply of good drugs writes:
I strongly disagree with
your critic's criticism of your pTang contest (even if his name IS pTang!)
Though achieving heights in excess
of pTang's constant of 2*pi, I suspect that there is - somewhere out there
- a pTang value that achieves Google Zen, which is a pTang value of (pi^2).
The symbol for Google Zen somewhat
resembles that found on the afore-referenced Triscit Pizza, except that
it uses chedder cheese instead of mozzarella.
Once Plurp readers have achieved Google
Zen, I suspect all will be well in the world of Google once again.
Of course, due to regular invasive
crawling of Google across the Planet Plurp, previous pTang values found
will disappear, requiring a never-ending pursuit of Google Zen.
That, or we just get bored of if and
invent a new game, and judging from the acuities and attention span of
most of the (now 10?) loyal Plurp readers, this will more likely be the
case....
Well, let's see. What games do we have going on just now? We have Image
Problems, of course. And we just reminded you of the Babelfish Puzzle.
Then there's the seemingly endless series of confusing Google games, all
having strange and befuddling mathematics associated with them.
Maybe we should just knock it off with these game things and hold forth
on Important Social Issues for a while.
Blab. A loyal reader writes:
Dear Plurp Master,
I appreciate that you math wizards
like to show off your work but some of us dummies don't have the intellectual
ability to comprehend it all. May I suggest that you establish a
new Plurp Site so you all can have your own little conversations without
muddling our minds?
A Dummy
We hate to break the news to you, but we already did that. This is
the dummy site. The real Plurp Math site is off discussing Diophantine
geometry at the moment.
Sorry.
Plurp. OK. Here's the deal. We are given to understand that Plurp
has become too esoteric, too inbred, and perhaps too scholastic for some
of our formerly loyal readers.
We are further given to understand that some of these formerly loyal
readers have, well, stopped reading Plurp altogether. Hard though
it is to believe! (Really. Who would think of Plurp as scholastic?
Whew.)
Too much Chihuly, they say (though they probably mean Cthulhu,
as we've only mentioned Chihuly once).
Too much math. Too little heartfelt amateur philosophy, maybe.
What to do? What to do?
Yak.
Miss Missouri won the Miss
Teen USA contest.
Isn't that the Show Me state?
Don't even go there.
Yo. Are you going to hell?
We'll meet you by the hot chocolate machine. (Weird
Links)
P.S. And just how embarrassing is it to have a grammatical error in
your
domain name? Ouch.
Yo. Attention. Attention. Satan's
latest tricks.
 Go
Goddess Game.. This is a slick way into getting you to cast spells and
summon demons and in the mean time think that you are playing a harmless
game.. Comes complete with a Witch's Wheel and candles disguised with butterflies..
This is a wicked trick! If you own such a evil item be advised it is infested
with demonic activity we suggest you destroy it as soon as possible.. Their
website is: http://GoGoddess.com
What would they say about our involvement with D&D?
Maybe this explains the grammatical error in their domain name, too.
Yak.
Yo! Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo! Yo.
Yo. Yo, yo, yo, yo!
Yow. Windows
RG demo. Really funny. Click
on it. Really. (gaekwad)
Yak.
We've got to become a high-performance,
in-your-face, speak-your-mind culture, because that's what this industry
requires.
Plurp. Is overnighting a word?
Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't even know they
had
a hot chocolate
machine
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
Blab. A quantum hydrologist writes:
The non-deterministic behavior
you are getting from Google is a result of searches that exceed pTang's
constant (2*pi). You are creating resonances that can cause any of various
interference patterns, all dependant upon the status of the observer.
The number of hits for "hydrologic
bitches" should always be even, because the P-shell always matches a top
and bottom quark at polar opposites of the orbital.
Google is not a toy, and I recommend
that you stop messing with it until you are fully conversant with the underlying
physics, lest you accidentally summon an Elder.
-pTang, Miskatonic U.
It has been our lifelong curse that our actions have always summoned
the Elders.
Blab. A reader permits us to enter his or her inner mental turmoil.
Heard on the radio last night:
"don't chum where you swim".
We have heard that sharks don't particularly like human flesh and
that, when they accidentally chew off your leg they sometimes spit it out.
That must be so demeaning!
Blab. On the subject of pTangification, a reader writes:
Plurp-
I tried to come up with a non-google
word combo where each word had > 100,000 hits individually and I found
one combo:
"hmong tuple", 103,000x148,000, pTang
= 5.86
Other combos with high pTang which
didn't meet my criteria:
Closest I came was "tuple slasher",
148,000 & 69,400, pTang = 5.76.
"tuple podiatrist", 148,000 and 57,900,
pTang = 5.71.
-Ed
We once hired a tuple podiatrist. Details omitted.
Blab. Paradoxically responding to a comment from another
blog entirely, a reader of some blog writes:
In response to Ian's comment
about the pTangial formula:
To expand the formula to cover non-zero
results as well, divide each N by (H+1), where H is the number of hits
the word cluster obtains. This degenerates to the original formula in the
H=0 case, and seems to provide a suitable penalty for H>0.
This is getting out of hand.
Blab. A reader seeks to express various mathematical truths in
the inadequate language of ASCII.
Take any two words. Their
pTang correlation (PC) is equal to:
(H * 10^9) / (N1 * N2)
H being hits for the two together,
N1 and N2 being the number of hits each separate word obtains.
The 10^9 constant is the result of
hand-waving aimed to get the PC rating to be about 1.000 for neutral correlation.
Some results:
"you" and "mental" - 0.99 (neutral
correlation)
"hydrology" and "water" - 16.20 (very
high)
"hydrology" and "shortstop" - 0.15
(negative correlation)
The first thing that occurs to me
is that an Eliza program might be able to use Google as a database for
determining changes of topic or to find words related to the present topic.
It is also good for losing an hour of productivity to screwing around on
Google.
-pTang
P.S.: In the process, I discovered
that Google lacks the commutative property:
you suck - 1,040,000
suck you - 919,000
The physicist in us is deeply suspicious of oddly determined dimensionless
quantities.
But, whoa (Keanu Reeves reference)! That noncommutivity is an interesting
and hitherto undocumented observation. In quantum mechanics, we define
the commutator of a and b as [a, b] = ab - ba. Clearly,
the concept applies to the noncommutative nature of terms in Google.
This leads naturally to a contest. Readers are invited
to submit two terms with the largest commutator you can find in Google.
That is, readers are invited to submit two strings a and b
such that
[a, b] = n(a, b) - n(b, a) is as large as possible, where
n(a,
b) is the number of Google hits on string a followed by string
b
(no quotes).
Hmm. Should we normalize it:
[a, b]/N, where N = [n(a, b) + n(b, a)] / 2
so we emphasize the largest percentage difference? Suggestions welcome.
We are, of course, flattered by the claim that there is no correlation
between me and mental. Thanks for your unsupportable confidence.
Blab. As an entry to our Image Problems
contest in the Gross Out category, a reader nominates:
Can your soap do that?
Eeeeew. We hope not!
Blab. A new reader attempts a dangerous Triple Helenism.
Subj: I would love to try.
Every rose has a silver lining right
beneath your nose.
--
Every rose has a thorn.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
[Some event occurs] right beneath
your nose.
And how true! Linked to you,
and missed becoming an everyday reader by a hair's breadth. Damn
these glass eyes. I will sue my opthamologist when I find my glasses.
With warm regards,
Another convert to Plurp
ps :: Stop having fun Google games
please, I need to at least -look- like I'm doing work...
Oh, yeah - like you should be different! (But welcome anyhow.)
Blab. A reader enlightens us as to our next vocation.
From Red Rock Eaters. Enlightening.
How
Can I Train Myself for Jihad
What an interesting document. It is a marvel to us how randomly constituted
words can become construed as <fill in almost anything here>.
May Allah bless those who follow His guidance.
Blab. Just when we thought it was over, this.
The raindrops skittered horizontally
across the window as the runway rose to meet them. He felt insulated, protected,
oblivious to the covert clicking-open of seatbelts. Perhaps it was the
swirling web of hopes and expectations, perhaps the thirty hours
without sleep, but he wasn't even aware he was murmuring her name, over
and over, "Mia".
She seems to be everyone's obsession.
Yow.
I grow impatient with my
brain and threaten to punish it with abandonment, severe coffee abuse,
postmodernism.
Us too. (Caterina)
Yak. Overheard while walking past the outdoor tables of a fancy
Manhattan restaurant.
All property is what?
All property is theft.
Thirty years ago, we might have regarded this as inexcusable cultural ignorance.
Today, we considered it a politely inconsequential lacuna.
We like that.
Yow.
The design sucks, you suck,
the whole frikin' site sucks.
We rather appreciate this pithy
appraisal of The Register. Don't you? It rhymes. It scans. It
falls so trippingly off the tongue.
Yo. Finally, honest product packaging. Use liberally.
Plop. We must find some new blogs to read. Our current list has
become dull. Excepting, of course, authors of blogs who actually, and for
reasons forever obscured to us, read Plurp. Yeah, well, except for
those, they've gotten dull. The same thing, the same conceits, the same
outrages, the same obsessions, day after day after day.
It was amusing at first. Now it's monotonous. We must find new material.
Is that how you feel about us?
Yo. Oh look. We serendipitously found what Nathaniel
Branden is up to these days. He's an ISP. :-) Curiously, he's also
a non-profit organization.
And a commercial concern.
Fortunately, he's not an arm
of the government, or some geographical
part of the U.S. And we're grateful for that.
Yo. The dark, sinister, shadowed counter-world of ... Santa
Barbara?
Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered just
how many Google games
there could be
Tuesday, August 21, 2001
Blab. A reader from the beatnik era writes:
like your Teoma vs. Google
test
Cool, man.
Blab. A reader coins a new
term.
two-bit-faced -
a look of generosity on the surface of a very stingy individual....
Hmm. The way we calculate it, this could be a four-faced person.
Blab. A reader who finds joy in the simple things writes:
So
Happy
It's
Tuesday
Don't Ignore Tuesday Zealots!
Blab. In a rare triple entry to our Image
Problems contest, a reader writes:
Can your soap do that???
Your Northwest Correspondent supplies
this.
Actually, that would make a pretty memorable commercial!
Blab. Today's lesson is from a well read reader. Pay attention,
kids!
See Jane.
See Dick.
See Spot.
See Fluffy.
See Dick's friend Sath.
See Sath draw on the ground.
Sath needs to have some blood.
Run Fluffy, run.
He escaped.
That was lucky.
Spot was not so lucky.
Splat Spot, splat.
See Sath start the ancient rite.
See Jane dance.
See Dick writhe.
See Sath change.
See Sath grow.
See Tsathogghua.
See Tsathogghua eat Dick and Jane.
Oh Dear.
Wasn't that nice? Now, who wants to read next?
Blab. Perambulated by a crenelate hypertonia, a reader writes:
Asymptotic
- 180,000 (12.1)
Homophobe
- 15,300 (9.64)
Asymptotic Homophobe -
0
pTang score
- 5.37
Asymptotic Homophobe - good pTang
score, surprising because "asymptotic homophobe" is somewhat redundant
in a way....
Very nice!
Blab. Crenelated by a hypertonic perambulator, a reader writes:
melding (read: "stealing")
a few ideas, I came up with:
etui
- 74,700 (11.22)
asymptotic
- 180,000 (12.10)
etui asymptotic -
0
pTangs
- 5.82
etui is an obscure word helped by
being a somewhat common acronym.
Thanks to the original contributor
of "etui" for a great word.
Good one!
Plurp. Not to be outdone, we've been playing around with Word
Combinations Not Found on Google.
The word hydrologic from yesterday turns
out to be a big winner. Why? Because it's not on very many word
lists on the Web. When you get down to two words, both of which must
be common, but whose combination is not found by Google, word lists are
your enemy. There need be only one good word list out there somewhere and
you are doomed.
So the trick is to find one fairly common word that is on very few wordlists,
and work from there. In this case, that word is hydrologic.
| Words |
Score |
| hydrologic roadsters |
5.69 pT |
| hydrologic mobster |
5.76 pT |
| hydrologic tandoori |
5.81 pT |
| hydrologic etui |
5.88 pT |
But that's not all! We turned our thoughts to cute little puppies and their
loving mommies, and came up with this bombshell.
| Words |
Score |
| hydrologic bitches |
6.44 pT |
Beat that!
(Note that we've been getting odd nondeterministic behavior from Google.
"hydrologic bitches" showed up today with 0, 2 and 4 hits at various times,
and others showed similar variation. It's hard to know what to make of
this! Ian
has more to say about it.)
Yow. Speaking of online dictionaries and Google, did you know
that every Google search you do is just a click away from a dictionary
definition? Neither did we.
When you do a search, Google shows you what it actually searched for.
See? It says:
Searched the web for hydrologic.
Click on hydrologic and it shows you a definition.
Cool!
Yo. For our duct tape lovers out there (and you know who you
are), the Duct Tape Cam.
Revel.
Plurp. Dave
thinks that sociology should become a science. Dave's so funny!
Are these fields waiting for their Newton? he asks. Actually,
it's no coincidence that Newton picked physics. Good problem selection!
Yow. The Surveillance
Camera Players. They like to be watched.
Where do we sign
up? (harrumph)
Plurp.
The blue dog
liked to be
watched
Monday, August 20, 2001
Blab. Today, the Masked URList lets this slip out.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010817/hl/sphincter.html
It is, we suspect, of interest only to those of you who have uncontrolled
bowel movements. We're not sure why our reader was looking for this, and
we can only hope that he or she found it in time.
Blab. On the subject of (analog) dictionaries, a reader writes:
Actually, I was at a party
just yersterday and used the word "stroppy." When derided for use of my
"non-word", I called for the procurement of a paper dictionary, which failed
to contain it.
Interestingly, my canonical online dictionary does have it.
stroppy
SYLLABICATION: strop·py
ADJECTIVE: Inflected forms: strop·pi·er,
strop·pi·est
Chiefly
British Easily offended or annoyed;
ill-tempered or belligerent.
ETYMOLOGY: Perhaps alteration of
obstreperous.
Blab. Another reader writes:
Hmm...many months, if you
mean a general dictionary. But I still use a print medical dictionary
on a regular basis.
Whassamatta? The online
medical dictionaries not good enough for ya?
Blab. A reader suggests a possible use for (analog) dictionaries.
I still look words up in
paper dictionaries when I'm not sure how to spell them. I haven't
really figured out how to do that in online dictionaries.
Also when I'm at home in bed and computerless.
There's a nice old beaten-up paper dictionary right there on the shelf.
We use Google for looking up the correct spelling. Some time after we noted
the fact that Google can predict the correct
spelling of a word, Google caught on and now offers that as a service
every time you search.
For instance, if you search for dictionery,
Google suggests that you might have meant dictionary.
When we're in bed and computerless, we're usually focussed on things
other than dictionaries. But that's just us.
Blab. A reader contributes an unique answer to our dictionary
question.
The last time I grabbed my
analog dictionary was over the weekend so I could dust behind it....
And thank you for that.
Blab. An eagle-eared reader suggests:
I think this qualifies as
a Helenism:
PGA tournament yesterday afternoon,
commentator said, of David Duvall, "I bet under his breath he's just kicking
himself."
Indeed, and so recorded!
Blab. Yet another reader intrigued by pizza
on a Triscuit writes:
I was intrigued by your Triscit
Pizza photo. I wonder if shredded cheese melted atop a Triscit Pizza
follows the same theoretical phenomenon as the "no two snowflakes are exactly
alike" theory.
And if so, what are the odds that
such an arrangement of shredded cheese resembles a Chinese symbol?
Incidentally, I believe the shredded
cheese pattern in Saturday's Triscit Pizza photo closely resembles the
Chinese symbol which means "Pizza Zen."
A Chinese symbol meaning pizza Zen is, of course, a trilingual (or
at least tricultural) reference. We wonder if it's possible to construct
a two-word quatrilingual reference.
Blab. In what turns out to be a rare mixing of memes, a reader
writes:
The blue dog, unable to afford
an additional equal-length side, was parsimoniously isosceles.
Blab. In our best entry yet to the Words
Not Found on Google contest, a reader gives us the following astonishing
calculation.
etui syzygy
etui - 74,500 hits
syzygy - 55,500 hits
total pTang = 5.53
Some might argue that this is cheating
since the number of hits is not a good indication of how common either
of the words is.
Nobody said the words had to be common. That's amazing!
Blab. A reader beseeches us thusly.
Go ahead, Steve. Tell
everyone what you did this weekend that will lead to your next career as
a caterer................
We're not sure if Dave
ever got over his
sleepiness, but we know we're still recovering from our most
exhausting weekend in a long time. Everything was proceeding nicely
last week towards a bit of a celebration for Helen on Saturday with about
twenty guests when, on Friday afternoon, the caterer canceled. Eek!
Fortunately, Steve, Pat and KT came to the rescue and helped us pull
the whole thing together on Saturday afternoon. It was a big success, but
not at some small cost to our stamina as we ran all over The City on Saturday
getting stuff, and ran all over the apartment that night serving it and
cleaning up.
We slept until 11 AM Sunday, dropped off again that afternoon for a
few hours, and crashed early last night. We're still groggy.
As to that catering thing, we are happy to vend out our services to
anyone with over a trillion dollars to spend on a small party.
Blab. Helping us keep track of time, and we do appreciate it,
a reader informs us that:
Now it's Monday
That's so reassuring.
Plurp. Friend Pat tells us with great emphasis about edamame.
Should we follow her in her recent addiction?
Yak.
Hey, mister! Can we have
our soup back?
Plurp. We suspect that one of the attraction to us of Zen and
other contemplative cultures is their great emphasis on quiet time. It's
not that we're anti-social, exactly. Rather, it's that we have such a great
attraction to time spent quietly and often alone.
We live in the middle of New York City. It's very noisy. And there are
millions of people here. All the time. And we love that. And yet we crave
the silences too.
It's so odd.
Yo. Have you taken the procrastination
test? We're going to. We swear.
Yow. For reasons incomprehensible to us, another person seems
to have linked to our silly blog:
Well, actually, that's the only new one. Not that we're ungrateful! We
are, in fact, thrilled. This brings our regular readership up into the
double
digits. Assuming that no one has dropped out in the past year. Which
they probably have.
OK. Actually, we're sorry we brought it up.
Plurp.
I saw it when I was in high
school and it profoundly affected my life. Oh dear. Have I said too much?
Would you like some tea? Are you married?
Plurp. Today's Plurp contest is called Image Problems.
No, it's not about Steve Ballmer. Well, not necessarily. Here's how it
works. We give you a tag line for some modestly well known commercial.
You use
Google Image Search to
find the URL of an image that you would not want to see associated
with that tag line, then send us
the URL. (Please, naughty readers, no images that would be considered
obscene in your local jurisdiction. And don't send us the image, just the
URL.)
Simple, eh? Here's the first tag line for you:
Can your soap do that?
Have at it.
Yak.
When you can't stab 'em in
the back, shoot 'em in the face.
Yo.
Video
Games Linked to Brain Problems
Researchers are particularly concerned
that by spending many hours playing games some children will not develop
their frontal lobes, which play a crucial role in controlling behavior
and in developing memory, emotion and learning.
Researchers are particularly concerned
that by spending many hours playing games some children will not develop
their frontal lobes, which play a crucial role in controlling behavior
and in developing memory, emotion and learning.
Plurp.
Developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers.
Sunday, August 19, 2001
Blab. Yet another reader takes us to task.
hotdog not a word!?
I guess I picked the wrong reference to consult, and, yes, I know, it's
your game and you make the rules. Merriam-Webster
online, which happens to be the paper dictionary I consulted as well,
lists "hotdog" (one word) as an intransitive verb.
For what it's worth,
parsimoniously isosceles
works also.
Fine. So, fine. So, Hotdog is a word. Fine.
We are impressed at a two-word
combination that is not found on Google. How many pTangs is parsimoniously
isosceles?
Blab. In another display of pTangial
legerdemain, a reader informs us:
The mark has been beaten!
fricative lysosome:
fricative - 110,000 hits = 11.6
lysosome - 9,670 hits = 9.17
Total score: 5.12 pTangs.
Very nice!
Blab. Captivated by the IQ test
last week, a reader writes:
Interesting IQ test.
When I first took it, I questioned the legitimacy of the test, but ended
up getting the exact same score that I got when I took a 3-hour monitored
test in high school.
Then again, only a sample size of
2....
Oh, after I took it, I re-took it
and got a 166 - "genius." I guess I got pretty smart after a 2-minute
break!
Curious about the question asking
about whether January 1, 2001 or 2000 was the start of the millenium and/or
the 21st century, considering I've heard scientists make legitimate arguments
on both sides of the question.
No doubt you were reading Plurp in those two minutes. Good for you!
Blab. A reader alerts us of a sea change in the industry.
Google
gets a rival from Jersey
Hmm! According to an
article back in July ...
US technology company Hawk
Holdings has launched an internet search engine called Teoma
which is set to rival favourite Google.
Teoma's technology, which utilises
applied mathematics, is based on multiple criteria. It looks for information
by text, link structure and popularity to determine the relevancy of a
site. Like Google it rates web pages according to the number of people
who link to that site. Unlike Google it collects links from a pre-determined
group of relevant sites, rather than the whole web.
Oooh. Applied mathematics. Must be good, eh? Let's find out.
-
Searching for plurp
finds our current blog page as the first hit. It's a good thing.
-
Searching for ian
whalley weblog finds Plurp again as the first hit. That,
too, is good. :-)
-
Searching for "steve
white" finds, um, Steve
White and the Barstool Pigeons, "a Ventura County blues band featuring
the soulful vocals of Steve White". While we used to live there a long
time ago, no one with ears could characterize our singing as soulful. Painful,
maybe, but not soulful. Google, on the other hand, gets
it right. This is somewhat less encouraging on the part of Teoma.
Let's try some more topical stuff.
Based upon our small sample, and the obviously correct criterion of Does
it point to Plurp?, we conclude that Teoma doesn't quite measure up
to Google just yet. We look forward to them adjusting their search criteria
appropriately.
Yow. More Ballmer
madness. We love this stuff! Here's the libretto. (ian)
Developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers.
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!
Yes!
Catchy, isn't it? We especially like the descent into that thin, squeeky
voiced madness. Helen says it's like est
(for those of you old enough and wacky enough to have heard of it). We
didn't think the esties sweated quite that profusely.
Readers are strongly encourage to send
us more links to Balmy Ballmer vids.
Plurp.
Plurp.
Developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers,
developers, developers, developers.
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