Plurp: Tasteless but not odorless

Bigger!

2001.09.30 : 2001.10.06

Saturday, October 6, 2001
Plurp. Due to circumstances within our control, we're unlikely to be posting for a little while. Talk amongst yourselves. Why you ask? Here's updated info...

Plurp. After a rather long drive, we arrived in a small village on the coast of Maine, where we intended to spend a peaceful week doing not much of anything. This plan was to be enhanced by the lack of television and telephone (and, hence, email and Web) in our little wooden cabin that hangs over the bay.
Of course, things turned out a bit differently.

Friday, October 5, 2001
Blab. A reader convinces us that the end of the world is nigh.
Re: Companies that serve up banner ads to other sites suck! They all suck!
Have you seen the latest ad thing? When you open a webpage, a transparent Flash movie starts up ***in the middle of the page, forcing you to wait until the movie is over before you can read the content on the page!***
Advertising is the tool of the Face of Satan. I'd rather pay a fee.
L.
For the tool or the face?

Blab. A reader just won't let this go. Without saying.
This may go without saying, but in case it doesn't, I'd like to refer your reader to any number of despotic regimes throughout history. Wherein liberty was often given up for perceived safety, but in fact the citizens thereof were not at all safe.
Perhaps our earlier readers meant to say Safety x Liberty < Constant (or, in appropriately normalizing units, Safety x Liberty < 1). But if they did, they'd still have been wrong. :-)

Blab. A reader ponders the disturbing features of ... words.
And even more interesting about the closing song on "West Wing" -- it was written about protesting the Vietnam War. Strange how it applies now, huh?
Wow. Just like Nostradamus. Those word-things are so ... sneaky!

Blab. Into the unforgiving Blab box, a reader types this:
Didn't realize that Stan has a Jimmy Durante nose! That picture proves it!

Blab. Then, feeling remorse, that same reader types this:
Sorry, I meant to type Satan. I think he is in my computer now.
Don't feel bad. That's the same mistake various Arab leaders have made as they sought to condemn the United States of America as the Great Stan.

Blab. A reader sends us a boring, blind ...
[link].
OK. Great. Here we have Abraham bargaining with Jaweh.
³⁰Then he said, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Suppose thirty should be found there?"
So He said, "I will not do it if I find thirty there."
³¹And he said, "Indeed now, I have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: Suppose twenty should be found there?" So He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty."
³²Then he said, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there?"
And He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of ten."
We're not sure what the final price was.

Blab. Admiring our What kind of person are you? thingie, a reader notes:
512 types of people. Better than most such people-categorizers.
We were considering patenting it. Briefly.

Blab. Another reader sends us another astonishing blind ...
[link]
This one, however, attempts to answer the question of why can get busted for taking photos of the WTC mess.
Today I managed to walk around the stupefying WTC disaster site for half an hour, doing what a serious professional would be doing: taking dozens of careful photographs of the ruins.
Then an NYC cop asked to see my authorization to be photographing a crime scene.
Subsequently, the cops booted him out, erasing all of the images on his digital camera, and now he wants to know how to get them back. Without, we assume, going back there.

Blab. A reader explicates that mysterious manager training phrase.
For now we see through a partnership, darkly.
Do we?

Blab. While admiring yesterday's doodles, a silly reader writes:
I would have put the tits at the top of the pyramid myself. Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow!
Those are ferret eyes, silly!
Did we mention that yesterday's doodles, along with other less instructive doodles from that same interminable management training session, are now immortalized in our Doodles section? Well, they are.

Blab. An obedient reader tries to answer our random questions.
1. What is your process?
Food/water/air in, CO2 and other stuff out.
2. How much ear wax is produced worldwide each day?
About 100 tons. (Human ears. 200 tons for all ears. Bees don't make wax in their ears. Corn doesn't make wax AFIK. I assume you're talking about earwax, AKA cerumen)
3. (Show your work.) What are the proles and Khans? Despair and bombast.
Duh.
Actually, the (show your work) part really was postpended to (2), not prepending to (3) and ... oh - you knew that. We get it. That's modestly humorous.
Your answer to (1) seems quite reasonable.
Your answer to (2) makes up for that. There are a mere six billion humans, a tiny fraction, we suspect, of the total mammalian (i.e. ear wax producing) population. You might have been safer restricting your answer to just the human population. But 100 tons for just people is 0.0005 ounces (15 mg) per person. By comparison, this is the weight of seven mosquitos. That's probably pretty close, but might be a bit on the low side.
Your answer to (3) is correct. Congratulations!

Blab. A reader asks the kind of cute little question we asked when we were four years old.
where does ear wax come from?
And, in response, Mom and Dad used to say, You should go read the Ear Wax FAQ.
Ear wax is a sticky liquid secreted by cerumen glands. [...] Cerumen glands are found only in the skin of the ear canals.
Oh - and don't forget ear candling.

Blab. An odd reader writes:
I found it odd that the same person who was putting Oprah on a pedastal was also bashing television. I also find it odd that Oprah spelled backward is Harpo.
For that matter, Plurp spelled backward is Prulp. Weird.
What's weird about Prulp? In another week, Google will find it here. Twice.

Blab. A reader whom we have helped (and we love that), writes:
I've decided based on your analysis of successful teambuilding skills to put a frog tank in my office.
Don't forget the fungus!

Blab. A reader sends us an unsolicited action plan.
What to do if you happen upon a peace rally by stupid naive hemp-shirt-wearing college idiots, to teach them why force is sometimes needed:
1) Approach dumb rich ignorant student talking about "peace" and saying there should be, "no retaliation."
2) Engage in brief conversation, ask if military force is appropriate.
3) When he says "No," ask, "Why not?"
4) Wait until he says something to the effect of, "Because that would just cause more innocent deaths, which would be awful and we should not cause more violence."
5) When he's in mid sentence, punch him in the face as hard as you can.
6) When he gets back up to punch you, point out that it would be a mistake and contrary to his values to strike you, because that would, "be awful and he should not cause more violence."
7) Wait until he agrees that he has pledged not to commit additional violence.
8) Punch him in the face again, harder this time.
Repeat steps 5 through 8 until they understand that sometimes it is necessary to punch back .
OK. Good stuff. So let's review. You'll go out and find the biggest, angriest, most muscle-bound college idiot you can and approach him or her with this methodology. And, after you do, you'll let us know what happened as a result. If the hospital or police lockup has Internet access.
Did we get that right?

Blab. A reader stumbles across the famous exploding whale.
A Whale of a Story
Indeed!

Blab. A reader responds over our various slatherings this week.
While I, too, adore google, I do think that Vivisimo is a wonderful tool in its own right. Usually find what I want in the upper tiers.
On the other hand, as it were, Jennifer's bum is a bit on the large side for my taste. The year don't wear those buttocks down, you know, but they grow.
We hadn't heard of Vivismo. We'll have to play around with that. It does respond properly when you search for Plurp, and that's a good thing.
We haven't actually tasted J.Lo's butt ourself, but we'll put that on our list.

Blab. A reader tells us what kind of person they are:
Interpezrative an compilative and constipated
We were unable to find the original text from which this was derived with Babelfish.

Plop. You may have heard that the U.S. is at war, and that privacy is unpatriotic. Well, Zero-Knowledge Systems, who provided facilities for anonymous Web browsing, heard that too. They've shut down their Freedom Network, which let people surf the Internet and send e-mail with almost complete privacy by using pseudonyms.
Oh well, huh?

Plurp. No, you can't have one.

Yo. This is what software is about. Exactly. (treedragon)

Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered if anyone
liked those
magazine covers

Thursday, October 4, 2001
Blab. A reader assures us that ...
Hell Hath No Fury Like J.Lo's Magical Butt
That may well be true, but we invite readers to ponder the various industrial applications of this technology. (Yes, those are laces.)
Frankly, it frightens us.

Blab. Responding to our shrill rant against banner ad companies, a self-fulfilling prophet writes:
>> Companies that serve up banner ads to other sites suck! They all suck! <<
Well, yeah. Now your readers will point you to Ad-Subtract and that other one which's name I forget, and all like that-there. Stir the bits just a little, and maybe you can get some of the sucky things to go away!
Ah. AdSubtract, despite their way-too-cutesy name, does appear to have such a product, as do a whole bunch of folks. We shall have to investigate.

Blab. This reader would rather talk about music.
I think it is interesting that the song (For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield) shows up in almost every movie or tv show about the 60s. I've heard a lot of people talking about Pearl Harbor in relation to 9/11, but not the 60s or Vietnam. Ok, maybe Vietnam.
I don't suppose you got that quote from Ben Franklin from West Wing. Why no reference to the source or did you have really have that quote floating around in your head before last night?
We don't actually recall much from the 60s, but we do remember the music.
On that Ben Franklin quote, may we just say one more time that Google is an excellent search facility that can be used by many, many people? Thank you.

Blab. Expressing this week's equation somewhat differently, L writes:
Re: Safety x Liberty = Constant
Wasn't it Robert A. Heinlein, that crusty old Libertarian, who said, "You can have peace or you can have freedom. Don't expect to have both at the same time."
Of course, maybe there's just something in the water in Missouri that makes people crabby. Look at Ashcroft, for god's sake.
L.
The quote seems to be:
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at the same time.
It is attributed to Lazarus Long, Heinlein's wish fulfillment alter ego. But we interpret its a bit differently. It seems to say that freedom sometimes requires a lack of peace, and the folks who fought the Revolutionary War would probably have agreed. It does not seem to say that safety requires a lack of liberty, though we're sure various despots down through the ages have said that with a smile.

Plurp. Yesterday at work was consumed largely in a management training session in which we learned, in eight or so hours, what we might have usefully learned in one or two.
Naturally, dear readers, we used that copious extra time to your advantage, summarizing the contents of such management classes for your future benefit. Today, in Plurp, we present you with the distilled essence of these triumphs of modern social science.

Plurp. Action plan:

Confront the mysterious

Be wary of the light

Complete the circle

Pursue contradiction

Pick up cat food

Plurp. What kind of person are you?

Structured or unstructured?

Interpret or compile?

Interactive or off-line?

Declarative or procedural?

Objects or actions?

Messages or calls?

Value or reference?

Granular or monolithic?

Linear or exponential?

Please tell us.

Yak.
The first step in recapitulation is capitulation.

Plurp. Important questions.

What is your process?

How much ear wax is produced worldwide each day?

(Show your work.)
What are the proles and Khans? Despair and bombast.

Please answer.

Yak. Readers are invited to speculate as to the meaning of this phrase.
Partnership is a lens to look through.

Plurp. Every management class starts with its scientific underpinnings, inevitably in the form of a 2x2 matrix.

Plurp. We are reminded of the hierarchical nature of our topic by the Pyramid of Obscure Symbology.

Plurp. Next, there's the evolution chart, showing the various ways of getting from here to there.

Plurp. Then we're ready for something to turn inputs into outputs.

Plurp. ... after which we can organize the universe into three fundamental categories.

Plurp. Putting it all together ...

Plurp. Finally:

Plurp. America responds.

Plurp.
The blue dog
turned out to be
a hierarchical squishy
fungus

Wednesday, October 3, 2001
Blab. Sharing our rapt interest in giant insect movies, a reader, quite possibly a reader from Minnesota, writes:
St. Urho
As Roadside America, the most viscerally frightening reference site we know, tells us:
St. Urho (Pronounced "oorlho"), the patron saint of Finland, [...] is reputed to have used his "splendid and loud voice" to chase the [giant] grasshoppers out of pre-Ice Age Finland (when the climate was much milder) and save the grape harvest. The Finns love him.
At least, the ones in America do. St. Urho was reportedly invented in the 1950s by a couple of Minnesota Finns as a joke. Today it's taken seriously enough that St. Urho Day (the day before St. Patrick's Day) is officially recognized in all 50 states.
This leaves us to wonder why there's hasn't been a giant insect movie made on this topic.

Blab. A reader writes:
Steve-
In response to your web challenge, I found an Albright AVI file, but just of that exchange. More details are here.
-Ed S
Oh! That's very interesting! Apparently, Albright really did say that (though the context still isn't obvious). From this, we conclude that, no matter what went on or what U.S. foreign policy was with respect to Iraq, Albright really did need more PR coaching. Desperately.
It is an interesting situation. The U.S. thinks it's necessary to blockade Iraq because Hussein is Bad. Lots of people (including children) die in Iraq as a result, starved to death or as a result of lack of medical care or whatever. In the meantime, Hussein lives well, has multiple fabulous palaces, rebuilds an extensive military, etc.
Who is responsible for all those dead kids?

Blab. Fascinated to know just what Oprah does think about terrorism, a reader writes:
Dear Plurpmeister,
I am right there with Oprah. I think terrorism is rude and it has to stop.
But seriously, folks, in a world where we have a rapture-prone Ashcroft and a thick as a door president who is playing Chevy Chase playing a dumb president, it is comforting to have a decent and comforting figure like Oprah. She reads, for goodness sake! She is a good influence. And I think those who complain about CNN and any other venues for "news" 24 hours a day are misspending their time. Television is the vast wasteland that Newton Minow called it in 1961, and those who use it as the narcotic of choice, deserve it. Have a nice day.
It is a comment on the intellectual landscape of today's society that we regard Oprah as a high point.

Blab. Thinking there's more than one of us here, Meg writes:
Dear Ladies & Gentlemen,
Welcome to the GREATEST SEX SHOW on the ENTIRE NET!
[...]
EVERYTHING is offered 100% ANONOMOUSLY & you don´t need to sign-up or have a creditcard ... The way it should be!
[...]
Yours truly,
MEGA-WWW
To get EASY ACCESS & PLUGIN to the LARGEST CONTENT SEXSERVER on the NET, use any of the 4 SERVERS listed here:
[...]
4. http://98.to/atomicbabes
We were, of course, intrigued by the idea that some pay-like site might be accessed anonymously, without registration or credit card. We were also intrigued by the name 98.to/atomicbabes, which we hoped might be a site with a certain science fiction or nanotechnology flair. Interestingly, it says:
THIS ACCOUNT HAS BEEN DISCONNECTED!
You have reached this page after typing an URL that was in conflict with our "Terms of Use". [...]
We don't send SPAM and we don't allow our users to send SPAM.
This account has been disconnected.
This is the first time we have had reason to applaud anything even dimly associated with the Kingdom of Tonga.

Blab. A troubled reader writes:
I was troubled by the "face of Satan" comment from one of yesterday's readers (are we up to 10 now?)
And then I heard the headline this morning that an untouched photograph of the Pentagon devastation had a smoke-cloud that (if you stand on your head, blink three times, and cough) looks just like the face of Satan. Someone has concluded that this is significant enough to cover on CNN.
It's the same someone, I suppose, who considers significant other "phenomena" such as potatoes (as in more than one potatoe) looking like Richard Nixon (don't they all, in a way?) or cornfields carved out by aliens.
Maybe that Barry Bonds story is news-worthy after all?
And that didn't trouble you?
CNN, of course, reported that the Face-Of-Satan rumor was false (or at least random), which is probably a worthy thing for a news site to do, given what seems to be the childlike gullibility of the U.S. population. Frankly, we thought it looked like the beast from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, but that's just us. We saw mermaids and teddy bears that day, but we missed seeing Satan.
We always feel so left out.

Blab. Mistaking our silly Weblog for a low-end sports magazine, a reader writes:
I'd like to give the "runner-up of the year award" to Sammy Sosa, who has now hit 60 or more homers in the past three seasons (which was the record established by a little-known Yank by the name of Babe), yet finished 2nd in the homerun race in all 3 seasons.
I've heard the sudden surge is credited to a recent shift from Ash to Maple bats by many baseball sluggers, but I'm still convinced it all comes down to good old-fashioned apple pie (laced with super-high concentrated performance enhancers).
Yeah, we never did follow football.

Blab. A reader composes a poem just for us. Isn't that nice?
Ode to October
A bird note sounding here and there
A bloom where leaves are brown and sober
Warm noons, and nights with frosty air,
And loaded wagons say - October.
~Thomas S. Collier
Thank you, Tom!

Blab. A reader suggests:
Safety x Liberty = Constant
Oh? Apart from the obvious objections about multiplication not being defined on social concepts, we even doubt the implied qualitative inverse relationship between safety and liberty.
We are not usually prone to quote others to express our deeply felt beliefs, and we hope our readers will forgive us for making an exception. You see, Benjamin Franklin, an extremely bright person who lived in interesting times, thought deeply about exactly this topic. You may recall his conclusion: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Those of you who believe otherwise are invited to test your beliefs by moving to Afghanistan, where you will have neither.

Yow. West Wing (the quaint analog TV show) tonight was spectacular. It was written specifically to deal with recent terrorist events, and especially the complications connected with terrorism, civil liberties, pluralism, racism, and What America Is All About.
The closing song:
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Wow.

Plurp. We love new perspectives.
[Columbus] did not do what most schoolchildren in this country think he did, which was discover America. Columbus did not discover anything. He was lost.

Rant. We just need to say this once and then we'll stop.
Companies that serve up banner ads to other sites suck! They all suck!
If you've ever watched the various little progress messages at the bottom of your Web browser you know that (a) most of the time spent loading an arbitrary Web page is spent waiting for the ad server to which they link to respond and (b) most of the times the process stalls and times out is because of the ad server.
We don't mind Web ads, particularly. It's better than having to pay for most of the dreck that's on the Web. But we do mind it when they muck up the works!
There. We feel much better already.

Plurp. The most common search term on our big, hairy Web site this past week was "camel's butt". We really worry about you people.

Plurp. America responds.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was eager to give up
essential liberty to obtain
a little temporary safety

Tuesday, October 2, 2001
Blab. Our time-traveling youth organization notes:
Hi Captain Plurp,
Speaking of dates, as NPR noted last week, tomorrow's is a palindrome!
- YMWC
How disturbing! What is the hidden significance of that?

Blab. A reader incites us to political action. Well, not us specifically, as we have absolutely no political power. Rather, we meant "us" in the larger, social sense, as if there really was someone reading Plurp who could ...
Specific actions, other than sensitivity training, to fight terrorism:
1. Let Saddam sell his oil.
Check this excerpt from Cockburn's column in the New York Press, reprinted in CounterPunch:
What moved those kamikaze Muslims to embark, some many months ago on the training that they knew would culminate in their deaths as well of those (they must have hoped) of thousands upon thousands of innocent people? Was it the Koran plus a tape from Osama bin Laden? The dream of a world in which all men wear untrimmed beards and women have to stay at home or go outside only when enveloped in blue tents? I doubt it. If I had to cite what steeled their resolve the list would surely include the exchange on CBS in 1996 between Madeleine Albright and then US ambassador to the United Nations and Lesley Stahl. Albright was maintaining that sanctions had yielded important concessions from Saddam Hussein.
Stahl: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?"
Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think the price is worth it."
They read that exchange in the Middle East. It was infamous all over the Arab world.
Hmm. This Stahl/Albright quote is indeed all over the Web, especially on socialist and pro-Iraq sites. It strikes us as a little odd that it's this exact quote, though, and that we can't seem to find any of the surrounding context.
It allegedly aired on the CBS show 60 Minutes on May 12, 1996. Readers who can find an a link to an authoritative transcript of the interview from which this is an excerpt are required to send it to us.
In any event, we suspect that Ms. Albright could use a little more PR training.
We wonder, though, if letting Saddam sell "his" oil would increase or decrease terrorism. We're not smart enough to know.

Blab. A reader who might not be a believer in the utopian future wherein metadata tells us everything we ever wanted to know, sends us a:
[link].
We love a good rant.

Blab. Commenting on the Oprah Magazine from yesterday, a reader writes:
Who cares what Oprah thinks?
I'm shocked and saddened that our CNN-based culture that we've become has somehow resorted to "What does Oprah think?" topics instead of noteworthy updates of the War on Terrorism.
CNN decided to waste 5 minutes last week on a "news item" of how talk show hosts and late-night comedians have reacted to all the media commotion. Is this really important in the grand scheme of things? Frankly I find it more useful to get an hour-by-hour update of how many tons of debris has been removed from "Ground Zero" rather than that drabble.
Last night I was watching CNN and the headlines that scrolled at the bottom. The headlines scrolled something like this:
"Bush has appointed John Doe to head up newly created anti-terrorism chemical and biological intelligence gathering team.... John Ashcroft warns of potentially more terrorist attacks in coming months.... FAA has relaxed security restrictions at some major airports, Reagan National to open.... Giants' Barry Bonds grounds out, walks, and is hit by a pitch in tonight's game against the Padres - still one shy of tying Mark McGuire's record of 70 homeruns.... Taliban reports they know where bin Laden is, but still wants to negotiate with the US...."
Which of these headlines doesn't belong? Don't get me wrong, I love getting my box scores on my favorite teams, but must we interject the stream of updated information of worldly events with a baseball note which, quite frankly, is irrelevant?
On September 10th, with very little going on in the world, I would've expected "filler" like what's on Oprah's mind or how Bonds feels about chasing the homerun record, but I have a hard time digesting those useless stories when surely there's plenty out there to fill our plates.
But maybe that's just me....
It does rather put the rest of life in perspective, doesn't it?

Blab. Referring to Oprah Winfried's latest, a very rude reader writes:
face of satan
Shame on you!

Blab. A delightful reader sends us this:
These are (almost certainly) better than any of yours.
An automatic generator of bizarre names for military operations. We love Ftrain!
Operation Legendary Badger!

Plop. There are wild rumors that our Web hosting company may be closing without notice in the near future. Who knows if it's true? But if Plurp should mysteriously vanish some time soon, maybe that's why.

Plurp. In answer to your never-ending questions:

Yes, we do. But just the one.

Eight. Nine if you count the spiders.

Schopenhauer. Unless it's a girl.

We'd love to, but we can't sing.

Nepal.

Of course not. Do people actually do that? Ewww.

Yo. Our busy government ...
A [U.S.] congressional committee is scheduled to begin reviewing draft anti-terrorism legislation Tuesday that could greatly expand the electronic surveillance powers of police and ratchet up penalties relating to certain computer crimes.
[T]he newest bill still falls short of clearly defining what crimes should be considered terrorist acts [...].
The bill lists more than 40 criminal offenses, including computer intrusion and damaging a computer, and defines those offenses as terrorism if they are "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion...or to retaliate against government conduct."
So that means no more community service for virus writers?

Plurp. This brings new meaning to the term pre-war apartment.

Yo. Ever wonder what we do at work? Here's an InfoWorld article featuring our High Assistant Overlord.

Plop. You didn't actually believe all those privacy policies on Web sites to which you've given personal information now, did you? Silly girl.

Plurp. America responds.

Plurp.
In another life
the blue dog
was
the High Assistant Overlord

Monday, October 1, 2001
Blab. Unconfused by recent events, our readers keep their eyes on what's important.
He's back! He's back! The blue dog is back! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Hmm. That seems to be correct.

Blab. Our French reader writes:
C'est le dog blue!
Yeah, c'est.

Blab. A reader turns all political on us.
In the ongoing Operation You Embarrassed My Dad But You're Not Going To Embarrass Me, it is perhaps time to pause for sensitivity training, or even thinking. Okay, we'll spell it: t-h-i-n-k-i-n-g. Start with a look at Chuck Corn's piece at AlterNet.org where you will see this below:
"The threat of terrorism cannot be effectively countered unless the United States changes its arrogant, me-first global ways and faces up to the fact that many people in other lands are -- rightly or wrongly -- damn angry at it. This proposition has become something of a mantra among progressives who counsel restraint in response to the horrific attacks of September 11. But it also is a sentiment popular within a subset of the national security establishment: counter-terrorism experts."
Maybe it will help?
An interesting idea. What specific actions would these folks suggest, other than sensitivity training? The article goes on to say:

[T]he United States must mount a "reduction of anger" initiative and that "the shortest answer is moving on the Israeli-Arab peace process."

We must provide assistance and listen to other states, including states heretofore regarded as rogue states.

That all sounds sensible. But we liked the advice, later in that same article, of former Dooby Brother and now Star Wars consultant Jeff "Skunk" Baxter:
The goal of U.S. policy, he said, should be to "re-engineer the perceptions of our enemies." Suicide bombers have to be convinced "they get nothing for dying for Allah," and the people who support terrorists -- leaders or commoners -- have to be persuaded such violence is an insult to Islam and counterproductive. So Baxter proposed a Manhattan Project of "perception engineering," which would explore and develop a variety of means: psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns designed by advertising executives ("these guys were selling Chevrolets when they were crap with the 'heartbeat of America'"); nanomachines that can invade the circulatory system and effect the brain and thought patterns of the target; cultural products that can engender warm feelings toward the United States. "This World War III is a different war," Baxter commented. "It's an information war ... a war fought with ideas ... I can give you a valium and make you feel good. I can give you a musical score and engineer your perceptions ... All this is doable."
Or, dare we say it, Doobyable?

Blab. A reader tells us:
The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
Do you think so? We always thought it was the one where he rips up a dollar bill, then pulls it whole out of your ear. We never could figure that one out.

Blab. A reader continues a dialog with some other reader.
Ah, I understand you now, my 'nother coastal friend. I see why you need to have all this become "real" for yourself. Yes, come, and I will take you to our neighborhood fire station and you can deliver to them a personal check for several hundred dollars so that they can build a fund for the families of the 10 fire fighters they lost on the 11th. If you need more reality, we can visit any number of fire stations and see multiple memorials to lost firemen - hundreds of flowers and drawings from school children and letters from their grateful neighbors.
Then we can take a walk down to Union Square to witness that acre sized memorial; passing fences and windows along the way that are plastered with hundreds of posters of missing persons, describing birth marks and tattoos in the outside chance that the victims might be able to be identified. And on the way you can look upon the still grieving faces of New Yorkers. Yes, come and make it real for yourself. I am only sorry you can't smell it anymore.
I certainly assume you were able to make the Oklahoma City bombing real for yourself by visiting THAT site right after the explosion. I gotta say it was real enough for me when I saw it on CNN. And Bhopal when thousands of people were gassed by one of our multinational corporations? Somalia during the tribal wars? Of course!
Isn't this instructive? Here are two readers with a lot in common. They are both from the U.S. (probably), both participants in the same culture (probably), both reeling in the emotional aftermath of the recent terrorist events (certainly), and both Plurp readers (which, no doubt, they now regret). And yet here they are, with only slightly different views on this tragedy, biffing and socking at each other.
In times of stress, it is tempting to lash out at whomever happens to be near. But we are not the enemy. If we cannot, as similar as we are to one another, have a feeling of sisterhood towards each other in this awful time, how can we expect there to be hope for the world?
Yes, these are awful times. Yes, we all grieve in our own way. And yes, we really do have to get along.
With that, we invite our cherished readers to they take further dialog on this particular topic to another venue.
Now - group hug, OK?

Blab. A reader sends us another curious ...
[link].
Wrong Slor.

Blab. A reader with better eyes than ours writes:
It has made you MIA?????
Yow! A Mia sighting buried in one of our endless pop psychology test results. She's everywhere!
Our heartfelt thanks to our clear-visioned reader.

Plurp. Another date with lots of ones and zeroes. Will this madness never end?!

Yo. Tony Blair and his buddies in the UK have also been busy balancing safety and civil liberties. Among other things, he is rushing to implement indefinite detention (sometimes known as imprisonment without trial in the U.S.).
The overall aim is to make it easier to detain [...] terrorist suspects [...].
The new powers are bound to be criticised by civil liberties groups and the Labour Left — particularly the indefinite detention plan which they may see as a return to the days of internment.
So, for those of you who are about to become guests of Her Majesty for a really long time, buh-bye!

Yow. Tony obviously didn't read this month's issue of Crypto-Gram, the excellent newsletter by Bruce Schneier. This month it's dedicated to the recent terrorist events and a careful examination (and often refutation) of the many current proposals to deal with terrorism by eliminating civil liberties. Bruce is a computer security guy, so he focuses on technical stuff like face recognition and cryptography.
It's a wonderful read. So go read it! (Ian)

Yak.
My dog has no sense of humor.
No sense of humor?
No, none at all.
How does he tell jokes?
He doesn't, he has no sense of humor.

Plurp. America responds.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was rumored to be
involved in
perception engineering

Sunday, September 30, 2001
Blab. A reader familiar with the patience of saints writes:
The Grey Lady published a piece in their business section today, by two reporters with strong stomachs, about a man named Frederick Horatio Alper, a rich investor who ran his company until he taught his recently dead brother, late of the World Trade Center in NYC, "everything he knew." He has returned from his tax exile in Switzerland as he is afraid that the money might stop.
Fred is back and he is going to run the firm which flies, I imagine, a flag with a dollar sign on it. He may not be able to stay long, given that his loyalty is to a bank account and the country that shelters him from those rapacious American tax rates, but he will be doing his best for all of his investors, some of whom may even have an emotional, nay, even metaphysical connection with the country that allowed him to earn his dough initially. Some of my fussy pals up here thought the man tried the patience of saints! As for me, I ask, what would Maimonides do. I expect he would think Fred not a very loving and loyal person, but then what would I know. I'm so retro!
- StAugustine
While knowing neither Alpers nor grey ladies, we nonetheless would have a difficult time condemning those who thought it proper to retain their wealth rather than have it roasted in the depths of the Slor.

Blab. A reader not fond of Idaho writes:
Sorry...BIGOT..But hey, you got the point, right?
And "Aryan", but, yes. :-)

Blab. A reader wonders:
Was this really necessary?
What - you don't like La Chupacabra?

Plurp. According to Cosmopolitan, which certainly ought to know, on the passion scale we are a:
Spirited Sister
Cheers for getting revved up without going over the edge. "You have an appropriate amount of passion for certain beliefs, people, and hobbies that you care about, and that kind of energy makes your life more exciting. But you also have to exercise caution about getting too wrapped up in one thing." For instance, you may throw yourself into work, but if you see it has made you MIA from friends and had you eating vending-machine garbage for dinner, you'll loosen up at the office so you can get back in balance.
We suppose this goes along with our recent discovery that we are a lesbian.

Plop. We see that you folks are busy out there balancing safety and civil liberties again. The results of recent CNN polls show these interesting results:

% Favoring Proposition

29% Allow police to stop and search people at random "as a way to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States."

31% Detention camps for Arab-Americans "as a way to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States."

55% Government interception and scanning e-mail from anyone in the United States.

59% Jail suspected terrorists "indefinitely with no bail" if that would prevent terrorism.

We don't think we want to live with you folks any more. Nothing personal, you understand. And don't worry. There are a number of countries that will be happy to accommodate your desires.

Plurp.

Plurp.

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