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2002.01.13 : 2002.01.19
Saturday, January 19, 2002
Blab. Unable to get the conversation out of the toilet,
a reader writes:
Boy, with this public restroom
logic we could get pretty messy (so to speak).
One could argue that the "doing" of
"other things" occur far less frequent than, well, the first thing.
So, given some basic assumptions about metabolism and the human body, we
can safely say that
p<->q
especially at football games, for
all you Yankee fans....
So this is a first-order approximation using first-order logic? An approximate
first-order logic? A logical first-order approximation? We don't believe
we've seen any of those combinations before. Certainly not at a hockey
game.
Blab. Fresh off of that tedious meta-conversation about first-order
logic (which we now regret having brought up at all), a reader segues into
a tedious meta-conversation about secrets.
"Are you sure it's not impossible
to tell someone a secret? Surely it's state is altered from secret to non-secret
in the telling. It's a kind of Schrodinger's cat problem. (Though I don't
suggest you use "He of whose name men fear to speak" to test this, or the
lovely Helen might get a little piqued) If something is secret and I know
it, it is not therefore secret. If something is secret and I do not know
it, it is not secret but unknown. Secrecy implies knowlege ergo there are
no secrets, "quod erat demonstrandum" said god before disappearing in a
puff of his own logic. Hmm, on reflection that's actually closer to Russell's
paradox than Schrodinger's cat. However, since there are no conditions
under which the statement "Tell us a secret" could produce a true result,
we shall tell you something else, often mistaken for a secret.
Namely, there is no lumber cartel.
-AJL
If you say
so.
Blab. Asked simply to tell us a secret, an insubordinate reader
writes:
I will *not* tell you a secret,
because it seems you always tell.
Shhhhhh.
Blab. Bored with the topics we bring up, a synesthetic reader
attempts to introduce a new topic
of its own.
 Beautiful
color, bad smell and/or taste:
Others?
Giraffes? Lava? (And what was that fur stuff, anyhow?)
Blab. On the ongoing topic of bonsai,
a helpful reader suggests:
To the new owners of TWO
Bonsai, my suggestion is to NOT put them next your sink if Steve comes
by to help with dishes. You NEVER know!
Our recommendation is never to have Steve help with the dishes,
though this does not seem to be working out historically.
Blab. A reader states or implores us,
You won't find Helen Naked
Pictures. I hope....... Steve?!!!!
Of
course you will.
Blab. A reader who pretends to be Helen, but who clearly is not
as Helen is not nearly this confused about how sending us the blinking
trip reports is a prerequisite to our putting them on the blinking Web
site, writes:
I am a stay at home wife.
Today I was asked by our contractor (who is installing our rose trellis!!)
if I was an attorney. Don't know where he got that unless he had
mistaken my work on the computer today as something more important than
the simple update of my cookbook for [name of Caribbean paradise deleted
- Plurp].
I do work outside the apartment several
days a week as an ESL volunteer tutor at our local International school
and also volunteer at the Horticultural Society and Names Project (the
AIDS Memorial Quilt). I do some writing about Steve's and my adventures.
Other than that I take care of Steve.
I don't know how I accomplished anything
when I worked full time. When did the dishes get done and marketing
and laundry and vacation planning and party planning???? I don't
know. I guess I was 10 years younger. It's amazing what a forty
year woman can do. Now at fifty (I still laugh when I write or say
that) I am enjoying our new apartment and magnificent garden. I planted
150 bulbs a couple of months ago and spend a little time everyday searching
out those few confused little tubers who think it is spring due to our
40 degree weather.
Any more questions? Steve has
long promised me a place on this site for my trip reports. Anyone
want to bug him for me?
OK, who is Tootles?
Who is Helen? What would constitute a proper answer to the question?
This person pretending to be Helen made up stories about what she does.
But is that who she is? Does it tell you her deepest beliefs, her
most distressing infirmities? Do you need to know her habits? What makes
her laugh? What her nightmares are about? Would it help if we told you
what she had for lunch today? Her glove size?
The question just seems so much more complex than that.
Blab. In a estrogen-soaked attempt to turn this blog into the
Oprah show, a reader writes:
I've seen this done on Oprah:
(Show # 213 entitled "Schizophrenics and Those Who Love Us".)
"Will the personality that is HELEN
please step forward? I will only speak with HELEN. I am looking for HELEN."
Helen, what was the first thing that
attracted you to Steve? What made you realize that you loved him?
I'd like to hear every gushy-mushy
detail.
We foresee the need to insist that certain of our readers arrange
to obtain telephones in the near future.
 Blab.
An ingénue writes:
Lying in bed at 5 AM you
snuggle up to me.
Ah. While it is a lovely image, and we do thank you for that, we must inform
you that we are happily married and hence unable to take you up on your
kind offer.
We do appreciate having such, um, enthusiastic readers, though.
Blab. A sharp cookie writes:
I called a co-worker a "sharp
cookie" today, and for some reason, the words sounded wrong to my ears.
(Is that even the phrase? Or did I mangle it?) It's not like I haven't
heard or said that before, but my feedback loop must have been working
overtime, and an alert went up saying "What the heck did you just say??"
I paused, then said to my friend "Sharp
.. .cookie?? What the heck does that mean??"
This then lead to a search online
for the origin of the phrase (I actually searched the Morris Dictionary
of Word and Phrase Origins first, to no avail).
Ultimately, my search lead me to Plurp
- "sharp cookie" was part of a Helenism thread. I'd never heard of Helenisms
... and I still don't completely get what they are. I also don't completely
get Plurp, but it makes me laugh, a lot, and that's all that matters.
Well, that's not entirely true. I
still don't know where "sharp cookie" came from. (Any leads?)
I hope to contribute something more
appropriately Plurpy soon ... but I need to let it soak in a while longer,
until I've absorbed the gestalt.
absorbgestalt.
hmm ...
Best,
Nick
Da, fearless reader.
Every couple of weeks, someone stumbles upon our meager site in search
of "sharp cookie". We are so very pleased that you made it far enough through
the other Helenisms to think them
confusing, and all the way over here to Plurp to not get it. Frankly,
we don't get it either.
As to that sharp cookie thing, we actually looked into the origins
of this term a few months ago, scouring a dozen canonical references sources
as well as the Web in general for authoritative information. And you know
what? We have no idea.
Our best guess (and that's all it is) is that it's a fortuitous combination
of two unrelated terms. Intelligent people are said to be sharp,
a reasonable manifestation of a well-honed intellect. People (other than
us) are referred to as cookie. Like that.
Or not. Maybe some reader is just, like, so much sharper
than us on this topic?
Anyhow, Best Nick, welcome. We're focusing the mind control lasers your
way as we type. Tell your friends, if you dare.
Blab. Juicing us up, a reader who knows our
neurons writes:
'Black Hawk Down' not only
features explosions, but also the other essential ingredient of the modern
film -- helicopters. A great many helicopters. A huge
number of helicopters. Truly, it's the film with everything!
Oooh! Helicopters are good. We like helicopters.
Plurp. And speaking of recipes ... fried
socks?
Yow. And speaking of fried socks, it seems that the folks at
Arthur Andersen (recently "fired"
by client Enron) are not
quite as stupid as they seemed.
Andersen, the accountancy
firm caught in the Enron scandal, has recovered thousands of electronic
files relating to the Enron audit.
The recovery of back-up files — including
e-mails and duplicates of paper documents that were shredded — will help
the investigation into the collapse of the Houston-based energy trading
group.
Let's all wave buh-bye to Slimy Enron, the company that just ran out of
rocks under which to hide.
We feel sure that Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, who sold
$3.5M worth of Enron shares just five days after being warned that
his company could "implode in a wave of accounting scandals", will enjoy
the exclusive attention of his new friend and roommate, Bubba.
And remember, boys and girls: Bits are forever.
Plurp. Sushi is God's way of poking fun at people who cook fish.
Yow. A surprisingly cool digital
clock. As with all great stuff, it's the idea itself that is so very
cool.
(b0rp)
Yow. You know what? Having a blog is way more fun than
should be allowed. It really is.
 Plurp.
After all,
who was
the blue dog?
Friday, January 18, 2002
Blab. A reader clears up an aspect
of our grossness.
Clearly you have a gross
misunderstanding of the term "weapon of mass distruction."
First, a tiny little hand-grenade-like
explosion, strategically placed in an aircraft, can, upon detonation, cause
the plane to go sputtering out of control, sending its 200 or so passengers
hurling toward the earth into some large structure housing thousands of
innocent people, which then collapses onto thousands more innocent people.
WE MUST PREVENT THIS !
OTOH, these 15,000 pound daisy cutters
have consistently succeeded in making very large holes in very large mountainsides,
yet somehow incapable of killing its one intended victim: Bill Gates,
who continues to mass-market his Worms Everywhere software code under the
name "Maxis" (maker of Sims and, sadly, a subsidiary of Microsoft, Inc.)
I don't see how the latter could at
all be confused with the former....
How obvious it all is when stated so clearly. How embarrassed we must be
at our dull inability to grasp such simple political realities.
Blab. On the subject of our confusion
about what constitutes a "weapon of mass destruction" these days, a reader,
clearly in the mood for a good rant, writes:
Ah, I see your confusion
(and raise you two inklings). It's only a weapon of mass destruction if
you're a terrorist (i.e. anyone that looks at you in a funny way, is Arab
looking, or carries nailclippers onto an aircraft), and not if you are
the righteous forces of a "peaceful" nation. If you are a God blessed western
government, you are free to wreak your vengence on all infidel souls with
impunity, and piffling things like Geneva conventions and reducing "collateral
damage" (killing innocent people) are not things that you have to worry
about. You are the hand of the Almighty, and you are righteous, and the
minions of hell shall not prevail against you. And all towel wearing peasants
had just better take note.
-AJL
The reader goes on to say things both wise (i.e. we agree with them) and
flattering (i.e. that we are too modest to say ourself), but cordons them
off from you, the Unwashed Masses, by alleging that they are private.
Anyhow, we appreciated them.
P.S. Nice rant, indeed! And, as an official towel wearing peasant (just
this morning, in fact), we certainly do take note.
Blab. A reader who was given satori as a solstice present writes:
You can let Helen know that
WE got TWO cute little Bonsai trees this year from TWO dear friends.
Even better, no seeds, no fridge,
no little dishes to be accidentally cleaned up. No, these cute buggers
are already 25 years old. Kinda hard to lose those in the dishwasher.
Have her people call my people.
Cool! Do they have something like this with kids?
Blab. A reader rushes in, breathless, hoarsely croaking this:
check out think-hole's update
(hopefully it's still there)
Um ... ? Thinkhole's still there,
and thank goodness for that. But we're missing the subtle and special thing
to which our reader is doubtless referring. We await further
enlightenment.
Blab. In three separate missives, a reader writes:
Helen
Oh sorry...thought this was the SEARCH
box. Just looking for those HOT pictures of Helen again
Just found the SEARCH box...Thanks
for your help! Tootles!
Perusing our server logs does indeed show someone finding our site with
the search string "helen naked pictures".
She is a babe, ain't she?
Blab. Our readers are always in search of knowledge. And, for
some reason, they keep coming here.
Helen was located on star
date January 6, 2002. *I* myself would like to know more about her. Whether
she works or is a stay at home wife.
Is there an "Authority on Helen" in
the house?
Perhaps HELEN herself will come amongst
us low down plurpists and speak.
We're not sure if Helen herself would deign to spend her precious time
in these slummy environs, even for the charitable purpose of being an authority
on herself. We'll see!
Blab. A reader from yesterday succeeds
in confusing us utterly.
I'm the reader "with lots
of things to do", but I hoped to get an answer.
But, Treasured Reader, you have failed to ask a question. No matter! We
will give you an answer anyway: 7,000 pounds of Edam cheese.
Blab. A reader informs us that ...
Binky is death's horse.
So it seems. We
always wondered what would happen if it turned out that death (small "d")
was just a practical joke. We imagine Death (astride Binky) cantering up
to us in our crabby dotage, looking down upon our horrified face as he
raises his sickle. We close our eyes, wincing, as the blade descends and
then - whish - misses our head. Looking again at Death, we see that
he has thrown back his cowl and is laughing at us through gleaming teeth.
Made
ya flinch, though!
Blab. A reader is reading our thoughts.
FYI: Black Hawk Down opens
this weekend.
True, for some value of "this". Our astonishing powers of extrasensory
perception allow us to intuit that it actually opened last
Tuesday, but this will be the first weekend it's showing. Haven't seen
a movie with explosions in it for a while. Gotta get us summa dat.
Blab. A nostalgic reader writes:
[Last year, January 18th
on Plurp]
Blab. A reader far too familiar with
the patent process writes:
[There follows a long passage from
that issue of Plurp wherein we expound upon a fanciful metaphor for the
patenting process involving villages and land mines. It is not reproduced
here 'cause, well, the bits are already elsewhere.
- Plurp]
Thank you, dear reader, for your enlightened regurgitation of our own lovely
words, which we do thrill to read and reread.
Blab. On the topic of those really awful recipes from yesterday,
a reader writes:
I especially appreciate the
recipe for Whole Stuffed Camel. I used to live next door to a herd
of camels; the experience would have been less unpleasant if I had known
they were edible.
Now we need to tell you our dromedary joke. One hump, or two?
Yow. The blue dog's superhero
name is The Miraculous Alien. It figures. (leuschke)
Yow. Jenny
Jones, on the Perils of Theory.
JENNY JONES: So you're
only 14, and you're already skeptical toward the "grand narratives" of
modernity, you're questioning any belief system that claims universality
or transcendence. Why?
ALEX: I guess -- to be cool.
JENNY JONES: So, peer pressure?
ALEX: I guess.
JENNY JONES: And do you remember
how you felt the very first time you entertained the notion that you and
your universe are constituted by language -- that reality is a cultural
construct, a "text" whose meaning is determined by infinite associations
with other"texts"?
ALEX: Uh, it felt, like, good.
I wanted to do it again.
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
(dust.from.a.distant.sun.)
Yo. Days of detailed and intense interrogation of Al Qaeda prisoners
have enabled the Marine Corp. to state categorically that "these
are not nice guys". Film at 11.
Yo. Oh dear. Dave
has broken into the hallucinogens again. We really must get better
locks for that cabinet.
Plurp. In general, we do not advise you to drive aggressively
when the road is damp with misty rain, and especially not to take that
left turn onto the on ramp too quickly, even if you do have a hot little
car and it would be infinitely fun to do so on a sunny summer day, if this
is not one, as you could easily fishtail to the right and, even if your
reaction time is good, what with the unanticipated excitement of the moment,
you might well over steer, fishtailing to the left, before regaining control,
your heart now convulsing and your eyes wide as you try to merge with the
groaning trucks and careening SUVs.
In general.
Yak.
I got four ingénue
pairs for you today.
You
did?
Yes.
Wow! You did?!
Yeah. What's the big deal?
... uh ... uh ... what
did you get today?
Four Anjou pears. Like I said.
Ah. Ah. That's good. I ...
I like fruit.
Plurp.
Lying in bed at 5 AM, worried
that the wax that fills my skull will soften come Spring and ooze slowly
from my ears, my nose, my tear ducts.
Lying in bed at 5 AM, painfully aware
of the fundamental weakness of the Inductive Hypothesis, making a mental
list of what I will do if the sun does not, in fact, come up today.
Lying in bed at 5 AM thinking that,
with my luck, even if I wake up a different person, I probably won't know
it.
Lying in bed at 5 AM, listening carefully
to the gentle snoring of the pigeons.
Lying in bed at 5 AM, aware that,
only moments before, I could fly, and vaguely sad that now I cannot.
Plurp. Now, tell us a secret.
Plurp.
The Miraculous Alien
seemed to have
left that spandex suit
at home
Thursday, January 17, 2002
Blab. A reader seeks to derive all of human behavior
from first-order logic.
Using your public restroom
illustration, then I would argue:
p->q
q->p
~p->~q
~q->~p
would all be valid statements of fact.
If we're talking policy here, we might suspect:
p->q
and so, tautologically,
~q->~p
... unless you're planning on running right home. OTOH, you might need
to do, well, other stuff in there, so we do not have:
~p->~q
At least, that's one thought on the subject.
Blab. Kindly responding to our request
to send us the URL for the worst sounding recipes they can find on the
Web,
My
favorite recipes, in particular this,
this,
and this (but definitely
not this).
G
Hairball Salad With Saliva Dressing. Bloody Eyeballs On The Rocks.
Whole Stuffed Camel. Classics, to be sure.
But not Penis Stew? You got something against stew?
Blab. A reader sends us a blind but nevertheless interesting
...
[link].
Well lookee there! Somebody is selling an Enron manual on e-bay. And an
interesting one at that.
This is the original manual
given out during one of Enron's internal advanced risk management classes.
It gives detailed descriptions as to how earnings,creditworthiness, and
the timing of reportings can affect how a company is perceived in the financial
world.
from the manual:
Attain Favorable Accounting
Treatment
By using certain structures, companies
can re-categorize expenses in such a manner as to improve the perceived
financial performance.
Also included are passages and case
studies to teach a person how to do the following:
-manage the timing of reported earnings
-enhance creditworthiness
-improve ability to attract capital
-stabilize earnings through complex
risk structures so as to make lenders more likely to extend credit, and
do so for longer terms
-use risk structures to reduce earnings
volatility perception in order that lower multiples are not required by
equity investors
Ouch.
Blab. A reader too new to grok the gestalt writes:
White background? Yellow
and red squares? NO! Plurp should be purpl.
We have bad news for you, Binkie. It is purpl.
Blab. A reader with lots of things to do does this instead.
There're lots of things to
do, but I'm sitting in front of this box and thinking about something inteligent
to type in:
You will tell us how that works out, won't you?
Blab. After we tuned the mind control lasers to tickle palindromic
parts of our readers' brains, one reader writes:
I wrote a palindromic poem
for you, as grateful thanks for reducing the intensity of your MCL's for
a couple of days (or is it just the virus in my head is blocking it).
--
Desserts won in word drown I now
stressed
on one dice decide no no
not set as a test on
live time I emit evil
set up side disputes
drawn onward
mood level doom
I
--
As a point of interest (or not) there
are 127 characters in the poem, which in Binary is 1111111 - a palindromic
number. 127 is also a prime number, which i like because it implies a completeness
or indivisiblility, otherwise, I'd not know when to stop writing (long
ago would have probably been appropriate)
:-)
So there you go.
-AJL
We are rendered mute by this heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Plurp. Reasons that we are now said to like Him Whose Name Was
Eaten By The Elder Gods:
-
 He
no longer licks our back in the middle of the night.
-
He has not recently jumped on our legs in the early morning to extort food
from us.
-
He indulges in premeditated shredding of the expensive living room rug
less often than previously.
-
He has not peed on our side of the bed in several weeks.
After all, how much closer to perfection can a cat get?
Rant. We love this.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates
announced a major strategy shift across all its products, including its
flagship Windows software, to emphasize security and privacy over new capabilities.
 It's
like Bozo announcing a major strategy shift to emphasize fashion sense.
 Imagine!
Microsoft may actually take a programmer or two off of providing more break
dance moves for Clippy and assign them to fiddle in ignorance with one
or two of the zillions of security and privacy holes - some so big they
can be seen from space - that infest their products like sores on plague
victims, all the way from brain dead architecture to idiotic implementations.
We're not even going to mention their ongoing Worms EverywhereTM
initiative.
Which is to say, Billy finally gave them an easy job.
Plop. So now we're hopelessly confused. That shoe bomber guy
(and we do love that term) has been charged with "attempted
use of a weapon of mass destruction." Our impression is that the stuff
in his shoe might have been about as powerful as a hand grenade. Which
leads us to wonder: What is the definition of "weapon of mass destruction"
these days? How destructive does it have to be?
And if a shoe bomb counts, doesn't a 15,000-pound "daisy
cutter" bomb? And if it does, isn't the U.S. using weapons of mass
destruction, and in large quantity, already?
Can you see why we're confused? Can our readers unconfuse
us in time?
Plurp. What the voices are singing today.
I'm in with the bomb squad.
I go were the bomb squad goes.
I'm in with the bomb squad,
And I know what the bomb squad knows.
Et cetera.
It's a toe-tapper.
Yow. Shamelessly stolen from Ian.
Gotta love it.
Plurp.
The blue dog
thought it would be
inteligent
to fix all those security bugs
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Blab. A reader with deep suspicions about technology
writes:
Balb?
And then ...
Lablbabb!
Yes, dear reader, the Blab
box really does work. Really.
Blab. Not content with trying to frighten us with the notion
of forcing children to dress as Pokémon,
whether in public or private, a reader now suggests an entire terrifying
universe
of forced infantile transvestitism.
 [link]
The horror. Children - innocent, angelic children - forced under
threat of parental expatriation to dress as culturally demeaning symbols
of ignorance and bad taste, forced to parade around in the company of their
peers, emotionally scarred for life, only to grow up as crazed, coulrobic
killers.
OTOH, we never much liked children. So maybe it's OK.
Blab. A reader offers us an opportunity for a lesson in Zen.
Got a Mini Bonsai for Christmas
from a dear friend who knows me too well. The little pack included
three seeds that you soak and then remove to the fridge for seven days
for a pretend winter. Then you plant it. So yesterday I started
it. I made a small bowl of water and neatly set it aside on the counter.
Had to remember to drain it and store it today. This
morning I woke up and went to make
a cup of coffee and noticed that the kitchen was all neat and clean.
Steve had volunteered and done all the dishes last night. And guess
what. He did ALL the dishes. ALL of them. I went back
into the bathroom and approached him while he determined he had just broken
his electric shaver. I asked him about that little white bowl. Oh
yes he had stuck it into the dishwasher. Oops! --Helen
A monk told Joshu, I have just started on bonsai. Please teach
me. Joshu asked, Have you eaten your rice porridge?
Blab. A reader with a compelling need to belong writes:
Well, we've had our first
school shooting today in New York City. Gosh, it feels sooooo good to part
of the club. And we didn't think we were up to it!
But we are, dear reader. We most certainly are.
Plurp. A correspondent takes us to task for yesterday's
report of an  NYC
earthquake that, in fact, happened in October of last year. That dang time
machine! Can't anybody make a reliable temporal trembulator these days?
Sheesh.
Plurp.
Walking home yesterday, a
disheveled man pointed in my direction a paper cup that contained a handful
of coins. He looked at me, expectantly. No thanks, I said,
you
keep it.
Plop. We don't mean to complain. Really we don't. After all,
massless.org
links to our humble blog right there on the front page. And it's a pretty
short list that includes Famous Blogs like Medley and Camworld and DavidChess.
Goosebumps, ya know?
But, if we can be forgiven just a small point, let's look at what massless
says about various of us.
medley
A keen eye. A political bent.
camworld
Needs introduction to few: Cameron
Barrett, Design Technologist. Besides, like me, you already read his log
daily, don't you? :)
david
chess
David is whipsmart and hosts an ongoing
game of Nomic.
plurp
A great read. From surreal to thoughtful
and onto other interesting places. A delightful descent into the whimsy
and peculiar madness of Steve R. White.
So Medley is keen, Cam too famous for words and Dave is whipsmart,
whereas we are whimsical and peculiarly mad.
Well, on balance, maybe that's OK. At least, that's what the voices
are saying.
Plurp. Washing your car with a bag full of cats is a lot like
sex.
Plurp. We were disappointed that not a single reader took us
up on our request to submit pictures
of people and microorganisms that look alike. After much reflection (three,
to be precise), we figured it was because we had only described the task
in text, a traditionally opaque and tribulative method of garnering action.
So we figured we'd get your juices flowing with an example.
 |
 |
|
President George W. Bush, Jr.
|
Fungus
|
See? That's not so hard. Now let's all try
again, shall we?
Plurp.
When I was a child,
said the man, I thought it would be romantic to be an assassin.
The coffeehouse was busy, noisy, intimate conversation mixing publicly
with laughter.
It was probably Three Days of the
Condor, he said, that old Robert Redford movie. Max von Sydow. The
attention to detail. The calm acceptance of it.
You had to know so much. Firearms,
loads, casings, wind, penetration. Medical details. What induces heart
attacks. How long a 200 pound man will live whose femoral artery is severed.
You had to be an expert in everything.
The waitress came by to see if they
wanted anything else, and he fell quiet for a moment while she moved on.
The puzzle. How to do it. When.
To make it look like natural. Or an accident. To make it look like someone
else. You had to be so ... precise.
The man sighed. He smiled. As it
turns out, he said, every profession has its small satisfactions,
don't you think?
The man placed a ten dollar bill on
the table, wrapped a scarf around the top of his coat and, patting the
shoulder of his companion, walked slowly out the door and into the winter
air.
Yak. Truth in exercising.
I'd like to run a marathon,
but ... it's a very long distance.
Plop. The good
news is:
[California] Gov. Gray Davis'
proposal to let state and local police obtain roving wiretaps on suspected
criminals was dropped from the legislation containing it Tuesday after
the legislative counsel's office concluded that it was illegal.
The bad
news is:
[T]he legislative counsel
said that a state law authorizing roving wiretaps for state and local prosecutors
and police would exceed the authority federal wiretapping law gives states,
and would thus be invalid. President Bush signed legislation in October
that broadened federal wiretapping abilities to target suspected terrorists,
but that law did not expand states' powers to allow roving wiretaps at
the local level, the counsel concluded.
That is, the federal government wants to have a monopoly on this wildly-expanded
ability to wiretap.
Plop. Reminding us that IQs
are still lower in the South ...
LAUDERHILL, Fla. —
A plaque meant to honor Star Wars actor James Earl Jones at a southern
Florida town's upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. celebration has instead
shocked citizens with its ugly message: "Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping
the dream alive."
Officials in Lauderhill, a suburb
of Fort Lauderdale, were angered by the homage to Ray, who shot and killed
King in 1968.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was often said
to greatly resemble
moldy chili
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
Blab. Still obsessed with that extremely
advanced logic problem from the other day, a reader writes:
p->q gives you ~q->~p. q
implies nothing, nor does ~p.
Nor, indeed, does any of this.
Blab. A reader who, like we, is concerned that there really are
no coincidences in the universe, writes:
Immediately following the
demonstrations that, given only (p->q), one cannot validly conclude (~p->~q),
we have the statement:
"I guess if Plurp isn't up there is
no reason to stay on line"
~p->~q
sounds like an algorithm for public rest rooms to us.
Blab. Trying vainly to elevate the recent topic of logic
from sheer foolishness to something more intellectually mature, a reader
writes:
There are actually various
theories of counterfactual conditionals [obvious Google search] outside
of formal boolean logic (springing mostly, I suspect, from the fact that
most people's intuition does find something vaguely odd about the boolean
fact that for all P and Q, not-P implies (P implies Q)). Not directly relevant
to your fishy case, but vaguely related...
If we had known about counterfactual conditionals, this whole thread might
have made sense.
Blab. A student of Robert's Rules of Order (Revised) writes:
"Unfortunately, it was true
that we didn't get home early, so ... ?"
Liar! I call for the flaming pants!
The chair recognizes Mister Pants.
Blab. In an attempt to get us to respond, a spam-baiter writes:
"Yo Mama is so short, you
can see her feet on her driver's liscense"
Insidious! If we didn't already have a Weblog, we would have to insult
their intelligence by return email.
Blab. A terse but friendly reader writes:
hi
Hello. Please tell us something about yourself.
Blab. On the topic of interesting names of apparently real people,
a reader writes:
Here in my beloved hometown
of Columbia, MO, lives a auto dealer with the potentially remarkable name
of Richard Head.
My reaction to this is a repeated,
"What were his parents thinking?"
Lamar
At least he avoided nicknames. Or did the kids all call him Snotnose?
(Beyond all expectations, Richard Head is not
an uncommon name. There's even a band
by that name, none of whose members are named Richard Head. We assume this
was on purpose.)
 Blab.
A reader attempts to frighten us with this ...
 [link].
And we would be frightened - terrified, even - if we thought, even for
a moment, than any adult would buy a Pokémon costume and force small
children to dress in it, either in private (!) or in public. Which would
be worse: being named Richard Head or having to go to third grade looking
like that?
Honestly.
Plop. Civil rites? Civil writes? Ian
suspects not, so we changed it to his spelling.
Anything for Ian, about which more later.
Yo. That typography influences textual interpretation. (Bovine
Inversus)
   
Yow. Due to the great good graces and staggering technical genius
of Ian (who is not a frog),
we now have what all obsessive bloggers really need. And what's that? Why,
a new addition to our Stuff section
entitled Usage Statistics,
of course! With badly scaled graphs, distressingly colored pie charts and
everything.
Now even you can revel in the documentary evidence of our unpopularity.
And wonder, and we mean really wonder, about all those people looking
for Slave Shoelicker. (We do, however, harbor a secret glee at being
among the world's foremost authorities on
nyotaimori.)
Plurp. There was an earthquake
Monday morning at 1:42 AM, centered a few blocks from our apartment. Nervous
people called the police with reports of shaking buildings.
We slept through it. But - give us a break - it was a Richter 2.6. Those
of us from California regard such quakes as slightly less noticeable than
someone sneezing in the next town.
If there's a Richter 9 in NYC, we'll let you know. OK?
Plop. Twinkie casserole? Spam sushi? French fries and ketchup
soup? Pretzel lasagna? Readers are invited to send
us the URL for the worst sounding recipes they can find on the Web.
Extra points if you've actually tried it yourself, in which case you can
also describe your experience.
Suddenly canned beets are not sounding quite so bad.
Plop. We don't actually mind it if Arthur Anderson cooked
the books. We would mind if they followed the English tradition and
boiled them into unrecognizable mush, though.
Plurp.
The blue dog
tried to watch
those p's and q's
Monday, January 14, 2002
Blab. The problem of
the missing sushi seems to have stimulated dim memories in many of
our readers who now believe they didn't sleep through that class in mathematical
logic. Here, a reader tries simultaneously to redefine the problem and
impress us with its Latin.
Paragraph
28.
Your blab box doesn't seem to support
mathematical symbols. (cymbals!) If it did, then it would. (it would).
But, in your case here, first order laws are too weak. You require /ceteris
paribus/ laws, so that you can restrict the specifications of the law within
specific conditions under which the law does not hold. For a law that predicts
the likelihood of you having sushi only if you come home soon, you would
need to define a restriction on the likelihood of sushi being available
based on the definition of soon. Of course, soon usually reduces in proportion
to the available sushi, so you're out of luck matey.
-AJL
Frankly, that smells like week-old fish to us. Matey.
Blab. A reader takes another swag at that incredibly
complex logic problem from the other day.
p<=>q
Bzzt. Sorry, that's incorrect. But you leave with the handsome home
edition of our game: Logic For the Illogical. And thank you for
playing.
Blab. A reader tries another approach.
A false statement implies
any other. Like this one, for instance.
Unfortunately, it was true that we didn't get home early, so ... ?
Blab. A reader displays a complex and detailed etui in regards
to our problem with fish.
I thought for sure someone
else would have responded correctly.
Let p=you don't come home soon
q=you won't have sushi
The implication in question was p=>q
p and q both being false does not
make the implication false.
p | q | p=>q
_____________
F | F | T
Only TF in the truth table makes the
implication false.
I miss the google game. -etui
syzygy
We're not sure why p was greater than or equal to q, but
we're pretty sure that everything is a Google game.
Blab. A reader attempts an exhaustive proof, only to be exhausting.
"If you don't come home soon,
you won't have sushi! ... we did come home soon and we didn't have sushi."
P
Q ~P -> ~Q
T
T T
T
F T
<< see?
F
T F
F
F T
I'll bet the formatting gets all messed
up and this is incomprehensible.
Let's just say it wasn't the formatting. Though, being fair, we have to
give the Gold Medal to this particular treasured reader. (And, well OK,
to the previous one as well. We're just playin' with ya.)
Blab. A reader seeks to flatter us.
I guess if Plurp isn't up
there is no reason to stay on line. I will go now ...
We note that the reader is remarkably successful. And we hope it comes
back soon.
Blab. A reader flings further enlightenment in the general direction
of that proposed Helenism yesterday.
Calm
as a millpond. So there -AJL
And, indeed,
that does it!
Blab. A reader performs a crucial experiment.
RE AD&D - I claimed my
IQ was 300 and that I had a Ph.D and it only awarded me an intelligence
of 17... upped the IQ to 400 and I got a 20. But something is seriously
wrong with this guy's calculations.
So you're saying that the people with IQ 400 aren't making
AD&D character calculators? How disappointing!
Blab. A reader informs us of a random Shakespearean insult generator.
All the world is a stage
and we are merely players, thou saucy toad-spotted bum-bailey!
You, minion, are too saucy.
Blab. A reader shouts:
YES, YES ... EINSTIEN,
HAWKINS, FEYNMANN ... ;-0
Well look at that. Some clever person has created a set of criteria that
helps you rate a set of "scientific" claims or ideas, perhaps separating
genius from crackpottery.
It doesn't seem to work, though, as self-application to Plurp
yields a score of at least 297 which, unless we read it wrong, is considered
entirely crackpotified.
Blab. A reader reminds us of yet another LOTR detail that we
omitted in our otherwise exhaustive review yesterday.
all filmed in beautiful New
Zealand too you know...
A lovely place, it seems! We want to know where the Elfin Forest is.
Blab. A young reader writes:
I have... organs of excretion
and reproduction!
Imagine our joy at your
discovery.
Blab. A reader wants to know ...
Which tree is Helen?
The one on the left.
Blab. A reader with undersized britches sends us a:
[link]
... which turns out to do nothing interesting (except in Opera, of course;
see the Plurp subtitle for this week). Some debuggery leads to what
the reader meant to say:
[link]
This latter being universal truth.
Yow. We watched The
Siege last night, a tale of how the U.S. responds to a string of
domestic attacks by radical Islamic terrorists by (among other things)
suspending civil rights and "detaining" anyone who looks Middle Eastern.
Go rent it. If you've already seen it, see it again. Watch it carefully.
Really.
Yo. Last chance to avoid legal problems! Enter your credit card
number here for immediate relief.
Plop. Are you a terrorist assassin who wants to manufacture and
deploy biological weapons, but you just don't know where to get started?
No problem! You can buy all that information on the Web.
What evildoer, we hear you ask, would sell such dastardly
stuff? Why, the
U.S. government, of course.
For $15, anyone can buy "Selection
of Process for Freeze-Drying, Particle Size Reduction and Filling of Selected
BW Agents," or germs for biological warfare. The 57-page report, dated
1952, includes plans for a pilot factory that could produce dried germs
in powder form, designed to lodge in human lungs. [...]
One report obtained [...] from the
government is "Development of `N' for Offensive Use in Biological Warfare."
`N' was the code letter for Bacillus anthracis, the germ that causes anthrax.
Another is "The Stability of Botulinum Toxin in Common Beverages." The
germ-derived substance is the most poisonous known to science. [...]
"Screening Studies with Variola Virus,"
dated 1958, describes Army studies to explore the weapon potential of smallpox,
a highly contagious illness that even without military aid managed to kill
more people over the ages than any other disease.
It seems that those rockets scientists in the U.S. Government are trying
to plug this particular dike now. But you know how naughty information
is. Once you let it out, it stays out.
Plurp. Heck, we don't need terrorist assassins. We have snack
foods. Must be the aliens.
Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't need
terrorist assassins
Sunday, January 13, 2002
Blab. A reader, trying to prove the consistency of two
statements in our coming-home-sushi puzzle
yesterday, writes:
p->q, ~q->~p
Sadly, our reader just plain gets it wrong. Even if the statements were
correct, this would not constitute a proof.
Blab. A second reader tries a more minimalist formulation.
p->q
To which we can only reply, ~p.
Blab. Finally, a reader, perhaps more in tune with the logic
of Plurp, writes:
butterfly fingers = butterfly
fingers
... which is, of course, exactly correct.
Blab. A reader wonders about itself as an AD&D
character.
Str: 5
Int: 47
Wis: 14
Dex: 9
Con: 7
Chr: 14
What's this mean?
Um ... that you're a physically debilitated super-genius out to
destroy the world if you don't accidentally stab yourself with a dinner
fork?
Blab. An unrepentant reader who really does know better nonetheless
circulates email rather than the URL of the 2001
Washington Post Style Invitational, in which their readers are asked
to take a word from the dictionary, modify it by adding, deleting or changing
a single letter, and then provide an oh-so-clever definition.
In punishing our reader for this breach in bloggiquette, we will not
publish any of winning entries at all. Instead, we offer our own.
Plnrp - Doe; a deer; a female
deer; ray; a drop of golden sun.
Blab. Another intoxicated reader writes:
Helenism for you, as heard
on the TV show "Who Want's to be a Millionaire, (rather an open question)
:
And then ...
Helenism for you, as heard
on the TV show "Who Want's to be a Millionaire, (rather an open question)
: - bugger - hit enter, should have done this in the big blab box
- anyway :- Calm as a cucumber . -AJL
OK. Cool as a cucumber we got. But, Calm as a ... ?
Banana slug? Cardamom? Fruit stand?
Blab. A reader notes the following from Thinkhole,
a blog foolish enough to link to us on a regular basis.
Magnetic
Poetry
This is both obsessive and funny. Obsessive in that this Magnetic Poetry
game includes 197 words, which is quite a few unless your PC screen is
a big as a fridge. Funny in that the author then rearranges them into some
initial poetry.
all apples base
are belong to us
Go play!
Plurp. Our primary kata yesterday was Clean Office. We worked
for three straight hours on this form. The good part was that we made the
Six
Infamous Boxes disappear, largely by breaking into our compatriots'
offices and leaving little anonymous piles of our stuff in their
offices. :-) The bad part was that, in the end, you'd have a hard time
telling that we did anything at all. Looks like we still have a few more
weekends to spend in this way.
Zoom. Our other kata yesterday was Wash Car, which we hadn't
done for far too long. Turns out it's still blue.
Plurp. For the last couple of weeks, we've caught snippets of
hallway conversation at the lab.
-
... good, but they left out a lot of stuff ...
-
... really three hours?
-
... made the mistake of reading the books again, so I kept thinking "that's
different" ...
We should be embarrassed to admit (though we are not) that we knew exactly
what
they were talking about.
And, last geek in the world that we are, we finally saw it too.
And the verdict is: Really Quite Good. Halfway through, we stopped thinking
about the effects, the details of the various cultures and (well, pretty
much) how we had actually played all of those characters in all
of those situations. Instead, we became immersed in the reality of it all,
started caring for (and worrying about) the characters, and kept wondering
what would happen next.
We loved the characterization of the elves, which was both detailed
and subtle. Arwen waits confidently in the river that bounds the elfin
forest, taunting the Nazgul to come and get her. (Little do they know!)
As the others in the Fellowship are slogging waist-deep through mountain
snow, Legolas walks on top of it without leaving a footprint. And
(twice!), the elfin scouts have their arrow tips at the party's necks before
the party even realizes they are there.
The production has the usual problems of all literary epics brought
to the screen - there's lengthy voice-over narrative at the beginning just
to tell you what this is all about - and there are the usual tough choices
about what to include and what (massive parts) to just leave out.
The one jarring cultural out take we just couldn't get over was the
casting of Hugo Weaving as Elrond. Weaving, you recall, was Agent Smith
in The Matrix. When he was addressing the Fellowship, we kept expecting
him to say, "Well, Mr. Anderson ...". And we couldn't shake the image.
Still, it is the most richly imagined fantasy world ever, and the epic
story on which all other epic fantasy seems based. How could you not wait
breathlessly for the other two?
Plurp. Then we saw Amélie.
It had subtitles.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was a jarring cultural
out take you
just couldn't get
over
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