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2002.02.17 : 2002.02.23

Saturday, February 23, 2002
Blab. We appear to have rudely awoken several readers with our request that they think up a new name for Enron.
To save costs, and at the recommendation of Mrs. Phil Graam and the folks at Anderson, we're pushing ENDRUN, which requires only two letter changes and is more reflective of the spirit of the firm.
Ooh. That's good! Along these same lines is:
Shredron.
Also, I am mildly annoyed by the clock thing.
Don't worry. It gets much more annoying with time. Meanwhile, another reader has another clever entry.
How about L. Ron... no, wait, another money stealing scam is already using that one.
What would Mother think?

Blab. A reader has a new craving.
I wants that clock.
Feel free to lift it from the page source. Information wants to be stolen.

Blab. We have succeeded in annoying a Treasured Reader.
The clock thing is really annoying. It gets in the way of clicking on links. Maybe if the circling date were ditched? L.
Oh? In both of our browsers (Netscrape and Internet Exposer), the clock is distinctly to the right of the cursor, and doesn't interfere with clicking once you stop the cursor and the clock stabilizes a little.
But, yes, it is really annoying. That's what JavaScript is for, after all.

Blab. A reader seeks haikuic solace in the midst of this week's JavaScript Madness.
Blinkless Bright Blue Dog
Seems Quite Unaware
Of time's flight all about him.
Very nice!

Blab. A reader with another point of view (and a sticky Caps Lock key) writes:
OH MY GOD THE CLOCK STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP THE CLOCK STOP IT OH MY OH NO OH OH OH OH OH OH OH
Jungle drums, friend. Jungle drums.

Blab. A reader whose glass is half full writes:
Actually, you should be pleased that Googlewhacking was reported on by CNN. The reporting of any internet meme by the mainstream media signals the beginning of the end of that meme.
Yeah. We suppose. But still.

Blab. Trying out our lascivious little Blab box over there, a reader writes:
oh ya
hi hi hi
Thanks for blabbing Moron
Our sentiments exactly.

Blab. The following entry illustrates the unusual event of a reader doing some work on our behalf.
I investigated ice skating a bit, and can report that:
1) Your concern of increased variation can be put to rest.
2) The entire judging process is a mathematical train wreck.
They base the final result on ordinal rankings, not raw scores. Presumably, this was done to prevent corrupt judges from having a large effect on the rankings by using large swings in raw scoring.
But it creates crazy effects like:
Michelle Kwan, after her performance, the penultimate one of the event, was ahead of Whatserface.
Russian Chick then puts in a performance which, due to ordinal reshuffling, puts Kwan in 3rd and Whatserface in 1st.
From what I can observe of the judging, the 14-choose-7 scheme will have the effect of making the results depend entirely on that final selection process. Get 4 judges predisposed to your nationality, and you win.
A pox on all their houses.
-pTang
Wow. That is incredibly wacky! We suspect we can do better with a collection of Lava Lamps and some chicken bones.

Blab. A reader reports on mysterious correspondence from her sister, who is widely believed to be on the CIA payroll.
4 Cirebon
Mar 6 Bogor
Mar11 Purwakarta
Mar13 Garut
Been thinking about this ....... sounds like CODE to me ...... I thought that Frances was retired ............. so what could this mean ........ hmmmmmm .......... must get Plurp to work on this puzzle.
Perhaps our readers can crack the code.

Blab. On that question about living forever, a reader writes:
Who wants to live forever?
There is a rather large and worrying amount of time involved in 'forever'; the thought of having to exist for even longer than that is quite unimaginably horrid if that existence is to be in the same dimensions and constraints as 'life' is defined now.
Of course, the thought of living for longer seems more appealing in inverse proportion with the percieved time left to live, so it may be presumed that I will not always believe that I would not always not wish to live at least some time longer, that time being always extended by a period undefinable and therefore eventually indistinguishable from forever. As to what I would do to get it, hmm, I don't know really. Living in our finite sense currently entails some level of conscious awareness of how we interact with others, and
our effect on the world, the actions which we take are those that define us, our lifestyle, our relationships and our freedom (or not). If one could live forever, would the constraints of conscience (and consciousness) thereby disappear, becoming useless as a deterrent.
Perhaps once that disappeared we would no longer really be living anyway - unless you consider unchecked abberant and abhorrent behaviour to be a viable form of existence.
So, first you define consciousness and living, and then call me and see if I want it ;-)
-AJL
We're pretty sure we have no idea what the reader is talking about, unless it is implying that its only reason for avoiding aberrant and abhorrent behavior is a fear of death. Then again, maybe it is.
But we'll tell you what. While you're busy arguing over definitions and such, we'll just take your spot on the Eternity bus.

Yow. What do you get when you have a telnet geek with too much free time? Why, Star Wars in ASCII, of course. We think somebody needs to get a life. Seriously! (/usr/bin/girl)

Yo. AliceBot doesn't understand that, but she is kind of cute. (/usr/bin/girl)

Plurp. It's getting hard even for us to deny the degree to which bad taste is a staple of our existence when, during a discussion of novel New York memorabilia tonight, we suggested World Trade Center candles.

Plurp. Yesterday, Dubya told a Chinese audience that diversity is not disorder, debate is not strife and dissent is not revolution. How does he know? They're spelled differently.

Plurp. On the subway tonight, a young man with close-cropped hair and a cap that said United We Stand highlighted passages in Thomas Moore's Utopia with a yellow marking pen.

Plurp.
The blue dog
thought those candles
were really tasteless

Friday, February 22, 2002
Blab. A reader checks in on our Ethics Challenge (what would you do to be given eternal life on Earth under pretty much whatever conditions you'd like?).
I can see myself rationalizing a small wrong - even against a friend - for the sake of a long comfortable life (I've done it for less), but sincerely believe I'm too contrary to conspire in a blatant crime against an innocent, for whatever benefit.
What if one of the conditions is that all memory of doing something unethical to get the grand prize is wiped away (from the beneficiary and from the world)? That probably would not change my attitude, but it could tip someone whose concern is living with the guilt.
Since you invited us to name the conditions, here are mine: an end to my mood disorder, and to the occasional pain in certain joints; quicker mind, better memory, and ability to tweak some of my mental qualities at will; ability to consume whatever I enjoy (and exercise only if I enjoy it) without getting fat or otherwise compromising my health. That's the nugget; ideally, I want my body replaced with Foglets.
So when offered eternal life if only you would shoplift a Hershey bar from the local A&P, you'd choose the grave instead? Stealing a penny from a rich stranger, you'd choose the worms? Fascinating, but we don't actually believe you.
On the reader's second topic, we had not previously heard of foglets.
Dr. Josh Hall from Rutgers University proposed the idea of an user-friendly and completely programmable collection of nanomachines called foglets. These nanomachines would not build other nanomachines. Foglets act as individual components for an overall object such as a table or chair by attaching itself to one another. There are two utility fog operation modes, "naive" and "fog". In "naive" mode the foglets move into different positions and perform certain mechanical operations depending on what object it was forming such as furniture. In this mode, the foglets could be programmed to change from a chair to a table as needed. In "fog" mode, the foglets act like pixels on a television screen and does not move. In this mode, the foglets could be painted on a wall and be used as wallpaper. One could change the wall color by programming the foglets.
Way cool, but we worry if they've done the thermodynamics calculations. Last we touched our toe into this, it's not a matter of small-scale machine design, but rather of the heat generated when these little guys change from table to chair en mass.
Do our readers know?
(Also, we wonder what nanomachines would do to live forever.)

Blab. A reader who imagines either too much or too little writes:
I don't think I'd kill to live forever. I don't think I'm that rational. Would I lie? I'm sure I'd lie a little, I don't know if I'd lie big. I don't think I'd steal anything from anyone that needed it in an obvious way (unless I knew I could pay it back before it mattered); I'd certainly steal from (let's see) Kenneth Lay (maybe even if you left out the "living forever" part). I can't imagine living forever; it's hard to know what you'd do to get something that you can't imagine.
Or maybe it's that I can't imagine not living forever?
Well, that's a somewhat more compromising and therefore somewhat more believable answer (to us).
We find ourselves so far outside of the mainstream on this topic that we probably ought not to reveal our own position.

Blab. On our little math problem, and our nattering at a reader's response to it, a reader writes:
"If the number of judges is 1, your claim is that the standard deviation is D'. If there are an infinite number of judges, your claim is that the standard deviation is zero."
That is indeed my claim. Is there a problem?
There we go again, trying to respond to reader mail in the midst of meetings to which we must actually pay attention. We hate that.
And see the next entry.

Blab. A reader provides a bit of detail.
The previous reader had it right. The standard deviation will be D'/sqrt(n).
The sum of N normally-distributed values, each of stdev D' is a normal distribution with a standard deviation of D'sqrt(N).
We are looking for the stdev of the AVERAGE, which will be D'sqrt(N)/N, or D'/sqrt(n).
Intuitively: D' for 1 judge (axiomatically from the starting conditions), and approaching 0 for many judges (we expect the average to be very close to <D> with many judges, hence a small stdev).
-pTang
Yep, these two readers are exactly right. (And my nattering yesterday was completely wrong.)
The point that we were trying so ineptly to make is this. Even in this simple, idealized case where the scoring distribution is fixed and the skaters' scores would, on average, be identical, there is a difference.
In the current judging system, there are 9 judges, so the standard deviation of the scoring is D'/sqrt(9). In the proposed system, there are 7 judges whose scores are counted, so the standard deviation of the scoring is D'/sqrt(7), which is larger.
So the proposed judging change will increase the statistical variance in the scoring, and skaters may be elevated to first place or bumped down to second place more frequently based, not on their performance, but on statistical noise.

Blab. A reader thinks we were right, even though we had no idea.
Well, you were right, though I thought the long O was obvious, but there is a site that will pronounce it for you, if you refuse to take my view as sacred:
meiosis
There you are. The definitive answer, from your local friendly Web.

Blab. A reader who must be using Dave's brain writes:
You can trust your scar
To the man who drives a car;
A big bright nebulous car!
It's so fascinating that an unused meme from our collective childhood is so strong that it is easily recognizable even when so badly mangled. The brain is a very strange system.

Plurp. Yesterday was the worst of days / the best of days.
An interview with a reporter went terribly awry when we were unable to convince her that our work in automating every aspect of the interaction of one business with another will lead to a revolution in the global economy. That's what everybody's saying, she retorts, though we are unable to find anybody else who is saying it, nor are the many industry analysts with whom we have discussed it. It's as if we showed you a single Web page in 1993 and told you it would change the world, we said. You would have said, "Yeah, so what? Everybody has bulletin boards." And yet, it did change the world. We were unable to get her to see it.
Worse than that, we watched in horror at lunch as CNN aired an extremely long piece on Google-Whacking, a dumbed-down version of Plurp's own game of finding N common words whose combination is not found by Google. Not only are these boring folks late to the table, they haven't even figured out that the Google cache effect makes their results non-deterministic. We and our Treasured Readers discovered all of this some time ago, and got no national media attention whatsoever.
We conclude that the entire world revolves around marketing. We have no idea what "Google-Whacking" even means but, had we coined the term, we feel certain we would have used up yet another minute of random fame on CNN. But no, we didn't figure out a sexy name for our game, and we are thus relegated to the sewers of history.
We call this effect Google-Flushing.
On the other hand, we practiced two very satisfying kata yesterday: Drive Car, Top-Down Style in the morning (though it was marginal, as it had just rained and was still cold) and Grill Steak, Charcoal Style in the evening, though it is mid-February and we worry about our attachment to physical pleasure in doing so.
But then, we have always been attached to physical pleasure.

Plurp. For Lent, we've given up reverence. How about you?

Plop. We see that Disney is milking it for all it's worth in Cinderella II: Dreams Come True. If they're going to spoil it like that, we want to see the whole series. Cinderella III: The Divorce. Cinderella IV: Sleeping Around. Cinderella V: The Menopausal Murders. And, finally, Cinderella VI: The Yenta Years.

Yo. We are currently protesting to the IOC the fact that we did not receive a gold medal in the Men's Downhill, and are considering a lawsuit against the IOC, the USOC, and everyone who watched the event. We do not regard a lack of participation in the event as a barrier to participation in the tort lottery that follows it.

Plop. Despite vehement denials at the time to the contrary ...
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that 16 Afghan fighters killed by American troops north of Kandahar last month were not members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. While he described the deaths as "unfortunate," he issued no apology and said there was no reason for disciplinary action. [...]
Evidence has been mounting that the twin raids, carried out overnight on Jan. 23, resulted in deaths and detainment of fighters loyal to the new interim Afghan government. Some officials had speculated that the United States might have been duped into mounting the attacks by false information from rival warlords. [...]
Even though the Defense Department issued no formal apology to those detained or to the families of those killed, the Central Intelligence Agency has distributed up to $1,000 to some of the victims' families, officials said.
Indulge us, just for a moment, and imagine that this story took place in San Francisco rather than some obscure part of Afghanistan.
That would be unfortunate, wouldn't it?

Yo. In a related story, John Belushi is still dead.

Yow. Today's Plurp Reader Contest is: Come up with a new name for Enron. Not only will this be fun, it's also practical as Enron is, in fact, looking for a new name. Here are some thoughts to get you started.
Cheatron
Ignoron
Slimeron
Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!

Yow. Oh, yeah. Do you like that wild clock thing?

Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered just why
they did call it
"downhill skiing."

Thursday, February 21, 2002
Blab. What's this?
[link]
We suspect it's part of the production facilities for the mind control lasers. But our head hurts and we're suddenly not sure.

Blab. On our question of what would you do to live forever, a reader bids this:
If I could live forever by doing good things always, that's what I would do. I know, that's incredibly boring, but I'm into being good. Deal with it.
Heck, you can't even live your three score and ten by doing good things always. (We don't think you can, anyhow.) We suspect you're not a candidate for living forever.

Blab. A reader with an ego big enough to fill all of eternity writes:
Frankly, I would expect to trade nothing for that longevity, as I would expect that nature would see the benefit in my continued being.
And you'll let us know how that works out, won't you?

Blab. Trying desperately to educate us on trementories of literature that somehow didn't get embulized in Classics Illustrated, a reader recites thusly.
[excerpt from "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead" by Tom Stoppard]
Ros: Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?
Guil: No.
Ros: Nor do I, really.... It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead... which should make all the difference ... shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like being asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you, not without any air- you'd wake up dead, for a start, and then where would you be? Apart from inside a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it ....
[Guil stirs restlessly, pulling his cloak round him.]
Ros: Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that, I mean you'd be in there for ever. Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really...ask yourself, if I asked you straight off- I'm going to stuff you in this box now, would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking- well, at least I'm not dead! In a minute someone's going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out. (Banging the floor with his fists.) "Hey you, what's yer name! Come out of there!"
Guil (jumps up savagely): You don't have to flog it to death!
[Pause.]
Ros: I wouldn't think about it, if I were you. You'd only get depressed. (Pause.) Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
Actually, it ends right here.

Blab. A reader gives us more work to do.
Got a note from Helen today with a message line: "tonight" I thought she, too, was excited about the fact that 8:02 PM tonight would be 2002, 2002, 2002.
No, she was talking about some planetary/lunar eclipse or something. Didn't even know what planet it was.
You need to keep her up on the more "important" current events....
Planetary eclipses? Feh! Compared to a triple palindromic date-time event, planetary eclipses fade into utter insignificance.

Blab. A confused reader writes:
OK, so it's 8:09pm and the world didn't end tonight. But the Martians just landed across the street so I am wondering........
Actually, the world did end. The Martians are just a side-effect.

Blab. On our desire to replace our worthless feline with a cute, bundle-o-fur Golden Retriever, a cat-symp writes:
Dogs aren't much better.
I came home last night to find our two Cocker Spaniels being very bad pooches. Three piles of droppings (actually only one after the puppy at the other two, but there was still residue!) and three puddles of pee (one on the hardwood floor!).
This just after the wife cleaned the whole floor earlier that day....
- Felis Lynx
We suspect cats in dog's clothing.

Blab. We never did discover how to pronounce meiosis.
You say me-OH-sis and I say me-ah-sis...... you say to-mah-to and I say to-mah-to.......me-OH-sis, me-ah-sis, to-mah-to, to-mah-to... let's call the hole thing off!
We're missing the whole hole reference, but it is catchy.

Blab. A reader encourages us in a new direction.
We don't think you're currently doing enough about vowels. Please do more things about vowels.
Always desperate to please our Treasured Readers, we encourage everyone in the known universe to dispense with the use of vowels for a day in supplication. Those of you copying the Torah will have a particularly easy time of it.

Blab. A reader takes a desperate, if authoritative, stab at our simple math question.
D'/sqrt(7)
I will NOT show my work, mainly because I remember enough basic statistics that the answer seems pretty obvious to begin with.
Ah. Let's look at some limits. If the number of judges is 1, your claim is that the standard deviation is D'. If there are an infinite number of judges, your claim is that the standard deviation is zero.
Now, why was it that you didn't want show your work?

Blab. As usual, certain lazy, shiftless readers would rather avoid even the simplest math problem by instead attacking the assumptions of the problem as stated.
Whilst your skating maths problem is terribly entertaining, the skating authorities do not claim to be trying to deal with a world where each judge picks his score randomly and
(more importantly) independently from the other judges. In a world where each judge assigned scores randomly, skating would be much simpler and fairer, and none of that pesky 'preparation' and 'training' would be required on the part of the competitors (who would also be largely optional). But
I digress. The skating authorities are trying to handle a situation where a small, but non-zero, number of the judges are in collusion with one another.
Does their new formulation handle that better than their old formulation? Well, frankly, I have no idea, but it seems plausible. Should be possible to work it out, though, no?
Well duh. (Or, as we have been taught to say as a result of years of political training at work, Yes, and we're on a different point.)
We're on a different point. We suspect that randomly selecting which judges to pay attention to will indeed help with "emotionally fragile" judges who are easily suckered into voting for reasons other than merit. But, as even our very stylized version of the problem would point out (if only someone would state the solution, sigh), it introduces other effects which could be, um, bad.

Blab. A reader we didn't even know we had pens one of the finer rants we've seen.
The Compassionate Conservative, in my opinion, has spent far too much time listening to his Inner Ashcroft and put far too much effort into emulating Ronald Reagan.
I think it a bit scary that Dubya is looking toward Ronnie for catchy rhetorical language, toward the oil and gas community for advice on a progressive environmental policy, toward Texas clemency boards for guidance on criminal rehabilitation (when was the last time clemency was granted?), and toward the CIA for implementing openness in government.
Still it's clear he loves his mother and respects his father. What else can we ask for in a President. ... I'm thinking. I'm thinking. ...
Darla
Lovely. Just lovely.

Yo.

Plop. Here we go.
Smoking a joint, sporting a leather jacket and donning dazzling jewelry may be more than acts of mere overindulgence — they may actually be funding terrorism.
The argument here is that some folks who are involved in selling these things might also be involved in their production, transportation, packaging or sale might also have some vague connection with something that someone regards as terrorism.
The dastards! Let's hang 'em high!
Or maybe not.
After Sept. 11, several stories reported bin Laden associates in Tanzania were buying up supplies of the gemstone tanzanite, and smuggling them to Dubai and Hong Kong in an effort to fund Al Qaeda. The stories prompted jewelry giants Tiffany, Zale Corp. and QVC Inc., which together constitute the largest market for tanzanite in the world, to suspend sales of the popular gem.
Sales subsequently plummeted, costing gem dealers and others millions in profits.
The only problem was, the bin Laden-tanzanite connection wasn't true. U.S. officials could find no link between the tanzanite sales and Al Qaeda, according to the State Department.
It's so hard to tell who the bad guys are when all they're doing is engaging in normal, acceptable activities, isn't it?
For the sake of argument, let's just suppose that the sale of camel dung was entirely the province of terrorists. We might expect GoodThinking folks to tell us not to buy camel dung. And we'd probably comply, especially since we have all the camel dung we need at the moment.
But then they'll tell us that those evildoing camel dungists also buy leather sandals, and they'll encourage us not to buy leather goods as that will encourage people who sell things to people who sell things to terrorists. And it's at this point that we will be forced to point out that the global economy really is interconnected, and that it makes utterly no sense to claim that one of its goods is inherently bad or good because of who buys or sells it.
But don't worry. We would understand if they stared at us with glazed eyes, the spittle falling slowly from their open mouths, their fingers twitching on the triggers of their M16s, and ordered us to stop participating in the global economy.
Really we would.

Plop. It's OK. You don't live near any of these places, right? And it's well known that biological materials never spread.

Yow. We hate to credit William Safire twice in one week, but ...
What wife of a United States senator profited from her close association with a big company that did heavy lobbying of the federal government and then went bust, costing investors billions and workers their jobs?
Why, Wendy Gramm, most recently awakened watchdogs would say, wife of the Republican Phil Gramm of Texas, previous chairman of the Banking Committee. As a director of Enron, she was on the audit committee that didn't question the fast-and- loose auditing, and (subtracting the deferred compensation that went into the tank) received about $220,000 over eight years.
That's peanuts, say Republicans. The senatorial wife who hit it big was Anne Bingaman, married to New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. As lobbyist for the telecommunications comet Global Crossing, which went bankrupt last month, she received $2,500,000 for six months' work during 1999.
Both senatorial wives are accomplished executives who parlayed responsible government appointments into lucrative private positions.
All together now. How do you eliminate corruption due to the power of government officials? Eliminate the power.

Yak. We stagger under the weight of the genius exhibited by a former skiing star on TV this morning.
They call it "downhill skiing" for a reason.

Plop. Windows XP keeps a record of what CDs you listen to and what DVDs you watch, and lets Microsoft track which media files you download from the Microsoft site. But you don't mind at all, right?

Yow. What happens when youth, enthusiasm, too much free time and Web self-publishing coincide? Go see Incredible stuff he made. And the actually quite fascinating and funny How much is inside. (Beth)

Yow. In addition to have some really stunning photographs, David Gallagher wants to be #1 on Google. Please do help him out.

Yo. A Helenism from a meeting today.
I see the end of the light

I have seen the light

I see the light at the end of the tunnel

We think this one's particularly funny, as the Helenism actually has the opposite meaning of its component phrases.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was never embulized in
Classics Illustrated

Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Blab. You know, we stay up late at night trying to think of really intriguing topics to discuss here, finding the most obscure and fascinating Web pages to which to point you, writing the silliest riffs on modern culture, and on and on. Then we ask, off-handedly, how you pronounce meiosis, and we get a flood of mail.
Go figure.
me-OH-sis
As in, "Me oh sis, she a chipper, that one, ay?"
(There. I've finally met my Bad Cockney Immitation quota for the year.)
L
Congratulations.

Blab. A reader has the same pronunciation but a different story.
I've had more than a few biology classes, and I pronounce it "me-O-sis." Three syllables, the first one sounding like the English first person singular objective pronoun, the second sounding like the first word in the Canadian national anthem, and the third sounding like the first syllable of the figure from Greek mythology who was eternally condemned to roll a boulder up a mountain. Emphasis on the middle syllable.
I didn't look it up--after my long-winded explanation I bet you wish I had, though.
Ooh! We especially like the erudite references to the Canadian national anthem and Camus!

Blab. In the Midwest, it is pronounced differently.
Huh? It's my-oooo-sus*. How did you know, Captain Plurp, that Laura 16 year old brought up this topic just yesterday. Pointing to the four Valentine carnations in the vase on the table she exclaimed: "Mendelian genetics at work!" Sure enough, the red carnation and the white carnation had one pink and one variegated carnation between them.
Your Midwest Correspondent.
* Not to be confused with Uranus. (I didn't start it.)
Captain Plurp knows all. But never mind that. We're just surprised that this Laura person mistook carnations for beans.

Blab. A reader writes, ambiguously:
my-osis
... which could be my-oh-sis or my-oooo-sus, or any of half a dozen alternatives. We will presume the reader meant squinching.

Blab. On whatever planet this reader is from, it is pronounced very differently indeed.
meiosis, pron. "squinching"
Good to know. Now if only we knew where to pronounce it like that, we'd be all set.

Blab. Finally, and surely only to drive us farther into madness, a reader writes:
I pronounce "meiosis" as /maIj'@UsIs/.
(ASCII IPA symbols from here)
Oh please! This is beginning to remind us of work. And that just won't do! No siree.

Blab. A reader answers a completely different set of questions.
I decided to skip your long questionnaire and take the short one:
Have you ever met a dog who would bite you when he was tired of being petted?
Yes.
Have you ever met a cat who wouldn't?
Yes.
Can we have your cat? 'Cause ours just decided to pee on Helen's side of the bed yesterday, and we're getting pretty tired of a roommate with such inaccurate bathroom habits. We'll be happy to swap.

Blab. A reader discovers our Secret Identity.
I am sure that this must be one of your alter egos loose on the internet.
Doesn't every New Yorker have a "Huntin' Home Page"?
Yes, that's us all right. Big game hunting in Colorado, yep. Deer, elk, pretty much anything that's big and moving. Shoot 'em. Shoot 'em dead. Gut 'em and skin 'em, we say. Elk jerky for dinner tonight, snookums. Bring us a beer.

Blab. We love this. You will too.
School Cheating Scandal Tests a Town's Values
The setting is a small schoolroom in Piper, Kansas, a nowhere little town on the outskirts of Kansas City.
Mrs. Pelton said she began to worry in October, when students' oral presentations, filled with big, unfamiliar words, sounded strangely similar. As she flipped through their projects a month later, she found the writing far more sophisticated than previous assignments. A plagiarism- detection Web site, turnitin.com, showed one in four were laced with lifted material.
So she gave those kids zeros on their presentations, the parents were outraged, the school board ordered her to raise their grades and she resigned. Now ...
A sign posted in a nearby high school read, "If you want your grade changed, go to Piper." The proctor at a college entrance exam last weekend warned a girl wearing a Piper sweatshirt not to cheat. A company in Florida faxed the school asking for a list of students — so it would know whom never to hire. At Tuesday's board meeting, as five television news crews rolled tape, a woman worried that the community has been "stamped with a large purple P on their foreheads for plagiarism."
Mrs. Pelton, meanwhile, has become a kind of folk hero, with dozens of calls a day offering support — and jobs.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Piper, Kansas will remain a nowhere little town on the outskirts of Kansas City. Remember kids: If you're going to cheat, don't be stupid about it. Oh.

Blab. Just a few more hours before the end of the world.
20:02 20/02/2002 - Nearly there!
Good heavens. As another reader informs us, even the traditional media have noticed

Blab. A reader with a taste (so to speak) for the macabre asks:
have a little bite, Hannibal??
For the sake of our readers with more precarious dispositions, we will not even hint at this story of manic cannibalism here. Oops.

Blab. A reader is ...
Really concerned that the situation comedy called the Bush Administration is being reported seriously. First of all, that's Chevy Chase in his best role to date, not the get of George Bush and the Attack Cow. The -flation confusion was a bit over the top and the script writers ought to try for greater subtlety. The Evil thing is really getting tiresome. Even my 9 year old groans at that one. The outright theft of the Ashcroft character persona from Kubrick's military guy (precious bodily fluids and all that) is clear, and the casting is wonderful, as the Ashcroft actor does look insane and gray and driven by demons that cause him to drape bare breasted statues in cloth. (Interesting that a natural enemy of the crusading AG, the dreaded Catholic Church, does the same with their statuary in late Lenten season...one of the scriptwriters must be an RC.) The one sop, the Secretary of State character, is a neat idea. Colored, compassionate, rational, a great American character in the liberal tradition (with enough bowing to the nuts to keep his job) I expect he may wind up in another season as being drafted for the Presidency by his or the Other party. The porcine Vice-President, however, seems to push the envelope (or is that stretch?). His greed and callousness are too obvious. A more nuanced rendering would be welcome. Given this actor's real life health problems, there may be a natural way to write him out of the script and bring on someone with more range and believability. But Press, please treat it for what it is. A little scary from time to time, yes, but still just television.
Why, thank you. We consider it our best work to date. And we will ask the Associate Writers to work on an episode involving the rendering of our porcine Vice President, just for you. Watch the headlines.

Blab. A reader wonders:
what happened on January 10, 1001
Yeah! According to Google, about 21 things happened on that date. Then the world ended. As we know it, Jan.
And, now that you've reminded us, which dates are palindromic in the Tolkienian calendar?

Plop. Our selfless friends at the Pentagon point out that the proposed gigantic war budget is a real bargain.
Today's proposed DoD wartime budget "is only 3.3 percent of America's gross domestic product," [...] Comptroller Dov S. Zakheim said in a Pentagon interview [...].
During the [...] late '70s, [...] the United States spent 4.5 percent to 5 percent of its gross domestic product on military needs. That would make today's proposed DoD budget a relative bargain, he said.
Can someone explain to us why we expect the military budget to scale linearly with the GDP? Isn't the whole idea of a federal government that it will scale sub-linearly?
Are we just being mathematical and picky here, or do we detect an area in which it would be sensible for Big Brother to give us back some of our stolen lunch money? Hmm?

Yo. If offered the possibility, would you choose to live forever? Here on Earth, we mean. We would, and we don't actually believe people who say otherwise. We think they are trying to accommodate themselves to the tragic reality of a finite life span.
But think about it. What if you really could live forever? Hey - dictate the terms you like. Eternal youth. Riches. A favored position in society. Whatever. Would you do it? Of course you would.
So the question is, What would you do for your favorite flavor of eternal life on Earth? Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? Betray a friend? Kill someone?
Yeah, we know this sounds sophomoric, but we think it's more. We think it's a very interesting ethical question. And we would appreciate hearing your choices.

Plop. Washington D.C. has granted public brawler and convicted rapist Mike Tyson a license to make money beating up other people. We speculate that this is within the local norms of acceptable behavior.

Plop. No doubt trying inarticulately to communicate with us, Him Whose Name Was Excreted By Frogs decided it would be a good idea to pee on Helen's side of the bed yesterday, then chew up the baby's breath flowers and strew them about the living room last night.
Can we get a dog now?

Yow. Because the voices insisted.

Plop. Dubya learns why he thinks things.
Touring a museum at the 151-mile border [between North and South Korea], Bush was shown axes North Koreans used to kill two American servicemen in 1976. "No wonder I think they're evil," he said, shaking his head.
We're all shaking our heads.

Yo. OK, kids, here's a math problem for you. Don't worry; it's easy.
The Olympic committee, in the wake of the skating scandal, is proposing to revise the way they score the event. Rather than averaging the scores of 9 judges, as they have in the past, they propose to average the scores of 7 judges, chosen randomly from a set of 14 judges, all of whom submit scores.
Assume that two sets of skaters A and B are being judged, and that the judges pick their scores randomly from a fixed Gaussian distribution D (with average <D> and standard deviation D') for both skaters. Assume that, in the proposed scoring method, the scores that are being averaged are chosen randomly and independently for A and B. Over many trials, the average scores by these two methods are both obviously <D>. What are the standard deviations?
(Show your work.)

Plurp.
The blue dog
would never pee
on Helen's side of the
bed

Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Blab. For reasons unfathomable, a reader shows us ...
The reading list of the US Army Chief of Staff.
The Peloponnesian War. The Evolution of U.S. Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76. Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War.
This guy needs to get out more.

Blab. Well, we've hit the big time. How do we know? Because of this.
I reviewed stevewhite.org and would like a link from it to my client's web site. In exchange, I'll post a link from their site to yours.
Exchanging links will help bring in more business for both your web site and my client's. An added benefit is increased search engine traffic because the search engines rank sites higher that have a good number of relevant links.
My client offers adventure travel tours for fly fishing in Alaska. Each Alaska adventure is comprised of small groups and includes lodging and food at reasonable prices.
Please let me know if you are interested in exchanging links. I'll send you more details once I hear back from you.
Looking forward to your reply.
So let's review. Their client's Web site, offering adventure travel tours for fly fishing in Alaska, is so desperate for traffic that they think a link here will help them out. Looked at another way, our "reader" thinks that Plurp rates so high in Google as an authoritative site that a random link to their site will carry with it the imprimatur of respectability.
Strange times. Strange times.

Plop. More evidence that Dubya never studied, for that tiny subpopulation of our readers who still needs proof.
A brief wave of panic swept through financial markets on Monday after President Bush's latest slip of the tongue, in which he mixed up deflation and devaluation.
Traders worldwide couldn't believe their ears when Bush relayed to a news conference that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, outlining his plans to revive Japan's economy, had placed equal emphasis in their talks on banks' non-performing loans, "the devaluation issue" and regulatory reform. [...]
Most traders doubted Koizumi would have publicly mused about devaluation and assumed that Bush, famous for gaffes such as a pledge to "put food on your family," had meant to say "the deflation issue."
Whatever you do, don't think about him as Supreme Leader of the World's Only Remaining Superpower. It'll only make you depressed.

Yo. How do you pronounce meiosis? No fair looking it up!

Plurp. Proving that we are a test-taking junkie, we even took this, which was sent to us by an adoring reader.

Relationship? On-top-of(Bed), Laboring-under(Misconception), Younger-than(Springtime)

What book are you reading now? In Search of Clusters. And no, it's not about chocolate.

What's on your mouse pad? TrackPoint, folks. Duh.

Favorite board game? Quake II. What's a "board"?

Favorite magazine? Analog? None. Digital? Log.

Favorite smells? Sushi. The ocean. Vanilla. Helen.

Least favorite smells? Certain decomposing mammals.

Favorite sounds? Her voice. I could listen to it forever.

Worst feeling in the world? Rejection.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning? Oh god - already?

Favorite color? Mica blue.

How many rings before you answer the phone? At work, one. (I don't answer the phone at home.)

Future child's name? Are you kidding? I can't even figure out the cat's name.

What is most important in life? Love. Accomplishment. Passion. Serenity.

Favorite foods? Sushi!

Chocolate or vanilla? Yes, please. And could I have nuts on that?

Do you like to drive fast? No, sir. I always drive within the speed limit, sir.

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? No. The cat is stuffed but does not sleep with us.

Storms - cool or scary? Very cool. Show me the magic.

What type was your first car? 1966 Mustang coupe. 289. Red.

If you could meet one person dead or alive? Alive (see "Least favorite smells").

Favorite alcoholic drink? A really stunning Cabernet.

Do you eat the stems of broccoli? Don't be silly. Do you eat walnut shells?

If you could have any job you wanted, what would it be? The one I have now, but with a Special Assistant to handle all of the political sewage.

If you could dye your hair any color? Exactly the color it is now. That'll confuse 'em.

Ever been in love? Oh, yes. Yes! Yes!!

Is the glass half empty of half full? Waiter!

Favorite movies? Aliens, Local Hero, Men in Black. Something like that.

Do you type with your fingers on the right keys? Yes. And on the left keys as well.

What's under your bed? Nothing! (We just got a housekeeper.)

Favorite sport to watch? I'm drawing a blank here.

Say one nice thing about the person who sent this to you. You cannot possibly imagine, nor can I explain, how wonderful it is to reach out, at a random moment in the warm afternoon, and touch her.

Homework assignment: Study previous version; compare and contrast.

Plop. Have you ever met a dog who would bite you when he was tired of being petted? Have you ever met a cat who wouldn't?

Plurp. We once tried to tie a Gordian knot, but ran out of rope and had to settle for a square knot. Curiously, when Alexander came by for tea, he unsheathed his sword and cut it in half, confirming our conjecture that he was just a lazy nodophobe.

Yak. Trying to find our seats at the theater last weekend.
Usher: Row D, 14 and 16. Your seats are on the other side. We're odd here. Just odd.
Us (consolingly): You're not that odd.

Plurp.
In my next life, I will be French, judging precipitously and without care, falling into passionate tears that night while confessing my life's fragile misdeeds and then, the next morning, denying it all, my own self-righteousness taking precedence over reality. But I will look good doing it.

Plurp. We had an argument last week with a colleague who insisted that the large-scale organization of computing systems was that of a broken hierarchy. We told him that the large-scale organization of stars in the sky was that of a flawed painting of Alan Turing.

Yow. William Safire's editorial in yesterday's NYT is, well, fabulous.
These [people monitored in public by video cameras and other surveillance systems] used to be the Great Unwatched, free people conducting their private lives; now they are under close surveillance by hundreds of hidden cameras. [...]
Is this the kind of world we want? The promise is greater safety; the tradeoff is government control of individual lives. Personal security may or may not be enhanced by this all-seeing eye and ear, but personal freedom will surely be sharply curtailed. To be watched at all times, especially when doing nothing seriously wrong, is to be afflicted with a creepy feeling. That is what is felt by a convict in an always- lighted cell. It is the pervasive, inescapable feeling of being unfree. [...]
When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and permanently record your every activity, you are placed under unprecedented control. This is not some alarmist Orwellian scenario; it is here, now, financed by $20 billion last year and $15 billion more this year of federal money appropriated out of sheer fear.
Naturally, we completely disagree. We cannot afford to be labeled anti-American in the database.

Yow. This is a rather boisterous game, and one not to be played in a house where there are invalids.

Yak.
So where does he live?
Brooklyn.
Does he talk fast?
Not that I recall. He doesn't talk as fast as Dave.
That's not saying much!
I'm just sayin' ...

Plurp.
I once knew a woman who made a Turing machine from a collection of origami sculptures and a can of hash. She used to eat trout, pan fried right from the lake. Now she surfs in the chilly waters off Block Island. But this is just the subtext. Just carrying on makes the statement, tells its own story. Now this.

Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't follow
any of that.

Monday, February 18, 2002
Blab. A reader proposes ...
The Grudge Match to end all Grudge Matches: the Old Ones of the Cthulhu mythos vs. the First Ones of Babylon 5.
Although perhaps the First Ones are overrated--after all, they did get driven out of the galaxy with nothing more than an impassioned speech.
OTOH, we're really not sure what happened to the Old Ones. But, rumor has it that, if the stars are properly aligned, they can pretty much kick anybody's keester.

Blab. A reader asks a question too deep in the labyrinth of religion for us to even understand.
Re: Your reader with a sweet tooth and a good knowledge of the calendar:
Who exactly will want to buy Easter Cookies in the month directly proceeding Easter Sunday? Hmmm...?
Uh. Pontius Pilot? Brian?

Plop. Today's an Official Holiday at work (for reasons apostracized by Ian). So what are we doing? Working, of course.

Plurp. There is a dramatic scene in the trailer for the upcoming Time Machine remake in which the protagonist says, I'm from the past. To which we, were we in that scene, would be sorely tempted to reply, Aren't we all?

Yow. Speaking of the past, Helen's mammoth Northwest Tour trip report (from way back in 1999) is now up in our Trip Reports section. Settle back with a big mug of cider.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was a
big
mug of cider

Sunday, February 17, 2002
Blab. Following up on our speculation that, spandex-suit-wise, Olympic athletes had obviously taken over from the superheroes of our youth, a reader writes:
In the annals of superhero-style Olympic costumes, it is hard (in my humble opinion) to beat the outfit (I say 'outfit') worn by Canadian speed skaters. For example, the wonderfully-named Catriona Lemay Doan can be seen here dressed for, and in the midst of, her battle against evildoers, and again here after vanquishing her foes and revealing her secret identity.
We feel certain that she is the new President of the JLA.

Blab. A reader with a sweet tooth and a good knowledge of the calendar writes:
Regarding the Cookie of the Month....I have been considering making St. Patrick's Day cookies. Then Easter ones the following month. Why don't we ask how much people will pay for these cookies before we shut them dowm?
Who, exactly, do you mean by "we"?

Plurp. What the voices are saying today.
Chitty. Chitty. Bang, bang.

Plurp. Mussorgsky yesterday at the NY Philharmonic, Pictures at an Exhibition, though it was the Gorchakov interpretation rather than the usual Rimsky-Korsokov / Ravel interpretation. (There does not appear to be an unadulterated Mussorgsky manuscript of the work around any more, so we are forced to guess his intent though the people who were generous enough to "interpret" it for him. Sigh.)
Pictures was our wedding march, and Helen cried through it this time, remembering, hopefully with joy.
We both found the first movement done with surprising rapidity, and both thought that Ann-Margret must be waiting in the wings.

Yow. The Crucible today, with Liam Neeson as John Proctor. Since it was never a Classics Illustrated comic, we knew nothing about it. Turns out this Arthur Miller guy is a pretty good writer. The play, about honor and truth in the midst of the Salem witch trials, speaks volumes on the extra-judicial jingoism of Dubya's war. D'oh.
Anyhow, the production is quite fabulous, and you should see it if you can.

Yo. You heard the bizarre story of hundreds of bodies dumped in the woods near a crematorium whose incinerator had not worked for fifteen years.
I wish we had a good explanation for this, said Georgia's chief medical examiner, but we don't.
But did you notice that the owners were named Marsh? Must be the Georgia branch of the family.

Yo. We know you've always wondered the following.

What are the "Great Old Ones", "Old Ones", and so forth? How do you tell them apart?

Is it okay to say "Hastur"?

Where can I get a copy of the Necronomicon?

Where is R'lyeh?

While you must realize that your sanity is in serious danger for even wondering, those of you who are beyond caring can now find the answers in the Official Cthulhu Mythos FAQ.
We love the Web.

Plurp. We think skeleton competitors should be required to go down the course while standing on their heads, as it makes for a more difficult and artistic sport. Those who agree with us are encouraged to check in to the nearest mental hospital, along with the current skeleton competitors.

Plop. We must admit to growing tired of suicide terror bombers, and we would like to suggest a mutually acceptable solution: Suicide Terror Bombing Booths^TM.
The idea is this. We (well, most Israel) will construct a number of highly armored Suicide Terror Bombing Booths^TM in areas that seem to be plagued by this practice. Suicide bombers need not undergo the dangerous and time consuming effort involved in actually constructing and transporting bombs. Rather, they simply enter the sanitary Suicide Terror Bombing Booth^TM and close the door, which locks automatically behind them. Upon pushing the large red button to confirm their intent, they can interrupt local television coverage with their own vital political message for 60 seconds before a small shaped charge in the booth blows their body into tiny, bloody shreds.
The entire event is broadcast on C-SPAN and the like. In this way, far more people will see, and be affected by, the event than ever see, or are affected by, a typical suicide terror bombing. The bomber will go to whatever religious fate was promised. Everybody wins.
In return, we promise to be scared. OK?

Plurp.
The blue dog
always wondered about the
difference between the Old Ones
and the Not-So-Old Ones

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