Plurp: Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?

Bigger!

2002.02.24 : 2002.03.02

Saturday, March 2, 2002
Blab. A reader suggests a caption for this week's Disturbing Image.

"If you can't stand the palm of my hand, Mr. Powell, I will bring out the riding crop!"
We still want a link to the entire video. Really we do.

Blab. A reader names our latest piece of stuff.
the statue is beautiful. Very regal. Maybe you should name her Helen
You know, Helen had the same idea! We nixed it though, as it would cause our already tenuous grasp on reality to slip altogether, and we would plummet, gyrating wildly, into the horrible abyss of confusion between the animate and the not..

Blab. A reader reacts.
"meaningless drabble?" don't tell Margaret
Why? Does she have a Weblog too?

Blab. Our passing reference to anti-tobacco ads by tobacco companies seems to have tripped some dangerous circuit breaker in the mind of one of our Treasured Readers.
It's funny (REALLY), but just yesterday I was reflecting on
anti-tobacco ads by Big Tobacco here in the states. Though I can't speak for any British companies, I can tell you that Big Tobacco here in the states is led by a team of brilliant (and black-lunged) marketers.
First, Phillip Morris has figured out that if they are truly concerned, they come across as the good guys.
Tar-infested-lung Guy: (inhale) Man! (cough, hack) Philip Morris is telling us tobacco is bad for us.
Breathes-through-a-hole-in-his-throat Guy: (wheeze) Yessir! (indesrcibable bodily noises) those folks REALLY care about us!
Tar-infested-lung Guy: (long drag as he reaches for another pack) Yup! In fact (coughs up blood) I bought two cartons yesterday, and they gave me a free Marlboro Man T-shirt.
Breathes-through-a-hole-in-his-throat Guy: Wow! Those guys are the best ! (coughs, chokes, falls over dead)
Second, now that Philip Morris is labeled a "good guy," people will be more inclined to buy products under Philip Morris' umbrella, such as Kraft Foods and Miller Beer.
And third, Philip Morris knows that the best way to get humans to do something - especially Americans - is to tell them they shouldn't. This is normal human nature and goes back to the famous "Don't eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge" speech. Heck, if Adam and Eve wouldn't even do what God demanded, do ya really think they're going to listen to a silly TV ad?
And here we were, unaware that Adam and Eve were even alive any more.

Blab. A reader somehow obtained a pre-review copy of our upcoming paper, Origin of the Instance Rule in Did So / Did Not.
As a footnote, when the Committee enacted the Instance Rule, a small group of mathematicians who preferred the symbolic style of play split off and formed their own Did So/Did Not Federation, which exists to this day.
It remains small, however; non-mathematicians tend to be turned off by tournaments in which the organizers must decide before the start of the tournament whether the Axiom of Choice is to be in effect!
We must ask our reader to keep any other text from the paper private, at least until it has been accepted for publication.

Blab. On the topics of consciousness, what we're thinking, Wittgenstein, and all those other intellectual-type topics, a reader writes:
It's easy for us to say that we know what we're thinking. The question is - who is it really providing us with those thoughts? A neuron in our brain which has stored critical information on it? ("the answer to 35 is (C)" or "I'm certain I paid the phone bill last month") Perhaps some divine entity, giving us guidance as to our best course of action? ("Don't lie - that would be wrong" or "Don't do it - you're married") Perhaps some extra-sensory communication with the dead? ("I hid a million dollars under the oak tree" or "You killed me, and I will see to it you get what's coming to you") Or perhaps some twisted, demonic voice in your head? ("The Hale-Bop comet will take you to a better place" or "drown your children in the bath-tub, it's the only way out")
Who knows, really. And that's why it's impossible to truly know what you're thinking, even if you know for certain what you're thinking.
I think....
We hate to clear up your life-long confusion, but it's actually the orbital mind control lasers. Fnord.

Plop. It turns out that Americans were never taught the basics of personal finance. It's so sad.
"To this day I don't have a clue when it comes to personal finance," said the 25-year-old New Yorker. "Why people buy stock, why they sell it, I have no idea. It wasn't something I learned in school."
Imagine what life is like for those who decided to stop learning when they left school. We imagine that Jennifer Muzio (she who spouted the above) is equally ignorant of how to use a video recorder, make coffee or get a job.

Yo. Brilliant Insight O' The Day^TM:
Life would be a lot less fun if we were not conscious.

Plurp.
The blue dog
took three eggs,
a can of corn dogs,
half a cow brain and
a pinch of potassium ferrocyanide

Friday, March 1, 2002
Blab. A reader submits a draft for its Sunday sermon.
One does not have to be taught how to hate, one has to be taught how to love. However, there are so few good examples so as to make it very unlikely that one ever will learn this. Hate is the easy path, and we do it from the first moment we realise we are not alone in the world. Learning to live with others peacably is the truly hard path. -AJL
Love, schmuv. We think do-gooders spouting this "love" nonsense should be lined up against a wall and taunted with frogs. Mercilessly!

Blab. A reader accuses us of (A) fraud; or (B) misrepresentation.
Your reader's VERY descriptive historical re-telling of the Did So / Did Not game has clearly shown me one of two things about our reader (and our culture in general):
A) There is someone out there with a six-figure income being paid by a Very Large Corporation so he or she can spend countless hours writing meaningless drabble; or
B) There is someone out there cheating the government of welfare resources instead of going out to get a job, sitting in a dimly-lit room wearing a tattered college sweatshirt, fingers sticky and discolored from too many Cheetoes, and spending countless hours writing meaningless drabble.
Either way I found the story humorous, light-hearted, and reflective of the Did So / Did Not tournaments my sister and I would hold on a regular basis growing up.
Did not!

Blab. A reader worries about us. Isn't that nice?
You wanted an appropriate, non-stupid name for a silly piece of wood and you thought you'd ask you Plurp Readers?
Did you REALLY think this through?
How about Ichiro?
Actually, its fake marble, we never think things through (it's a matter of policy), and we love the idea of naming an ancient female Cycladian artifact after a contemporary male Japanese baseball player.
Why didn't we think of that?

Blab. Another reader tries to affix a name.
For Helen's new sculpture, I recommend Cycloe. Just seems somehow appropriate.
Darla
We don't know if Darla is a second suggestion or not, but Cycloe is an interesting thought riffing, as it does, on Cyclops. Though our little sculpture has no eyes, rather than one. What is the name for an ancient figure with no eyes? Another reader thinks it knows.
Emily
No, we don't think that's it.

Blab. A sharp-eared reader nominates a Helenism.
Heard on the radio this morning:
"He can now see the carrot at the end of the tunnel."
Not sure if it meets all the requirements for a true Helenism, but here's my stretch:
Dangle the carrot in front of him.
See the light at the end of the tunnel.
See the carrot at the end of the tunnel.
Yep, that works. Congrats!

Blab. A reader saves us from having to rant further about Wittgenstein by ranting for us.
"For clearly 'know' here means 'doubt does not make sense', and there can be knowledge only where doubt is also possible."
Oh, puh-leeeze! Either there are indubitable things and we're perfectly capable of knowing them, or there are no indubitable things (it's always possible to doubt anything). Saying that we can't know our own thoughts because (for some quasi-poetic reason) it's impossible to know that which you can't doubt and (because we're using a radically oversimplified model of mind) it's impossible to doubt our own thoughts, is just ivory tower omphalomania. A harmless enjoyment, true, but then so is snail-racing.
We always figured people obsessed over Wittgenstein (et al.) only because his theories were so convoluted, and not because they made sense.

Plurp. A while ago, a reader wrote:
Hey, I also went to CCS at UCSB (Math/Physics '91).
We encouraged the reader to send us email, which he did, and which we then lost. We are so dopey! Anyhow, if the reader is still around and isn't totally exasperated with us, we encourage him to send us email again. We promise not to lose it this time.
Heck, we might even reply!

Yow. Try playing Nine Men's Morris without knowing (or reading) the rules. It's kinda fun! It's a bit like doing science, but much less time consuming.

Yo. You, as we, should be worried by the search strings people use to get to our humble Web site. Feederism, for instance, for which we are on the first page in Google, is #9 for February.
Weirder than that? Shower songs, for which we are the third and fourth Google entries, is #14.
Who looks up shower songs?

Plop. News of further Military Intelligence at the Guantanamo P.O.W. Camp.
Incensed that two guards stripped a detainee of his turban during prayer, nearly two-thirds of the prisoners captured in the Afghan war refused lunch Thursday and chanted "God is great" in Arabic in their first mass protest since arriving at the base.
We feel certain that it took a great deal of planning and foresight to engineer the solidarity and collective protest of a bunch of people who had been isolated, shackled, blindfolded, humiliated and caged.
We are so impressed.

Yo. And speaking of intellectual acumen, Monica Lewsinsky, clearly one of the Great Thinkers of our time, stuttered the following Helenism last night during her mismatched interview with Larry King.
First and foremost in my mind ...

First and foremost ...

Foremost in my mind ...

Yay, Monica!

Plurp. We are forced to conclude that tobacco is a very strange business to be in when the head of Britain's biggest cigarette company says ...
that smoking is bad for you and that people are “better off” avoiding tobacco.
Ya know?

Plop. It's Rocket Science Day here at Plurp.
The Enron Corporation paid its executives huge one-time bonuses last year as a reward for hitting a series of stock-price targets ending in 2000 — the very time, investigators now say, when corporate officials were improperly inflating the company's profits by as much as a billion dollars.
Anyone to whom this comes as an astonishing surprise please raise your hand.
Anyone?
Anyone?

Yo. Proving that the Web isn't necessarily the Source of All Truth^TM, this site claims that we are a:
Lawful Good Elf Bard Thief
Lawful Good characters are the epitome of all that is just and good. They believe in order and governments that work for the benefit of all, and generally do not mind doing direct work to further their beliefs.
We're not quite sure what a lawful good thief is, but we're pretty sure we're not one of them. Though perhaps our readers know us better than we do?

Yak. From a meeting today:
two-faced commit

Plurp.
The blue dog
can now see
the kibbles
at the end of the tunnel

Thursday, February 28, 2002
Blab. A reader illustrates quite convincingly the astonishing notion that it does not know what it is thinking.
To say that I self-ascribe my thoughts or sensations without either the possibility or need for the kind of criterial evidence which others need to ascribe thoughts or sensations to me is not to say that I alone know my thoughts and sensations, or that I have a privileged access to them which is denied to others. On the contrary, precisely because my expressions in language of my thoughts and sensations are not based upon behavioural or any other criteria, it is meaningless to talk about my 'knowing' them. For clearly 'know' here means 'doubt does not make sense', and there can be knowledge only where doubt is also possible.
These thoughts are not mine.
When we say "know", we mean "ice cream sandwich". When we say "thoughts", we mean "sticking our fingers together with small pieces of tape, or the flights of sleeping birds". When we say "you", we mean "without feathers".
Pity the sad Wittgenstinians, who do not seem to recognize that people say I know what you're thinking precisely because they know what they would be thinking in those same circumstances, not because they are describing some behavior of the other person. (And indeed, that is why the statement is often wrong!) It is an act of introspection, not of experimental psychology.

Blab. On the subject of Colin Powell's love song (and yes, though we scarcely believe it ourself, we did write about this), a reader writes:
Steve-
_The Daily Show_ broadcast footage of Colin Powell's love song to Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka. She's no Jiang, but it makes compelling footage, in the sense that a train wreck is compelling. Ask around the Powell fan sites.
Still photos here.
-Ed
This is a very different view of Mr. Powell than we are usually afforded. Readers are encouraged to send us an appropriate caption or explanation, if they dare.

Readers are also encouraged to send us a link to the entire video. It must be on the Web someplace, right?

Blab. A Palestinian reader writes:
What's wrong with that picture?

Why, the child has failed to verify that the firearm was unloaded and on 'safe.'
Tsk, tsk, tsk !
And we thought the color balance was off.

Blab. A reader volunteers a solution for the problem of our obsessive compulsive eater. Two solutions!
Sufficient calories can easily be obtained from our obsessive compulsive eater, if each of those tiny morsels is a truffel. Oh, except for one bite-size morsel, which would need to be a multi-vitamin.
Theory two is equally simple: if our fellow reader never sleeps, this allows for 48 equally balanced meals throughout the day. A mere 50-60 calories per bite would suffice for a typical diet. Eating a Big Mac in ten bites would satisfy this requirement just fine.
Let's review. Our Treasured Obsessive Compulsive Reader can either

Eat truffles, then violate its own two-bite compulsion by consuming a single vitamin pill or,

Survive solely on Big Macs and no sleep.

So there you are, Treasured Reader, a life plan of your very own, brought to you by the clever folks here at Plurp.

Blab. A reader tosses out an order of magnitude.
115 < Calorie Count < 11,500
Assumes food between 5 and 500 calories per mouthful, and awake for as long as I am in a day
This pleasant diet provides adequate variability to both weight-loss and weight-gain proponents. Not that we care, but it's a cute feature.

Blab. A reader reminds us that ...
the fan of Stephen Wright is also your fan.....
And we rejoice in that.

Blab. A reader gets all confused.
Actually I'm quite fascinated by the RGB concept, compared to our childhood understanding that red, blue, and yellow composed all other colors. Add blue to yellow to get green; add more blue to get aqua.
I don't remember when I first discovered it, but I remember looking close to see the RGB bars of a TV screen, and realizing that I wasn't looking at a picture, so much as a field of RGB blocks which, in pointilism style, creates an image when viewed from greater than 6 inches from the screen.
What is an apple? Call it what you want, but I call it the dust-ball in a box in my basement that we purchased 25 years ago which was "upgrade-able" to 32k of memory.
Right. The RBY thing is about mixing pigments, and has to do with what color you perceive when light is reflected from them. The RGB thing is about mixing light, and has to do with what color you perceive when you see mixtures of different "pure" colors of light.
Most fascinating to us is the fact that what you see when you mix red and and green light isn't actually yellow light (though it looks that way). It's actually red light and green light. It's just that your eye can't tell the difference between that and pure yellow light.
Unless you're a tetrachromat, of course.

Blab. Another reader gets all confused.
You would actually put stuff into coffee and ruin it?
Frankly, we're just as happy to leave it alone. Our experience of coffee is that it comes pre-ruined. How can you people stand that stuff?

Blab. A reader enlightens us about the origin of the favorite die question.
Favorite die?
D4
D6
D8
D10
D12
D20
D100
... comes from slashdot. They appear to be conducting some sort of a survey ...
Why take a survey when they could just, uh, choose randomly?

Yow. Helen's final Solstice present arrived today, a mere two months late.
(The little card saying This item is back-ordered also arrived today, well over two months after we ordered this thing and they assured us it would be here by Solstice. Remind us to rant at you some time about the idiocy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which runs a great, great museum but does not have even the dimmest idea of how to run a business. Just amazing.)
But anyway, here's the deal. The goodie is (a reproduction of) a female figure from the Cycladic Islands (in the Aegean) from around 2500 B.C.. (And you didn't even know they made fake sculptures way back then!) Note, interestingly, the Picasso-esque face
We need a name for her. We beseech our readers to help us: Come up with an appropriate, non-stupid name for her. Give it a shot.

Yow. During an incredibly dull conference call today, Bob the Sock Puppet entertained us by mocking the dullest callers, pretending to speak for them while making silly faces.
We were forced to put the phone on mute to avoid interrupting the call as we laughed ourself purple.
It's so good to have Bob back.

Plurp. Do not take notice of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit site. Do not click on the many links which threaten to result in images, no. In particular, do not go near the stalker vids. And under no circumstances download the screensaver. Do not. Do not.

Plurp. Following up on Dave's erudite analysis of tic-tac-toe and Bovine's subsequent enlightening text on rock-paper-scissors, we present here excerpts from our upcoming paper, Origin of the Instance Rule in Did So / Did Not.
Nowhere in the field of social games is the genesis of these games in human conflict as clear as it is in Did So / Did Not. Unlike more recent games such as chess and go, the roots of this elegant game of rhetorical skill and psychological dominance have been traced back through early prehistory, and it is widely believed to have been a firmament of life in early central African social groups.
[...]
As an ancient game, it was astonishing that a rule change could be suggested, much less adopted, in modern times. Yet, this is precisely what happened as a result of the incredibly short 1952 Master's Match play between Yaroslavl and Remedou in Cheshire.
The shocking result is best evinced by the transcript itself.

Yaroslavl Remedou

1. Did not. Did so. Yaroslavl begins with the classic and entirely expected Negation. His tutelage under Posad practically forbids his use of the Assertive opening.

2. Did not. Did so. The standard Iberico continuation. This initial, conservative play belies the fireworks to come.

3. Did not! Did so! The Grana variation, long a favorite in international competition.

4. Not! So! Yaroslavl is clearly trying to throw his opponent off balance with this early switch to shorts.

5. Not! So! Remedou misses a critical opportunity to take the initiative after the Russian's uncharacteristically weak continuation. History might have turned out much differently had he seized the moment!

6. Not! Not! Not! So! So! So! In a surprising development, Yaroslavl goes directly to triple shorts. What does he have in mind?

7. A hundred times not! A thousand times so! Yaroslavl maintains the initiative with a Symbolist attack. He knows that Remedou was trained in the Tilsiter school, and will respond in kind.

8. A thousand million times not! A million million times so! Yaroslavl's trap is set. Taunting Remedou to follow him up the Symbolist escalation he is, as will soon be clear, just toying with his opponent.

9. A million to the millionth times not! A billion to the billionth times so! The trap is sprung. One could hear gasps from the audience at the Russian's innovative and highly technical attack, and at the Frenchman's worried delay in responding.

10. A google to the googlth times not! --- Yaroslavl seals Remedou's fate with his mathematical brilliance. Remedou is stunned into default.

The heated debate that followed made it clear that this situation was untenable if the game was to be saved from monopolization by mathematicians. Dozens of proposals were put forward and shot down. At length, the entire Symbolist school fell as the Committee adopted the Instance Rule.
[...]

Plurp.
The blue dog
clicked on those
links

Wednesday, February 27, 2002
Blab. A reader admits to this:
I was searching for Barbara Boxer on the WWW (don't ask why) and was given two suggested sites:
- Boxer, Barbara, Senator of CA, official website;
- Porn Star Clothing and accessories.
Connection?
Isn't Gary Condit from CA too?
How embarrassing for us! Try though we might, we cannot locate a porn star clothing and accessories site while Googling for Barbara Boxer. Our Treasured Reader obviously has skills far beyond our ken.

Blab. A fan of Stephen Wright writes:
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts.
We love Wright's humor. But we don't know why. Perhaps our readers do.

Blab. A reader attempts to answer how many calories per day our obsessive compulsive reader takes in.
My Calorie consumption guess is 8675309! * pi
Hmm. That seems a tad on the high side to us, but our slide rule has been buggy lately, so who knows?

Blab. A reader probes the mysteries of the subjective.
I wonder if it would be possible to determine whether our commmon hatred of Woody Allen films can be determined to be qualitatively and quantitively similar? For instance, you claim to uniformly hate them, where as I would say that I absolutely hate them, and indeed him in them, the whining little sod. Therefore, I would suggest that your acquired dislike of them is akin to the onset of middle aged diabetes, where as mine is akin to the congenital diabetes of those born with it. I come to this conclusion only because I have never managed to watch a whole Woody Allen film, nor would I ever again attempt to do such a thing, whereas your intolerance to them has increased over time from repeated exposure.
-AJL
Interesting! Is there such a thing as Woody Allen toxicity? Danger, Will Robinson!

Blab. A fan of musical theater writes:

What was that line from South Pacific? "You have to be carefully taught how to hate. It needs to be done before a child is six or seven or eight?"
That was good old Oscar Hammerstein II back in 1949.
You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late;
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8 !
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught.....
You've got to be carefully taught.
It wears its age well, doesn't it?

Blab. A reader displays an inability to choose.
Favorite die?
D4
D6
D8
D10
D12
D20
D100
We like them all as well.

Yow. Well whaddya know! We come into our office yesterday morning to find, quite by surprise, Bob the Sock Puppet, last seen at the Virus Bulletin 2000 conference where he was kidnapped by unknown evildoers.
He isn't saying where he's been or how he arranged his daring escape, but he does look happy to be back, doesn't he?

Yo. Apropos of the discussion yesterday, Caterina and Rebecca both note this:
What is real? (415) 564 1347

Plop. That scurrilous rag, The Times, alleges:
America has failed to compile evidence identifying any of the 500 prisoners it is holding from the Afghanistan war as suitable candidates for a military tribunal, the Pentagon conceded yesterday.
The admission is a major setback for the United States, which claimed that it had detained senior members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and the Taleban regime.
Despite holding the prisoners for weeks, and in some cases months, interrogators lack enough details to build a case against them that could be put before a specially-convened hearing, the officials said.
Any of them. Any of them.

Yo. Somehow the news leaked out. Operation Blue Dog, begun last September, completed successfully in January. Our thanks to all of those involved. History will remember you, even if we don't.

Plurp.
The blue dog
says Woof
to Bob

Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Blab. In the opinion of this reader ...
Now this guy knows how to throw a party....
"On Thursday night, Mr. Bush was the guest of honor at a banquet given by [President Jiang Zemin] at the Great Hall of the People, where after dinner Mr. Jiang serenaded the president and Laura Bush, with "O Sole Mio" in Italian, to the accompaniment of an accordion player.
When Mr. Jiang was done, he asked Mr. Bush if he would like to sing. "Secretary Powell would like to sing a song," Mr. Bush replied, indicating his secretary of state, Colin L. Powell. Mr. Powell demurred."
Frankly, we would not really be thrilled at having the Chief Dictator of China serenading us with a romantic song and an accordion. No doubt that's just us.
We understand Dubya's deferral on the converse, but we would love to have seen the video of Powell romancing Jiang. Pity.

Blab. A reader becomes obsessed with our hypersensitivity to bitterness.
Interesting! Do you also find chocolate revolting, as it, too, is bitter? Chocolate meant for direct, unaltered consumption usually has enough sweetness added to the bitterness that most people do not even realized it is bitter, but the bitterness is still there. I imagine that you, with your hypersensitivity to bitterness, are well aware of that property of chocolate.
Side note: I, too, find that people confuse sourness with bitterness. Whenever someone makes such a mistake, I find that the best example of bitterness for them to sample is unsweetened chocolate. Not "semisweet" or "bittersweet," mind you, but completely unsweetened. Quite bitter indeed.
We generally love chocolate, as our increasingly ample girth would suggest. We find that bitter things, when sufficiently diluted with sugar and milk and such, can be tolerable, and even good.
Black coffee is horrible; coffee with large amounts of sugar and milk is tolerable; Kahlua is good. Similarly with chocolate. Unsweetened chocolate, which we came to know in our halcyon days of creating French pastries, is thoroughly unsuitable for human consumption.

Blab. A reader teases us with a deep philosophical question.
But is it that bitter tastes different to me than it does to you, or that it tastes the same to both of us, but I like the taste and you don't?
;-)
We claim that we can't actually know what it tastes like to you, at least not in the same way as we know what it takes like to us.
We don't like Woody Allen movies. In fact, we pretty much hate them uniformly. This feels like an acquired distaste to us; we have come to this reaction after seeing far too many of them.
We certainly don't like bitter things, but it does not feel like an acquired distaste. As far back as we can remember, we have always hated them. And it feels very visceral, like an aversion to pain.
Our best model for these observations is that we experience the sensation of bitterness differently than do most people.
Anyhow, how could you prove us wrong? ;-)

Blab. A reader protests our interpretation of our own experience.
That has nothing to do with qualia, but with personal preference. I enjoy having my face licked by a cat... Are you claiming that the experience of a cat's tongue on your nose is fundamentally different for you than for me?
Dude, that is so sick! Ugh.

Blab. A reader thinks they can listen in on the chattering of our internal voices. And for some reason, this does not terrify them.
I can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking. It is correct to say "I know what you are thinking", and wrong to say "I know what I am thinking." (A whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar.)
Really? It seems to us to be just the opposite. You might claim that you know what we are thinking, but you can't actually know it, at least not in the same way that we can. At least, we don't think you can.
OTOH, we actually can know what we are thinking. Sometimes, we even do. We think.
But perhaps we somehow missed some subtle philosophical point that you were making. (Or thought you were making.)

Blab. A reader with Nacho Doritos in one hand and a beer in the other informs us:
"The colours red, blue, and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by all."
What is a real apple? When I hear "apple", I get a visual in my head -- perhaps of the last apple I saw, or an apple in a book, or maybe just an amalgamation of those attributes I typically associate with "apple". When someone else hears "apple", he see a different image, one from his own life's experiences. Both images are memories from a given angle, a given perception, a given time. Neither is a real apple. What about a photo of an apple? It isn't real either -- just another angle or image of one aspect of an apple. What about an apple on a table? Is it real? Well, no, because it is just a representation of one GENETIC aspect of an apple grown under certain conditions -- otherwise, there would only ever be one apple and a bunch of other red things with stems.
So, what is a real apple?
Indeed do many things come to pass.
By this argument, nothing is real, including the veracity of this argument.

Blab. Mistaking our humble blog for a psychiatrist's office, a reader writes:
I have an obsessive compulsive eating disorder. I can only eat no sooner than two hours after I wake, and not after four hours before bedtime. When I eat I have normal food but cut it up in Two bite size pieces. I then eat the two bites every half hour on the half hour all day. In between the half hours, I must drink at least six ounces of water. Restrant dining is impossible.
Readers are invited to calculate the number of calories thus consumed on an average day assuming a normal American selection of foods. The answer closest to the number we are thinking will be consumed by those less fortunate than yourselves.

Blab. A reader attempts to crack the code from the other day.
They're all locations used by cruise lines and tour groups. I would assume this is a tour schedule.
Ah! Perhaps these are drop locations for some clandestine spy. Is Ashcroft paying attention to this thread?

Blab. A lawyer writes:
As a long-time (although currently dormant) Nomic player, I was amazed to learn today that, in many games, being a rules lawyer is considered a bad thing
It is an amazing fact that some people would prefer to focus on something other than the process, the rules, the state transitions, the parliamentary procedures, the algorithms, the recipes.
Curiously, there are persistent rumors that there are enclaves of life that involve something other than that.
But don't worry. They're just rumors.

Blab. A reader asks:
What's wrong with this picture?
Apparently, if you're a Palestinian, nothing at all.

Plop. This violent but politically correct quid pro quo of military "thinking" is getting way out of hand if we're now trying to balance the number of pregnant women who are victims.
Really!

Plurp. The new financial conservatism is so confusing!
Perhaps it was the bottle of 1947 Château Pétrus for $17,500. Or maybe it was the 1945 vintage from the same vineyard for $16,500. During dinner at a fashionable restaurant here, six investment bankers lapped up $62,700 in fine wines, and now they are suffering from a huge hangover.
Their employer, Barclays Capital, has fired all but one of the bankers since the dinner last July at Pétrus, a restaurant in London named for the vineyards that produced the wine.
Apparently some of these "bankers" tried to pass these off as client expenses. Fortunately, they were fired. Unfortunately, they were not jailed.
Is it just us, or is this obviously criminal? We're just not clear on this.

Yow. Helen hears a Helenism, allegedly from Jeffrey Skillings, who was attempting to indicate that Enron might be a warning to the investment industry:
It's a canary in a mine field

It's a canary in a coal mine

It's a mine field

Plop. The Pentagon says:
The Pentagon is to close its Office of Strategic Influence after news outlets reported that it would spread disinformation to the overseas press.
See, that's what they say ...

Plop. Using the famous Sergeant Schulz defense today, former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling blamed numerous parties, from Arthur Andersen to the Federal Reserve Board, for the collapse of the once powerful energy trader.
And no doubt his dog peed on his acquisitions.

Plurp.
The blue dog
volunteered to pee
on Jeff Skilling

Monday, February 25, 2002
Blab. A reader upon whom we probably unfairly ragged yesterday reacts:
"And what we really meant was: If you could be any kind of cute little puppy at all, which would you be?"
I've been called many things in my life, but never a rules lawyer. You now have to make a saving throw against my feelings being hurt.
And I would want to be a cross between a chihuahua and a pekingese. They're small, cute and very sweet, with none of the annoying traits of its parent breeds.
L
Actually, we did like your reformulation of our wanna live forever? question. And, while many people balk and say, I wouldn't do anything rude at all in order to live forever, we basically don't believe any of them.
We never did like little dogs, though. We would happily cause their grisly deaths in large numbers in order to live forever. Or just for fun.

Blab. Fortunately, someone appreciates L.
I, for one, am grateful for L's promise not to give my immortal self any superhuman powers. In particular, were I immortal, I would be grateful for my finite and fallible human memory. I imagine that with infinite, perfect memory, eternity would eventually become boring. But if I have little or no memory of what I did a hundred thousand years ago, then I can do it again with just as much novelty as the first time.
Yes, but it could also be quite embarrassing. But surely, your peer would say, you remember me! We met at a party seven hundred years ago.

Blab. A reader asks (then answers):
How do you pronounce my name? With reverence!
Interesting. A name that is spelled "F-R-E-D S-M-I-T-H" but pronounced "Withreverence". You know, "Withreverence, party of four ..." Sounds Gaelic, doesn't it?

Yo. Do you remember being stoned late one night in the dorms and, with a handful of Nacho Doritos in one hand and a cheap beer in the other, debating whether or not you see the same color when you look at something red as do others of your clique?
Of course you don't. But that's not important now. What's important is (1) It's a really good question, having to do with the primacy of the subjective view of qualia and of consciousness itself, and (2) We have an answer.
And the answer is: No. In general, you do not perceive the same thing we do when you perceive something red, or soft, or bitter.
How can we make such a broad statement? Well, leaving aside such wonderful diversities as synesthesia for the moment, we can tell you about a sensory experience of ours that is probably much different than yours.
We find bitter tastes positively revolting. Not just distasteful, you understand, but nearly unbearable. Most people find bitter somewhat unpleasant; no doubt this is evolution's way of warning us against alkaloids. But our repulsion is much more dramatic.
We have a hypersensitivity to bitter. We are repulsed by things that you may not even consciously realize are bitter. We cannot stand the bitterness of beer, for instance, or coffee. But we are similarly repulsed by cabbage (did you know it was bitter?) and certain other vegetables. Tonic water is anathema.
Many people confuse sour and bitter. We do not. We love sour things, and wish candymakers imbued their wares much more sour than even the "extreme" sour candies that have been popular in the last few years. But bitter? Yech. Disgusting.
And if such a simple thing as bitter is apparently so different between you and us, what hope is there for more complex qualia such as red, or soft?

Yo. Examining some confusing email over the weekend, we came to the conclusion that our dear employer's personnel database now lists us as reporting to ourself.
This is the second time this has happened. The first time, a few years back, it also had us working in Hawaii. This all sounded great to us, and we were in the middle of arranging the move when we discovered that it was an administrative mistake. We were crestfallen,
This time, we figured it was excellent timing as we're about to give out raises, and we think that Steve White character is vastly underpaid. We were in the middle of correcting this gross injustice when our Personnel folks told us that, once again, it was an administrative mistake and they were going to fix it. It ain't broke! we hollered. Don't fix it! But they seem intent on it.

Plurp. We learned a new word today: heteronomic. It is alleged to be the antonym of autonomic (as in Autonomic Computing, our most recent mania). But it also seems, and this strikes us as much more likely, to be the antonym of homonomic. (Is homomatic a synonym for automatic? We're so confused!)

Yo. This is very annoying. We feel like a cat in a room full of mostly catatonic cockroaches. (Bovine Inversus)

Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't look
blue to you

Sunday, February 24, 2002
Blab. A reader seeks advice.
The clock doesn't live update the date. One has to leave and come back after midnight.
Our advice is: Leave, and come back after midnight.

Blab. A reader characterizes a disability as the result of a clever plan.
Clock? What clock? Opera spares us your Javascripted bells, whistles, chimes, and bongs. Good thing, too.
Good for you! We admire your tenacity.

Blab. A reader puts down its twenty-sided dice, clears its throat, and makes a terrible mistake.
Yeah, the clock offsets 100 pixels to the right of the cursor -- when that part of the JavaScript is working right.
The question about immortality is interesting, especially considering the constraints -- or lack thereof -- you put on it. Basically, if I may paraphrase, you said something like, "Given that you could have immortality *and anything else you want*, what would you do to achieve it?" It wasn't just immortality you were offering. It was immortality without a price, the sole exception being the consequences of the action taken to achieve it.
I'd like to restate your basic question. "If you could have anything at all you wanted in the universe -- absolutely anything, and as much of it as you wanted -- what action would be too heinous, too evil, too morally disturbing to allow you to take advantage of the offer?"
The only answer to the question as I've cast it, of course, is, "Nothing." If you can have anything at all, you can grant yourself the ability to undo the consequences of your action. Without consequences for someone, even if it isn't you, there can be neither guilt nor morality.
So, perhaps it would be more interesting to narrow the focus of the question a bit.
"You have been offered immortality, along with eternal youth. You cannot die of age, disease or injury less severe than the complete destruction of your physical form. That's all you get. You don't get any greater wealth, or skill, or beauty, or intelligence, or talent, or anything more than you have normally. You have the normal range of Human emotions, at least in the beginning. You feel physical and emotional pain just as you do as a normal Human, at least for now.
"Now, given these constraints, what action would be too
heinousevilvilenastybad for you to commit in order to achieve this immortality?"
Hmmm . . . that's a tough one.
And, of course, I would hope that no one would ever jump in front of me, waving a sword and ranting, "There can be only one!"
L.
You know, this is why we quit playing D&D: Rules-happy players who were always trying to outsmart the DM. As DM, we had a simple rule: Player characters trying to outsmart the DM (with Wish Rings and the like) are subject to random smiting, preferably to spectacular effect.
And what we really meant was: If you could be any kind of cute little puppy at all, which would you be?
OK?

Blab. A reader answers several pressing questions before wresting away from us temporary authority over the mind control lasers.
So where does helive?
He does not live. He was not born and will not die. He is something entirely different, something far outside of human understanding. In fact, I'm uncomfortable discussing him, because he might be able to hear me even now.
Does he talk fast?
Each of his words contains many words. There are few with enough wisdom to hear all of them. For instance, he might seem be asking for a cup of coffee, and yet he has actually recited the lost poetry of Greek poet Odicles of Thermos. He does this using a self-designed proprietary layered psychoacoustic compression algorithm that exists in his brain alone, and which can compress 26 hours of audio into 3 bytes (on a little-endian machine). He is paid over $3,000,000 annually by AT&T, the RIAA, the MPAA, and the film industry to deny the existence of this algorithm.
I'm just sayin' ...
Speak no more! Simply follow his instructions.
Whab? Wle cam't haar lyou. Wle hab a harbmonicla in lour mouf.

Blab. Another reader tries desperately to figure out that little Blab box, to no avail.
hej
@@%$#!^&*
You type it, you send it, we get it. Got it? Sheesh.

Plop. We are so glad the Olympics are over tonight. But we must admit that we will miss the daily fabrications from the French about their role (or lack thereof) in the scandal surrounding judging in the skating events. Today's amusing and random story is that the evildoing Canadians were behind it all.
"I was so mixed up in my mind, I had trouble thinking properly," Le Gougne said.
Not explained (this time) was why this resulted in the Russians winning. Maybe its due to that not thinking properly thing.

Plurp.
The blue dog
had
trouble thinking properly

Top

Earlier entries Later entries