Plurp: Mental programming for the weak-willed

Bigger!

2002.03.03 : 2002.03.09

Saturday, March 9, 2002
Blab. A reader takes us up on our challenge to write a limerick whose first line ends in "fundamentalist Christian".
A fundamentalist Christian,
the D.O.J.'s top musician.
The eagle, she soared,
but the song really bored.
The critics commit sedition!
That's really good, and much more clever than our silly attempt.

Blab. A reader informs us that:
I like toast.
Imagine our joy. It's a slow Saturday.

Blab. A reader tries to justify its actions.
The Ministry of Love was way too busy to keep up the pretence.
-AJL
(Oh, and, if your reader knows where I can find a life, then I'd be grateful if it would let me know).
Well, we do have an opening for a cat-hair-cleaner. The pay's not great, but the fringe benefits are terrific (if you like having your back licked by a cat).

Yow. Since you're reading this, you clearly have no appreciation of good writing. If you did, you would be reading this instead. We find it pretty much breathtaking.

Plop. What say we just nuke 'em all?
The Bush administration has directed the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries and to build new smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations, according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The secret report, which was provided to Congress on Jan. 8, says the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria. It says the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand nuclear attack [(sic)]; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or "in the event of surprising military developments."
We especially like that latter phrase. Sounds like an enlightened policy for a stable world to us!
(The original article from which the above is digested is here. Read it. Really.)

Yow. An excellent review of Lou Gerstner's tenure as IBM's CEO, bringing the company from the edge of the grave to the pinnacle of industry success, can be found here. It really is amazing and, despite our natural and well-oiled cynicism, we are a big, big fan of Mr. Gerstner.

Plurp.
The blue Ashcroft
filled the Bill of Rights
with brightly colored machine
tools

Friday, March 8, 2002
Blab. A reader informs us of a disturbing personal behavior.
Your Plurb coverage of the Attorney General's song-writing prowess had me tapping my toes to the score of the The Producers and humming "Springtime for Ashcroft and America. . . ." I'm not sure whether to be amused or terrified.
Darla
Yeah, he's a toe-tapper, that guy.

Blab. Today's entry in AJL's saga of the patriotic re-education of the blue dog seems to come from another reader.
Ohhhhh Andrew......time to get a life, dear. And return the Blue Dog while you're at it.
Heck, we've been pretty pleased to get daily updates on the blue dog's plight. The friends and families of the other "detainees" (that means "prisoners", by the way, in case you haven't kept up) don't have any way to get information about the folks so "detained".

Blab. Through the miracle of faster-than-light communication, reader Andrew complies.
The blue dog is being returned, the Ministry of Love cannot find any (any!) evidence against him.
-AJL
None at all? That sounds suspicious to us.

Blab. A reader writes:
Dump the Ashcroft head! Use Laura Croft (Angelina Jolie style) instead!
That's a thought.

Blab. Tickled by our recent fantastic waxing on the question of How do you know anything?, a reader who must be Dave writes:
Hey, I've been all worked up about that particular sophomoric question since back when you were still wearing short pants and doing physics!
Ah, those were the days. Yeah, we've been all worked up about it for quite a while, though not as cleverly as our reader has been.

Blab. A reader laments.
oh, how the mighty have fallen
More specifically:
Delta Air Lines dismissed Arthur Andersen as its auditor yesterday, heightening concerns that a vicious cycle of client defections may undermine the accounting firm as executives at company after company decide they cannot stick with Andersen.
The loss of Delta's business, which follows similar announcements by Freddie Mac, Merck and SunTrust, among others, indicates that the next several weeks may determine whether Andersen will be able to hang onto enough business to survive and cope with a mountain of shareholder lawsuits filed against it and perhaps other liabilities related to its work for Enron.
Join us in a moment of silence to observe the passing of yet another incompetently managed company.

Blab. A reader informs us of a certain bollocks that seems no longer to be mitigated.
Remember that story about the universe being turquoise? The story that was complete unmitigated bollocks?
Well, the scientists have now conceded that the universe isn't turquoise. Who could possibly have believed that, anyway? Sheesh!
It's actually beige. We are not making this up -- they are.
[The error was caused by (what else?) a software problem. And it had nothing to do with the fact that the whole thing was unmitigated bollocks (see above)...]
Yes, we ranted at the "scientists" who reported that the universe was the color of mint chip ice cream when that story first came out. (Actually, they just mapped a bunch of miscellaneous data onto the visible spectrum and that's what it looked like. You could do the same thing with traffic patterns or rainfall statistics.)
It is impressive that they not only did junk science, they did it wrong. They had a massive bug in their computer program that they've only now discovered. When they redo their junk science calculation, it turns out that the universe is light beige.
Not quite as sexy a story this time around, is it?
The Universe

Before After

Idiots.

Blab. A reader interested in Caribbean real estate writes:
Dr. Plurp seems to have another more profitable career in mind. Maybe there is a Caribbean island in his future afterall!
The reader refers to this:
The deal-a-day Jets were at it again yesterday, signing Steve White, a free agent defensive end from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who became the fourth player the team has added this week in its relentless overhaul of its defense.
Another one of our little hobbies.

Blab. A reader writes:
Viral marketing doesn't work. Tell everyone you know.
We have no idea what that link is, so we're inclined to believe you.

Yo. Are your neighbors terrorists? Evildoers? Thinkers of bad thoughts? Of course they are! And it's your patriotic duty to report them.
Fortunately, you can now do this. Anonymously. On the Web. Welcome to Snitch Report! (Beth)
(Not sure about your neighbors? The terrorist test will help you root out evil. We tried it on ourself and determined, quite accurately, that we are probably not a terrorist.)

Yow. We have absolutely no idea what this is. But we like it! (faerieglamour)

Yow. Caution. Seditious ideas follow.
[W]e must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?
How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?
Two things strike us about this. (1) Somebody noticed! (2) It's from a speech by a U.S. Congressperson. (Rebecca)

Yak. From another meeting at work.
We will do this in its full chicken-richness.
What could it mean?

Yo.Which one of the X-Men are you? As is well known, we are Mystique, the erotic shape-changing female (blue, don't you know) and only villain of the bunch.
We know. We were always your favorite. (Dave)

Plurp. In response to a challenge tonight to write a limerick with a first line ending in "fundamentalist Christian".
Once a fundamentalist Christian
As aggressive as young Sonny Liston
Preached brimstone to nerds
With God's holy words
And hammered them home like a piston.
Not so great, eh? Perhaps our readers can do better.

Plurp.
The blue Ashcroft Head
was very disappointed
in the Ministry of
Love

Thursday, March 7, 2002
Blab. A reader exposes a certain grease fetish.
Sounds like with all the cooking oil used of Ashcroft's head he could fry eggs for everyone on his staff while singing his cute little ditty. Now that's what I call an employee perk!
This took us some time to understand. We believe the reader is referring to this article about Herr Ashcroft, which claims:
Each time he has been sworn in to political office, he is anointed with cooking oil (in the manner of King David, as he points out in his memoirs Lessons from a Father to His Son).
When Mr Ashcroft was in the Senate, the duty was performed by his father, a senior minister in a church specialising in speaking in tongues, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God. When he became attorney general, Clarence Thomas, a supreme court justice, did the honours.
And yes, that would be pretty scary, if we did not have confidence that a Supreme Executive Official could only be doubleplusgood rightthinking. Which, of course, we do.

Blab. A reader wishes to defame another reader.
I believe that the "Science has been flying by instruments for years" reader was claiming that he *doesn't* know anything.
But what do I know?
Um ... nothing?

Blab. A reader implicitly objects to being explicitly insulted. As if he didn't get the whole gestalt to being with. Huh.
"Sorry. It's like, you know, Missouri."
Hmmmph. And here I thought you were the champion of the obscure and ironic, or the obscurely ironic, as the case may be. I suppose I was misinformed.
The "Show It State." Funny. I will share that with some nudist friends of mine.
And, to a degree, I think a great deal of what we "know" is simply the acceptance of what a bunch of other people over a period of time have declared as being "knowledge." What can we really "know," after all? What we see? What we feel? What we hear, smell, taste? Cogito ergo sum?
I think that we can only "know" anything within the limitations of our senses and within the context of our culture and society, which are by definition the creations of the common consensus. As much as we rugged individualists would like to deny it, the individual really has only a limited existence outside of the context of culture.
Of course, it also comes back to the idea that we can "know" something that, objectively, is not true. "Knowledge" is not necessarily "truth," just as perception is not necessarily reality, but because of the limitations of our existence, it might as well be.
And I still contend, and have, I think, amply demonstrated over and over, that I really don't know anything.
L.
It turns out we are the champion of the misinformed, so you've still come to the right place.

Blab. From the usual series of blind couriers comes yet more news of the blue dog.
This is to inform you that the blue dog has been put on trial before a tribunal. We would like to assure you that the trial will be full and fair, and totally in line with US policy. To further expediate the throughput (we've got about 500 to get through) of criminals, trials of similarly dangerous criminals will be conducted in groups. We enclose a photograph of the trial process.

We felt it necessary to accelerate the trial date, as the blue dog is now categorised as extremely dangerous, following an incident with an explosive substance and the subsequent demise of the Camp Leiutenant's favourite mastiff. Also, one of the guards shot himself in the foot with what is believed to be a WW2 german pistol, which on examination showed traces of blue hair (and it was a bit smelly). The blue dog has developed a strange bow legged walk since yesterday's shower time, but is otherwise well.
-AJL
We are, of course, content that the right thing will be done. In some vague, undefined, extra-judicial but politically correct sense.

Blab. Mistaking us for the source of all truth, a reader asks if some stuff on the Web is ...
True?
The nugget from this series of 1997 Cypherpunks mailing list postings is this:
The Autumn 1997 issue of MILITARY HISTORY QUARTERLY had an article by Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen on U.S. military plans to gas Japan during Operation Olympic. [...]
The plan called for US heavy bombers to drop 56,583 tons of gas in the 15 days before the invasion of Kyushu than another 23,935 tons every 30 days after that -- and that was just the STRATEGIC bombing campaign. Tactical air support was in addition to that. [...]
Chemical Corps casualty estimates for this attack plan were 5 million dead with another 5 million casualties. Ultimatly, it looks like the plan was not approved, but prepared for since the gas to impliment it was sent to the Pacific -- Likely as a back up to the A-bomb.
Pretty horrific! We're not sure if this is true or not. Operation Olympic was the plan to invade Japan and force its unconditional surrender. But we can't find anything on the Web about a plan to gas folks as a part of it.
Maybe our readers can?

Yo. The world is getting to be very stranger. Helen pulls out a excerpt in the NY Times that remind her of Ian's license plate, insisting that we take it into work for him. After the several days of random delay that we always inject into such tasks, we do. Now it appears in Ian's blog.
We do not understand this.

Yo. Stranger or less so, we dunno, but we seem inadvertently to have developed a new management methodology of announcing directions (and collecting employee reaction) via Weblogs. This is way too weird.

Yow. Dave seems to have gotten all worked up about our sophomoric question, How do you know anything? And, in the process, he's written a very subtle piece of humor about it.
We like that.

Yow. Ian, on whom we have lavished far too much praise already this week, rants on the topic of Dubya's shadow government so fabulously as to require even more attention.
So, my entirely obvious question is, if it only takes around 100 senior government workers to provide the essential services of the federal government, what the blue bleeding heck are all those tens of thousands of government wallas in DC doing?
We confess to having wondered the same thing. But, being a loyal, rightthinking citizen-soldier of the New World Order, we couldn't say so ourself.

Plurp.
The Ashcroft Head
unilaterally forbade
genetic mixing

Wednesday, March 6, 2002
Blab. Drat! There we were, all smug in the notion that those dudes/dudettes at Columbia who were trying to study the Six Degrees of Separation thing had a terribly flawed methodology, and that the narrowly cast email that they had people send out to their friends would never reach some random, predesignated person.
So, when we received the official Columbia email from a Treasured Reader, we saw that it was destined for a particular writer in New York and sent it off to a New York blog friend who actually writes stuff. Like that's gonna work!
Now this.
Heh. I finally got around to forwarding your "Small world" thing to my friend Leslie and it turns out she knows the person you were looking for, Pavia something. Umm, so that's what, 3 degrees of separation? Not bad.
We hate it when our irrational prejudices are challenged. Stop that.

Blab. A reader picks nits off of that lovely Helenism ("It's a relief off my shoulders") from the other day.
Shouldn't it be "That's a relief"?
Plop, plop. Fizz, fizz.

Blab. A reader just can't refrain from using rude language.
Doesn't it just scare the living crap out of you when the world is being run by people like this?
Sheesh, what's all this politicians singing crap all of a sudden!
-AJL
The reader refers to this:
Since John Ashcroft became US attorney general last year, workers at the department of justice have become accustomed to his daily prayer meetings, but some are now drawing the line at having to sing patriotic songs penned by their idiosyncratic boss.
[...] "Like she's never soared before, from rocky coast to golden shore, let the mighty eagle soar," and so on for four minutes.
If you're curious (or masochistic), you can actually see and hear it here.
Personally, we think all politicians should be required to indulge in sixteen hours of singing a day, in a style of their own choosing. It would help keep them out of trouble.

Blab. A spammist named quite ironically after a mediocre food chain writes, in part:
Hi. I'm Linda Applebee. I've been doing this kind of work at home for over ten years- it's not very complicated. Mainly I insert sales literature into envelopes seal them and mail them. It's called "stuffing envelopes" for short. It's a wonderful way to make money. I really enjoy it.
Hi, Linda. We are pleased at your great good fortune and hope that you continue to enjoy the uncomplicated - some would say "menial", but not us - work to which you have devoted your sad and meaningless life.

Blab. A reader waxes nostalgic.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Readers are requested to submit their favorite candidate for a 2002-ish technology quote (which may be fictional, though, you know, points off) that will look equally dim in 2052. Here's our own nomination:
We've had three major generations of computing: mainframes, client-server and Internet computing. There will be no new architecture for computing for the next 1,000 years.
- Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle; 2001
Oracle. Phnnn. Get it?

Blab. A reader beseeches the Powers That Be:
Let my Blue Dog Go!
Unless our reader has frogs or plagues at hand, we are pessimistic.

Blab. A reader reports:
The bluedog has now been transfered to a more permanent holding facility.

We assure you that we are doing everything in our righteous power to treat it in the manner it deserves. We regret that your request that the blue dog be treated as a prisoner of war has been denied. All prisoners are allowed to write one letter to a person or body of their choosing. The blue dog's letter to Plurp follows.
-AJL
=========
His most gracious and worthy plurpness,
They're treating me quite well, although they have shaved my entire body. They finally took the taped over goggles and ear muffs off me today. I'm a little purturbed as they've confiscated my collection of Jodie Foster pictures and the small penknife Helen gave me for last solstice season. Something about evidence collation. Anyway, at least they missed the 16lb of gellignite and the Luger pistol that I managed to swallow before they caught me.
Well, I better go now, as it's my "personal" time in the shower. There's a big mastiff called Butch who said he'd help me find the soap or something. Give my love to all the others, and don't worry, I've begun to learn to love these wonderful guards. Things are doubleplusgood here.
The blue dog.
If a blue dog is shaved in the woods ...
We anticipate a certain upcoming (and rather painful) bowel thingie, but that is best left for others to document. We are doubleplus pleased that the blue dog is learning righteousness, by any means necessary.
And do say Yo to Butch for us, won't you?

Blab. On that topic of that goodie, various readers write:
Tell Us What This Goodie Is
Wild guesses -- Part of a home planetarium kit? A home disco kit? Something that uses "ionization" in its description? All of the above?
L.
Maybe. Maybe. But we doubt it! It would be pretty silly if all the stars were equally spaced, now, wouldn't it?
Clearly your little Goodie Tuesday is the IBM Pocket-Sized
Planetarium, which was one of the cornerstones of IBM profitability until 1934 when they (rather wisely) decided to shift their focus entirely to computing systems.
Again, no. It turns out that, in 1933, IBM manufactured the IBM Atom Slicer. A bit ahead of its time and not much of hit in the deli market during its first few months of sales, IBM ceased marketing it in 1934, just eleven years before the atom was first split by terrified humans, the rest being (we're so sorry to say) history.
It's the Special of the Week at Dirty Sid's Adult Toys and Bondage Gear.
Yee haw.

Blab. A reader responds to our question, How do you know anything?
Science has been flying by instruments for years. We no longer even report on phenomenon simply observed through an instrument -- it is not phenomena implied through the observation of an instrument, and sometimes not even that. Have you ever seen an electron? An atom? How do we know they exist? How do scientists know that slamming two particles into each other really breaks them into "fundamental parts" -- slamming two glass bottles together makes them turn into glass fragments, so are glass fragments the fundamental constiuents of glass bottles? Andy Warhol had the right idea: with modern technology, we can simulate pretty much anything - from atomic structures to freefall - so why should the average person simply take it for granted that the scientific community isn't just pulling a fast one on him? Newton "proved" the laws of gravity. Einstein comes along, shows Newton was wrong, and then "proves" relativity. Quantum mechanics comes along, shows Einstein didn't have it exactly right either, and "proves" quantum theory. Sometimes, the reasoning behind science is hard to swallow. Take two and call me in the morning.
While it is oh-so-tempting to take the reader's bait and rant at the various misconceptions about science demonstrated by the above, we refrain. Instead, we point out that our reader didn't manage to answer the question. So we ask our reader again: How do you know anything?

Blab. In a rare and inbred event, a reader informs us that ...
Regarding your "Knowing" question, our reply was so long, we put it on our own blog.
-AJL
Fortunately, we haven't bothered to read it.

Blab. A reader who may or may not know anything writes:
How do you know anything?
All knowledge is, at its core, a leap of faith.
Prove to me that New Jersey exists. I've never been there; I've never seen it. I have only my faith, my willingness to believe, in the statements of others to guide me. I can come up with plausible -- although logically strained -- responses to contradict any evidence you produce for me that New Jersey is really there.
In this case, my perfectly plausible arguments to deny the existance of New Jersey would be viewed as irrational, because we have such a preponderance of circumstantial evidence to support the existance of this place, and no contradictory evidence. To maintain a position that New Jersey doesn't exist would be seen as bizarre, even insane. Therefore, I accept, without any (well, much) reservation, the general consensus that New Jersey does, in fact, exist.
Perhaps that's what knowledge is -- acceptence of the general consensus.
Of course, knowledge doesn't necessarily have anything to do with reality. Just because "everyone knows" something does not make it true. At a recent speech, the presidential ventriloquist using the Bush dummy said that over 90 percent of Americans believe in God, and yet no one has ever been able to produce even circumstantial evidence to support the existance of God.
So, how do we know anything? I'll be honest -- I don't have a goddamned clue.
L.
We would be happy in the belief that New Jersey does not exist. The alternative is so frightening as to threaten our bladder control.
But is it really the case that knowledge is consensual, that you knowing anything relies on what other people know, or believe, or say they know or believe?
Really?

Blab. A metaphysical reader writes:
God said it, I believe it, that settles it. No, no, sorry. I'll be
serious now.
I think a reasonable person pays attention to the reliability of different information sources under varying conditions. A presidential candidate speaking about tax policy, a broker speaking to the profit potential of an investment, the network news speaking of anything, all go into a mental box labelled "Random Noise, Disregard."
My sense perceptions, coding advice from my boss, and judgements from my wife fall under "Highly reliable under many conditions, little better than random noise under some."
As I gain experience with different information sources, I experentially learn of their reliability. As a side-note, I have often observed that paying attention to the sources' inherent biases and motivations provides strong clues. Paying attention to *why* a source was or was not a reliable one in a given instance will help one form a better model for the future.
An extreme example of this theory of knowledge in practice:
Me: "Remember last Thursday when we did X?"
Wife: "Wednesday."
Me: "Remember last Wednesday when we did X?"
Now, I still remember it being Thursday. And I'm not just going along to play nice. My rational belief is that my wife is far more likely to remember it correctly than I.
While we would not presume to give our reader marital advice, we do admire the reader's association of knowing with prediction. Though we don't know why.

Blab. A reader from the Show It State asks:
Instead of an Ashcroft head, how about a Mel Carnahan head? A lot of people here in Missouri thought Mel would make a better senator than Ashcroft even when Mel had managed to be dead for several weeks. Personally, I think he'd make a better Attorney General now.
Still with Mel . . . .
L.
We hate to break the news to you, but no one outside of Missouri knows who Mel Carnahan is. The rest of us only know him as the dead guy who beat Ashcroft.
Sorry. It's like, you know, Missouri.

Blab. Mistaking us for someone who gives a flying taco about what Slashdot is or is not doing, a reader writes:
Slashdot Ad Free: The Worst Subscription Service Ever Launched
We have introduced this system as it appeared to be the easiest way to milk our cash cow, and will at a later stage introduce a proper subscription model if and when we can be bothered.
Yawn.

Plurp. Lots of Blab today. We learn from this that stupid image contests and sophomoric philosophy are very motivating to our readership.
This depresses us beyond our ability to express it.

Yow. According to some random UK news source ...
Professional [bag]pipers could be silenced by a European Union directive on controlling workplace noise, according to a Tory MEP.
'Bout time!

Plurp. Today's bit o' nostalgia: Bob the Sock Puppet, in better times. (Ian)

Plop. The folks at Cadillacare out to kill us with a huge new juggernaut designed, apparently, to crush Miatas like kumquats beneath its mammoth tires.
It's a truck that's hard to miss. Plus, you can frighten small children and suburban livestock with it.
Not to mention us.

Yak. Interminable meeting at work, Day 2.
We're going to e-Source-ify that.

Yow. An excellent idea from our interminable meeting, Day 2:
Install a personal 900 number. We would give it out to all of the people who are desperate to converse with us even though they have nothing useful to say. It would be quite pricey for callers; if we must suffer fools, we can at least suffer them at a profit.

Yak. Same meeting, more priceless content.
Industry consultants don't really digest the information you feed them. They just turn around and shoot it out at another customer. What we're good at is putting our information in a form that is pretty much what we expect to come out.
Amazingly, no one laughed but us.

Yak. The hits just keep on coming.
Those who do it, do it with technology.

Yak.
The question is: Can we be the next brake shoe, the next piston?
We always wanted to be the next piston.

Yak.
This cannot be under-emphasized as an important topic.
We can only agree.

Plop. Did you know that Herr Ashcroft believes calico cats are signs of the devil? Do you at least feel better knowing that he's reading your email? We do.

Yo. Perusing the ol' usage logs, we notice lots of people finding their way here recently by Googling for "thermobaric bombs". Their interest is probably piqued by the recent use of these awful weapons on the caves of eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. is in the process of exterminating a few thousand Taliban and Al Qaeda folks.
That reminds us that we really don't understand how these bombs work in cave warfare. The news reports keep referring to their ability to "suck the oxygen out of the caves", and they seem to imply that the lack of oxygen kills the folks in the caves.
And that's where we get all confused. An average person has to be deprived of air for about three minutes before they die. We cannot conceive that the conflagration caused by a thermobaric bomb lasts three minutes. That's a really long time, and the whole idea of thermobaric bombs is to disperse and burn their fuel very quickly to make a big boom (and a corresponding overpressure that "flattens soft targets", by which they mean things like aircraft, armored vehicles ... oh, and people).
So what gives? Are the news reports just confused? (That would be unique!) Is the point of these bombs just to make big booms, either killing folks directly or collapsing the caves or cave entrances?
Do our readers know?

Plurp.
The Ashcroft Head
was devoted to protecting
every registered American citizen's rights under
the Constitution

Tuesday, March 5, 2002
Blab. A reader rushes in, all excited, and gasps:
Announcing Slashdot Subscriptions: "Slashdot is about to start accepting new ad formats. The large ads that you see on many other sites are coming here. We really don't have an option: these are what advertisers want, and if we don't provide them, we won't be around much longer. But we want to give you an option to see Slashdot without these ads. Second, you need to understand that Slashdot readers fall into a variety of types, and charging the same flat fee just isn't possible."
They are going with $5 for 1000 ad-free pages. Thoughts? Comments? Opinions?
We will continue to pay $0 for an infinite number of ad-free Slashdot pages, as we never look at the silly sight. Really. News For Nerds. As if that wasn't what the whole Web was about.

Blab. A reader wonders where all this is going.
First the Blue Dog, now Bob the Sock Puppet.
IS THERE NO END TO THIS MADNESS ? ? ?
Let's just hope Bozo the clown isn't next.
Perhaps it'll be Him Whose Name Has Been Captured By Ashcroft And Thrown Into A Deep Abyss Surrounded By Howling Teenage Rock Stars.
Him Whose Name Has Been Captured By Ashcroft And Thrown Into A Deep Abyss Surrounded By Howling Teenage Rock Stars has warned us against following this strategy.

Blab. A reader summarizes things nicely.
We have certain knowledge that the blue dog is either in hiding, or dead, or somewhere else.
-D. Dumsfeld
Or something else.

Blab. From another series of blind couriers comes the following:
The blue dog would like to assure you that he is learning the path of love at the hands of the righteous.
-AJL
Naturally, we are supportive of just this sort of re-education for those guilty of wrongthink.

Blab. A reader somehow discovers our nummy nummy broken jokes.
I'm reminded of this "broken limerick" from one of Doug Hofstadter's books (Metamagical Themas, I think).
There once was a man from St. Bees
Who was stung on the arm by a wasp
 When asked, "Does it hurt?"
 He replied, "No it doesn't;
But I'm glad that it wasn't a hornet."
It is so very difficult to find someone who understands that this is funny.
We love this! And it leads us to Not Quite Limericks, most of which are not even, quite. But funny anyhow.
(And, we stole it for our collection of Broken Jokes.)

Blab. A reader with a sticky Caps Lock key finds humor in following the directions on the Big Blab Box very, very literally.
YOUR BIG THOUGHTS
We find humor in your sticky Caps Lock key.

Blab. A reader, paying attention to the radio rather than the many other cars careening down the road, writes:
A Helenism heard on the wireless on my way to work, ce matin: The sky is our Oyster!
Wonderful! And gratefully noted.

Blab. A reader wonders about the existence of ...
Google Bombs?
Yes, Virginia, there is a Google bomb. Google shows you pages that match your search terms or pages referred to by important pages that match your search terms. So we can pervert Google by referring to, say, Andy "Talentless Hack" Pressman.
Pretty cool! And what a great article!

Blab. A reader submits an allegation and a command.
Ashcroft sucks. Bring back the Blue Dog.
We'll have to take your word on that allegation, and you'll have to talk to Herr Ashcroft on that command. Sorry.

Yow. Another minor link, this time from Jerry Kindall. You like us. You really like us!

Yow. Lego Pinhead.

Plurp. This week's reader contest is: Tell Us What This Goodie Is. Be creative. Be descriptive. Be literary, if you want. Be bombastic. But don't be silent.

As usual, we'll publish the best of your responses, the worst of your responses, unattributed changes in your responses, whatever. Hey - it's the Web.

Plurp. Mister Fusion or Mass Confusion? You decide.
Tiny bubbles imploding in a solution of acetone may have generated nuclear fusion, Russian and U.S. scientists said Monday, in an experiment that, if confirmed, represents a giant advance in nuclear physics.
The old fogeys amongst you may remember the flap over cold fusion back in 1989. While there are still folks who think it works, weirdly enough, they are far and few between.
Is acetone fusion similarly Bad Science or is it Nobel Prize City?
And here's the real question: How would you know? How do you decide whether a scientific result is valid or not? You might be right in not believing CNN. (We don't.) You might not even believe some random dude at the world-renowned Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. So what are your criteria for belief in some obscure scientific result?
Just for fun, let's generalize. How do you know anything? What are your criteria for belief? Do you base your beliefs on the opinions of other, equally fallible humans? On the fervent belief of lots of such humans? In your interpretation of the words of various infallible gods? Only on your own direct observation and reasoning?
We love these questions. We've loved them since we were maybe ten years old, wondering about how people knew that there were (or weren't) UFOs, or knew that the prophecies of Jean Dixon were (or were not) believable. We think they are deep and profound questions, and that people almost never think about them. And that, when they do, they just get confused.
Do you?

Yak. From one of those interminable meetings at work.
.NETized (pronounced dot-net-ized)

Yak. From that same meeting.
This is such a good argument that I nearly convinced myself.

Yow. The highlight of our day-long meeting (which, argh, continues all day tomorrow) was the display outside the conference room of historic IBM hardware. We particularly enjoyed the IBM meat grinder and the IBM salami slicer. Seriously! We used to produce stuff like that before, in 1934, the company sold all that stuff to somebody else so as to focus on computing machinery.
1934. IBM has been doing this computer stuff for a while.

Yo. Among our many other crosses to bear, we took responsibility today for making this actually work. Are we nuts, or what?

Plurp.
The Ashcroft Head
planned to re-educate
all wrongthinkers and
evildoers

Monday, March 4, 2002
Blab. A reader wonders about the blue dog's last meal.
Corn dogs come in cans??
These do.

Blab. A reader spends all of its time watching TV, just for us.
A possible Helenism from one of those terrible "credit consolidation company" adverts. I'm not sure if it counts, however -- but it's just such as good
"It's a relief off my shoulders"
 * It's a weight off my shoulders
 * It's a relief
Okay, so the second one is a bit weak, but I like the (candidate) Helenism, as it might mean the opposite of its component phrases...
Works for us! And duly recorded. Congrats!

Blab. A reader worries ...
Hey, did that threat scare the blue dog? he seems to be in hiding and not at his usually place at the bottom of the blog.
It seems that it was more than a threat.

Blab. A reader alerts us to a near-miss with Certain Disaster.
One of those peculiar temporal syzygies happened this morning, at least for me, at 5:06:07 a.m. At that moment, the date and time was 020304050607, but only if one notates dates and time as I do (yymmddhhmmss). As I suspect I may be the only person on the face of the earth to do this, it may very well be that it was only my world that ended in that one second span, and I'm still around because, at the time, I must admit, I was actually asleep, and missed the big event.
Of course, my world could well have ended last year on February 3 at 4:05:06 a.m. (010203040506), which would certainly explain a great deal about the past year.
L.
We encourage our readers not to use this notation, to avoid the possible end of the world if they did.

Blab. A reader masquerading as our self-confessed obsessive-compulsive eater writes:
M and Ms yes, French Fries no. But now that you've suggested it...
We also suggest you eat peas only in a Fibonacci sequence, and corn niblets according to the sequence of the digits of pi.
We love having an influence on our readers.

Yow. Yet more fame. This time it's a link from alleged reader AJL itself. We are puffed up with pride! (Or is that moo goo gai pan?)

Plop. Through a series of blind couriers, we obtained these exclusive (and frightening) photos of Bob the Sock Puppet's recent captivity and torture at the hands of unknown evildoers. Oh, the caninity!
(Note: Some content not suitable for sock puppets.)

Bob is shown here in captivity, clearly screaming in terror or pain.

Now we see why. His diabolical captors have an array of torture instruments. Are they seeking information from Bob, or is this simply their idea of sadistic fun?

What are they doing here? We can only guess. And we really don't want to. This picture provides clues to the identity of his captors, and perhaps his kidnappers as well.

Bob's torturers are shown here opening a lesion in his ... well, in his body.

At this, perhaps ultimate point in the torture, the evildoers have cast Bob's internal organs onto the table. From the look of it, this was done entirely without anesthetic. It is a tribute to Bob's endurance and resilience that he survived at all.
Finally, there is this horrifying video clip showing Bob in an advanced state of agitation and psychological distress, no doubt as a result of these hideous tortures.
Bob won't actually talk about any of this. When we bring it up, he just sits there, mute and stone-faced.

Plurp.
The Ashcroft Head
assures right-thinking Americans that
what is being done to the blue
dog is in the best interests of all
patriots

Sunday, March 3, 2002
Blab. A reader asks us a silly question.
Do you sort your M&Ms by color before you eat them? I DO!
We are not aware that we have any eating-oriented obsessive compulsive conditions, though apparently many of our readers do. Do you arrange your French fries by size before eating them?

Blab. A reader takes us up on our challenge to play a game without knowing the rules.
I played your "Nine Mens Morris" and I WON...once (on the lowest level). Don't know how I did it. It's kind of like checkers & connect four - But not really.
~Sara
Cool! Do our reader know any other online games that we can play without having any idea what the rules are?

Blab. A reader stands us up against a wall and says:
your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries, go away or I shall taunt you a second time...
Ah! Now we see ...

Blab. A reader threatens further violence.
The blue dog will be taken to Guantanamo P.O.W. Camp, caged and taunted with frogs until he learns the true path of love, or admits to being a terrorist. Whichever happens first. -AJL
We knew it was only a matter of time.

Blab. A spammist writes:
Are you tired of getting up early, only to know your making a fraction of what your employer does??
Um, if we hadn't learned simple English grammar, we probably would have a low-paying job, just like you.

Plurp. A rainy night last night and drizzle today, both inside and out as the cold that Helen has been fighting this week seems to be winning again. So we're staying cozy today, watching dumb movies and catching up on work.

Yow. Are you an old fogey with a residual sweet tooth? Then you are required to explore Sweet Nostalgia, featuring the candies of our sprouthood. And you can still order them! Cinnamon toothpicks. Fizzies. Bosco. Ah, nostalgia.

Top

Earlier entries Later entries