Current
Earlier
Later
Archive
 

Home
Search
Mail
Stuff
 

2002.06.30 : 2002.07.06

Saturday, July 6, 2002

Blab. A reader after our own gullet writes:

One of the things I miss the most about living in NYC is sushi. Just had some.  I won't tell you how far away from anything resembling water we are, but it was good. Someone was just heard saying "I am full of contentment and eel." Who would have thought that?  Not me, and certainly not him. Another convert. Let me live vicariously: where is your favorite place to get sushi?  (blowout, local spot, etc.)

Unlike most topic areas, this is one in which we have an opinion. And our opinion is: sushi is the world's most perfect food. We could easily eat nothing but sushi for the rest of our life. However, at its usual price, we would have to die in a week or two, and that's probably not best.

Sushi in Manhattan is highly variable, filling all points of the spectrum between sublime and inedible. We have yet to find a sushi place near our apartment that (a) delivers and (b) is good. This is a great shame, as having sushi delivered is one of the most decadent things in life.

We usually end up walking down to Hatsuhana and bringing sushi home, though actually dining there produces even better sushi. A very long time ago, we saw Phil Collins there, before we even knew who he was. We went to Sushi Yasuda once with a mysterious guest. It was quite fabulous, and priced accordingly. We went to Bond Street recently with friends; some folks say it's the best place in town. It is quite fabulous (in both senses) and has the added appeal of attracting a crowd much cooler and more attractive than us.

Blab. A reader gets its knickers in a twist.

A conference where you're not allowed to talk about the items discussed? My goodness, the mind control lasers must really be near maximum. Or perhaps the group consensus was that everything discussed was so truly worthless that they'd rather it was never mentioned again. Of course, it is always a grand challenge to stay awake during a content-free speech. A conference about "things which must not be spoken"....the grand challenge must have been to keep a straight face. Historically our industry gets its knickers in a twist over some grand challenge that is going to change the world. Surely you remember MITI and the "fifth generation" effort or the world-changing "expert systems". Now it is pervasive computing, self-healing systems (I have a collection of about 50 papers on this subject from 15 years ago if you want it) and, God, ummm, rather "that which has the name that can't be spoken" save us all from digital rights management in hardware. sigh. once more around the stupidity circle....

It's not that unusual for informal workshops to ask participants to avoid public attribution of things that are said there. This encourages participants who would otherwise be worried about saying wild things because of their reputation to go ahead and say wild things anyway. And that's good.

That said, it is true that the computing field, perhaps even more so than other technology fields, has been full of drooly promises of Future Wonders that never quite happen. (We're still waiting for flying cars.)

OTOH, it has changed the world in pretty significant ways. It's always hard to know what the Next Big Thing will be in any field. But it is fun to work on stuff that might qualify.

Blab. A spammist offers us a program that ...

-Fixes ALL Errors In Windows!

... which we figured would be pretty darn cool, having a Microsoft program that had no bugs at all, and we were about to click on the spam link and purchase this wonder, when it occurred to us that spammists hire markedroids, not programmers, and they really don't know what they're talking about. Fooey.

Plurp. Someone on a TV talk show said today that the over-60 population was about to explode, but they didn't say who was responsible.

Plurp. Let's see. What did we forget to tell you about? Well, we forgot to tell you about:

• Ordering that Clive Barker's Undying game over the Web a couple of weeks ago. It actually works on our stupid PC too! Well, you have to reboot the machine before you play it, or the display goes blank and you have to reboot the machine anyway. And it sometimes blue screens. But that's pretty good! It's a fun game - spooky and scary and stuff - and we've only had to look up the solution to a puzzle once.
• July 4th being a holiday, on account of Ian's birthday. Among the many festivities, Ian received a toy hamster that sings Yankee Doodle Dandy in an Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks voice when you mash its left foot. Very funny. Oh - and a very cool magnetic construction toy called Geomag, over which we all obsessed for hour after hour.
• Our being honored with another Local Award for Driving Style on the way to Ian's place last Wednesday. We felt bad about this, as it was a holiday weekend, we knew there would be many people competing for such an award, and we felt like we had gotten our share and should let other people participate. But we suppose the local committee knows talent when it sees it.
• And probably other stuff that we forgot.

Plop. Him Whose Name Is Spoken By Eels has been sitting on the bed with us all day, taking up space, making it difficult for us to sit back, or type, or eat. He has perfected the art of annoying us without doing anything at all. It's Cat Zen.

Plurp.

The blue dog
was the
Next Big Thing

Friday, July 5, 2002

Blab. A reader takes the quiz about us.

40% Correct
2 Correct Out of 5
3 Incorrect Answers
0 Unanswered
Submitted on 16 Jun 2002  02:19:17 EDT

Question 1: Buderi describes the "CHRISTMA EXEC" e-mail:
Answer 1: Incorrect answer: 2 as the most significant battle in the Virus Wars.

Question 2: Anti-virus researchers:
Answer 2: Answer correct: 2 warn that there is not such thing as a benign computer virus.

Question 3: Buderi describes divides the war against viruses into ______time periods so far.
Answer 3: Incorrect answer: 3 four

Question 4: IBM's Digital Immune System took ______ years to materialize.
Answer 4: Incorrect answer: 2 six

Question 5: Steve White, a source Buderi uses throughout the essay, is a:
Answer 5: Answer correct: 2 theoretical physicist who works as an anti-virus researcher.

We delayed reporting on this portentous (and probably pretentious) event because our formerly Treasured Reader committed a crime in doing so. Our formerly Treasured Reader gave the quiz site the Plurp email address (bamboozled, so their defense attorney will claim, by that evil site's offer to send us the results of said Reader's test), ensuring that we will receive, each day, offers for various body parts of numerous young women and dozens of solicitations for Chinese talc.

Not that we fail to appreciate either young women or talc, mind you. Quite the contrary. We are quite fond of both.

But we Do Not Appreciate our formerly Treasured Readers giving our email address out so as to populate spam lists. Really. What were you thinking?

Blab. A reader finds:

Bruce Sterling's Grand Challenges lecture

This is the keynote talk that Bruce gave at our recent conference. The ground rules of the conference forbade us from talking, in detail, about stuff folks said at the conference. But if Bruce chooses to post it himself, well ...

Reader are invited to tell us what they think. Consider this your Special Treat for reading our humble blog while everyone else is BBQing or sitting in Big Tubs of Water. We will reserve our own opinion for another time.

Blab. A reader, showing incipient signs of starting its own blog, attempts to start its own contest.

The Orwellian War is Peace Contest

Read the statement and background to same, below.  Then provide your own equally stunning example of Orwellian double-speak. 

'The plastics recycling will be suspended for at least one year and glass recycling for two while the city examines whether the labor-intensive recycling program can be made more cost-effective. 

"Our commitment to recycling is just as strong as ever," Bloomberg said. "We're just trying to be practical." '(quoted on CNN.com)
 

Example:

While it may appear that our failure to fill the municipal pool is contradictory, we are as committed to the swimming program as we have ever been. 

Being a NY resident, we wondered about this ourself. That impressive relevance to our own life makes this an Official Plurp Contest. So, like, say stuff.

Blab. A reader complains about various mathematical fetishes.

I don't understand the weird base-10 hangups that some people have. Now, one's 64th birthday is something to be depressed about, because you're on your LAST BIT in the age field!!  Scary.

Then, finding a sort of ECC religion, a reader who might be this same reader writes:

God uses the high bit in the age field as a checksum, by the way. 127 is the theoretical maximum for human life. After that, overflow error. 

Fine. Whatever. Go away.

Plop. In the middle of MiB II today (which, BTW, was quite good and, in places, absolutely hilarious; plus it features Lara Flynn Boyle as a leather-clad alien, um, dominant woman), we were treated to several bars of a low-fidelity version of Rossini's William Tell Overture. No, it wasn't part of the soundtrack. It was some moron's cell phone.

Imagine the reaction of the audience, many of whom were of our own certain age, and hence had grown up with that endearing black-and-white analog TV show The Lone Ranger. And for us, poor Rossini's work is forever associated more with Clayton Moore than William Tell.

And imagine what we all thought of the dweeb who (a) has The Lone Ranger theme as his cell phone ring and (b) leaves it on in public places.

Yo. Congrats to all you folks who went to Burning Man this last year - you're stars! Of a nudie video, that is, shot on-site by Voyeur Video Inc., and now available for sell to all comers.

So all of you who just made partner in your law firm should start making up really, really good stories.

Plop. The Dubya is planning to invade Iraq. (Well, not Dubya himself, of course, but rather lots of young women and men who will be shredded by mines and die of hemorrhagic fever in his place, this being the nature of WW III.)

Big surprise, huh? Unfortunately, we don't suspect it will be as easy as last time. This will be much messier. This time, Mr. Hussein has had time to prepare. And, faced with annihilation, Mr. Hussein has little motive to hold back, not just in Iraq but elsewhere as well.

We are not looking forward to this.

Plurp.

The blue dog
was the decaying refuse of
a videotape of Burning Man
as strained through the rhetorical filter of
Bruce Sterling

Thursday, July 4, 2002

Blab. Belated celebrities write:

Dear Steve,

Happy 50th!!!

Love,

Edward Said
Ed "the Red" Asner
Noamy
Casey Kasem
(Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars!)

Dear Ed, Ed, Noam & Casey. We already told you. We are in denial. Go away.

Yak. It was a Pawling restaurant night last night as the Towne Crier Cafe was holding one of its famous Open Mike Nights.

I will be playing a medley of songs from A Beginners Book of Piano Lessons.

Sadly, we were escorted to the back, to the separate bar, where we could not hear this music, and where small children screamed a capella.

Plurp. This Web site claims that "blue dog" can be rendered in hieroglyphics thusly.

But - oh, come on - do we look that gullible? Hieroglyphics were neither phonetic nor alphabetic, and the notion of a 1-1 correspondence between hieroglyphs and the English alphabet is (how can we express this?) unlikely.

Plop. In an article about how the U.S. doesn't want to have its military folks judged by the International Criminal Court, the NY Times indulges in a bit of Oldthink.

The administration worries that the new court could be driven by politically motivated prosecutors and that American military personnel would not have the constitutional rights granted all Americans in criminal proceedings — for example, the right to be tried by a jury of peers and to have access to evidence.

Those were the days, weren't they, when all Americans had constitutional rights? Yep, that was some fun.

Yow. If you liked that Google visualizer the other day, try the thesaurus visualizer, which shows relationships between words. Modestly interesting. (Metafilter)

Plop. How close was that asteroid last month? Pretty frickin' close! (T.C. MITS)

Plurp.

The blue dog
was a post-modern
deconstruction of a close
reading of a
Phoenician thesaurus

Wednesday, July 3, 2002

Blab. A clever reader sends us this really quite fabulous plot synopsis for ...

The Osbourne Identity

Week 1: The family's holiday in Brussels is cut short when Sharon assassinates the Prime Minister.  Kelly is lectured after getting a Swiss bank account number tattooed on her thigh.  Jack is mocked by French students.

Week 2: Kelly, angry at being grounded during the MTV awards, replaces her mother's nuclear trigger device with Ozzy's bubble generator.  Ozzy sleeps through a three-way firefight at the mansion between Islamic militants, a Lebanese Christian militia, and Sharon.  Jack is mocked by home-schooled kids.

Week 3: When Ozzy is captured by the Polish Secret Service, Kelly and Sharon disguise themselves as pierogis and sneak into the embassy.  Jack, forgotton at home, plays dress up in his mother's kevlar business suits.  Guest appearance by Julia Stiles as "female pedestrian #2."

Week 4: A visit to the pet psychologist is cut short when Ozzy swallows an NSA listening device and suddenly understands what is family is saying for the first time.  Jack botches a suicide attempt.

Week 6: Ozzy discovers secret messages while playing a bin Laden video backwards, but no one believes him.  Sharon, angry with the women who dubs her voice for French television, destabilizes the Euro.  Kelly comes home drunk.

Let us guess. Ozzy doesn't remember Week 5. Right?

Blab. A reader informs us of a disturbing event.

We would like to inform you that Mia has appeared spontaneously in my blog feedback - we very much suspect one of your readership. -AJL 

Good heavens! Will this madness never end?

OK, naughty reader. Fess up! (We do like the bit about Sylvia, though. Nice puzzle!)

Blab. A reader attempts to reduce the Riemann Hypothesis to a previously known case.

I have found a simple solution to the Riemann Hypothesis, but unfortunately this blab box is too small to write it in. 

Sorry. Wrong theorem. Check next door.

Blab. A reader contributes the world's first solipsistic proof.

A refutation of the Riemann Hypothesis: I have never heard of it, therefore it does not exist. Q.E.D.

This is sure to set the math world astir.

Blab. A reader says something.

I will not check the free will tester. Instead, I say to you "kitty kitty kitty sploong boobab kitty." Take that, you filthy red determinist. 

We admit that we had not thought of this reaction to our little essay on free will. Now we worry that we were unable to.

Blab. A reader seeks to amaze us. (We are constantly amazed by our readers. That we have any is the most amazing part.)

I can eat 50 eggs. 

So can this guy's dog. And Paul Newman, of course.

Blab. A reader obsessed with the waste products from its anus writes:

Yes, well. Aside from .25 of the ACLU, I could do fine without all those organizations. Thanks for helping me make the point.

And to rephrase:
Any document signed by Ed Asner, Noam Chomsky, Casey Kasem, and Edward Said is best used for friction-based removal of waste products from one's anus.

We'll keep that in mind next time we have a document signed by Ed Asner, Noam Chomsky, Casey Kasem, and Edward Said.

Blab. Some awful spawn of those egg pods writes:

happy 50 

We are in denial. Go away.

Blab. The enigmatic zyx lady makes a surprise reappearance.

This may be a way to handle the idea of Spongebob Squarepants that you can get your mind around.

I consider myself an Absorbant, actually.

- the zyx lady 

Okaaaay. Someone with way too much time has an extensive Web site on the Church of SpongeBob SquarePants. Much can be learned just by glancing through the concordance.

YAP - a holy acronym for Yellow, Absorbent and Porous. The scripture lists the attributes of SpongeBob Squarepants as "absorbent and yellow and porous" (Genesis, C1, V8) but the Church changed the order of the attributes (around August, 2001) for the purposes of aligning them with the actual sequence experienced by Absorbants as they study the attributes. It was also changed to make a better acronym. That SpongeBob Squarepants is Yellow is obviously noticed and learned before an Absorbant learns about His Absorbency or Porousness.

Simply frightening.

Blab. A reader brings diversity to our usually narrow demographic.

Subj: Mix Tape

Hook me up wit' The Answer: Allen Iverson, And1 Vol. 5, and Barron Davis vs. Skip

We'll get right on that.

Blab. A reader points out why we never really understood the fine art of jurisprudence.

Six Are Arrested in Pakistan Rape

ULTAN, Pakistan, July 2 -- The police said today that they had arrested six people, including members of a Pakistan tribal court, after an 18-year-old woman was gang-raped as a punishment. [...]

The teenager was raped last month as punishment meted out by a tribal jury for her brother's supposed affair with a woman from a tribe of higher social standing.

We suppose it's a good thing that her brother didn't commit murder.

Yow. More meetings (yesterday) mean more Helenisms (today). Aren't we lucky?

We're out in the boondoggles on this one

Yak.

This language solves the Five Queens Problem.

What's that?

It's what you solve if you're too slow to solve the Eight Queens Problem.

Yo. Man Speared Through Brain. No Vital Organs Damaged.

Yo. Conclusive Evidence That Dubya Is Synthetic.

Yo. Man Charged With Removing Body From Windshield. And you think we make this stuff up. Nosiree!

Plurp.

Plurp.

As a boy, Brooklyn ceramicist David Bartheld fell in love with his piano teacher, Avonelle -- or was it her distinctive coat? These porcelain bowls celebrate the vertical lines and pale green pattern of her apparel that so captivated him.

Plurp.

The blue dog
was unable to
eat 50 eggs

Tuesday, July 2, 2002

Blab. Prompted by our desire to understand SpongeBob SquarePants, a reader informs us of this tantalizing fact.

Hey... kitchen sponges actually used to all be actual sea sponges, and a lot of people still use those.  Just don't let them get old... they're actually a rotting dead animal.
-Voaris 

So, they used to be actual sea sponges before they turned into polyurethane? Cool.

Blab. A reader sends us a lovely little rant.

William Bennett, secretary of education when the man who was president didn't even know it, and then drug czar (did he wear a crown from time to time in formal situations) had someone write this over his signature in the Wall Street Journal this very day, in reference to court findings for vouchers and testing pee in schools: "The excessive invocation of individual rights, for once, was forced to yield to the reliable tests of good sense and community sentiment." Was he ever a Stepford wife?  And did you notice just how great education became during his reign, and how the drug traffic just disappeared in the Bush years? 

As for the holiday... thanks for asking... I am going to hide behind the flag with all the guys in government.  If it's safe for them it will be safe for me. 

We're sure you'll all be cozy in there, and free of any excessive invocation of individual rights.

Plurp. Would one of our readers kindly send us a proof (or refutation) of the Riemann Hypothesis? Thanks much.

Yo. Cat feces are killing off sea otters. Film at 11. (robot wisdom)

Plurp. Here is a little essay on free will. See the checky box (below)? You can click on it to put a checky mark in it, if you'd like. You can click on it again to remove the checky mark. You can do this as many times as you'd like.

Free Will Tester

Yow. Funny.

Plurp. Yesterday, after the spacecraft departed, we noticed egg pods left behind in our office.

Just FYI: some of them appear to have hatched last night.

Plurp. Prompted by that Google Visualizer's insistence that this was related to Plurp, we took one of those stupid IQ tests again. This time, we scored 154, which seems a tad high, but we like it better than our score last year.

Plurp. Percy the dog is running against Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in her bid for Congress. You may remember Harris from the last presidential election - the one that Al Gore won?

We figure that, if the dog can count to three, he's a shoe-in.

Plurp.

The blue dog
had no
free will

Monday, July 1, 2002

Blab. Another of our growing group of groupies writes:

Subj: You are FABULOUS!! 

I just found you by accident while looking for a place that pays writers for their submissions.  I love your stuff! i emailed your site to my best friends!
jewel

That's immensely kind of you, of course, and we look forward to a noticeable spike in readership as a result of the interest of you and your friends. We hope your enthusiasm is not dampened, however, when you discover that we don't pay anybody for anything.

Blab. On the topic of that manifesto yesterday, a reader seeks to poison the well by association.

Being against anything Ed Asner is for can't be far wrong. 

Our gentle reader gets to cross off each of the following from its list of permissible organizations.

• Screen Actors Guild
• Defenders of Wildlife
• Peace Now
• The ACLU
• The Heifer Project
• Food First
• Death Penalty Focus
• The Disarm Education Fund
• The Office of the Americas
• Democratic Socialists of America
• Amnesty International 

We feel certain that this will give our gentle reader more time, which can then be used to contribute to Plurp.

Plurp. Today's horrifying mixed meme:

The Osbourne Identity

Readers are invited to submit a plot synopsis.

Plop. We've seen those soft news pieces where people show how hot their cars get in summer by frying eggs or cooking bacon. But cooking kids? That's sick.

Plurp. Our brain is still resonating dissonantly from the discovery this weekend (and it was, we must say here, prompted by people whom we previously believed were sane) of SpongeBob SquarePants.

SpongeBob SquarePants is a recent cultural icon that is said to have been invented by a marine biologist, presumably to overcome the previous paucity of invertebrate cartoon heroes. He began life as an actual marine sponge, but seems to have shape-shifted into a common kitchen sponge. (To the best of our knowledge, kitchen sponges are made entirely of synthetic materials, and have no biological connection with marine invertebrates.)

So, having invented such a character, the next obvious thing to do was to create a whole franchise, which has also happened. Witness such horrors as the game, the T-shirts, the lunch box, the party supplies, an extensive line of toys and - god save us - SpongeBob underwear.

We want to get on board with this new meme. Really we do. But our poor mind just grinds its cognitive gears when we try to do so. Perhaps our readers can give us some much needed advice on this topic.

Yow. Ian's right. This here Google visualization thingie is pretty darn cool! It's a little odd in that it uses Google's Similar To rather than links on the page itself to populate its graph. Still, it produces some interesting relationships. Try it with www.stevewhite.org/log/current/ and set Radius to 10 and Show to All, check Show Singles, then double-click on the Plurp node. Whee!

Plurp.

The blue dog
had a heartfelt
desire to become a 
cultural icon

Sunday, June 30, 2002

Blab. A reader seeks to turn us from our usual path of inanity, and towards serious political issues. Naturally, we can't allows that to happen.

There may be hope for the US (Not much, but hope) here's the link and the start of the article that makes me say this.

Prominent Americans have issued this statement on the war on terror

Friday June 14, 2002
The Guardian

Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.

The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.......... 

We appreciate our reader bringing to our attention this outrageous document, signed by a number of well-known U.S. evildoers like Ed Asner and Gloria Steinem, which unlawfully protests such things as the Bush administration's unappealable deprivation of rights of U.S. citizens that it labels "enemy combatants".

We're not smart enough to know how to run the world. Heck, most of the time we can't even tell when our Benighted Leaders are telling us the truth and when they're just pulling our leg.

But we do agree that people who lobby publicly against any action that our Leaders happen to take are, well, those people are Evil, and must be stopped. At all costs. It's the American Way.

At least, it seems to be these days.

Blab. A reader succinctly abstracts recent conversations here in Plurp.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not it at all.  That's completely wrong.  That's very very far from the mark.  That's not even in the same county as the mark. That turns out not to be the case at all.  That's just not it.   Not, not, not, not, not.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  No, I'm afraid that's not it.  Nope.  Can't get there from here.

Is so!

Blab. A reader wants to know things.

What is MEEP?

We don't know.

Plurp. It's hot today. Serious Summer. All of the normal New Yorkers have left town for the Hamptons, or Fire Island, or points elsewhere. All of the tourists have taken their place, and are wandering around, staring at the buildings.

Not us. We're spending the day in bed, watching Devil's Advocate and Conspiracy Theory. Later, we might watch Men In Black. We are so slothful, so indulgent.

Plurp.

The blue dog
didn't know what is was
either

© 2001-2002 Steve R. White, All Rights Reserved