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2002.07.28 : 2002.08.03

Saturday, August 3, 2002

Blab. A reader insists that we ...

Check out zillions of games. Why don't you egghead computer guys ever do anything neat like this? 

It's a mystery! The mystery is that our reader didn't attach any pointer to these zillions of games that we need to check out, nor any clue as to what neat things us eggheads should be doing.

Blab. Our correspondent from romantic Java (not the language) is concerned about both dining and politics.

Subj: Smoking cats

most likely your choice would have to be between menthol and non-menthol...as in Salem-flavored or good ol Marlboro-flavored.

Speaking of which, is anyone keeping track of Colin Powell's adventures in Asia? He is in the top of our news here and he didnt even spend the night. On the other hand it may be you dont have to spend the night in order to be in the top of our news. He did however drop quite a wad of your cash on the army--and, he didnt even spend the night!

Java correspondent

So you're saying that most people who drop a wad of cash on the Indonesian army stay the night? That's sweet.

Blab. Inspired by the thought of Britney Spears as a physicist, a reader breaks into song.

Oops, I spilled it again
It burned through the door
Made holes in the floor
Oh bugger, bugger!

Kinda Catchy, huh? Britney the Chemist lives again 

Damn you! We're going to be humming that all weekend.

Blab. A reader, who may have read too much into a few things that we said in the heat of the moment, writes:

Steve, dinner is still in the oven ....... when are you coming home??? 

So this would be an awkward time to tell you that we're happily married, right?

Plurp. We went out to see K19 again today. This time, it turned out to be a submarine movie starring Harrison Ford. And, despite the inclusion of a Russian missile, an explosion and the requisite helicopter, the audience demographic clearly indicated that it was a chick flick.

Go figure.

Plop. They're digging up the street just north of us this weekend. Something bad happened on Thursday or so, cutting power to all of the surrounding buildings (restaurants, apartments, etc.).

Today, one of our phone lines is all crackly. It's not a good sign.

Plurp.

Once upon a time,
in a land far away,
where scallions were used as clothing
and hens as shoes,
in the final days of this land,
before the coming of the Darkness,
there appeared in the dreams of old women
a blue dog

Friday, August 2, 2002

Blab. A reader informs us of the doings (and undoings) of various governmental units.

The Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act, sponsored by Hollywood-area Representative Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and House subcommittee on intellectual property chair Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.), would allow copyright owners, such as the film and recording industries, to secretly hack into users' computers and unleash new technologies to thwart unauthorized trading of movies or music on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. 

You know, we initially read that as Peer to Peer Privacy Prevention Act.

Oh.

So, yeah, Dave ranted about this quite substantially a little while ago, and wrote what we think is destined to be the definitive literary work on the topic. Which you should, y'know, read, and stuff.

Blab. A reader suggests a particularly disgusting combination.

cold corned beef hash with fried egg 

Would you like fries with that?

Blab. In a final, cataclysmic entry to our Disgusting Cold activity this week, a reader goes for Baroque.

cheese fondue. pizza. Stuart Andersen's pea soup. In-N-Out fries. lava.

That's two votes for lava, making it the popular favorite.

Blab. Seeking to console us over the recent loss of so many readers, one of our favorite Treasured Readers writes:

Could I have a lifetime subscription to Plurp please? (Oh, and one of those pretty things to read it for/to me.
Thanks -AJL 

Absolutely! And here is your pretty thing:

Blab. A reader sings that sweet siren song.

Please double my subscription fees at once.  And more pictures of belly-buttons, please.

We are always happy to pander to the perverse fetishes of our Treasured Readers. Especially Treasured Readers who do the math.

Blab. A reader who must have gotten a really good deal on periods writes:

Oh yes Steve, some of us are keeping track, and as for those unnerved well most of THEM aren't even American ............. so it doesn't count does it?

I'm reminded of the joke "How do you sleep in a bed with an elephant" Answer: "Very very carefully."

SOOOOO........... If you excuse the simplifications and distortions of the following summary of some current thinking in my country, then some of us think.....

'Americans are great, if somewhat insular, and arogant (as a people not as individuals).  Their country, well, more of us proportionally, have been killed and wounded, fighting for American interests in the last 50 years than anyone else (including Americans).'

'Our Government fell because some of us didn't like our soldiers risking their lives in Afghanistan, where we have no interests, except to please the U.S., but our new government is even more pro US.'

'The USA has bombed more countries, destabilized more governments (30+) without declaring war on them, than anyone else in the last 50 years.'

'The USA commonly gives aid and succor to tyrants and terrorists, and even trains them, as LONG AS THEY ARE THE RIGHT SORT OF TERRORIST.'

'In any other civilized country the current President wouldn't have won the elections , Oh thats right he didn't.. he was just declared the winner, like tyrants and cheats everywhere are.' Its not what even I expected from a such a great country.

'But they intend good don't they? so its sort of .... alright!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  In fact its GREAT!!!!!!!!! KEEPING THE WORLD SAFE FOR ..................... um ................. Americans??'

So, when September 11 came the whisper went around "............. Ah .... the sound...of some F***ing BIG chickens Finally coming home to roost ..........."

Hope there are no more chickens on their way and I hope none of them come near you and your loved ones.

And I don't approve or condone.. I just sort of expected it ............ long ago.

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a chicken at her.

Blab. A contingent reader informs us that ...

It depends on what you pay 

What does? The Clairvoyant Synchronization of Random Walks?

Blab. On the notion of killing a system of belief, a reader writes:

Not much animism around nowadays. Maybe killing off Native Americans was contributory?

Could be. Animism is, we expect, less widespread than it once was. Definitely not killed off, but tamped down a bit. Slaughtering Native Americans may have contributed to that in the Western Hemisphere, but in the Eastern Hemisphere, it looks to have occurred at the hands of a more virulent meme: Buddhism.

Blab. A reader seeks to excuse evildoings by picking nits.

Re: non-U.S. citizens don't have the right to...

Really depends upon what you mean when you use that tricky word "right." I'm pretty sure there's some non-U.S. citizen right now being tried without benefit of counsel and not by a jury of his peers. Are we obligated to intervene?

Are the rights positive in nature, arising only via mutual agreement, or negative, inherent in the nature of man? Or is it some terrible jumble of principle and pragmatism?

Talk of rights is often complicated by the fact that people often think they know exactly what they mean, and it is often quite different from the thing the people listening think the term refers to.

We always thought old Tom phrased it well.

We hold these truths to be self-evident,—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Interestingly, it does not say all Americans.

We didn't use the word right, though; the article we cited did. We were just suggesting, modestly, as always, that it might not be a completely dandy idea for a government to figure that it can imprison pretty much anyone it wants to, without cause, without evidence, without recourse, and without end.

But hey, what do we know?

Blab. A reader complicates our life.

actively smoking will also kill your cat and add a distinctive, woodlike flavor to the meat.

Ooh! Now we're stuck trying to choose between hickory and mesquite.

Blab. In a spectacular show of pictorial largesse, a reader sends us a shot of ...

Nine tons of giant squid

... at La Jolla Cove, our old stomping grounds. Cthulhu must have missed our change of address notice.

Yo. Bumper sticker we ought to get:

Have You Picked Your
Low Hanging Fruit Today?

Yo. It looks like such good news, but ...

A US federal judge has ordered the US Justice Department to disclose the names of suspects being held in connection with the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington. District Judge Gladys Kessler said the government had 15 days to comply and allowed for only two exceptions: 

• If the detainee is a material witness to a terror investigation 
• If the detainee requests it 

Expect all of them to be declared material witnesses in the next two weeks.

Plop. The world's worst chess program.
 

	Plurp	Stupid Computer
1.	d2-d4	h7-h6
2.	e2-e4	a7-a6
3.	b1-c3	b7-b5
4.	g1-f3	c8-b7
5.	c1-f4	h6-h5
6.	g2-g3	f7-f6
7.	f1-h3	h8-h7
8.	h3-f5	h7-h8
9.	f5-g6	Drool

Plurp.

The blue dog
had no
rights

Thursday, August 1, 2002

Blab. It must be the summer heat. What else would explain the flood of reader mail today, starting with a great variety of entries to this week's Dandy Plurp Game - Disgusting Cold - in which we ask you to name some foodstuff which is disgusting when served cold?

disgusting when served cold:

Dinty Moore Beef Stew (and its enigmatic cousin, Chunky Sirloin Burger)
Miso Soup
fried eggs (especially the yolk)
Hash Browns
Refried Beans

Now I feel all ooky

Kafkaesque

We have to admit we guessed the authorship of this marvelous piece before we saw the signature. That must mean we've been married too long.

Our second entry today takes a rather literary tack.

Revenge is said to be best served cold, but one might construe this to mean that it's good for the server, and thus bad for the servee. So in other words, the one who actually has to eat it finds it less palatable cold.

Which begs the question, what is warm revenge like, anyway?

p.s. Ramen is really nasty when served cold, though quite good (depending on flavor and preparation skill) warm.

We're not sure about the connection between revenge and Ramen, other than the R. Continuing on the path of greasy foods, a reader submits a Disgusting Cold entry with which everyone must agree.

French fries, specifically McDonald's ones, are icky when served cold. Or at least quite a bit significantly ickier than when served warm.

We find McDonald's french fries one of the great delights of life, when served hot. They are quite awful when cold, though.

Meanwhile, an enophile and phase transitionist writes:

Disgusting when served cold  -  'Red wine' - if you allow liquid as 'food' and suprisingly despite your guidelines. 'Ice cream'. Is there anything more disgusting than really cold slablike ice cream on a really cold or even hot day? Its so bad cold than nearly all of us lick it to warm it up and get the flavour before consuming, or hold it in our mouths even at the risk of an ice cream headache (see this fascinating technical article on 'brain freeze')

If we're prepared to take these risks surely it proves we'll do anything to avoid ice cream served cold?

We hadn't thought of it that way! We shall have to notify OSHA immediately of this great threat. You scream, we scream ...

Again in the phylum of Greasy Foods, a reader enters:

Irish stew

This might be the progenitor of the Dinty Moore Beef Stew (and its enigmatic cousin), discussed above.

Finally, we receive our first entry in the Mathematical Conjecture category.

P=NP

While we have not tried it ourself, of course, we can easily imagine how this would be disgusting if served cold. Perhaps that's why no one does it.

Blab. A reader finds the Britney Spears, Ph.D. site

This site claims that Britney Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. It even has a picture of her lip-syncing a formula. I guess you can learn SO much more contemplating HER navel rather than your own.

Also see this competition "to rewrite one of Britney Spears songs to include a scientific or technical principle in an amusing manner."

(Notice that we didn't put this in the Disgusting Cold section. We're trying to be good. Really we are.)

Blab. We can't get anything right this week, as illustrated by yet another customer loss.

"That reader who was searching repeatedly for New Jersey not existing writes:"

No, no, no. It wasn't I looking for that. Can't you get anything right? Cancel my subscription forthwith.

L.

Meanwhile, another reader sends an ominous warning to anyone else who might be considering canceling their subscription.

P.S.  Cancel my subscription forthwith

Another victory for the Mind Control Lasers.

And even more collateral damage:

My subscription didn't come with any forth. What's the deal? 

You did not receive any forth with your subscription because we don't like you. Buzz off.

Blab. Despite our feeling of utterly hopeless depression at having lost so many Treasured Readers, our mood is somewhat buoyed by the receipt of this annual letter from a still-Treasured Reader.

(not certain of our whereabouts this December, we send our annual letter early…)

Well, it is that time of the year again, is it not?  A time of joy, renewal, and hope.  A time for looking back and sharing with family and  friends. 

Chester, our thirteen year old Irish setter, came to a tragic though curious end this year during our annual visit to the National Parks. As you will recall from last year’s seasonal letter (we have dropped “Christmas” you will note, having had complaints from our niece, the convert to Judaism who has recently converted to Islam, much to the consternation of her Orthodox in-laws, but more of that later) Chester’s sight was becoming problematic.  A depth of field problem, it seems, and it had worsened.  While we tried to be sensitive to the fact that dogs hate to be laughed at, his cocking his leg at the postman, having mistaken him for his favorite maple, did result in some guffaws, the postman’s not among them.  Well, back to the tragedy.  We had just returned from a hike in the Grand Canyon…the Red Canyon Trail to the Colorado and back…when Chester spotted what he must have thought a rather sleek and silvery female whippet just getting up a head for a good run. Ever the puppy anxious for play and a good mating, off he went in pursuit of love, only to merge with a Greyhound Bus heading for the Hoover Dam with the women’s chorus from Our Lady of Perpetual Anguish in Sedona.  While we will sorely miss his company we know in his muddled head he was pursuing a dream date.  (Do dogs smile?  We love the big questions.)  The ladies of the chorus rendered a moving In Paridsum from Fauré’s requiem before continuing to the dam. 

Gerald, our eldest, is still single and in no hurry to settle down with a nice girl.  He seems happy in his job at Fidelity where he runs statistics for a fund manager to whom he is devoted. She seems like a nice woman.  They share a love for canasta, Broadway shows, and ascots. We think there is an affinity there but try not to pressure him, though god knows we could use the room his ever appreciating Barbie collection takes up. 

Beth and Terry are practicing law in Washington, each at a different firm.  Beth is doing environmental law and a lot of pro bono work for animal rights groups, though she is beginning to think that this latter is too narrow, and is toying with the idea of a new vegetable rights group which hears the cry of the tomato with every BLT served in America’s luncheonettes.  We hear this mostly through Terry, with whom she is sporadically in touch.  We also hear that she continues to hate us with a fury for having brought her up in such a sheltered, loving  and privileged environment.  Plus ca change.  Terry thinks pro bono work demeans the client, so she spends her billable life working for clients like Exxon Mobil Corp., Human Rights magazine, and the George Lincoln Rockwell Memorial Foundation. The namesake of the last is not known to us, but she says he was a much misunderstood figure.  Daniel’s advertising talents (he’s still in New York) are being put to work on a makeover for the prune growers group, at the moment.  He volunteered for Nader and some of our friends are angry with him for that, while others, particularly his old girlfriend, Jessica (she is almost healed, though she still is on the gorge-purge cycle) think that we have gotten what we deserve for not having hued to higher standards as represented by Ralph and God, not necessarily in that order.

As hinted at above, our favorite niece, Beth Sheba (nee Mary) is in conflict with her husband’s Orthodox family over several issues, but the straw that broke this particular camel’s back was when she sold the second set of Rosenthal service to buy a prayer rug for her new Muslim orthodoxy. Her husband, Phil couldn’t care less, since his major belief system is bound up with the fate of the Boston Red Sox, but it is putting odd pressures on their son, Ibrahim (formerly Abraham, don’t ask) who has to listen to the grandparents’ complaints about his mother, his mother’s harangues about the Golan Heights, and his father’s tortured reasoning about why this will be the year for his  baseball team. 

Outside of the pancreatic cancer, our impending loss of the business, thanks to Enron’s odd accounting methods and non-payment, things are going along as one would expect. And we trust things are just as cheery for you.

A pretty good year, all told. Thanks for passing that along, and do give our best wishes to the various Beths.

Blab. Our coinage turns out to be worth something.

Congrats, your page will the first on google to reference "twitblog" 

But not the last, we trust. We suspect that this neologism has legs.

Blab. A reader embarrasses itself in as much public as our humble blog can manage.

Boolean or no, she's still not 14.

Interesting! There are several possibilities.

1. We didn't know that Claudia Schiffer is 31. We thought she was 14. We feel obliged to report on the pregnancy of all 14 year olds here in Plurp, without comment of course. Claudia was just the first one we knew about. We said silly things about "14 == 31" because we thought it was completely unrelated to the Claudia Schiffer thing.
2. Something else.

Blab. A reader attempts to convince us that substituting the word Plurp into a well-known poem is, in fact, a literary art form.

"To he sh*thouse poet for his wit.
A monument of solid.......PLURP!!!!"

I don't think so, which suggests its not as easy as you seem to think.  I suggest it depends on where you get your verses from.  In fact after spending several hours going through many sources of verse (and worse) I have come to the conclusion that the more highly thought of the verse, the easier to place 'plurp' within it and still be funny.   Which is to say the least ....... very ....... strange. 

We find it deeply disturbing that anyone would spend several hours doing this. But then, we write this Weblog, so ...

Blab. Deepening our depression, one of our most steadfast readers demonstrates how sad our life is, being forced to write this stupid blog on our own time and dime.

Re financing Plurp:  I am happy to announce that I have obtained a rare interdepartmental grant from the departments of Agriculture and Defense that pays me a generous stipend NOT to write Plurp.  Modeled after agricultural subsidies, this program aims to prop up the price of web pages and allow hard disk space to remain fallow, thus regenerating magnetic domains. Originally, the stipend was to not_Plurp_write every seventh year (following normal crop rotation patterns). However recently, the grant was extended to not_Plurp_writing 24x7, with a goal of achieving 99.99% not_Plurp_writing performance!   Thanks to your tax dollars, perhaps even six sigma not_Plurp_writing may be eventually be possible. 

Plurp reader #1 

We will think of you, very specifically of you, on April 15.

Blab. A reader is confused by our excitement.

I don't know why you are getting so excited about anti-gravity research, surely you of all people would know, as Solomon Short put it:-
"You can believe anything you want.  The universe is not obliged to keep a straight face." 

We're not surprised that there are folks out there "doing" anti-gravity research. We need people like that. If not for them, who else would wander the halls of physics departments late at night, muttering to themselves and running their fingers through their greasy hair?

What surprised us is (a) these people are employed by the likes of NASA and Boeing and, (b) their organizations engaged their PR staffs to let everyone know about it, rather than hiding their crackpots in the broom closet.

But that's just us.

Blab. A reader provides us with another reason to not bet on humans as the evolutionary winners.

With reference to the 'introduced species' posts you may be interested that Australian government and otherwise, wildlife experts have been for some time in the midst of a debate about whether the 'dingo' or local wild dog introduced by the native inhabitants some 15,000 years ago is 'native' or 'introduced' and therefore whether it should be protected or wiped out as a threat to the environment. To be fair to the 'wipeout' faction Australia is unique in being originally totally mammal free, if you exclude this dog. To be fair to the 'protect' faction 15,000 years is a long time to be considered a foreigner.

This is the same Australia that introduced rabbits back in 1859 for sport hunting, then introduced myxomatosis in the 1950s, and then the rabbit calicivirus in 1995 to contain the burgeoning rabbit population? The same Australia that introduced poisonous cane toads in 1935 to control the cane beetle population, said cane toads since then threatening the native frogs and other small ground creatures?

Okey dokey, then.

Blab. What is it all the way down? This reductionist knows.

If it's utils all the way down,
maybe it is also tools all the way up,
we are just a tool in the hand of our atoms,
we just do what they want.

[Yup, it is OK to be discomforted and confused at this point.]

Heck, we're pretty much always discomforted and confused.

Plurp. Passive smoking can kill your cat. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Plop.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters held in Cuba do not have a right to U.S. court hearings, allowing the military to hold them indefinitely without filing charges. 

Okey dokey. So what's the general principle here? Folks who aren't U.S. citizens can be held indefinitely by the U.S. military without the need to file charges? Life imprisonment in cages without trial, without review, without appeal?

Um. We work with a lot of folks who aren't U.S. citizens. Some of our best friends aren't U.S. citizens. Most of the world isn't U.S. citizens.

The 600 men held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not in the United States and thus do not fall under the jurisdiction of federal courts, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said. 

Well all righty, then. Good thing the military didn't bring them onto U.S. soil. They cleverly took them to a U.S. military base carved out from a hostile country. Somehow, that isn't U.S. soil. And, somehow, that makes it all OK.

We can think of about 5.5 billion folks who should be unnerved by this. Make that 5.5 billion plus one. If you're keeping track.

If anyone is keeping track.

Plop. Seen from a Metro North platform yesterday, in upscale Westchester County, north of New York.

We despair for the ideals of America.

But what would it mean to kill a system of belief, anyhow? Would it make sense to say, Kill utilitarianism? Or Kill theism? Or Kill rationalism?

The truth is, our memes outlive us all.

Granted, mentally aberrant groups throughout history have attempted to stamp out systems of belief, mainly by slaughtering people who held those beliefs. We're not aware of that ever working. Has it?

Yo. You know what interests us? What interests us is folks who spend a lot of time thinking about food. Not eating it, mind you, or anticipating eating it. But thinking about it. The theory of it. The politics of it. Stuff like that.

Food theorists. Who would have guessed?

Plop. Loyalty cards (at supermarkets and such) take on new meaning as the FBI is now routinely monitoring your buying behavior.

[O]ne national grocery chain voluntarily handed over to the government records from its customer loyalty card database in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 

And others say customer databases -- including those culled from travel, financial and insurance industries -- are routinely shared with the government for surveillance purposes.

Cheer, comrade. You're not cheering.

Yo. A seminar at work tomorrow:

Clairvoyant Synchronization of Random Walks

We love this place.

Yo. It's hard to know what to think sometimes.

Brock Enright, a 25-year-old artist, has created a business where people pay him thousands of dollars a time to be violently abducted. 

Around 30 people have used the service so far, and dozens of other personalised 'kidnap plans' are in preparation. 

Each kidnap is different, to cater for the particular tastes of the individual. 

Clients are mostly bound and gagged and taken away for a period of incarceration that lasts for hours, or even days. 

Even more odd, this is happening in our little home town of NYC.

It turns out that Brock double dips. He exhibits videotapes of these kidnappings as art ("art"). (Search for "Brock" on the linked page.)

Yo. Better bombing through chemistry.

U.S. jet fighter pilots, responsible for at least 10 deadly "friendly fire" accidents in the Afghanistan war, have regularly been given amphetamines to fly longer hours.

Then when they return to base, the pilots are given sedatives by air force doctors to help them sleep, before beginning the whole cycle again on the next mission, often less than 12 hours later. [...]

It is not known whether Dexedrine was involved in the friendly fire incident in which an American fighter jet dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers early on April 18. But the possibility did come to the mind of one defence analyst. 

"Better bombing through chemistry," remarked John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-area defence policy think-tank.

Plurp.

The blue dog
decided that hateful memes
were disgusting
no matter how they were served

Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Blab. One of our formerly Treasured Readers writes:

Dear Editor: The Helenisms aren't funny any more. Cancel my subscription forhwith.

Oh dear. Plurp itself has dangerously few readers, and our premium Pay-Per-Plurp service is so perilously close to bankruptcy that we've had to forge revenues for the last several quarters just to look solvent.

And if that wasn't bad enough, an entirely different reader writes:

10:30 and no new Plurp. Cancel my subscription forthwith.

Looks like we'll have to reconsider our plans to get rich from blogging. Maybe we should run an accounting firm.

Blab. A reader complains but, refreshingly, does not abandon us.

I think that we should be paid to read all that therapy.

Did we somehow leave you off the payment list? Sorry about that. Please contact your account representative.

Blab. This week's Dandy Plurp Game - Disgusting Cold - in which we ask you to name some foodstuff which is disgusting when served cold, seems to have caused a certain low level of brain activity amongst a few of our readers. We apologize for waking you.

eggplant is awful cold

As in, ices your hands when you remove it from the freezer?

cow brains. No, wait. I meant lava.

Now you see, brains falls into trouble on that game restriction that it has to be non-disgusting when served hot. Lava, on the other hand, is a dandy entry.

You stole my lamb chops.  Now give them back!

Very well. But we're warning you: they're cold.

Blab. A reader explains it to us.

They laughed at Edison, they laughed at Einstein, they laughed at Tesla.

Yes, and they also laughed at a million other people whose names we don't remember, because those million people were wrong.

Ah. We get it now.

Blab. A reader proves that it is not necessary to denigrate it more than three times. Which is a relief.

Too easy?  Tedious?  Fine, I'll take the hint (now that you've hinted about three times) and end thusly:

This is the way the unannounced contest ends,
This is the way the unannounced contest ends,
This is the way the unannounced contest ends,
Not with a bang but a plurp.

Now that's funny!

Blab. That reader who was searching repeatedly for New Jersey not existing writes:

New Jersey does not exist

Interesting. I had a high school teacher who used this as an exercise. Prove to him that New Jersey exists, he said, and for every bit of "proof" offered by members of the class, he came up with a counter argument, some of which were pretty solid, many of which were as logically twisted as a creationist's.

Ultimately, I think the conclusion reached is that there isn't necessarily one overarching piece of evidence that will prove something, that, at some point, you just have to accept the preponderance of the evidence.

Personally, however, I still argue that New Jersey doesn't really exist. I'm glad that someone else agrees with me.

L.

As the train pulled out of Penn Station - we were on our way to D.C. some years ago - we told Helen that New Jersey did not exist. But I can see it right there out the window, she protested.

Yes, we replied. Amazing, isn't it? Advanced digital video permits unparalleled resolution and even limited 3D effects. Just look at the fabulous texture mapping on the "old brick walls", and the way the graffiti looks like real paint.

I don't know why I put up with you, she said, changing the subject.

Blab. Mistaking our humble blog for a Boolean expression evaluator, a reader writes:

14 == 31

False.

Blab. Mistaking our humble blog for the IEEE, a reader writes:

There are currently about 45,103 MAC addresses for each person on the planet. You think that is enough?

No. Could you make some more, please? Thanks.

Plurp. At least this saves us from the trauma of trying to broker for a company called Monday. What a nightmare, one analyst said.

Yow. The super secret diary of Gollum/Sméagol. LOTR as a twitblog.

Day Thirty Four
Balrog-Gandalf conversation did not go as well as hoped, resulting in gory death of both. Perhaps was not cut out to be matchmaker after all.

Pretty funny.

Yow. Speaking of pretty funny, this is Strike Two for Janes Defense Weekly.

Bin Ladin and other Muslim extremists, it was reported, are posting encrypted, or scrambled, phonographs and messages on popular websites and using them to plan terrorist activities against the US and its allies.

Yeah, we know it's just a typo. Still ... !

Plurp.

The blue dog
was an encrypted,
or scrambled,
accounting firm

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Blab. It seems to be Junk Science Week here in Plurpdom. And we love that! A reader provides a needed respite by reminding us that ...

There is no such thing as natural.

Interesting.

Next week, Dreamworks will release the animated movie, "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron." [...]

It will also give a big boost to the folks trying to save America's wild horses. [... T]he effort is ironic since the American government spends millions every year to keep out so-called "invader species." Just last week, Congress held hearings to reauthorize the Invasive Species Act, which tries to keep foreign critters and plants out of America. 

You see, the mustangs are the quintessential "invasive species," in that they were left here by actual invaders, namely the Spanish conquistadors of the 1500s. North America hasn't had an indigenous equine since at least the last Ice Age about 8,000 years ago. 

It occurs to us that the species homo sapiens is also not indigenous to the Western Hemisphere or, indeed, to anywhere but a small part of Africa. Given how speciation occurs, virtually no species is native to anywhere but a relatively small (and sometimes tiny) region.

We enjoy those who suggest that "invading species" should be kept out. We wonder at what point in ecological history they think this policy should be applied.

Blab. In this same vein, a reader informs us that ...

Alex Chiu wants you to live forever.

Isn't that nice of him? See, Alex invented Immortality Devices. Oh sure, they look like finger rings made of magnets, but they're really Immortality Devices. And you know they're real because the U.S. Patent Office has honored Alex with a patent.

The invention claimed is: 

1. A method of utilizing a magnetic ring adapted to be worn on all the fingers including the thumb of each hand to supplement strength and speed of existing magnetic
flux current cycled around a human body to increase health of the human body by virtue of blood circulation being directly proportional to magnetic flux and the
magnetic flux being a natural turbine to circulate blood and which consists of no moving parts but yet still propels the blood, wherein the magnetic ring has a ring with
a size adapted to comfortably and snugly fit on all the fingers including the thumb of each hand and a pair of permanent magnets that extend outwardly along opposed
positions on said ring and have North and South poles, said method comprising the steps of: [yadda yadda]

But that's not all! Alex, clever little devil that he is, has sections of his Web site devoted to ...

ALEX CHIU'S NEW DARWINISM

Full of graphics and animated GIF's. How a group of chemicals form into a cell. What makes animals crawl, swim, or walk. Why can humans think. Why are there male and female. Must read! 

SPACE STATION 

Discover the unsolved mysteries of our universe with Alex Chiu. Full of graphics and explanations to make sure that you understand completely. 

Don't miss these sections. They are very instructive. Nonetheless, they might sound a little nutty to you. Alex has anticipated that, plastering his home page with this:

Many people have scorned and laughed at the persons below. But one day, they were all proven to be correct.

And yes, the pictures of the persons below are of Edison, Einstein and Tesla. They laughed at Edison. They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at Tesla. Now, finally, they're laughing at Alex.

Alex is clearly one step from greatness. Or a job at Boeing.

Blab. An observant reader writes:

Seen on the back of a Tshirt wearing bicyclist rding down Broadway today:

Chir Ping Chicken
Chinese Food

212 *** ****

Curiously, this might be entirely mundane. Similar to earlier observations.

Blab. Perhaps exasperated at having to read yesterday's Plurp entries, some of which went on for, like, paragraphs, a reader writes:

Can't your readers just say it and then shut up??

Yes and no.

Think of it as therapy. A strange kind of therapy. Therapy where the client types in revealing bits of internal psychodrama and we pay our Web host (and spend our valuable time) to enable you to read it here. Well, we don't actually pay our Web host, as that mysterious collection of people hasn't actually figured out how to tell us how much we owe yet. But you get the idea.

Blab. Andy Rooney writes:

Modern society is getting way too complicated. I went to buy some 'Pledge' today in my local supermarket and discovered that their were now 12 KINDS of Pledge. 'Woodgrain' 'Double strength' 'Super waxy' and 'Pine scented' being just some of them.

Now admittedly 10 years ago when I brought the last spraycan of it,  I had to choose 'Lemon scented' or 'New Formula' and that was annoying, but in the end manageable (I chose 'Lemon scented' if you must know.)

But this ....... the girl at the checkout was very helpful "If you tell me what you use it on, maybe I can help " she said. But no ...... when I told her that for 40 years I've used it to keep Motorcycle helmet's hard and scratchfree as well as perspex visors clear while racing BMX cruiser, Beach racing motorcycles, karts, road racing motorcycles, and just ordinary cruising pillion with my loved ones by M/C   (in the dark among other conditions) at speeds in excess of 220kph where believe me you want to be able to see clearly, very clearly ..... all she could say is "but Pledge is a furniture polish"

Indeed it is ........ its always been just a furniture polish, but as my 11 year old said tonight as I squirted the last of the old stuff onto the scratched Final Fantasy VIII Playstation CD and made it work a little better. "This stuff is cool, for all sorts of things"

In addition I've been using recently on the fairing and tank of my little bright red Kawasaki AR50R which I use on beautiful sunny winter days like today, to annoy the hell out of other motorists, by passing them where they are travelling slowly after zooming past me on the straights ....... downhill corners and 'S' bends mainly (creative driving I think its called ...... Hell , Steve not all of us can afford a Miata!)

Well is the new stuff any good? (I came away with 'Woodgrain' in the end, after some serious peering at the cans because they didn't have 'Racing Motorcycle Visor'and because my eyes are getting funny in artificial light at my age) 

Who knows! its never been any good as a furnture polish, by the way. Well that's unfair as its easy to use maybe, but there are much better furniture polishes, but until I was spoiled for choice never a better small scratch filler, on perspex. I hate some kinds of progress!

Blab. A reader with good timing wants to know:

Does anyone really read that long winded stuff your readers send you?

No.

Blab. On Ian's Helenism from yesterday, a reader reveals its aberrant internal mental state.

I don't know if it's a Helenism but it sure is funny! 

Is it? We thought it was green.

Blab. A reader reveals extreme life confusion.

So, are you suggesting we sell the Boeing stock?

So let's review. Our readers are asking us for financial advice? Now that's weird.

Just because Boeing funds physically impossible anti-gravity research is certainly no reason to doubt the brilliant, insightful management of the firm. No reason to doubt their entrepreneurial genius. No reason to doubt their profit potential.

It is reason to doubt their sanity, their high school education, their grasp of the simplest organizing principles of reality. But if the 90s proved nothing else, they proved that psychotics could run their stock price up like ... well, like crazy.

So buy, we say. Buy Boeing. Hey, you never know.

Blab. What is it all the way down?

Maybe it's Gilligan's Island all the way down....

Uh, yeah. This is that mental circuits thing from yesterday, but using characters from Gilligan's Island to portray the various states of consciousness / mind / awareness / something like that.

We are not clever enough to make this stuff up. Not by a lot.

Blab. A reader continues the tedious form.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere plurp is loosed upon the world.

Has it occurred to our readers that this is too easy? We need a more interesting game.

Plurp. To celebrate this summer's hellish temperatures (at least around here) we announce this week's Dandy Plurp Game. We call it Disgusting Cold, and here's how it works.

1. You think up some food that is disgusting when served cold.
2. You Blab it to us and we publish it here.

That's it! (We like to keep these things simple.) Just a couple of constraints, though:

1. It has to be a food that is usually served hot. Otherwise, duh.
2. It cannot be a food that is disgusting even when served hot (e.g. canned beets).

Just to show you that it's not impossible, here's our entry: lamb chops.

See? It's easy. Now it's your turn.

Yow. Those desperate readers who jumped on Plurp as soon as it was posted yesterday may have missed one of the most fantastic events of our time, and we mean that literally. So go back and read about Boeing and NASA investigating the Russian anti-gravity device.

It has everything! A mysterious Russian physicist, discredited by the scientific establishment, unable to publish because the Evil Empire (the old one) somehow prevents him. The unrepeatable experiment; the mysterious reason. The incredible result that would Change Life As We Know It. The famous scientists who say it's impossible. The brave research institutions who are trying to prove it anyway. And, of course, the media. The panting, brainless media. They never studied.

Gotta love it. Just gotta.

Yo. Speaking of extinction events, here's good news.

Astronomers said Monday they have determined that a newly discovered, 1.2-mile-wide asteroid will miss the Earth in 2019. 

This time.

Plurp. Fourteen-year-old model Claudia Schiffer is pregnant.

Plurp. Most popular search on our site this past week?

new jersey does not exist

Plurp. Napster Future Seen Bleak. Duh.

Plurp.

The blue dog
thought of it as therapy;
a strange kind of therapy,
in which The Professor invents
an anti-gravity device that works only on
Claudia Schiffer.

Monday, July 29, 2002

Blab. A reader catches himself listening to himself. Always dangerous.

A Helenism, from my own mouth:

'... Get your finger in gear...'

  * "Pull your finger out"
  * "Get your arse in gear"

{inw}

Interesting! Pull your finger out means stop loafing and get going. We don't know why. Or rather, we think we do know, but we're not saying here. Get your arse in gear seems to be British for buck up. We don't know what buck up means, but we'll assume it's something like hurry up, the more colloquial translation.

So, we have a winner!

Blab. Reader Eliot writes:

I grow old... my mind's usurped...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers plurped.

We'll watch for that.

Blab. What is it, all the way down?

"It's circuits, circuits, circuits, all the way down."

(The linked pages provide a wonderful illustration of why psychologists should not be allowed to write about science, and why hypnotists should not be allowed to write about psychology.)

Blab. That reader from the future gestures in the direction of ...

The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012

Synopsis: Using the military to do other than military stuff (e.g. act as internal police, interdict drugs, teach in public schools) opens Pandora's Box, resulting in a coup and et cetera.

So don't do that.

Blab. A lisping reader pulls us further down the squirrel hole of insanity.

beep the meep is one of The Doctor's moth ruthless enemies

Ah. Against our own wishes and better judgment, we learn more.

Beep is the self-proclaimed Most High of the Meeps, a race of peace-loving creatures whose exposure to a Black sun mutated them into a warlike race. 

Blab. Pondering our recent suggestion to bet on the evolutionary winner, a reader solves all the problems of speciation and biospheric homogenization for us. We love it when our readers do our work for us.

Baited again, sigh. :-) Species do not, in general, "move around".  When there is geographic isolation, motion of species across a zones that they can't easily cross can be extremely rare, as in a new founder population every 1-100 million years. (10000-1000000 human lifetimes). This is why Australia has its own native [micro]flora/fauna, and why the native [micro]flora/fauna of the Americas is so different from that of Eurasia. Humans really have changed the rules (constants) of biology; the sorts of population mixing that happen now are at least 10000 times faster than pre-high-tech human. It will be obvious in the fossil record a billion years from now (if there is a fossil record).

If we stop homogenizing the biosphere right away, say 100 years from now when we get over our gratuitously moving atoms around phase, things might quickly settle down / coevolve into a less chaotic instability, perhaps as quickly as a few million years. There are a broad range of possibilities, basically human extinction (plus whatever other species we take out with us in our self-specicide), or humans(*) plus whatever life forms we allow to coexist with us plus whatever other lifeforms manage to coexist with us despite our attempts at specicide. I think we're both on the side of "humans plus"; the disagreement is simply a matter of how much we should mess around with the current system without any rigorous way of  predicting the consequences.

(*) Plus whatever lifeforms have managed over the last billion years to be incorporated into our cells/DNA (and that of our tolerated co-life forms) and which we choose not to edit out. 

The reader correctly describes the effects of human transportation on the mixing of species. Nowhere is this clearer than in the globalization of disease. The plague took years to decimated Europe because it spread at the rate of human foot travel. Today, a new flu strain travels around the world in a matter of weeks - on airplanes.

It is interesting, though, that humans are not the only mixers. Mammals of various kinds have carried seeds over large distances (as anyone who has ever gotten a prickly sticker will attest). Birds commonly carry seeds (and, in their circulatory systems, viruses) over hundreds or thousands of miles.

So there's nothing weird about carrying species around. It happens all the time. It is true that a newly introduced species can grow significantly after its introduction. But it's all part of The Process.

Our reader wonders how much we should mess around with the current system without any rigorous way of predicting the consequences. Would it be rude of us to mention that Doing Nothing will have equally unpredictable consequences? Those who thought that Nature had a Grand Balance never lived through any of the previous great extinctions.

Remembering our suggestion to bet on the winner in the game of evolution, we feel constrained to point out that humans may not be the winners. We're a pretty wonky species, when it comes down to it, and we've hardly been around long enough, on an evolutionary scale, to be noticeable. We might be better off betting on blue-green algae. Or brine shrimp.

Blab. A reader works hard to see meaning in the random noise that often shows up in our Blab box.

I saw the "utils" reference, now I've got to browse the archives to figure out what the "conversation" is about. In economics, "utils" are a measure of the utility a person gets from a particular good. That way we can compare apples and oranges.

I see someone made a comment about the term "value." Undoubtably some people think of everything in terms of money value, but that's not the only explanation. 

Some economists would argue that you can place all things that we value on one big util scale. It's not so much putting everything in terms of goods and services, but putting everything (including goods and services) into one big measure of value.

If one cannot measure across different realms of value, how can one decide whether to buy a sports car or donate money to a children's hospital? Go on a vacation or spend two weeks teaching kids how to read? We make these decisions all the time, and a good model will try to explain why, rather than hand-wave certain parts of the world as being "infinitely precious" or otherwise inaccessible to analysis.

Do you value a can of coke more, or a 1-in-a-billion chance of finding a cure for leukemia a day earlier? Even passively, we make these decisions constantly.

-pTang

We have no idea what our reader meant by that odd remark. We figured it referred to software utilities. But what do we know?

Be that as it may, the choices you ask us to make are easy! Buy a sports car (duh). Go on a vacation (without the kids). Can of Coke.

Plop. This item caused an emergency re-issue of today's Plurp, it being way too good to pass up! According to Jane's Defense Weekly, the authoritative source on all things military (get this):

Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, has admitted it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology if the science underpinning them can be engineered into hardware.

As part of the effort, which is being run out of Boeing’s Phantom Works advanced research and development facility in Seattle, the company is trying to solicit the services of a Russian scientist who claims he has developed anti-gravity devices in Russia and Finland. The approach, however, has been thwarted by Russian officialdom.

The Boeing drive to develop a collaborative relationship with the scientist in question, Dr Evgeny Podkletnov, has its own internal project name: ‘GRASP’ — Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion. 

A GRASP briefing document obtained by JDW sets out what Boeing believes to be at stake. "If gravity modification is real," it says, "it will alter the entire aerospace business." 

GRASP’s objective is to explore propellentless propulsion (the aerospace world’s more formal term for anti-gravity), determine the validity of Podkletnov’s work and "examine possible uses for such a technology". Applications, the company says, could include space launch systems, artificial gravity on spacecraft, aircraft propulsion and ‘fuelless’ electricity generation — so-called ‘free energy’.

But it is also apparent that Podkletnov’s work could be engineered into a radical new weapon. The GRASP paper focuses on Podkletnov’s claims that his high-power experiments, using a device called an ‘impulse gravity generator’, are capable of producing a beam of ‘gravity-like’ energy that can exert an instantaneous force of 1,000g on any object — enough, in principle, to vaporise it, especially if the object is moving at high speed.

Podkletnov maintains that a laboratory installation in Russia has already demonstrated the 4in (10cm) wide beam’s ability to repel objects a kilometre away and that it exhibits negligible power loss at distances of up to 200km. Such a device, observers say, could be adapted for use as an anti-satellite weapon or a ballistic missile shield. Podkletnov declared that any object placed above his rapidly spinning superconducting apparatus lost up to 2% of its weight. 

Although he was vilified by traditionalists who claimed that gravity-shielding was impossible under the known laws of physics, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) attempted to replicate his work in the mid-1990s. Because NASA lacked Podkletnov’s unique formula for the work, the attempt failed. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will shortly conduct a second set of experiments using apparatus built to Podkletnov’s specifications.

Boeing recently approached Podkletnov directly, but promptly fell foul of Russian technology transfer controls (Moscow wants to stem the exodus of Russian high technology to the West). 

The GRASP briefing document reveals that BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin have also contacted Podkletnov "and have some activity in this area". 

It is also possible, Boeing admits, that "classified activities in gravity modification may exist". The paper points out that Podkletnov is strongly anti-military and will only provide assistance if the research is carried out in the ‘white world’ of open development.

Oh lordy. We tried to edit that down for you, but its every word is just way too precious. Friend Ed said at lunch today that there was a slashdot thread claiming that Jane's published this, but we didn't believe him.

More about Podkletnov's "discovery" is here. And here.

The British journal New Scientist has reported in its 21 September 1996 issue that the article, which had been scheduled for publication in the Journal of Physics D: Applies Physics, has been withdrawn following a statement by the alleged co-author, Petri Vuorinen, denying that he ever worked on anti-gravity with Podkletnov.

The paper itself is here. There's a groupie site here (which features another anti-gravity device created by James F. Woodward, "a member of the faculty of Cal State Fullerton, in both the Physics and History departments.") And thousands of other links.

What can we say? What can we possibly say?

Rant. We have determined why cats are so anti-social, so disruptive to the modern household, so troublesome. In short, we have determined why cats are pests.

And the answer is: the Humane Society.

By ensuring that all cats are "neutered" (we love that term) before they are adopted, the Humane Society (and their running dogs) ensure that there are only two sources of cats in modern society: feral packs that inhabit junkyards, and the ramshackle houses of demented old women.

Clearly, neither of these is an environment that would tend to evolve loving, well-behaved pets. No, they breed either vicious predators or demanding brats. In short, they breed precisely those behaviors we observe in modern cats.

We would not think of allowing our particular monster to breed, creating more of his hellion spawn upon the Earth. Were it left to Mother Nature, his kind would become extinct, and the bulk of kittidom would be filled with sweet, good natured kitties. As god intended.

This new theoretical construct leads to a bold prediction: Things will get worse. As more of these annoying brats are bred, the Humane Society (and their furry symps) will call for even stricter neutering of cats in whatever civilized environs they can reach. This does not include, as you may have suspected, junkyards or the ramshackle houses of demented old women.

Mark our words. The world has seen the heyday of the loving housecat. Our ignorant interference with Evolution will come back to bite us in the end. Probably repeatedly.

Yow. Congrats to mouse for surviving Blogathon 2002.

Yo. Is raw meat conscious? Most assuredly, according to the careful experiment performed by the folks at the end of that link.

Plop. On the other hand, we cite the example of  Jack Chick, famous religious tract writer extraordinaire. You've probably been handed one of his little tracts on campus, or at the mall. As a sample, here's why Christians should never play D&D. Similarly, we learn about the origins of Islam.

We believe this proves conclusively that raw meat is not conscious.

Yak. From a conference call today.

Dan? Is that you?

Yes.

I thought you were another Dan.

I'm not.

Plurp.

The blue dog
originated in a conspiracy
by the Pope to overturn
evolution

Sunday, July 28, 2002

Blab. Reader Shelley makes us desperate.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my plurp, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Frankly, we'd rather not look on your plurp, if it's all the same to you.

Blab. A reader has something to say about statistics, prediction, humor, and their role in life.

The item about the Central Limit theorem is even funnier when you realize that had the experimenters used different sized die (smaller maybe) they would have got even stranger results .

For up to 5000 instruction cycles of a modern PC small devices don't work the way you would predict.

For a computer scientist this should be a hilarious result, and might even make a good one think if modern computer chips or projected designs share in the fun.

Certainly biological life being mainly chemical reactions obviously works differently from expected and its really funny when smart biological life doesn't think this is important or significant. 

Umkay. We probably don't want any stranger results.

Blab. Under the mystical influence of a really old issue of Plurp, a reader squeaks.

MEEP?

We have no idea. But it's not the first time.

Blab. A reader inaccurately accuses us of being a ...

Pedanticist

Actually, the term is pedant.

Blab. Turning the telepathic rays on that reader who said, At the bottom, it's all utils, a reader extrapolates as follows.

Perhaps s/he meant to say that it's utils all the way down?

Perhaps our reader is a turtle. Perhaps the moon is a harsh mistress. Perhaps you really can't eat just one.

Plurp. Thousands of giant flying squid wash ashore in La Jolla.

"It was just unbelievable," said Bill Halsey, 26. "They made these strange noises like a dolphin or a seal as they were dying." 

"The thing that weirds me out about the squid is that they have humanlike eyeballs," Clif Williams said. 

Yes, it does foresage the coming of Cthulhu.

Plurp. Well, this orgy of self-aggrandizing self-publication that we call Weblogging is at an end. How do we know? All too simple. That bastion of fussy semantics, that Old Media pedant's pedant, William Safire his own self, has now written an article entitled Blog in the New York Times Magazine. Somehow, it seems destined to be one of the most widely blogged Old Media articles ever.

Blog is a shortening of Web log. It is a Web site belonging to some average but opinionated Joe or Josie who keeps what used to be called a ''commonplace book'' -- a collection of clippings, musings and other things like journal entries that strike one's fancy or titillate one's curiosity. What makes this online daybook different from the commonplace book is that this form of personal noodling or diary-writing is on the Internet, with links that take the reader around the world in pursuit of more about a topic. 

To set one up (which I have not done because I don't want anyone to know what I think), you log on to a free service like blogger.com or xanga.com, fill out a form and let it create a Web site for you. Then you follow the instructions about how to post your thoughts, photos and clippings, making you an instant publisher. You then persuade or coerce your friends, family or colleagues to log on to you and write in their own loving or snide comments. 

That's certainly what we do.

Yow. Helen has a cool new digital photo editor that has the amazing ability to knit pics together into a panorama. Here, for example, are two panorama of the skyline as seen from our apartment.

Incredible verisimilitude.

Plurp.

The blue dog
was the result of William Safire putting
thousands of giant squid
into a digital photo
knitter

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