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2002.08.04 : 2002.08.10
Saturday, August 10, 2002
Blab. A reader expands our horizons. Or shrinks them.
We're not sure.
Did you know that "MIA" is
slang for buliMIA?
This leads us to the truth about Mia.
An apparently
lovely person who has it / does it. An
article on folks who are pro-Ana
(pro-anorexia) and pro-Mia (pro-bulimia). An Ana-By-Choice
site. People who think anorexia
is just a diet. And less.
We can only hope that this isn't our
Mia.
Blab. A reader clarifies yesterday's muddy
reporting of the New York Times.
Concerning determining primality
'quickly': they mean in polynomial
time, but they can't say that because it scares the non-mathematical
readership.
We feel sorry for that readership,
we really do.
How can they decide, without this
information, whether to allow their brains to implode from the awesomeness
of the result?
Wow. An exact polynomial-time test for primality? That is pretty
cool!
 The
naive algorithm for testing N for primality (try all integers less
than the square root of N) is exponential in the number of bits
in N. (We think; did we get that right?) While it's believable that
there's an approximate algorithm that's polynomial-time (it's not unusual
to find polynomial-time approximations to NP problems, for instance), it's
pretty surprising (to us, anyhow, not being a number theorist) that an
exact polynomial-time algorithm exists.
We assume this doesn't have any trivial extension to factoring, or the
entire crypto community would have had a collective heart attack by now.
Still!
Blab. A reader who must be as ancient and venerable as we are
writes:
Plurp, plurp, fizz, fizz,
oh what a belief it is.
And a nice mixing of the memes at that!
Blab. Part of the header of a piece of Chinese spam we received
today:
X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=5.8
tests=NO_REAL_NAME,DEAR_SOMEBODY,LINES_OF_YELLING,
UPPERCASE_25_50,MSG_ID_ADDED_BY_MTA_3,Razor
We would like to believe that spammists are now labeling their art for
easy disposal. Somehow, though, that seems like an unlikely explanation.
Perhaps a knowledgeable reader will be so kind as to tell
us where these lines came from.
Blab. A reader received ...
Lots of great T-shirt ideas
in the mail today.
Get 4 DVD's for 49 Cents Each!
investigate anyone via the
internet
FREE HGH - Look 10 Years Younger
in 3 Weeks!!!!
discount ink cartridges for
epson, canon and HP inkjets
Always has Access to Your Computer
You can be paying yourself
FIRST!!! How?
Compare & Save On Your
Auto Insurance - NOW!
Friend, Seduce Women Now!
WORK FROM HOME.FREE INFO.
(No porn this morning, oddly enough;
maybe tomorrow.) You should start a Cafe Press store. "Exclusive
Spam-themed items". A whole chain of them!
We admit to not understanding the subtle double entendres associated with
most of these. To us, they would just look like ads on T-shirts.
We do, however, quite like Friend, Seduce Women Now!
Blab. A reader sends us a sign of Government Gone MadTM.
Imagine what they'll do to people who, for instance, look suspicious.
 Plop.
In a watering down of doubleplus good TIPS,
Herr Ashcroft's citizen-informant network, in which government employees
(and everyone else) will report anything suspicious they notice about you,
we learn that ...
[...] they no longer plan
to ask thousands of mail carriers, utility workers and others with access
to private homes to report suspected terrorist activity. [...]
"This was never a program intended
or designed to infringe on privacy concerns," said one official.
So don't go outside your home, Winston.
Yo. 55,000
chickens suffocated. No, it's not really news. That is, it doesn't
affect you and you don't really care. But it is a bizarre headline, isn't
it?
Yo. Just a normal Saturday morning around Plurpville.
We sit on the bed, reading the newspaper, while Helen types with the cat's
tail.
Plurp. We have here in our hand a piece of paper labeled Electronic
Ticket. When we get to the airport, they will say to us, Do you
have your electronic ticket, sir?
Is anyone else confused by this?
Plurp. Which of these does not belong?
 Plurp.
It is not a dog, but a dog
Exponentially, a dog
Taken to the third power,
The algebraic dog
Made entirely of those parts
We do not want to think about.
Friday, August 9, 2002
Blab. A reader insists that we ...
Look upon my Plurps, ye Mighty,
and despair!
Must we? Would it be OK to just despair and skip that first part?
Blab. A helpful reader sends us a blind ...
[link].
This is the NY Public Library's link page, pointing to lots of US and international
newspapers and other bitfeeds. For you bitfeeders out there.
Blab. On that site that hopes
beyond hope to figure out which blog begat which, a reader writes:
Seems like you begat that
site. You and 12 others. How, exactly, does that work. I mean, logisticly.
Not us! Our theory is that some poor, unfortunate reader entered our
unworthy blog into that site, for reasons unfathomable. But this does
give us cause to expose the three blogs that falsely accuse us of being
their parent blog: leuschke.org,
The
Moon Rocket and Roam.
Naturally, we deny any such responsibility. Please direct any further
questions to our attorney. Thank you.
Anyhow, we decided to register there today, so as to blame Dave
and Ian, the undeniable progenitors
of Plurp, but we have yet to hear back from yon site. We figure
there's some old guy named Jake sitting there in his garage, smoking cigarettes
and typing in userids and passwords with two fingers.
It could be a while.
Blab. A very silly reader writes:
You can suck the soul out
of something, and you can suck the heavy metal out of something.
But can you suck the country western ouit of something?
Would that we could, dear reader. Would that we could.
Wow, that was stupid. Don't
print that.
That would violate the Seventh Rule of Plurp.
Or that last thing either.
Or this.
That would violate the Fifth Rule of Plurp.
Blab. A reader who was taking notes at the last meeting finally
sends them to us.
First rule of Plurp, you
do not talk about Plurp.
Second rule of Plurp, you DO NOT talk
about Plurp.
Third rule of Plurp, when someone
says stop, goes limp or taps out, the fight is over.
Fourth rule of Plurp, only two guys
to a fight.
Fifth rule of Plurp, one fight at
a time.
Sixth rule of Plurp, no shirt, no
shoes.
Seventh rule of Plurp, fights go on
as long as they have to.
Eighth and final rule of Plurp, if
this is your first night at Plurp, you have to fight.
You are not your blog.
Blab. A reader solves a Deep Mystery for us.
A reader: "What
is Plus Plurp? I want an upgrade."
He probably referred to this
"Plus Plurp is a fantastic relaxed
expression-without-self space and innocently "therapeutical" ... "
I think the poor "Plus" here just
wanted to be read as "Further etc etc". The world is far from perfect these
days.
Anyway these are just better news.
The regular Plurp is all those things, but one should really use the
Big Blab Box
Technology that works... on the human
level.
So it was in our own blog, eh? How diabolically obscure! Clearly that reader
from yesterday knew that we never actually read what our readers
write.
We thank today's reader for trying to give us an out but, in fact, Plus
Plurp is a new, premium version of Pay-Per-Plurp.
In addition to the punctual noon postings and erudite content you have
come to expect of Pay-Per-Plurp, Plus Plurp gives you Plus
Notes, explaining all of the obscure cultural references and inbred
humor that so many readers of our standard Plurp fare miss entirely.
Plus
Plurp gives you access to digital versions of certain rare texts and
fragments of arcane lore that, well, let's just say that the universe as
you know it is only a thin sliver of a much larger reality. And, it provides
you scheduled monthly control over the mind control lasers.
What could be better? If not for you, then certainly for that Special
Something in your life. Sign
up now.
Blab. A reader is easily influenced by media packaging.
Britney!
Britney!!
Britney!!!
Britney!!!!
Britney!!!!!
Britney!!!!!!
Britney!!!!!!!
Britney!!!!!!!!
ZZZzzz.
Blab. A reader tries a second time to get a smidgen of our dwindling
attention.
|\_._._/|
|
o
o |
\
´.` /
|`---´|
|
| Der blaue Hund says,
It's the road sign
|`___´|\_of
the times.
/|
|\
##
##
Oh, we see. It's ASCII art. How nostalgic!
Blab. A reader sends us a sign.
Sign in NJ: "Slow down, get
ticket" (Bill's favorite)
We tried to explain this to the nice town official who gave us our last
Local Award for Driving Style, but he didn't seem to be familiar with it.
Blab. On that woman who had to drink
her own breast milk to get through airport security, a reader writes:
If the story is true the
securitroid was certainly a jerk. On the other hand, one finds oneself
wondering, if she thought the breast milk was disgusting, what she was
carrying it around in bottles for.
We suspect the media just makes this stuff up. We do.
Blab. A reader alerts us of certain activities.
What a very busy place Oxford
is!
OXFORD, England -- Oxford scientists
have discovered that a
crow called Betty is no bird-brain.
Despite the horrible pun, which seems somehow required of the media these
days, this is an interesting study.
These scientist types have themselves a crow that they conclude understands
the abstract idea of tool making.
Betty astonished scientists
by deliberately bending a straight wire into a hook and using it to extract
food from a container, the journal Science said on Friday.
The feat, it is said, makes her the
first animal other than a human that has shown a clear understanding of
cause and effect, and fashioned a tool for a specific task using new materials
not encountered in the wild.
Not even chimpanzees, our closest
cousins, have this ability.
Heck, we're convinced that half the humans on the planet can't figure
this out.
It's either a breakthrough or utter hogwash. Readers are invited to
risk their own meager reputations by telling
us which they think it is.
Yow. And, speaking of breakthroughs, here's
one that's small but cool. Some clever folks in India have apparently (the
paper is not yet published) come up with a way to determine whether a number
is prime, and to do so "quickly" (the article does not say what that means)
and with certainty (previous results had some chance of error).
"This was one of the big
unsolved problems in theoretical computer science and computational number
theory," said Shafi Goldwasser, a professor of computer science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science
in Israel. "It's the best result I've heard in over 10 years."
Pretty cool!
Yak. Ed, at lunch today.
I would like
to float in a tank next to two girls with shaved heads.
But then, wouldn't we all?
Plurp.
The blue dog says,
It's the road sign
of the times
Thursday, August 8, 2002
Blab. A reader works overtime to flood us with ideas
for common public signs that would make interesting
T-shirts.
"Own a computer? Make money
from home!"
"I lost 20 pounds in 20 days!"
 "No
Parking Zone"
"No Loitering"
"Yield"
"Help Wanted"
"Falling Rocks"
"Se Habla Espanol"
"Slow Children At Play"
"Right Lane Must Turn Right"
"Do Not Spray. Owner Will Maintain"
And one we have all around Washington
State:
"Apple Maggot Quarantine Area"
We're pretty sure we don't understand the first two of these, but we are
quite
fond of that last one!
Blab. A furry reader nonetheless sends us another cryptic fragment
from the Catbox of Madness.
Found on Silverblue's
(Furry) livejournal.
Don't know if where it was found is
even slightly relevant but I couldn't find any other trace of the band
or MP3 seperately and I liked the lyrics
"Cities.
Cthulhu mythos song. And rather
a good one.
SLAUGHTER TOWN by Immaculata.
[Three
long verses deleted to spare our
Treasured Readers the
certain mental
damage that would otherwise
result.
- Plurp]
CHORUS
The planets have aligned
And there's no time to change
your mind
The choice is clear that's
why we're here
Well the Eater of Dimensions
Meets the Whistler from the
stars
We're following the blind
piper down
To the Goat with a thousand
young
The madmen weep and the dead
can speak
All paths are leading down
Those souls who found the
darker way
On the road to Slaughter Town
Besides, the song is good just because
it has a crumhorn in it. I think Disaster Area should cover it."u
Disturbing. We found it (or something like it) on only one
other Web page out of over two billion. At least, on only one other
Web page that our
meager mind could conceive.
Blab. A reader seeks to educate us. Big mistake.
Linus
Pauling was an outstanding biologist and theoretical chemist, but was
equally well known for his
humanitarian efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
Yes, but could he read French?
Blab. Our poetic reader indulges us.
We like when that happens.
Somehow this is becoming
a kind of chess game, I hope it's funny for you and that you are really
not worried because there is no reason here for such. At this point it
feels a bit ridiculous for me.
Plurp: "In fact, now that you mention
it, we can hardly think of anything else!"
Thinking is good, not easy, but good
:).
Plurp: "Was it really connected with
the otherwise unconnected inscription beside the blue dog that day?"
Only three of these random things
are absolutely false, and you have been warned that the raw material would
make probably few sense.
1. Poetry and poetic prose want to
be memorable, so being excessive sometimes is just instrumental to that.
1'. In general poetry and fondness
for the carriage return are not the same thing.
2. My Erdös number is 3.
3. = deleted (too much information
about what I'm reading) =
4. = some conspiracy theory about
Lisp underuse and various world emergencies =
5. Max Weber's 'Die protestantische
Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus' is probably relevant for the
"discussion" at hand.
6. While a student, with a friend,
we poked fun at the notion of "true"/perfect man - the western movie type,
or (super)hero, or "tombeur de femme". We listed the supposed characteristics:
one was "he always makes the proper choice".
7. = something true about me not
being religious =
8. = to be filled with something
true and funny =
9. = something true and bitter about
american socio-economical model =
9'. the actual point in 9. is a predicate
of the type "Santas does not exist".
10. = to be filled with something
funny and true =
11. There seem to be a shortage of
very good socio-economical models. At least a mild impression of such [shortage].
But it's probably just a mood or seasonal thing. [Btw communism was not
one of such models]
12. = to be filled with something
true but unpleasant =
13. "About Scarcity" is a really
great potential title for a really-deep-thought book.
14. I'm an advanced AI financed by
the DOD in an oversea facility, and they want to turn me off.
15. My understanding is incomplete.
16. = something true about weakness
having something to teach =
17. I always made the proper choice.
Somehow that was my culture trying
to enact its difference :).
Last installment, Cheers.
Now that's more like it! From self-absorption to Generic
Literature in just three days. Another victory for the mind control
lasers.
Blab. A reader has incomprehensible desires.
What is Plus Plurp?
I want an upgrade.
We have no
idea. But when you find out, please do let us know.
Blab. A reader spends all its time watching the clock.
10:40 and no Plurp.
Cancel my forthwith.
Your forthwith is hereby prescriptively canceled.
Blab. A certain reader donates a stray late entry to the
Greyscale
Plurp
Activity.
"And the winner of this year's
Albert Einstein Look-Alike Contest is . . . ."
Yes, I do nothing all day but await
my daily Plurp (which is still coming in spite of my forthwith cancellation
request, which is good because I immediately regretted that decision).
I wish my poor blog were so hearty and nutritious for the soul.
As in most things these days, I blame
my meds.
L.
We all blame your meds.
Blab. And now, the acceptance speech.
Dear Plurp,
I have never been to Lesbos.
And I think I liked the "wet his pants"
one best myself.
But still, I am deeply honored.
Please renew my subscription.
-- Miss Greyscale
You like us. You really
like us!
Blab. A certain reader sends us a blind ...
[link]
... from which we learn that (a) someone is trying to map blogspace by
asking who begat whom, a questionable methodology at best, and (b) a certain
reader seeks to flatter us by claiming begatism.
We find this embarrassing and disgusting. How dare you?
Plurp. Helen required us to tell you about this.
Blame her.
A woman says a security guard
at Kennedy Airport forced her to drink from three bottles of her own breast
milk to demonstrate the liquid posed no threat to other passengers.
[...] She called it "embarrassing
and disgusting."
So, naturally, we wondered what they do in the case of urine samples. Or
semen donations.
Like we said: blame her.
Yow. Britney Spears is taking a six
month break. We can only hope that this means we will hear no mention
of her, see no image of her, not have to conceive of her plastic falseness
in any way whatsoever, until next February.
We were always the incurable optimist.
Plurp.
There is nothing like a squid,
Nothing in the world.
There is nothing you can name
That is anything like a squid.
Yo. All you EverQuesties went to the
Fan Faire. Right?
Nice ears!
Yow.
Dear Mr. Zeus,
You are aware, I am certain, of our
relative satisfaction at your recent winter, it being unusually mild, hardly
frozen at all, and otherwise fairly acceptible given the constraints under
which you must labor during that time of year.
Not so this summer, I fear, which
has been unconsciounably hot, humid to the point of perpetual stickiness,
and punctuated only with deadly thunderstorms that bring no relief. It
has been like this, I feel obliged to remind you, for several months, and
I was about to register a formal complaint.
Until today. Today is - how best to
express it - glorious. It is just warm enough to notice, there is the slightest
breeze, causing the trees to ripple slowly, and the sky's brilliant
blue is dotted with puffy clouds. It is a day that begs us to luxuriate
in its glow, a day on which the memory of atmospheric assault fades. A
perfect day for sailing. A perfect day for driving with the top down. A
Beach Day. It is a day that seduces us into believing it has always been
thus.
All is forgiven.
Yours most sincerely.
etc. etc.
Plurp. At our annual physical this morning (poke, tap, prod,
stick),
we warned him: Be careful; our skin chelates like crazy.
He just looked at us; we surmised that he was laughing silently.
Chelate,
tr.v.
To remove (a heavy metal, such as lead or mercury) from the bloodstream
by means of a chelate, such as EDTA.
Cheloid,
n.,
A red, raised formation of fibrous scar tissue caused by excessive tissue
repair in response to trauma or surgical incision.
But he was not laughing when we leapt across the table, sucked all the
heavy metals from his body, and left his lifeless form quivering on the
floor. No, sir.
Plurp.
The blue dog
thought that was
"embarrassing and disgusting."
Wednesday, August 7, 2002
Blab. Nothing in recent history has compared with the
volume of reader response to our now legendary Greyscale Plurp Activity,
in which you were asked to provide captions for one or more, and preferably
all, of these cursed images.
Quite a few of you responded to this otherwise pedestrian stimulus,
a result which we have recorded for future use. One of you (and you know
who you are, L.) apparently did little more in the past day than
respond. We have also recorded this fact.
We start with the single entry for only one of the images.
In spite of the beret, the
old man finally had to admit to himself that he still couldn't read a damn
word of French.
We like that, though we don't actually know if Linus Pauling read French
or not. Still, we are forced to move on to those brave readers who tackled
all three at once. First, these telling entries from readers who have a
hard time distinguishing between various people.
sometimes I like to cheer.
Sometimes I like to read. Sometimes I like to stick my tongue out.
And similarly:
Caption for all three pics:
"At that exact moment, George realized
that he wet his pants."
We now turn to those readers whose sense of caption is too obscure even
for us. And that's pretty obscure. First, a reader with a worrisome intestinal
disorder writes:
Flying peccaries! Flying
peccaries out of my butt!
(Works for all three, in as much as
it works for anything.)
Next, a reader who severely underestimates the world population writes:
I sound my barbaric PLURP
over the roofs of the world.
(all three)
Finally, a reader suggests a connection with an ancient musician that we
completely miss (the connection, that is; we don't miss the musician).
Caption: "Please, please,
please, please. Please, please, please, please."
(with apologies to Universal
James)
With a sigh of relief, we display a few reader contributions that we understand,
at least.
Caption that fits all three:
"Aaaah!"
... which would likely fit almost any picture. Or:
Caption for all three pics:
"Viagra works for me!"
... which probably fits very few, and perhaps not even these three. And
speaking of obscure cultural references, here's an oldie but a moldy:
I'm plurped as hell, and
I'm not going to take it anymore!
... though we don't quite see it fitting the pic of Linus, but that's probably
just us. Next, an entry from a reader with a severe spelling disability.
Je suis plurped car l'enfer
et moi n'vais le prendre plus!
At long last, we make our way up to the Winner's Circle. The Runner Up,
who will take over for Miss Greyscale in the event of her turning out to
be a lesbian, is:
The auditions for the role
of Cleopatra weren't really going to plan...
... which we particularly like in its understated understudiness. But the
honor of Miss Greyscale of This Week goes to the following entry
because (a) being arbitrary makes us believe we are powerful and (2) it
feels rather mysteriously like it should mean something:
No one ever saw Homer again.
Congratulations to all of our readers. Remember: there are no losers, only
those of you who didn't win.
Blab. Plurp's own blank versist is back, this time with
enigmatic engrams and lines within which it is suggested that we color.
Plurp: "Did we say anything
about winners or losers? Hmm?"
sorry, hmm,
no, absolutely not,
but the current Zeitgeist and
"always made the proper choice"
ignited that generic rant,
'you' were not the target.
I think nobody is truly interested
in the
precise causal set of analogical
jumps
and memory links, they make
far less sense than the result :)
for the audience and are far less
interesting
and a wee bit more personal.
Plus Plurp is a fantastic
relaxed expression-without-self space
and innocently "therapeutical" ...
So thanks for Plurp, but please,
no more unfunny targeted questions
about the whys and whys not of the
entries,
.. :)
It breaks the spirit of the thing,
doesn't it? it should not feel
that personal.
Of course you're the final arbiter.
Thanks again -- back to the untargeted
flag
state. Cheers.
Actually, we do want to know what it was that caused the
question of winning and losing to appear so prominently in your consciousness.
In fact, now that you mention it, we can hardly think of anything else!
Was it really connected with the otherwise unconnected
inscription beside the blue dog that day? Or was it something else?
Something that has been bothering you for some time, perhaps? Something
connected with your obsession with that other country and its culture?
Was there a time when you did not make the proper choice? Hmm?
Blab. A reader submits an "entry" into the Mine's
Bigger Than Yours activity. We don't know why.
"here" is longer than rye.
"there" is longer still
"Boring". We win.
Blab. Next, a reader convinces us that its
son is an area of low or nil population in New Zealand.
Location: Home > Place Names
> Search Place Names > Search Placenames
New Zealand Geographic Placenames
Database
Place Name Detail
Rowan
District: Taranaki
Description: LOCALITY: Defined area
of low or nil population
Lat: -39.3985
Long: 174.1069
NZMG Easting: 2605390.9
NZMG Northing: 6200350.1
NZMS 260 sheet: P20
This must come as quite a surprise to his other parent.
Blab. Finally, a reader puts us out of our misery with this missing
...
[link].
This counts as both authoritative and having real place names, and it has
place names that are longer than five letters to boot. Nicely done, Treasured
Reader!
Blab. Perhaps as a subtle dig on our increasing girth, a reader
writes:
oh, please, buy me this
for christmas. please...
dorian
Gee, dorian, we are not in the habit of buying our readers anything ever.
But when we do get into that habit, rest assured that we will buy
you
a
machine gun. Oh, yes, we will.
Blab. A reader presents us with a puzzle.
|\_._._/|
| o o |
\ ´.` /
|`---´|
|
|
|`___´|\_
/|
|\
##
##
(Looks better in emacs - Morton)
So, what looks better in emacs, the digitally graven image above, or something
named Morton? We may never know.
Blab. A former Mason recants. Just in
time.
'Recantations for Masons'
Wow There's some serious recantation
going on here. I'm sure even Win2000 can't stand up to this level of spiritually
and mystical power. If you've already tried this solution out yourself
and Soldier of Fortune still doesn't work Steve, we can be fairly sure
that your ancestors must have done something really serious. Perhaps they
drank coffee? or even worse owned a cat? That'll make Win2000/Soldier of
Fortune screw up every time.
There is however an obscure ritual
involving things with tentacles in the dark and chanting the complete sequence
of Pi (base two) that is supposed to fix programs even for people who try
to operate Win2000 after drinking coffee. I'll get back to you. Oh wait!
it involves owning a cat, so it could be a little self defeating, but you
never know.
We have recently attempted to get Soldier of Fortune to work on our laptop
by performing forbidden rituals involving giant squid from La Jolla, abstaining
from thinking about coffee, and reciting the 137th digit of Pi (base two)
to a certain Nameless One.
Still no luck.
Blab. A reader demonstrates eerie skills.
Happy anniversary -AJL
Why thank you! How did you know?
Yow. Yesterday, we saw the most wonderfully disturbing art exhibition
in recent memory at the Whitney.
Michal
Rovner makes photographic images of people (et al.), many of them very
large in scale, but all of them grainy, barely
recognizable, as if photographed from
a vast distance.
The dark, foreboding figures interact, or do not, moving together, standing
apart, while an eerie soundtrack (reminiscent of György Ligeti) plays
in the room. The effect is altogether frightening, and spellbinding.
An installation called Time
Left is a large white room in which black, inch-high images of
thousands of unidentifiable people walk in dozens of lines, stacked from
floor to ceiling, around the room. We don't know if it was the artist's
intent, but our quick estimate was that the number of figures was approximately
the number of days in a person's life. So we stood by one of the walls,
holding our hand up so that one or the other of the figures was projected
onto it, saying to Helen, This one is the day we got married; This one
is the day we met.
A photographer from the Chicago
Tribune was taking photos in the room for an article which is scheduled
to appear there in the next couple of days. Perhaps they will show us holding
the days of our life in our hand.
Plurp. Wordage from common public signs that would be interesting
if made into T-shirts.
Grand Opening
We Deliver
For Rent
To The Trade
Wholesale Only
No Solicitors
No Flyers
Caution
As usual, readers are ...
Yow. The
Times Style Guide. How did we not know that was there?
Plop. On the tragedy of public education in mathematics, as evidenced
by the Associated Press.
13 Die as Afghan Army,
Attackers Clash
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Attackers
struck an Afghan army base on Wednesday in southern Kabul, and 15 people
were killed, including 11 guerrillas, authorities reported.
Yow. Are you having a bad day with your computer? Hopefully not
as bad as this guy. Is there
any computer using human on the face of the Earth that does not empathize?
Plurp.
The blue dog
was self-
captioning
Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Blab. A reader points us to what surely must be the
...
Coolest
dad on the planet.
We ask you. How many dads have created a Mech Warrior out of old crates
and cardboard for their homicidal little child?
That is pretty darn cool. When we were of similar age, our dad helped
us construct the space ship from Mrs.
Coverlet's Magicians (our favorite book at the time) out of two-by-fours
and cardboard, though nothing as fancy as the above. It's main technological
advancements were electronic. In addition to various switches and blinking
lights, it had an analog computer. For plotting courses, or something.
Anyhow, it was way cool.
Blab. A reader breaks into poetry.
Plurp: "The
blue dog always made the proper choice"
[That's "wickedly" inspirational]
I deduce the blue dog is a winner,
at least that is one definition.
Why the phrases:
"you're a loser"
"you're such a loser"
make me think of american movies?
Is it a peculiar american thing to
classify
people in winners and losers?
to consider losing as a kind of stigma?
is it the foundation of some Kind
of Something?
do it break when the winners reveal
themselves
as just cheaters and bluffers?
ye, not so funny, confused overseas,
ranting.
-- Thanks.
Did we say anything about winners or losers? Hmm?
Blab. Today's single entry in the Mine's
Bigger Than Yours activity, in which you were asked to find an
authoritative reference to the longest place name you could, falls a bit
short.
'Rowan' well hell its
bigger than 'Rye'
and its the name of my son
Unless your son is a place, we're not sure this counts.
Blab. A reader sends us all sorts of information on those quaint
analog book things that seem to want to tell us how to run a Weblog.
We
Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs
We've
Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture
The
Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog
Blogging:
Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content
Running
Weblogs with Slash
Funny, we thought we already knew how. We suppose our reader is trying
to tell us something. We have much to
learn.
Blab. A reader invents a new art form: Casting aspersions by
quoting from the dictionary.
Main Entry: ne·ol·o·gism
Pronunciation: nE-'ä-l&-"ji-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: French néologisme,
from ne- + log- + -isme -ism
Date: 1800
1 : a new word, usage, or expression
2 : a meaningless word coined by
a psychotic
We'll take what's behind Door Number Two, Bob! Or, from the Google
dictionary:
ne·ol·o·gism
n.
-
A new word, expression, or usage.
-
The creation or use of new words or senses.
-
Psychology.
-
The invention of new words regarded as
a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.
-
A word so invented.
-
Theology. A new doctrine
or a new interpretation of scripture.
Ooh! We like that last one.
Blab. One more person learns the nearly spiritual wisdom that
is Plurp.
This morning my wife started
to read out from the newspaper in her you-must-listen-to-this voice the
startling news that Cats can get cancer from passive smoking.. So I LOOKED
at her.
After a while she blushed and said
"All right, all right, how was I to know that the stuff you've been wittering
about for a week on the internet was real?" How indeed.
I really, really, really like women,
but I'm not sure I'd like to live with one, or marry one.
OOps,
.....Oh Damn!
Admit it, dear reader. You love it.
Our experience with newspapers is that about 80% of any event in which
we've been involved is inevitably written up wrongly. Either the newspapers
are picking on us (a distinct possibility), or 80% of what they write is
wrong.
You might ask your wife how she knows that the stuff she's been wittering
about in newspapers is real.
Blab. A devotee of Arts &
Literature Daily sends us unsurprising news.
Cats: Creatures
from another planet?
Its fairly convincing for me amyway
(via A&LDaily)
And to us as well.
[T]he cat has not adapted
to humans by making itself useful and retains its own silent agenda. Despite
possessing intelligence, it has, generally speaking, not shown any inclination
to put its abilities to use, unless it can see an immediate reason.
In human terms, cats lack altruism
and are lazy.
So there you are.
Yow. Some fourteen years ago today (this refers to the periodic
and relative position of the Earth in its orbit), a small number of humans
were present at a Ceremony involving the speaking of Words, the playing
of Music, and the eating of Food. Some of these things were connected with
Highly Symbolic Acts, such as the wearing of Rings, the Pressing Together
of the lips of more than one human, and something called Dance, which is
said to be a coordinated movement of (in this case) two humans. It was
all very strange.
After that, things were pretty much the same. And they were very different.
It's hard to explain.
Yak. From a conference call yesterday.
Person 1: The topology
for today is a client-server model. The topology for tomorrow will be more
of a peer-to-peer model.
Person 2: What's the topology
for Thursday?
Plurp. Useless fact # 873:
Currently, we have exactly
31,000 unread pieces of email.
Plurp. This year's Greyscale Plurp Activity is as follows.
Read carefully. Follow directions. Color inside the lines. No running.
Send us a caption. Be creative.
Alternatively ...
Send us a caption. Be creative.
Or, if you wish ...
Send us a caption. Be creative.
For extra points, send us one
caption that works for all three.
There. That's not too hard, is
it?
Plurp.
The blue dog
was
the topology for Thursday
Monday, August 5, 2002
Blab. Confused about the meaning of bigger, a
reader who must be male writes:
For the "Mine's
Bigger Than Yours" contest:
Rye
I didn't look too hard.
You probably still don't. But we're sure it's the best you can do.
Blab. A reader works hard on last
week's assignment.
Even more disgusting when
cold AND wet: smoking cat. The flavour, the smell, the wet, uraugh!
We will take your word for that. It's one of those life experiences that
we seem not have a burning desire to, uh, experience.
Blab. The PR Director of zillions
writes:
Well, zillions is a hell
of a better chess player than any of those others you've talked about.
Almost certainly better that you, as well. And it's doing it with a generalized
tactical engine, so you can change the rules and it will still be far better
than you.
We have no doubt whatsoever that <nameOfRandomChessProgram>
is better than we are. Far better than we are. It probably has a better
phone voice, and knows which side of the plate the pickle fork goes on.
We are virtually incapable of any normal activity that would involve knowledge
or reasoning, as evidenced by this blog.
We are also certain that there are good
chess programs out there that we could (a) buy and (b) stir the bits
on our machine by installing. We were looking for ones that were (a) free
and (b) playable on the Web.
We know. We're just being a troublemaker.
Blab. Mistaking our foolish blog for Activision technical support,
a reader writes:
Hi.
I have the same problem with "Soldier
of Fortune" running on my laptop IBM T21 described in your
Plurp entry.
Have you got any suggestions / work-arounds
for this ? Would be nice if you could share them with me.
Thanks a lot !
Ralf
Hi. We suggest that you ponder the sorry plight of cupcakes
in Japan, neither recognized nor appreciated, and that you recite the
various recantations
for Mormons while standing on one foot.
You asked.
Rant. We are confused by the term homicide
bomber. We understands its derivation, but not its meaning. What
other kind of bomber, military or civilian, is there? Is it meant to distinguish
itself from, say, facilities bomber, or unoccupied desert bomber?
We had this same linguistic concern when the term Ground Zero
(as applied to the former WTC site) somehow morphed into Ground Hero,
which we suspected was not quite the image the morphers intended. (Though
we never know!)
Is it that neologisms these days are coined to avoid what they are not
trying to convey, rather than trying actively to convey something?
Yak. From some (analog) TV show.
Gigi died suddenly, in the
middle of one of her many plastic surgery procedures, from a congenital
brain defect.
No kidding.
Yow. Watermelon for breakfast. Must be summer.
Plurp.
The blue dog
renounced the penalty of
condemnation and spite by the entire
universe
Sunday, August 4, 2002
Blab. Our meme mixer contributes a belated entry to
our Disgusting Cold activity.
Disgusting when cold: smoked
cat
Yeah, but they're also disgusting hot. Heck, they're even annoying raw.
Blab. A reader has travel plans for us.
Charming place to visit,
wouldn't want to live there:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-
llantysiliogogogoch
Say THAT five times fast
Actually, we've been there. It's a little village in Wales. The literal
translation of the name is St. Mary's Church by the white aspen over
the whirlpool, [and] St. Tysilio's by the red cave, or something like
that.
Sadly, the lengthy name (which goes all the way around the corner of
the town's train station) seems to be a hack by the 19th century tourist
industry.
The claim is that there are now even longer place names in Wales, as
well as New Zealand and Thailand.
Readers are invited to enter our
new Plurp contest, Mine's Bigger Than Yours, in which
you cite an authoritative Web reference to the longest place name you can
find.
Blab. A reader points us at a silly blog article with a great
title: 50,000 Wil Wheatons
can’t be wong.
From Davezilla,
a number of questions about how long it takes for monkeys to match humans,
including 'If a tribe of a Chimpanzees were locked in a Catholic rectory
for 100,000 years, would they turn into pedophiles? [Don't answer that.]'
And finally, if you put a troop of chimps in a room full of kitties, porn
and domokuns, would they become bloggers?
But damn, nothing about decent flavours
for smoking cats or Colin Powell's habbits with wads of money, so it looks
like I'll have to go back to Plurp.
We hope that Plurp will always be the world's foremost source of
meaningless dreck.
Blab. A reader compliments us on our recent series of meaningless
dreck.
Nice 'Pretty thing' and Niice
'belly button' More pleease moore Oh God no NOT Roger Moore!!!
From general anatomical principles, we might be tempted to infer that he
has a belly button, but we could not find an authoritative source on the
Web to confirm it. Perhaps our readers
can.
We are told that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we'll leave
that pretty thing remark alone for now.
Blab. That reader who asked for a
pretty thing to read Plurp to it informs us of a certain subtlety
in the request.
While I acknowledge the prettyness
of the reader offered, I actually meant one of those new fangulater iMac
thingys, being already possesed of one of the other type of pretty things
for the last 10 years. -AJL
Let's review. Faced with a choice between the pretty thing on the left
and the new iPod on the right, our technophiliac reader would opt for the
iPod. Every time.
While we admit to never having been offered either one of these, exactly,
we feel certain that we would make this choice the same way as our Treasured
Reader. Yes, surely we would.
Blab. A reader gives us a detailed clue to that zillions
of games thing.
zillions of games
Ah. you must means www.zillions-of-games.com.
The first infinitely expandable
PC gaming system. [...] an absolutely unique "universal gaming engine"
technology, allowing you to play nearly any abstract board game or puzzle
in the world.
We're too lazy to sort through all zillion of them to find out if it's
any good. But we know our readers have lots of spare time for stuff like
this, so maybe they can tell us.
Plurp. There was an amazing thunderstorm on Friday night that
started with the most impressive torrent of rain we have ever seen just
two minutes before we went to leave work. Seeing an unexpected waterfall
down the steps outside, we thought better of it and went back to our office
to wait out the storm. We ended up leaving at 9:30 PM, after the bulk of
the storm had passed, but still dodged downed tree limbs and cringed at
huge bolts of lightning that arced across sky as we drove home.
Plurp. We marvel at our continuing ability to get by with six
hours of sleep on weekdays, and yet to sleep easily for twelve hours on
weekends. How does that work?
Yo. Here's a
fascinating report of how serious terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda were
anticipated by the Clinton and Bush administrations, and how a plan was
making its way through the Bush administration, prior to Sept. 11, to take
pretty much the actions against al-Qaeda that were taken after Sept. 11.
But the whole thing got caught in the molasses that is Washington, so nothing
was done.
Would it have made a difference if they had done something before Sept.
11? Always hard to say.
Yow. Another masterpiece from the "knit images together" function
in Helen's photo editor. We love automation.
Plurp.
The blue dog
always made the proper
choice
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