Plurp: A Mighty Fortress Is Our Blog

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2003.02.02 : 2003.02.08

Saturday, February 8, 2003
Blab. The famous Sara Beard (and her lawyer) write:
Steve,
I have been googling myself since we met. At first I was disappointed - and then confused - then I started to ask people how google works (i received many answers - all different). I even met one of the founders of blogger (meg) - she couldn't tell me.
However, today, I was excited to see that you did it! I owe you a mighty big glass of wine. THANK-YOU! So does this mean that I am famous?
Just to clarify some of the points in your blog (I know they might have blurred a bit given the wine).
[Boyfriend Name deleted], my boyfriend, is the viral marketer ([Company Name deleted]). And, he is quite googable. You can dump on him all you want - you have never met him - and the press has been after him before.
I have one of those wonderful corporate jobs - working for [Company Name deleted] - measuring customer profitability (which is a new job - less ambiguous than my old job - "strategy").
So, we must get together again ~ I was laughing about our afternoon all evening long.
Best,
Sara
Hi Helen!
This electronic message transmission contains information from the Company that may be proprietary, confidential and/or privileged. The information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying or distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to the address listed in the "From:" field.
What can we say? Our brain developed a viral marketing fever as a result of that whole conversation about googling oneself.
In spite of that, we are pleased that our efforts at making Sara Beard famous finally paid off. It is one of the more memorable accomplishments of our life.
We do wonder, however, how she knows how profitable her customers are.

Blab. Remember that anonymous woman whose fascination with branding (in the most intense sense) we documented a couple of weeks ago? She now reveals herself.
Yes, Steve, but why you gotta bust on the fact I'm interested in branding and corporate identity design? Why I oughta...
Famous Sara has a corporate job, too! (Smile)
-Melinda
We offer our unworthy but abject apologies, Mistress Melinda.

Blab. A reader wants us to quit our day job.
You too can be president or at least make speeches like him.
We wonder what it must be like to be the Public Speaking lesson plan on What Not To Do.

Blab. A reader tries desperately to construct a least-squares fit to a single data point.
But surely the lesson to be learned from the fact that the Jews-leaving-WTC story is widely believed in the middle east is not "People in the middle east will believe weird things without any supporting evidence," but rather "People in the middle east will believe weird things that make jews look bad without any supporting evidence."   An "al-Qaeda is responsible for the Columbia disaster" story does not fit that profile.
Surely the lesson to be learned is, "People in the middle east believe weird things about buildings without any supporting evidence."
Or maybe not. We were merely suggesting that the al Qaeda was responsible for the Shuttle disaster meme was at least as consistent with the world view of that group of people as the Jews planned the WTC disaster meme. Or maybe not!
What do we know, anyway?

Blab. A reader documents what may be an emerging trend in suburban public art.
Steve:
On Wednesday morning I saw a banner next to an American flag on an overpass. It read:
"Rich white men want you to wage war on peasants -- again."
By Thursday morning the banner was gone. Thursday afternoon, on another overpass, this message appeared--in spray paint this time:
"If I fear my neighbor, can I kill him?"
Just possibly, there is a grass-roots movement under way. Well, we can hope. . . .
Darla
P.S. The Greenway is a toll road in No. Virginia helping to connect DC with the suburban badlands.
We marvel at the deeply scholastic environment in which our Treasured Reader lives - an environment in which people driving down the highway naturally indulge in philosophical and political discourse with each other through the medium of signage.

Blab. Our good friend Tony Blair writes:
"When people say to me, 'Why are you risking everything in a sense, politically, on this issue?', I say to them, in all honesty, I do not want to be the prime minister when people point the finger back at history and say you knew perfectly well those two threats (weapons of mass destruction and terrorism) were there and you did nothing about it," Blair said.
Thanks, Tony. And now, this.

Blab. We are astonished to find that we are not alone in despising those awful commercials from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
This is the one that really disturbs me.
If this is what passes for rational debate in this country these days, we have far far worse problems than the drug trade.
It is and we do. Here's the one to which our Treasured Reader refers.

Norm: It's a ploy.

Nick: What?

Norm: This "Drug money funds terror". It's a ploy.

Nick: A ploy.

Norm: A manipulation.

Nick: Ploy.

Norm: "Drug money funds terror." I mean, why should I believe that?

Nick: Because…it's a fact?

Norm: A fact?

Nick: F.A.C.T. Fact.

Norm: So, you're saying that I should believe it because ... it's ... true. That's that's your argument.

Nick: It is true.

Or perhaps you'd prefer our version.

Chirac: It's a ploy.

Blair: What?

Chirac: This "Iraq supports al Qaeda". It's a ploy.

Blair: A ploy.

Chirac: A manipulation.

Blair: Ploy.

Chirac: "Iraq supports al Qaeda." I mean, why should I believe that?

Blair: Because…it's a fact?

Chirac: A fact?

Blair: F.A.C.T. Fact.

Chirac: So, you're saying that I should believe it because ... it's ... true. That's that's your argument.

Blair: It is true.

Plop. Now that we're about to experience major terrorist attacks again, here's how to prepare.

Learn what those strangely colored threat levels mean.

Go read the government's Terrorism Readiness List, and make sure you know what to do when Armageddon comes knocking.

Print out and read FEMA's Are You Ready? booklet, especially the chapters on Terrorism, Chemical and Biological Weapons, and Nuclear and Radiological Attack, 'cause the electricity won't be on when you need to read it.

Then sit back and relax, secure in the knowledge that the U.S. government has everything well in hand.

Plop. Even though we are too stupid to know precisely the right thing to do in our current global crisis, we are not so stupid as to think that this is it. Are you?
The Justice Department is considering legislative proposals that would significantly expand the federal government's power to investigate, detain and punish suspected terrorists in secret and without court supervision, according to a preliminary draft of the bill disclosed yesterday.
The draft, a potential successor to the Patriot Act that passed Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, would authorize the Justice Department to conduct clandestine searches or eavesdrop on any suspected terrorist or foreign agent for 15 days after the beginning of a military conflict or "national emergency," rather than after a formal declaration of war, as current law provides. It would also permit wiretaps of U.S. citizens in terrorism cases for longer periods and with less court oversight than now permitted; and allow the department to collect a DNA-sample database from both convicted and suspected terrorists.
Under the draft, the government could declare individuals, not just groups, "foreign powers" subject to clandestine surveillance under looser standards than would apply in criminal cases, and it would permit such surveillance against a U.S. citizen suspected of spying for a foreign power, even if the alleged suspicious conduct was not itself criminal.
Taken as a whole, the proposals would constitute a far-reaching invitation to Congress to ratify the Bush administration's get-tough legal approach to the war on terrorism. The Jan. 9 document, labeled "confidential -- not for distribution" and titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, was posted on the Internet by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
The author of the bill? Attorney General John Ashcroft. What's that? You thought he was in the executive branch, not the legislature? We hereby declare you a foreign power and will send the Peace Corps to interrogate you with extreme prejudice. Thank you.

Plurp. We are amused at the hubbub about U-2 flights over Iraq. The Iraqis object that they can't tell the difference between U.N. U-2s, which typically fly at altitudes of 60k-80k ft, and U.S. military jets, which typically fly at altitudes of 35k ft. Poor arithmetic skills, no doubt.
But here's what amuses us even more. The U.S. would like us to believe the following.

The U-2 is a 47 year old reconnaissance plane. Its successor, the SR-71, was retired from service.

The U.S. has been working on Stealth technology for over 25 years, and has produced three publicly-known Stealth airframes: the F-117A , the B-2 and the F-22

The U.S. has not produced any newer or more stealthy reconnaissance planes.

See? Isn't that a knee-slapper?

Yak. Helen. Of course.
Thumb all of them in the nose

Thumb your nose at all of them

Punch them all in the nose

Plurp.
We eschew peanut butter sandwiches, hummingbirds after mourning, the fingernails of saints, words beginning with diphthongs and the dreams experienced by large collections of river stones.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was the highest of the many
strangely colored threat
levels

Friday, February 7, 2003
Blab. Exposing our embarrassingly maudlin writing, a reader searches for thirty year old candies. Bleh!
Subject: Chocolate Covered Cherries
Steve - saw your site and wondeed where you bought the ccc's. My girlfriend tells me she used to love them but I can't find them anywhere. Can you help please?
Best wishes
John T
Goodness, John T! Don't you know that Google is your friend? Silly boy.

Blab. On our effort to take Michael Jackson up on his offer to jump off the balcony if someone announced that all kids were dead, a reader comes up with a time-saving device.
You don't actually have to execute anyone. You just have to _announce_ it.

Well, that greatly simplifies matters! Our apologies to those children who were in the front of the line.
And, Michael, we have some bad news to tell you ...

Blab. A reader discovers a fact that has driven some of us beyond the edge of madness: that we sometimes miss things. Here is the disastrous aftermath.
You've missed the most amazing thing about the Kasparov-Deep Junior match, at least to a chessplayer. Deep Junior is playing a different style of chess than any computer before it. Traditionally, computers have excelled in wild positions with lots of tactical complications, where the computer's calculating ability allows it to plow through the myriad variations far better than any human.
Conversely, they typically do not do so well in positions without any immediate tactical shots, where long-term planning is required. (Which is why all computer programs, even Deep Junior, require opening books, as the starting position is such a position. Turn off any computer's opening book and laugh at it's poor opening play, even if it does still beat you in the middlegame.)
Further, computer calculations have been primarily driven (after mate itself) by material considerations. Computers would only sacrifice material if it clearly led to mate, or an eventual gain of material which outweighed the sacrifice. (Neither of which, as the pedants will point out, is truly a sacrifice.)
But in this match, Deep Junior has played much differently than any computer before it, sacrificing a pawn in Game 4 with 24. a5, and a full piece(!) in Game 5 with 10... Bxh2+, neither of which clearly led to mate or an eventual gain of material.
Meanwhile, Kasparov eschewed the conventional wisdom about anti-computer chess (play a quiet positional game) in Game 1, willingly went into a tactically complex position, and won.
Most amusing about the linked columns above are when writer Mig Greengard is repeating the traditional thinking about computer chess in his commentary on Game 1--"When a computer gives up material you know it's either in serious trouble or about to announce mate in 12 on your sorry human butt"--only to be proved wrong by Deep Junior's un-computer-like sacrifices in Games 4 and 5.
(Mig does have a great way with words, though: "The commentators soon turned against Junior's aggressive decision, saying that the passed b-pawn would eventually be surrounded and chopped down, leaving Black with the advantage. 35 moves later when the draw was agreed the pawn still stood on b6 like a statue in the Louvre that had seen the French Revolution take place around it.")
That's quite an allegation! Now you are obliged to tell us why its style is different. What is it doing that other chess programs do not?

Blab. We work with a number of brilliant people who have an academic form of Tourrette's Syndrome. In the middle of a meeting about something else entirely, they spit out, with great excitement, some mysterious phrase or fact with no connection whatever to the ongoing conversation.
Sometimes, it is the solution to some devilish problem that has puzzled them for days. Sometimes, it's just mysterious.
And - surprise, surprise - we have readers like that too.
not-so-good-for procedures are all the rage... really.
It might be a new trend in programming languages. It's hard to tell, isn't it?

Blab. A reader allows us to indulge in grandiose self-flattery. And we like that.
Ok. I know I've sent you something about this before, but I never saw a response. It think your system was hosed at the time, or something. Anyway....
You have a comic listed here in stuff that looks as if it's done by Mike Krahulik (Gabriel) of Penny-Arcade.   In fact, check out this. It's dead on (except for the eyes).
Yours is listed as being done by J. Fred Shirley-Haro. What's the deal?
- Felis Lynx
Well, yeah, except that ours is incredibly funny whereas Krahulik's is mean-spirited and dull.
Ours was made with the ultra-fun StripCreator, which no longer exists at the now-enigmatic Lowpass site. We used this very same facility to create the equally hilarious All Talk. No Action., the inbred Cthulhu Haiku: Open Mike Night, and the much less interesting Broken Jokes: Open Mike Night.
Oh, and J. Fred Shirley-Harold's name was truncated by some brain-dead software on the Lowpass site. He is so upset about that.

Blab. An unknown reader down the hall sends us this.
[link]
Where "this" leads to Engrish TTT Captions, a whole collection of Engrish subtitled stills from The Two Towers.
can you not see that your uncle is varied by your mall content
We have to wonder what the market is for such a thing. Other than the Web, of course.

Blab. A read feels much better now.
So glad we have raised our terror threat alert status. I feel so much better now.
And well you should.
Four camouflage-clad, Cuban coast guard members arrived Friday morning in Key West, where they told police they had raced across the Straits of Florida in a Cuban patrol boat they took while on duty.
So, clearly, that Homeland Defense thing is perfectly tuned to protect our lives while not violating our Constitutional rights.

Blab. A reader moves the bar a little lower.
This is what a computer is supposed to do in a better world. Click on this link and then type in your name...
We're still wondering in what way our reader's world is better. But then, we often wonder that.

Plurp. Whenever we buy something from Amazon, which loses money on every sale, we feel a quiet pride in contributing to its eventual demise.

Plurp. When the Shuttle broke up last weekend, we found it curious that NASA immediately and repeatedly announced that people should stay away from the pieces that fell, as they might be harmed by "toxic fuel". Looking at the fireballs streaking through the sky, we figured that anything volatile (and certainly that volatile) would have long since burnt up.
Our well-known paranoia kicked in. What other motivation could they have for keeping people away from every obscure scrap of debris? Sure, they want as much unadulterated evidence as possible to reconstruct the problem, but ...
It occurred to us that there might be some Nasty Government Secret stuff on board the Shuttle. Five of the seven crewmembers were active military folks, after all. And those images of National Guardsfolks standing over handfuls of debris added to the military mystique.
But, then, nah! Too paranoid. Too conspiracy theorish. It was probably just toxic material after all.
Or was it?
A piece of debris classified "top secret" is somewhere among the thousands of shards of the space shuttle Columbia spread across Texas.
The communications device handles encrypted messages between the shuttle and the ground. According to its serial number, it is in a class of equipment labeled "TSEC" -- telecommunications security -- that must be handled with strict chain-of-command documentation. [...]
One encryption expert said if the box were keyed it could be valuable to a foreign intelligence agency, if it survived the accident.

Plurp. Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto the 'Net.
President Bush has signed a secret directive ordering the government to develop, for the first time, national-level guidance for determining when and how the United States would launch cyber-attacks against enemy computer networks.
Is nothing sacred?

Plurp. Dubya.
"I have said that if Saddam Hussein does not disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him," Mr. Bush said. "And I mean it."
So it wasn't a joke, then? Thanks for clearing that up.

Rant. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has been using your money to make TV commercials that try to convince you, through a Byzantine and complicated chain of illogic, that buying drugs contributes to terrorism. We think this is so blatantly ignorant of basic economics as to make commenting on it beneath us.
Except that we can't resist.
Here's one of their obnoxious commercials.

Norm: This drugs and terror thing. I mean, it's a very complicated issue.

Nick: A complicated issue?

Norm: Complicated.... very complicated.

Nick: No drug buyers, no drug money.
No drug money, no drug dealers.
No drug dealers, no drug murders, shootings, bribery, corruption.

Norm: Not that complicated.

Would it surprise you to discover that we have our own version?

Norm: This drugs and terror thing. I mean, it's a very complicated issue.

Nick: A complicated issue?

Norm: Complicated.... very complicated.

Nick: No drug laws, no drug criminals.

Norm: Not that complicated.

See? Not that complicated.

Plurp. We were sitting around today with Dave and Ian, wondering what kind of people we should be hiring. A detailed analysis of our daily working habits indicated that we should be hiring Email Answerers and Meeting Attenders.
No experience required.

Plurp.
The blue dog
figured that anyone who
ever bought anything
was contributing to
terrorism

Thursday, February 6, 2003
Blab. A bot writes:
On Wed Feb 05, 2003 at 11:54:39 PM PST I was unable to read your web site: http://www.stevewhite.org/ due to the following error: No New Text
Um, yes, well. We already used that Web host excuse this week, didn't we? Can we blame this one on the cat? Prolly not, pity though it is. We'll just have to fess up and admit that we were, uh, busy.

Blab. Another reader, noticing this same effect, gets just plain nasty.
A day without Plurp is like a day without beets.
There's no call for that kind of rudeness. Really.

Blab. A veteran reader and meme-mixer extraordinaire writes:
Still no Wednesday Plurp? Please check your records: I have subscribed to the Beets-for-Plurp version.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Do you have a Blab? Even a Blab would help.
Shocked by our own lack of regard for our Treasured Reader, we are forced to return its beets.

Blab. Despite our best efforts, we please one reader. We really must look into this!
I'm pleased to see you're viewing the possibility of war realistically. Over the past few days I've been becoming increasingly alarmed reading blogs of people who think this war is a good idea.
We are hard pressed to imagine a more horrifying human activity than war. And war against a megalomaniacal adversary with weapons of mass destruction? More dangerous than anyone can imagine.
We think it's pretty clear that Hussein has chemical and biological weapons so terrifying that you would not sleep if you understood their potential. We also think he considers them Tools Of The State, and will happily use them to pursue any of his various goals.
This is bad. This is, in fact, very bad.
We also think it's clear that he'll get nuclear weapons pretty soon, either because he separates enough enriched uranium himself, or because he buys it from some Uzbekistani nutter.
This is much, much worse.
So we are faced with a dilemma. Left to his own devices, Hussein will become the most dangerous force in the world. Real soon now. But war brings its own terrible risks. What happens when Hussein kills a few hundred thousand Israelis with rockets full of smallpox? The next few moves are too ghastly to consider.
We are relieved not to be the person who must make these awful decisions. We know that we are not smart enough.
Unfortunately, we also know that the people who are making these awful decisions are much, much stupider than we are.

Blab. Our easily amused Midwest Correspondent proves that someone actually reads our header mottos, and for that we are eternally grateful.
Hi Captain Bulwark Never Flailing,
On the subject of imaginary techno items, here's a submission from one of my dreams last night. Picture a lightweight dark blue rectangular block, roughly 3" x 1". In the center of one of the rectangular faces is a rectangular slit, outlined in very dark blue, almost black. When you want to know how to spell a word, you speak into the slit, say the word and also spell it as best you can. Then a lovely voice tells you the word's correct spelling, as well as its meaning, conveyed in a clever and fun sentence.
The voice is Will Shortz's. I think he's charming. Each Sunday morning on National Public Radio, he presents a segment on puzzles that is a "must listen" activity each Sunday morning around our house.
Just before the alarm went off, I remember thinking: "Wow- how entertaining! This would be really fun to take on vacation." BBBBBZZzzzzzzt.
I've been told I'm easily amused. This idea of "a really fun thing" probably falls in that category.
Your (easily amused) Midwest Correspondent
It turns out that these devices are for sale on eBay. The current going price is $19.95.

Blab. A reader sends us something quite mysterious.
parasite human
What does it mean? We don't know. But we worry, in our sleepless moments in the early dawn, that they are talking about us, in their language of secret whispers.

Blab. A reader makes introductions.
sara, joe millionaire
Joe, Sara Complete Jerk. You two will definitely get along.

Yow. Have you been following Kasparov vs. Deep Junior? No? But you should. It's very interesting! This is a program, developed by two people, running on a perfectly pedestrian machine, that is pretty much as good as the best human on Earth.
This is amazing.
Even more amazing are the implications.
"What's happening with chess is it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence intellectual activity," said Hans Berliner, a former world correspondence chess champion and professor emeritus of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. "You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. Chess is winding down."
Have you ever seen anything so astonishing? We haven't.

Yo. ... until now.

Chess Nerds of the
New Millennium
Blab. A reader suggests an interesting procedure.
Each single day, a newborn will claim responsability for all the evil and death, of that day, through the voice of an elder.
The newborn will then be scapegoated, slaughtered and his blood burnt.
At night, we would sleep relieved.
- * -
Justice can be just a red fever of the eye.
(oo)~
Now, what would this be good for?

Yow. Michael Jackson.
[I]f someone announced all kids were dead, I would jump off the balcony immediately.
We generally like kids, but what can we say? Jacko drives a hard bargain. The executions begin tonight.

Plurp.
The blue dog figured
that a day without beets was
...

Wednesday, February 5, 2003
Blab. A lascivious reader writes (twice):
sara kozer
That's quite a mouthful, isn't it?

Blab. A reader didn't say something. We wonder what.
I didn't say that the answers were good. How can a subset be cheesier than the larger set?
It's a matter of density, isn't it? Same cheese, smaller volume. Right?

Blab. Our Treasured Readers often send us information without context. Usually, our supernatural mental powers are capable of divining their intent. Usually.
If you are using my stuff, you are hurting for material but thanks anyway.
Let's be clear on this. We are not merely hurting for material. We are anguished for it.

Blab. A Slashdot reader asks the most mysterious question of the week.
Kishotenketsu Programming?
Possibly. But what really <happened>?

Blab. A reader seeks fame in all the wrong places.
Hey! I sent in the timecube link on April 11, 2001.
Indeed you did. And you're the only one to remember. How does that make you feel, exactly?

Blab. Verifying the proper focussing of the mind control lasers, a reader answers our question.
Vituperous. Hmmm. Only 391 hits. I wonder how many hits you can get without being a real word?
Ah.
So there you are. Vituperous is not a word.

Blab. Unimpressed by our nomination of Serbia and Montenegro as the country name with the most syllables, one reader insists:
you can do better than that... The United States of America has more syllables than Serbia and Montenegro.
Oh, yeah. We forgot about them. Angelina Jolie suggests:
The Democratic Republic of Congo
... which is pretty good, if awfully literal. More to the point, a reader after our own psyche nominates:
France
Winner!

Blab. Another reader answers our question. No, a different question. We think. But it makes us feel powerful anyway.
Why doesn't al Qaeda take credit for the shuttle disaster? Two possibilities:
1. It's not their style. Maybe I'm just misremembering, but have they formally taken credit for any of the previous attacks attributed to them, even that of September 11?
2. I'm not sure it would be believed in the Arab world. All the reasons NASA gives why it wasn't a terrorist attack (too high, too fast, debris pattern not consistent with an attack) are entirely valid. If they did manage to place a bomb on board, why would they wait until the very end of the mission to detonate it?   How would al Qaeda overcome these objections?
It is apparently widely believed in the Middle East that Jews were responsible for the WTC attacks, with "evidence" cited of 4,000 Jews calling in sick on Sept. 11, 2001, and hence avoiding being killed in the WTC disaster.
So ...

Blab. Back to that calendar question, a knowledgeable reader's fingers unconscious tap out a rhythm to the beat.
Hijri - The Islamic Calendar is extremely widespread in it's use, as it's observance is an article of holy duty for muslims.
According to this, there are about 40 calendars in use in the world currently, including Chinese, Indian, Coptic (Egyptian) and most interestingly the Balinese, who apparently use 2 calendars, one of which (the pawukon) is extremely complicated and presumably only used to give you an excuse for forgetting your wife's birthday.
-AJL
Whose birthday? Oh.

Blab. As predicted by the theory that any question in Plurp will eventually elicit obscure mathematics in reply, a reader writes:
In addition to the calendars you cite, they also mention the Indian and Islamic calendars.
I note that there seem to be three inconsistent principles used in constructing these calendars, and each calendar abides by two of these three principles:
1) The average calendar month should be a lunar month, and the year should consist of an integer number of lunar months
2) The average calendar year should be a solar year.
3) Years should differ in length from each other by no more than one day.
The Gregorian and Indian calendars reject principle 1, and abide by 2 and 3. The Jewish and Chinese calendars reject principle 3, so that some years have 12 months and others have 13. Most interestingly, the Islamic calendar rejects principle 2: each year has 12 lunar months, even though this makes the calendar year 11 or so days shorter than a solar year.
We once attempted to popularize a binary calendar, in which there was only one day. The swimsuit edition featured a single white pixel. It never caught on.

Blab. Vying for the award for Most Obscure Reader, this one donates a drawing below which is inscribed encoded text.
[link]
Mr. Shrdlu, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Mr. Eatoin Shrdlu.

Blab. Those of you who happen to work for our employer will experience a slight cerebral detonation upon reading the headline associated with this ...
[link].
"Help IBM Take On Smallpox." It's not what you think. Or maybe it is!

Plurp.
Q: How few people can get an inside joke before it's no longer an inside joke, and just becomes obscure?
A: Working ...

Yo.
Microsoft is warning that the success of the open-source movement could hurt its sales, potentially forcing the software giant to cut prices and sacrifice both revenue and profits.
Duh!

Yak. A colleague waltzes into our office, plops down in a chair and says:
You know, I suffer from ... uh ... it's called ... uh ...

Yo. You've probably read about Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. today. Now go read what he actually said. It's much more interesting than the digested media reports.

Plurp.
The blue dog
suffered from
...

Tuesday, February 4, 2003
Blab. A bot writes:
On Mon Feb 03, 2003 at 03:54:49 PM EST I was unable to reach your web site: http://www.stevewhite.org/ due to the following error: Time Out
You and us both, bot-friend! We get to blame this, and the delay in Monday's post, on our otherwise flawless and superb Web host. Or, at least, that's the story we're telling.

Blab. Our readers keep us up on current events. And a good thing, too, as we would otherwise have no idea what's going on in the analog world.
See Michael Jackson shoot himself in the foot Thursday Feb, 6 at 8pm on ABC. Make lots of popcorn. Watch and count down to his demise.
So you'll watch this and let us know what happens? Fab.

Blab. A Treasured Reader contributes the infinitely valuable.
Helenism heard in a shop this morning:
"Shall we speak"
Shall we say.
So to speak.
-AJL
Dandy! Thank you for your contribution to our burgeoning cultural collection.

Yak. Tonight.
Helen: This is what I'm getting you for Valentine's Day.
Steve: Uh, an emergency kit for my car?
Helen: Yeah! It's got jumper cables, and a flare, and a roll of electrical tape, and all sorts of things.
Steve: Wow. That's incredibly domestic.
Helen: No, it protects you. Because I love you.
Steve: Okaaay ...
Helen: And what protects me is diamonds.
Steve: They'll have to protect you from afar.

Plurp. What country's name has the most syllables? We're nominating Serbia and Montenegro. Not to mention its sheer vacillation.

Plop. In the category of Most Tastelessly Mixed Metaphor, the winner is ... Ronald Dumsfeld!
"You get the smoking gun after the planes have crashed."

Plurp.
The blue dog,
beneath quiet panting,
cursed all of the various acronyms
that made up Computing

Monday, February 3, 2003
Blab. A reader claims authoritative knowledge of which calendar systems are currently in widespread use. We know about the Gregorian, the Chinese and the Jewish; we wondered what others there might be.
There are no others, for some definition of "widespread."
Bzzt. We're sorry. You must state that as a Web reference.

Blab. A reader states it as a Web reference.
There is only one calendar system of note. All others are the products of those educated stupid.
What an amazing site!
"Why not the Time Cube?"
The only reason is educated stupidity.
We plan to entice the UCS or Union of Concerned Scientists to participate and cast the Time Cube, religion and academia into a cauldron of debate - so Truth will surface. I offer UCS $10,000. to disprove Time Cube. UCS refusal to investigate, indicts them evil. There can be no time limit set on this event until the fight has ended and dust settled. Never has an event has been so important to future of children, nature and humanity. The event will be held in a 1250 seat facility and a small entrance fee will be required to cover cost for police, permits and etc..
We especially like the use of large, colorful fonts, which grow larger as the author grows more shrill. This page is a work of art.
There are other parts of this site, slyly hidden behind links. Proving Human Stupidity, for instance. Hmm - we think we have next week's Plurp motto!

Blab. A Treasured Reader is on the lookout for our bitter interests.
A story about a US Patented "Bitter Blocker" that makes bitter foods taste not-bitter.
I can imagine certain people would use it like salt.
It doesn't block all "up to 20" bitterness receptors, but it does a good job on coffee, quinine and others.
There is also a "Sweetness" blocker, the "gymnema sylvester plant of India". Nobody has commercialized it
Interesting! Those of us who are extremely sensitive to bitter could be made to appear more mainstream by an ability to drink coffee and beer without retching. (We've always wanted to appear more mainstream.)
We are willing to bet, however, that that sweetness blocker won't be a big commercial hit.
(Hmm. There seem to be lots of patents that discuss bitter blockers.)

Blab. One of our many groupies sends us this ...
[link].
Awww. That's so sweet! If only we knew who you were, we would spend Sundays naked with you in bed.

Blab. A reader tells us, helpfully, what canonical jokes might have preceded yesterday's curious reader contribution.
Well, there's ...
Once upon a time, a woman had a faithful cat. And one day, a guy ran over the cat with his horse drawn carriage. So, the man went to the old woman and said:
"I'm terribly sorry about your cat. I'd like to replace him."
"That so nice of you!" said the old woman, deeply touched. "So how good are you at catching mice?"
"No, no, replace it with another cat. Jesus, why are people so damn literal around here?"

Oh! We get it! It wasn't actually about Jesus, was it?

Blab. We have the most amazing readers. This one knew both Jesus and Buddha. As children.
Jesus' imaginary childhood friend was the Holy Ghost. Buddha didn't have an imaginary childhood friend as he was too busy frolicing with woodland creatures.
Did Muhammad have a security blanket? We always wonder about things like that.

Blab. And, on an unrelated topic, this.
To err is human, to moo, bovine.
We have always said that.

Blab. On that recent SQL worm thing, reader Bill (who happens to be a world-class expert on this topic) sends us this.

A two-frame gif animation, before, and after 31 minutes.
And the tech report.
Quotes from the tech report:
"The worm achieved its full scanning rate (over 55 million scans per second) after approximatly three minutes, after which the rate of growth slowed down somewhat"
"in the first minute, the infected population doubled in size every 8.5 (±1) seconds"
"it was two orders magnitude faster than the Code Red worm"

31 minutes?! Yipes! We used to say that Internet-borne viruses would spread around the world in "hours or days," but only because saying "seconds or minutes" sounded too wacky at the time. It was clear even very early on that this kind of rapid spread was possible, and even likely.
The world has become a very complicated place.

Blab. Ed comments on the discussion that we meant to have on the saint of the Internet.
Saint Expedite is revered in New Orleans, Brazil, and Reunion (of .re fame.)
Expedite is depicted in art holding a cross labled "HODIE" ("TODAY" in Latin). He is associated with both rapid solutions and finance. Expedite would be the ideal Internet Saint because many people believe he is an urban legend himself.
One more miracle and he's in. At least, that's what we hear.

Blab. As if we were not already in enough trouble, an anonymous reader makes a scandalous allegation.
Sara Beard loves you.
That'll be enough of that!

Plurp. Our response to a friend's email, saying that Saturday was a tough day for everyone.
The shuttle disaster seems both too close and too remote to me. Maybe it's the tenor of the times: too many horrifying events to process rationally.
I remember the bunch of us going to see The Godfather in Santa Barbara, long ago. I think I drove; did anyone else have a car? I also remember being so shaken by the horrific violence in the film - the horse's head, the garroting, the machine gunning in the tollbooths - that I had a hard time driving us home.
In subsequent years, maybe I got used to it. Inured. I got used to horrific violence, to death and dying, to war and all of its psychotic barbarities. And now, to terrorism.
Am I used to it? Am I really? Probably not. More likely, I am in denial. I regard it as a fiction that is happening to me. I watch my life, my city, my world, burning on TV. As if it were just a movie. Just a movie.
And up next: war. Again. This time, a horrific war (as if wars could be anything but). A war in which hellish weapons are unleashed upon them, upon us, upon all of us. A war which we will wish would be fiction, but which will be all too real. We will not be used to it, the horse's head, the garroting. We will not be inured to it, this time, the machine gunning, the gassing, the satanic diseases, the violent destruction of our most fervent desires.
We will not have that dismissive luxury.

Plurp. Here's a predictable reaction from some Iraqis.
Immediate popular reaction in Baghdad yesterday to the loss of the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew — including the first Israeli in space — was that it was God's retribution.
"We are happy that it broke up," said government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi.
"God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. They have encroached on our country. God is avenging us," he said.
But today, our question is a little different. Our question is: Why wouldn't al-Qaeda claim responsibility for the shuttle disaster? Sure, their claim would be immediately disputed by NASA and other folks in Western governments. It seems likely, though, that this claim would be widely believed in the Arab world, and certainly among the more radical factions that are al-Qaeda's recruiting targets.
Such a claim, if believed, would make al-Qaeda seem very strong and capable, especially given the security surrounding this shuttle mission and the participation of an Israeli pilot involved in the 1991 bombing an Iraqi nuclear reactor.
So, why doesn't al-Qaeda do this? Tell us, oh wise readers.

Plurp. Were giant space spiders responsible for the shuttle disaster? Quite possibly!

Plurp. Those Game Neverending folks are back with a new piece of their Web site, advertising the larger, more intriguing game of which the alpha was but the merest shadow. Well, that's what they say.
They're writing code furiously, hoping they have the overall idea right. They're promising a huge world, social groups, governments (ick), the ability to create new "places" and suchlike.
As long conversations during our recent trip to Santa Barbara indicated, there are quite a number of social/economic multiplayer games out there already. They all model a world that's at least a bit different from our own, and therein lies an interesting problem. Worlds, it turns out, are pretty complicated, and it's basically impossible to work out in detail what people will or won't be able to do, given only the rules. You have to actually watch people do stuff.
After a while, the players find holes to exploit: incredibly powerful things they can do, or some unexpected way to become ridiculously wealthy. And things start to go awry, at least from the point of view of the game designers, who had a particular kind of world or society in mind. What happens then? Usually, the game designers intervene, change the rules, drain the ridiculous wealth and power from certain players, and let it go again. Until the next exploit is discovered and they have to do it again.
That is to say, they act pretty much like Hari Seldon in Asimov's Foundation, and for pretty much the same reasons.
This strikes us as rather spooky.

Yow. Nanobot Comics. Very funny. At least, we think so.

Plop. Evidence today of two interesting propositions.

Michael Jackson coaxed young boys into sleeping in his bed.

Michael Jackson's nose was once located in a hair-bearing part of his body.

Yo. Planning on committing suicide while geeks watch you on your Webcam? Sorry, it's been done. Come up with something original, will ya?

Plop. Did you miss National Pie Day? Yeah, we did too. Darn it to heck! Oh, well, console yourself with a quick visit to the Museum of Food Anomalies. It's free. (Kafkaesque)

Plurp. Is vituperous not a word? We thought it was.

Plurp.
The blue dog's
nose was once
...

Sunday, February 2, 2003
Blab. A reader foretells its own demise.
bovine mode is the motto of my day. definitely headed to the slaughter house unless i can find escape from the lathargic.
So what you're doing is reading Plurp? You're in some serious trouble, friend.

Blab. Staring, glaze-faced at one or more previous entries last week, Homer writes:
Mmmm.... milking.
Now all we're missing is a donut.

Blab. A reader gets its knickers all atwist about whatever it is currently hallucinating.
Don't you dare put "Thurdsay" at the top, because that would be a DIRTY DIRTY LIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We don't seem to recall having ever written Thurdsay before.

Blab. A reader notices that we had one, small success last week.
[link]
We thank you. And Sara Beard thanks you.

Blab. Another reader notices a more general form of this same success.
Looks like it worked.
-AJL
Yes. Astonishing, isn't it? In fact, we're Sara Beard's first several hits on Google.
We can imagine a new pick-up line for nerds: Hey, baby, I can make you Googlable.
Do you think it'll catch on?

Blab. Some of you may have visited the site of our former cow orker Mike recently.
Subj: Eek! Referers!
Steve,
Just wonderin', gotta RSS feed?
I'm far far too ADD to remember to check for updates. Ok, well that's not strictly true. I remember, but then I go to the kitchen for a slice of cheese and come back with a refilled drink that I put next to the other refilled drinks I've come back to my desk with when going for cheese. Sometimes I end up taking the extra refilled drinks back to the kitchen to dump them out, only to come back with cheese.
But aggregating would solve a couple problems.
- Mike
- "Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship." - Cicero
Do we have an RSS feed? Good heavens no! That would involve, like, work and stuff. Plurp is restricted to readers who can at least put up with, and preferably embrace, our utter sloth and technical stupidity.
Sorry.

Blab. A reader asks the obvious question.
You like when people quote Cicero to you or you like that people don't do it very often?
We like it when people with cheese quote Cicero to us.

Blab. A reader makes a depressing prediction.
The Nameless One will survive...
WMD defenses for pets that we didn't want in the first place. Great.

Blab. An inverse Googler sends us more of a puzzle than might otherwise be obvious.
"No, no, replace it with another cat. Jesus, why are people so damn literal around here?"
These being (we think!) things that one might say after the punch line of canonical jokes, or maybe canonical aphorisms. Or something. The problem is, we can't figure out what canonical jokes (or whatever) might have preceded them. Perhaps our readers are smarter than we are.

Blab. We seriously injure a Treasured Reader's imagination.
surely you can find more entertaining uses for such glasses than just presenting a name.... remember x-ray glasses? oh, the possibilities! or you could diff the image from last year's and point out the changes.
"Mabel, you're eyes are baggier, your chin sank, and we won't go any lower".
or access the Total Information Awareness site and find out what the last blood test turned up, how much money they owe you, and when they last plurped. there are so many possibilities it makes my imagination hurt.
send me these glasses NOW! here's my $19.95+s&h in a SASE (properly SOAPified, of course).
Dorian
You know, we were just sure we blogged this whole idea long ago, but we can't find it now, so maybe we didn't.
Anyhow, we undertook, a few years ago, a lengthy study of peoples' reaction to the idea of augmented reality. What if, we asked, every pair of glasses you owned had a feature that overlayed what you were seeing with additional information? What if you could interactively determine what kind of information is displayed for you, quickly and easily? What if it was free?
Then we asked two questions. First, would you use it at all? Second, if you would, what would you use it for?
The reaction was definite and universal. One group - we shall call them the Normal People - said, Ick! That's awful. I wouldn't want all that stuff floating around me. I wouldn't use it at all. Another group - we shall call them Nerds - said, Wowser! That's great! I'd use it all the time! But, when asked what they would use it for, they said, Uh ... um ... give me a second ...
Very few people both wanted to use it and could come up with a good example of what they'd use it for.
Which makes Dorian unique. But we knew that.

Blab. A reader writes:
William Gibson recently posted a bit about augmented reality on his blog, though in less the literal sense.
So you claim, but without giving us a link, Treasured Reader. How shall we reward you? Hmmm ...
On another topic, we would appreciate it if someone would tell Gibson that blog archives need to be in reverse chronological order, how to do links in his text, and how to make visited links change color. Sheesh.
But more important than this is William Gibson's short piece on the Columbia tragedy. This is an amazing piece. This is Gibson as an astonishing writer. Go read it. Now. Do.

Blab. A reader needs help. Or, at least, instruction. And we are always anxious to help.
But how do you click on the underlined links? Jab yourself in the eyes?
Yes. You jab yourself in the eyes.

Blab. A reader impresses us with its minimalist lack of context.
I'm sorry.
And well you should be, shiftless reader, for not even attempting to provide context for your now meaningless words.

Blab. A reader explains the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Oh, about those chunks of ice in the East River......the rum punches get mixed today for tomorrow's beach party.
Those are gonna be some seriously large rum punches.

Blab. A reader thinks that ...
This has all the answers.
So, um, a Web site in which the apparent owner collects and documents random bits of information about random stuff: movies, people, concepts, and on and on. Kind of like the Web itself, but smaller. And cheesier.
Nice!

Plurp. The GNE alpha shut down Saturday morning at 12:05 AM PST. We gave up three hours earlier than that (midnight our time), after scattering our material possessions around various locations of the world and selling our lovely house, complete with teleportation closet, back to the only real estate company in town.
That means we missed the end of the End Of The World party. Oh well.

Plurp. Gung hay fat choy!
And this is an excellent time to test the acumen of our readership for global cultural trivia by insisting that they provide an authoritative Web reference which lists all of the major calendar systems in current, widespread use. We know about the Gregorian (duh), the Chinese, and the Jewish. What others are there?

Plurp. We are forced to rise to the defense of Microsoft.
Computer security experts say the recent "SQL Slammer" worm, the worst in more than a year, is evidence that Microsoft's year-old security push is not working.
"Trustworthy Computing is failing," Russ Cooper of TruSecure Corp. said of the Microsoft initiative. "I gave it a 'D-minus' at the beginning of the year, and now I'd give it an 'F."'
Now this is simply unfair. Software is a very complex undertaking, and it's just asking too much to expect safe or trustworthy software from an arrogant monopoly that has never shown any desire or talent in protecting its customers from obvious, ongoing, heinous threats.
So lay off those nice folks in Redmond, OK?

Yow. Here's a way cool drawing goodie, compliments (oddly enough) of the nice folks at GE. Go play. Really! It's fun.

Plurp. Did Jesus have an imaginary childhood friend? Did Buddha?

Plurp.
The blue dog
was a collection of random
bits of information

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