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March 20, 2003
Breaking News
Save Over 40% on Intel CPUs!
Look, TigerDirect, you’re a fine discounter, but please don’t send me any more email with “Breaking News” in the subject unless there’s some actual goddamn news in it like a cure for ebola, Ireland rotating 15 degrees clockwise, or President Bush’s succubus emerging and announcing that it’s worn out and is taking a few days off.
March 18, 2003
I blogged that the Google translation of a French article on World of Ends said that the piece is “corrosive and didactic.” Kenneth Powers writes from Spain:
As a professional (i.e. I generally get paid for it) translator, I am happy to see that I will not be out of a job for some time yet. I would recommend the translation “scathing and educational”, and yes, I would say they liked it, as did I. Of course, given the roots of the term “Mordant”, they could be saying “it bites”, translation is such an uncertain science, :)
Too bad. I sort of liked being corrosive and dictactic at the same time.
March 13, 2003
When I was in Austin earlier this week, I asked the woman at the front desk of the Radisson if there were any movie theaters nearby.
“Well,” she said, conflict playing over her face, “there’s one. But it doesn’t have stadium seating.”
“Huh?” I replied, “That’s not a requirement.”
“Um, well, it just has regular seating.”
“I’m ok with that.”
Pause as she screws up the courage to blurt: “It’s not in a good part of town.”
Aha! The light goes on. I don’t know if this was a race thing, a socio-economic thing, both or neither, but clearly “stadium seating” was the name of a truck carrying some hidden cargo.
March 4, 2003
February 20, 2003
I don’t like hearing from collection agencies. They scare me because they get to write bad things about you on the permanent record your high school principal warned you about. So, when I received a letter from a collection agency today, it made me nervous. It seems I owe AT&T Worldnet the mighty sum of $16.95.
The nice guy I spoke with at the collection agency cut me off in mid-outrage as I said that I’d never received the original bill. It turns out that the $16.95 was the final charge for a Worldnet account I cancelled a year ago. AT&T had sent the bill to my worldnet email account…yes, to the account that I’d cancelled.
“I get this all day long,” the collection guy said.
It looks like AT&T has earned yet one more Golden D’oh.
In its monthly list of “Wired, Tired and Expired,” the new issue of Wired lists “loosely joined” as tired. (“Evolved” is wired and “tightly coupled” is expired.)
I believe that according to the terms of the Geneva Convention on Lost Luggage, I am therefore entitled to claim that “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” must have been at some point implicitly wired. Right?
Woohoo [by implication]!
February 14, 2003
I don’t see what the big deal is about those pencil carvings. Oh, sure, they’re flashy in a show-offy sort of way. But I’ve been doing the same thing for years, and I only use the sharpened nail of my left pinky. For example, here are two of my recent works:
Anatomically precise human skeleton carved into a #2 pencil
Anatomically precise Donald Rumsfeld
February 13, 2003
A Freudian mishearing:
Our 6th grader has been doing a unit on poetry, including having to write poems in the style of Walt Whitman. I find this degrading to Whitman: when they study da Vinci, are they supposed to do oil paintings in the style of da Vinci? No, apparently writing like Whitman is something that any 6th grader can do. Jeez.
Anyway, my son started to tell me about a poem a friend of his wrote as an assignment. My son said: So-and-so’s “Song of Myself Poem.” I heard: “Song of My Cell Phone.”
I telephone myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every ring tone belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
February 11, 2003
AKMA has a way to ease into a digital ID infrastructure. (Hint: If we are what we eat, at long last we’ll know exactly who we are.)
The weekly Puzzler from Click and Clack, the Car Talk guys, was so hard that they extended it a week and gave some hints. I woke up this morning at 5:30 and knew the answer without having thought about it consciously. Next on my dream agenda: Re-discover benzine’s structure!
Unfortunately, when I re-checked the puzzle this morning, I found I’d significantly altered its terms, a case of having the right answer to the wrong question.
Anyway, here’s the puzzle:
The warden meets with 23 new prisoners when they arrive. He tells them, “You may meet today and plan a strategy. But after today, you will be in isolated cells and will have no communication with one another.
“In the prison is a switch room, which contains two light switches labeled A and B, each of which can be in either the ‘on’ or the ‘off’ position. I am not telling you their present positions. The switches are not connected to anything.
“After today, from time to time whenever I feel so inclined, I will select one prisoner at random and escort him to the switch room. This prisoner will select one of the two switches and reverse its position. He must move one, but only one of the switches. He can’t move both but he can’t move none either. Then he’ll be led back to his cell.
“No one else will enter the switch room until I lead the next prisoner there, and he’ll be instructed to do the same thing. I’m going to choose prisoners at random. I may choose the same guy three times in a row, or I may jump around and come back.
“But, given enough time, everyone will eventually visit the switch room as many times as everyone else. At any time anyone of you may declare to me, ‘We have all visited the switch room.’
“If it is true, then you will all be set free. If it is false, and somebody has not yet visited the switch room, you will be fed to the alligators.”
And then we get three hints:
Hint number 1: A sixth grader could figure this puzzler out.
Hint B: Take a long-term perspective.
And Hint III: Solve the puzzler for three prisoners.
You can submit your answer to Car Talk…but you gotta tell me first.
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