By way of Slashdot I come across this marketing professor's test case of bad prose that he uses against grammar checkers.

Actually I thought his paragraph contained some useful insights that I might profitably use in my unending quest to build the brand loyalty and success and memic mindshare of Wetmachine(tm) home of "One-stop-shopping for all your technoparainoia needs(sm)." I've modified the text below accordingly.


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Marketing are bad for brand. Wetmachine is good brand. Wetmachine's is good brand. Wetmachine's are good brand. Wetmachines' are good brand. Finance good for marketing. 4P's are marketing mix. Wetmachine use marketing mixes for good marketing. Internets do good job. Internets help marketing. Internets make good brand. Gates do good marketing in Wetmachine. Gates build the big brand in Wetmachine. The Gates is leader of big company in Washington. Warren Wetmachine do awesome job in marketing. Wetmachine eat Wetmachine.

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New census data indicates that, on average, white men with a four year degree earned, on average, more than any other catagory. Women generally earned less than men, but white women earned less than black and asian women (and slightly more than hispanic women). No one is sure why this is the case.

What's odd is that that last night I was having a conversation with my wife which has some relevance on this. While one anecdote is hardly the basis for public policy, I'd be interested in knowing whether any of the xtant research has explored this issue . . . [Read More!]

The computer spreadsheet doesn't get enough credit among computer programmers. I think that more than any other one concept, VisiCalc, 1-2-3, and Excel were the killer app for the personal computer. As a programmer, I have tended first to think of formulae and calculation mechanisms when I think of spreadsheets, but the UI and development style are perhaps more significant. For each individual cell, you can look at the value, the formula, or the formatting, and change each through a menu. You can incrementally build up quite a complex application all on your own, never leaving the very environment you use to view the results. Why doesn't all software work this way, only better? That's what I'm working on. [Read More!]

I spoke with Douglas Hofstadter for about an hour yesterday. That was kinda cool. I'm still hoping that he'll participate in the mashup of my Cheap Complex Devices, but I ain't going to count on it.

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Inspired by John's observation of a slow news period, I checked the activity of Croquet bloggers. Except for my 9 day old announcement, the average posting is 22 days old.

I guess everyone's hard at work. Come on guys, tell us how it's going!

Wetmachine is a bit sclerotic of late (content wise). Maybe it just needs an emitic or whatchacallit, an enema. Or a little more science. In any event, here's a link to some earlier work I did towards A General Theory of Everything.

Sample quote:

My theory will not account for the chemical or atomic or subatomic: that's covered elsewhere (See: scientists). Nor will I deal with cosmic stuff, for that's too big to be of concern to us. Astrophysicists are on some kind of trip, we'll agree on that, but what it has to do with you and me and the price of dough nuts is a closed question. So that leaves us with the human scale, that where we live, us'ns, and that's what my theory shall reconcile, just like Milton, only updated.

Maybe that will be enough to scare some of the other wetmachiners in to action. After all, there's more where that came from.

Florida, which has a number of good muni systems, has passd an anti-muni bill out of subcommittee and out to the FL House of Rep.

If anyone in FL is reading this, get on the horn to your state rep today. Tell them to show the same courage against Bell South that folks in Indiana showed against SBC and that folks in NE and TX are showing.

According to this story at CNet, the FCC is considering striking down local regulations in California, Florida, and several other states that require phone companies that provide DSL services to offer those services without requiring the customer to also have a traditional land line.

Blocking this regulation will essentially raise the price of DSL service, and strangle the move many people are making away from traditional land lines to relying solely on cell phones or VOIP services, such as Vonage (both of which I've been considering, given that Verizon is charging me $45 just for local phone service).

Good to see the FCC is still looking out for the big guys.

Grey goo is what happens when little machines convert everything-there-is into manifold copies of themselves.

Now the nice scientists in England -- All-the-England-there-is -- are hastening the day!

Well, good show old chap, I must say! Just make sure that they're British self-replicators and once again the sun shall never set (on the British Empire, &c &c, ).

I went to the theatre last night. At the Vineyard Playhouse, Dr. Yukevich did three short dramatic readings -- one story by Joyce, one by Poe and one by his own self. This last was a Monty Pythony tale, and the good doctor, whose regular job is emergency room medicine, proved to be something of a John Cleese. The last time I had seen him it was 11:30 PM at Martha's Vineyard Hospital and he was treating my younger daughter for what turned out to be whooping cough.

I've been to the playhouse several times over the last year or so (ever since I got 'volunteered' to be an usher). I never want to go but always end up enjoying it, and of course ushers get in for free.

Anyway it got me to thinking. About how a story on the printed page is and is not the same thing as the identical story when acted out by a man in a costume. The words are the same, but what was a story has now become a play. It's the same thing but it isn't. Similarly, consider in what ways sheet music is the same as the music performed. You see where this is going. . . unless one snaps out of it, one is going to spend the next N hours lost in idle ontological daydreaming. [Read More!]