Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Friends don't let friends...Apparently, the primary concern of a friend is to keep his friends from doing the wrong things (sometimes known as "falling into error"). This seems to be a deep-rooted duty in our culture; a Google search for the phrase "friends don't let friends" returns over 21,000 hits. Many of these are bound to be duplicates, but that still leaves a lot of things to keep friendwatchers busy.
The range of things to watch out for covers just about everything, from the sublime to the ridiculous, profound to silly, serious to whimsical. This is a collection of Web sites dealing with this crucial issue.
I don't know when the term originated, but I suspect that "...drive drunk" is one of the earliest.
Almost all of these sayings are epigrammatic, and many make their way onto bumper stickers and T-shirts. I sometimes wonder about the advisability - or propriety - of proclaiming your views, sandwich-board-like, on your clothes. Did Jefferson have a T-shirt that said "I am a Jeffersonian Democrat"?
To save space, I've left out the string "friends don't let friends" in the links below. When you read them, be sure to add the "don't" back in, otherwise, you're likely to end up doing all sorts of wrong things. This will probably get you a lot of attention, not necessarily appreciated, from your friends.
Also, a few headlines appear in more than one category.
Disclaimer: Inclusion of sites in this list does not imply either my endorsement or disapproval.
There are a lot of links here. That is, after all, the point. Some
of them are bound to be so fascinating that you're likely to wander off,
and may end up gone for days. That is, after all, the point of the Web.
I left out two or three that turned up in the search, on the basis
of extremely bad taste.
Many sites deal with computers, and what you should or shouldn't use.
Some of them are pretty esoteric.
use AOL (191)
The List
When there are many sites with the same philosophy, the number of sites
is in parentheses after the title.
And here's one from ZDNet News, about the Pentagon's take on "a growing electronic menace: the PowerPoint briefing".
The Fortune article has an example of how not to use PowerPoint: the Gettysburg Address, if Lincoln had had our advantages.
use dial up
Some warn against a particular product, or endorse some other:
drive Fords (163)
Based on the ratio of Ford/Chevy, it looks like Chevys are way ahead in popularity.
I like that one.
This topic wouldn't be complete without the political:
vote
Republican (289)
vote Democrat (89)
Those two seem to have the bases covered. Nobody seems interested in
keeping their friends from voting Libertarian or Independent.
Like
the Ford/Chevy split, Democrats seem to be more outspoken than
Republicans.
On the serious side, there are the friends who don't want their friends to hurt anyone:
abuse kids
drink and drive (581)
get abortions
shoot other friends
execute their citizens
rape
join gangs
Naturally, religion plays a part:
underestimate
the power of God's love
go to
Hell
The popular "drink and drive" prohibition gets a lot of coverage. Here are a few representative sites:
drink and drive
WHEN
THE PARTY'S OVER
Drinking
and Driving: Ringing in the New Year Safely
drink 'till they drop
This guy does not advocate drunk driving. But, the consequences can be quite harsh, and as there are always borderline cases, he maintains that if you do go there, you'll need the best defense money can buy. Either way, it's going to cost you a bundle.
Then there are the odd ones, some serious, some not, that just don't fit into the broad categories:
dial and drive
drink and play
get sick
go to law school
invest and drive
shop and drive
pay sales tax
ride junk
Ride what, then? Skis (as this one suggests), and bicycles
Notes
My two picks for the Most Esoteric Prohibition are:friends don't let friends drink and su(1)
I found this in a signature line on a message board posting. It is
attributed to Kevin Harris.
friends
don't let friends word process without Reveal Codes Reveal codes
are little formatting codes used by most word processors to specify how
a document is formatted: paragraph breaks, lists, numbered sections,
etc. Word thoughtfully hides these from you, which can be annoying at
times. If you're revising a long, complicated document, it's a lot
easier if you can see the codes on the screen. That entry is by a
lawyer, which is interesting because there was once a very good word
processing program, XyWrite (this was in
the Old Days, when companies other than Microsoft were allowed to write
applications). It was much used by the legal profession, and one of the
function keys let you toggle the reveal codes on and off.
posted by Mike 5:38 PM
su is the Unix command that gives you full control over a
computer. Once you successfully su, it and all its files are
yours. If you're drunk, you might suffer a momentary lapse of
judgement, and delete all the files. I'm told that this happens, but
rarely.
The (1) indicates the section of the Reference Manual that describes
su, and it's probably unnecessary, as su only appears in
one section. The (1) does make it clear that we're talking about Unix.
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Speaking of Words:
Someone proposed a rule to cover the "I before E" (or vice versa) thing:
I before E, except when it's not.
That should completely eliminate any confusion.
posted by Mike 6:58 PM
Monday, April 08, 2002
WORDS
Words are the bricks and mortar with which we build our sites. The key thing about people who like to write is, that they like to write. If Hougton-Mifflin won't buy their work, and the New Yorker won't print it, that's OK - they'll write anyway, and put it up on this, the world's biggest town square bulletin board.
As in all human endeavors, some are better than others. In this corner, I'll try to point out what I think is "good writing". This is partly a subjective issue - there's no one standard of "good writing", at least not as far as the words themselves, taken individually, like links on a chain.
What sets good writing apart from the rest, is the expression of ideas, the construction and layout of a good, convincing argument, the marshalling of facts to support a stance. When good ideas are handicapped by bad grammar and spelling, there's a problem. Readers have to trip over debris to get at the ideas.
MINING FOR GOLD
There may be a count of active blogs; I'd guess somewhere around 100,000. A Google search for "blog" shows 823,000; "weblog", 992,000. MIT's Blogdex shows 14,214 sites and 1,092,797 links. (In proofreading, a day later, the Google "blog" count went up to 859,000; 'weblog", to 1,050,000. I'll check back in a week or so.)
Probably not more than a handful of us read all of them. There's probably a parallel between blogs and specialty-interest magazines. The last time I looked, there were about 10,000 specialty-interest magazines, most with small circulations and dedicated readers. Many great bloggers go for months with fewer than 100 readers. More than once or twice recently, I've read bloggers write, "Wow! Where did all those hits come from?". In at least one case, he followed up and found out: The Tipping Blog.
There seems to be a dozen or so people now whose blogs have attracted significant attention (and that number is most likely off by a factor of 10 or so (which isn't at all bad in cosmology)). You know who you are; you know who they are. I'll put in links, and I'll tell why I think they're good writers. (I don't want people to get the idea that I'm linking to good sites so I can bask in their sunshine, and pull in a few links myself.) If I don't mention somebody's site, it's just because I haven't seen it yet, or haven't read enough to make a call. (As if anybody would be depressed if this uppity newcomer didn't gush over their site.)
Some, like Andrew Sullivan and John Derbyshire, are working journalists whose business - and life - is writing. Others, like asparagirl and The Last Page work in other fields. (IT seems to be a good source of bloggers.) But they all write, most because they want to, a few because they're driven to.
My first example of "good writing" comes from John Derbyshire. This appeared in his NRO review of The Time Machine:
posted by Mike 3:04 PM
Sunday, April 07, 2002
LAST WEEK'S LOGGINGS
WSJ 4/5/02
Korean Airlines flight crews get Tasers. They've already gone through martial arts training. UAL is said to have bought 1300 Tasers, but the FAA hasn't approved their use.
Washington Post 4/5/02
Argenbright is out of almost all US airports. In the Washington area, they're replaced by Globe Aviation Services. We can all feel safer now - except that almost all of Argenbright's laid-off screeners are applying for jobs at Globe.
Washington Post 4/5/02
The air space around the White House, the Capitol Building and the Naval Observatory [note 1] is a Prohibited Area for all aircraft. Since 9/11, airplanes have drifted into this space almost 600 times - about 3 times a day.
[Note 1: The Naval Observatory is the traditional home of the Vice President. There are 4 other areas: 2) The Bush ranch in Texas 3) the Bush home in Maine 4) the nuclear plant in Amarillo, TX (thanks, guys - it's nice to finally know where that one is), and 5) George Washington's home in Mt. Vernon. (Well, maybe it's hard for him to sleep with all that noise).
Reuters 4/4/02
China's space program: Shenzhou III launched March 2002; astronauts early this century (by 2005); a manned space station soon; Beijing builds a space industry, aiming for a manned moon mission.
Times of London 4/4/02
The EU imposes a "green tax" of up to 50 pounds ($65) on London-LAX flights. Norway imposes a CO2 tax on all their flights.
Houston Chronicle 3/15/02
Russia pumps up the space tourism industry: They're aiming for 2005. Trips are expected to cost about $98,000, which buys you a 60 to 90 minute flight that gets you 63 miles up (probably a conversion of the Russian's 100 km), where for about 5 minutes you'll be weightless and extremely airsick.
posted by Mike 8:23 PM
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
Since the term "illegal alien" has been replaced by "undocumented worker", I don't think we should stop there. Let's keep going, and make these substitutions:"thief" or "robber" will be "undocumented property transfer agent"
"car thief" will be "undocumented automobile repossessor"
"murderer" will be "undocumented mortician".
posted by Mike 9:24 PM
(Today's a good day for news.)
Reported in today's WSJ. It's not online; here's a summary.
After Mad-Cow Scare, German Pigs, Farmers 'Enjoy' More Quality Time
The government of North Rhine-Westphalia is trying to counter the mad-cow scare. They figure that farmers can improve the quality of their pork by improving their quality of life.
In typical German fashion, they proclaimed a decree (not just a guideline)which says, in part:
Needless to say, the farmers are Not Amused.
Later on in the story we see the source of this Great Plan:
Gotta watch out for those Social Democrats.
At a state-sponsored agricultural center, one engineer seems to have a faint grip on reality:
posted by Mike 10:49 AM
Tuesday, March 05, 2002
Election day in CA. More later.posted by Mike 10:26 PM
posted by Mike 10:03 PM