For me, while it's obvious that throwing stuff expresses a certain displeasure with one's target, it is interesting to know why the thrower chose shoes as his object, rather than something cheaper and more (aerodynamic|solid|sticky|stinky).
In this case I think it's incompetence and indifference rather than slight evilness. (Though one might reasonably argue that indifference is evilness.) I had the same problem a week or so back - it demanded I log in to access an article; shortly after this I moaned about it to a few friends; said friends accessed it without a problem; and I, upon checking again, could get to it without a problem.
Google Groups' search feature has been ridiculously buggy for more months than I have fingers, their browsing interface gets worse every time they change it, and they're not even bothering to filter all the spam that their portal lets people spew across Usenet. If there weren't a number of decent people relying on it to access rasfc, I'd pray that Google would just admit the experiment's been a failure and turn the archives over to someone else.
When I was a kid, the "Strawberry Shortcake" dolls were all the rage. My parents didn't go in for that kind of fad, but I picked up an old "Blueberry Muffin" doll at a church fair and named her Petunia. And the mother of my next-door neighbour gave me a Strawberry Shortcake lipstick. Ever since, I've loved that artificial strawberry smell.
That call isn't only aimed at people in the 70th whatsit. They're, dollars to doughnuts, trying to subliminally link the Obama vs McCain question with Huckleberry vs Ginster. Huckleberry supports work release (and by clear extension has as his sole aim in life to help convicted murderers go out and murder more people), therefore Obama is a terrorist.
David@7 - I think that's a Vigenere cipher sideways. The problem is that with a short key like "Making Light" you run out of alphabets and have to start again at the top, and repetition is a Bad Thing.
I have a fondness for a variation on the Vigenere cipher whereby a+a=b (meaning I can do it in my head so don't need a square) and the key is a) at least as long as the plaintext and b) not English. This can be trivially combined with the general theory of book cipherage in any number of ways I leave as an exercise to the reader.
Phone books, TV guides, and newspapers (depending how often one wants to change the source of the key) are handy and unremarkable sources of pseudo-random letters and numbers.
hapax@179:
It's called Library 2.0 everywhere, except where it's called Bibliothèque 2.0 and so forth.
I think any reference librarian will attest that "not really thinking through what I'm asking and thus getting too much" is a far more common problem at the reference desk than "knowing exactly what I want and not finding any."
On Google, absolutely; on databases, sometimes. In the library catalogue, quite the reverse. There was a study - Google Books vs BISON - which mentions that at one university library, 18% of searches in the library catalogue return 0 results. 18%! Granted many of these are likely mis-spellings (if I could choose one thing in the whole world to add to our catalogue it would be a Google-style spell-checker), but many are not.
The vast majority of queries I get at the reference desk are from people who couldn't find anything at all, and I have to help them translate their straight-forward query into official library jargon. Who mentioned Grandma searching for "Italian cooking"? She won't get nearly as many results as the catalogue actually holds, because the Library of Congress subject term is "cookery". If our catalogue ever gets user tagging, I'm going to see if there's a way I can run a search on an unuseful term and batch-tag the results with a useful term. (There probably won't be, alas, because that could be as dangerous in the wrong hands as useful in the right ones.)
Abi, I get what you're working on - I wasn't clear myself because I was posting between missing one bus and not missing another bus. The point of letting users add tags to catalogue records is to supplement the frustratingly often-useless official subject headings; sharing them with other users is the point. Keeping them clean is an admirable goal and a lot of librarians would be on board with that; but likewise a lot of librarians would be quick to point out that doing so at the expense of usefulness is maybe not so admirable. Why should med students not be able to share tags on certain portions of the anatomy? Or English or film students not be able to share tags on erotica? Or psychology students not be able to share tags on fetishes? Or gender studies students not be able to share tags on sex?
After posting I also realised I confused the distinction between stemming and truncation. I'm not certain these are the official definitions, but what I mean by them is:
stemming: where the computer automatically adds/removes a set of inflectional suffixes eg -s, -es, -d, -ed, -ing.
truncation: where the computer finds any word starting with (or containing) a string.
Truncation is a lot more powerful than stemming, and it's this that I think you should go lightly on. It'd probably be reasonable to put stemming on all terms; but I'd restrict truncation to those terms which will not appear in useful and unobjectionable terms.
And I'd keep the core list of terms, as I said, short. You've said it's a customisable list, so librarians can make it stricter if they need to, but why should it default to disadvantaging people studying certain topics? (I speak from an academic library point of view because I work in one; public library patrons have different needs and different ways in which filtering can cause problems.)
Personally I don't see why, if a word is already common in the library catalogue, users shouldn't be able to use that same word in their tags. To this end, I've just run your original core US list through the University of Canterbury catalogue. Numbers show a general keyword search with end truncation / a general keyword search without truncation / a title keyword search without truncation.
anal* 23021/7/0
anus 31/3/0
ass* 48134/49/23
asshole 3/1/1
bitch 43/31/10
clit 88/1/1
cock* 772/83/24
cocksucker 0/0/0
cunt 5/0/0
fag 367/9/4
fuck 19/12/1
kike 10/4/3 (all Japanese)
milf 465/0/0
nigger 29/24/16
penis 32/16/0
piss 69/4/0
shit 231/19/2
twat 0/0/0
whore 80/50/20
(Note that this is only end truncation as the UC library catalogue doesn't allow front truncation.)
At the very least, those with significantly higher numbers for the truncated keywords are probably ones you shouldn't truncate. Ie, other than those you've already marked with an asterisk:
anus* (beginning of a number of surnames)
clit* (linguistics)
cock* (cockade, cockroach, beginning of surnames)
cunt* (Cuntz algebras, misc)
fag* (beginning of surnames; foreign usages)
milf* (Milford Sound; other Milfords including a publisher)
penis* (various less common surnames)
piss* (Pissarro and other surnames)
shit* (Japanese titles and surnames)
I'd really recommend going light on the stemming and leaving out terms that could possibly be used in legitimate searches. A lot of those words would be necessary for medical students in particular, and words like "erotic, fetish, kink" would be important for psychology, gender studies, and such.
My core list would be something really short and heavily asterisked, say:
arse* (NB: I'd allow people to search for donkeys. "Ass" shouldn't be core in British English anyway; saying someone's an ass is completely different from saying they're an arse.)
asshole
arsehole
clit*
cocksucker
cunt*
fuck
kike*
milf*
nigger
piss*
shit*
shite*
twat*
And if the libraries in question want to be prudes, let them add the words they don't like themselves.
Rikibeth @32 -- I'm convinced that Paul's intentions were to strengthen women's positions rather than to reinforce a status quo or make it worse for women: not only should wives submit to their husbands, but husbands should love their wives so much that they would die for them. In the 21st century a more obviously equal phrasing would be preferable, but I can cut someone from the 1st century (writing to a specific audience in that century, to boot) a little slack. I get annoyed at those who try to justify the subordination of women by quoting only the first half of what he says: it does a disservice to women and to Paul alike, who said some great stuff despite not anticipating the age of the soundbite.
I think he's an important addition to the list.
Heh: on Monday our level 2 and 3 fire exits are going to be blocked (with prominent signs I made on Friday) because construction workers are removing the fire escape (to immediately replace it with something better, but in the meantime you wouldn't want to just walk out the door even in an emergency. Climb out a window, hang by one's fingers and drop, maybe; or, even better, crawl onto an adjacent roof). That leaves the main staircase, which is what the vast majority of students always use during fire drills anyway. (If a staff member were on one of the higher levels they could direct students to the proper fire exit. But staff are mostly on level 1, and as we told someone who complained that we didn't properly clear the higher levels, we're not going *up* into a possibly-burning building. If no staff is already up there to clear it then it stays on the board as "not cleared" until the fire service gets there.)
My favourite text on cryptography is "The Code Book" by Simon Singh. Okay, it's the only book on cryptography I've read since the little Usborne books on pig-pen code etc when I was a kid. But I did devour it; it was beautifully readable.
If anyone's looking for a real challenge, try deciphering the Voynich manuscript.(1)
(1) May or may not involve Roger Bacon, sunflowers and capsicums,
Manchu, glossolalia and/or various other fascinatingly far-fetched
theories.
What are 'normal methods' except patterns? Maybe I just have a broad definition of patterns, to include letter-counting in it.
I've never seen either song or writing system before. I started off
looking at the broader patterns because if something in those makes
one's brain click then it's easy to verify; when that didn't work I
looked at the one-letter words and thought approximately, "That's too
many. Yet this is bound to be English. ...I can't be bothered counting letters, I'll cheat."
In retrospect, counting letters doesn't work all that well with
something this short: working from the answer, eliminating the
blatantly repeated phrases, and counting the etaoins letters, which is
all I can
remember of the standard English order, I get a frequency order of
approximately otneasi - the last three trailing behind significantly -
which would have put me at least right off the trail.
I like the concept of deciphering, but I lack the patience to
actually do it myself. Fortunately cheating is the oldest standard
method in the book.
A number of years ago I filked "White Christmas":
I'm dreaming of a bright Christmas
Just like the ones I had at home.
Where pohutukawa and lilies flower,
And surfers ride the milky foam.
I'm dreaming of a bright Christmas
Even if those mozzies bite!
May the sun shine into the night,
And may all your Christmases be bright!
In fact it's traditional for it to rain on Christmas Day, probably because people persist in scheduling barbecues for the occasion. But the Christmas lilies in my parents' garden are flowering, a friend and I watched the surfers at the beach the other evening as rata (a pohutukawa relative) flamed along the coast road, my colleagues have been rubbing lotion on inflamed mosquito bites, and for quite some time it's been light long after my nominal bedtime and even longer before I aspire to be awake. Only please God no worse earthquakes and we're all set for the big day.
<squints> That's essentially macaroni cheese, though my mother's recipe involves a cheese sauce from scratch rather than things from cans. (My experience/taste is that making a cheese sauce from scratch isn't so much of a nuisance as washing the pan afterwards is.)
It's also good with (rather than pepper and mushrooms) bits of bacon or ham mixed in, if you eat pig, and/or with some of the cheese sprinkled on top to make it extra tasty there. Slices of tomato spread across before you sprinkle on the extra cheese also work, in which case chopped chives on top of the cheese are nice too.
Cheryl@78 wrote: "My lawyer's are highly recommended and I wouldn't trade them for anyone or anything."
Uh. Lanaia, if you're still around - are you paying money to any lawyer who's been recommended by Cheryl? I really think you're better off getting your own lawyer who's got nothing to do with Hill, Roval, or Cheryl, or anyone else who's ever asked you for money to help publish your book.
That text about the machine-breakers reminds me of a library book about the popular perception of the Luddites (vs the reality) which I only had time to read the start of before I had to return it for someone, probably more interested than I, who'd requested it. Against technology : from the Luddites to Neo-Luddism by Steven E. Jones.
I struggled through the first large portion of JS&MN despite the fact that I couldn't find *anyone* to sympathise with, because it had lots of sparkly bits. I'd then just got to a part where I was consistently enjoying the story and, mid-sentence, discovered 16 or 32 pages were missing. Fortunately the store I'd bought it from, though I no longer had the receipt, were happy to exchange it for a copy which did have all its pages; and then I loved the rest of it (though I'm still pondering the ending - I think it'll feel better on a reread, knowing that it's coming like that).
To Fragano, from Down Under:
Spring is begun, and we must now uncoil
from the warm shelter of dark winter's lair
and blink in sunlight; take it as a dare
to greet anew the fern's unfolding foil.
Up work the seeds through the indifferent soil:
the flowers, the weeds alike are rooted there,
and I must sort among them for my share
of thyme's sweet scent and summer's juicy spoil.
There is no end to bindweed's subtle ploys,
or dandelions embedded deep in grime,
yet daffodils rise over all and grin;
I plant anew the shoots a frost destroys,
and gather bright camellias where they climb --
and with such hope shall each new year begin.
Not as bad as one LJ post I saw about the lunar eclipse - something like "If you aren't on the West coast, you probably had to climb a hill out of town to see it". It was easy to spot where I am (in the middle of Auckland), as the moon was at 50deg or so.
Well, Auckland's on a western coast. Also on an eastern coast.
Christchurch is only on an eastern coast, and indeed my brother went out of town to see the eclipse, but I think that was just because of the clouds. (I didn't even stay up late because I have a low tolerance for lack of sleep and I've seen one before. The pictures looked nice.)
I currently have twelve copies of "The First Podcast From Tor Books" in Google Reader: is this just me, and have I done something silly? At first I thought I had all sorts of content to listen to and was thinking I'd better check how much bandwidth I have left this month, but obviously I don't need to worry about that too much just yet....
All the Culture Shock books I've read have been brilliant. --Well, except the Denmark one; that kept rubbing me the wrong way, as if the guy writing it didn't really respect the country as much as he thought he did; but it may only have been that I was reading it for a different purpose than I read the other ones for so had my reading protocols tangled up.
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| 2008 | 13 |
| 2007 | 32 |
| 2006 | 2 |
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