Yeah, I know. In fact, here's the score: within 2 hours of sending
out old, wrong bits, I got TWELVE corrections & flamemails from FoRK.
No exaggeration, it's pretty impressive.
> I'd take cover if I were you....
Already there, suffering a major aneurysm. Or is it aneurism?
\me looks in online webster. Ah, it's both. It's probably one of those
deals like minuscule, which can now also be spelled miniscule because so
many dictionary writers misspelled it --- caught that bit in the Paula
Poundstone letters column on page 79 of the July/August 1997 Mother
Jones:
"If a word's misspelled in the dictionary would anyone know? ...
18th century dictionary makers had fixed the spellings of words
in an effort to bring about standardization, but there is still
some variation. "Miniscule," for example, is becoming an acceptable
spelling of the word "minuscule," because despite minuscule's
most fervid complaints, people keep spelling it "m-i-n-i-s-c-u-l-e."
This worries me a bit. My name, Paula, is spelled "p-a-u-l-a,"
but if enough people started spelling it "low-life-scum-sucking-pig,"
I guess I would have to accept it. ... In the first printing of
the third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, one entry
word was misspelled and many people brought it to their attention.
So the answer to your question is yes."
Just like the answer to the question, "If a person posts OLD, WRONG bits
to fork, will anyone notice?" is yes. The thing that sucks, of course,
is that the web archive is immutable. Not only can I not remove the
spurious post, but I cannot even edit it to make it correct, as the
person who sent it to me (before it was a forkpost, darn my linear
parsing of email) was able to do:
> > According to this morning's NY Times, this "advice" comes not from
> > Kurt Vonnegut (who did not give this year's commencement speech at MIT)
> > but from Mary Schmich. It appeared as a column in the Chicago Tribune on
> > 6/1. Just FYI. It's still good advice!
Anyway, here are my awards for "Adam's Aneurysm 97":
MOST COURTEOUS CORRECTION: has to go to Kristin. Thanks for not even
insulting, me Kristin, you're nice. :)
MOST INTERESTING CORRECTION: definitely Dobbin. His correction was
invisible to anyone who was not me, which I'm thankful for because he
used several words even *I* don't know the meaning of.
MOST PROMPT CORRECTION: that would be Ernie, congrats, in under an
hour elapsed wall clock time (53 minutes to be exact).
(BTW, the reason I'm having an aneurysm is that I only bought 100 shares
of Apple while it was languishing at 15 a few weeks ago... damndamndamn...
time to go back into my drunken stupor and watch the replay of
Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" on PBS. When the heck should I dump
my 3Com stock already? It's been languishing around 55 for a few weeks
and I'm itching to rid myself of it... :)
Oh, and Jim wrote:
> Perhaps it was inevitable that "Pardon My French" would hit the apex
> of the KUCI charts... ;-)
> 1) Fuck--Pardon My French (Matador)
I got this album and listened to it a few times before my NYC trip.
It's pretty good, I like the instrumentation. Rohit, you'll have to
borrow it when you come visit.
But back to the subject at hand: yes, sometimes people accidentally post
old, incomplete, or wrong bits. Does that mean FoRK as a medium is bad?
No. No system is perfect, and we have to trust in the members of the
system to keep the system good. Meanwhile, as Kristin says, use
procmail fearlessly, or as Rohit says, hit the delete key if you don't
like it. Or unsubscribe if you don't like the traffic and just follow
the archives on the Web from time to time. But as for me, I'm enjoying
this party and I think Rohit makes one helluva good host.
Anyway, as my penance, I will post some new bits. Something I found in
Cosmo magazine entitled, "Are you a snob?" Okay, as bits, it's pretty
poor, but as entertainment, I found it cool that I'm a snob.......
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
Set your spirit free, that's the only way to be.
-- Spice Girls