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Next poker game with AKMA, I’m bringing Faith Chips!

A ten-pack is going for ten bucks right now! Click the image to learn more about Faith Chips.

[Cross-posted to The Farm.]

The story’s a couple of years old, but it’s been making the rounds

lately, so I thought I’d point to it: The Case of the 500-Mile Email.

Here’s the introduction:

I was working in a job running the

campus email system some years ago when I got a call from the chairman

of the statistics department.

“We’re having a problem sending email out of the department.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“We can’t send mail more than 500 miles,” the chairman explained.

I choked on my latte. “Come again?”

“We

can’t send mail farther than 500 miles from here,” he repeated. “A

little bit more, actually. Call it 520 miles. But no farther.”

“Um…

Email really doesn’t work that way, generally,” I said, trying to keep

panic out of my voice. One doesn’t display panic when speaking to a

department chairman, even of a relatively impoverished department like

statistics. “What makes you think you can’t send mail more than 500

miles?”

“It’s not what I *think*,” the chairman replied testily. “You see, when we first noticed this happening, a few days ago–“

“You waited a few DAYS?” I interrupted, a tremor tinging my voice. “And you couldn’t send email this whole time?”

“We could send email. Just not more than–“

“–500 miles, yes,” I finished for him, “I got that. But why didn’t you call earlier?”

“Well,

we hadn’t collected enough data to be sure of what was going on until

just now.” Right. This is the chairman of *statistics*. “Anyway, I

asked one of the geostatisticians to look into it–“

“Geostatisticians…”

“–yes,

and she’s produced a map showing the radius within which we can send

email to be slightly more than 500 miles. There are a number of destinations

within that radius that we can’t reach, either, or reach sporadically,

but we can never email farther than this radius.”

Read the rest to see what the culprit turned out to be.

The webcomic Something Positive has its own take on Anne Rice’s change of subject matter (which I wrote about in this entry). Here’s a sample:

Click on the image to see the whole comic.

or :”Anne Rice Returns to Catholicism, Writes Book on Jesus at Age 7. Expect a Goth Freak-Out in 5…4…3…”

[via Metafilter] Call me an intellectual snob if you must, but I’ve made it a point to

give Anne Rice’s novels a wide berth. It’s not that I’ve got anything

against a good vampire story, it’s just that many of the grown-ups I’ve

encountered who have a large collection of her books would be lucky to

get a two-digit score on an IQ test. My feelings on the matter are best

summed up in a Simpsons gag in which Otto the pot-addled bus driver, who is staying over at the Simpsons’ house, asks Marge for something to read: “Hey, Mrs. Simpson — you got anything written from the vampire’s point of view?”

I find it mildly amusing that Ms. Rice’s upcoming novel, the first in a series, is taking an

distressing:

In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under

the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will

publish “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a novel about the 7-year-old

Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. “I promised,” she says, “that from

now on I would write only for the Lord.” It’s the most startling public

turnaround since Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming” announced that he’d

been born again.

Even more strange: Kirkus Reviews gave it a star and calls it:

a triumph of

tone — her prose lean, lyrical, vivid — and character. As he ponders

his staggering responsibility, the boy [Yeshua — the Hebrew name we know as “Jesus” — Joey] is fully believable — and yet

there’s something in his supernatural empathy and blazing intelligence

that conveys the wondrousness of a boy like no other.

My curiosity is piqued now. I may have to purchase a copy.

I’ll also have to keep an eye on LiveJournal for the next little

while. The goth freak-outs over the development should be amusing.

It may be time for some folks to re-read The Mopey Goth Handbook of Despair.

Adam Bosworth has held his blog posting titled Speaking Up in reserve since July, but he’s finally published it.

I fear now for my children growing up into a world where the leaders

turn their backs on the spirit of reason and inquiry. Where the new

cardinals of the church deny evolution not on any grounds of empirical

reason or evidence, but rather like children having a temper tantrum

because they want it not to be so. Where the leaders of this country

try to take Terry Shiavo’s husband to court not because of any

evidence, but because they are angry to have been proven wrong by

science. Where cowardly murderers kill innocent men, women, and

children and claim to do it in the name of a religion, meaning

something that no one can possibly argue with from a rational point of

view. Where the education board of Kansas makes the state a mockery by

demanding that irrationality be held to be as valid as science. Where

1.2 billion people consider it acceptable for some man with a vision to

utter a Fatwa ordering some person killed simply because he doesn’t

like what the other person chooses to believe in or even just

disapproves of his line of inquiry. Where political correctness means

that if some lines of inquiry are pursued, others feel free to harass

and abuse and even threaten the people trying to find out the facts.

Where people believe that they have the right to tell others what to

believe, what to wear, what to eat, what to say, and what to think.

Reason and Inquiry trumps Irrationality and Edicts. While

it’s been said before, it’s worth repeating, especially by someone in

my field with a well-rounded education (Adam was a history major).

A side note: Adam didn’t publish the entry when he wrote it

three months ago because he “didn’t want to hurt Google”, his employer.

As he wrote in an earlier posting on his blog:

I find that most of what I want to post these days would rile a fair

number of people and then Google would get the blame even though these

are my personal opinions, so I chose to keep my thoughts to myself. The

last thing I want to do is hurt a company that has been very good to me

and fun to work at.

I

haven’t the time to discuss this subject in further detail, but it’s

one that I should cover at some point: can you truly be separate from

your employer on your blog? It’s a question that we touched upon at the

“Business of Blogging” workshop at the CASCON conference yesterday, and my short answer is “to varying degrees.”

[ This article also appears on the Blogware blog. ]

There’s a guy who goes by the moniker of Manolo the Shoeblogger who comments on

all sorts of fashion in various blogs:

• Manolo’s Shoe

  Blog

• Manolo’s Prada

  Blog

• Manolo for the

  Men

• Manolo for the

  Brides

If you’re the type who wears jeans and t-shirts seven days a

week,

you might not enjoy Manolo’s blogs. However, if you like to dress up

every now

and again (and especially if you dress up every day), you’ll find it,

as Manolo would put it, “the

interesting and the entertaining“.

As I blogged earlier,

I’ll be speaking at the blogging workshop of the CASCON 2005 Conference

which takes place next tomorrow from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Sheraton Parkway Toronto North Hotel and Convention Centre in Richmond Hill.

More details are in that earlier blog entry.