Last words

For Your Words Only

To really get creative writing done, I need to filter out all the distractions and let the words flow. I need an editor with fullscreen mode. By Giles Turbull, O'Reilly Network

I have no words for this

barcepundit-english.blogspot.com/2004/09/you-can-do-lot-in-o ne-single-day-just.html
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New words

laptop ballet: the movements made by a person hurrying to a meeting, when he realizes he does not know where this meeting takes place, and that information is only in the email, but he is too busy or lacking a suitable place to sit down, so he ends up running down the hallway, balancing the laptop with one hand, and using the computer with the other.

Sometimes you also see this being performed with PDAs and cell phones, but these are nowhere as spectacular as the full 3 kg IBM Thinkpad version, performed in a narrow corridor in sync with 20 other people.

Silmarillion in 1,000 words

VALAQUENTA:

MANWE: I'm in charge!
VARDA: I'm Manwe's spouse. And the queen of the stars!
NAMO: I do death and fate. They call me Mandos.
VAIRE: I'm Namo's spouse. I weave things.
IRMO: I have gardens. They call me Lorien.
ESTE: I'm Irmo's spouse. I take care of the gardens.
YAVANNA: I make things grow.
NIENNA: I'm sad.
ULMO: I live in the ocean.
AULE: I'm Yavanna's spouse. I've got a great big hammer! I made dwarves.
NESSA: I dance.
OROME: I hunt!
VANA: I'm Orome's spouse. I make living things happy.
TULKAS: I'm strong. I'm Nessa's spouse. I got here last.
MELKOR: I'm bad, momma, I'm ONE BAD MUTHA-
TULKAS: Grar.
MELKOR: Um. Yeah. Hiding now.

Words that I don't care about*

Objective words

Some words from a remixer

Victor Stone writes a remixer-readabl e description on how the new Creative Commons Sampling license compares to our standard licenses. He also mentions that it's important to have format specific metdata, so that search engines can find Creative Commons licensed audio, as opposed to text, images, or video. This way remixers can easily find sounds they can remix legally, rather than having to wade through a mass of content.

You get format specific metadata when you choose a license and designate what format your content is in. We'll soon launch a seach engine that reads this metadata so that you can find works to use as part of your own creations. Unfortunately, currently no major search engine offers this service.

Numbers to words with PHP

New HP chief's way with words

Naked Words

2004 in Words

Weight of Words

The missing 997 words

The power of a picture to evoke a feeling and convey a meaning more elegantly and more efficiently than mere words is, especially in these times, awe inspiring. One of the reasons I enjoy illustrating many of my entries with photos is due to their ability to describe my subject far more completely and without bias than I can. In the wake of the Iraqi prison torture photos I have been waiting and hoping for an explanation of how people could do this, take photos of it and display them proudly on their PC. Regardless of all the rhetoric about 'this is war' or 'but they attacked first' or 'they beheaded an American', I want to understand how anyone and everyone who knew about it and participated in it could follow their orders so completely that they went an extra mile and posed for pictures in which they exuded a pride one usually only sees in game hunter photos including the dead carcass of the one that didn't get away.

Being an American abroad in a country that is neither NATO or supplying combatant troops to Iraq amplifies my feelings of betrayal by my own country and the scrutiny by the rest of the world who don't wonder at the news since they've known all along that we're just a bunch of thugs who frequently break or refashion the rules of engagement to suit our whims. I haven't been proud to be an American in so many years that it seems pointless to try to count them, but this is a new low. Much of America, in a collective white trash playground yawp, will rebutt the outrage by saying something ignorant like "War is hell" or "We saved them from Saddam" while forgetting that the whole exercise was to liberate Iraq, not take over the country and pick up where Saddam left off at Abu Ghraib. Who knew about this and why did it take so long to hit the press? There are a lot of troops over there and a number who have returned already. Why aren't we asking them to stand up and testify? I know a few people serving in Iraq, one of whom was even an MP in or near Baghdad, and every day I resist the urge to send them an email with one line: Did you know? I suppose I don't because I'm afraid that all of them will say yes and I don't know that I have a response to that which wouldn't sound confrontational and accusatory. Of course they knew.

The most disturbing part of the photos is the gloating and posing by the soldiers, but there was something oddly familiar about them, too, that I just couldn't place. Fortunately, Susan Sontag has reminded me why in What Have We Done?":

So, then, the real issue is not the photographs but what the photographs reveal to have happened to "suspects" in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken - with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the second world war took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare. (See a book just published, Photographing the Holocaust by Janina Struk.) If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs - collected in a book entitled Without Sanctuary - of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880s and 1930s, which show smalltown Americans, no doubt most of them church-going, respectable citizens, grinning, beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

If there is a difference, it is a difference created by the increasing ubiquity of photographic actions. The lynching pictures were in the nature of photographs as trophies - taken by a photographer, in order to be collected, stored in albums; displayed. The pictures taken by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib reflect a shift in the use made of pictures - less objects to be saved than evanescent messages to be disseminated, circulated. A digital camera is a common possession of most soldiers. Where once photographing war was the province of photojournalists, now the soldiers themselves are all photographers - recording their war, their fun, their observations of what they find picturesque, their atrocities - and swapping images among themselves, and emailing them around the globe.

I've seen some of those pictures from the age of lynching as a sport and they are every bit as repellent as the ones from Abu Ghraib. It's pretty sad to think that, in spite of exterminating 6 million people during a war, the Nazi's didn't pose with piles of skulls like a game fisherman who just hauled in a great catch, no, they apparently still had some shred of decency left somewhere. They even had fine Leica cameras to document it with, not some crappy, grainy mobile phone camera. I mean, what in the fuck is going on here? Baseball, Apple Pie and Tortue: The American Way makes an attempt to put some of the blame where it belongs, on Americans. Why is America behaving like it's the only damn country who ever sustained an attack by terrorists and are lashing out as though rounding up all the people in Iraq and torturing them is going to either stop terrorism or elicit good will from those who aren't planning to bomb the US?

As someone who isn't living in the back patting, thumbs up, alrighty let's kill some terrorists enclave of the continental US, I'll gladly inform those who are that the only thing that is working, is making those of us with US passports feel even more exposed, more ashamed and desperate to not be mistaken as an American. We keep waiting and watching for some sign, some faint hope that the people of America will find someone to rally around and march on Washington and riot in the streets. I suppose we'll be waiting until the Wal-Mart runs out of cheap crap to buy. America is a country of sheep who follow orders, obediently consume and optimistically hope that no matter if they sit on the couch and do nothing that everything will turn out alright. Optimism. Always.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words and the only words I've been getting from them are "Fuck the World." I want the other 997 words explaining how in the hell it happened, continued to happen, pictures made it onto screensavers and everyone just watched and 'followed orders'. I want to know this as it's the same thing that happened with Hitler's willing executioners. How is it that the US is the arbiter of democracy and truth? I want those 997 words that the pictures were at a loss to explain.

The war of words with Iran

making up the words

Flip Words 1.0

list of words

lssu.edu/banished/archive/2004.php
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100,000 words in your pocket

Amazon's odd words

"The Words Speakers Use"

X-Words Deluxe 3.0.6

I lack words!

Education and Words

Tyler is worri ed that college cheaters might get an unfair head-start in the job market.  In my experience, he has nothing to worry about.  GPA is certainly something we look at when reviewing resumes, but students often fret about GPA with an intensity that is rarely justified by subsequent life experience.  Good grades can sometimes play a part in getting a candidate invited to an interview (which is admittedly important for people starting out), but again I wouldn't worry too much about cheaters.  My sense is that people normally don't cheat unless they feel that they need to -- in other words, people cheat in order to avoid getting kicked out of college, not as a way to get the sort of GPAs that might stand on their own to get someone into an interview.  You could argue that it's unfair for a 2.0 student to perhaps get a job based on a fraudulent 3.2 GPA.  But with a 3.2, it isn't going to be the GPA that plays the major part in that person getting a job anyway.  And if they are the sort who need to cheat on college exams, they'll be left behind and Tyler won't be working anywere near them five years from now.

~

This makes a nice segue to a rant that's been building for awhile.  Nothing annoys me more than those who whine "the government doesn't do enough to educate our children!"  This seems to be a very popular political tactic, but turns education on its head and does more harm than good.  Education is not a passive thing that students have done to them, but rather an active thing that students do for themselves.  If a person wants to learn Calculus, History, or Music; but doesn't, he has nobody to blame but himself.  It is not the parents' fault, it is not the teachers' fault, and it is certainly not the government's fault.  There are plenty of good Calculus books available, and the cause of failure to learn isn't lack of government funding or lack of quality teaching -- it is lack of reading the book.

It is true that children don't normally teach themselves to read, but this is really the sort of thing that parents should teach their children.  Even if 50% of children enter first grade without being able to read, teaching kids to read is a tiny fraction of what our government spends on "education".  And once a child knows how to read, virtually all of the world's learning becomes hers for the taking.  The invention of written language guaranteed that great "teachers" could continue to communicate to students long after the death of the teacher.  The printing press lowered the cost of such communications almost to zero, and public libraries made such teaching affordable to societies poorest members.  It is impossible to overstate the impact that these three developments have had on humans' ability to teach one another, yet we still have people who reach adulthood without knowing basic arithmetic.

I believe that the advent of the Internet and mass storage are having the same sort of impact on humans' ability to teach and learn that the printing press had.  And furthermore, I think that the "semantic web" will be another such leap for mankind.  But even without today's "mass-storage web" and the coming "semantic web", there is absolutely no excuse for someone failing to learn something that he or she desires to learn. 

Kids today have things soooo much better than Aristotle had.  I wish they would stop whining already, and "just read the book!" (as Mark MacLeod would say)

~

And speaking of literacy, here is a nice little story about the "100 words you should know".  This list has provoked some disagreement recently, with some people violently rejecting the idea that flowery words are evidence of intellectual horsepower.  It is true that people sometimes use intimidating words as a sort of facade to dazzle and deflect away from real intellectual deficiencies.  But that is not the same as saying that a rich vocabulary is not worth acquiring.  Words are the atoms of language, and language is the substrate of thinking (especially abstract, higher-level thinking).  Words lubricate the brain.

On the other hand, I have a hard time taking seriously a list which considers "Ziggurat" a sign of intelligence.  I suspect they mixed up the "words that help you think" with "words that are good for Jr. High spelling-bee finals".

Idle Words

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Borrowed words

Words, not bullets

Viral Words

Daypop "word bursts" is an interesting idea.  The implementation seems to be rather naive at the moment, though.  It would be great to be able to quantify and track various viral phrases.  For example, I've noticed a resurgence of the adjective "super" around Microsoft; particularly "super" with at least one other adjective ("super slick", "super cool", etc.)  Another example: after the 2000 presidential election fiasco, the incidence of the phrase "rule of the law" made a stunning statistical jump (and is still way more common than before, as far as I can tell).  And has anyone else noticed how widespread the phrase "make no mistake" became after 9/11/2001? 

These are all the sort of things that a reasonably smart computer could clue us in to.  The computer could recommend that you use a phrase that is at the cusp of becoming popular, or warn you when you use a phrase that is trending hyperbolically to becoming cliche.

This is no different from concerned parents who analyze the past 100 years of census data to select a child's name that will be most auspicious when the child reaches maturity and to avoid names that are trending toward obsolescence.  Most parents do that, right?

~

Whoa!Did I just see some guy explaining to Greta van Susteren that "the CIA has done Bayesian analysis to predict with 85% certainty that Saddam will launch a pre-emptive terrorist strike on the U.S."?I wonder what they used as inputs for their analysis, considering that nobody even knows what Bin Laden or his crew have been doing for the past year and the weapons inspectors haven't been able to find any of the weapons that Saddam is hiding.  Apparently Bayesian techniques are so powerful that actual information is unnecessary.I wish we had known about this magic technique before!  Hurry up! Let's run a Bayesian analysis to tell us where Bin Laden is!

Stolen words

In 75 Words or Less, What is the
Semantic Web?

A play on words

Too geeky for words

A commander's words to his men

Is Google still doing residential phone
listings?

Portable Phone Numbers = Market for Cool
Numbers

Web Phone Adds Computer Telephony Phone
Features To Existing Web Applications

Coca-Cola Creates Custom Phone for Promo
(Phone Scoop)

phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=853
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Iowa phone company tries to block
incoming cell phone calls

Broadband Internet Phone Company,
VoIP2Save.com Announces Full Phone
Number Portability

Quick-'n-Dirty methods to determine
which competing label is better: "Cell
Phone" or "Mobile Phone"?

On the SIGIA-L mailing list, Stephanie Berger recently asked: "My cohorts are not sure whether to use "cell phone" or "mobile phone". Any evidence that one is better than the other, or one is used more often than the other?"

This is a good example of the kind of labeling questions information architects face all the time. The answer to these labeling questions will depend on the target audience (a better label for whom?), on business requirements (maybe the business want to promote one term over the other) and on the context in which the label will be used.

I'll discuss the conversation that followed here and afterwards point to some useful tools for if you have a labeling question yourself.

Andres Sulleiro: "Without any empirical data I will go with my own opinion. [...] A quick survey of the phone carriers seems to suggest that "wireless" (as in "wireless phone", "wireless customer") is most common among US carriers, though you see some references to "mobile" as well. T-mobile, a European company, uses "mobile" which is more common in Europe as well as being the name of the carrier."

Method: check what other websites call it.

Jason Cho: "I think "cell" is more widespread in the US as Andrés noted. "Call my mobile" can sound pretentious to Yankee ears. But I would think everyone understands the term "mobile" on a business card."

Method: personal experience.

Peter Van Dijck (and others): "Google for "cell phone" (including quotes): 6,230,000, Google for "mobile phone": 6,360,000. Looks like a tie, assuming your audience is similar. Just pick one and make sure your search engine knows both terms."
Christina Wodtke: "Y ahoo for cell phone : 16,800,000, yahoo for mobile phone: 21,200,000. What does this really tell you? you'd have to know who each engine indexes, how much of the web, etc.. better to use a magic 8 ball. ;-)"

Method: check popularity of the terms on the web.

Peter Van Dijck: "My next step would be to find out what people search for on your site,
or if not available, on the web (assuming that's more or less your audience). Google adwords can help."

Method: Find out what people (preferably your target audience) search for.

Dave: "I like "mobile" for the reason that Christina stated (forward compatibility); USers and non-USers will equally understand it. Also, it is more interoperable w/ most of the vCard based addressbook programs out there. I don't know any that are using "cell" or "cellphone" ... I also like the clear and easy two word approach of "mobile phone" ... I'm always wanting to say "cellphone" where "cell phone" is really the more correct version. "cell" though just doesn't feel like a real word b/c the "cell" doesn't fit a meaning to me. I know what it means if I am forced to think about it, but it really doesn't mean anything to me at all."

Method: personal experience, check what software programs use.

Christina Wodtke: "> As can Ove rture's keyword tool (couldn't find URL straight away).

You also might consider some adaptation of the freelisting technique on a subset of your target. E.G., a write in survey: what portable electronics do you own, then analyze for use of "cell phone" and mobile phone".

Method: freelisting technique.

Eric Reiss: "Having worked closely with several telecommunications companies, including Tellabs (US), Nortel (Canada), ADVA (Germany), and NetTest (Denmark), this discussion is one I've heard before. Europeans generally don't recognize the term "cell phone." North Americans seem to accept both "cell" and "mobile." ATT insists on promoting the term "wireless." In most instances, we've agreed on the word "mobile" since it is understood by the widest audience. Nortel, for instance, used "cell" almost exclusively until the late 90s, but now leans toward "mobile." I think there is a trend here."

Method: ask the subject matter experts.

Pabini Gabriel-Petit: "There's also Wordtracker.
[...]
In this vein, you might try just walking up to people, holding up your cell/mobile phone, and asking them what they call it."

Method: Analyze what people search for.

Method: Find out what labels your users use.

Quick-'n-Dirty methods to determine which competing label is better.

So, as a review, here are some of the methods used to determine which label is better.

1. What do you think?
Method: personal experience/insights.

2. What do your users think?
Method: freelisting technique.
Method: Find out what labels your users use: show them the item you're trying to label and ask them what it is. (You could build an online tool for this).
Method: Find out what people (preferably your target audience) search for / check popularity of the terms on the web. Ove rture's keyword tool. Google adwords. Wordtracker. Google and Yahoo both list how often a term is used on the web (use quotes around your terms!).

3. What do the experts think?
Method: ask the subject matter experts.
Method: check what other websites/software call it.

Gotcha's: be careful when using these techniques. You are looking for a label that works for your audience and your business requirements. Most of these techniques use audiences that may be very different from yours, and most are indicative only (ie: they're not hard science). Use your judgement.

Phone display magnifier

FreeHeadset.org launches program to
promote wireless phone safety by giving
away free cell phone headsets.

FCC Upholds Right to Switch Phone
Numbers

Some 2.8 Mln Consumers Move Phone
Numbers

Cell Phone Numbers Glance

Phone numbers for sale on eBay

AT&T Response To FCC Ruling On The
Phone-To-Phone VoIP Petition

Cell Phone Users Interrupt Sex for Phone
Calls

consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_sex.html
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Local Dallas, TX Auto Dealer Receives
800 Phone Calls in One Day After
Featuring Vanity 800 Phone Number in
Radio and Television Jingles

Nigeria - the land where phone numbers
can kill

UK creates new numbers for Internet
phone users

Dial 4-1-1 for Cell Phone Numbers? (PC
World)

Merging internet and phone numbers: UK
consults

NTT DoCoMo develops phone with display
speaker

About 2.6 Million U.S. Consumers Move
Phone Numbers (Reuters)

VoIP firm tussles with states over phone
numbers

Shaw to disclose digital phone
subscriber numbers

Wireless: Internet phone service
scrambles for numbers

Outed: Skype project to dial real phone
numbers

Oman plans to change phone numbers to
eight digits from July

In 2003, the residential local VoIP
market grew more than tenfold from about
10,000 local phone subscribers to more
than 130,000 by year end

Polycom Launches Wireless Conference
Phone, Video Display

DTI consults on plan to link your phone
numbers, locations, identities, email

More Than Seven Words You Can't Say...