All the form, none of the content!

After the fall of humanity, when the hyperintelligent cockroaches are trying to reconstruct the ancient human practice of "commenting on a blog", this is the entry they will end up putting in the textbooks.

I disagree vehemently with the entry itself, but the comments come as close to the Platonic form of constituents of a comment thread as you will ever get in imperfect, materially instantiated cyberspace.

(Hat tip: Crooked Timber)

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NB: Believe it or not, I actually had to close comments, the first time I've ever had to do it. They had become so offensive without any useful content that it's no longer worthwhile to keep it going. Sorry. I have repeatedly vowed to stay away from this topic, but in defense of my colleague, I…
Sir Tobias Osborne of the Quantum Boolean Functions has made the plunge and is trying out open notebook science: Tobias J. Osborne's Research Notes. Which reminded me of some dream software I've been thinking of writing (oh Time you Devil---why could you not expand to fit in all I want to create…
Thanks to everyone who participated in the unscientific survey on commenting. The results are back, and I'd like to share them with you. As many of you have noticed, we've been talking about comments a lot here lately, both at BioE and on Sb in general. There's also a big session on online civility…
Our man in Chicago turned me on to Charlie Stross.  Little did I know, Stross' writings have become something of a sensation in the academic world.  One of the first blogs I read was Crooked Timber.  I think it was our man in Chicago who showed me the way there, IIRC. Anyway, Crooked Timber has…

Contrarian response :)

Accidental double-post.

Accidental double-post.

Synchophantic response...ROFL, IMHO!

By afarensis (not verified) on 10 Apr 2006 #permalink

Dr Free Ride

I came across something roughly analagous last January, and mentioned it a week ago on PZ's blog. I'll quote part of my post.

But there is a game here. Compare two quotes, first John Miller's then mine from a paraody book review on Amazon.

You cannot have randomness. If you do, you can never science (know) a subject because there is no pattern and no law governing that phenomenon since it is random.

The foundation of any good society has always been order and tradtional cultural absolutes. HOW CAN ONE BRING ORDER FROM RANDOMNESS? It is the exact opposite of order, by definition! . . . Nowhere do the authors inform the reader that Randomism denies God designed a non-random creation.

The Amazon game might be fun for some of PZ's readers. It's an evolving challenge to one's brain and sense of humor simultaneously. It gets more difficult with each new participant.

Amazon has listed an apparent reprint of an apparent milestone of computer science from the 1970s, A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates by Rand Corporation. The contents are simply one giant list of 5-digit random numbers.

Almost all of the 44 reviews treat the book as if it has story content and, so far, no reviewer has repeated a slant/approach used by previous reviewers. Some of this is quite clever. I'd recommend reading them from the earliest to the most recent to appreciate the evolution. Two of my favorites are what the ...............? by Preston Brewer "preston" [Think about it; it took me awhile to come around] and 47382 75983 37483 83740! by 47.

It's a great, spontaneous, unscripted group joke-in.

I forgot to mention I like 47382 75983 37483 83740! by 47 because it's original, definitive, and subtle.

And, one of the shorter reviews, but no less poignant from it's brevity, What about the abnormal deviates? by John W. Runyan III, "Too much time on my hands". The two opening sentences [and about one third the total] set the emotional tone. "Why don't we ever hear about them? They have feelings too."

By SkookumPlanet (not verified) on 10 Apr 2006 #permalink

Comment on content of original post placed on this thread (based on the assumption that now the original comments number ove 200 no one there would read my comment anyway).

Further comment complaining about the delay in posts being added to the thread, with additional accusation of censorship made in blatant disregard of blogger's notice about delays being due to comment moderation for spam.

What you postmodern liberals don't understand is 9/11 changed everything.

By Eight Tons of Geese (not verified) on 11 Apr 2006 #permalink

Comment admonishing ETOG for typing from basement instead of fighting in Iraq

Re-post of my previous uncharacteristically-long post with the damn nested blockquotes formatting correctly. This witty apology included.

By SkookumPlanet (not verified) on 11 Apr 2006 #permalink

McLuhan was right!