can be found near the end of the account of Jara da Cimrman’s
VISIT TO SCOTLAND, 1871.
Category: nonsense
Avigad Berman
Slowly and under the ground, a loosely-knit group of fans of Avigad Berman is forming.
Avigad Berman specializes in recommending cool and silly gadgets in http://computers.walla.co.il/.
He makes an effort to draw out the trolls among the talkbackers cultivated by Walla not only by recommending gadgets without a point, but also by his portrait and his mention of living with his mother and being pampered by her.
It is believed that Avigad Berman is a pen name used by a woman, who prefers to hide her fatness and love for gadgets and her sons.
My special keychain specs
Following moshez’s and omerm’s examples, I too want a keychain.
My requirements, however, differ from theirs.
My keychain needs only to keep my keys and do well this simple job.
The keychains with which I have had the experience tend to lose keys after a while. I load them with several keys (my car, for example, needs as many as four keys, one of them is really an immobilizer). It seems that keychains are not really designed for holding more than 4 or 6 or so keys at the same time.
My temporary workaround is to be obsessive-compulsive, live like an anal retentive, and have repetitive disorder, and check that the keys are there every time I access the keychain.
What I wrote 16 years ago, as a bored physics M.Sc. student
1st Joint Conference Between Earth Physicists and Epsilon Uridani Physicists
5. Discussion about Quantum Mechanics
E.U. present their model of the microscopic universe and their key thought experiments.
Earth present Quantum Mechanics.
E.U. physicists ridicule it – citing quickly all those paradoxes (such as EPR, quantization of gravitation, etc.). All paradoxes except for two are already familiar to Earth physicists.
E.U. criticize also the thought experiments, starting from Stern-Gerlach experiment. Their attack is on the fact that the abstractions have not been properly constructed. Some of the neglected details are, in fact, very important.
Then, a review of the histories of the ideas is made.
E.U.: WHAT?! Your physicists do not learn epistemology?!!!
Summary
The Earth physicists took advantage of playing with symbols without referents: their mathematics is very developed. E.U. can use several mathematical concepts developed on Earth for their physics research.
Accessibility of disability related Web sites
I am active in the “Accessible Community” project in Petah Tikva.
This project is part of an effort made in several Israeli cities to improve the quality of life experienced by people with disabilities.
Today there was a meeting of representatives of the “Accessible Community” project from several cities. Among other things, two Web sites were announced:
Of course, I asked about accessibility of those Web sites to non-IE browsers. Both announcers of the Web sites claimed that their Web sites are accessible to everyone.
After returning home, I surfed into those Web sites using Mozilla. I found that the first Web site has a problem of text layout, which causes some frames to overlap. The links, which I checked, did work. With the second Web site I saw no problems in my limited testing. I cannot finish this journal entry without an amusing anecdote. I schlepped a woman, who walks on crutches, to the meeting and back to her home. The woman is very active in the campaign against non-disabled people parking at spaces reserved to people with disabilities. Near her home there is a parking reserved for the car of another disabled person, and it was empty when I arrived there. I stopped my car in the reserved parking place to let the woman go out and then exclaimed “Oh, I am occupying a disabled parking!”. She LOL and almost ROTFLed.
Wow, where is my Int'l Assoc. of Graphomaniacs membership card?
I have an acquaintance, who is not using the Internet, but is interested in matters intellectual. I told her about my blog and she was interested in what I have to say about the economic problems of developed countries and how I propose to fix them.
So I have printed for her what I wrote so far in my blog.
You see, I don’t consider myself to be prolific writer in any particular way. I didn’t think the printout would amount to much.
To my amazement, the stuff already occupied 20 pages! And this was barely 3 week worth of stuff!
At this rate I may have enough material for a book in half a year! This, even after I take into account the fact that most of the stuff which I write in the blog is not meant for a book.
What does Google have to say about mimsy borogoves?
The Borogoves Are Mimsy Again–Terry Gilliam’s JABBERWOCKY is a review of a movie, which was directed by the director of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”.
Mathematical Fiction: Mimsy Were the Borogoves has some comments and references concerning Lewis Padgett’s classical Sci-Fi story.
There is an application called Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll’s original nonsense word, which titled the poem which introduced the mimsy borogoves). So this word already lost its lofty nonsense word status.
I can only wonder what widgets will be christened as borogoves, and in how many ways can they be mimsy.
Difference between blog and Usenet/E-mail/Web discussion group
When you blog, you set the agenda.
You discuss whatever you feel to be interesting,
important,
or valuable.
You build, or fail to build, a community.
A community of people who add insightful comments to your posts.
A community of people who share your sense of the worth of your blog stuff.
On the other hand,
Usenet discussion groups,
E-mail based discussion groups,
and Web forums
hold true group discussions.
The BDFT (Benevolent Dictator For a Term) moderator
Is Always Someone Else.
Your important messages
The ones which cost you love, sweat, tears and blood
Are the ones which are left without responses
Sometimes they are unmentioned.
Even if you were not trolling for attention.
The ones who get attention are the trolls,
who do get fed.
The group discussions go on
The group discussions drift here and there
The group discussions wander aimlessly
The group discussions ignore whatever is precious and dear to you
The group discussions may have originated from your brain
But then they have their own independent life.
The group discussions are not subordinate to your wishes or values.
People sometimes take the liberty of telling you to go and have a life.
On the other hand,
If people do not like your blogged stuff,
They simply ignore it
They simply do not read it
They simply do not comment on it.
When you are normally introvert
When you are not used to letting people
have a peek at your way of viewing the world
When the reason for opening a blog
When the reason was your desire to develop and discuss a special idea
When you feel like you speak to the black hole
The black hole which swallows your spoken and written stuff
Which demolishes it to its constituent leptons, baryons, and mesons.
When you feel like that
When your creative juices somehow start flowing.
It is then that you try to imitate post-modern art
And you write poems which do not gyre,
do not gimble
and most importantly – do not rhyme.
MIMSY WERE THE BOROGOVES?