Top 10 Internet Laws

1. Godwin’s Law
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

2. Poe’s Law
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.

3. Rule 34
If it exists, there is porn of it.
See also Rule 35: If no such porn exists, it will be made.

4. Skitt’s Law
Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself.
Or: the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster."

5. Scopie’s Law
In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the room.
Whale.to is a conspiracy theory site which includes such items as the complete text of the anti-Semitic hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as claims that Aids is caused by vaccination programmes, and that Auschwitz never happened. Clearly credible.

6. Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law)
If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.

7. Pommer’s Law
A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.

8. DeMyer's Laws: Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws
The Second Law states: “Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.”

9. Cohen’s Law
Whoever resorts to the argument that ‘whoever resorts to the argument that... …has automatically lost the debate’ has automatically lost the debate.

10. The Law of Exclamation
The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters.
According to Pratchett, five exclamation marks is an indicator of "someone who wears their underwear on the outside"

You want more info? Go here.

Found via Neatorama

Collaborative animation

Nice walk

I'm just posting this here so it's easy to find when I want to watch it again. This commercial would be an example of superb timing.

Farewell summer

If only it were this easy

Spin rinse repeat

My first mistake was watching The T get into Facebook. That was a small step but a major one. I could feel my mind split into two. I followed her down the FB rabbit hole and now I suffer from online schizophrenia. This is just like in Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three, the second installment in the Dark Tower epic when Roland has two sets of memories those that really happened and those that also happened. There was a boy. There was no boy.

My mental split happens along the line my virtual existence. You should post that to your anonymous blog. You should post that to not anonymous facebook. Once that mental debate gets rolling, I turn on ye olde iPod and continue listening to the Gunslinger series. Hence, nothing gets posted anywhere.

FB is an odd world. Just what is a friend? Anecdotally some meatspace friends and I have meta-FB discussions about the environment of constantly checking in for status reports, the politics of who to friend and whom not to and which way the friend requests flow, the politics of accepting or ignoring or accepting and then quarantining friends. Granted, we also just post like crazy and continue this little run down the stairs (we've got momentum now and dare not look at what our feet are doing lest we fall).

But it seems strange to me nevertheless. What event is worthy of a status update? I enjoy hearing about what folks are doing but gosh and golly the sun is out and why don't we just meet for a cup of joe or a brewski and chat? Reading the feed is a weak substitute for face to face. I know I am not the first to say this but I am coming to understand it in my own time. I have selfish underpinnings. I think I am much funnier in the flesh. I like hearing people laugh at me or with me, it matters not most of the time. When the FB crowd does not respond with a "Jane Doe likes this', I feel like the humor fell flat.

My incessant feed checking is much like Tourette twitch. What is Sally doing right now? She hasn't posted in 12 hours is she all right? Should I call her? Should I call the police? OK, I agree that bringing in law enforcement is a bit extreme but I truly think I am wearing out the refresh button in my browser's URL box.

I've got errands to run and cat boxes to empty. Right after I read the feed one more time.

Back in school

Here I am at a major research university in the Emerald City for a
week long class in how to lead discussions. Some of my colleagues
wonder I feel I need this class. I think the fact that I am
questioning my skills as a discussion leader reveals differences in
our perceptions of our classrooms. That is a blog topic for another day.

I love being in a university setting. There is an energy unique to
this setting I didn't know I missed. And you have to love that the
prof started us off by telling us where the best drip coffee on campus
could be found.

Caffeine is the fuel of academe.

Sent from my iPhone

And then we sleep, glorious sleep

illustration for the August issue of Wired by Jason Lee

Link

I'm licensed to do what now?

After about 18 hours spent in a classroom and on the, uh, range, I am now the proud holder of a motorcycle license. I also have a bit of a sunburn on the back of my neck. The latter I earned by tooling around a paved lot while never getting above 2nd-gear. The former was acquired the same way. I've spent some time reflecting on the whole experience—T says possibly too much time.

True to form, The T turned my commentary on the course into an example of learning theory. Let me explain. A student in the class said she was taking the class because she bought a 400cc scooter to ride to work and she'd heard that if she was caught on the road, it would be taken away. She does not have a permit for the scooter. She seemed to think that it would be impounded because it was a scooter. I tried to explain to her that it would be impounded because she didn't have a driver's permit to ride it on the road. I guess she didn't believe me because the next day when the instructor asked her why she was taking the class, she said the same thing. She wanted her motorcycle license because she thought she needed to get a motorcycle because a scooter could not be on the road. She did not understand the role the driver's permit played in the situation. The scooter is completely street legal. It would have been impounded because of the lack of a permit, not because it is not a motorcycle.

It was fascinating to me to watch how my suggestion of necessary paperwork was ignored. This is where T's learning lesson comes in. People, i.e., students, will hold on to their beliefs until they can mesh new information with their old (possibly incorrect) understanding to come to a new understanding. This woman had it in her head that it was the mere existence of the scooter on the road that was the problem and not the lack of paperwork. I wonder if she's shopping for a Harley right now because she still doesn't get it.

(Is this where I mention she is in the country on a green card and that little bit of paperwork she seems to understand just fine?)

When The T has talked about how people hold on to what they understand during our many education conversations, I've nodded my head and agreed. It makes sense. I've then walked into a classroom and wonder why my students make mistakes that were addressed and discussed previously. Their understanding of the math is similar to the scooter-chick's understanding of impounding: each party is holding on to what they know because new info has not been integrated into their belief structures—yet (hopefully 'yet'). Now I'm pondering my role as an instructor to help students with this integration of new info. This falls into Leading a Horse to Water scenario so I know I can't just give them the info and think that they'll immediately believe in it and integrate it and understand it. But how far do I lead? Do I walk right to the water? Do I just provide a map and compass? Do I try to come up with more detail in this analogy when I could be doing other things?

ponder ponder ponder

Never thought I'd use that nugget

Last century when I was in middle school, my gonads dictated that I take Home Economics rather than woodshop. Well, it didn't take. I am helpless in the kitchen. I can struggle through pizza, popcorn, pasta, and reheating restaurant leftovers. My mother, on the other hand, can do some serious magic when it comes to cooking. When I was wee, her renditions of Leftover Surprise were stupendous (how leftovers ever existed in our family of six is beyond me). She had a few recipes that were cycled through every now-and-again and she has at least one soup that cannot be committed to paper since the main direction is "continue to add sugar and vinegar to the duck blood, raisins, and prunes until it tastes right." Yummy. I kid you not.

She had one cookbook that I foresaw even at a young age as the thing we four siblings might fight over at the reading of the will. My brother headed this feud off by getting all the sibs our own copies a few years ago. Good move, bro!

The Encyclopedia of Cooking was compiled by Mary Margaret McBride and has 1536 pages. My mother's copy is bound in hinged steel plates (my copy has a cover but it is not attached). It is massive. It has recipes on everything, including raccoon and other game. Lard is a major ingredient throughout the recipes. This is not surprising since it was published in 1959, the heyday of the Lard Era. It shows every kitchen gadget of the time and how to use it. It defines cooking terms, like "pasties." (I'm making those tomorrow.)

It also has a typo and I only know this because of what I must have picked up Home Ick, er, Ec over three decades ago. Fact: the ingredients in American cookbooks are listed in the order they are used. So the recipe for Rice and Cheese Croquettes that lists mayonnaise, flour, then flour again is in error. "Why is a self-confessed reheater making something she cannot pronounce?" I hear you cry. I was both drawn to the combination of rice and cheese and comforted by the fact that I knew what all the other ingredients were and that none were raccoon.

Anyway, the corrected typo should read: mayonnaise, flour and milk. The amounts of the ingredients isn't what helped me solve the problem. I know not how to make a sauce that will thicken and two tablespoons of milk would certainly be stiffer than 2/3-cup of milk, wouldn't you agree? Well, if you agreed, we'd both be wrong. It was the directions for how to add the ingredients to the saucepan that helped me solve the dilemma and use 2/3-cup of milk.

Now, if Ms. McBride had not been from deep in the heartland and perhaps had a habit of sipping a wee bit of sherry between steps and sounded a bit more like the Queen, I don't think I could have solved my dilemma. Apparently, cookbooks on the other side of the pond list the ingredients from greatest to least quantity used. I don't think I picked up this part of the factoid in junior high. Regardless, I would like to thank my teacher whose name is lost to me. Tomorrow's lunch of rice and cheese croquettes is a go. Dinner will consist of turkey pasties. Stop by for a nibble if you're in town.