Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
His content is so good that I wish he used NewsBruiser
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Last night I had a dream that may have involved the doctor from Enterprise, and that certainly involved Jon Carroll as a high school writing teacher. I dream about fictional characters more than I do real people.
A few weeks ago I dreamed about Daniel Davies, and I didn't know why. Now I do. He's hot. The geekiness, the take-no-prisoners writing style, the contrarian slyness, the calculated appeal to my Anglophilia. Just take a look at a post or two from late last year. "What is the optimal way to go about writing a dictionary?" He sees a problem-solving approach, bashes it, bashes himself for being stupid, and then gives himself the big meta pow to examine how his thought patterns led him astray. Wonderful. Then there's a quiz. Sample: "When Christina Aquilera sang "Voulez vous couchez avec moi?" in the song "Lady Marmalade", was she using the French word "vous" as the formal second person singular, or as the second person plural?" Sample answer from the audience:
Is obviously 2nd person singular. The singer (orginally Chaka Khan) is adopting the persona of a francophone New Orleans hooker. The more formal "vous" is a gesture of deference to her would-be client.
Anyway. He's across the Atlantic and all, but rowr. Of course, this brings to mind hilarious pickup lines involving supply and demand and barriers to entry.
