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I'm a reasonably fast and accurate typist, but I can still write acceptably in cursive and regular print. I have a tendency to use notebooks (the kind made out of dead trees) to scratch down ideas and brainstorm, which is all the practice I really need to keep functional.

I don't frankly care one way or the other whether people can type or write well. People who obsess over the decline of handwriting are generally pretentious wankers, who are probably also obsessing over the fact that no one wants to read Ulysses anymore either.

But I think the reason people tend to make tons of spelling errors and have slop handwriting is because they don't bother to work at it. Even when I'm typing, I'll go back and fix typo's and correct words if I notice one is spelled incorrectly.

It's not because I'm anal. It's because I'm bothering to write this shit down! This is ten minutes of my fucking life here! There will be a day when I'd happily kill a fucking puppy for 10 more minutes, and I'll think back and think, "Well I sure wasted a fucking ton of time on Slashdot, but at least I didn't look like an illiterate 12 year old girl!"

The same is true of my handwriting. It's legible, it's got personality. I try not to misspell words. It's because I don't want some superficial prick to dismiss everything I've bothered to write down because it's straggly and shaky, and looks like something a kid wrote. I want them to look at it and say, "Jesus, not only is he brilliant and sexy, his handwriting is fucking exceptional! It's not straggly or shaky, it's legible, and it's got personality! If he spent that much time on his handwriting he must speak 12 languages, and play an instrument too!"

Although it's really easy to make fun of Garfield, there have been a few interesting cases of Jim Davis breaking from the main storyline.

For instance, this story arc from 1989 is moderately disturbing, especially when you consider that it's is Garfield comic....

And while we're on the subject of Garfield: removing Garfield's thought bubbles removed can be quite humorous (and occasionally depressing), while randomized sets of 3 frames from the comic are about as funny and as coherent as the real thing.

And finally, although it's not garfield, The Family Circus can be easily made funny with a different set of captions.

"The longer this fellow stays in office, the more he resembles Richard M. Nixon, IMHO."

I morphed them, and it was surprising how little work it was:
http://www.dougshaw.com/experiments/presidents.htm l

Speaking as someone who actually read Ulysses, I think actually taking the time to read the book actually makes you LESS able to write an intelligent essay. I sure as hell had a better idea of what the book was about before I read it.

I thought it was just me, but then I ran accross this guy who described reading Ulysses as "...like having a rib ripped out of my body, being beaten with it, raped with it, and then being forced to eat it," which about sums up my feelings for it.

In conclusion, if there are any schoolchildren out there, there is no course of academic plagarism whose punishment is worse than actually having to read Ulysses! For gods sake, don't let it kill again.

My cat has actually used my computer keyboard to write poetry:
http://www.dougshaw.com/anakin/anakinpoems.html

if you love this game, take the Andy spoiler quiz

http://www.dougshaw.com/puzzles/spoilers.html

All the little script k1dd135 who've read their George Orwell homework.

I am a 38 year old professor of mathematics who has read much, from many areas of the political spectrum. I would love to be a k1ddi3 again, but those days are long gone, and I am proud if I write a script to set freecell goals. (which I have.) It does not speak well of your own maturity or intelligence when you assume that people who disagree with you must not have put a lot of thought into a given issue.

BTW (fair question) what harm has come from the US having social security numbers?

That is a very fair question. Notice that I do not assume you are a "script kiddie" because you don't know a lot about a given issue. I don't claim to be an expert, but here is some from the top of my head. (If this thread were still live, I'm sure other people, more up on this than I am, would be able to add to my list)

1) Identity Theft. By expanding the Social Security number to an "ID" card, we are in a situation where, in order to transact business, most Americans wind up giving this number out. (Try getting electric service without it in some states) Then, if the number is taken, the thief can get a copy of your birth certificate, and start opening bank accounts and credit cards. This happens often, and is happening more and more frequently.

2) Government Harassment. (Our government has a history of using the FBI and the IRS to harass people who believe differently than they do. Read a book about the latter part of Martin Luther King's life for one example, and there are many others.) If the social security number was used as promised, then all the government could do with it would be to deny you your legitimate retirement benefits. Now, with it being used as an ID number, it can be used to track you. What's the harm? What if you are not a criminal, but a person using his/her constitutional rights to attend meetings that the government doesn't like, or to attend protests. You don't think the government would abuse this power? There was a protest in Minneapolis when George W. came to town. It was a peaceful protest. But when the News Cameras were setting up, your government decided they didn't want the protestors around... so they were all taken away and arrested for brandishing weapons. The "weapons" were pretzel sticks, and the police apologized as they were taking the protestors away.

3) Principle. I know that this probably doesn't carry a lot of weight with you, because you would prefer the illusion of safety over anything else. But when the social security cards were issued, the people, the people whom congress is supposed to represent, said, "No. We don't want this system, because we don't want national ID cards." The government doesn't get to say, "We will do what we want and then ask you 'what's the harm?' " That is not how it works. So a compromise was reached. The social security cards were issued ON THE CONDITION that they would NEVER be used as ID cards. That was the agreement. And the government broke it.

4) High Stakes Errors. A lot of information about me is now stored under my social security number. If there is a mistake at this point, the consequences could be very bad for me. If you have a number close to mine, and you default on a loan, that blemish could be entered under my number, and I wouldn't know about it until years later when I was trying to buy a house.

But social security numbers wasn't the point of my posting.

The point of my posting was that if the government says, "We will take away the following bit of your privacy but ONLY IN THIS ONE case, for ONLY THIS ONE PURPOSE and we will DELETE THE DATA" and you allow the structure to be set up; it is foolish and naive to believe that the government will keep its word. And I used the social security card as an example.

The web is a medium for people to do easily what they could have done anyway through other means at some great expense of time and/or money.

Does that seem more coherent to you? (No sarcasm intended!)

I still disagree. One thousand people have read my review of Brave New World. Before the web, even if I had a lot of money, I wouldn't have been able to get one thousand people to read it. (Oh, yes, if I had Millions of dollars of disposable income, I would have been able to hire a publicist and self-publish. But even if I HAD a million dollars, it would not have been WORTH a million dollars.)

The general gist of your comment (seems to me to be) is that the web simplifies things, but does not allow us to do anything new. And I disagree. The web allows me to publish my book reviews. Strangers and I now have very interesting discussions about the books I have reviewed, and whether I, a math professor, have a right to pass judgment on Literature.

This would not have happened if it had not been for the web. Even if I had time and money, I would never have done a project like this. The web has allowed me to do something new, that is not just an extension of what I could have done previously.

Pi is not that unusual. Here is a simple number called (I believe) the Champernowe Constant

0.123456789101112131415161718192021222324...

After the decimal point we are, in effect, counting. Clearly, any string "35002134" will appear in the Champernowe constant, and infinitely often. (Anybody know where I got the sample string?)

Pi is an amazing number, clearly, but sometimes it is erroneously represented as the only number with the above property.

DJS

http://www.dougshaw.com