All your translators are belong to us

Microsoft has launched a tool that helps non-native writers to write better English. "It is not, strictly speaking, a machine translation tool. It is more akin to the grammar checkers familiar to users of common word-processing programs—but enhanced to work with people not native in English. ... Using large numbers of Chinese and English texts, Zhou and his colleagues have learned what mistakes are common and what the writer probably intended. Using this quantitative approach—large sets of texts rather than complicated language rules—they also join the statistical trend from the last couple of years. It has proven far more effective than expected."
Advice for free: we hope you're not still using that sodding paper clip, Bill.

Not a Love Poem, or even a Desperate Song, this

His main public is located not in the Spanish-speaking nations but in the Anglo-European countries, and his reputation derives almost entirely from the iconic place he once occupied in politics--which is to say, he's 'the greatest poet of the twentieth century' because he was a Stalinist at exactly the right moment, and not because of his poetry, which is doggerel.
Yes, his work is still plagiarized by teenage boys in Latin America, who see his Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song and figure there is nothing wrong with borrowing from it--just as one poem in the book is itself stolen from Rabindranath Tagore--and presenting its overwrought lines to their girlfriends. But if those boys grow up to be serious writers, they leave Neruda behind.

From Bad Poet, Bad Man, by Stephen Schwartz at The Weekly Standard.

Won't you come home, Bill Watterson?

When David Anez used a collection of pictures from a popular video games as a placeholder while he worked on his real comic, he didn't know he was inventing a genre. One listing of comics based on these "sprites" (that's the nerd word) has "more than 1,200 entries," says this Wired article. But, like the article, we also wonder what will happen when the legal blokes scent money here. If that doesn't bother you, you might want to check out Arnez's How To Make A Sprite Comic.

Also on Wired, also on comics, but more recent: that beep on your celphone? It could be your daily dose of Garfield coming through. A supplier called GoComics will message them to you at about US$3 a month. Worth it? Tell you what, give us them dollars, and we'll send you links to the best strips of the day, every day. Ok, two dollars? A dollar?

This blogger was once a "semifinalist" at Poetry.com. Think we should tell these guys about it?

There's a part of us that's geeky, and another part that writes poetry. Evidently, on April 1st, our inner geek won, because we were charged up with the Gmail announcement to the exclusion of all us. So, today, to make up, we won't say anything about the Goog's valueing its IPO at US# 3.3 billion, and make amends by telling you that on also April 1st, Foetry launched. Since then, according to Stephen Burt at the Boston Globe, Foetry (who announce themselves thus: "American Poetry Watchdog, Exposing the fraudulent 'contests.' Tracking the sycophants. Naming names.") has been raising hackles, comment and quite a bit of dust. Says Burt, "Foetry reads like a cross between the Drudge Report and Consumer Reports, anonymously investigating (and spreading) rumors to further the cause of transparency." There's much debate both for and against the site, apparently, and as the report goes on to say, "Perhaps the clearest point Foetry proves is one neither defenders nor detractors notice. Randall Jarrell wrote 50 years ago that the loudest controversies in the arts were matters "from which the art could be almost wholly excluded, leaving nothing but politics and public morality." The chat and the charges on Foetry's message boards are all about poets, but rarely about their poems: Aesthetic matters are almost completely absent, as they would be in a court of law." Read the story here. [Via A&L Daily]

The learnings from 9/11

The report of the 9-11 Commission (more formally, The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) is available online. The report, which spreads blame across two administrations, uses language that's a welcome deviation from the constipated prose one usually gets from such bodies. It features section headings like: Chapter 1: "We Have Some Planes" and Chapter 7: The Attack Looms and Chapter 8: "The System Was Blinking Red".
Here's the intro to Chapter 11, FORESIGHT—AND HINDSIGHT

In composing this narrative, we have tried to remember that we write with the benefit and the handicap of hindsight. Hindsight can sometimes see the past clearly—with 20/20 vision. But the path of what happened is so brightly lit that it places everything else more deeply into shadow. Commenting on Pearl Harbor, Roberta Wohlstetter found it “much easier after the event to sort the relevant from the irrelevant signals.After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. But before the event it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings.”
As time passes, more documents become available, and the bare facts of what happened become still clearer. Yet the picture of how those things happened becomes harder to reimagine, as that past world, with its preoccupations and uncertainty, recedes and the remaining memories of it become colored by what happened and what was written about it later. With that caution in mind, we asked ourselves, before we judged others, whether the insights that seem apparent now would really have been meaningful at the time, given the limits of what people then could reasonably have known or done.
We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.

But will we still go "HIC!" and use the lampshade as a hat?

The AWOL Machine (Alcohol With Out Liquid™), created by Dominic Simler, is based on the premise that "by mixing spirits with pressurized oxygen, a cloudy alcohol vapor is created which then can be inhaled." So, you get all the kick, but don't get a hangover. And ingest no carbs.
We never had a problem with those, actually. We just wish someone would invent something that stopped us being pompous, lachrymose, and just plain silly when we're pissed.

Come as you are: your RSVP as your avatar.

With your permission, we'd like to push a personal project.
It started with an idea we had, to do something like The Noon Quilt, an online collobarative writing project we participated in many years ago. We thought we'd invite creative people to send in short entries to a web page that would become a virtual greeting card for India. The entries could be in any form that the web supports, linked by some connection to India's existence as a country. Unfortunately we got this brainwave a little too late to do anything about creating the page and back end that would make it possible, so we got, though we say so ourselves, innovative.
Ryze event listings are normally used to invite participation in physical events, but we decided to try an experiment, using the Guest List as the medium, so to speak.
Ryze members can use their RSVPs to either contain their entries or link to them.
Here's a few extracts from the Event Page.

Here's the one-line brief:
In your RSVP, tell us about your India.
What kind of entries fit in?
Your contribution could be on any subject connected with India or Indians. Some suggestions: your idea of India, its future, its past, its present, what being Indian means, what India means.There's no restrictions as to form, as long as it can be displayed on the web: poem, limerick, joke, essay, story, scripts, blogpost, cartoon, ASCII art, a scan of a painting or sculpture you have done, a digital image or animation, a lyric, a music score, a recording, even an entire multimedia page you have stored elsewhere. (And remember, even your choice of Yes, No or Maybe is an intrinsic part of your 'entry.')

The List stays open up to 23:59, IST, August 15th. If you're a member of Ryze, all you have to do is stroll over to the event page to say "Happy 57th, India!"
If you'd like to become a member, just pop over an join up - it's free, and damn useful, even if you don't want to join in on this thing of ours - or mail us, and we'll send you an invite.
By the way, anyone who's willing to host this elsewhere, as in with a proper URL, hosting, some back end support, go over to the Non Quilt page, check out the source code (it's in PERL, and free to download) and get back to us. Quick!

The one thing that might make us consider playing golf.

My friend has an idea that there should be all-male golf courses that feature nude women on the course. But the women wouldn’t be like the strippers at outings (topless females pouring beers, taking wagers, tending the flags, flirting), they’d be more like wildlife. You know how cool it is when you see a deer running across the fairway, or standing near the tee box? That’s his idea. You might not see any for a few holes, then all of a sudden you’d hear a rustling in the trees and see two of them running back into the timber. A few holes later, you might see one standing in your fairway, then she’d run off when you got ready to hit your t-shots.

from this post at Life at TJ's Place (which we just discovered, and which has quickly become a fave) by "Kevin," who is "the assistant manager of a gentlemen's club in the Midwestern United States, called TJ's Place, which is not the real name of the club." (Gentleman's club = strip club, BTW).
Kev writes with rare humour and warmth. We think he's going to be one of them bloggers-with-a-book-deal soon.
Here's some more samples:
"Interesting fact: touch a pen or a coin to a mirror and look at it kind of from the side—if there is a small gap in between the object and its reflection, it’s a real mirror; if the points meet, it’s a two-way and someone is on the other side, watching you touch a coin to their mirror and wondering what the f*** you’re doing." "Curly looks like Curly. He sells and services video games and juke boxes and pool tables (including ours). He also doesn’t drink. Curly is in love with one of the dancers, Jamie, and has been for years (she’s one of our veteran dancers who was here long before I started). He’s not gross about it, though. Jamie is very nice to him and doesn’t take advantage of the fact that he would give his life for her. They’re good friends, but it’s the definition of an unrequited love." And there's... oh go trawl his archives. We just did, and we're still smiling.

Just a little link we found with our X-ray vision

'If you put 'free tutoring' on the banner, nobody's going to come in,'' said Scott Seeley, the director of operations, who established the center with Doug Bowmen, its educational director. 'But if you put 'superhero' - we're already getting a constant flow of people asking questions.'

A Brooklyn non-profit uses its super powers to help kids.

My get up and go, it never arrived.

Leaving New York, we flew out of JFK. That's the same airport my father flew into almost 41 years ago, when he arrived from India. Though I doubt he (or any man of his generation) would phrase it this way, I suspect he was looking for the same thing I was looking for when I arrived in New York. A place to be, a place to belong, and a chance to take some chances. He'd headed west leaving behind everything and everyone he'd ever known, and all I'm losing is the chance to have a good bagel as often as I'd like. But I like to think I've got some of the same spirit my father does, and that part of honoring my love for both him and New York is to chase adventure wherever it takes me.

Anil Dash's evocative post on leaving New York City brought a torrent of thoughts to the surface. A little more than thirty years ago, my father came to Bombay to train for a promotion he had just received. A few years later (Next year will make thirty! Egad!), the rest of us were able to join him. And i think to myself, i've lived in five cities, almost a sixth, moved home ten times, had three proper jobs and sat at thirteen different office desks.
(The desk i'm typing at now being the one steady factor. It's the same one i've had since i was in school; bought second-hand, it is now scarred and stained and requires a special technique to open one of its drawers.)
Yes, i've always considered myself quite the nomad. But the fact is, that none of those shifts were moves initiated by me. They were dictated by Dad's job transfers, his retirement, limited term leases, other necessities, but i've always been the passive one. Even the 'almost a sixth,' to a city i'd long planned to move to, but never did. Even that was because of a Certain Person who lived there. The fact that i didn't make up my mind and just pick up sticks and go may have had something to do with her deciding to move. Right out of my life.
And i wonder, all those passive moves, did they leave in me a desire for some permanence? Something that makes me reluctant to move on, move up, just move? i know i've never shown the gumption Dad and Mum did, moving away from all that was known and loved and familar so that their children could have a better life. And they had the same excuse i did for staying put. One grandfather was in the Army and the Telegraphs, the other in the Railways, and both of them had moved around the country as children. Dad's family even lived in Burma, and fled from there just ahead of the armies of the Rising Sun. Ancestors moved too, to India from various parts of the British Isles, and god knows where else.
Me? twice i let job offers abroad slip through my fingers. And once, as i said, with that certain person, i suspect my inertia lost me something precious. Even now, older - so much older - and hopefully wiser, my biggest ambition is to own a home of my own. Roots. A haven.
Yes, i love to travel, and i hope to see more of the world than i already have. But i lack that true wanderlust, that real pioneering spirit that shapes the world. Perhaps i need to change that. Perhaps i'd better start by at least getting a passport.

Damn, i have rambled on. Not to worry, i'll shift back to the usual pretentious first person plural and third person from the next post on.