I enjoyed both that post and the little tickler at the end Dave! Thanks!
Deepa.
On 7/19/06, Dave Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The fringe always attracts more attention that the uninteresting
> conformists...that's what makes news "newsworthy" and grabs attention.
In the US several years back, I recall seeing a suggestion that we
needed a new unit of probability, the "bobbitt", to describe events
that are incredibly unlikely, but nevertheless, given several hundred
million people and due time, occur. (one supposes that India is more
likely than the US to find uses for decibobbitts)
Obviously anything around a terabobbitt or so isn't going to be that
newsworthy -- it'll be a regular mainstream experience. However, in
order to pad out the space between the ads in any given news medium,
it's common to run editorial that ranges from gigabobbitts all the way
down to the hecto- or decabobbitt range -- but to leave as an exercise
for the reader the task of distinguishing between the several orders of
magnitude.
-Dave
Q. why do we refer to news as a "medium"?
A. because it is neither rare nor well-done
