Tag: Filler

I’m away for the next few days, having a holiday in the country and appearing as a guest star (of sorts) in a pub quiz. I was going to leave you with pithy thesis materials but instead I thought I might share with you the wonders of my phone’s peculiar and almost useless technology, word-predictive texting.

Most phones today have predictive texting; you start inputing a word and the phone tries to guess which word it is you want. My phone has an added feature; it will also try to predict the next word for you as well. This hardly ever works, but it does have a certain charm; if you let it predict one word it will quite happily try to predict the next word and so on until such time it completes a sentence or ends up repeating itself ad nauseam.

I often just start off a message to see where my phone will take it. Here are four of my favourites. I only chose the first word; the rest is all due to the ‘geniuses’ at Sony Ericsson.

This morning? Not convinced by the zombie apocalypse.

Rally to Wellington on the machine. Homeward bound.

Can book. Cool. You tried the other slot? Strange. Are we might also occupy and that’s a wrap, Mr. Cato.

You due to bother with my washing?

It’s not art but I know what I like.

See you on the other side of Easter.

Well, I’m now waiting on my tutors to finish the marking so I can then do the magic activity of signing off on the grades and generally closing the book on PHIL105. Then, thesis.

Hopefully.

In vague relation to the thesis, the journal Episteme (which seems to mostly publish articles I want to have the time to read) has devoted an issue to Wikipedia. You can read it for free (for the time being) here.

I’m still in the thrall of my 153 students and as such I’m not really blogging or thesis-ising at the moment. Still, if you want Conspiracy Theories I recommend going to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency for a quick fix.

Ah, paraphrasing the X Files. Happy 25th of the month, one and all.

Oh, and I think the thesis is over. I’ve been given a Wii and I can’t imagine its seductive pleasures will release me anytime soon.

[Today’s title is the best ambiguous New Zealand Herald article title of the week. Priceless.]

Hello everyone. Hope you’re all keeping well during this cold snap. A special welcome to the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement, who seem to have been visiting this blog over the last few days. Hope everything is in order.

I’ve finally finished my draft of the Testimony chapter and am ignoring it for a few months so I can get some other work done, mostly the first draft of the terminology chapter. Meanwhile, as I take a brief spell to luxiarite in my own glories, the Internet continues to proliferate Conspiracy Theories…

From the Northern Hemisphere: The International Journal of Inactivism (having now become essential reading) points towards the Steve Conspiracy. The material Frankbi points to is currently ‘suspended,’ which just lends itself to Conspiracy Madness.

From the Southern Hemisphere: David Farrar argues the the Labour Party of Aotearoa/New Zealand, the current majority party in the Government, is conspiring against ‘ordinary’ New Zealanders to subvert the Electoral Finance Act and thus stop John Key ascending the throne. It’s an interesting argument and one that’s just a tad controversial. I’d recommend checking out the comments to see Rob Salmond’s reply to Farrar’s assertions. Whilst Salmond’s actions are a little dubious (and remember, I’m no great fan of the Labour Party (but better the devil I know than the John Key no one outside Crosby/Textor does) Farrar makes several of his own assumptions ‘facts’ and infers to a far stronger conclusion than his evidence argues for. It’s not just a Conspiracy Theory, it’s an example ripe for use in a critical thinking class.

Well, I don’t know about you people, but I’ve got work to do. Until next time; trah.