klyjen.blog

Over the holiday weekend we got to discussing the delicate line between editing and writing, which is to say, the point at which helping someone with a master's thesis crosses from helping to writing. (There was a context, but I won't get into it here.) In the course of this discussion, it was mentioned that some college students would do "research" which they would then pass on to another--possibly more literate--student, who would then "arrange" the research into words and phrases and paragraphs and sections and end up with a thesis. The justification, as noted by one of my siblings:

Hey now. All of the letters of the alphabet were there in the research notes; she just rearranged them so that they made sense.

heh.

Posted by Jen at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have long felt that Amazon has customer service down pat. I love the recommendations, I love the "page you made" options, and I like the new plog feature. And, I have always enjoyed the e-mails I receive with taglines like "As someone who has purchased music from [bandname], we thought you'd like to know that [bandname]'s newest release is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com."

The e-mail I received yesterday, though, was slightly puzzling. Granted, I am a Harry Potter fan. And granted, I have ordered Harry Potter merchandise in another language (specifically, the first book, on tape, in French.) But this still seems slightly off-base...

As someone who has purchased books by J. K. Rowling, you might like to know that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Ancient Greek Edition) will be released soon.

Ancient Greek Edition? Is "Ancient Greek" the language spoken in modern Greece? Is it so named as a dig at the rest of us whose languages cannot be described as Ancient? And, if not...is there truly a market for Harry Potter readers who speak Ancient, as opposed to Modern, Greek? And, finally--am I somehow considered part of that market?

I could find the answers to these questions, of course, but at the moment I am just amused.

Posted by Jen at 05:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Apparently the Feds have a wonderful new idea. This time, through the IRS, the government is merging all of the data they have been gathering since the PATRIOT Act into a vast social networking application they are calling WYSKster. The acronym stands for Who You Should Know, and is still in beta, but will apparently go live at whoyoushouldknow.gov after April 15. Using data gathered from a variety of sources (including tax records, FBI files, phone logs, and flight manifests) the government will be able to tell any US citizen with a social security number who they knew, who they know, and who they should know.

I truly think this is a fabulous extension of the PATRIOT Act movement into social networking, having always supported the government's PATRIOT Act activities before. Thanks to Rick for the link; he is an always reliable source for these sorts of tips.

Posted by Jen at 01:28 PM | Permalink