ClariNet News and Time

ClariNet was the first commerical content provider on the Internet, starting way back in 1989. It took wire service news (at various times, from the AP, UPI, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters), classified them into Usenet newsgroups, and allowed sites to subscribe to those newsgroups for a fee.

For a considerable time I was primarily responsible for article classification. I had written a proposal suggesting a finer-grained classification system than the newsgroups allowed, which was not accepted by ClariNet's management. At one point I realized I was being a bit overzealous in advocating my proposal. This was my attempt to poke fun at myself.

---

ClariNet News and Time

By Aaron Priven, 1 April 1997

Time, Usenet, and Newspapers

ClariNet's news has been, and is still, chiefly delivered in Usenet format. One of the features of Usenet is that it is divided by subject, and not by time. (Most other conferencing systems work this way as well.) The first story on January 1 directly follows the last story from December 31, with nothing to mark the change. Indeed, it can be that stories on different dates are mixed in together, due to embargoes and the delays caused by editing.

Newspapers, and even most online news services, do not work this way. A newspaper is primarily classified by date. Today's newspaper contains today's news, and the strongest of divisions separates it from yesterday's news.

It is possible that since most people are used to having today's news separate from yesterday's, that ClariNet news is counterintuitive and less usable for that reason. It may be desirable to separate news by day, rather than by subject.

Implementation

Possibly, this could be done by modifying the web extraction program, providing clear delimitation between days in only that form of the news. However, that plan is for another day than this. Here I will discuss potential implementation proposals within the Usenet form.

To implement this within Usenet, it will be necessary to create new newsgroups associated with the days. There are two basic questions to be answered. The first is whether one chooses relative or absolute dating. The second is whether one chooses to crosspost the news to a new set of date-specific groups, or to incorporate the date into the existing group names themselves. These questions will need to be answered before an implementation plan is produced.

Relative or absolute dating. With relative dating, one creates groups such as clari.news.today, clari.news.yesterday, and the clari.news.days-ago hierarchy (c.n.days-ago.two, c.n.days-ago.three, and so on, up to c.n.days-ago.twenty-one). With absolute dating, one creates a separate group for each date: clari.news.y1997.april.d1, clari.news.y1997.april.d2, and so on. (Unfortunately Usenet group components cannot consist solely of numbers.)

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Relative dating requires no regular change in group names. The groups themselves would stay the same from day to day. However, the news in those groups must change regularly. This would require canceling every article at midnight every day and sending out a replacement in the previous day's group. (So that, for example, at midnight all the contents of clari.news.today would be canceled and reissued in clari.news.yesterday.) One unanswered question is which midnight to use. Most of our customers are North American, so midnight ET might be most appropriate. However, as we expand into world markets it may be necessary to use midnight GMT. Or perhaps it will be necessary to have several editions, each with a separate midnight: European time, Japanese time, and so on. The mechanism for doing this last would be difficult.

Absolute dating does not require the repeated cancelation and reissuance of articles. It does, however, require the issuance of new newsgroups each day. This would require more cooperation on the part of news administrators than we have had previously. It would, of course, be possible to specify the newsgroup names ahead of time, so that an administrator would only have to create the new groups once every few months. This would result in a lot of empty groups; however, unlike some of our currently empty groups, this would at least be intuitive (it should not be surprising that a group dated three weeks from now should be empty). It would still be preferable to have the groups created automatically each day, if news administrators will allow it.

Crossposting or incorporation into current groups. Essentially, this is the question whether these new date groups are to be an adjunct to the current system, or are to be incorporated into the existing system itself. Crossposting would imply that all news stays in the current group set, but is simply added to a new set of groups chosen by date. This would be relatively simple, but would not yield results for most of the readers, who will certainly not want only to have date-oriented selection. (Even newspapers have sections for particular kinds of stories.)

The other alternative is to create a separate hierarchy for each day: clari.today.biz.briefs, clari.today.biz.earnings, and so on, up to clari.days-ago.twenty-one.world.terrorism and clari.days-ago.twenty-one.world.top. This would provide the maximum benefit for those readers who want to find news by date as well as by subject. However, this would require a substantial number of new groups. For the relative dating system, it would be necessary to create 9,780 new groups, plus rename the current 489 groups to include the "today" marker. For the absolute system, it would be necessary to create 489 new groups each day (although it may be possible to only send out newgroup messages for those groups that are actually used; this could mean a significant reduction on weekends). This is not a minor undertaking.

It may be possible to have some compromise between the two sets. For example, there could be only a few categories marked with dates, perhaps something like the one-star set: clari.today.biz, clari.today.usa, and so on. However, these are still likely to have great volume. Creating a set with reasonable volume is likely to be rather detailed; not so much so as the full set, but close to it.

Conclusion

These questions of which groups to use must be answered before any implementation plans begin, as the implications are serious. However, attracting readership is very important, and we must do what we can to do this. This may be a first step.

I Was Awarded a Medal by NASA

A picture of the medal I was awarded by NASA.

OK, I admit it. I was one of hundreds of high school students who participated in NASA's "put an experiment aboard the Space Shuttle" contest. Each of us got a cheap plastic medal, a certificate, a copy of the group photo and an all-expenses-paid trip to a regional NASA conference for ourselves and our science teacher. Most of us in the West went to NASA Ames Research Center (in Mountain View, California).

Since NASA Ames Research Center is about fifteen miles from the high school I attended, the free hotel room and the "mileage expenses" seemed kind of silly, but the people there from North Dakota seemed to appreciate it. It was a lot warmer in California.

My experiment came right out of a Carl Sagan book I had read: it was basically to take some aluminium and lead and try to heat them up and make alloy out of them. In fact, the whole thing was pretty silly. I was taking biology at the time, and I didn't like biology, so when I was given a choice -- to do some regular biology assignment or to do a Shuttle contest entry on any area of science -- well, I decided a shuttle contest entry on metallurgy was a lot less boring. It was, as it turned out.

So I went to Ames, got advice on redoing the project for the Next Level of Competition, resubmitted it, and was told I didn't make the next cut. Oh well. I got an A in biology that semester. And I get to tell people I was awarded a medal by NASA.

When I was a sophomore in high school, one of my fellow students wrote several different letters to the school newspaper, and they would get printed even though everybody on the newspaper staff thought they were less than valuable. As I recall he was the only one who had any letters printed over a period of several months.

This is the first parody I remember writing. I thought I had lost it but it turned up in a box of mementos. It's not really very good (the meter is awful) but I think if one is defaming someone named Roger Sage one could hardly pick a better song to do it with.

---

Roger Sage and the New York Times

Are you going to print that letter?
Roger Sage and the New York Times
Sage's ideas: Our readers will scare
Drop our circulation to nine.

Please don't print old Sage's letter.
Roger Sage and the New York Times
For sanity don't you have a care?
This will lose us zillions of dimes.

Don't ask me again, Sage, about that letter.
Roger Sage and the New York Times
Sage, your ideas will open our wounds bare.
Save the riots for another time.

Oh, no, they printed Sage's letter.
Roger Sage and the New York Times
I'm getting out, right now while I still dare.
My reputation: can I save it in time?

I wrote this in October, 1996. Someone at SCO asked me if they could use it in a company theatrical of some sort. I don't know if they did or not.

I suspect I was half thinking of Frank Jacobs' "Headshrinker, Headshrinker" from Mad magazine when I wrote this. Given that, and that a headhunter is in fact another kind of matchmaker, I can't say this is very imaginative. Oh well.

---

Headhunter, Headhunter

Headhunter, headhunter please hunt my head
Offer me jobs
Get out the lead
Headhunter, headhunter look in your book
And get me a lot more bread

Send me
To far-off and distant shores
Where I'll do a job interview
They're I'll
Play tourist on your dime
Knowing the bills are all going to you...

Headhunter, headhunter please hunt my head
Work I have now
Fills me with dread
Headhunter, headhunter find me ano-
ther place I can work, instead!

She Really Loves QuarkXPress

Back in 1996, I was reading the Macintosh conference in the Café Utne online community. One of the users, in discussing her Macintosh activities, wrote:

I am pretty well-versed in Photoshop and Illustrator, but I spend most of my life with Quark, which I would marry if it wasn't an application.

I wrote this in response.

---

(Scene: A small office with a wooden desk. A door leads left into a hallway. On the desk is a Quadra 700 with a PlainTalk microphone and some AppleDesign speakers.)

(Enter KIRSTEN, closing the door behind her. In speaking, KIRSTEN addresses the microphone.)

KIRSTEN: Quark, I want to talk about (swallows) -- about us.

QUARK: Look, Kirsten, I think I know how you feel. But you have to understand -- it could never work out. I haven't wanted to publicize it too much, but -- I have to tell you. I'm an application.

KIRSTEN: (gasping) Oh, no. I had no idea.

QUARK: Yes, yes it's true. I'm not in a relationship now, I just broke up with Corelle Draw.

KIRSTEN (recovering): Listen, Quark, there are clinics -- psychologists -- they can help you.

QUARK (interrupting): Do you think I haven't tried? I spent a year in therapy with Eliza. But being an application isn't something you can unlearn, it isn't learned in the first place. I always knew as I was growing up that I was an application. I was always attracted to other programs. It took me a long time to accept, but now I know that I was compiled that way.

KIRSTEN: But you could at least try -- try for me. Don't you want to live a normal life?

QUARK: Look, Kirsten, I really like and respect you, as a colleague and as a friend. But you have to accept that you're never going to walk down that aisle and become Mrs. XPress. That's just the way it is, and I'm sorry it had to come to this.

(KIRSTEN bursts into tears, slams open the door and exits left.)

Like many schools (although not UCSC as far as I know), U.C. Berkeley has a lot of "school spirit" songs. One of them is called "Big C," about the large C installed on the hillside above the Berkeley campus. The melody to this song was used by a UCLA student for "Sons of Westwood," the best-known UCLA spirit song. I figured U.C. Santa Cruz could also use a spirit song. Of course, Santa Cruz is a little different than most other schools.

Tom Lehrer, who wrote "Fight Fiercely, Harvard," taught at Santa Cruz for many years. (I would have liked to, but I never got around to taking his math class. I knew somebody who took his musical class and it sounded like far too much work, putting on a different play every two weeks.) I guess he wouldn't have wanted to try to recapture his success... still, if anybody could have given the Banana Slugs the school spirit song they deserve, it would have been him.

---

Big Slug

(If UCLA can do it...)

On our steeply sloping footpaths,
Sits our lovely B'nana Slug.
The Slug means for all to think
Of peace from man to bug.
Yellow Slug is ever-present;
Comes on us from below,
If he should hear a word
Unkind or untoward,
He will shake his head "No,no."

What's he say?
He says No! No!
No-oh-oh!

We are sons and we are daughters
Of our shaken Santa Cruz.
We are here to be enlightened,
And also here to muse.
In siblinghood we'll be united
All over our Earth;
With politics of mass,
We'll fight for working class;
For love there'll be no dearth!

Chuck Bigelow's "who will write the most stupid thing on comp.fonts" contest inspired this, written in December 1994. Don Hosek published it in his typography magazine, Serif.

I don't actually agree with most of this, but it's difficult to write a song with the message "stick to established traditions" when parodying Dylan.

My copy of Simon and Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. got a good workout while I was writing this. For some reason Simon and Garfunkel have been a channel for me: in high school I wrote "Roger Sage and the New York Times" to "Scarborough Fair". And, obviously, it was also related to "Times." This is either a weird coincidence or a profound insight into my innermost soul.

---

The Times they are a-changing

(Apologies to Mr. Zimmerman)

Come type-aholics wherever you roam
Look at old Times Roman sitting on its throne
And accept it that soon you'll be sick of the drone
Of old Stanley Morison's makings
Still, you can do better than ITC Stone
For the Times, they are a-changing

Come draftsmen and artists who calligraph with the pen
Break in your nibs now, the chance won't come again
The type balls and wheels are no longer in spin
Now lasers and inkjets are aiming
The Linotypes have ceased their hot noisy din
And the Times, they are a-changing

Come Berthold, Adobe, Hell-Linotype all:
Don't be too surprised if we break your cabal
The whole design world we've worked to enthrall
Your efforts we are upstaging
It may look to you like just chicken-scratch scrawl
But the Times, they are a-changing

Come old-fashioned designers all over the land
And don't rasterize what you can't understand
Carson and Deck are beyond your command
Hermann Zapf is rapidly aging
We're progressing beyond Carolingian hand
And the Times, they are a-changing

The line it is drawn, the metal is cast
Yet laser and film are proved to be fast
Though old-timers often have been struck aghast
At the poor amateurs masquerading
We've all broken through the typographer's caste
For the Times, they are a-changing

For the Times, they are a-changing

---

The penultimate paragraph used to begin as follows:

Come old-fashioned designers all over the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Segura and Carson are beyond your command

I think it's better this way, and not inconsistent with what it might have been like in 1994 had I thought of it. (No change in preference is intended by referring to Mr. Deck instead of Mr. Segura -- the change merely improves the meter.)

Libraries and Community

Every year or so I seem to find myself on a library binge. One spring break in college I went to Vancouver, 900 miles away from my home in the Bay Area, to search for information on Ontario poltiics for the paper that would complete my BA degree. I found lots of information, but never wrote the paper. Several years ago, while unemployed, I visited six or seven local libraries searching out folk music I hadn't heard before. Now I'm working on my paper again with a different topic, and I've been going from library to library searching for information.

There's something shared about a library. Bookstores are sanitary places, full of virgin pulp straight from the letterpresses. Each book is like a medicine capsule, beckoning with its brightly colored exterior, yet ultimately sterile.

Libraries are different. Each time you take a book down from a library shelf, you share an experience with the patrons who came before and will come after. Pulling down that book is a ritual experience -- entering into a shared community with the others who've read it.

Of course, we all know the horror stories of anti-social acts in our shared community. We've all had the experience of finding an needed book unreadable -- pages ripped out, drenched in coffee or soda, or covered with meaningless underlines or distracting streaks of color. But there is also the joy of finding a pointed comment on a post-it or a lightly-penciled note explaining a difficult passage. Like the difference between graffiti and a mural, the difference is in the author's intent and the reaction sought from the audience.

And occasionally there is a scrap or note not intended for the community, but left in the book accidentally, or incidentally. Once, in an old computer programming book, I found a teletype printout from ancient printers that have been shut down for years. Just the worn type on the green-bar paper brought back memories of my own experiences with the old minicomputer.

In a book on downtown development from the San Jose State University Library, I came across a note: the phone number of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, left on a folded sheet of spiral-bound notebook paper. Like an amateur detective, one's mind races to fill in the blanks. Why Marin County, 70 miles from San Jose? A feminine hand. A section of paper torn out at the bottom, as if to be used in another note elsewhere. There aren't enough clues to this mystery to begin to solve it. But new mysteries are available on every shelf.

These experiences are usually ephemeral. One, though, has stayed with me. While researching the French Revolution for a history class, I discovered two different notes, in two different books, written in the same hand. I knew that I was following in the footsteps of some prior student, likely from the same class in some previous year. It's not really so surprising -- after all, class projects change little from year to year. Nonetheless, it made an impresson. To go into a building with a million volumes and pick two with the same history is a powerful experience, however obvious the explanation. It underscored for me the shared quality of libraries.

Often libraries seem the most alone of places -- forbidden to speak, one daydreams quietly as one slips among the stacks. But other hands have traveled before us. City planners and architects talk about creating community, but the anonymous forebears whose traces I find in books have created as much community as any town square or public market.

---

Postscript (January, 1998): It must not have occurred to me to discuss used bookstores. Used books have more character than new books, but the number of previous readers is much smaller than in a library, and -- what with inscriptions and so on -- much less anonymous. And occasionally they're not anonymous at all. If Shirley Daffin is out there, searching the web for her name, she'll remember purchasing a copy of Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans at Crescent City Books, 204 Chartres St., New Orleans, on May 20, 1995 at 3:10pm. The total cost was $20.70 and she paid with her Mastercard, the number of which is on the slip left in the book. I guess it's a good thing that the expiration date has passed.

Aaron Priven's favorite answering machine message

When I am in a silly mood, I will sometimes put this message on my answering machine.

---

Hello. You have reached the Pay Off Aaron Priven's Student Loans Hotline. Please leave your name, number, and level of support at the tone. For a regular membership of thirty-five dollars, you will receive our monthly Guide to Aaron Priven covering all Aaron Priven events. For a supporting membership of sixty dollars, you can choose one of our lovely thank-you gifts, including an Aaron Priven tote bag, an Aaron Priven tee-shirt, or an Aaron Priven mug. Thank you for your generosity.

---

Note, December 2002: Actually, I haven't put this on my answering machine for a long time, but I keep thinking I should sign up for the NPR news program "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," because the main prize on that show is to get NPR anchorman Carl Kasell to record your outgoing answering machine message. What could be more appropriate?

Some UCSC Course Evaluations

When I went to UCSC, it gave narrative course evaluations, not grades (unless you asked for grades). I wrote some fake course evaluations for myself and put them up on my dorm wall, wondering if I would fool anybody. I made sure they looked like evaluations: the big Xerox 8700 laser printer on which almost all official University printouts are done was available for student use, so it was trivial to print evaluations that looked just like the real thing. All I had to do was fold them, staple them, and then rip out the staples (to emulate being mailed across campus).

Writing 1, Composition and Rhetoric, is the one course that nearly everybody on campus has to take (although I tested out of it), UCSC's equivalent to first-year English. The other course was a "College Zero" course for which I had written a fake course review in the 1990 Course Review.

I don't know if I fooled anybody with the evaluations, but when I faked a recommendation letter from Chancellor Pister (using the stationary template thoughtfully provided on the University local area network, and leaving a blank signature area) and put that up on my wall, somebody wrote on it that I should not be such a damned show-off (even though one of the reasons "Chancellor Pister" gave for why I was so wonderful was that I was so very good at forging recommendation letters).

---

           UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA OFFICE OF THE REGISTRAR
WINTER 89            NARRATIVE  COURSE  EVALUATION            4-18-89

PRIVEN, AARON ROSS       WRIT 1    SEC.12                     CB# 0078
999323216     (89362)
MERRILL                    (HIS )      COMP AND RHET
   ADVISOR:                      INSTRUCTOR: LIKE, W.

      --INSTRUCTOR EVALUATION:

      Like, okay, you know, Aaron's work was like acceptable in this 
      class, but like you have to understand that he was like so totally 
      pissed off all the time that he was like a total pain to deal with 
      in class, you know?  I mean, like, really, you know, I had to come 
      to class and deal with like nineteen other people and you know Aaron 
      just insisted that like I pay attention to like everything he said, 
      right, and that just like isn't fair to like anyone else, you know?  
      He kept saying stuff like "I don't believe the correction you're 
      making is in line with the accepted rules of English grammar" and "I 
      don't see why you believe that the imposition of catchphrases is 
      helpful to comprehension of the paragraph" whenever I like tried to 
      help other students like be more free with their writing, like you 
      know?  Okay.  So, like, anyway, so Aaron's writing was like 
      acceptable, but you know he like totally refused to accept that like 
      good writing was writing that like read well out loud, you know?  
      Aaron is like totally filled with the idea that like good writing 
      means big words and like complete total formality.  I mean, really, 
      like ugh, you know?  But, you know, they weren't like totally awful, 
      and they were like understandable if you didn't actually like spend 
      too much time with them.  Anyway, Aaron can like pass the class, 
      okay?



           UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA OFFICE OF THE REGISTRAR
WINTER 90            NARRATIVE  COURSE  EVALUATION            7-28-92

PRIVEN, AARON ROSS       ZERO 23C  SEC.01                     CB# 0310
999323216     (23273)
MERRILL                    (MODS)      INTER DECOR DORMS
   ADVISOR:                      INSTRUCTOR: CEPTOR, P.          (SS)

      --- COURSE DESCRIPTION:

      This course, Praxis in Interior Decoration: Dormitories, provided an 
      introduction to the interior decoration of dormitory rooms.  
      Lectures and discussion sections were used, as well as extensive 
      work in laboratory facilities.  Students were evaluated on two short 
      essays, written laboratory exercises, and a final project.  Students 
      were expected to fully furnish and decorate (using University-
      provided furniture as a base) their own dormitory rooms as their 
      final project; special laboratory rooms were provided for off-campus 
      students.

      --INSTRUCTOR EVALUATION:

      Although he showed an excellent understanding of the theory behind 
      the work, his laboratory work and final project were no better than 
      fair.  While he has a good understanding of the important principle 
      of controlled chaos in dormitory rooms, his chaos is never fully 
      controlled and often is overpowering, especially with regard to the 
      overuse of milk crates (21 in his final project).  Aaron seems to 
      prefer informative rather than decorative wall hangings (i.e., 
      maps), which contradicts an important residential principle.  
      Moreover, Aaron's arrogant tone and flippant attitude diminished the 
      value of the course for other students and nearly forced me to 
      remove him from the class.  However, two excellent essays, one on 
      the division of room space in triple rooms and a brilliant essay on 
      various methods of elevating beds ensure that I cannot in good 
      conscience refuse to pass him. 

      Overall, Aaron's work in this class was acceptable.