Joel On Software on The Ethics of Samples

There's a bit of a debate in the technology blogosphere. Evidently, Microsoft sent free PCs, preloaded with Vista, to prominent bloggers. No strings attached. Robert Scoble, a notable technology blogger, says that as long as the blogger comes clean about the gift, there's no problem.

Joel Spolsky disagrees and echoes my own uneasiness about samples and gifts. I try to be very honest with my OWF readers when I've gotten something as a sample or gift—I consider them different only at a euphemistic level—and I'm very clear with PR people that I a) don't promise a review and b) don't promise to not write a bad review, as some other bloggers do. Anyone looking at my list of book reviews could see that I'm happy to publish bad reviews.

When it comes to samples of wine and books, there's a part of me that accepts this as a normal part of the business. Another part of me says that the ubiquity of samples doesn't prevent them from being problematic. They allow writers to praise wines no one will ever be able to buy; there's a whole issue of "for press" bottles from top vineyards or better blends; and they allow writers to ignore cost when their readers can't. As I always say, if Robert Parker had a fixed annual budget for wine, I'll bet the inflated pricing model for CA wines would collapse so that wineries could get their wares in front of The Great Schnozz.

When is something a sample, and when is it a gift? One winery sent me two identical bottles for review. I assume this was to cover the potential of a corked bottle, but isn't it really a gift? Cork taint isn't such a huge problem that the winery needs to send two bottles of the same wine to every reviewer. But if I sent it back, I'd be doing so at my own cost.

I also try to only take samples that I think will be useful to my readers. I accepted an expensive piece of grass-fed steak, because I wanted to sample different grass-fed beefs and see if they really had the "sense of place" that advertisers claim as a benefit. I thought that would be useful. On the other hand, I turned down a free fresh foie gras because it would have been from Hudson Valley, and I've sampled their foie gras plenty of times, so there's nothing new for me to say to my readers. I wrote the company back and explained that if I took the foie gras, I'd be doing so only to get free foie gras, not to educate my readers.

One Hundred Useless Facts

The BBC has posted their annual list of useless trivia gleaned from this year's news.

Lisa Whelchel And I Have Nothing In Common

I am oddly mesmerized by Lisa Whelchel's website. Whelchel played Blair on TV's The Facts of Life, and Melissa pointed me to her website.

I probably had a crush on her at some point. But I think I can assert with confidence that she and I would have nothing to speak about now. Her list of favorites provides a good launchpad.

You take the bad indeed.

Penny Arcade On The Wii Forecast Channel

My Wii recently got a system update that added the "Forecast Channel," essentially the weather station. It's really fun. For about two minutes. I just have no interest in obsessive checks on Jakarta's weather.

But today's Penny Arcade suggests that I simply haven't been creative enough with it.

McSweeney's Imagines Richard Dawkins On Santa Claus

What would happen if über atheist Richard Dawkins addressed elementary school students about Santa Claus? McSweeney's posits the address he might give.

What Are You Waiting For?

I recently downloaded the back episodes of the Grammar Girl podcast, and last night I listened to an earlier episode about prepositions. I was surprised to learn that the "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule has passed from rule to debate to acceptable grammar usage. She explains in the podcast that the rule comes from the 16th or 17th Century, and that it was a holdover from correct Latin grammar. "But it's now the 21st centry," she says, and many grammarians now say you can end a sentence with a preposition. Especially if it makes the sentence clearer.

But you still can't use a preposition without an object, so if your sentence ends with a preposition, make sure that the object is somewhere else in the sentence. She uses "Where is the snail race at?" as an example of an object-less preposition.

Celebrity Miis

Jason Kottke held a contest to see who could design the best celebrity Miis, the little avatars you can create on your Wii system. The results make me want to dig deeper into this functionality. Netizens showed some serious Mii design chops.

English 3200

At the last wine writers symposium, I spent about 20 minutes talking with a writing coach. This appointment is part of the services available at the symposium. I asked him about ways to improve my writing, including mastering grammar mechanics. "English 3200," he said immediately. "Most of us got cheated on grammar in school," he explained. "The full spectrum of grammar is rarely taught well anymore, and we've all missed out."

English 3200 is a book, and there seem to be three tiers. 3200 assumes that you know about nouns and verbs and adjectives and punctuation, but it starts off with subjects and predicates. The teaching format is one I haven't experienced before—a self-paced "programmed" course. There isn't a large explanation followed by exercises. Instead, a constant barrage of exercises, each simple on its own but complex in aggregate, incorporate the lecture material. You look at their question, answer, and then see the correct answer on the next page, adjacent to the next exercise. Instant feedback. Constant reinforcement.

Supposedly, this unusual format helps you retain the material, but only time will tell. But am I learning grammar? Even in exercises that describe subjects and predicates? Within the first three exercises, I've gotten better about understanding linking verbs, and I found a flaw in an OWF sentence, where I changed the subject to be more in tune with the verb (the sentence didn't make the final cut of the post, but I found it an interesting moment of self-observation; I doubt I would have noticed it before).

You can do one lesson in about 15 minutes, and I've committed to one lesson a day. Just as I can sacrifice five minutes a week for Grammar Girl, I can sacrifice 15 minutes a day to educate myself about the nuances of grammar that I've missed before. I believe that you can't have art without craft, and grammar represents the mechanics of writing. So far, English 3200 looks like a solid teacher.

Fact-Checking the Chronicle. And failing.

Melissa sent me a link to this article about San Francisco after Pearl Harbor. It's a good article for a number of reasons, but I was struck by this sentence: "Chronicle City Editor John Bruce dispatched cub reporter David Perlman to the roof of the building with binoculars to watch out for enemy planes. Perlman, now the paper's science editor, did report one plane: It turned out to be a star." I was sure there had been some mistake.

I fired off a note to Carl Nolte, the author, and asked if the two David Perlmans were in fact the same person, since a cub reporter in 1941 would be at least 85 today. Nolte wrote me back, "It is the same David Perlman. he is 87; writes like sixty." Imagine having someone on your newsroom staff with 65 years of experience in the field. Pretty amazing.

SketchFighter

Old Mac gamers may remember Ambrosia Software as a company that did high-production versions of popular arcade games. I figured they had died out as Apple's fortunes waned, but a Wired post alerted me to the fact that they're alive and well. They've just released a new game called SketchFighter in which you pilot a spaceship through a top-down landscape of tunnels and caves. Not exactly new ground, but the game's gimmick is charming: All the artwork looks like the little doodles you might have made as a daydreaming kid.

One More Reason to Visit Sweden

An ABBA Museum. I'd think of a clever pun for this post, but they seem to have all been used up by newspapers around the world.