CNN just published as a front page story this Amazon press release. Reuters must not employ any of those hard-driving investigative reporters we loved in old 30s movies.

For example the "story" "reports"

• "pre-orders already place the high-tech scooter in the top half percent of sales" Yeah? Each Segway costs $5000, while the average Amazon item costs maybe $50. So if Amazon sells 100 Segways in a month, it's in the same percentile as a book that sold 10,000 copies in the same month--that's pretty impressive sales for a book, pretty lousy sales for an item that got the publicity buzz Segway did.
• "It's selling better than many of our digital cameras" Yeah? And is Amazon the only retailer selling digital cameras, the way it is the only retailer selling Segways? In fact, do you know anybody who would go to Amazon to buy a digital camera?
• "Frazier declined to provide actual pre-sale numbers" I am sure the carefully phrased hype provided is much closer to what CNN readers care about.

What got left out of the "news story" is also interesting. There is no mention of the financial stake that Amazon has in pumping up Segway sales by releasing phony hype aimed at making the product look more popular than it is.

Some local Clark Kent did inject one note of reality in the final sentence: "in San Francisco a debate is raging over whether the human transporter should be allowed on that city's streets. " That debate stopped raging a week ago. According to the Dec. 20 SF Chronicle , after extensive public discussion 9 of 11 supervisors have voted to ban the Segway, enough to overturn the mayor's veto if he decides to try one.

Have you even given somebody "the gift from hell"? No, I don't mean re-formatting your mom's hard disk by mistake, I mean (for example) giving your nicely-rounded Aunt Lou an autographed copy of _Buns of Steel_. It seemed to you like such a thoughtful gift--until she opened it in front of everyone and then-- why did she run out of the living room crying? We nerds often end up asking questions like this.

Anyway, there is actually some intelligent but funny advice at MSN (shudder)

Boy, I wouldn't dare post news like that outside my journal.

It amazes me to see wizards at Java, Perl, and Unix who cower like tiny forest creatures when faced with a chance to make friends or get a date. So bring your magic wand over here and get ready to learn some new spells.

1) You're not in junior high school any more. You are in a big world with people of many ages, many interests, and many sexual orientations. Most of these people don't know that you puked on the teacher's shoes in first grade, so you get to start fresh with at least some of them. (If you are in junior high school, my list won't help you. You are in hell, my friend, so stay clear of the bullies and make friends with your computer. Life does get better.)

2) Social skills are learnable and doable. You wouldn't expect to learn Microsoft Foundation Classes without a book--would you? To become a Certified Nerd Social Success, plan for some reading, some practice--and some failures.

3) Most advice books, like most other books, are crap. The library is better than the bookstore for finding good ones. Steven Covey (7 Habits of Highly Successful People) is good. The Harvard Negotiation Project guys (Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations) are good.

4) If you want people to be interested in you, be interested in them. If someone is talking to you, don't sit there thinking, "I hope she likes me--do my armpits stink?" Listen to people, think about why they are saying what they are saying, ask questions, and think about what you want to say yourself.

5) Common interests help get relationships started--but to make relationships grow, the main thing is time spent together. If you feel isolated, get involved in a long-term collaborative project with other people who interest you. For example, work on the website of some interesting group or help out at a local school. (This is also a good way to troll for a job.)

6) Get other people involved in interesting stuff you do by asking for their advice. Find out what they are good at and ask them to tell you more about it.

7) When someone hurts you, expect your inner troll to yell, "That hateful jerk is hurting you on purpose!" or "You hopeless creep, nobody will ever like you!" Stay calm, think of kinder possibilities, go to a cheerful movie--and try again. Relationships are like puppies. If a puppy pees on the rug, you don't shoot it and hope for a better puppy some day--at least, not if you hope to end up with a long-term, lovable dog.

8) You, as a nerd, are an interesting person with a lot of abilities and a lot of cool stories to tell. You are exactly the friend or lover some people are looking for, so throw back your shoulders, take a deep breath, and get ready to help them find you.

9) While you've got your shoulders thrown back and your chest full of air, take a look in the mirror. Tell yourself, because it's true, that the zit on your nose or the 50 pounds you've been meaning to lose will not make a bit of difference to the right person. But in finding that person, you want to look clean and confident. Wearing a crumpled shirt from the laundry bag tells people, "I'm not worth much to myself." You are worth a lot, so look as if you thought so.

10) Go get 'em, wizard!

Any of you other nerds want to join me in giving advice to our younger brethren?

If you do a search thru imdb.com for "kidnap" in a plot, you find literally thousands of movies, but very few where bad guys kidnap one of us nerds. Much more often, a nerd kidnaps someone else.

So here I am, an hour of "research" later. (Research is what you get to call googling if you intend to write about fictional scientists kidnapped by evil dudes.) Figuring that you who read my journal may be as crazy as I am, here are some movies etc. that share this theme.

The Powerpuff Girls - Powerpuff Bluff (Price: $11.99) ...In "Mr. Mojo's Rising," the girls must rescue the professor when he is kidnapped by an evil megabrained monkey.
(http://power-puff-girls.8m.com/video.html)

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"Clash At Demonhead" (Nintendo Entertainment System)
The storyline is that there's a brilliant professor who has figured out how to make a doomsday bomb capable on incinerating the whole planet. Aliens kidnap him and, as the professor explains when you rescue him, placed him under a hypnotic spell to force him to develop a working version of the doomsday bomb. (http://www.hypnosisinmedia.com/Miscellaneous/ComputerGames/)

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>in Wild Wild West -- didn't somebody kidnap Salma Hayek's father, who later turned out to be her husband...?

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Crystal Hunt(1992)
Stunning martial arts fights highlight this rip-roarer in which a woman hires a noted professor to help find a crystal which can heal her ailing gangster father. When the professor is kidnapped, she joins forces with a policewoman and her associate to find him. Carrie Ng, Sibelle Hu and Donnie Yen star. 90 min. Dubbed in English.
(http://www.moviesunlimited.com/musite/product.asp?sku=539965)

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Three kidnapped geniuses on same webpage! (http://www.videos.net/marketplace/cl_serials.htm)
Manhunt Of Mystery Island (1945/15 episodes)
The inventor of a scientific breakthrough that could end the world's energy crisis has been kidnapped. (219 m.) K-NT2637 - $29.98

The Clutching Hand (1936/15 chapters).
Scientist with formula for synthetic gold is mysteriously kidnapped. K-UE1729 - $29.95

King Of The Texas Rangers (1941/12 chapters)
Saboteurs go after top secret formula. (195 m.) K-NT2199

/////Anarchy Online [massively multiplayer online rpg] plot twist (http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/story/present/articles/omnitek/old/kidnapped.html)
Prominent Omni-Tek Scientist Kidnapped: In a brutal attack last week, Dr. Jameson Helbron was abducted from a secret laboratory, deep in the hills of Clondyke. .Omni-Pol is optimistic that Dr. Helbron will not be harmed, as one official said, "By the way the clanners attacked, it is clear to us that they wanted Dr. Helbron alive. No body was found at the scene and the doctor did not appear at the terminal that contained his insurance data."

I like the plot with the evil megabrained monkey. Too bad I already have a /. alias.

You might think someone who wants to write a big fat book would be happy to sit down and write a little proposal. Wrong!

Writing a book is like putting on your most gorgeous outfit for an all-night party with all the people you like. Writing a book proposal is like being kidnapped, in your oldest underwear, to convince some grumpy space-aliens why Earth should be saved.

So why am I writing about this here in Slashdot? Aside from the obvious reason (avoiding work), I am inspired by Lingqi's Japan journal to write about stuff going on in my real life, assuming that fellow nerds will be interested. In fact, more of us probably plan to write books some day than will ever visit Japan, which is a good thing for Japan, because those islands would sink into the sea under the weight of the world's potential authors.

A typical trade-book proposal is between 15 and 70 pages long. Most of that is bits of your book in progress--that part is no problem. The annoying things, in no particular order, are your author biography, proposed word count, market analysis, and discussion of the competition.

The author biography is where the author explains (third-person pronouns preferred) that the already incredibly-famous author is taking a break from singing on MTV, making touchdowns on ESPN, and saving the world on CNN to write a book that millions of people are already dying to buy. This for me is the underwear-talking-to-aliens part.

The proposed word count is a technical problem, and therefore kind of fun. I went at the issue like a typical nerd--looking up techniques on the web. It turns out the editors don't really care about the number of words at all--what they want is to figure out the number of pages, estimating 250 words per page. Since my book has lots of pictures, plus about a thousand jokes, most of them with titles (each title, taking up a line, is estimated at about 13 words), I spent hours this weekend computing words and pages.

Then, after I was all finished, I realized all I really had to do was to take down a book from my shelf that looked the right size and shape for the book I wanted, count the pages of that book, and that was my page count, or (multiplied by 250), that was my word count. So if you've read this far in my journal entry, you can write your book proposal faster than I did.

I just got my most-modded post . Within an hour of posting, three people had modded it up for "Interesting." But it didn't stay long at 5. As the day progressed, it's been modded back and forth between 4 and 5: Overrated (-1). Insightful (+1). Overrated (-1). Underrated (+1).

Here's what I think is the funniest thing of all. I wrote my post after doing lots of research through Google News--it's loaded with real information about the topic, and links to places where you can learn even more. But nobody rated it Informative. Isn't that funny?

The Register says there are now Segways on sale. Rush in your $495 deposit (toward the $4950 purchase price) to Amazon.com, the only place currently selling them.

So far, with no fanfare, legislators in 32 states have declared the Segway welcome on local sidewalks. New Jersey, for example, is paying an unexpected price for its hasty cave-in, says this article at NorthJersey.com. Segway lobbyists pushed through a state law that prohibits towns from banning any "electric personal assistive mobility devices.'' According to the story, that law " was passed after Segway, maker of the "Human Transporter,'' lobbied New Jersey's Legislature and others throughout the country." As a result, New Jersey towns have been unable to deal with the latest fad among local teenagers, electric scooters, which they ride on the sidewalks.

Note that the scooters now terrorizing North Jersey pedestrians are not "assistive devices" that deserve protection by the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)--neither is the Segway. These are vehicles you have to stand up on to drive. But affluent parents who bought these toys for their teens are calling on the protection of the ADA to keep them on the sidewalks and out of traffic. We can expect to see the same with the Segway.

San Francisco plans to fight back, according to this Examiner article. Senior-citizen activists and walkers protested they don't want to share their space with a 95 lb machine traveling 12 mph. "The whole point of sidewalks is to separate vehicles from pedestrians," says Walk San Francisco director Michael Smith.

IMO, the Segway is a pyramid scheme waiting to tumble. Early investors put up the cash for a massive publicity and lobbying campaign. They now have until March to lure unsuspecting buyers to buy their Segways, and unsuspecting investors to buy their stock.

In March it's all over. Once Segways hit the sidewalks, the pyramid crumbles. Whoever has money in Segways in March will take the hits for liability claims that already have class-action lawyers licking their chops. State legislators will quickly rescind Segway laws, and Segway owners will be riding their white elephants in the street--if they feel like admitting they own this year's version of Edsel.

Today, one of my comments got modded up to 5, my very first 5! (For being Funny.)

Then some heartless person modded it back down to 4. I'd like to have the same enthusiasm for my first "Overrated" mod as I did for my first 5, but the sincerity just isn't there.

Then somebody modded it back up to 5--I am happy again. I know how lame it is to care about this, but wouldn't it be even lamer not to admit it?

After Slashdot flagged Microsoft's phony switch testimonial, Microsoft pulled the ad, and somehow its Google cache also vanished. (You can still see the ad at ScriptingNews, however.)

Now another Microsoft switcher story is gone from Google.

David Pogue wrote two columns for the October 17 New York Times. One of them, on the two-b utton Palm, is in the Times online index and turns up at the top of the Google search page for (for example) "Pogue two-button" . The other colu mn has mysteriously become invisible both to Google and to the NY Times online search engine. Not surprisingly, the invisible column was the Microsoft switcher stor y. I finally found it by going to Pogue's own site, www.DavidPogue.com

Try it yourself--pick a string-- any string--related to Pogue's Microsoft switcher story--even something as detailed as "Pogue Microsoft New York Times" . You can find a few people who quoted Pogue's column, but you can't find the column itself.

Google claims it doesn't invisibly kill links. If someone demands that a page be removed by Google, due to copyright or other infringement, Google claims it links to the "kill request" instead. But this is not what happened when the Microsoft switcher ad was killed--even its Google cache disappeared without a trace. This is also not what happened when the Oct. 17 NY Times article about the Microsoft switcher ad vanished.

Conspiracy theory: did someone object to Pogue's calling Slashdotters "articulate"?

Sound clips from Private Eye . You have to scroll down to find the best--"My One-Eyed Trouser Snake" sung by raunchy Aussie Barry Humphries (I don't know what Dame Edna does with that trouser snake now).

Monty Python sound bytes: I'm French--why do you think I have this outrageous accent? Sex, sex, sex, that's all they think about. Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?

You can get whole songs in various formats from the Unofficial Monty Python Sound Page.

Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry just gave Sherlock Holmes an Honorary Fellowship, says the BBC .

Jumping on this bandwagon, I propose:

• Olympic gold medal to Legolas for archery.
  Nobel Peace Prize to the crew of the Enterprise.
  MacArthur genius grant to Slartibartfast, who did such a fine job designing the coast of Norway.

1. http://www.m-w.com/game/#archive
Merriam-Webster's word games.

2. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/
Web museum, infinite eye candy online.

3. http://electronics.cnet.com/electronics/0-3219397-8-20484489-1.html
Full page of links to Flash goodies.

4. http://triggur.org/silo/site.html
World's weirdest site--exploring an abandoned missile silo.

5. http://scitechdaily.com/
If you can't waste an hour here, there's no hope for you.