🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Dec.14.18.39.47.1992.8473@ruhets.rutgers.edu> bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
>I tracked down the New Scientist squib on sci.physics, T**E H*S I*****A,
>and the crackpot index ... it's in "Feedback," a gossipy page at the 
>back of the magazine (p.80, 5 Dec 1992).  Reprinted without
>permission ... all errors are theirs and theirs alone.
.....>   

>   Naturally, someone took the time to write a program to mark messages
>   automatically.  Due to the difficulty of getting a computer to
>   understand the concept of "favourably", the programme gives you points
>   just for mentioning Newton, Darwin, Velikovsky, or the Bermuda
>   Triangle.

>....  And does anyone know why New Scientist use both "program"
>and "programme"?

Interesting question.  I myself have the following bug, and I wonder
if any of you have it too: I write 'program' for a computer program
but write 'programme' for a policy or propsed plan of action.  I write
'color' for things like red or blue, but write 'tone colour' -- and so
on.  I seem to use the American spellings for technical or literal
things, and the English spellings for more literary or metaphorical
items.  I think this might be because a lot of my earliest reading was 
British literature.  Anyway, I find it useful, but I have to edit it
out of things I write.

As for the New Scientist, I suspect they have this problem, too --
although I think Turing himself used the 'programme' spelling for program.

Sorry I can't comment on T**E H*S I*****A, etc., because it has been
in my kill file for a long time now.  I'd like to remove it but there
appears to be no sign of the the usual topic-decay curve.  I forget
whether John Baez included this anomaly in his list: "abnormal
prolongation of newsgroup topic persistence"

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