Quick note of congratulations and much joy in celebration of the birth of Henry Camden Akin - September 16th, 2003.

Same birthday as his 2 year-old big sister, which is kind of cool.

Time to flip the sentimental Irishman switch again:

May he live as long as he wants,
And never want as long as he lives.
May he always have the comfort of
Warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon on a dark night,
And the road downhill all the way to his door.

Joi Ito blogs a comment about our ability to derive sense from even quite badly scrambled sentences.

The example currently tearing around the Net at great speed, showing up three times in email already today and on many, many blogs, goes like this:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Um...

The test works, but I think there's more to it than this reading "the wrod as a wlohe" thing. That sounds right, but I think context perhaps plays an even bigger part in what's going on here.

In fact, what it illustrates most clearly to me is the importance of the words of three letters or less as the connective tissue in almost any sentence of coherent English.

Here's a test, using only the words that are too small to scramble:

Now is the of our by son of

Think about it for long enough and you should be able to fill in the rest of this famous quotation without the remaining words - scrambled or otherwise.

Context (not content) is king.

Just in case you're struggling, here's a scrambled version to make it a little easier:

Now is the wnetir of our dtnosnicet mdae giroluos smmuer by tihs son of Yrok.

To test the idea that we can still read scrambled text mainly because we read words as a whole, try figuring out a word like 'dtnosnicet' without the surrounding context.

So I think what's happening here is a combination of two phenomena.

But tehn I'm cntaelriy not a lusingit, so waht the hcek wulod I konw?

Highly entertaining on one level. Rage-inducingly wrong on another.

India’s Business Standard newspaper is reporting on the RNC’s ‘smart’ use of campaign funds – using low-paid sweatshop call centre workers in Noida, India to call up Americans and pump them for campaign funds to support the Bush re-election campaign.

And remember as you read this - we're talking about the same George Bush who boosted Hallmark stock with the proclamation of "Patriot Day" just a year ago today.

An interesting kind of patriotism at work here.

The RNC has, of course, denied the whole thing.

Harrumph!

Larng time no blog, fella. Laaaaaaaaarrrrrrnnnnng time. Usual excuses.

Just haven't really had much of interest to blog about fer a while. We've had my folks here getting to know their newest grandson for most of the last month. And I guess we've just been busy out of doors enjoying all the there out there.

Plus, I guess I sort of lost interest in the whole thing for a while. Wasn't really that much I cared enough to blog about. Except for a certain larger-than-usual amount of worklife craziness; about which I certainly cared enough, but certainly couldn't blog about.

Today, though, something popped up that has made me want to blog again. The excellent Rick Bruner (who I sparred with at the Jupiter Blogging conference thingy back in June) just sent out what is probably the best news release of 2003, if not the best of all time.

Go read the release and related backstory here. Go on...I'll wait.

Sweet, isn't it?

It's a painful story for Rick's firm, of course, but beautifully handled from a PR perspective. Plus it's so much more interesting and, yes, newsworthy (to the marketing media, anyway) than most of the bland detritus that crosses the wires every day.

Unfortunately, as you'll have learned if you've read Rick's post - the two big wire services, Businesswire and PR Newswire, refused to distribute this release for reasons best known to themselves.

IMHO, the wire services are being idiot wussies by responding like this. They seem to have completely forgotten (and overstepped) their role here. They're not editors, fercrissakes - and neither are they communications professionals - they're simply a conduit. Their job is not to assess or to judge; merely to fulfill. Clueless sods.

Full credit and high kudos to Rick and his fellow MarketingWonks for having the stones to do something so interesting, honest, and highly, highly entertaining.