Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Ambiguity a la carte, or who did the Panda shoot?

Down at the bottom of the NYTimes.com web page was a photo of what looked like a tent full of stuff and the following lede:

San Jose Stores Property of Homeless After Sweeps.

Wow, how ambiguous can you get?

occasion musing on email subject lines

Today, catching up with the false positives - Postini flags roughly 20% of the newsletters and other legitimate emails as SPAM and no matter how often I try to train the program, the percentage remains about the same - I got to musing on subject lines.

Here's an example: Learn more about our permanent hair loss solution.
I said to myself, is this an ad for a depilatory? Certainly, the way it's phrased makes it seem like the product is meant to make sure hair you lose doesn't come back. I personally don't care to lose any hair.