Home » Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

A Way with Words, a radio show and podcast about language and linguistics.

Discussion Forum (Archived)

Please consider registering
Guest
Forum Scope


Match



Forum Options



Min search length: 3 characters / Max search length: 84 characters
The forums are currently locked and only available for read only access
sp_TopicIcon
Year's Oddest Book Title Prize Goes to Dairy Carton Book
Grant Barrett
San Diego, California
1532 Posts
(Offline)
1
2009/03/27 - 2:19pm

Year's Oddest Title Prize Goes to Dairy Carton Book. "To those outside dairy (or container) circles, a book called 'The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais' tends to provoke more questions than it resolves. Such as: Why fromage frais? And: '60-Milligram' — is that a misprint?"

Guest
2
2009/03/28 - 8:12pm

This earlier NYT article provide some background on the winning "author."

"... it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker ... has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one."

Grant Barrett
San Diego, California
1532 Posts
(Offline)
3
2009/03/29 - 8:45am

Ah, I thought I remembered him. They're not books, they're "books."

Forum Timezone: UTC -7
Show Stats
Administrators:
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Moderators:
Grant Barrett
Top Posters:
Newest Members:
A Conversation with Dr Astein Osei
Forum Stats:
Groups: 1
Forums: 1
Topics: 3647
Posts: 18912

 

Member Stats:
Guest Posters: 618
Members: 1268
Moderators: 1
Admins: 2
Most Users Ever Online: 1147
Currently Online:
Guest(s) 100
Currently Browsing this Page:
1 Guest(s)

Recent posts