The Sunday New York Times

Every Sunday, Will Shortz, Puzzle Editor for the New York Times, hosts a ten minute or so radio program. The contestant is an entrant selected at random from those who responded correctly to the weekly challenge from the previous Sunday. I have entered many times over the years but never been selected. I suspect I am only solving the easier ones, like this week’s, when the number of correct responses is high so the probability of my selection is quite low (answer will be provided on request or on the radio next Sunday:

This week's challenge comes from listener Smatt Read of Somerville, Mass. Actor Tom Arnold goes by two first names — Tom and Arnold, both male, of course. And actress Grace Kelly went by two first names — Grace and Kelly, both female. Name a famous living actress who goes by three first names, all of them traditionally considered male. The names are 5, 3 and 6 letters long, respectively.

I admit that I cheated a bit, using Google to think of actresses who go by three names, such as Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City fame. If I were really clever I could have written an algorithm to both find and evaluate the names, but that degree of effort seemed a bit extreme, especially since I came up with the answer within about two minutes after starting the search.

Over the past few years many of our friends have been quite reticent to listen to any NPR programming because of disagreements with some of the political views supported by their staff. I definitely understand that. I am far from being what anyone would think of as a “news junkie,” but from where I sit, neither NPR nor Fox are providing completely unbiased, let alone completely accurate, reporting on a wide variety of issues.

All of this came to mind because of a piece that appeared in last week’s Sunday New York Times magazine entitled “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life.” Ms. Sacco had about one hundred followers on Twitter, a similar number who read this blog. There is no question that she wrote something that in the moment must have seemed humorous but that many of us would consider quite offensive; the details are in the Times article but I will not repeat them here. I know nothing about how Twitter works but apparently, just after posting the Tweet, she boarded an overseas flight and the item, initially sent to her usual modest-sized audience, “went viral.” On landing she found her Twitter feed filled with thousands of angry, nasty messages. Shortly after the incident, in an effort to protect the company for which she had been working, she was asked by her manager to resign. She is apparently not the only person to whom this sort of thing has happened.

Reading about this gave me pause. While I have not done anything to promote this blog, I have also done little to limit access. Having said that, I cannot imagine why anyone would find what I write of sufficient interest to waste time helping it “go viral.” The only consolation is that these things usually last 24-48 hours and then the crowd moves on to the next topic.

On a closely related topic, if you missed this week’s “Modern Family,” try to see if you can get ahold of it. The episode is about the pitfalls of heavy reliance on electronic communication, and was definitely one of the best we have seen in a long time.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Love,

Rebecca