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March 11, 2005

Why the Y Key Gets Abused

Ryan and I continued our scientific exploration this evening when he noticed that the Y key on his 12” Powerbook looked more “used” than the other keys. The paint wasn’t fading or anything, because it’s a Powerbook and they are indestructible, but it lacked a certain shine that the other keys had. Or maybe it was shiny and the others weren’t. I don’t remember.

Ryan thought that the cause could be that his finger drags more on the Y key than the others. This is because he uses the Powerbook in his bed, laying on his back with the Powerbook on his stomach. So because of the strange angle and the fact that the Y key is farther away than say, the T key, a dragging action takes place as you pull your finger back from pressing the key.

I verified this by finally copying his position after a few minutes of describing how he was laying. But I couldn’t even see the screen because my hands were in the way, at which point I realized he probably just doesn’t know how to use his Powerbook right, and that all of our experiments and usage of the scientific method was for nothing. Thanks a lot asshole. We could have used those 45 minutes to solve some other important scientific issue like how they make springs springy, but other types of metal “not springy”.

Name Order

I was just discussing with my friend Ryan what the reasons are in the way we order two people’s names. For instance, Duke and Gloria. Bob and Stella. Ron and Claudia. These sound natural. But Gloria and Duke sounds wrong. Why?

After much discussion, we have come up with this…

If the two names are of different sexes, the male name always comes first. Yeah that’s right, we have the penises, get over it.

If the two names are of the same sex, the “soft” name comes first, and the “hard” name comes second. For instance Susan has no hard sounds. But Patricia has a hard P and T sound, so it comes second.

If both names have hard sounds, the name with fewer syllables comes first. For instance, Pam and Patricia.

And that’s about as far as we got. We agreed on all of the scenarios we came up with… Was it a fluke, or is there really a set of sub-conscious rules for this type of thing?