Bloopers
The following have been reported by readers. The editors regret the errors.

"Cancelled" Versus "Canceled"

I couldn't help but notice that the word "canceled" was improperly used in the illustration on page 240. The double 'L' is typically a British spelling, and not standard for the US.

Devon Miller
Akron, OH

 The illustration on page 240 shows "The Year of Speech Recognition" as an event that is cancelled (with two els). The style for the book prefers U.S. spelling conventions, and the word should have only a single el.

 

Clarabell the Clown

Did I spot Clarabell the Clown in the illustration on pg. 240? If so, he seems to have amassed a few more horns than he wielded on the Howdy Doody program. On the show, he only carried two horns--one for 'yes' and one for 'no'.

Matt Allen
Beaumont, TX


Readers are correct in noticing that the clown standing next to Pepper (the mime from pages 216-217) is in fact Clarabell of The Howdy Doody Show. Purists are right that Clarabell had two bulbhorns -- one for "yes" and one for "no" -- on each side of the box that held his seltzer bottle. In the illustration, both horns are incorrectly located on the left of Clarabell's waist. This was a deliberate decision (artistic license) that allowed the bicycle positioning to expose the additional bulbhorns -- "maybe," "sure, why not?" and my favorite yes-no error recovery of all time, "I still can't tell whether you said 'yes' or 'no.'" Although Clarabell never actually grew beyond his standard "yes-no" reply, I like to think that he would have been equipped with a far richer palette of horns had he lived in the modern age of speech recognition.

Dr. Rubsmuckel's Graph

Dr. Rubsmuckel seems to have quite a significant error. The graph that she is demonstrating to the unsuspecting audience should actually be reversed. If the rate of errors was indeed to slow over time as drastically as she is reporting, the graph should in fact be concave.

Leopoldo Basanez
St. Louis, MO

 

Many of you correctly noticed that the curve drawn by UMH's Dr. Rubsmuckel-Fittletrej on page 351 is erroneously shown as a convex rather than the expected concave shape. The rate of change should slow with time, causing the line to approach but never reach the x axis. The curve was accidentally inverted in production, with a subsequent stampede of I.C.U.R.A. Smartypants subscribers who bought stock in superhuman speech technology based on the graph's promise of zero errors "someday." By the time the oversight was discovered, the stock had spiked and collapsed. Dr. Rubsmuckel, of course, had already bought short and so was able to retire to the Molvanian countryside where she now enjoys a spectacular view of the concrete quarries -- a view which still glows gently at twiilight with residual radioactivity.