describe what you'd do with the micro controller prize in exactly ten words.
The opening page is very clear.
"...tell us what you will use it for... in only 10 words."
"...tells us what your project will be in only 10 words"
"Only project ideas that are EXACTLY 10 words will be accepted" (emphasis theirs).
"To enter the Draw you must reply to the competition thread with you (sic) 10 word
project idea. You (sic) project idea must be exactly 10 words to be valid."
Out of a post of 888 words, which includes the official contest rules, this is stated five times.
If you found the contest via their mailout (like I did), the email also says this is several different ways, but out of 208 words it says it 3 times.
So I think we're pretty clear on the Rule.
I'd also like to point out that as this is a text-based medium and a text-based forum, that most likely the literacy rate of the participants should be around 99%.
Functional comprehension on the other hand...
John Boyd liked to argue that when anyone experienced an event, they followed a predictable path of computation, acronymed OODA.
They Observed the event, Oriented the data, Decided on a course of action, and then they Acted.
This is probably why even creatures capable of thinking still rely on hardwired reactions in situations of trouble: by cutting out the Orient and Decision steps, they can get a serious speed up in reaction. The drawback of course, is that the hardwired reactions aren't very smart.
Bolting when sensing a sudden anomalous event is useful if you are a rabbit, but if you're in a minefield its just not going to work very well. (I remember a SF novel based on the premise of not-reacting being the only reason why the protagonist survived, but I'll be damned if I can remember its title right off. Perhaps it was a short story? But I digress.)
Boyd, despite his brilliance*, left little behind in the form of written word, which is unfortunate, because I'd like to know what he thought about the problems of Observing, Orienting, and then making the Wrong Decision before Acting.
Like, in this example, posting project ideas in more or less words than required.
This is the kind of tiny research the Tiny Lab Director likes, so here is the current data out of 62 entries:
Words. Entries.
5 1
6 0
7 3
8 2
9 2
10 50
11 0
12 1
13 0
14 0
15 1
Oh, Homo Sapiens, what are we going to do with you...
There is a bit of contentious data, of course. Of the 50 'correct answers', 6 used acronyms to bring the count down, and three more hyphenated to create compound words. So the table could be redrawn with the 10 row changed to '41', the 11 row changed to '3' and the 13 and 14 rows changed to '4' and '2' respectively.
So from this data can we conclude that to many people, the number '10' actually has a diffuse blur of values from 6 to 15? Can I work in an obscure 'fuzzy logic' joke here, or is this entire post a fuzzy joke?
Speaking of jokes, there were several joke submissions, all of which were exactly 10 words long.
*He also tested low on I.Q., which is interesting, considering his various exploits that demonstrated considerable intelligence. The ugly specter of our lack of comprehension of thought reappears. (I am really tempted to see how many more 'of's I can add to that sentence. 'Of the Ugly specter of our lack of comprehension of thought I've** often had thoughts of...'
** As a poet, I'm free to use this variant, cf. Berstein, McCaffery,Hejinian, et al. And yes, this too, is a Fuzzy Joke.
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