Sooo… one of the articles I was assigned to read for tomorrow night’s class is called “INDEXING AND ACCESS FOR DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND THE INTERNET: HUMAN, DATABASE, AND DOMAIN FACTORS” by Marcia Bates. If’n you wanna read it, here’s the URL.

I honestly did find it really interesting. Here’s the part that made me go, “Hmm?” though.
It’s like “The X-Files” of information science or something… The Resnikoff-Dolby 30:1 Rule

Here’s an excerpt about the Rule:

In examining the Resnikoff-Dolby 30:1 rule we will discover an even more striking and hard-to-credit statistical pattern, which is nonetheless backed up by considerable data.

… Howard Resnikoff and James Dolby researched the statistical properties of information stores and access mechanisms to those stores. Again and again, they found values in the range of 28.5:1 to 30:1 as the ratio of the size of one access level to another. For mathematical reasons, they used K=29.55 as the likely true figure for their constant, but they and I will use 30 for simplicity’s sake in most cases. They found from their data:

• A book title is 1/30 the length of a table of contents in characters on average (Resnikoff & Dolby, 1972, p. 10).
• A table of contents is 1/30 the length of a back of the book index on average (p. 10).
• A back of the book index is 1/30 the length of the text of a book on average (p. 10).
•An abstract is 1/30 the length of the technical paper it represents on average (p. 10).
• Card catalogs had one guide card for every 30 cards on average. Average number of cards per tray was 30,2 or about 900 (p. 10).
• Based on a sample of over 3,000 four-year college classes, average class size was 29.3 (p. 22).

All these results suggest that human beings process information in such a way as to move through levels of access that operate in 30:1 ratios. Resnikoff and Dolby did not use this term, but I think a good name for it would be:Information Transfer Exchange Ratio. Something about these size relationships is natural and comfortable for human beings to absorb and process information. Consequently, the pattern shows up over and over again.

Yeah. I don’t know about that, but the second article we read had additional evidence supporting those findings. It’s beginning to get really really interesting even beyond this, though.

While I was doing my reading, I had the TV on to block out the noise of the household. What did I have on? The SciFi Channel. Yeah, I’ll admit it. I was watching (and continue to be watching) the three-hour Stargate SG-1 thing they do every Monday night. Normally, the commercials are precisely what you’d expect on a SciFi Channel - commercials for upcoming sci-fi/action movies, those same releases on DVD, fast food, cars, video games and video game systems, and the occasional personal hygiene product. They’re not targeted AT ALL.

Now, with this goddamn “holiday” coming up, what do I hear all of a sudden? The song that’s now affiliated with the match.com commercials… “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)” by Natalie Cole. Yes, that’s right. They’ve decided that NOW is the perfect time to target the lonely-nerdy-desperate-for-attention-and-affection sci-fi geeks. Oh, yes. The language used in the commercial was also particularly cloying and SOO targeted and manipulative!!! It made me rather angry.

First off, you have your cute couples, holding hands, smiling, making puppy dog faces at each other against a white background talking about how amazing it was that they met for the first time through match.com even though they lived 5 minutes away from each other, or that they found their soulmate halfway around the world (um… greencard??) Then the spokesdude says something to the effect of, “Your perfect match is out there somewhere - the one person who will love you for the real you…”

UGH!!! I visited the site to see if his exact words were re-printed somewhere. Here’s a gem off the FAQ”

Question: How much does it cost to become a subscriber?

Answer: It depends on which plan you choose*. We have a 1-month plan, 3-month plan, and a 6-month plan. You can check out prices by clicking here. *Prices do not include miscellaneous expenses usually associated with Match.com dates, such as flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals that shake and sing love songs, the occasional diamond ring, etc.

I didn’t write that. That’s their little joke. Clearly meant for… the ladies. Hee-hee. You’ll get flowers! Chocolate! Stuffed animals! And maybe, just maybe, YOU’LL GET THE RING! THE RING!! THE RING!!!

Goodness knows that’s the most important part of a relationship leading up to marriage… the flowers (that die), the chocolate (that can make you fat or diabetic), the stuffed animals (assembled by sweatshop or child labor in a third world country and that will become more junk that you’ll hang onto for sentimental reasons you damn packrat!) and, of course, the diamond ring (conflict or blood diamonds from Sierra Leone, of course.)

The whole holiday, really. But I love the targeted advertising to the sci-fi geeks. That’s right, Poindexter. Sign up for match.com and you will find a girl who will love the real you - the socially awkward, Warcraft-obsessed, White Castle-eating, hygiene deficient and generally self-important you that you hide from the rest of the world so effectively*. She’ll love that guy - once you fill out the match.com questionnaire. Dude, she’s going to turn out to be Angelina Jolie’s blonde doppelganger and love playing Warcraft WITH you and will never tire of watching that Leeeeeroy Jenkins clip.

*Just a note: other than the socially awkwardness, hygiene deficiency and self-importance, the other characteristics are not damning. My little brother likes White Castle. I like my little brother. He has a girlfriend.

Anyway… I’m done with this for tonight. Don’t think I’m oblivious to the massive amounts of contradiction in tonight’s post - I start off talking about library science and some obscure ratio, make an X-Files reference then rail against sci-fi geeks (while I was watching the Sci-Fi Channel) and online dating… well, that last part isn’t contradictory or hypocritical because I don’t do it, so I can make fun of it blameslessly. Oh, yes.

Shit. It’s 11:00. I didn’t notice how much time had passed. I have to get my ass to bed so I don’t oversleep like I did today. Though I had a good excuse today… the alarms didn’t go off since we had a brown-out or something. My brother woke up 3 hours late. I was better off; I actually got to work on time.