Auditing Eye Color

Is it normal for a tech magazine account rep (or anybody for that matter) to call someone and ask for the following:

• Address confirmation
• Email
  
• Fax number
• Amount we plan to spend on technical equipment this year
• Eye color - for auditing purposes

Eye color? What the freak kind of question is that? And is saying that it's "for auditing purposes" supposed to make it seem any more normal? If so, umm, it didn't work. Hmm, maybe she was just hitting on me...

We are the Machine!

A cultural anthropology assistant professor put together this techy little number and put it up on YouTube. Now it's all the rage, still staying on the top of YouTube's charts and being one of the most blogged about videos of the year (and now I am joining that mass). What's slightly funny though is that he is surprised at the video's popularity, according to this column in InfoWorld even though the very video itself talks about how easily content can spread in today's information age. So you would think that he of all people would've seen it coming. Nevertheless, it is an interesting (although slightly nerdy) look at the evolution of the power of the word (no, I don't mean Microsoft Word) and the interaction between human and machine.