Permission is given to use this material in any publication as long as my name and affiliation are left intact. If you can, send me the issue. Previous Porsching columns are available at http://www.cs.vassar.edu/faculty/welty/porsching PORSCHING by Chris Welty Hudson-Valley Region, PCA Blood Orange, Part I I'm going to tell you a story, as is my wont in this column, but for those of you reading this in printed form the story does require a little background. Many years ago, when the only people who'd heard of the Internet were a bunch of computer science geeks (like me), there was this "bulletin board" system called USENET News. The mere mention of this term would send most system administrators into hiding, as it had a tendency to fill gigabyte disk drives in a few minutes with the deep, profound, and completely meaningless thoughts of the nation's undergraduates. I know, since I've filled a few drives myself. One of the groups in USENET News was rec.autos, a free-form discussion group about cars. There turned out to be a fairly good number of active participants in this group who noticed that a lot of the postings had nothing to do with Porsches, but with these other mechanical devices that some people casually refer to as automobiles. After a particularly frustrating round of "wasted bandwidth", Stan Hanks rallied those pure of heart and formed a splinter group, the legendary (and now perhaps historical) Porschephiles List. The list started small, with perhaps fifty people, but grew steadily and now accounts for roughly 98% of Internet traffic. Back in the early days, things were a little different, we talked about what the best oil was, what to look for in a used Porsche, tires, that kind of stuff. I don't have 60 hours a day to read it anymore, so I don't know what Porschephiles talk about now, but I'm sure it must be different, they can't possibly be having the same conversations. One day the main discussion got onto car colors. There was an intense flurry of messages as people noted the colors of their own cars. The discussion reminded me of something I had always thought rather amusing about the color of my car, so I posted an innocuous enough message, along these lines: "The color of my car is tangerine. That's in the English color book. If you pick up the German, the same color code comes up BLUTORANGE, which literally means `Blood Orange.' Something was really lost in the translation there. Personally, I prefer `BLOOD Orange' to tangerine." This immediately generated responses from several noted scholars who kindly pointed out that "blood orange" is a real fruit, much different from a tangerine, which is not available in the U.S. I went to my local grocery store, to the exotic fruit section, and spoke to the section manager. I inquired about blood oranges and was assured by him that they were basically tangerines. With this expertise behind me, I returned to my terminal and shot off a message: "The manager of the exotic fruits section of my local grocery store tells me that blutorange is the German word for tangerine. Anyway, don't you really think that something was lost in the translation? I mean, BLOOD ORANGE and tangerine. You say the former in a deep, husky voice, and the latter in a soprano with a lisp." At this time in my life I was no novice to email discussion groups, so I shouldn't have been surprised. People tend to take electronic text-based communication a little too seriously, and they latch onto something you write and then never let go. There is no visual feedback, smirks, or body language to add to the context or change the meaning. Some people use smiley faces :) to assist the comically impaired, but of course I'm way too obnoxious for that. At this point, the whole "blood orange as a fruit" topic was, to me, completely irrelevant. I was simply trying to make the point that there was something lost in the translation from "Blutorange" to "Tangerine." Get it? Of course not. Well, don't worry, no one else did either. I was simply amazed at the number of responses generated by my message. Another thing about email discussions is that people are very eager to spout off little bits of trivia that they know, or experiences they have had. In fact, writing a message to a large email list is very much like trying to pick up a date at a bar. This rule doesn't apply to any of my messages, you see, since I am aware of the phenomena and therefore not affected by it. Many of the responses, then, began with "When I lived in Germany ..." or some other assertion of superior knowledge of the subject, and to these people the subject was blood oranges. Overwhelmed, I was at first discouraged that amidst the barrage of replies (sent not to me but everyone on the list) a grand total of TWO got the point. I soon became convinced, however, that it was relevant whether tangerines and blood oranges were different. I was, as you can well imagine, incensed and outraged at the thought that I had been led astray by a person holding so noble and trustworthy a position as fruit department manager. Could it be that tangerine and blood orange ARE in fact TWO DIFFERENT FRUITS, despite the assurance of the local experts? Armed with various email messages assuring me (with various levels of diminuation) that a blood orange is not a tangerine, I raced to the supermarket to confront Mr. Smarty-Pants Fruit Manager. Assuming the character of most of the email messages I received, I screamed and yelled, gesticulated, grimaced, flatulated, and otherwise made a spectacle of myself as I attempted to make my point. I then apologized profusely to the poor guy (he *did* look a lot like the fruit manager), who will probably never buy lemons again, and the store management arrived *en-mass*. Having misdirected most of my energy at this point, I was less of a spectacle as I repeated - in a nevertheless highly accusatory manner - the story of my betrayal. The fruit manager was apologetic. "I had no idea you would take my comments so *seriously*," he said, visibly shaken by my intensity. "This is the god-damned *NET* for chrissake!" I yelled, pointing to the email printouts. "Of COURSE it gets taken seriously!" The store manager broke in, his soothing voice and smarmy manner distracted me from the fact that I was being escorted out. "Sir, if you will just calm down. We are under direct orders not to reveal the existence of blood oranges to the American Public. I'm afraid we can not discuss the matter further." "Direct orders from whom?" I asked, stunned. The manager smiled as the doors closed. I was outside. Alone. I drove back home slowly, running the implications of what I had just heard over and over in my head. A feeling of paranoia came over me as I arrived at my house. Once inside, I realized I had only one hope for ever discovering the truth, and I made the call. "Hello, can I speak to OLIVER STONE, please?"