Authors of the month
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A few weeks ago, we featured Elevate Embuggerance and Holistic Feisty, authors (according to Google Scholar) of The Linguistics of Laughter:
Now, thanks to research by Steven Landsburg and Aaron Mandel, we're proud to introduce you to the prolific writer "Ass Meat Research Group", who is listed at amazon.com as the author of 88 books:
His (their?) frequent collaborators include "Frozen Horse", who has written 23 books, and "Chilled and Frozen Hors the Fresh", who has written 24. The same circle of writers includes Sheep the Edible Offals of Bovi, and a number of others; we leave the full analysis of this social network to future literary scholars.
Steven's post explains how (most of) this probably happened. It's clear that there's still some room for improvement in algorithms for automatically parsing biographical records.
[Update: this one has been rattling around the blogosphere for a few years, unknown to me — interesting to see that it still hasn't been fixed.]
Roland said,
November 10, 2009 @ 11:44 am
This appears to be one of the zillions of autogenerated books on Amazon created by this guy. I wouldn't be surprised if this particular error were caused by the publisher itself.
Dan T. said,
November 10, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
"Chilled and Frozen Hors the Fresh" sounds like some variety of hors d'oevres.
The "Ass Meat Research Group" sounds like some industry trade group sponsored think tank.
Dan T. said,
November 10, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
And "Frozen Horse" might be a Native American chief.
Benjamin Zimmer said,
November 10, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
@Roland: Ah, the ubiquitous Philip Parker. See Bill Poser's post from last year, "Philip Parker's House of Words."
CWV said,
November 10, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
I believe that "Chilled and Frozen Hors the Fresh" was one of the many pseudonyms used by the late rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard, also known as Big Baby Jesus, Dirt McGirt, Ill Irving the Murderer, and Roll Fizzlebeef, among others.
Sili said,
November 10, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
You don't know Sheep (his friends call him Offal)? He's David's younger brother.
(Initial joke scrapped after looking up the proper spelling of Jon Bon's last name.)
Spell Me Jeff said,
November 10, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
Hors the Fresh, brother of Hengist the Rotten: 5th century Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain.
Ginger Yellow said,
November 10, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
And of course, Offal is famous for his dyke.
E. said,
November 10, 2009 @ 4:44 pm
I wonder if Frozen Horse is any relation of 19th-century businessman Preserved Fish Jr.
Sandra Wilde said,
November 10, 2009 @ 6:41 pm
When you click on the author's name, it comes up with the same book as 24 separate listings. Who knows how that happens?
And here's a customer review of the book on Amazon:
I have to say that this is the finest work I have read in this field; although two years old, it's still a fascinating guide to the horse meat industry, and anybody with a proclivity for horses and mules will find the enormous range of black-and-white photographs particularly entertaining. It's quite expensive, though, but if you need this kind of information you can probably get your company to pay for it. Myself, I'm a consumer, and I just have a thing for meat, so I saved up.
Eveningsun said,
November 10, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
No images? Sigh.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » The Ass Meat Research Group said,
November 10, 2009 @ 7:36 pm
[…] Questions) has the scoop on this, and also on Chilled the Fresh and other noted authors. Thanks to Mark Liberman (Language Log) for the pointer. Categories: […]
Lazar said,
November 10, 2009 @ 8:29 pm
King Chilled and Frozen Hors the Fresh was much better loved than his father, King Chilled and Frozen Hors the Rancid.
Amazon Prime Ass Meat « The Lure said,
November 10, 2009 @ 10:14 pm
[…] Prime Ass Meat Here. Explanation, here. (h/t Language Log via […]
ronbo said,
November 11, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
"Ass Meat Research Group" – if it isn't the name of a band, it should be.
Alex said,
November 12, 2009 @ 8:56 am
@Ronbo
If they're rappers, I can just imagine the videos