How I chose the title

Every piece of writing needs a good title. It's the hook, to get grazing passers-by to stop and sample the writing. When I decided to start this blog I didn't have the title worked out yet.

Well this morning on the subway it hit me. What I'm up against is a lot of spin, smoke-screening and irrelevant arguments -- the sort of thing we call a "red herring." Their aim is to throw you off the trail (dried salt herrings, which can go reddish, are very smelly -- so I'm told.)

I want to counter all those red herrings with a good, solid environmental reality check. Something from the other side of the spectrum ... something green.

So there it is. I'm calling this "Green Herring." Of course I had to google the term to see if someone else had thought of it. Of course someone had: there's a vegetarian restaurant in Canberra that has the name already. Here's one online online review - they liked it. I'll have to look it up if we ever get to Canberra. We've got friends in Melbourne that we're overdue for another visit.

There was also an entry in a Matlab contest that used this title. I haven't run the code to see what it does, but it sounds like some pretty pictures may emerge...

Well that's it for how I chose the title.