And the winner is...

As you may have gathered from this morning's incomplete and half-baked column, both Henry and I have been pretty tied up this weekend. Therefore, after brief consultation, we have agreed to defer announcing the winner of "A Strange Bot in a Strange Land" until after we have had a little more time to discuss and evaluate the entries.

However, judging "Your 2050 Census" was a much simpler matter. M produced an interesting build-up with a nice bit of speculation concerning the impact of answering Census questions forty years in advance, and overall we like the sample questions presented and the overall feel of the entry. If anything, it was too short—but then, this was a lesser challenge, and JS-Kit definitely constrains the length of comments. Waterboy, on the other hand, wrote a neat little exploration of the effects of technology, and particularly of intrusive technology, on the Census. It was a sweet little self-contained story, but dealt more with the technology of gathering the Census than with the contents of the actual Census form itself.

Given that this turned out to be a showdown between the two previous challenge winners, then, we're going to go with M's entry. Both were entertaining and well-written, but M did a better job of directly answering the challenge, and while that is not always the most important criteria in picking a winner, this week, it is. Ergo, M, come on down and claim your prize.

And speaking of prizes: our record-keeping has been a little sloppy of late. Is there anyone out there who is owed a prize and has not received it yet? Let us know.