The Greenbelt

Language Liberalism Freethought Birds

Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

The church says Earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence in a shadow than the church.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Really????

How did I live this long without knowing that "gymnasium" comes from a Greek word meaning "to train naked"?

Labels: jeopardy, language

6 Comments:

At 11:30 PM, January 13, 2011 Kathie had this to say...: Man vs. machine: who do you think will win on "Jeopardy!" -- former champs Ken Jennings or Brad Rutter, or IBM's "Watson"?
At 12:38 PM, January 14, 2011 The Ridger, FCD had this to say...: Much will depend on how the questions are worded, I expect.
At 4:33 PM, January 14, 2011 Barry Leiba had this to say...: You can see a bit from the practice round on ZDNet's article -- see my blog today for a pointer.
At 8:18 PM, January 16, 2011 Kathie had this to say...: Did you happen to hear this report on NPR's "All Things Considered" this afternoon?

"Google's Artificial Intelligence Translates Poetry":
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132959095/googles-artificial-intelligence-translates-poetry

I suspect neither of us will be replaced any time soon :-)
At 7:43 PM, January 17, 2011 The Ridger, FCD had this to say...: Hee hee. Nice typo in that poetry-translating story:

"So it will pick 'orange' just as happily, and it will have to through it away afterwards," Genzel says.
At 11:40 PM, January 17, 2011 Kathie had this to say...: One imagines the transcriptionist was relying on SpellCheck -- which, also being a computer program, is flawed and can't check for context.

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You cannot leave. You cannot drop the armor now. Why? Because you are needed, more than ever. You are mandatory to keep the energy flowing, the karmic vibrator buzzing, to keep the progressive and lucid half of the nation breathing and healthy and awake and ever reaching out to the half that's wallowing in fear and violence and homophobia and sexual dread, hoping to find harmony instead of cacophony, common ground instead of civil war, some sort of a shared love of a country so messy and internationally disrespected and openly confused its own president can't even speak the language.

After all, you don't hand over all your children the first time the flying monkeys bang on your door...

It's far from over. The tunnel is just a little darker -- and longer -- than we imagined.
—Mark Morford

The Greenbelt

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Really????

6 Comments:

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