Two Fumbles
Two humorous mistakes were made recently, one by a computer or a robot, and the other by a human. The computer whaaa was made by Google. Recently Herta Däubler-Gmelin, the justice minister in German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government, made an apparent comparison between President Bush and Hitler: she said "Das hat auch Hitler schon gemacht". This means "Hitler also had done it"; the word "schon" means "already" but in this phrase it is more for emphasis. I put the sentence into Google and it said "Do you mean 'Das hat auch Hitler schoen gemacht' ?" That really put words into Herta's mouth. It now says "Hitler also had made it beautiful."
The other was by a human; in particular, NBC's Tom Brokaw. In talking about today's five-person murder during a robbery in Norfolk, Nebraska, Mr. Brokaw said, "It happened in a quiet town, Norfolk, Nebraska, whose main claim to fame is that it was Johnny Carson's birthplace. It is no longer." Huhhh?? Since when does a person's birthplace change? Did someone go back in the past and move his parents to a different town? This misplaced phrase has Orwellian overtones. Johnny Carson was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He was always born in Norfolk, Virginia. He was never born in Norfolk, Nebraska. It's like Oceania being at war with Eastasia, whereas people heard yesterday it was at war with Eurasia. But Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, and all the history books need to be rewritten. Tom needs to be more careful with his sentences to make sure that they refer to what he intended them to refer to; in this case, to the quietness of this heartland town in rural Nebraska.
Someone says it is human to err, but to make big mistakes requires a computer. I say both humans and computers can make big mistakes at times.
A Journey through Blogrealm
Blogtrek
Blogtrek
2002/09/26
2002/09/25
Tax Fuel Hogs!
I find my quest for a teaching position has been thwarted by Governor Warner's budget cuts. That has put a hiring freeze on six out of nine schools in this area. This may mean that I would want to get a non-teaching position instead, or continue working where I am. This is disappointing, and in my opinion, not necessary. I think that instead of cutting programs all over the place, Governor Warner should recommend instead an increase in the gasoline tax. We need to conserve on gasoline and petroleum even more than on water, as you can find out by reading the papers in www.oilcrisis.com I think that a 40 cent a gallon increase would allow the state government to eliminate most of the cuts, although an exact computation would require knowledge of the budget and of gasoline consumption. The increase would also help encourage development of alternative sources of energy such as hydrogen and wind. I urge Governor Warner to lift the hiring freeze and to increase the tax on gasoline.
I find my quest for a teaching position has been thwarted by Governor Warner's budget cuts. That has put a hiring freeze on six out of nine schools in this area. This may mean that I would want to get a non-teaching position instead, or continue working where I am. This is disappointing, and in my opinion, not necessary. I think that instead of cutting programs all over the place, Governor Warner should recommend instead an increase in the gasoline tax. We need to conserve on gasoline and petroleum even more than on water, as you can find out by reading the papers in www.oilcrisis.com I think that a 40 cent a gallon increase would allow the state government to eliminate most of the cuts, although an exact computation would require knowledge of the budget and of gasoline consumption. The increase would also help encourage development of alternative sources of energy such as hydrogen and wind. I urge Governor Warner to lift the hiring freeze and to increase the tax on gasoline.
2002/09/24
The God Test
I hit upon an idea to find what a person is really like. I am not sure that there is an Ultimate Being of some sort, a universal God. In my opinion the evidence is against it. Instead, when someone invokes God, like thanking God that they are safe from some tragedy or thanking God for helping them achieve some coveted award, they are talking about their own God. In a sense, to one's self, one's self is God. I think a lot of problems in this world would vanish once people recognize that the God they worship is really part of themselves. Only one person that I know of (besides myself) has recognized this: in a book, she writes "I am Grandmama God".
Therefore, to find out what a person's personality is like, ask them why they believe in God and what God has meant for them in their lives. This is fairly easy for someone who believes in God; for an atheist or agnostic such as myself, it is much harder; for such a person, ask them, if they believed in God, what kind of a God would it be. If the person is Christian and believes strongly that Jesus is their salvation and that He is a constant part of their lives, ask them what Jesus as meant for them. I will take myself as an example. I do not believe in a traditional God, so I will have to imagine that I do believe in a God. What would He be like?
My God would be a tasker and a riddler. He would always be presenting me riddles for me to solve. What is life all about? Where does the Universe end? Is it true that P is not equal to NP? How should I structure my life? My life would be an endless quest for the Truth that God represents. He would not give me much comfort, since He knows I have all I need to comfort myself. The reason that the stars are disorganized is that God made them that way. He would be the Constant Question, the Reason behind the Chaos, why Chaos appears in Order so much of the time; he would even riddle me on whether He exists, why I am me and what is it all about anyway. The traditional God that most closely resembles mine is Coyote of western Native American myth, the Rabbit of Cherokee and other eastern Native American myth and Loki of Norse myth.
That is, if I believed in a God. What does that say about me? It says I am a seeker, a trickster, and one who is trying to understand it all but can't quite get it.
I hit upon an idea to find what a person is really like. I am not sure that there is an Ultimate Being of some sort, a universal God. In my opinion the evidence is against it. Instead, when someone invokes God, like thanking God that they are safe from some tragedy or thanking God for helping them achieve some coveted award, they are talking about their own God. In a sense, to one's self, one's self is God. I think a lot of problems in this world would vanish once people recognize that the God they worship is really part of themselves. Only one person that I know of (besides myself) has recognized this: in a book, she writes "I am Grandmama God".
Therefore, to find out what a person's personality is like, ask them why they believe in God and what God has meant for them in their lives. This is fairly easy for someone who believes in God; for an atheist or agnostic such as myself, it is much harder; for such a person, ask them, if they believed in God, what kind of a God would it be. If the person is Christian and believes strongly that Jesus is their salvation and that He is a constant part of their lives, ask them what Jesus as meant for them. I will take myself as an example. I do not believe in a traditional God, so I will have to imagine that I do believe in a God. What would He be like?
My God would be a tasker and a riddler. He would always be presenting me riddles for me to solve. What is life all about? Where does the Universe end? Is it true that P is not equal to NP? How should I structure my life? My life would be an endless quest for the Truth that God represents. He would not give me much comfort, since He knows I have all I need to comfort myself. The reason that the stars are disorganized is that God made them that way. He would be the Constant Question, the Reason behind the Chaos, why Chaos appears in Order so much of the time; he would even riddle me on whether He exists, why I am me and what is it all about anyway. The traditional God that most closely resembles mine is Coyote of western Native American myth, the Rabbit of Cherokee and other eastern Native American myth and Loki of Norse myth.
That is, if I believed in a God. What does that say about me? It says I am a seeker, a trickster, and one who is trying to understand it all but can't quite get it.
2002/09/23
How many people do I know?
I did a lot of stuff today, on my day off on Monday; applied for some teaching positions, planned a trip to the Outer Banks, and planned for a cluster of three meetings that decided that they all wanted to go late in the day on the 24th. For my blog today, I will comment on how many people do we know. Is it 50? 5,000? 700? How could we know? I tried to find the answer several ways. My definition of know is: A knows B if and only if, if B had died in Planeattack, then A would have noticed it. Here is what I tried:
1. Automobile accidents. 40,000 people die each year in auto accidents. This has happened for the past 50 years (since I was 6). That's a total of 2,000,000 people killed in accidents from 1952-2002. I knew 4 people in my lifetime that died in auto accidents. This means I knew 4 out of 2,000,000 people or one in 500,000 people. Since there are 282,921,406 people in the US, it follows that I know 282,921,406/500,000 or 566 people.
2. Random selection. Randomly select people out of my workplace and all the organizations I belong to. Make an allowance for others and then take ratios for each org and add them together. This gives me about 400 or so.
3 Planeattack. This gave me the idea for this blog. I saw an article in the newspaper that criticized a poll that said that 1.2 percent of all people say they know someone who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or Pennsylvania. That's 0.012*282,921,406 or 33,890,208. This means the average person who died (there are 3,034 of them) knew 33,890,208/3,034 or 11,170 people; actually, higher, since people know the same people, whereas the division implies they are disjoint. This is also too high. That was the newspaper's argument. Something was wrong with the poll.
4 Look it up in Google. Look up "average person knows * people". The asterisk is a wild card. I get answers of 200, 500, 250, 2000, and 300. Further in a church, according to one web page, the average person knows 62 people regardless of the size of the church; but I would presume that if the church is smaller than 62 people, then the average person knows everybody. Further, a "meganetworking" person knows 3,500 people.
This shows that nobody really has a hold on how many people one knows. My feeling is that I know about 500-1000 people, with about 100 of these fairly well on at least an acquaintance basis. But I still would like for someone to come up with a good figure for this.
I did a lot of stuff today, on my day off on Monday; applied for some teaching positions, planned a trip to the Outer Banks, and planned for a cluster of three meetings that decided that they all wanted to go late in the day on the 24th. For my blog today, I will comment on how many people do we know. Is it 50? 5,000? 700? How could we know? I tried to find the answer several ways. My definition of know is: A knows B if and only if, if B had died in Planeattack, then A would have noticed it. Here is what I tried:
1. Automobile accidents. 40,000 people die each year in auto accidents. This has happened for the past 50 years (since I was 6). That's a total of 2,000,000 people killed in accidents from 1952-2002. I knew 4 people in my lifetime that died in auto accidents. This means I knew 4 out of 2,000,000 people or one in 500,000 people. Since there are 282,921,406 people in the US, it follows that I know 282,921,406/500,000 or 566 people.
2. Random selection. Randomly select people out of my workplace and all the organizations I belong to. Make an allowance for others and then take ratios for each org and add them together. This gives me about 400 or so.
3 Planeattack. This gave me the idea for this blog. I saw an article in the newspaper that criticized a poll that said that 1.2 percent of all people say they know someone who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or Pennsylvania. That's 0.012*282,921,406 or 33,890,208. This means the average person who died (there are 3,034 of them) knew 33,890,208/3,034 or 11,170 people; actually, higher, since people know the same people, whereas the division implies they are disjoint. This is also too high. That was the newspaper's argument. Something was wrong with the poll.
4 Look it up in Google. Look up "average person knows * people". The asterisk is a wild card. I get answers of 200, 500, 250, 2000, and 300. Further in a church, according to one web page, the average person knows 62 people regardless of the size of the church; but I would presume that if the church is smaller than 62 people, then the average person knows everybody. Further, a "meganetworking" person knows 3,500 people.
This shows that nobody really has a hold on how many people one knows. My feeling is that I know about 500-1000 people, with about 100 of these fairly well on at least an acquaintance basis. But I still would like for someone to come up with a good figure for this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)