Working Toward Self-Destruction, or Irrelevance

"The goal of the GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) program is to develop and apply computer software technologies to absorb, analyze and interpret huge volumes of speech and text in multiple languages, eliminating the need for linguists and analysts and automatically providing relevant, distilled actionable information to military command and personnel in a timely fashion. Automatic processing "engines" will convert and distill the data, delivering pertinent, consolidated information in easy-to-understand forms to military personnel and monolingual English-speaking analysts in response to direct or implicit requests."

This description of the GALE program is taken directly from the DARPA website (DARPA is a research program funded by the Department of Defense). What worries me just a smidgen is the bolded part. So essentially, we're working to eliminate our relevance in the workplace is what they're saying, which sounds like a bad thing doesn't it? But after a moment's thought, I realized that machine translation research is only one of many fields in which the work is, as I called it "self-destructive". Research scientists in disease prevention, alternative energy sources, anything technology-related- all these can be self-destructive in some way. But I'm not that worried, because most of the time, a solution to one problem only generates more problems (more work for us!), like infinite recursion, and also, it will be way beyond my lifetime before a solution is even found. Although, judging by this really interesting article on machine translation, it may be sooner rather than later in this particular field. (Okay, looks like the article "Me Translate Pretty One Day" won't be posted on line until December 1st.) Here is a text version of the accompanying picture:

"Dos burritos, por favor"

Human translator: 2 burritos, please!

Machine translator: 2 young donkeys, please!

Ducks Backward Sans Vowels

Check this webcomic out, it's awesome!

Ponder This

"Chew the cud" means to ruminate, and "ruminants" are cloven-hooved quadrupeds of the suborder Ruminantia, like cows, who chew their cud. Which begat which? My guess is that the name of the class of animals comes from the thoughtful expression that appears on a cow's face when it chews its cud. I also think we give cows too much credit. What kind of deep thoughts do you think ole Bessie is mulling over as she chews her molasses-like abc grass? Certainly nothing as deep as world domination.

"I Dunno"

What do you say when someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to? You can either

a) reply in Belgian ("waffle waffle") with the proper intonation and accents and stuff, or

b) go Poppins on the inquirer, singing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!", or

c) gaze fatefully and absentmindedly at the moon, and say "Mars is bright tonight."

Think of these options as the equivalents of a blank stare. That last one is from Harry Potter 1.

Wow how did it become a post about Alias? I thought the world revolved around cheese

I decided that I am not a pathological liar. In order to be a pathological liar, I must believe in the lies that I tell, which I most certainly do not. Lying is a valuable skill to have/develop, especially if one is involved in the business of crime-stopperage, espionage, getting out of sticky situations, and being a good mother.

For instance, Irina Derevko was an awesome mom, and what was that line that defined, directed, and defended her actions from beginning to bloody end? Truth takes time, baby! Come to think of it, we still don't know the truth. "Ah, but there was neither truth nor an endgame in the Alias-verse, little grasshopper" says the wise, objective non-viewer. Lord, if life, reality, and morality are anything like Alias, then we're in trouble folks. No objective truth, no official moral code that is above human interpretation, we may as well be Lost on a little island in Hawaii. With a fat guy named Hurley. And a misplaced polar bear.

To be honest, I'm not far from believing that the subjectiveness of the Alias-verse well reflects the realities of our own Universe, but that's another story for another time. (Something to do with colors and evolution and moral codes.)

Luck and Deception

You know, I don't believe in luck, but sometimes I like to pretend I am lucky, and then luck seems to follow me around. Or, I like to pretend that coincidence is luck.

I am currently playing an incredible, whopper of a prank on my bookstore co-workers right now. It is awesome. Details later. Oh god, it's so funny.

Bookstore Encounter #847

A customer came in today looking for Pimsleur's Arabic and Hungarian language tapes. She was a thin, energetic, vigorous woman of about 45 or 50 with white-blonde wavy hair, tanned, weathered face, and unnaturally blue eyes (contacts, she confirmed later). As we rode up the escalator, I asked her why she was learning these languages- whether it was just for fun, or for her line of work. She said it was useful in the kind of work she does for a living. Of course I had to ask what she did for a living, to which she replied, "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you." We both laughed, while my mind wandered immediately to Alias and Sydney Bristow and espionage in general. I said aloud, "We laugh, but it's true!" She and I burst out laughing even more jovially at that.

I'll bet you the world she was a spy.

The whole situation, with the laughter, and the secret thoughts hiding behind the laughter, and the darting of the eyes to see if we could read behind each other's laughter was...funny. She and I got to talking for a bit about how dead-useful knowing a bunch of languages can be, career-wise, especially Arabic and Spanish. She said she was a flight nurse in the military, and a regular nurse at HUP as her civilian job (she is soooo a spy!), but dude, if she had told me that she worked at a bank, I-I, I don't know what I would have done. I might have just fainted right then and there.

Anyway, hm, oh well, the point is, sometimes, I forgot the reason why I want to learn all these languages, and the theory of language, and then this woman came along to remind me that they do have a place in the world, that I'm not just wasting my time and being unpragmatic. Thanks, Lady with Unnaturally Blue Eyes. Do you think if we did a retinal scan on her, she'd turn out to be a double, like Ethan Hawke or (shudder) Francinator?! Ok-kay, I really need to turn down the imagination station a notch or two or five.

(She is soooo a spy, y'all! Eeek!)

Oh, and I met Jonathan Safran Foer yesterday.

Math and Politics

The situation is, people are pissed off at Kerry because he said the following at a rally in Cali:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

American soldiers in Iraq, among other groups, were extremely insulted by Kerry's "joke" because it sounded like he was saying that they were dumb.

I just want to say one thing about this whole situation, and it's pretty ironic really because the outcry stems from a logical misinterpretation on the part of the American soldiers: Kerry's statement was not an "if and only if" statement, as we say in the language of math or logic. His statement, broken down into essentials, says

not smart => stuck in Iraq.

American soldiers misinterpreted his statement as:

stuck in Iraq => not smart.

P implies Q doesn't equate to Q implies P, in other words, but it's a mistake we make often in math as students, and in life and politics apparently. I know it's a technicality and probably would annoy people if I tried to point it out, but I just wanted to throw it out there.