As the video below demonstrates, getting computers to work with human language is hard–even after decades of research and development.

Over at Slacktivist and Making Light there are lively discussions about ‘Could you live on X amount of money?’ Lots of commenters are chiming in with their mimimum requirements. For me, though, all those participants are missing the point of the discussion. This comment at Slacktivist expresses my sentiments exactly (though more eloquently than I could have done so):

For me, my happiness for their good fortune turns to scorn for their blind privilege when they go from, ‘I wouldn’t know how to live on only 100k a year’ or ‘I wouldn’t want to try to live on only 100k a year’ to ‘I couldn’t live on 100k a year’. I understand that you don’t want to downgrade your lifestyle; who would? I understand that you’ve never had to live on 100k, let alone 50k, let alone 30k, and it’s very understandable that you regard the prospect of trying with some trepidation.
But you could do it. Lots of people do it, because they must, because they have no choice. And if you had no choice, you’d do it, too. So be grateful. Be humble. Help those who don’t have your staggering luck, to be amongst the richest people living in the richest country. You don’t deserve it, nobody could, so at least be thoughtful about it.

One of my biggest fears in life is that I’ll feel entitled to something. For me, being part of an intentional faith community is one of the biggest antidotes to feelings of entitlement. It helps me to keep in mind just how miniscule I am in the grand scheme of things.

Today, I ran across Bob Sutton’s blog, Work Matters. Just up my alley: he shares lots of practical applications of some fairly esoteric ideas. I found Bob’s blog via this post: Strong Opinions, Weakly Held. In it, Bob shares this insight:

A couple years ago, I was talking the Palo Alto’s Institute for the Future’s Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that – to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.” They’ve been giving this advice for years, and I understand that it was first developed by Instituite Director Paul Saffo. Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them. Bob explained that it was just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions.

That’s an eloquent description that I find ever so sensible. I do indeed have strong opinions, and like my friend Rafe Colburn, I like to think my opinions are based on well considered evidence, and that I’m willing to change my opinions in light of new evidence.

This web page about English usage ‘non-errors’ has been making the rounds in the bloggin world this week. It contains a list of English usage that people frequently correct, but the author of this page calls them ‘non-errors’ since they are in common usage. I poked around and discovered that the author of the page is an English professor who has published a book on English usage errors.
Given the author’s knowledge of English usage, I’m a little disappointed that he calls the items on this page ‘non-errors.’ In fact, his primary argument that the issues in question are not errors is the fact that they are commonly used. I don’t see how he can publish a prescriptivist book on usage and then not disclose that his view of these issues is based on a descriptivist argument.

Ben Stein’s State of the Union.

Eric Sink has a recent blog post about negotiating. He makes the common sense observation:

In negotiation, the one thing that really strengthens your position is the ability to walk away from the deal.

My salary history over the last ten years bears out Eric’s observation. With every job change except one, I received a decent salary increase. The one exception was the job I accepted after having been laid off. I was not in a strong position to negotiate salary, and I took a big hit for it. It took me several years to get back to the salary I had before.

The New York Times lists ten lesser-known significant dates in American history. For instance:

FEB. 15, 1933: The Wobbly Chair
It should have been an easy shot: five rounds at 25 feet. But the gunman, Giuseppe Zangara, an anarchist, lost his balance atop a wobbly chair, and instead of hitting President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, he fatally wounded the mayor of Chicago, who was shaking hands with F.D.R.
Had Roosevelt been assassinated, his conservative Texas running mate, John Nance Garner, would most likely have come to power. “The New Deal, the move toward internationalism — these would never have happened,” says Alan Brinkley of Columbia University. “It would have changed the history of the world in the 20th century. I don’t think the Kennedy assassination changed things as much as Roosevelt’s would have.”

Apparently, this list of reasons why America actually sucks is making the rounds on the internet. I’m the first to question unbridled ‘America is Number One!’ jingoism, but I’m highly suspicious of this list for several reasons:

1. It was created to prove a point, so the data is necessarily selective
2. The sort of short bullet points that the list employs is subject to gross oversimplification
3. Many of the points in the list are not given comparative to other countries (e.g., “Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training” So, how does that compare globally?)
4. I frankly question the veracity or quality of some of the data (e.g., “Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.” I recall seeing a chart of average work hours, and South Korea led every other country by several hundred hours. Apparently, the South Koreans have some really bizarre ideas about the average work week)

I would really like to see someone pick apart the list. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or inclination.

This morning, I happened to catch Alex Chadwick’s Radio Expeditions report from the Ecuadorean rain forest with entomologist Rex Cocroft. Dr. Cocroft’s musings at the end of the piece struck me, so I transcribed them:

It can seem very strange to people, I think, and very ludicrous, to see some grown person who’s spending his time chasing around tiny, strange bugs in the woods, but I think of it like somebody who’s a musician. You’re not just a pure musician in the abstract. You play something, and once you pick up an instrument, all the principles of music are there. And if you’re studying biology, then any individual living thing that you can study has all the principles of biology wrapped up in it, and it has a long evolutionary history that has solved a very impressive set of problems and challenges and has a beautiful set of adaptations.
[The tree hoppers] are just very different from us, but they have just as many challenges in their lives, and fabulous, very finely tuned adaptations for dealing with them. So they’re not at all primitive or simple. They’re actually very complex and advanced, if you will.

I don’t know whether Dr. Cocroft bellieves in any dieties, but I am much more impressed with a God who can devise evolution and let it run its course than one who just spits out creation fully formed. The more I learn about the complexities of creation via science, the greater my reverence for it.

I’ve considered writing something about The Da Vinci Code (read the book, may eventually see the movie on DVD, but based on my dismal movie watching history, probably won’t), but I really couldn’t think of anything to add to the billions of words already being written about the book and movie. As usual, Gordon Atkinson sums up my feelings perfectly and much more eloquently than I could have done:

I’ve read the Da Vinci Code. I plan on seeing the movie, which I hear is better than the book. I liked the book. It was a fun read.
I have no interest in discussing Dan Brown’s scholarship or lack thereof. Anyone who paid attention in seminary has heard of these extra-biblical sources and knows that Mr. Brown’s book is an adventure story and not a biblical or historical treatise. The Da Vinci Code has roughly the same relationship to biblical and church history that James Bond has to the world of secret agents. And hey, what’s wrong with that? It’s a good read. Like a Clancy novel.

(Note: I only attended seminary vicariously via Katie)