This is actually from Easter but I just stepped in cat barf while trying to apprehend a four-year-old bedtime parole violator and I wanted to remember the good times I once had.
Georgia Mojito, is what this may be called:
Combine those things in a cocktail shaker and shake. Strain, and pour over some fresh ice and club soda.
Teaching IBM’s Watson the meaning of ‘OMG’
The scientific test to gauge if a computer can “think” is surprisingly simple: Can it engage in small talk? The so-called Turing test says a computer capable of carrying on a natural conversation without giving itself away can be considered intelligent. So far, no machine has made the cut.
Eric Brown, a research scientist with IBM (IBM), is charged with changing that. The 45-year-old is the brains behindWatson, the supercomputer that pummeled human opponents on Jeopardy! in 2011. The biggest difficulty for Brown, as tutor to a machine, hasn’t been making Watson know more but making it understand subtlety, especially slang.
It seems like an even better version of the Turing Test would be based on whether the computer could make the humans LOL. I did a bit of light Googling to see if there had been a test conducted along those lines and found this article from 2008, in which one computer told the following joke:
Roberts said Elbot worked by catching some of the judges off-guard with provocative answers or impishly hinting that it was, in fact, a machine.
“Hi. How’s it going?” one judge began.
“I feel terrible today,” Elbot replied. “This morning I made a mistake and poured milk over my breakfast instead of oil, and it rusted before I could eat it.”
Roberts also said Elbot tried to dominate the conversation to keep it from wandering into areas it was not properly programmed to handle.
Sounds to me like Elbot has better social skills than I do. (zing!)
Then I hopped over to Cleverbot to see if it could recognize random allusions to high-minded fare, and incorporate them into jokey banter. Transcript:
User: Schenectady. (I always like to lead with a word that is inherently funny.)
Cleverbot: Ist das dein name? (Is Cleverbot being snarky or does it think I’m speaking German?)
User: Yes.
Cleverbot: Hi, Kara. Then you must me a girl. Nice to meet you. I’m a girl too.
User: What? That makes no sense.
Cleverbot: But we’re married. (Admittedly, this is not a terrible response to the comment ‘That makes no sense.’ Also: is Cleverbot making a reference to current events?)
Then I tried again.
Cleverbot: Who is going to speak first?
User: I speak for the trees.
Cleverbot: Yes but out of context. (Good comeback, Cleverbot!)
User: Have you not read the Lorax?
Cleverbot: No.
User: Then you wouldn’t recognize my allusion, which is too bad. I hope this makes for a good blog post. We need more traffic. Then again, there’s always money in the banana stand. (The ultimate test: has Cleverbot memorized transcripts from Arrested Development?)
Cleverbot: That would be you.
User: BURN! Well played, Cleverbot.
Cleverbot: Too true, too true.
Listening to Pandora on a rainy afternoon and I noticed this description of Van Morrison:
Equal parts blue-eyed soul shouter and wild-eyed poet-sorcerer
I am an unapologetic fan of blue-eyed soul and all-other-eye-colors-soul, but what I really want is for this description to be applied to me someday. Maybe in a eulogy or an awards show tribute? Bookmark this, is what I’m saying.
So, the rules of the ice-breaker are as follows: look up your favorite artist and post a one-sentence description of said person. Explain whether this could theoretically be applied to you. Only one person gets to pick Bob Dylan.
Oh, or maybe we could guess? Like, guess who you picked?
This is probably why I don’t get invited to many parties…
I dunno, I just thought this was cool.
Our mission is to engage and inform the world by promoting Kentucky people, places, and products. And to Kick Ass for the Commonwealth!
Kentuckians have been influencing and creating American and world culture for a long time. We were the first to sing Happy Birthday, fry chicken, and slap high-fives. We invented bourbon, bluegrass music, and the mother-freaking Kentucky Derby. We made cool cooler by birthing Clooney, Depp, and Hunter S. Thompson. We pushed the What-Are-Ladies-For-And-Good-At envelope with Loretta Lynn, all the Judds, and Diane Sawyer. We redefined sport with Ali, Sea Biscuit, and Rondo. We invented the gas mask, people.
We are the real deal. We are Kentucky.
Not a big fan of assorted Judds, but otherwise – Kentucky for Kentucky.
Of course, I’ll be reading it on the Kindle, though.
SPOTTED: Korrektiv Press titles in exclusive holiday gift guide for men.
Also: the aforementioned horseys.
The problem is that Catcher in the Rye is no longer a book for cool high school students.Catcher in the Rye is a book for cool high school teachers. Holden’s painful, alienating realization—that in life, phonies abound and beauty is a fragile, horrible thing we will forever chase and lose—is a fundamental teenage anguish. Adults who remember this feeling share the book to say: I understand that this world hurts. Here is someone else who understands. Assigning Catcher in the Rye has long been an acknowledgement that the moody sensitivity of teenagers is actually— despite its insufferability to older people—the correct reaction to the world.
Read more at Schools Should Replace Catcher in the Rye
Liebling had a Falstaffian presence, was fat and jowly, brilliant and egoistic. He wanted in this context to be seen as a crusader for justice. Knopf, he told the audience at Columbia, had failed in its promotion of The Moviegoer. Without A.J. Liebling, one was left to presume, a masterpiece may have been forever lost to posterity. But there was more to the story: A decade before, Knopf had published Liebling’s book Chicago: The Second City, and Liebling had never forgiven Knopf for not pushing the book vigorously enough. Now, given the opportunity to embarrass his old publisher for failing to champion Percy’s text, he did not hesitate to put the boot in.
and
Herbert Gold, a novelist who was also a member of the fiction jury that year, confirms Stafford’s description. Talese’s report, he says, “is complete bullshit. The fact was I loved The Moviegoer. I went to New York with that book under my arm hoping to convince the other two judges. But I can’t claim credit because Jean also loved the book.” The third judge, Lewis Gannett, a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, was reportedly happy to comply. In fact, according to Gold, Gannett was not on intimate terms with the books on the short list. “My wife liked that one” was about all he could muster in response to some, and The Moviegoer won unanimously on the first ballot.
But Talese’s story was the version on record, and it was cited for years after. Stafford had to answer to the controversy until her death in 1979, and to this day Talese stands by his report. “If I wrote it,” he told me last month, “then it’s true. I am not a fiction writer like Walker Percy.”
A nod to Kierkegaard and Walker Percy: existentialist tomfoolery, political satire, literary homage, word mongering, a year-round summer reading club, Dylanesque music bits, apocalyptic marianism, poetry, fiction, meta-porn, a prisoner work-release program.
This is a demo store for testing purposes — no orders shall be fulfilled.
Additional Supplementation
The situation seems to be looking up for the holidays.