Category: humour

I was reading the insightful qwghlm (because all the other domain names were taken) recently. I’m a private sudoko fan, I do a puzzle here and there under the covers when R isn’t looking. Seriously though, I liked the idea that something like Sudoko is a much more tractable problem to a computerised solution than crossword puzzles. However, I must take issue with Chris Booth’s comments.

I love The Independent’s “Get the picture” for that reason. But the best example of this class of puzzle (often done for charity) are those where the clues are initial letters and lengths of the key words in a phrase (e.g. “The T—– D— of C——–“). What fascinates me about them is that there doesn’t seem to be any analytical process one can go through to solve them, but the answers are almost always universally accepted as right. And they can pop into my head at any time.

There is a clear analytical process to solve these based on a combination of understanding sentential structure and knowledge of common phrases. The sequence abolve follows the structure determinant adjective noun of (possessive) noun (potentially a proper noun!). Therefore solving it could be achieved using a search program (another opportunity to use the Google API?)
which builds up [Letters|Rest_Of_Word] signatures of common phrases based on verbal categorisation based on accepted English grammar. I’m not discounting the complexity of parsing a vernacular or highly idiomatic phraseology here! I recommend anyone interested in computational linguistics should get the following book: Using Computers in Linguistics: A Practical Guide (Paperback)

It’s fascinating to read about the kansas school board’s decision to include greater criticim of the theory of evolution in its school science standards. This has given rise to some harsh criticism from the scientific community and some extremely humorous parodies of Intelligent Design including the compelling theory of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM). FSM is the theory that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created us in HIS infinite wisdom and can alter all scientific experiments and measurements to make it appear that he doesn’t exist using “his noodly appendage”. Like all good religions it’s got a great merchandising department with t-shirts, mugs etc.
What’s really interesting here is that Intelligent Design is being dismissed as “religion” when it probably should correctly be embraced as another valid scientific movement concerned with understanding the deeper questions of origin science. The manner of its inclusion in any school curriculum should be limited as it requires greater scientific study but it’s unfair to say that criticism of evolution shouldn’t be allowed. However, just to upset things further it’s entirely possible that evolution and intelligent design are complimentary theories where evolution is a set of processes initiated by a focussed organism for some as yet unknown purpose. . It’s just a theory, like FSM-ism 🙂
Many of ID’s proponents are religious but it does seem reasonable to explore the possibility of intelligent direction in the creation or evolution of life on this or any other planet. It seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The political tensions in the US between conservatives and moderates, republican and democrat are creating an environment where it is near impossible to engage in a rational and objective discussion of any deeper moral or philisophical issue without being pigeon-holed as right-wing religious zealot or a leftie atheist.

The cost for calling eircom.net technical support is….
1.75 euro/minute. How long can this nefarious organisation be permitted to rob the citizens of Ireland with exorbitant rates? ComReg, our wallets are in your hands…

With apologies to taint.org. I picked up the following from the Irishblogs aggregator. I’ve often thought there was a requirement for a sig removal tool which scours emails for phrases like “[Dd]isclaimer”, “[Tt]he information contained”,”[Uu]nauthori[sz]ed use”, etc. and strips the offending lines and surrounding paragraphs from the emails while updating spamhaus with the offending address. A spot of tarpitting might also be a necessary component of such a solution. Ok, I’m kidding & would never condone such an action but many sigs such as these are essentially spam anyway. Just because I’m engaged in communication with an employee of a large Scottish financial institution doesn’t mean that I wish to participate in an email marketing campaign for their services.