Bing vs Google

I took Bing's little challenge: Bing It On. Where they attack Google, assuming that they have a better set up.

I did like Bing more when I searched for "Terantula", but the challenge didn't really answer the question I had. I use search engines as a spell check, for it is the best spell check I have ever seen. The challenge doesn't show that part: that would give it all away.

I appreciate the way the study was set up, attempting as well as it could to be non-biased. But I repeated the test afterward, searching for all the same things through each search engine and I discovered something:

It is impossible to be non-biased. An important detail is aesthetics and setup. Bing's results are fine. There are little differences, but for the most part the big searches give pretty comparable results. Trying each search on Bing proper and Google proper I much prefer the latter. Perhaps because it is what I am used to, but I didn't like the floating Facebook thing.

Biggest constructive criticism I have: image search. Bing's image search bothers the hell out of me. It's a general Microsoft like thing. Hover and some helpful thing pops up under your mouse. Spiffy idea, I suppose, but it is obnoxious. I am sure opinions differ, as this is a true opinion. But I do not like hovering little boxes showing a bigger version of the same picture. It's annoying and in the way. 

The Peculiar Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (2010)

Aimee likes geeks. Smart sciency types are definitely her type, between The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own, I draw this conclusion. And so, if you like smart sciency types, you might really like this book. If you like Literature, as a genre, then you might like this book. If you like drama drama drama, angst angst angst, sadness sadness sadness! then you will probably like this book.

It is not all about sadness. Angst or drama; and it's not snooty. But sadness is in the title and features pretty prominently. If you are having trouble, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I found the second half of the book to be a lot more fun than the first. But it is a book that generates very mixed reviews. In my own immediate circle it scored a love, a like, an ok, a meh and a hate. I like that type of feedback. It suggests to me a level of quality even if I did not perceive it. It has an ability to mean very different things to very slightly different people; who knows what it could mean to you.

In other words, disregard the rest of this review. If ya wanna read it, the best thing to do is read it. Otherwise, don't.

I found the characters in the book to be a little flat and too adult. Eight year olds talk like they are 30. The world's people tend to be governed by one emotion: angry people are angry, annoyed people are annoyed, boring people boring, distant people distant. Everyone seems to have a communication problem, even the empathetic people (who are always perceptive)... and no one is happy. No one. In the entire world. None. Maybe because they don't know how to talk to each other. Only a little bit of an exaggeration. In the second half of the book, characters are revealed to have more depth than I first thought and it is revealed that, surprise!, there are some people who are fairly content and maybe even happy. There are some curious people. Some people who love. It takes some waiting to find these non-depressed folks.

The Peculiar Sadness of Lemon Cake is nothing if not bizarre, for that is Aimye's aim. Her style of shooting. And the target she is aiming for is unutterable allegory. Like a Zen Buddhist, Aimee doesn't seem to have much faith that standard verbal fare can project her myriad messages to the audience. Nor does she seem to feel like a realistic story is her game. She goes for a fantastical reality which you must interpret for yourself. This is my favorite aspect of her story. But I don't know what messages Aimee is going for. I am certain that I didn't get them all. I see something about people choosing to become furniture in their own houses--becoming lost in their own private pursuits, not interested in living. I have met these people and I don't understand them in reality any more than in this story.

For me, this story feels very small. But it has a good chance to mean more to you. So disregard all of this drivel. Read a synopsis. If it sounds good, then try it for a while.

Scientific Analysis (spoilers comin'):

Nothing changes. No one communicates. They only commiserate inside themselves in a lonely monologue. Rose is 12 years old and can count 2 conversations with her father. There is no life outside this story besides what you read. The characters don't know each other any better than you do, despite living decades within the same household as each other. Every discovery she has about her father is told in a 200 page book. Likewise with her brother. And her mother. And George. Everything she knows, you have seen her discover. It is so small.

That is my main problem with it. It is too much just a story. It exists only within itself more dependently than epic fantasy. She can only taste emotions when it is palpable for the story. She doesn't taste her mother's affair until it starts. Why is there no lead up? Her mother is bringing snacks to some guy for years and it doesn't come off in her baking emotions? Why not?

I Pledge Allegiance to My Family

I wonder about people

People don't make a lot of sense. Expecting people to be rational is akin to expecting pigs to fly, expecting caterpillars to recite poetry. Yet still, I find myself expecting it. How can you happily spend $500 a month on marijuana and be upset that your grand-daughter likes it too? It doesn't make sense.

Yesterday I saw another sign declaring "More Freedom, Less Government." It is a nice sound-bite. More of one, means less of another. Simple relationship. Causational. Easy to understand. Straightforward. There are no other factors. Believe me! this sticker shouts. And many people obey. I encounter this attitude frequently. If we have less government, we become more free. Period. Exclamation Point.

At the same time, there is a ubiquitous attitude that the United States in God's design for human nations. ...which are governments... And usually when I encounter the former attitude, I find the latter in abundance as well. How can a person hate their government, and want it down played further and further and further; and yet love their country? Without realizing a government and a country are rather the same thing?

Then I started working in the public school system. Where we teach our children to recite a hollow rite beyond their vocabulary in front of a flag that they do not understand every morning. Despite a complete inability to understand what they are doing, or why, or even which hand is their right so they can place it over their "heart", which is invisibly located somewhere on their left breast.... this habit is instilled with greater rigor that any mathematical operation or grammatical nuance they may be learning.

I don't say the pledge every morning with the kids. I am not particularly patriotic. The idea of a 'nation' is too esoteric for me to pretend to pledge allegiance to. I don't see the point in trying to brainwash myself to it. Reality, as I understand, does not have borders. There are deserts in the mountains, and wetlands in the deserts, and oceans inland. The United States is a very loosely held together congregation of people who won't see eye-to-eye. We fight amongst ourselves, fight amongst our own states, and find as many little details to divide each other as we can. Denver isn't Colorado to the people who live in the mountains.

This is what I hear when the Pledge is recited:

I pledge allegiance

to some fabric

which represents America.

Not to the plutocracy

for which it stands

Fifty-some states,

fighting God,

heavily divided,

with liberty and justice

for celebrities. (and rich people)

Stay Strong.

Evil Prevails when good people do Nothing.

I may not be a "great soul", like Mahatma Gandhi, but I try in earnest to live by his idea: Be The Change You Want To See In The World.

I believe in this.

Even though it may cost me a job. Pittance, really. It cost Gandhi and India more than that for several decades. But eventually, the world was made a slightly better place.

Be the change.

Be a good person.

Even when you are told you Can't! (we say that a lot).

Even when it is illegal.

Fire and Ice (movie, 1983)

This is a great example of an Awfully Wonderful movie. A great flick to watch with a few friends who don't get too intent on hearing every word of dialog, even if there are only a few dozen the whole movie long.

This is an example of a the "fairy tale" phenomenon. Grimm stories are so devoid of character that that anyone can re-imagine the entire thing, straying back to the plot only once in a while, and make a great new story. This was Disney's career. Harry Potter is so great partially because of a premise so unrealistic that it invites readers to make up extensions for the characters. Reasons things might go the way they do. Fire and Ice lacks so much that it is a great conversation piece. And you'll be thinking about it, and laughing At it for hours to come.