Posts by Dr. Boli
NOTICE TO BOROUGH RESIDENTS.
DIRE PREDICTIONS No. 10.
CORRECTION.
DIRE PREDICTIONS No. 9.
HEY, WEB DESIGNERS! YOU CAN HELP TRAIN THE NEXT GENERATION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
Well, if you have a Web site, or even just contribute to one, you can help train the next generation of artificial intelligence, and in the process you can make our world brighter and more artistic by making it more surreal.
For non-technical readers, a very short explanation. When an image is placed on a Web page, it is supposed to have an alt attribute, which describes what the image is or the information it conveys. The alt attribute is there to be used instead of the image by screen readers or text browsers. But it is also used by self-learning artificial intelligences to train themselves to recognize images.
This is where you, the Web designer, can help! You can make sure your alt attributes train the next generation of artificial intelligence to see the world more artistically, which is to say with a liberal dose of allegory and surrealism. You do this by using imaginative descriptions in your alt attributes, rather than the prosaic just-the-facts text that has hitherto been the fashion.
A few examples:
alt=“Komodo dragons”
alt=“President James Buchanan”
alt=“Couple waiting at a llama station”
alt=“Earl Hines playing the bagpipes”
alt=“Kitten”
alt=“The Battle of Camifex Ferry”
alt=“Agricultural extension agency”
These examples should be enough to demonstrate the principle. Now go and do likewise. Together we, the Web designers of the world, can build a brighter future where artificial intelligence, which has already proved its ability and inclination to be wrong, can be consistently and entertainingly wrong.
THE ADVENTURES OF DICTIONARY GUY.
Announcer. And now Malt-O-Cod, the only malt food drink flavored with real cod-liver oil, presents…
(Music: Trumpet fanfare.)
Announcer. The Adventures of Dictionary Guy!
(Music: Sousa’s “Library of Congress” March, in full and under for…)
Announcer. Yes, it’s Dictionary Guy, the hero who knows what words mean and isn’t afraid to tell. With his trusty unabridged dictionary and his prep-school education, Dictionary Guy comes to the rescue whenever the English language is egregiously abused.
(Music: In full, then fade under…)
Announcer. Our story begins in the offices of Dynamitech, a medium-sized corporation that sells products and services. The working day is just getting under way, and Mary Lou and Fred, two ordinary hardworking employees, are hard at work on a product or service.
Mary Lou. All I’m saying is, it would make our jobs a little easier, that’s all. I could get the work done better, that’s what I mean, if they would just tell us whether we’re working on a product or a service.
Fred. Yes, but you know how Baker is. You’re not supposed to ask questions like that if you want to be a Team Player.
Mary Lou. I just want to know what sport we’re playing. If I’m on a football team and I’m playing hockey—
Fred. Heads up. Here comes Baker now.
Baker (entering). Hey, Mary Lou, and whatever your name is, I was just wondering if we were on the same page yet vis-a-vis the project to break down silos going forward.
Mary Lou. Uh… silos? You mean, like on a farm?
Baker. I mean that, you know, as a thought leader and cultural transformation steward, I was hoping to get your buy-in on some differentiated behaviors based off the paradigm-shift model I ran up the flagpole last week.
Mary Lou. I, um, think the custodian usually takes care of putting up the flag in the morning.
Fred. He means—
Baker. I was thinking we should take a deep dive into our core agilities and see what deliverables we could all bring to the table.
Mary Lou. Well, I suppose I could make cupcakes.
Baker. At the end of the day, my key focus is to impact collective growth from the top down, so if I have to think outside the box to move the needle, then I’ll leverage our touchpoints to drill down into our value add and synergize the layers of the onion.
Mary Lou. I don’t think you know what any of those words mean.
Fred. Uh, Mary Lou, I don’t think that’s a good—
Mary Lou. No, really, I think you’re just throwing buzzwords out at random. You’re egregiously abusing the English language.
(Music: Trumpet fanfare.)
Dictionary Guy. Hark! I hear a cry of distress from a literate citizen!
Fred. Who are you, and how did you get past security in that outfit?
Dictionary Guy. I am Dictionary Guy, and I have sworn to avenge crimes against the English language whenever they inconvenience citizens who abide by the laws of grammar. Behold my mighty unabridged dictionary, with which I foil any villain who speaks unintelligible jargon!
Mary Lou. I hope you won’t do anything drastic. I mean, my 401(k) is vested in two years.
Baker. Let’s circle back on the language question. That stuff isn’t in my wheelhouse, but I think we can ideate some solutional thinking if we can just be proximal and make sure we have the bandwidth to productize a results-oriented swimlane.
Dictionary Guy. Indeed? Take that, villain!
Sound: Loud thump, body falling.
Mary Lou. Well, gee, Dictionary Guy, you just clonked him on the head with that big old book.
Dictionary Guy. He had it coming to him.
Mary Lou. I mean, I thought maybe you’d look some of those words up in the dictionary and show him why he was wrong.
Dictionary Guy. Well, I don’t see how that would help now. Maybe when he wakes up.
Fred. Should I, like, dial 9-1-1?
(Music: “Library of Congress” March, in and under for…)
Announcer. And so once again Dictionary Guy foils a villain who would debase the language of Shakespeare and Milton. Meanwhile, kids, when it comes to malt food drinks, you know all the words you need to know. Malt-O-Cod is the name you trust. Look ’em up, kids—look up “malt,” and look up “cod.” But don’t look up “O,” because that would just be silly. That’s everything there is to know about Malt-O-Cod, now with the 469th edition of Noah Webster’s Grammatical Institute in every specially marked two-pound package! It’s the malt food drink that’s brain food—Malt-O-Cod!
(Music: In full, then out.)
From DR. BOLI’S UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY.
Regicide (noun).—Murder of a person or persons named Reginald. For traditional reasons it is punished more severely than other forms of murder.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS.
We have taken up this question before, and Dr. Boli hopes it will not spoil his readers’ fun to reveal here at the beginning that his opinion has not changed.
EventBrite is a popular ticketing service used by many organizations, including the City of Pittsburgh Environmental Services to schedule appointments for electronics recycling. If you have an old television that has died and passed on to a better life free of reruns at last, it is necessary to have the carcass recycled, and you must set up an appointment to have the chauffeur drive it to the recycling center.
In order to get the ticket for your recycling appointment from EventBrite, you must agree to three separate legal documents. Two of them, taken together, add up to 17,363 words, which would be, at a commonly accepted average adult reading rate, an hour and a quarter of uninterrupted reading. The third document does not exist: the link leads to a generic landing page, and the document cannot be found by searching for its title on the site. But you must agree to it anyway.
Let us ignore the phantom document for the moment and assume that, being a figment of our imagination, it contains no words at all. We are still required to agree to 17,363 words.
How does this compare to other legal documents?
The Constitution of the United States of America, including the secretary’s attestation of the corrections, is 4,498 words.
It takes almost four times as many words to state the conditions for receiving a recycling appointment as it took to set up the entire machinery of American government.
Ah, you say, but the machinery of American government was defective, and the Constitution has had to be amended more than once.
The Bill of Rights, including the preamble, is 828 words.
The rest of the amendments, from XI up through XXVII, including their dates of ratification, are 2,698 words.
The Constitution with all amendments, as well as the attestations and other matter, comes to 8,024 words. That is still less than half what we have to agree to in order to receive a recycling appointment from EventBrite.
And that is under the assumption that the third document, which was not available for us to read but to which we still had to agree, contained no words at all. We may be permitted to doubt that its language, when it exists, would be as terse as all that.
The fact that courts take these agreements seriously is all the evidence you need that our justice system has been sold lock, stock, barrel, and infantryman to the capitalists. These are not agreements: they are conditions imposed at will by private organizations upon people who cannot choose to refuse them. (Recycling electronics like televisions, for example, is a legal obligation.) The correct term for imposing conditions in that way is slavery, and it would be healthier for our political discourse if we simply said what we meant.
BEER?
“Well,” he says, “we have…
“Imperial Milk Stout with Frosted Animal Cookies, Strawberry, Raspberry, Milk Sugar, and Vanilla…
“Imperial Milkshake Stout Conditioned on Oreos…
“Imperial Stout with Toasted Coconut, Coffee, and Cinnamon…
“Salted Caramel Butter Crisp Pastry Stout…
“Imperial Stout with Blackberries, Cocoa Nibs, Vanilla, and Milk Sugar…”
“So,” you say, interrupting the list, “the answer is no?”
“Well, if you don’t like our stouts, you might try an IPA. We have IPA with Strawberry, Rhubarb, Milk Sugar, Graham Crackers, and Vanilla…”
“I’ll just have iced tea,” you say with a frozen smile.
Now, you may think this is a little exaggeration, and it is true that Dr. Boli has once in a while indulged in slight exaggeration to make a point. But these names are taken straight from the list at a brewery in Sharpsburg, a brewery that lives in part of the old Fort Pitt Brewery, which once produced the most popular beer in Pennsylvania.
Apparently the word “beer” no longer means what it meant when Dr. Boli was younger.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: Why are so many allegedly poor people fat? It’s disgusting, that’s what it is. They suck up public money for food stamps, when obviously they have way too much food, not too little. I never let myself go like that. I bought a gym membership, and I work out every day. I have a whole roomful of top-rated exercise machines at home for when the gym is closed. I shop at Whole Foods and make sure to buy the most wholesome gluten-free all-natural fair-trade vegan-approved ingredients. If these so-called poor people would do what I do, they wouldn’t be so disgustingly overweight. —Sincerely, Lord MacBloat of That Ilk, Ilkington Heights.