Posts by Dr. Boli
ANOTHER WAY.
IN LEGAL NEWS.
REMARKABLE ANIMALS.
The Patagonian Wild Poodle uses the sharp stones that abound in its native habitat to trim its fur into serviceable pompoms.
McGillick’s Lesser Swamp Gerbil can, when cornered, sing all the songs of Dan Schutte, which discourages some predators and brings out the sentimental sap in others; in either event the gerbil is likely to be spared.
The Brunot’s Island Weasel, having depopulated its habitat of suitable prey long ago, has learned to order from Grubhub.
The Madagascar Flying Lemur can soar through the air for considerable distances, but only when thrown by another Madagascar Flying Lemur.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: My professor in English 101 assigned us an essay, and she said that the conclusion should end with a “mic drop.” What is a “mic drop,” anyway? I was going to ask my professor, but I was afraid she would think I was stupid. —Sincerely, Olivia, a freshman at Yohogania Community College.
Dear Madam: A mic drop is an emergency airlift of audio equipment to underdeveloped countries with a serious deficiency of public-address systems. Why your professor wants you to end your essay that way is not entirely clear to Dr. Boli. It seems like an expensive activity for a community-college freshman to indulge in. Usually mic drops are handled by UNESCO.
Incidentally, if you want to see an audio engineer’s head explode in colorful fireworks, you should point out that the word mic is, by the laws of English orthography, pronounced “mick,” and that the proper spelling for the short form of “microphone” is “mike.” For some reason this statement will cause apocalyptic rages that are very entertaining to watch. It has nothing to do with your essay, but after you have finished that you may need to unwind for a while, and taunting audio engineers is a harmless pastime that arguably improves their characters.
POSTER.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: Why are space aliens not visiting us? With all the stars in the galaxy and all the planets spinning around them, there have to be intelligent beings who have overcome the trivial difficulties of faster-than-light travel. Yet they never visit. They never even text me. Are they snobs or what? —Sincerely, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Dear Sir: It is true that the abundance of worlds in our galaxy makes it improbable that there are no other forms of life out there. They might consider it unwise, however, to get themselves mixed up with unpredictably primitive civilizations. It is likely, therefore, that something about our civilization strikes them as primitive. If we look at our planet from an outsider’s point of view, with an unbiased eye, what we notice immediately is that we still have weather. An extraterrestrial species evaluating our world for potential cultural exchange or commercial exploitation would seize on that detail as indicative of the state of our civilization as a whole. “They still have weather,” the scouts’ report would say. “Until they can get their act together and cooperate enough to implement some rudimentary meteorological planning, it is safe to assume that their planet is unprofitably and even dangerously disorganized; their culture has nothing to teach us, and a risk/benefit analysis of the commercial possibilities does not persuade us that this species could be profitably exploited.”
You should consider the possibility, however, that certain advanced extraterrestrial beings would be willing to meet suitably forward-thinking members of the human species on a private basis, subject of course to sensible non-disclosure agreements. Once you have considered that possibility thoroughly, you should show up at the Grandview Park bandstand at half past eleven tonight and bring a good Riesling. For some reason they are particularly fond of Riesling.
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LET MICROSOFT TAKE CARE OF IT.
Enhance images in Microsoft Edge
Sharpens images and improves color, lighting, and contrast
It turns out that Microsoft has introduced sophisticated artificial intelligence to process all the images you look at even if you don’t ask for them to be processed.
This is amazing! Haven’t you always wished Rembrandt could be a bit brighter? Wouldn’t it be better if Monet weren’t so blurry?
If you are a photographer, chances are pretty good that sharpness, color, lighting, and contrast are the four things you fuss over most when you’re preparing a photograph for publication. Well, you’re just wasting your time. Microsoft will use the awesome power of artificial intelligence to throw out your decisions and substitute much better ones. The setting is on by default, and it takes an inquisitive user or an unlikely coincidence even to discover that it exists.
This must be what the future looks like. In the future, artists will no longer have to worry about whether they have got the colors exactly right or whether the subject stands out from the background well enough. Rough in the composition, and the machine will take it from there. And the artists who do worry about those fussy little details will no longer waste anybody’s time but their own. The rest of us will see their pictures with all the currently fashionable aesthetic decisions made in the most agreeably fashionable way.
But why should we stop at images? Couldn’t deep learning tidy up Shakespeare’s notoriously sloppy blank verse? The pacing of Moby-Dick could be tightened to James Patterson standards. All that frittering about in a Bach fugue could be reduced to a tune you could walk home humming. The frustrating vagueness in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey could be sharpened up until a five-year-old could understand what was going on.
Microsoft has come up with the artificial-intelligence version of this French translator.
Of course the main effect early users noticed was that a lot of images in Edge were blurrier than in other browsers, but Microsoft says, “We're aware of the issue and are looking into it.”
FIND THE SADDEST.
Can you top that?
CLUB NEWS.
Elbridge “Ripsaw” Renshaw was forced to resign as president of the Pandemonium Motorcycle Club after leaked emails revealed that he had on multiple occasions referred to his Harley as “Mr. Bikey.”
The Tuesday Gardening Club will be meeting on Tuesdays next month instead of the usual Fridays. Mark your calendars.
The Ladies’ Quilting Auxiliary of the No Rules Extreme Fighting Club of Woods Run is asking for donations of old clothes, curtains, tablecloths, or anything else that absorbs bloodstains. Also, we could use some fabric for quilts.
The Fort Pitt Cornell-Penn-Dartmouth Club is looking for some ringers for next week’s golf match against the Allegheny Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club. We don’t want to repeat the embarrassment of last year, and those snobs always cheat anyway.