Posts by Dr. Boli
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: Under certain circumstances a key combination on my computer will produce an emoji, which is a graphic substitute for thought that has become very popular among the lower classes lately. Since it is possible to hit one of these key combinations by accident, my question is this: is there some adjustment I can make in the preferences that will prevent my computer from ever producing another emoji again as long as I live? —Sincerely, 😠.
Dear Sir or Madam: An amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to tamper with the emoji system in any software, even if the software is otherwise open-source. A reporting requirement is included in the amendment, which probably explains the pounding at your door right now.
WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
REPLACE HUMAN EDITORS?
To spoil the surprise for you, the answer appears to be no. Not yet.
Zoho Writer is actually a very good online word processor, which Dr. Boli mentions because has no wish for Zoho, by all accounts an honest and upstanding Indian company, to suffer on account of anything he is about to say.
But when you are advertising your advanced artificial-intelligence capabilities, you ought to have someone outside the coding pit check to make sure that your AI assistant is not in fact as dumb as a box of rocks.
Writer comes with Zia—an AI assistant trained to help you improve your writing. It understands the context of your sentences and comes up with grammar, readability, and style suggestions to further polish your piece.
Sounds swell! Now look at the screenshot. (You can click on it to enlarge it.) This is not text Dr. Boli made up to put Zia through her paces. This is the screenshot Zoho published as a demonstration of Zia’s advanced artificial intelligence.
In this text, Zia has made two suggestions (three if we count underlining the “of”’ after “due”). Of those, one is completely wrong. Adverbs of frequency do in fact usually come before a simple verb, though you can probably think of a dozen exceptions before you finish reading this sentence. (“Do you come here often?”) However, the usual placement in a compound verb is between the auxiliary and the main verb. The original text is correct: “She has always been” is much more natural than “She always has been,” though the latter may be used to emphasize the “has.”
Now read that original text, and you will find a few questionable things that Zia has not flagged. Among them: the incomprehensible phrase “tour of visiting us,” the Donald-Trump-style capitalization of “Airport,” the missing “up” in the expression “to pick her,” the extra space between “was” and “from” at the beginning of the second paragraph, the un-English relative clause (“who could speak” where “and could speak” would be the English norm), “spain” and “spanish” without capitals, the un-English article in “had a lunch,” the missing article in “having amazing day,” the missing apostrophe in “Its,” and of course the non-native expressions throughout, which (to be fair) might be natural to a speaker of Indian English. Dr. Boli may have missed a few, but this is a very good list for nine lines of text. In nine lines with at least twelve obvious errors, Zia has flagged two and has flagged one correct expression as wrong.
Once again, Dr. Boli has decided to wait a little longer before he has a fit of panic about the coming artificial-intelligence apocalypse.
PARKING SIGN.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION,
Annual Christmas Number.
Little Drummer Boy. Connoisseurs of Christmas novelty songs insist that “The Carol of the Drum,” otherwise known as “The Little Drummer Boy,” was much funnier in the original Lancashire dialect.
Nativity scenes. Inexplicably, 83% of the Nativity sets manufactured within the past twelve months have turned out to include a pangolin, in spite of the manufacturers’ best efforts at quality control.
White House. The much-lauded White House Christmas decorations for 2020 include a giant inflatable coronavirus wearing a Santa hat.
Puritans. Although the Puritans officially outlawed celebrations of Christmas, an underground fruitcake industry prospered in seventeenth-century Boston.
Christmas Colors. For this year’s Christmas red and green, the Web Color Consortium has picked FireBrick (#B22222) and MediumSeaGreen (#3CB371).
Advertisement.
GOOGLE KNOWS EVERYTHING.
PARKING SIGN.
HOW TO VIEW THE CONJUNCTION SAFELY.
Tomorrow, December 21, the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn will appear in the sky, a once-in-800-years event that has been called the Christmas Star by astronomers desperate for publicity and funding. The two planets, already very near in the sky, will approach to within a tenth of a degree. Here are some tips for viewing the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn without personal injury.
Use a pin to poke a small hole in a sheet of aluminum foil. Wrap the sheet of foil around a potato. Bake the potato. Eat the potato with butter, sour cream, and shredded Cheddar (real English Cheddar, not the American substitute). If you are indoors eating a potato during the conjunction, you will probably be safe.
Bring a pair of powerful binoculars or a small telescope. It will allow you to detect the approach of a superstitious mob with pitchforks and torches while there is still time to make a getaway.
Make sure to check the astrology column of your local newspaper for the latest conjunction safety information. Be especially wary of any tall, dark stranger with a mysterious past.
If you are vacationing on either Jupiter or Saturn, it is probably too late to book a return flight. Find an interior room on the lower floor of your hotel and brace for impact.
If the conjunction begins wandering across the sky, making gestures to you to follow it, and you do decide to pursue it, and it finally comes to rest over a stable, and inside the stable is a newborn infant surrounded by his parents, some shepherds, and an assortment of picturesque farm animals, make sure you have available a gift of (a) gold, (b) frankincense, or (c) myrrh. Under no circumstances should you bring a drum that goes pa rum pum pum-pum. Babies and snare drums do not go well together.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: I’ve been feeling like a failure as a dog owner because I’m not paying enough for dog food. Calvin Coolidge, my Dobermoodle, eats mid-priced dog food from the supermarket, but my neighbor (who keeps parrots, by the way, but she has opinions on everything) says I should be feeding him that expensive all-meat dog food, because dogs are wolves, and wolves are evolved to eat meat. Am I cheating poor Cal on his food? —Sincerely, A dog lover, but not sure how much of a dog lover.
Dear Sir or Madam: Your neighbor’s assertion is based upon an insufficiently nuanced understanding of canine evolution. It is true that many taxonomists consider the domestic dog to be a subspecies of wolf. (Others do not, so you must be careful about the seating whenever you invite taxonomists to a party.) But the dog has had tens of thousands of years to diverge from the wolf. Dogs evolved from those wolves who learned to stick by the humans and eat the things the humans tossed aside. In other words, the contents of your garbage can are what your dog is evolved to eat, and supermarket dog foods are carefully formulated to provide a close approximation, nutritionally speaking, of your garbage. Your dog Calvin is well fed.