Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

“What Is Hubris, Alex?” *

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I’d heard of this little demonstration of computing power some time ago; last week I caught a documentary about it on PBS’s NOVA program. On the way into work today, I also heard a more up-to-date report of it on NPR’s Morning Edition. The event itself takes place tonight through Wednesday, during the regular Jeopardy! broadcast time slot.

One of my favorite moments in the NOVA program: The Watson project leader at IBM, David Ferrucci, was for a while quite discouraged with Watson’s performance in dry runs. He’d invited his two small children to the set to watch one of these earlier tests. Onstage, Watson’s screen was set up as in the above video, between two human competitors. The part of the “host” was played by a comedian. Every time Watson got a question wrong (which happened many times during that stretch), the host laughed and made a wisecrack. Because, y’know, the wrong answers were often surreally wrong. People in the audience and Watson’s competitors always laughed at the host’s commentary.

What did Ferrucci’s kids take away from the experience?

Not that they’d witnessed something important, an historic event.

Not that machines aren’t as “smart” as humans, nor even as “smart” as their advocates claim.

To my knowledge, they didn’t remember — all kid-like — something completely irrelevant like the vending machines.

No, what they got was emotional confusion:

Why was that man picking on Watson, Daddy? Why was he making fun of him? And why was everyone else laughing and applauding with the man? Didn’t that hurt Watson’s feelings?

The highway of electronics history is, as they say, littered with the road-kill of assertions that thus-and-such task will never be successfully performed by a computer. So I lay no bets on the outcome of this Jeopardy! challenge.

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* Note that this can refer to human hubris, either on the part of Watson’s designers and builders, or — to the contrary — on the part of everyone who thinks this will validate the conventional wisdom: that a computer cannot out-“think” a human on any task requiring natural-language processing.

More interesting, maybe, to wonder: Will it someday refer to machine hubris?

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What’s in a Song: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2)

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[Another entry in an occasional series about American songs with long histories. This one follows Part 1, about the history of the composition of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” You can read Part 1, posted last week, here.]

[Video clip above assembled from the first film version of Roberta (1935); Irene Dunne sings it here. Later in the film, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance to an instrumental version, and their dance is what people usually remember from the film. This clip’s uploader helpfully tacked the dance scene onto the vocal: it begins at around 4:03 into the clip.]

By the time the 1940s rolled around, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” had already established itself in the pop songbook. According to at least one observer, pianist Joe Bushkin of the Tommy Dorsey band, it provided the pivotal moment on “the night Frank Sinatra happened.” (Something of a storyteller, Bushkin apparently told the story many times; the details below come from Sinatra! The Song Is You, by Will Friedwald.)

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If You Can Believe It (or Even If You Can’t)

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[Image: backglass from a new(ish) pinball game by Stern,
currently available from Premier Amusements]

From whiskey river‘s archive (a/k/a the commonplace book):

A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance.

“Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?” he asks.

“No,” replies the colleague, “but I’ve been told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.”

(Niels Bohr)

…and:

Strangers

A man and a woman happened to sit next to one another on a train. The woman took out a book and began reading. The train stopped at a half dozen stations, but she never looked up once.

The man watched her for awhile, then asked, “What are you reading?”

“It’s a ghost story,” she said. “It’s very good, very spooky.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “There are ghosts everywhere.”

“I don’t believe in them,” he said. “It’s just a lot of superstition. In all my years I’ve never seen a ghost, not one.”

“Haven’t you?” the woman said, and disappeared.

(Alvin Schwartz)

…and (plus the last sentence):

“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.

“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!”

(Lewis Carroll [source])

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Okay, I Still Hate the Name “SyFy”…

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…and probably always will. But this is a pretty damned impressive advertisement/trailer:

It sort of compresses all the memes from the SyFy cable network’s distinctive bumper spots into a big ol’ nearly coherent 2:40 whole (and avoids the corny-CGI temptations to which the network’s special-effects guys all too often succumb in the actual programs). Nice.

(Anybody know what song is on the soundtrack? Musically, it reminds me a lot of the song whose adorable video I featured in this post back in June, but the lyrics don’t seem the same.)

(Hat tip: Speak Coffee to Me)

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A Quirky Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist (2009 ed.)

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Taking off from the first edition… All I’m going to do for the music portion here is just add ten songs (and pray that, over time, I won’t blow the little WordPress audio-player thingie out of the water).

As before, these artists and numbers appear, back-to-back, in the playlist:

  1. Peter Robbins et al.: dialogue from A Charlie Brown Christmas
  2. Anonymous 4: Hodie Christus Natus Est
  3. Waverly Consort: Three Spanish Villancicos – Dadme Albcrecias
  4. Perry Como: Home for the Holidays
  5. Mannheim Steamroller: Joy to the World
  6. George Winston: The Holly and the Ivy
  7. Celtic Woman: O Holy Night
  8. John Denver and the Muppets: The Twelve Days of Christmas
  9. Al Hirt: Nutty Jingle Bells
  10. The Roches: Deck the Halls
    — 2009: —
  11. Charlotte Church: Mary’s Boy Child
  12. Madeleine Peyroux/k.d. lang: River
  13. George Winston: Variations on the Kanon
  14. Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops: The Toy Trumpet
  15. Eartha Kitt: Santa Baby
  16. Mannheim Steamroller: Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
  17. Celtic Woman: The Wexford Carol
  18. The Brian Setzer Orchestra: Jingle Bells
  19. Jimmy Boyd: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
  20. Cumberland Gap Reunion: Silent Night

(Note: The playlist goes automatically from start to finish, once you click the little Play button. To fast-forward to the next number, once a song is playing you’ll find a little fast-forward button to the right of its progress meter. And a fast-rewind to the left, for that matter.)

[audio:00_dialoguefromacharliebrownchristmas.mp3, 01_hodiechristusnatusest_anonymous4.mp3, 02_threespanishvillancicos_dadme_albricias_waverlyconsort.mp3, 03_homefortheholidays_perrycomo.mp3, 04_joytotheworld_mannheimsteamroller.mp3, 05_thehollyandtheivy_georgewinston.mp3, 06_oholynight_celticwoman.mp3, 07_12daysofchristmas_denvermuppets.mp3, 08_nuttyjinglebells_alhirt.mp3, 09_deckthehalls_theroches.mp3, 11_marysboychild_charlottechurch.mp3, 12_river_peyrouxlang.mp3, 13_variationsonthekanonbypachelbel_georgewinston.mp3, 14_thetoytrumpet_fiedler.mp3, 15_santababy_earthakitt.mp3,
16_rudolphtherednosedreindeer_mannheimsteamroller.mp3, 17_thewexfordcarol_celticwoman.mp3, 18_jinglebells_briansetzerorchestra.mp3, 19_isawmommykissingsantaclaus_jimmyboyd.mp3, 20_silentnight_cumberlandgapreunion.mp3|titles=’A Quirky/Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist’|artists=Various Artists]

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What’s in a Song: Cry Me a River (2)

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[This is Part 2 of a two-part series about the song “Cry Me a River,” made popular, originally, in a recording released in 1955. Part 1, about the song’s history, appeared a few days ago. As I indicated there, if you hope to learn anything from this about the Justin Timberlake song of the same title, you should proceed down the street and rattle the next doorknob.]

You hear the expression every now and then: Party A is complaining bitterly about the course his life has taken, or about the weather, or about the cancellation of a favorite TV show… whatever. The complaint falls upon the ears of Party B, an especially unsympathetic listener, who often has what B believes to be even sorrier woes. B sneers and says something like: Yeah, yeah — all right. Cry me a river, why dontcha.

One measure of the phrase’s popularity: the Urban Dictionary offers no fewer than three user-supplied definitions and colorful examples (not counting references to any songs by that title; the following is copied and pasted unchanged from the UD, so brace yourself for offenses to the Mother Tongue and good taste):

to tell a moaning person to shut up and that you dont care.
your cat got ran over and your giro is late, Cry me a river love!

…an expression that means i’ve been through worse, you’re being a drama queen

person: omg my chihuahua is sick
you: cry me a river loser both of my dogs are dead.

Said in response to some ones sob story. Shortened from the full statement of “Cry me a river, build a bridge and GET THE FUCK OVER IT!”

Very old saying predating any Justin Timberflake warbles or other pop culture references. Interestingly still in common use today.

Whinger: My cars broken down and Im poor and I lost my job and my wife left me and when she left, she ran over my dog.
Cold Hard Bastard: Cry me a river buddy, cry me a river.

Whatever the specifics: Isn’t that a great metaphor?

At the Yahoo! Answers UK site, one poster provided my favorite creative explanation (an example, btw, of a mondegreen) for the phrase’s origin:

It’s actually ‘Crimea River’. An English soldier was writing home during the Crimean war and wrote “It’s terrible being away from home. I miss you all. I hate this Crimea River, it’s so dirty and depressing, but it’s the only water we have”. When his wife read it out loud to his children, they mistook the words for Cry Me A River and not Crimea River.
Source(s):
My very own Great Grandpa.

As for covers of the song, other than Julie London’s, since its official publication in 1953…

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Loitering in Mind

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A somewhat slapdash whiskey river Friday post this week, its author having been pretty much laid low by the stupidest of ailments — a cold — since Tuesday night.

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (a thematic archive):

Can You Imagine?

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now — whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade — surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

(Mary Oliver [source])

From whiskey river:

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts. We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need — not all the time, surely, but from time to time — to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember — the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.

(Frederick Buechner [source: quoted many places online])

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At the Outset

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From whiskey river:

Morning

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best–
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso–

maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins–
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows–
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.

(Billy Collins [source])

…and:

Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough.

(Jeanette Winterson [source])

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Real-Life [Movie] Dialogue

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[Above still depicts the Martian “war machines” devastating the California countryside. In the foreground lies a small propeller-driven spotter plane of terrestrial origin, which has crash-landed — as they are wont to do at the peak of military operations against aliens.]

So last night we’re watching the 1953 Hollywood version of The War of the Worlds, starring Gene Barry and directed by George Pal. First time I’d seen it in a long time — and, more importantly for me, the first time I’d seen it with closed captioning.

The first scene I’ll highlight occurs early in the film. Somewhere in the hills outside Los Angeles, a “meteor” has crashed to the Earth. Fearful for some reason (this is around the time we sat down to watch it, so their motivation isn’t clear), the people of the nearest town have picked three men from among them to stand guard around the thing.

(Obviously they’re not that fearful, since all the rest of them then adjourn to a barn dance.)

The three men engage in some conversation which pegs them as, like, not scientists. The “meteor” starts to make a pinging sound, like a sonar device, and one of them draws the obvious conclusion:

That’s not a meteor — it’s a bomb!

At this point they notice something strange about the “bomb”: it has something on the top which looks like a hatch or manhole cover. As they watch, this hatch cover begins to turn… slowly…

[Following dialogue is all by one speaker.]

That’s no bomb. Bombs don’t unscrew!

[Hatch cover continues to turn… and turn…]

It’s the darnedest thing. It keeps unscrewing!

Eventually, of course, the hatch opens and a colored, three-lensed “eye” comes out on a long stalk. So now they know they’re dealing with something pretty seriously odd — probably, well, Men From Mars. They determine to approach the meteor bomb extraterrestrial vessel on foot, with white flags, because “everybody knows” a white flag means the bearer intends no harm. But they still have a problem. Luckily, one of them has an immediate solution:

Guy #1: What do we say to them?

Guy : “Welcome to California.”

So things go rapidly to hell from that point forward, as you can imagine even if you haven’t read the book or seen the film. But the US military, with help from their counterparts elsewhere, notices that the big levitating “Martian war machines” behave similarly wherever they land. They always come down in threes, for instance, and then there are those artificial eyes with three lenses — modeled on the Martians’ own three-eyed selves. Perhaps the people of Earth can use these observations to combat the aliens… if only they could figure out some of the remaining mysteries…

Military officer: Pattern-wise, one lands, then two, making groups of threes joined magnetically. Is that possible?

Scientist (Gene Barry): If they do it, it is.

Eventually, the government and military decide to use the “atom bomb” (which presumably isn’t unscrewing) against the aliens. Everyone in the (surviving) central cast and a bunch of other people (who are a little dumber and hence don’t take cover behind walls and such, and come to be tossed around like rag dolls in the shock wave) don radiation-proof suits and goggles so they can observe the explosion. As they watch, a PA system’s loudspeaker counts down the minutes and seconds:

Four minutes to bomb time…

Indeed.

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