Posted by Bob on October 6, 1999, at 23:35:08
In reply to Re: WHY? 2) silly post, posted by Noa on October 6, 1999, at 22:07:01
> The two translations somehow reminded me of the old story of the computer translation of the proverb "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" from English to Russian and back to English. APparently it came back as "The vodka is tasty but the meat is rotten".
While funny, I don't think it's all that silly. It gets to the heart of the matter. Meaning shifts from moment to moment. The "true" answer to Why? right here, right now isn't written in stone, but rather (as Sting put it) "on the surface of a lake."
Back to the computer metaphor:
The first version of the Newton (Apple's PDA that brought handwriting recognition to the, uh, well, technophiles ... yeah) had a recognition program that also tried to spellcheck for you automatically -- not only did it take a stab at turning your scribbles into computer text, it tried to figure out what you really meant to write. So, someone wrote in the poem Jabberwocky to see what would come out. The result was a new poem called "Tablespoons" ... "Oh fractious day! Cartoon! Cathay! He chortled in his joy"GIGO ... garbage in, garbage out.
Perhaps a better take on Why? from a computer perspective is like the old joke about Microsoft Technical Support -- "100% accurate, and completely useless". There are more important questions to ask. Where next? How? When?
(When? Maybe tomorrow ... it's past my bedtime and I still gotta post a new thread.)
Bob
poster:Bob
thread:12554
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991001/msgs/12698.html